wsimpso1

If your M-1 only needs help to get the first round out of the clip, that is normal. New ammo generally works more cleanly - reloaded brass has always been more likely to need a nudge. If instead, it needs help to get the bolt closed once the round is well into the chamber, you have a different problem. If it has a slightly tight or trumpet shaped chamber body or short throat, it might have a bit of trouble closing or double once in a while or fire on closing. There are several ways to get a chamber that is small in the middle of the body. Check it out with a Cerrosafe casting of the chamber. The easy ways are oversized barrel threads and undersized receiver threads. Another way is to have an undersized finishing reamer. They are all cause to send the gun back with specific comments... Billski

The full on ESP is a double stack 1911 in 40 S&W. 3 pound or less trigger, great sights on a nice long radius, great pointing for shooting from retention, and my 160 grain ESP load works with an 8 pound recoil spring and a 17 pound main spring. One soft shooting combo. I don't know if cross training matters, but if you change to 180 grain bullet, a little more N320, an 11 or 12 pound recoil spring, and plus 2 mag pads, and you have a fully competitive USPSA Limited gun too. Going short of that, 150 grain 9mm loads that make PF in a 9mm M1911 is slick. Billski

OK, did you hear the one about the guitarist who locked his keys in his car? Yeah, it took him nearly an hour to get the drummer out of the back seat. What do a you call drummer who has just lost his girlfriend? Homeless. What's the last thing a drummer says in most bands? "Hey, why don't we play one of my songs?"

Geez... If you do a mental run through of the stage several times, you can rip through the stage, not bust procedurals, and hit only the threat targets. It does take practice doing it, so you might as well get started doing it on every stage. Next this is a GAME, but in real life people do panic and run through the scene, they do get frozen by terror, they do get grabbed by bad guys. Having no-shoots in view is a realistic challenge. I personally think that the no-shoot penalty is WAY TOO SMALL. Billski

On the topic of Serpa holsters, there is a hot controversy on the topic of their use. Look it up and make up your own mind before you buy. As one who has had a pistol squirt out of a holster when diving into prone (and this with a holster that works fine during somersaults), I can say crank on some friction if what you are using does not have real retention features. Billski

I always say "run what ya got" until you have fired in a couple matches. Essentials: A semi-auto rifle that works. Zero it, and know where it hits from point blank to whatever distance the match has. Have several mags that you know work, and a way to carry one or two on your body. Know how to cleanly load, unload, and fix a stoppage. And if all you can come up with is an M-1 Carbine, do not let that stop you. And if you have access to an M-1 Rifle, well, cool points to you; A pistol that works with a strong side holster. Zero it for point blank to 30 yards. Have several mags that you know work, and a way to have at least two on your body (more if it is a single stack). Know how to cleanly load, unload, and fix a stoppage; A shotgun that works. Confirm where it is putting the shot cloud and slugs. Managed recoil ammo is a good idea. Know how to load it from whatever you have and be able to do it while walking. If your feet are moving, you should prbably be stuffing more shells into it - Seventeen rounds is fairly common for a stage. You don't need a semi-auto - a double with automatic ejectors will get you into the match just fine, but do know how to feed whatever you have quick and clean. Once you do this a couple times, you will start to figure out what class you want to compete in, which type of gear appeals to you, etc. Forget speed, be safe and get your hits! Billski

There is a ridge on the front of AR15 mags and a groove in the well. I can not get the mag in backwards in any of mine. I too suspect some jungle clip or tape arrangement. Billski

I coached juniors and sub-juniors in a very active smallbore group. We would work with youngsters of any age, but they did not seem to "get it" until they were 8 or so. The biggest reason the 6 and 7 year old's did not latch on was attention span. Smallbore requires you to pay attention through getting into position, acquire point of aim, adjust it onto the target, and then get through ten shots slow fire. Something clicked in them around 8 and then they could do it all and be solid in all of their range behaviour. I don't believe I ever came across a 6 year old that was up to the attention and concentration levels of small bore. Now admittedly, smallbore is single shot rilfes without fire and movement, but it takes being on for 15 minutes too. A younger kid would be more likely to stay "on" for long enough to memorize the stage and run it, but he would have to have good role models and exceptional patience (for a 6 year old) to learn the game to that level... I am suspicious the Miko does have those things, and that is worth a lot. From watching him, I would bet that at least one parent shoots well, and that parent has fully impressed Miko with how he has to behave to continue shooting. I would rather chase him through a stage than some of the adults I have run in practice sessions. He comes in with a card and a classification, you gotta let him shoot. Billski

+1 on Boats. If it is not a hot load, and it fires reliably in your gun, it is probably OK. Working up towards that load is the safe way to go. If you do not get indications of high pressure while you work up to it, you are probably fine. All of my small primers are small rifle, and I load my 40 S&W loads with them. They work fine in my pistol. Now large rifle primers may not fire reliably... Billski

Safety levers generally have a pin or ball that is spring loaded into a detent dimple or notch somewhere in the scheme. If your felt detent is soft, then either the detent is not applying enough force and/or travel or the detent notch is too shallow. Lots of ways it could be happening. Easy ones are bound detent pin and/or spring, and no detent dimple. Clean and check that the detent moves freely and travels far enough to engage the dimple or notch, then check that you have a dimple or notch. If debris was interfering with the works, you might have found it. If that is not it, then I would get serious with CZ about them fixing it or get it to a gunsmith known to be knowledgeable on CZ's. Billski

Propellant materials are hygroscopic, which means that they will pick up moisture - the same amount of powder measured by volume can change a couple % due to very humid or very dry storage. The plastic jug doesn't prevent this water vapor movement - water vapor moves right through most polyethelene. And when the absorbed water content changes, so does the energy released by the propellant. The prevention for propellant drift with the seasons is to keep it in the basement or cellar, if you have one. Same thing for primers. Or don't load so darned close to chrono trouble... The heat is going to be less of an issue if it only takes a couple years to use up a jug of powder. The big check is to open the jug and sniff. If it smells of acetone and ethanol, it is OK. If instead it smells of acids, and is tinged brown or rust red, it is fertilizer for the flowers. This last thing happens when the sacrificial chemicals that pick up nitric acid are used up. This stuff is like galvanized steel or zincs on a boat. They corrode so that the rest of the boat or steel doesn't. In propellants, nitrogen atoms are attached to cellulose and gylcerine. Those nitrogen atoms come off over time, and want to make nitric acid, which then accelerates the release of the nitrogen atoms. The powder makers put in a chemical that suck up those nitric acid molecules. Until the sacrificial chemical is used up, very little degradation in performance occurs. Once it is used up, the powder degrades rapidly... And the nitrogen release is a log function of temperature. The rate doubles every 19 F, ergo storage in a basement of root cellar. Billski

Other people said that this was funny. At the time, I was in no position to appreciate it. Shooting a match right after a downpour. I slipped and fell while moving downrange, came to a stop face down on the mud, the loaded gun still in my hand with the arm extended and gun pointed downrange. My left leg is shaking - I am obviously injured. The SO wants the gun cleared and he does not want me to make the injury worse. So he puts his hand between my shoulder blades and says "Bill, don't move, OK?". Great guy, priorities correct. I lay there, leg shaking, and responded "No S*%t" The peanut gallery busts out laughing, some of them roaring. Glad to be of service, guys... Billski

The art of giving direction was summarized by Eisenhower when he said that it is not about giving directions that can be understood, but in giving directions than will not be misunderstood. This one is a prime example of ambiguity. The shooters are conditioned by training and match procedure to shoot from cover whenever possible, and they can see the target while still at cover. So the directions have to be unambiguous or the COF has to force breaking cover. A way to write the COF to preclude shooting from cover and force shooting on the move is to write "break cover from P1 and engage T1-3 while on the move to P2, reload at P2, break cover from P2 and engage T4-6 while on the move to P3" This makes the intent of the stage unambiguous, while the original description might allow a shooter to revert to "I can see it from here, I am shooting it from here". There are ways to make the threat targets come into view after the shooter breaks cover, as they mght in a real encounter, but they do tend to get technical. If the club has a couple photo-eyes and actuators to either move the targets or drop a blind, it could be more realistic, and then you would not have to specify breaking cover, just "Move from P1 to P2 engaging targets as they appear, reload at P2, move from P2 to P3 engaging targets as they appear. All targets to be engaged while on the move and in tactical sequence"

The shorty gas system was designed for 11" machineguns and 12-14" carbines, and they seem to work fine. In a 16" barrelled shorty, we get higher pressure gas, we get it too soon, and we get it for longer. Now some 16" guns work fine, but some just refuse to become reliable... Build a 16" gun with the port in the right place (mid length upper) or a 18-20" upper with a rifle length system, and they just work. And people that build HighPower Match Rifles on the AR platform they use still longer barrels, and find that they work better with the port moved further out still. It seems like four inches is all the further the port should be from the muzzle. Yes, MacFarland rings can be the problem. I watched a Master Class shooter with a Scott Medesha space gun (Gold standard for NRA Match Rifles). Spaces guns usually use carbine buffers... It would start a string OK, but the empties would come out more and more forward until the gun would not even eject them. After much fuss with cleaning and lubricating, installing a new gas tube, the MacFarlane gas ring on the bolt was replaced with three GI rings, and the gun was back to its x-ring drilling form. Billski

Don't get me wrong. I have seen rifle length guns that were screwing up - gunsmithing problems, gas rings missing, McFarlane rings, extractor worn out, cracked feed lips on the mags, etc. And more than few shorties work great. If you have 16" that work, hang onto them. But statistically speaking... The only time I have seen rifle length guns rip through the rim is when the chamber was just loaded with grit and/or goo. I have worked with several 16" shorties that rip through case rims even when clean, with polished chambers and new extractors, etc. And I have worked with a couple guys whose 16" guns we never did get running reliably. The gas pulse comes too big and too early. Some folks bump the gas port size, which just makes it worse. With the pretty good chance that a new 16" shorty will act up and require special attention, why bother with them? Add either a Fat Tube or a Pigtail to fix them until you can rebuild it with a new barrel in either mid length or rifle length gas system. Billski

At the first sense of a stoppage, keep the gun downrange, and LOOK at the bolt/carrier through the ejection port: If the bolt is half way - Pull the mag, cycle the bolt to clear the rounds, insert mag, cycle the bolt, resume; If the bolt is locked back - Mag Change, resume; If the bolt is almost closed - Bump the forward assist ONCE, If that does not close easily, do the stoppage clearing drill; If it closes easily, resume; Understand that any AR15 type rifle that does not operate easily is telling you something. It is either dirty or you have a gun problem. There is one exception - putting a fully loaded mag into the gun with the bolt forward can be tough. That is why may of us wear GI 30's with only 28 in them. Pmags supposedly reload fine with 30. Maintenance is required of Semiauto rifles. This best done after every range session or match: Clean the chamber, GI chamber brush, solvent, dry patch; Clean the bolt and carrier. Drop the firing pin, cam pin, bolt - get as much of the crud out as you can easily, and wipe it all down; Drop the extractor and get the crud out from the recess and the part itself, check that the extractor is still sharp. If in doubt, install a new one with new spring and rubber. Oil and reinstall;; Check the ejector with an empty case hooked under the extractor and pump the ejector. A drop of oil here is insurance; Find the bright spots on the carrier and bolt - They all get at least a drop of oil; Reasssemble the bolt and carrier with oil (or moly grease) on all of the bright spots, and pit drops through the vent holes in the carrier, exercise the bolt a couple times; Check that the gas rings will hold the bolt against gravity. If they won't get that spare set in there; Those of us interested in continuing accuracy will clean the bore using a rod guide, one piece rod, and our chemical/mechanical combination of choice; Pull the operating handle and clean the crap off of it and its operating channel; Clean any mags that hit the dirt, and any that have more than a couple loadings on them. Strip, get rid of the dirt, firing residues, brass and jacket shavings, etc. Reassemble. Some folks have other items, but this works pretty well. When a malf occurs, stick a paster on the mag and write the malf info on if; If it fed two rounds, the mag lips are probably in rough shape, and the mag will fail a "fountain test" - Load the mag, hold it lips up, and thump the base on a wooden block that is firmly supported on a table or the ground. If rounds fountain out of the mag, the body is shot. If it did not get rid of the fired round, and followed it with a loaded round, fountain test the mag. Maintenance should make all kinds of difference. My guns work fine with GI mags, but if in doubt, PMags won't hurt... Billski

Pigtails are pricey, as are fat gas tubes, but if they smooth out your gun and make it reliable, well, it will hold you until your new 16" with a midlength or 18-20" with a rifle length gas system arrives. The big problem with shorty gas systems in 16" barrels is the timing of the operating pulse. Adjustable ports may help a little, but the gun may still be picky about ammo, how you hold it, etc. Derrick Martin wrote a whole chapter on the topic of making unreliable 16" shorties work NINE YEARS AGO. Every case rim ripping AR15 I see is a shorty. Why do folks keep buying them? Billski

I bobbed two hammers like the one at the top over ten years ago, and they have never failed to fire, except when ammo was not present... Billski

I understand that the match actually went off pretty well. Congratulations on that! Big matches are huge tasks for a lot of people who all volunteer to make them happen. If a bunch of things happened well, and only a few things were worthy of criticism, you did pretty well. It was never my intention to piss off the folks who worked hard to make it go as well as it did. Thread drift took this thread away from the intended topic of SO's giving unearned penalties. That being said, that the swinger on the gas station did not end up presenting the same challenge to all shooters. S%^& happens. The damage would have been avoided by throwing out that stage. As to the questions about why "Casey" did not protest the PE and get the MD involved? Geez, we should have a system that routinely abuses newbies for not knowing the rulebook thoroughly or for not being good match lawyers? He is a grown-up and I don't want to defend him so much as I want all of us to do better in the future. The shooter in question only got interested and classified in the last few weeks. In order to recognize that PE was being wrongly assigned, you have to be familiar enough with the game and the rules to understand what had happened, and then be able form a successful rulebook framed challenge to the PE with the MD. Instead he took his punishment quietly but confusedly and moved on. Yep, a newbie got abused, the SO did not get corrected, and our game took another hit it did not need to take... Billski

Now let me put down what we have: There is a rule requiring us to use cover for engagement and reloading if it is available; There is no rule requiring us to stay behind any piece of cover; Many stages have us moving from one piece of cover to another while exposed to threat targets and are not penalized for that; The shooter has to engage in tactical priority. Now let's look at the stage: Cover is available at the start point, but the shooters are not allowed to use it; Shooters are directed to shoot the remaining targets, but the shooter is on his own to decide when to trip the swingers and disappearing target; Shooters move to the cover of the doorway, exposing themselves to either the threat target on the left or on the right. The shooters are not penalized for that exposure; The shooter starts out slicing the pie, gets to a target that is not shootable yet, and choses to move to other cover, which allowed him to engage a threat target from cover, and then slice the pie to his pair of swingers. Now let's think about this for a minute. Is there even a way to get to the doorway without exposure? Going direct or sliding to either side all result in exposing himself to at least one threat target and sometimes two. We do this all the time in this game, and don't even think about penalizing the shooter for it. And if we do this all of the time, why is his crossing the opening penalized the second time but not the first time? Tell me how we can fairly and unambiguously decide when to penalize and when not... In both cases he is exposed to a threat target that is not neutralized. Oh wait, wouldn't you need a rule that says you can penalize for exposure? And wouldn't that require that you need a course of fire that had ways to do it without exposure? Well, we don't appear to have either, so how can you fault the shooter for that? Next, we did have the tactical priority definition cited. But we frequently have COF's where we engage some targets from cover, move to another piece of cover, engage some more targets. Why is it OK sometimes, but not here? All that he did was move from one piece of cover to another. No rule exists against it and the COF did not specify that he had to engage all of the targets from one side of the doorway. Now, mind you, I am not saying that in a real fight I would leave solid cover and cross a doorway just to save some time. But this is not a fight, it is a game, and we are supposed to be working with rules and the COF when we play a game. So, I am back to getting someone to use the rule book and COF to convince me that procedure was violated. Penalties are supposed to come fairly from rules. So far, it looks like we have a rulebook without guidance on this topic. In most games (I have played a few) if you can not cite Rules or specific direction that is violated, you can not impose a penalty. This imposition of a penalty where makes IDPA seem capricious to both the newcomer and to this oldtimer. Now if we had a way to get Berryville's attention on this topic... Billski

More info on the COF: The walk through included the requirement for the shooters to engage the first three targets from the starting spot between the pumps and the car. I suspect that they did not want a shooter skipping a round off sheetmetal or glass and out of the range (an event I have witnessed). So, yeah, nobody used the car for cover on the first three targets, which was tactically wrong; The COF did not specify that the shooter had to select one side of the opening and stay put. Those of you that think he earned a PE, please cite rules from the rulebook that he violated... Really, convince us by using the rules. Billski

I guy I know shot in a match, and crossed an open space from one piece of cover to another with his loaded gun in his hands. Penalty or not? The folks involved don't seem to remember an admonishment during the walk through not to cross the open space... Here is the video - How would you call it? And why? Billski

Absolutely hilarious! Billski

I use a 1.5-5x and have the short range sights at 1:30 on the forend. Works great, but I end up using the glass most of the time anyway. Billski

Depends upon how you want to use it. If all of your shooting is 50m or less, it is fine. If you have to take on plate racks at 200m, you might want a better barrel. I do know a guy who made Expert in High Power shooting a barrel that had 1.5" of freebore. He only started checking after he decided his groups were excessive at 600 yards. Once he checked, it took him less than 24 hours to have another barrel enroute to him for that rifle. I would scrub it really well with JB, make sure that you have the copper out of it with any of the copper solvents (do cycles of both), and see if it will shoot. If it does not shoot well enough to make you happy with 25 grains of WW748 and a 69 grain BTHP, it is time for a new barrel. Billski