Glock26Toter

Nice! "Look the magazine out." I like it. Thanks MM.

The one thing I see in this entire thread is "commitment." When we are committed to something we identify where we need to improve and seek out the resources to make that improvement. At some point in my shooting career I decided I was committed and THAT'S the one thing I did to really improve. (this may have been the point at which I decided to get a USPSA tattoo! HAHA!)

This is pretty dead at this point, but for Q2 I choose to look at it like this. At the line, assess penalties as needed. (1 extra shot) At the targets, score as normal. (highest counting hits) Also at the targets assess penalties as needed. (1 extra hit.) They are all separate scoring events. Also, yes 9.4.5.1 handles the actual rule to apply.

I had to skip Cha-Lee's Mega match on Saturday and run down to Sante Fe, NM to take artwork to one of my wife's galleries. I was a tad bummed but it was a nice little "vacation" to spend with my wife. When someone asks me to skip a match I'm careful not to make them feel guilty for it. I get to do a lot of shooting so asking me to do something else shouldn't be a burden. Anyways, I was able to shoot the Weld County match on Sunday. As promised the "fist match after Nationals" was my chance to bust out the concealed carry gun and give it a go under match conditions. I spent my first two years in USPSA ('03/'04) shooting that little guy and now, with everything I've learned I was curious how I would handle a gun that was clearly NOT designed for competition. I routinely put a few mags through it at practice sessions so it's not like I don't remember how it works... just not for a match. On the first stage I shot 26A, 4C, 1D. It was a pleasant surprise but I knew it was a beginners luck thing. The remainder of the match was confusing for me. On close targets it was easy to just use target focus and see the sights with enough clarity for decent speed and accuracy. But the far targets I found myself trying to look at the sights and when I did that the targets completely disappeared in a blurry mess. I found myself going back to the target and really, just guessing that I was where I needed to be. This was made VERY evident on the all steel stage where I spent a lot of time missing blurry blue and white blobs downrange. This "sighting at speed" confusion was only made worse by a gun that's probably not capable of shooting 8" groups at 25 yards. It's also got "tactical" 3Dot, Tritium night sights that are just a gray, pocket lint color so finding them is a challenge unto itself. I'm actually pretty happy with what I see in the video with respect to movement and gun handling. I have a nice firm grip and recoil control is decent. Overall, I'm able to run the gun. Albeit slowly and inaccurately compared to my usual. All challenges aside, I had a good time laughing at myself and taking a healthy load of crap from friends. One guy in particular was just giddy over the fact he can say he whooped up on a GM. HAHAHA. When all was said and done I only posted 2 mikes (one of them being the steel challenge at the end) and a single no-shoot so I didn't do half bad. I'm not sure why I did the challenge for a "fun" match. I should have just shot it again, but I was hoping to get another run at that stage!

Oh my gawd. That thing looks military grade. Why would a civilian ever need one??? HAHAHA. That thing is cool. You are going to have LOTS of fun. Good luck.

I've talked to several people that have experienced the same thing. I think It's just a matter of how often you check and how tolerant you are. Back when I first started I thought that within 3"-4" at 25 yards was "good enough." and it was off by about that much each time I checked. If I only checked it every 6 months, then it was only off every 6 months. Only now that I'm not willing to accept a drift of 3"-4" do I "see the problem." Only now that I check every week do I realize that it's off every week. Sometimes it's not, but normally it's off after every match. The question that bothers me is.... is it off after the first shot, or the 100th shot? Not knowing where I stand is not something I'm willing to put up with anymore. Given my current experience and ability I feel the need to solve this problem. I think the solution is a Deltapoint. I've seen that super shiny, super crisp dot of the Deltapoint and I want it bad. Having said all that, let's keep in mind that if we go to C-More about this issue they'll likely say it's not on every sight. Furthermore it's probably a result of mounting it sideways. Not to mention my experience is with exactly THREE sights. Not something to draw a complete conclusion from. So my statements about C-More are NOT a statement on their product quality. If you have one, check it often and maintain it just like all your equipment.

I just got back from another USPSA Nationals. While my performance was littered with mistakes and some mediocre performance there were more good things than bad and this was my best showing yet. It was a strange one indeed and while hurricane Matthew turned out to be a major non-issue for us it changed the match in a big way. We wound up shooting a 2 day, full schedule and taking Friday completely off. Friday's worst wind was completely normal for some of the Eastern Colorado's wind in a local match and it only rained about 1/2 the day. At any rate, here's a link to a complete video of my match. Spencer Stein did an awesome job of capturing all my runs. So there were plenty of mistakes, but overall I wound up with 1 Noshoot, 5 mikes, and 14 deltas. My proudest moment was the barricade one with some brutal one hand shooting. I managed to get through that stage with all my hits and did it in a completely reasonable time. This netted me a 4th place overall finish on that stage among some big-dog names. My final place was 26th Open. In Grandmaster class that was 21 out of 34 GM's that showed. I was very disappointed to discover that despite my best efforts my C-More had drifted about 4" right at 25 yards. This spelled disaster for the 50 yard shooting challenge where I successfully called all my hits, but took 2 mikes and a delta. When I shot yet another mike on the next 30 yard head shot I realized that the first hit on every mike was on the right side of the target. I ran down to the function range, confirmed the issue and fixed it. That was at the very end of the first day so I went into day 2 with a renewed attitude and had a great time. After reviewing all my videos I see some good things to not, and some areas for improvement that I can work with. Good: I showed myself some amazing accuracy and visual patience. In plenty of instances I not only waited for the dot to settle as required, but made the decision to accept a charlie or wait for the alpha successfully. I showed myself I can do that. I also didn't blow a single reload. I didn't have to think about those things or concentrate on them... they just happened while I shot. Areas for improvement: To contrast the above, I was reminded how easily one can forget the visual patience thing and miss some calls that I had no business missing. My 1 noshoot was on the closest noshoot in the entire match. It was like, 6 feet in front of me and I plugged it like a chump! I was in full on "make up mode" from a previous screw up. I need to remember that no matter what, when I'm shooting, I'M ONLY SHOOTING. I have no choice but to wait for the required sight picture... I know what it looks like. Just do it, all the time. I can see that I have a "plant step" when moving out of many positions. My trailing foot lifts slightly before planting and I think this is from not having my weight prepared properly for leaving. I'll work on this to see if there's a way to already have my trailing leg loaded for launching out of position better. If not, see if there's a way to capitalize on that "plant" or "spring" step to get out of positions faster. A tad more research into this is needed. I'm doing much better on keeping my elbow up on reloads and need to do the same with surrender position draws. On the stage where I dot hunted for an eternity I can see that my shoulder drops quite a bit causing a hunch-draw situation. I've been burned on that before where allowing my upper body to move will cause me to draw at an angle hanging the gun up in the holster. I need to practice making the surrender draw without moving anything else on my upper body so that it's exactly the same as my normal draw.

I shot a match on Sunday at Aurora Gun Club. We had 2 people that don't normally design stages. Both new stage designers so it was a bit of "new blood" for the match and I thought they were fun stages. I shot the black gun and had a few issues. One of them was a 3-per paper hose fest. I found that I kept missing my trigger reset and stuttered my way through the stage. It was a reminder that no matter how fast you work the trigger you still have to work the trigger. I've been suspecting for a while that I want to increase my return spring tension as this fast shooting manipulation often leads to missing the reset. I suppose that's the definition of trigger freeze but either way feel that an increase of return pressure will fix it. I'm not touching anything until after Nationals. On another stage I had several malfunctions. It didn't cycle properly and by the end of the stage I could feel the slide dragging. After taking a brutal HF slashing I checked things out and the gun was dry as a bone. Everything was squeaky clean without a drop of oil to be found. ooops! This was a reminder that you have to "work the match" and continue to check and maintain your equipment throughout. In Saul Kirsch style I'll say "a champion doesn't let parts fall off his gun or discover it needs maintenance during a stage. He checks it and maintains it off the clock." (that's not a quote, just something he might say after watching my shit-show on that stage.) From a shooting perspective I was happy with what I did. I had 94 alphas, 26 charlies and 4 deltas. It was the most alphas of the top 3 shooters. I also shot a clean match and 3 of the 4 deltas I took were on a SHO/WHO fixed time stage. So I won't beat myself up over them too badly. I think I made a good effort toward getting all alphas as fast as I could get them and doing everything else really fast. I just hope I can feel half this good after this week is over in Florida. My goal for Nationals is not a particular placement, but rather a "as good as I can do" approach. I just want to feel like I left it all on the range.

I went to the range today for a final practice session before Nationals. I thought that 50 yard stuff Panda suggested seemed like as good a place as any to practice. I setup 2 Classic targets at 50 yards and went to town. well, not exactly. I did take time to verify zero on both guns. The Hulk was still dead on from 2 weeks ago YAY! and the black gun had to be adjusted slightly to get it running tip top. Once I was happy with that it was a long haul up range to the 50 yard mark. I hit those targets with the Hulk in a quickie stand-and-shoot drill and was pleased with a decent score. As I recall, the best I did with 4 shots on each target was down 2 charlies. I quickly put that gun away as it will be my primary for Nationals. I sure didn't want to chance screwing something up. When I picked up the black gun I was still able to get some decent hits and ran a few different drills at that distance. For several, I shot 2 on each, ran a few feet forward to a box. Performing a reload on the way, and then bent down as if shooting through a port. I was too lazy to get a real port, but did note how much more labor it was to ensure my hits when shooting bent over like that. Very often, our port shooting is a hose-fest and it's not very common to shoot at 50 yards through a port. I'm glad I practiced that. I'm also glad that I did some extreme accuracy shooting with the black gun. I was starting to think I just plain shoot better with the Hulk but couldn't put my finger on it. After today I would say that they are as close as 2 guns can get. I'm very happy to shoot either one now. At any rate, by the time I was done I had made myself feel much better about those far targets by only logging a few deltas and mikes during the session. I certainly hope I can rein myself in for the real deal in a few days. Tomorrow I'll shoot a final local match where I have one stage setup with classic targets in a who/sho standards stage for some final practice. Then it's go time.

Yep, agree with much of what's said here about doing your job as an RO and watching the timer to ensure it's accurate. As I read it, I kept thinking "it's not legal to review the timer" right? I would have thought based on memory that you are not allowed to review the timer. But we should never do that, so I looked in the book. Apparently you can review the timer. Looking at Rule 9.10.1 a review of the timer would be one of the ways to determine that the time may not be accurate. Although, unless it was determined without a doubt that the review made it an accurate time, then the time would have to be deemed "in question" or "inaccurate" and therefor not accurate and require a re-shoot. In other words... if you thought it wasn't accurate and reviewed it to fine 20 shots and you knew the competitor took 20, all is well. If the count was anything but accurate then the re-shoot is ordered.

I had a good time over the weekend shooting matches at Aurora Gun Club and Clear Creek. I tried to keep up my heavy accuracy focus and not worry so much about speed. That's a tough nut to crack and on a couple of stages I let too much retard leak out and wound up with significantly less alphas that what I've been going for. I need to keep that accuracy focus up and trust that I'll be fast enough. I've proven it many times recently and if I can keep doing it will produce some darn good scores in the future. I didn't take a single video as my Gopro was left on my desk and I forgot to grab it both days. Video is providing almost zero value these days as it seems to be mostly about what I'm seeing, feeling, and thinking these days. But the wife likes to watch them and they do provide a good anchor for performance review so I'm not giving up on them yet. Anyways, I'll have a practice session tomorrow after work where I'll sight in the Hulk and set it aside for Nationals. I'll practice some more one handed shooting as that seems to be the one place I consistently get my ass handed to me these days. One more local match this weekend before I go hang with the big boys. I'm super excited. No expectations, just excited.

I got out of work super early today and headed to the range for some practice. After running some new rounds through the chrono I setup the same classifier that I screwed the pooch on last weekend. Without pressure I was able to get all the hits in under the par time and had pretty decent hits too. The best score was 102 and the worst was 96. There were several botched runs as well. I found that I was missing some reloads. I stepped closer to the target and just practiced a bunch or reloads until I worked out that I've been dropping my elbow pretty seriously during the slap-down to get the magazine. This causes a teacup grip on the magazine and all consistency goes out the window. I don't do it every time, but I think under the standing reload situation it's more apparent. Once I worked that out I was happy with my reload smoothness. I also ran a lot of SHO/WHO drills. I did some head shots and some alpha shooting and was pretty happy with my results. I still have a long way to go as my best head shot only routine left plenty to be desired. The bad news is, that at some point I injured my right elbow and some pretty sharp tennis elbow pain has reared it's ugly head again. I'm going to go super easy on that elbow for the next 2 weeks until Nationals.

I was able to shoot matches on both days this past weekend. The first was out at Ben Lomond and the second at Weld County. I took some vids of both matches, but only processed a couple of them. Here they are. The reason I looked at both of these was because I think they show what I've been looking for regarding goals lately. On the first run, despite my making an error and almost forgetting a target I like the way I maintained a stable platform and kept aiming even when faced with a stage that can very easily lead you into moving too quickly with wide open targets. I was happy with that. Although there were other stages, one in particular that I allowed myself to rack up way too many charlies and got two mikes. One of the mikes was just a bad call. I saw and called a hard cover mike and thought I made it up. I must have done that thing where I looked directly at it while making it up. Meaning, I aimed at and got very near the first mike with my makeup. Both less than 1" into the hard cover. The other side of that same stage had a barrel very close to the port and partially obscuring the target. I heard one hit the barrel and made it up. The makeup was a super light barrel hit. Looking at the hit it was only a short streak directly below the first one, but obviously enough to throw the bullet off trajectory. While the second mike wasn't necessarily something to beat myself up over had I not allowed the large movements of the stage to dictate how I engaged the shooting I would have had more success. I had also dropped far too many charlies on that run supporting my thought that I didn't allow myself to shoot well when required. The second stage in the video, I think shows some pretty decent shooting on the move. On the second array, it was necessary to basically stop in that position to ensure at least an AC on the standing target and CC on the laydown behind that barrel. I think it saved a lot of time over still having to lean for that stand up and then approach the barrel for 2 A's on the lay down. The rest of the stage netted more charlies than I would have liked but for that much movement slowing down for all A's would have given up too much time. The next fastest dude (not including PCC) took the time to run up to the laydown target and that cost him a significant time loss. We actually wound up with the exact same hits validating my time saving plan and making the time investment I put into 2nd position well worth it. Even though it seemed painfully long when doing it. So areas for improvement? There were still plenty along the same lines as before. I let myself get downright stupid on the classifier on Sunday along with the stage I already explained. Saturday there were less, but in many cases I think I took some things too slowly regarding accuracy. I'm still looking at the same old inability to instantly change gears. Goals moving forward: Practice SHO/WHO a LOT more. Every practice. Get back on some serious dry fire and practice reloads. (been hitting this 2 nights a week lately!) Continue to practice accuracy. (Still on this... really seeing a difference.)

Thanks for the offer Cha-lee... as tempting as the shock collar is I might just have to pass on it. I have a feeling YOU would be yelling behind me every few seconds causing even more shocks! I think your best point about the system is to make it immediate and not do some "carrot or no carrot" after the match. The only issue is that I would like to think of a positive reward rather than a punishment. I suppose it's putting too much thought into it and I'll likely do the round count subtraction. Meanwhile, I made it to the practice range yesterday for a bit of technical work. I had to switch from CCI to Winchester primers last week. I shipped all I had loaded in CCI to Nationals and didn't want to load too many Winchester loads until I chronograph-ed. Yesterday was my opportunity (like 15 minutes while the thunderstorm was forming over the range!) and I was surprised to find that my load was 3-4 points higher PF with the new primers. I wasn't sure if I would see a difference, but there is for sure. I'll drop .2 to get back down to 170-171PF for this weekend's matches. I also swapped my dot from what I thought was a 4MOA to a 6MOA. (the current dot is missing it's color designation) I could not tell a difference between the two dots. This sucks, because I know the green gun was quite a bit dimmer when compared to the black one. Unfortunately for me, while I was swapping the dot out it was not only starting to rain but a thunderstorm was moving in and it got very dark. I also don't have my black gun for comparison since it's out for repair. I quickly sighted in and got the hell out of there. I'll have to compare the two guns this weekend in bright sunlight so I can really tell if the known 6MOA was the fix.

I think that it's a must. I feel that you must have a relaxed, natural face, and relaxed view of the world when trying to take it all in at 1000mph. Closing an eye, opening an eye and chopping off half of your vision along with limiting depth perception is not what we need to be doing during a run. At worst it's changing your view and adding steps to your shooting. At best it's simply wasted movement/processes that should be eliminated. I would personally work on it until I was able to overcome it. Do it early in the game while it has the least impact on your scores so you don't reach like A class and then have to try to train it out of yourself.

If you are in the initial planning stages and haven't rehearsed it much than it's OK to change to the plan you see someone else do. If you have already rehearsed it several times then stick to your plan and analyze whether it was a good or bad choice later. The way I see it, if it's before the match starts or within the first minute of the 5 minute walk though it's OK to change. The remaining 4 minutes of the walk through needs to spent rehearsing YOUR PLAN. Whether it was influenced prior to that or not. Own it and rehearse it. This is where video comes in handy. Video yourself. When you see a more advanced shooter that you know has a different (better?) plan video him too. Compare and contrast later.

I was able to shoot both matches this weekend. The first was out at Colorado Rifle Club. The staff did the usual awesome job at coming up with stages that were fun. I was considering doing an "all head shot" match because my frustration of sloppy shooting was getting the best of me. I mentioned it to Cha-Lee. What he said about it hit home very well. Basically it was "why would would you practice something that's not your goal?" He followed that up with "pick a spot, and aim at it." That's the goal. He also had some good advice about how to motivate myself to be punished for not aiming. I thought about this all day while shooting. I didn't give a crap what my times were and didn't fret over stage planning either. I put very little thought into micro-planning elements such as engagement order. I didn't even want to hear my times. I just aimed. With the exception of one stage where I took the planning so lightly that I wound up brain-farting all over the place. Although it earned me a No-Shoot during "make up mode" my score only had a single charlie to go with that no-shoot. So, while I didn't post any lightning fast times they were surprisingly good for what felt like an eternity aiming. I was rewarded with 117 Alphas out of a match that was 134 rounds. That's only 16 charlies and 1 delta. (and the delta was on that crazy 25 yard, 6 second par time classifier) So 87% Alphas. Not bad. Today I shot the Pueblo Sportsman's Club match. Same drill, different day. It was all about the alphas. Today I couldn't help myself and put a lot of effort into stage planning. I felt like I had a good, solid plan on all of them but I was still in extreme "alpha mode" and only aimed. Again, it seemed an eternity of aiming. Again, I was rewarded with an 86% on alphas. Also, just like yesterday I jacked a stage where I forgot to keep that mode alive. This was on a SHO/WHO classifier stage. In the end, I still managed to lose it on a couple of stages. But for the majority my attitude of "forgetting everything" and entering a "just shoot and trust that I'll be fast enough" really paid off this weekend. (hmmm, where have I heard that before??) I feel like I showed myself a contrast in performance. On one side it was making myself not care about anything and just shooting when I was shooting. On the other side, because I spent so much time shooting, it was ASS-HAUL mode when the movement started. I know that this is the same shit we've been preaching.. and had preached to us... and is ultimately the goal. But as with many things we are trying to master, we need constant reminders and this was another one for me. Oh, and back to the punishment thing. Currently, I don't have any ideas. Money isn't enough for me (long story, but I just don't think it will work) and more fitting to my attitude I would rather reward myself for doing well, such as an "all alpha" stage or "no delta" match, will get me a ... ??? In the end, I think feeling like I did after shooting this weekend is reward enough for now. (oh man that sounds cheesy. Oh well, deal with it!) Also, there was this texas star that I just slaughtered! It was the fastest star I've ever taken. It not only didn't have time to move an inch, but I heard it crying afterwards. (or somebody was.. it might have been me.) So, now that I'm all done pumping myself up here, the times that I did fall apart need to be identified as areas for improvement. The first one... well, that was poor stage planning and it underscores the importance of not taking that for granted. Get your plan together! It's the only way to shoot the stage properly. The second one revealed how bad I am at SHO/WHO shooting. Wow, do I have a long way to go. Also, I was very unhappy with my reload on Saturday's classifier. so, goals moving forward: Practice SHO/WHO a LOT more. Every practice. Get back on some serious dry fire and practice reloads. Continue to practice accuracy.

I went to the range this afternoon to get a bit of practice. Funny that Cha-Lee asked me if I was only doing static accuracy or adding movement. After I thought about yesterday's post I decided to warm up with some static accuracy nickel drills (just ran it once with each gun) and then setup a movement accuracy drill. At 25 yards I setup two partial targets. One side covered with a no shoot and about 6' away a lower covered no shoot. I did a drill where I shot two on each and then moved to the other side of a barricade and shot two on each. I didn't put a lot of emphasis on speed. I did find that I could do the drill without no shoots in about 7.5 - 8 seconds with .50 - .60 splits. If I pushed harder than that I wound up getting into delta or no shoot zone and could tell I was not breaking the shot properly. I REALLY wish I would have taken more ammo. Just when I was really starting to like that drill I ran out. I also ran into some snags as I discovered that my two malfunctions at the Utah match were a problem with the black gun. As it turns out the hammer is not dropping all the way sometimes along with a funny trigger lockup. I thought the first malfunction at that match was failure to go into battery. I'm now sure that it was in battery but the hammer was not down all the way. The second malfunction I didn't know what had happened. (it was on the last stage of the match) Today I found that if the hammer did go down all the way it didn't strike the firing pin. I'm sure it's something simple but I choose to let Rick get it working and move onto making Hulk my primary. Even with a dim dot, I'll shoot it this weekend and I've got a hook up on a new 6MOA dot so by next week the Hulk will be back in action and I'm sure the black gun will be also.

I spent all weekend out at the Utah State Championship match. It was a fun and challenging match. At first I underestimated it due to the lack of difficult or far shots. Later I found out that it had plenty of challenges of it's own. I was quickly reminded in the first few stages that "run and gun" stages can easily get out of control. I hosed through one in particular where I just lost my visual patience and managed to score 2 mikes and 3 deltas. This put me in, 27th overall place for that stage. That one stage alone sealed my fate... but I wasn't done learning lessons, not by a long shot. I managed to do the same crap on several more stages, and when all was said and done I racked up 2 no shoots, 5 mikes, and 15 deltas. Yikes! When I wasn't falling into my "old ways" I was certainly racking up some nice stage runs. There were several that I was in the top 5 overall scores and one that I was 2nd on. This shows me that I'm capable of doing things right, but obviously need to work on doing it more often. Looking at my video's I'm seeing some "fluid" movement and not locking into a stable shooting platform to make the shots. From my movement I can't see whether I'm shooting a 5 yard or a 20 yard target. This, I think, shows that I'm still not employing the proper technique at the proper time. I'm doing the entire stage in one mode and not slowing down as much as needed for each array. i.e., super slow / stop on 20 yards and almost no slow down for 5 yards. For now, I'm going to continue to concentrate on accuracy. I think, by continuing to train myself to accept less sloppiness in my sight picture I'll also train myself to make my movements match the sight picture. I'm thinking that this weekend I may do an "all head shot" match or something similar to really drive that point home. hmmmm?

I knocked off a tad early from work yesterday and headed to AGC for some technical work. I found that both guns were almost exactly the same. On at 7 through 15 yards and about 1" right/1" high at 25 yards. Some slight adjustment on both and they are dead zero windage and 1" high at 25 yards. The funny part is, it took an almost in perceivable adjustment on one, while the other took about 1/4 turn to get the same results. The other thing I noticed was that while both had batteries that were in the "good" voltage range the Hulk has a noticeably dimmer dot. I mean, like a LOT dimmer. I recall replacing one of the dots a while back, but I'm almost certain it was not with a brand new dot. I think, to get the Hulk to be bright enough I'll need a brand new module. Once again the back up is not quite a back up. At least I can shoot the darn thing effectively if I need to. This is just another reminder that it's a constant battle to keep both guns running and in perfect shape. It's all part of the fun! So anyways. After I was sure they were both on, I ran Ron Avery's nickel drill. I had never done that one before. I did it at 7 yards and missed the nickle by no more than 1" but missed it about 5 times out of 25. Not bad. I actually found that drill easier with the dim dotted green gun. The black gun's dot was a bit too bright to really see the nickles behind it and allowed for more mistakes. I only had enough ammo to try once with each gun. Next time I'll turn the dot down a tad. Today if the weather holds I may run out one more time and run that nickel drill again with a buddy of mine. We'll see.

I was not able to shoot a match this weekend as I was in a CRO Class given by Kevin Imel. It was a great class and I'm glad that people like Kevin are willing to put in the time to help us all out like that. Just as I say with the RO class: Given the opportunity to take one, always say YES. We setup 3 stages as part of the class and then went ahead and shot them like a mini match. I was able to verify the Hulk's sight in that I had done earlier in the week. It also seemed to be running tip top. I think I'm good to go if I want to use it as my primary for the Utah state match next week. I'll try to get one more session in this week to ensure that BOTH guns are sighted in exactly. This will ensure I can decide which gun will be the primary for the match without worrying. I'm still not quite convinced the Hulk is ready rumble as the primary. I would prefer more than 100 rounds with ANY new component before it get's the "primary" sign off. 2 more runs that that darn Dot Torture drill would do it. Not to mention, I really feel that the drill is helping with my definition of what an acceptable sight picture is. Anyways, hopefully I'll get that chance. Between work and the weather I'm not so sure.

Maybe... Work on isolation of the trigger finger during hard grip. This comes from strength training grip using COC. Real strength training, not getting one that you can do more than 15-20 times. Get one that you can't do more than 5 and work toward doing it 10 times. When you get do it more than 10, get the next weight up. Also, think about making your trigger return weight lighter. I talked with someone about making it heavier and he recommended against it because you try to pull again without waiting for it to return. (since it feels too close to the pull weight.) Anyways, you are doing great and I'm sure you'll overcome this soon.

When Cha-Lee explained this to me years ago it was a game changer for my reloads. My take-away was that all the real work in reloading is done with your weak hand, and not the gun hand. The gun hand will figure out what to do without much effort. Also as far as keeping the gun high... I don't feel that there's some magic height or formula for how high to keep it. If dropping it a bit is the natural place to meet the mag than so be it. Smooth and consistent is more important than a height measurement. (you'll find that it's quite high if you are performing the "slap down" Cha-Lee explains.) One last thought. For me the best drill to help sink all this in is partial insertion drills. Bring the mag just to the mag well mouth and don't do the complete reload. This helps reinforce the act of looking right at the reload and creates a very slight pause to ensure all is lined up. Don't worry, that pause will all but disappear at match time... but the consistency won't.

You are correct, you have to own up to weaknesses and commit to train hard and fix them. However, there's a different between negativity and identifying areas for improvement. I've still got my list I'm working on and still have my goals for practice. Just don't see the need to ONLY review them and not celebrate a few things that I did well. Since I've been feeling particularly beat up the last few matches I wanted to let the goal list sit for a bit and allow my fun meter to swing back into the positive zone.

If it makes you feel better even people that live in the US feel like Idaho is another continent. HAHAHA! No seriously welcome to the US. It's awesome here.