Carmoney

Ha!! I calculate the power factor at 0.8425. That's even lighter than the stuff the IDPA SSR guys are shooting!

Yeah, Jim, we'll definitely show up at the range on Saturday, hopefully in time to see some of the shooting. I'll PM you my cell phone number.

Looks like a couple late entries have taken us to 13 wheelguns for the 2006 Area 5 match, which (like virtually every other major match across the country this year) is an increase over 2006! I see only one Revolver GM on the squad list! Sam and I will be rolling in sometime on Saturday, we'll swing out to the range and see what's going on. Maybe we could get the crew together for dinner that evening? I know Dan will need to get back to the room early for his strict daily regimen of 5,000 dry-snaps, but I'm always up for a barley-pop or two.....it is, after all, Wisconsin.

Sweet! Are there any results posted?? Shred put up his camera shots, but I can't quite read them....

Jeff, we're sure sorry you can't be with us at Nats, and we send our very best wishes to you and Mrs. Sako. Dave, very sorry you won't be able to make it this year. We'll catch up with you at another match one of these days.

The real action on the weekend of Oct. 7-8 is going to be the Iowa Back-to-Back Single-Stack and Revolver matches!!

mm-hmm!!

That's fantastic! He's not on the squad list for Nationals, so I assume he was a late entry to the match? Whoever lined that up, good job. Now we need our other GM, our buddy 10mmdave himself, to step up!! C'mon--no excuses. Show us what you got.

Yeah, but definitely in the same vein.....

Need I say more???

Man, this is fantastic news for our two new GMs who somehow missed out on signing up for the USPSA Nationals on the first go-around!!

First of all, let me say it puts me in a good mood just to see good ol' Dan Sierpina chiming in on this. When I first started competitive shooting during my brief tenure in New England, Dan was one of the top comp gun builders in the business! Check out that loooooooow USPSA membership number of his! Second, there's no dark mystery about bending a mainspring. I wouldn't mind taking a picture, but right now everything's all nice and loctited in place, remind me the next time you see me taking one of my revolvers apart (which isn't very often) and I'll snap a picture. But you see, every gun, every spring, every strain screw, seems to be a little different than the last....and the next. A photo would only show you what it looks like on that gun, with that spring. I'll describe the general process for you. My original bend technique was to take two pairs of vise grips, snap them on the spring near the ends, and bend until a noticeable tweak began to appear in approximately the middle of the spring. Then I got lazy one day and didn't feel like running out to the garage to get the second pair of vise grips, so I just grabbed the big end with one pair and bent the spring against the edge of my workbench. Then one day I discovered that I didn't even need vise grips, I could just grab the goddam thing with my hand and bend it against pretty much any hard surface. I have never made any effort to place the bend in a certain spot, but the bend tends to appear approximately in the middle of the spring. I've done it enough now I can usually get pretty close with the first bend, but I've never had a problem tweaking it back and forth several times until I get it just right. I'm looking for 5.5 to 6 pounds DA on a competition revolver. That's not "Randy-land," but it's the next closest thing, and I like a little extra reliability margin, frankly. Some guns seem to have way-long strain screws installed. On these, I will sometimes shorten the strain screw some, and combine that with a bent mainspring. Doing all the adjustment on the strain screw, though, is usually a mistake, as it will often lead to a particular type of binding called "knuckling." I don't know how to describe it any better than that, other than to say I guess it's more art than science. But it ain't difficult art! And what do you got to lose?? It's a $4 part. Give it a shot. Experiment with it. Put the bend in different places, whatever. Hell, design a jig that will bend the spring "cryoharmoniphonically" and you could probably sell at least 25 of them to guys here on this forum who think it's all about the gimmicks--but only if you charge at least $300 for the jig (nobody would want it if it only cost $30)!

It will be interesting to see if the parameters stay the same for next year.

...said it before, I'll say it again....unless you're just dying to spend money unnecessarily, adjusting the stock spring (by bending) is an excellent way to achieve the lightest possible mainspring tension that is still 100% reliable. Even the aftermarket springs need tuned to the gun, to optimize the DA trigger pull. As for the rebound springs, I'd say use the lightest one that still gives you good snappy rebound.

Sorry Doug, the best custom Ruger ever made looks like a pot-metal turd next to a good Hamden High Standard! ;-)

OK, the stages are posted and available for viewing! Go to the OOPS website: http://www.ioweb.com/oops/ Click the link to the match information page, and there's a link at the bottom that will pull up all the stages. 10 stages, including classifer 06-03. 192 rounds minimum. As with any match, the stages are subject to minor change without notice. We will be shooting the same stages for both matches (I didn't think we'd get this approved but USPSA said it's OK since the two divisions are different enough). But remember, these are two separate matches--1911 on Saturday, Revolver on Sunday. Yes, there are other places to shoot that weekend. But you will not get more shooting or more fun for your money anywhere else in the country, I'll promise you that! Don't wait too long to get your entries in.

OK, the stages are posted and available for viewing! Go to the OOPS website: http://www.ioweb.com/oops/ Click the link to the match information page, and there's a link at the bottom that will pull up all the stages. 10 stages, including classifer 06-03. 192 rounds minimum. As with any match, the stages are subject to minor change without notice. We will be shooting the same stages for both matches (I didn't think we'd get this approved but USPSA said it's OK since the two divisions are different enough). But remember, these are two separate matches--1911 on Saturday, Revolver on Sunday. Yes, there are other places to shoot that weekend. But you will not get more shooting or more fun for your money anywhere else in the country, I'll promise you that! Don't wait too long to get your entries in.

Want to impress us? Have the "sponsors" actually award the cash to the winner(s), instead of dangling it just out of reach and then continually changing the parameters so that it's never actually paid out.

Sorry, but two years in a row, the guy's just freakin' dangerous. If I were the Mikes, I'd invite him to stay home next year and practice safe gun handling with his air-softs.

Kool! I'd love to have a counterfeit STI if it was half-decent and cheap!

Great values in major matches are still out there if you look. Our upcoming Iowa back-to-back Single-Stack and Revolver matches (10 stages per match, including classifer, fully sanctioned Level II matches, 192 rounds each) entry fees are $30 per match, or $50 to shoot both! Another great value--the Minnesota Sectional is $35 this year. In my view, some of the match fees that are being charged are pretty unconscionable.

Most people think mainly about sear geometry and hammer hook height, and these are certainly factors, but I never cease to be astonished at how different a trigger job can feel with minor differences in sear spring tension.

Cool--thanks! My basic point is that in most jurisdictions, the medical community has done an amazingly effective job at setting up an elaborate series of roadblocks to avoid taking responsibility for the errors they frequently commit. Because of the AMA's fantastic public relations campaign, juries tend to universally love physicians. Because of the great expense involved in taking on a negligent doctor in court, only a tiny fraction of the real mistakes that cause people real harm ever result in a lawsuit. Most victims have cases that have been rendered economically unviable, due to the cost of hiring the required medical experts, who almost invariably have to be retained and brought in from out of state. Of those cases that make it to trial, only a small fraction of them result in plaintiff's verdicts, and only a tiny fraction of those result in the giant million dollar verdicts that you occasionally read about in the paper. And most of those big verdicts are fully justified. In reality, those "out of control juries" and "huge verdicts" are extraordinarily rare anomalies, statistical outlyers. And I'm no fan of greedy plaintiff's lawyers (and I sure do know a few of them!), but in this instance they have been made the scapegoat. It's even more unfair to blame juries--which in most parts of the country are made up of regular people like us who do their best to seek the truth and arrive at something that resembles justice. You see, it's all gotten real political--it's now a blue-state/red-state kind of thing. And along the way, people have forgotten that in most parts of the country (there are certainly some exceptions) the civil justice system actually works very well about 99.99% of the time. But that's not what the pharmaceutical companies, or the insurance companies, or the AMA want us to think. In the name of "tort reform," they want the balance tipped even further in their favor that it is already tipped. Or so it seems to me! (Sure sounds like a rebuttal, doesn't it Big Dave? Anyway, thanks for letting me jump in.) Mike Excellent points. Unfortunately, that won't happen either unless someday we finally insist that the inmates quit running the asylum (i.e. get rid of the confidential internal medical peer review system that virtually eliminates evidence against incompetent doctors from ever seeing the light of day).

Nothin' wrong with a little friendly speculation! (When you see Bud, tell him Mike and Sam say hello from Iowa!)

This was a really fun match last year--we're looking very forward to the '06 version!!