Glock26Toter

Oh yeah. Quite the score. Craigslist will delete any gun related stuff and will remove your account if you do it twice. Yes, reloading supplies and parts count. I had brass removed with warnings... after selling a couple of buckets. I LOVE IT when we can get them past the sniffers and sell our evil gun stuff anyways! Nice work. Besides that, I've been super impressed with my 1050 since buying it a couple of years ago. Welcome to reloading like a pro!

I shoot regularly at Centennial Gun Club in Colorado. They use PVC pipe and some kind of "concrete" tape? It's like duct tape, but very "plasticy" and I've also seen it used in warehouses for marking inventory locations, forklift lanes, etc. It sticks to concrete WAY better than duct tape. Please AVOID PVC fault lines. I've personally stepped on it and took quite a head-banging fall when it rolled out from under me. I would like to see 1x2's with that plastic concrete tape myself. I would caution against the sandbags and no tape... seems the fault line could slide if stepped on. Good luck!

I feel you man. I shot many years with my right eye. I actually changed by accident. I think when I got glasses. I shot archery and when I got glasses had a hard time because I would look through the very edge of my lens. I had to change my nock point to accommodate. I believe when I changed my nock point I started shooting left eye'd. After that I felt weird when I returned to shooting handguns. Then one day I realized I was using my left eye. Up to that point I would have always said I was right eye dominant. It's worth noting that until that point in my life I never understood any of the dominance tests so it's possible I was neither (or both depending on how you look at it.) Anyways, I'm still not sure if that's how it unfolded since I'm talking about a 40 year span but the only thing I know is that I'm NOW left eye'd. This entire time I've never had any trouble with rifles. I keep both eyes open even when using a scope. It's been a strange road for me, and the point of this ridiculous story is... Just go with it. I never did put much thought into it and would advise the same. Shoot how you need to shoot to obtain a consistent draw and hopefully maintain the ability to keep both eyes open. (something that's a must in my opinion). I would avoid trying to change anything about YOU and only work on changing technique to get you shooting well without any auxiliary movement. Enough trigger time will result in success no matter what you have to do to run the gun.

This weekend I was only able to shoot one match at Centennial Gun Club. I had to do some personal things and almost skipped this match too, but thought... screw that. I gotta shoot. I'm really happy that I've got the green gun back and went in with confidence knowing that it's dead on all the way out to about 25 or 30 yards. The classifier went very well for me. This was a true "hero or zero" moment and I sure as hell didn't want to score some 89% on the damn thing and wind up getting screwed out of making GM. If all goes well with pending scores July will be the month, but I'm NOT counting my chickens before they hatch. With that in mind, I just let it all hang out and things fell into place. It was 99-04 (Pucker Factor) so not exactly a difficult one but when it was all said and done I scored a 110.57% on it with 3 points down and 2.79 seconds. The best part about it was that I knew right from the first shots that all was working well. I was in tune with the dot, watched it for every shot and called every hit with precision. There was a marginal head shot, but thanks to that green gun being exactly sighted in I knew it was there even though I called it on the far edge of the head. My shots on the far targets were maybe 1-2" apart and dead center of the A-Zone. This was more than just scoring a good run on that stage. It was a "show yourself what's possible" moment and I'm super excited about it. The next stage, on the other hand was a reminder of how bad things can go in a hurry. I was running to the final position of a long box along the length of the stage and stepped on my magazine. On a concrete floor that meant I was lying flat on my back before I even had time to fully register that my foot had landed on something besides concrete for that last step. I hit hard and was pretty sure I had injured something while I was looking up at my gun and ensuring it was still pointing downrange. The RO asked me if I was OK and wanted to stop. After a brief pause to assess myself for possible injuries I yelled "NO" and jumped to my feet to finish the stage. As it turned out, other than a shattered DAA Magnetic mag pouch I was unscathed. Whew! It's quite upsetting to be the guy that has fallen TWICE at that range and I need to remember that you CAN NOT push to 100% at that match. There are things you need to watch and that match should be about helping new shooters, having fun, and not worrying about a 100% performance. I'm going to wind up hurt if I do that shit again. I have hopefully reached the maximum number of times that I'll fall in my shooting career! So, overall I was very happy with my shooting, stage planning, and all but ONE of my movements. There were a couple of mikes and no-shoots so improvement is certainly still on the agenda. Goals to get this done; Work on confidence of instantly breaking the shot when sight is correct... but not an instant before! More dry fire. More documentation and information building.

Why reinvent the wheel, so to speak? http://www.doublealpha.biz/eckla-beach-rollyfor like $99.00 + some shipping seems reasonable to me. I know many will disagree with said "reasonable price", but think about how much money in sponsorship dollars companies like DAA put into our sport. They sell many types... http://www.doublealpha.biz/range-carts?osCsid=f24820ffd44c87555bd7ed2176c9811d

What's this "might" stuff?

Always point out positives before identifying areas for improvement. It will help you have a lot more fun. No matter what level of shooting you are, there are ALWAYS things you've done well. e.g., My last response to a called mike was "yeah, but did you see that plate rack go down?!" Do that. It's more fun. I've found that the Accuracy/Speed issue is a bit of a teeter-totter. Try to make most of your goals one or the other and move back and forth to edge your way forward. It's a lot of work to try to think about careful aiming AND moving faster. You'll find there are times when you feel you're shooting OK but moving slow, or moving OK but shooting badly. Set the goals in the front of your mind and list accordingly. Of course the goal is to do both like those fancy shmancy GM's... we'll all get there one day! You are on the right track. Good luck.

The problem with moving your head is that its not consistent. In some positions you'll need to move more than others. As we all know from missed high-fives, if the first guy holds his hand up and the second guy just hits his hand, all is well and we don't look stupid. If both of us move our hands toward each other we can look like fools. Maybe not every time, but for sure in front of women. Your draw will always be more consistent if the gun is being drawn to the same point every time. I'm also left eye/right handed and also developed a head tilt. I saw quite a bit of draw improvement when I dry-fired myself straight. My advice is to do the same.

I think it's awesome that you are already videoing yourself. You have a good handle on some positive aspects as well as areas for improvement. My advice is keep the list of improvements short, but fresh. Seems like you mostly have: Postive--- good accuracy/visual patience. (this includes slowing movement just enough to get the hits, but not stopping.... "shooting on the move.") Good basic gun handling skills. Video review. Journaling. Areas for improvement--- Engage sooner. Don't camp out on targets/arrays (leave sooner) Work on speed of movement between positions. Seems like this list will keep you busy for, oh... the rest of your life if you keep updating it.

I attended the 2016 Mile High Showdown this past weekend. I learned some lessons that I won't soon forget. It was a tough match that brought back all the memories from 2015 Nationals. There were some long shots and many stages that almost nobody could get through without errors. While it may generate complaints I choose to look at matches like this as an opportunity to deal with the mental aspect of not feeling like we are all rock stars. Like Nationals last year I made significant errors in the first few stages. When I completely missed a target I let myself get very upset and threw my magazines at my cart from about 10' away. As soon as the mags left my hand I immediately realized how immature is was and how stupid I looked. Luckily, only 1 person (that I know of) saw it. It wasn't a super hard tantrum throw... more like a toss, but never the less I felt like crap. I went to the safety area for a self imposed time-out and reflected on all the books I've read that remind us we can't let that shit happen. After returning to the match and taking my own advice (and many others) about shaking it off I was soon back to having a good time. YES, there were several errors later and I didn't feel good about my performance, but by the end of the match I had run a couple of mighty respectable stages and was hopeful of the results. (remembering that everyone else was shooting the SAME match.) By the time all was said and done, I wound up with a HOA for Open and Top Master trophies. It was a tough match for all involved and when I told my toughest competitor about the FTE he just shook his head and said... "me too." This was a good lesson in how to manage your mental game and that you never give up and absolutely must keep your cool. Always keep your attitude fresh and remember that it's all FUN. That said, I also learned that if you want to do well and have time to absolutely optimize each engagement you must put the time in. I had failed to allot for a walk through day and that was a large portion of my errors in the beginning. The 5 minute walk though is NOT enough. I was originally going to do a Sat/Sun match with Friday off for stage review. When Cha-Lee asked if I would RO, I happily agreed but failed to edit my schedule accordingly. Next year, YES I'll R.O., YES I'll have Thursday/Friday off to ensure I can give it my all AND help out.

How about we flip this around a bit... You identified you need to work on your one handed shooting. But it sounds to me like you had a great time and had 5 GOOD stages where you able to find a plan that fit your ability, executed them well and were very accurate. Keep it up!

It was a two match weekend. Out at Colorado Rifle Club I shot a pretty strong match and had a great time. The match down at Pueblo West Sportsman's club... not so much. I've found that I'm making a lot of technical, small errors in my game. There are some draw inconsistencies, reload problems, and I shot 2 No-Shoots and a mike at the Pueblo match that were not called. I think I'm just pushing a bit hard in trying to put some mustard on my game and finding that the elevated pace is a bit tough to maintain. I don't like the idea of reigning things in and feel like I just need more practice and more dryfire to smooth things out. I did a bunch of analyzing my videos from the match (only 1 vid per match) and some dry fire videos and have identified a few things. 1. My draw has gotten a bit faster and smoother and I I'm coming out of the holster at a slightly different angle than before. When I switched to the PT grip I had changed the angle slightly because it was getting a bit hung up. Now I've gone back to the original position by about half way... so the change from original is very marginal now. Without thinking about it I can draw very quickly and smoothly now and I think this is the golden spot for this holster. We are talking very slight so I think it will help rather than hurt me for the big match coming up. 2. At the suggestion of CHA-LEE I also did a LOT of pre-insertion reloads. This is a great drill that I've done before, but not in a long time and will put this back into my practice routine for sure. After doing them for about 30 minutes with all different engagements and movement into them I was able to execute a few full speed, full execution reloads with some darn nice precision. That little pause makes you LOOK hard at the magazine/well alignment and after you've done that a bunch the pause can be almost non-existent and everything runs smooth as silk. I chose NOT to make a big deal about the no-shoots. They were high-risk targets and you can't win them all. I'm just going to chalk it up to not giving them enough visual importance just like all the other shots and move forward. I feel good about the progress I made and the lessons I learned this weekend and look forward to not really working on anything specific except having fun at the Mile High Showdown!

I made it out to AGC for some practice after work. I felt a bit disconnected and not really into it. With afternoon sun beating on me and the fact that I had forgotten my materials box (tape, stapler, etc...) and had forgotten a notepad I just felt a tad off. Running the Stoeger drills I found that I did much better with hit quality but my time suffered by about 5 seconds over the course of the drill. This was due to MUCH slower times in my reloads and SHO/WHO engagements. The rest were improvements, especially at 25 yards. Reloads were, for some reason almost painful for me. I think it was because I was only loading 10 rounds in each mag. I did a bit better with full mags on some drills I did afterwards, but by then I was thinking too hard about it and although slightly better, they still didn't flow well. Also, I had a very tough time with SHO/WHO. I learned a new method in the Bob Vogel class and I'm starting to think it's just not for me. I took forever (1.45 - 1.85) to get the first shot off during the drill. When I ran a bunch of shots afterwards I found it's just not a comfortable position to get into for me. I modified my stance back to my old way and found it much more consistent but still benefited from a slightly modified grip that Cha-Lee had brought up during that same class. By then, I was SUPER hungry and thirsty and decided I better get the hell out of there before I did more harm than good. The good news is I had 1 mike and 1 delta so it was the most accurate session to date. Next time I think I'll run the same drills and not worry so much about SHO/WHO and just do what feels comfortable. Also, I MUST EAT and take some water.

yeah, I'm with the fake trigger pull crowd here. Click on the first one, then pull the trigger with the same force it took you to make it click the first time with good sight pictures. If all is working well you should be able to do that without the sight moving as you "break" each shot. I dry fire at least 6 shots per draw on scaled targets. The goal is not realistic trigger pull, it's trigger finger movement on sight picture without moving the gun(sights).

You look pretty solid when it comes to stance to me. Now just speed up. More in the realm of sight acquisition - shot breaking than anything else. You are aiming, then shooting. When "Aimshoot" is a single function you'll kick ass. Keep up the good work.

Well, another awesome Rocky Mountain 300 is in the books. I've always had a great time at this match and this year was no different. Although fun, my overall shooting was not something that I would call at the top of my ability. I see numerous sluggish engagements, movement that was hesitant and some downright embarrassing mistakes that cost me many points. Having said that, I did manage a 92% finish behind Henning Wallgren, and even at the top of my game would have been lucky to gain another 5% on him. Henning shot like the champ he is and I congratulate him on a well deserved top spot. One day I'll give him a run for his money, but not today. So how can I eventually give him a run for his money? Well, I can shoot more plate racks like the two I took down on stage 3. Especially the right one. That was a "show yourself what's possible" moment. There are other moments too, like some of the steel engagements during the stage 5. I was able to adjust my target as the steel fell to keep it falling at a good pace. Had I not jacked the movement would have possibly taken the stage win on it. I also had some target acquisition and split times that were well into GM territory. These are things I need to keep doing. How to do that? I can start to believe myself when it comes to splits and what I'm seeing in the sight. There are times when I'm in tune and pulling .15 splits on partial targets with all the confidence of a GM, and then there's wide open targets that I'm running .22 splits on and losing HF like crazy. The problem, when I'm shooting slow splits isn't the lost split time. It's that the transitions and movement becomes sluggish too. I'm just like running underwater type of thing. I have other moments where everything is clear and I'm pulling splits like a madman, so my movement explodes using the same energy and it all works well. Those are GM moments and this brings me back to my current overall goal of reaching consistency. I'm able to shoot like a GM sometimes. When I can shoot like a GM all the time, well... I'll be a GM. Stage 4 (the only stage not on Vid) is a good example of how I'm shooting these days. The first half was crazy. I was shooting super fast splits and powering through the ports across the front with confidence and knew damn well I had mostly alphas, with a couple of charlies but not having to wait around for the dot... it was just there and I knew it instantly. I hosed through a partial with a confident engagement that required quite a slow down from the port hose-fest, but executed it confidently and accurately. Then there were two colt poppers that I just fell apart on. I kept moving after missing, went 1/2 way into a reload, when back up to engage, and missed some more. By the time I finally finished those targets I did a standing reload and had to wait for the port to drop before moving on. It was a disaster that should never have happened. If I had just stayed put until I got those poppers and then moved on, all would have been fine. So, basically I came away with a good finish, but feel if 3 more GM's had shown up I would have finished 4th. Goal list... Work on confidence of instantly breaking the shot when sight is correct. Keep working on the grip/arm form. (really starting to sink in now) more dry fire. Live fire once this week. more documentation and information building.

Welcome! You have a good handle on self evaluation and your basic skills are great. Keep it up and your learning curve will be steep and fun. Don't sweat the classification system. Just run your pace and the system will move you along appropriately. I personally believe it's an excellent system and does a good job at putting you where you should be. One bit of advice on the evaluation is always put in something you did well along with the things you need improvement on. I've also been doing this journal for quite a while now and attribute much of my "success" to making myself do it. It really helps to take a step back and at least dump basic feelings about a match in as concise a manner as my writing skills will allow. Welcome, and we'll see you at a match one day!

Yeah, I agree with those guys. You could wind up with some part of the conversion that doesn't work exactly correct and have a lemon on your hands. Without actually doing the math, I think you could sell - purchase for the same dollar amount invested in conversion.

I've tried a few times to reload my brass. Each time I saw reliability drop. Either through occasional feed problems, primer pocket problems, or case gauge failures. This includes roll-sizing for a while. Some solutions suggested were, sort all the brass, use different primers, let the gauge failures be practice only, or other things. In the end, for the cheapest part of the cartridge I choose not to spend the most labor on saving it. I simply recycle it via metal recycling centers.

Interesting that this was a recent discussion. It must be a misunderstanding or a different situation. Or maybe the rule has changed. The rule seems very clear here regardless of what was discussed. Keeping in mind that everyone involved in my situation, including me also thought the action had to be performed before prohibited so I'm not saying the thought is unfounded, but I can't figure out another way to interpret what I'm reading in the current rule book.... 2.3.1 Match Officials may, for any reason, modify the physical construction or stage procedure for a course of fire, provided that such changes are approved in advance by the Range Master. Any such physical changes or additions to a published course of fire should be completed before the stage begins. 2.3.1.1 In lieu of modifying course design or physical construction, a Range Master may explicitly forbid certain competitor actions in order to maintain safety during a course of fire. a. Declaration of a Forbidden Action may be made to prohibit competitor movement which is likely to result in an unsafe condition. Nothing in the rule about having to wait until afterwards. Where I think the interpretation comes from is rule 3.2.6 that covers the "afterwards" part... 3.2.6 In the event that a competitor action contravenes the course requirements, and that action creates a safety issue, the Range Master must be immediately summoned for a ruling. The Range Master may rule that the action is allowed and the competitor’s score will stand. Alternatively, the Range Master may require modifications to the course of fire, and/or may declare that the action is “forbidden” for safety reasons. (See Rule 2.3, including subsections) I fail to interpret this as anything other than... If a competitor is likely to do something unsafe we can apply rule 2.3.1.1.a to forbid it. If a competitor has already done something unsafe we can use rule 3.2.6 to make a determination whether it was unsafe and decide to use 2.3.1.1.a to call it as such. (more specifically we MUST call the RM to make that determination.) Think about the logic of requiring us to stand by and watch someone do something unsafe with a gun before we can stop it.

Centennial Gun Club had their match on Sunday night as usual. I went down there to make sure I could still shoot after Saturday's shit show. Well, it was a good match and I was pretty happy with my shooting overall. I did manage to tank the classifier. I did something very distracting and looked directly into the lights while waiting for the beep. At the moment I realized I was staring into lights, I glanced down and my last thought was "will I be able to see the dot? Should I try to stop and reset?... BEEP" I don't know if that's what put in panic mode of if I just went there on my own, but I could see the dot just fine. It just didn't do what I wanted it to do, I blew the reload and logged a 6.3HF (with 1 mike) on El Presidente. There was also another stage where I miked, but still managed to win the stage due to a 2.5 second lead over the next fastest run. It just went smooth and I'm positive that my plan was the fastest plan on that stage. I was able to skip a port that almost no other shooters on my squad were able to skip. This was either due to reloads needed, or maybe shooting on the move confidence. My plan was heavily reliant on some non intuitive target orders as well as moving across 3 different targets while shooting. I executed it well and everything flowed in my favor. At the end there was two targets on either side of a barrel and I shot 2 alphas, another target, alpha mike, then final target. I knew something hadn't gone right and snapped back to the 2 alpha target and breathed a sigh of relief. Only to lean over to the other target to see the hard cover mike. OOPS. I got my targets mixed up and by then it was too late. At any rate, when all the shooting was done I had racked up 6 deltas and 2 mikes, but plenty of alphas to make me think I had overall called my alpha hits. Still lots to learn as 6 deltas is waaaaaaay too many. But at least I felt like I had gone a step forward no matter how tiny. So this coming weekend is the Rocky Mountain 300. I'm excited for my first major match of the year. Even though it's not a sanctioned match it's a great match and I look forward to a good time. Goal list... Keep working on the grip/arm form. more dry fire. Live fire will need to happen on Wednesday. more documentation and information building.

Thanks for the input guys. And, after reviewing the rule. It looks like neither I, nor anyone involved actually knew the rule. According to what I'm reading you don't have to wait for the competitor to actually perform the forbidden action when it comes to safety. 2.3.1.1.a.... Declaration of a Forbidden Action may be made to prohibit competitor movement which is likely to result in an unsafe condition. Further study reveals that declaration of a forbidden action never required letting the competitor perform the action. IF a competitor does it, the call is made and he's required to re-shoot it, but it doesn't actually say we have to wait for it. Now, with regard to making said "modification" after the match has started I see that you can't "offer" a reshoot. If it's deemed needed, then it's mandatory. Part of what I think if most interesting about the rule book is how some rules are "made up" or otherwise "massaged" over time and how important it is to constantly review it. I wish I had actually reviewed this rule prior to thinking I knew what I was talking about. That entire situation would have been much simpler and over with before it even started. I appreciate the comments so far. Also, we have a Q.C. guy who's job it is to look for these things. Also missed by him since he's not 6'4". Looks like the best call would have been to have looked in the darn rule book to determine the true application of forbidden action and apply it properly.

Here's the situation that happened at Aurora Gun Club on Saturday. At AGC we have some very strict rules and a "less than optimal" relationship with the range. One of these rules is that we can ONLY engage steel targets from DIRECTLY IN FRONT. No angle at all can be introduced to a steel target. This means that we have very small and usually port limited engagements on steel. There was a stage (a new stage designer's 3rd stage) that I helped setup and we created some no shoots that were stacked up as high as we thought necessary to prevent anyone from shooting over the top. A shooter was about to shoot (I was the scorekeeper) and rehearsed standing on the fault line and shooting over the top at a steep angle to the steel. I told him I was not going to allow him to shoot that plan and we would need to call it a "preemptive forbidden action." Yes, I know the rule, but if we allowed a competitor to actually perform the action in order to follow the rule to the letter, and an AGC representative saw it, or WORSE the bullet left the range we could all be in a world of hurt. It's important to note we were almost exactly 1000ft from E-470 and the shot would have been angled toward the highway. I saw this as a textbook example of why the rule is in place. Since I couldn't talk anyone into the "preemptive forbidden action" call I had requested, I took 2 no-shoot targets and made the blocking no-shoots higher. I felt it was the lesser of the two evils since it was not modifying the engagements or moving anything in any way. After a discussion about that with the shooter upset about the "stage modification" I saw his point and was advocating to have the stage thrown out. I never found out if the competitor lodging the complaint had intended to shoot it that way, but he was the first to shoot it after the modification, hence the appropriate one to have said complaint. The RM's point was that it was not a modification of stage engagement or shooting view and it was a local safety measure only and that it should stay in. In the end, it was decided to keep the stage in and offer a re shoot to the 8-10 competitors that had shot it. No one accepted and we moved on. This exact scenario has happened at this range before and the "preemptive forbidden action" was allowed. This is an important a local rule, and in order to continue having matches at this range we must comply with it. I guess the question here is, would a preemptive forbidden action be the best call for this scenario or is there some other way we could handle this without having to throw stages out every time someone is about to do something against a local rule? (keeping in mind, we are only human and this is an oversight issue, NOT a stage design issue. We do our best to prevent it.)

This week has been one with lots of things going on. I read the Saul Kirsch book, Thinking Practical Shooting. And it was a good read indeed. I also had some time to sneak back to the range and chrono the 7.3 grain rounds and found they were at 168pf and that's cutting it way too close. So I loaded up a bunch of 7.4 grain loads and decided I would chrono after Saturday's match. I shot the match and things were off from the start. In thinking back over all the bullshit that occurred I think I can sort of explain why it was the worst match I've had in years. Really, what I think happened is that all the mindset stuff in the book made me believe that there was going to be some miracle and that I would suddenly be this GM with more finesse than I had ever had before. When, it didn't happen (obviously!) it was a let down of sorts and things just didn't click for me that day. (all subconscious.. I didn't really think that.) Also, there was a bunch of drama over a stage that we had to modify during the match and and a shooter got pretty upset and a lot of discussion was produced over it. I let that affect me way more than it should have and just plain felt like shit the rest of the day. There was also some drama over another stage and that too, got into my head even though it had nothing to do with me. I don't KNOW if that's what happened, but the bottom line is, on the last stage of the day the wheels fell off and allowed myself to have a freaking hissy-fit and for all intents and purposes, I threw the match. This the exact OPPOSITE of what the book was all about and I somehow spun it 180 degrees and allowed a bunch of crap to cause me an epic failure of which I vow to never repeat. That's the real lesson that I learned this weekend. We can all have bad days... we can all have things going on in our heads... just shoot like you shoot! When you get new information allow it to sink in a bit and don't try incorporating too much of the new information at once. I'm already making load changes and incorporating some new grip techniques along with all the shit that I've been trying to accomplish to make a GM level performance the norm. There's a lot going on and I've got a long way to go. Calm the hell down and shoot like you shoot. That stuff will work it's way into the shooting by maintaining my goal list, just like all the other stuff along the way. So, onto the technical stuff: Chrono came in at 171 in shiny and 169 in the Hulk. I think I'm going to increase back to 7.5 grains and call it good. I do intend on making the green gun my primary blaster again once I get the PT grip installed so making sure the chrono is good on that one is a better plan. Also, the PT grip is in, so in just a week or two I'll have the Hulk back in action! When I was adjusting my powder I also suspected that I had drifted up from my original 7.6 grain setting. I actually believe my original chrono for Autocomp was closer to 7.8 than it was to 7.6 as I thought. That damn Dillon powder measure is a pain in the butt to adjust and you have to check it a LOT until you've hit that magic spot where it will finally throw stable loads. I hate adjusting it. At any rate, I honestly still don't really see a difference in the dot. I "think" I feel a tad less vibration in the gun, but if the dot is less jumpy it's by a very small margin and I'm not positive about it. The drag is, that my first match with Autocomp was also my worst match in a long time. And the stage situation that started it all? I'm going to start another thread under "Stage Comments or Questions." to get some input. For now, moving forward... Keep working on the grip/arm form. More dry fire. Live fire once this week. (yay, still doing it!) keep documenting. (building my "bank of information" that Saul Kirsch talks about)

Empty gun starts are not worth overthinking. Everyone has to load and you aren't going to make any drastic changes in your stage run at that point. It's when you try to get fancy and all hell breaks loose that things can continue to pile up for you the rest of the stage and cause things to go from bad to worse. If I was shooting anything but open the old "slap and rack" would not even be an option. Since I do shoot open and my gun sits completely flat on it's side AND I have big sticks to help I routinely use the slap and rack with success. This only works in situations where the gun won't move (I rarely use it on barrel top starts because the surface is so slick) AND most importantly I have ZERO option of doing anything else during the load. If I have to take even a single step than a standard load is faster. There are those that argue that under no conditions is the slap and grab faster, but I disagree. As long as it's practiced and executed properly under optimal conditions it saves me time. But again... I've never won a stage because of it. I just like to hear people whisper "he's doing that crazy slap load thing!" in the background. hehehe. If you are going to try it regardless of gun type here's the key to success. The left hand ONLY HOLDS THE GUN STEADY. The right hand ONLY SLIDES THE MAGAZINE IN. You cannot move both hands at the same time and expect success. Also, part of each hand is touching the table at all times.