jmtyndall

That's awesome. I really want to try CO but hearing so many horror stories of optic reliability. Hopefully this will help improve dot quality

Until you push the gun left with too much trigger and pull the gun down anticipating the recoil. Then your sight alignment and sight picture go right in the garbage. They were useless to you because by the time the primer ignited and the bullet left the barrel the gun was pointed somewhere other than where your perfect sight alignment and sight picture told you they were. Aim all you want. Take 3 weeks to set the gun up on a rest. Doesn't matted if I kick the muzzle right before you break the shot.

"Aiming is useless" is a blanket statement. "Aiming is useless if you can't pull the trigger" is a qualified statement. Those are opposites. I'll ask again, did you watch the video or just read the clickbait title?

First you must do one, then you must do the other. As Ron says, no amount of aiming is going to give you tight groups without trigger control. Ron isn't saying that nobody should ever aim the gun. It's basically the first thing he says in the video. "You need to be able to pull the trigger without changing the attitude of the gun. Until you can do that, aiming is useless." Don't ignore the part in italics as it's pretty damn important. He goes on to say you need to be able to not only press the trigger without moving the gun, but also to yank the trigger (ie go fast) without changing the attitude of the gun. Did you watch the video, or just read the title?

It's not even that someone is wrong. He just really wants to aggressively play semantics to show how smart he is. I'm sure he has several national championships. Anyways, he's successfully derailed the thread for those who want to distill down information from multiple sources and incorporate the helpful bits into their shooting.

Went to do live fire this weekend. Still haven't gotten in contact with whoever holds approval power to allow me to use the action bays at the range I'm a member off. I get it...safety is important, but I've been getting the run around for months. Might as well not have the bays. That said another practice session with no holster or mag pouches so I worked on 15 yard head shots strong and weak hand (classifier stuff), a bit of practical accuracy at 7 and 15 yards. Finally took the target out to 25 yards and did a bit of shooting for groups. Noticed I was struggling a bit seeing 2 rear sights and 2 targets. Now when I first started shooting pistol I was cross dominant. I taught my brain to be right eye dominant, or at least to use my right eye for shooting. Now it's not a huge problem but since my eyes are nearly identically dominant I sometimes have a bit of issue when trying to transition quick or pick up the sights quickly. Also sometimes I get this double sight/double target and it's a bit hard to shoot. So when I got home I stuck some tape to the top half of my shooting glasses lenses. Doing a couple nights of dry fire I feel like this is going to be a big improvement. I'm picking up the sight very clearly and quickly, no ghosting, having an easier time getting a nice sharp focus on the front sight (seeing the serrations), and even seeing a more precise aim point on the target. Theres a match this weekend, I'll shoot it with the tape and see how I like it.

You don't understand the point hes making? Theres a difference between precisely aiming the shot and just putting the dot in the A zone. The point is pull the trigger quickly without disturbing the gun. If your sights wobble in a 4 inch circle you'll shoot a 4 inch group by pulling the trigger without disturbing the gun. If you hold a half inch dot as your aim point then push the gun 0.1" low and 0.1" left every time you pull the trigger then your shot goes 6" low left. To me it's fairly obvious what he's saying

In the short term, use athletic grip tape to protect your hands when they get tender. Over time you hands and the grip tape will "wear in" and it will be less of an issue

Working down reload times is much harder than draw times. With draw time I was able to force speed then clean up what broke. With reloads any time I try to push it all falls apart. Mags fly across the room, feed lips get stuck on the side of the gun, rim of the case gets stuck on the back of the gun. I cant tell where I'm going wrong, I know that my grip on the mag isnt quite consistent. The gun position or movement up to the gun position is likely also not consistent. I pushed harder and harder trying to fix it and it just got worse to the point I was missing 70-80% of my attempts. I think part of the problem is that this is a much more complicated skill than the draw. Tomorrow night I will back way off, no timer, half speed. Slower even just to work the mechanics then start working it down just one tenth at a time. Going to take me a LONG time to get to those 1.0 second reloads Edit: Shoot Fast Podcast Ep. 48. "Gripping your mag consistently is as important as nailing your grip on the load." Listened to that a couple times and then went to grab my gun. The faster I go, the less consistently I grab the mag. I noticed that a lot of my missed reloads I was holding just the very end of the magazine which results in a lot more "slop" with where the bullet end of the mag is pointed, which is probably causing the top of the mag to smack into everything around the magwell instead of going into the magazine well. Slowed down to about 2.0 second loads and grabbed the mag really consistently with my finger nice and high along the front of the mag and noticed that things got a lot better. Going to work on doing that consistently as well as some Burkett loads and just working on grabbing the mag.

I dont know why you feel personally attacked by the shooting (in)ability of myself (new shooter to the sport) or my comment to the OP (another new to the sport). Is a more accurate load better? Yeah. Do you need to be able to shoot less than 3" groups at 25 yards to develop a good load? No. Do you need to shoot that well to participate in matches? No. Should we strive for the best accuracy we can have? Yeah. Sure it would be great if we could all shoot groups in the zeros with our handguns and any deviation was on the load, but it's not realistic. Someday I may be able to shoot 3" groups at 25 yards(maybe, I've seen a lot of guns not shoot that well from a rest, but I sure hear about it a lot on the internet). In the meantime, for the 20,000 rounds it will take me to get there, I'll work up loads based on power factor and check for acceptable accuracy so that I can get some match experience.

Pfffffft. Hey OP if you can't do this don't worry, neither can I! At this point I just load for power factor unless something is really bad. Example being the 147gr load in my M&P 9mm shoots like 2.5-3" at 7 yards. Figured it was just my shooting, but when I switched to a 124gr bullet suddenly the groups dropped to 1.5". None of these are even close to 3" at 25 yards, if my gun is even capable of it! The point is I can make some conclusions about a load being "accurate enough" and being the right power factor even If I can't shoot impressive 25 yard groups.

I'm not that good of a shot really. If I go slow and concentrate I can keep 10 shots in a 3 inch dot out to 10 yards. At 25 yards I can shoot a 6-8" group..most of the time. So at 25 yards I can hit a head box, steel plate or A zone if I take my time. I'd suggest if someone is interested in the sport that they understand how their gun works, the safety rules, know how to reload the gun, and can hit A-box most of the time out to 15 yards before they head out to a match. Everything else is going to come with time.

I must say, after a few days without my gun in my hands they feel pretty good. I can tell that hand strength and grip endurance are going to be an important part of my training. Did a quick session of dry-fire last night. I was not happy with either the speed nor the consistency of my reloads. Just a few thousand more reps and maybe I'll get there Before I left for the weekend I had ordered an Apex DCAEK kit for my M&P and it made a massive difference. It's much easier for me to pull the trigger quickly without disturbing the sights, and particularly it's much easier for me to pull the trigger weak-hand only without disturbing the sights. I'm hopeful this helps my shooting a bit. But one drunken night while out of town I did a "bad" thing. I ordered a Walther Q5 match. Now I just need to decide if I want to stick with production or shift over to carry optics. While I think about it I'll keep shooting the M&P. Tonight's dry fire will be focused on reloads.

Tim, there's a chart on the forward-set trigger page that shows what all the pull weights are for different spring combos. Quite informative. As for my conclusion, I decided I knew I want to upgrade to a different gun rather than invest a fortune in making this one shoot good. In the mean time I went ahead and bought the DCAEK and while I had the gun apart I polished up the trigger bar, the interface between trigger bar and the "c-clip", the striker block channel and the sear plunger. The trigger is way smoother and also way lighter. Sure it has some pretravel and a bit of overtravel but it doesn't seem any worse than stock in that regard. I don't have a trigger pull gauge, but the pull weight is significantly reduced and I didn't replace any of the springs.

You've loaded a squib already? Please be very careful and dedicate your full attention when you are reloading. Look inside every single case before placing a bullet and check the powder hopper often. Finally at this point of your reloading adventure, clear the entire shell plate if you have any issues or need to stop for any reason. Later on you can learn to clear just the malfunction and keep loading the rest. I dont want to hear about anything happening to you or your gun!

I'll jump in way behind here A116747 Second match was all-classifiers so got my initial classification- C class 54.97%

The dude isn't human. From what I recall he made master in IDPA right away and his initial classification was GM in USPSA. I'm not saying he didn't work hard, I'm sure he did. But a few months of dry fire isn't going to me to GM that's for sure! Anyways, I just got my initial C classification and I plan on taking whatever classes I need to advance as quickly as I can. I don't care if someone made GM without taking classes, or if someone took 57 classes and took 10 years to make GM. If they can shoot at that level then that's pretty awesome to me.

I think he's saying the fundamentals are the same whether you're shooting 5 or 25 yards. The 25 yard target is a little blurrier and harder to see but everything that happens at the gun is the same. You find a precise points of aim, align the sights, press the trigger straight and smooth and then the bullet hits the target. If you just look at angular deviation a 3" 25 yard group is like shooting a 0.6" group at 5 yards. With a 9mm that essentially means that all of your bullet holes have to touch each other to meet the goal. In fact if you measure a 0.6" group center to center then it should fit entirely under a quarter at 5 yards. I might be able to do that with my wife's 1911. No chance I could do it with my M&P. That's not to say I can shoot a 3" group at 25 yards either. The target is so out of focus for me that I struggle to get a consistent sight alignment/sight picture. But at least I know fundamentally what I should be doing lol.

I was back at the range last night. Did better than last time and my grip strength has returned, though I still have a bit of pain (probably mild tendonitis) from jumping in so hard. Hands haven't been used to gripping so hard for as long as I've been doing dry fire sessions. It's been REALLY hard to take the days off to let them heal. In the mean time I am still doing some movement and airgunning around the house, as well as digesting as much content as possible. Joined Practical Shooting Training Group, started rereading the books I have and been working my way through the Practical Pistol Show podcasts. Anyways, back to the range time. As limited as I am with what I can do at this range I worked on pressing out, finding the sights and breaking a shot as quickly as possible at 7 yards. As close to performing a fast draw as I can get at this range. The results weren't exactly pretty, but out of 100 rounds I shot 93 Alphas, 6 Charlies and a delta, timer data was worthless due to other shooters on the range. I'm tightening my grip and anticipating recoil as I pull the trigger which I'm really trying to work on as well, so I spent another 60 rounds practicing trigger control at speed/group shooting. Basically set a 3 inch dot out at 7 yards, get a good sight picture, then execute a quick but smooth trigger press. The final 6 shots I was able to keep all 6 at relatively quick speed. I shot my remaining 90 rounds doing doubles at 7 yards, really trying to work on seeing the sights, gripping the gun, tracking the sights etc. My last couple of runs I tried to concentrate on locking my wrists and I felt like I was better able to control recoil. I want to make that a focus next time I go out. I am amazed at the things you can learn just shooting 2 rounds at a target just 5-7 yards away. I'm itching to shoot my next match, but I'm out of town for a funeral this weekend. Probably for the best though since my hands are still a bit sore.

Yeah this. But only if you buy two guns then never compete with them. Then it's like buy twice, cry perpetually as you pay your ammo bill

Oh lord. No longer all that interested in buying one of these to dabble in CO

Your English is great. Thanks for the advice. I definitely slowed down and did some slow fire group shooting and worked on breaking the habit of holding the trigger back and riding the reset. Maybe the session wasnt a total waste. But I like your idea of shooting doubles with only one round. I'll try that out.

One thing at a time. What you're saying sounds right. I look for about 0.020" bell on 9mm with coated bullets. Could probably use a bit less but every now and then I get a case the bullet just doesnt quite sit right on. So I stay with that. No affordable scales measure to the hundredth of a grain. What you have is sufficient. Everything we do can be assumed to be +/-0.1gr and this it doesnt make a ton of sense to try to determine our precise load by throwing a bunch of charges and then averaging them. Most powder drops throw +/-0.1gr with most powders. The fact that yours only threw 3.6 and 3.7 means you're throwing more precisely than that. So your powder measure is doing fine. Your digital scale effectively rounds your charge weight. That means the 3.6gr will display but the charge weight is actually somewhere between 3.55gr and 3.64gr (see why the sticker says +/-0.1gr?). It will read 3.7gr on the display if the charge is between 3.65gr and 3.74gr. 3.64gr and 3.65gr are incredibly close together yet read 3.6 and 3.7 respectively on the display. 0.01gr of powder is very likely less than 5 tiny kernels. Oh and the load cell performance likely varies with temperature, battery voltage or wall power fluctuations, tiny air currents (these aren't enclosed lab scales), florescent lighting etc. So a known check weight placed on the scale could display different results at different times! A beam scale could be more precise if you're very careful using it, but they are susceptible to being read wrong, the magnetic damping can interfere with the reading a bit and the pivot points need to be clean and razor sharp. All of this explanation to say that what you have is fine. In the beginning it's a bit hard not to hyper focus on being ultra precise. The instruments we have just aren't capable of being that precise with certainty. If you want to be very consistent when working up loads for the chrono we can talk about trickling powder to try and eek some extra precision out of the scale.

Well I went to the range today. I've been doing a lot of dry fire and focusing on grip, so my hands are smoked. I figured that was okay and I'd still have a productive live fire practice. Right after warming up I shot the doubles drill a couple times and noticed I was barely able to hang all the shots in the A/C at 7 yards. Tried to work on a few other things and was just really unsatisfied with my shooting. Gun was moving around in my hands, having to readjust grip, yanking the trigger and pulling shots low left. Packed it in and called it a day. I was feeling pretty down but I spent some time thinking and reflecting and realized a lot of the issues stemmed from tired hands not being able to actually grip the gun. My hands were sore and tired which explains the gun shifting around, and likely explains the horrible flinch I didnt see as much last time I shot. I didnt make progress in my shooting tonight, but I did learn a lesson. Know when to let your body rest. Dont ignore what its telling you. I turned money into noise tonight because I didnt listen. I will take a couple days off to recover, regroup and then try again next week. Hopefully with better results. Also, need to train trigger control at speed. Cant be said enough. Slow fire, pin and reset I can pull the trigger dead straight. When I try to go fast my hand tenses and I pull the gun all over the place

Is this to say the grey version is somehow different? The gun store near me stocks the grey ones and I haven't seen the black/blue ones before.