Carmoney

I'm afraid those 10-rounders stick out of the gun too far to be legal in SS.

Happy and confused.....well, you've certainly found the right sub-forum!

I own a bunch of 1911s, including several that are beautiful hand-built custom guns. But this past year, I have been competing in various single-stack competitions with a nearly-stock Springfield Loaded with fixed sights (and a green factory paint job) I got in a trade deal at a local gun shop. The minor custom work I've done myself: a fiber-optic front sight, a crisp 2-lb. trigger job (including Koenig hammer and EGW sear), an S&A magwell, and a piece of grip tape on the front strap. That's about it. Consistent with my "el cheapo" approach, I shot it with Wolf ammo and Uncle Mike's belt holster and mag pouches. This set-up was good for 2nd place overall at the 2005 Minnesota Single Stack match, and 4th place overall at the 2005 Iowa Single Stack match. If people want to turn this new provisional division into an excuse to drop thousands of dollars on custom stuff, OK fine, but that will not be the determining factor in who wins these matches. A 1911 doesn't need to be terribly expensive to be reliable, reasonably accurate, and easy to shoot and reload. Looking forward to 2006! Mike

Revoman, now that you're here, I think we should use this photo as our inaugural revolver forum "You Write the Caption" contest:

Revoman already knows how young and dynamic I am, Hop. What he may not realize is that you are even younger than me. I suppose the kind of life you've had to endure down there in Rammer, Tennessee tends to age a guy prematurely..... EB, we might just have to stick a classifier in there and turn you into a Revolver Master!!

Looks an awful lot like a gun one of our local club member had for sale early this year. His gun was set up similarly, it was known to be reliable, and a number of mags went along with it. He was asking $700, which I thought was a very good deal. However, nobody wanted it that bad, and it finally got traded to a local gun dealer and eventually sold off the shelf. I don't know how much the dealer paid, or how much it brought at retail. I have occasionally regretted not buying it when I had the chance.....

Revoman: Even if we made you take off the scope??

I started in competition shooting at age 21. However, my kids both started at age 10. Jill has stuck with her favorites, steel and bowling pins. By age 11, my son Sam proudly carried his own USPSA membership card in his wallet, and was already shooting USPSA matches with me across several states. Conversely, he was not eligible to participate officially in IDPA at all (although he did shoot one state IDPA match that allowed him to shoot with the up-front understanding that he would be DQ'd afterward due to his age--we appreciated the match director accommodating us and letting him shoot, but it was pretty silly considering his competence and experience, and it was a significant factor in turning us both off IDPA for good). Now, at age 12, Sam's a veteran of the Steel Challenge, the USPSA Nationals (on the revolver super squad, no less), the Big Dawg Steel Match, the Area 3 USPSA Championships, two Missouri Fall Classics, two Iowa Single Stack Championships, the Great Plains Sectional, the Minnesota Sectional, the Ohio Sectional, the Illinois Sectional, the Rocky Mountain Regional ICORE Championship, and probably others I'm forgetting. Oh yeah--he also participated in the Junior Olympics in Table Tennis last year! :-)

Interesting. When I was thinking about this issue, I glanced up at the clock on the wall, and sat there and watched as one full minute went by, and imagined I was waiting for some poor soul to go through a full minute's worth of airgunning, drawing, dry-snapping, adjusting, toweling, sight-blacking, and assorted other various mental walk-through ritual. (I say poor soul because all he's accomplishing past about the 15-second mark is making himself even more nervous and jumpy and generally screwing with his own head....or so it seems to me.)

Mike, thanks for making such a great point!

The more I think about this, and read the posts you guys have put up here on the board, the more I think maybe Dave's proposal is a good one: Allow 7- and 8-shot revolvers but with minor scoring only (sorta like they've done with Single-Stack). Seems like this would encourage more people to play, and give all of us more options. I can think of at least two guys at my local club who have voiced a desire to shoot their 8-shooters (not including me and Sam). I do not believe that this rule adjustment would automatically create the need for the 625 shooter to acquire different gear. I think over the course of the typical larger (sectional/area/national) USPSA match, the relative advantages of the 8-shot minor and 6-shot major guns would be nearly a wash. The downside would be the perception of the equipment race. I can easily imagine those of us with both platforms pushing hard for advance stage diagrams, or bringing both sets of equipment along and decide which one to shoot after looking over the stages! Whether that would be good or bad for the division can be debated. I think it would add to the fun, but I'm sure others would not feel the same way. I don't care either way about barrel venting and comps and all that--that crap is all placebo with the type of loads we'd be using anyway (.38/.357 minor and .45 major)--we learned that back in the golden days of pin-shooting. Interesting stuff.

Ever stop to calculate the impact of a full minute of LAMR ritual on the rest of the squad? At a match like the USPSA Nationals, with 18 shooters per squad each shooting 18 stages, if everyone insisted on taking that much time to get ready, that's 5 hours and 24 minutes of diddling.

Mark, many of us who have kids shooting in this game know how much you have done to support IPSC/USPSA as a family activity! It's not the same world out there that we grew up in, and it's harder than ever for families to find true quality time together. Thanks for being such a fine example for the rest of us! (Here's a photo of Jill shooting steel with the M-617 .22 revolver this past summer....she's a freshman in high school now and enjoys seeing the looks on the other kids' faces when she tells them about her shooting prowess!)

Gotta watch this a little.....sometimes people who don't want kids involved in their "special little thing" blame it on their insurance because it's convenient and easier than telling you the truth. I experienced this once (fortunately only once) at a shooting range when I showed up to shoot with my daughter (then 12 years old). Turns out it was complete bullcrap, that requirement wasn't written into the insurance policy at all, the guy just figured it would be easier to blow me off with that excuse. Probably a waste of time and paper. There may be local law to the contrary, but generally a parent or guardian cannot sign away a minor's legal rights, nor can the minor him/herself without court approval.

I don't know Bubber. The reload with an 8-shooter is going to be a little bit slower on average--even with Super or Short Colt--than you'd get with a good hogged-out 625. That factor, combined with the minor scoring penalty, would make the two platforms pretty even, I would bet. Hmmmmm........ Maybe if we wind up doing the Iowa Revolver-Only Championship (IROC?) we can open up the 8-shot minor option and just see for ourselves......?

Them boys down in Florida don't know nothing about no JM. Florida is Cliff Walsh country.

Heard from a little birdie (heh-heh!) that John Burkholder and Dan Carden are both keeping ol' Jerry on his toes out there at the Rio, with a couple stages left to go. Can't wait to see the final results! Mike

Erik makes a good point.....when I shot at one particular club last year I was assigned to a club officer who escorted me through the entire match, just so they could make sure I understood all the safety stuff. Didn't matter that I was 38 years old, didn't matter I'd been a USPSA member for more than 10 years, didn't matter where I'd been in the past, didn't matter what experience I had....all that mattered is I hadn't shot that particular club and they didn't know me from Adam. They were so darn nice about it, though, that I couldn't possibly get mad at them! And, since during the rest of the week I work as a trial attorney defending civil lawsuits, I can sure respect that club's desire to have very specific safety policies that are followed religiously. God forbid, if something bad ever happened, it would sure be nice to be able to show the jury how careful and diligent those club officers insisted on being. I guess my point is if Alden was only being "discriminated" against for being a new shooter (not just a young shooter), it's a lot easier to understand and forgive. On the other hand, if a club is going to insist on running people through a safety check, they need to make sure somebody's there to handle it right on the spot, so that new shooters never get turned away like that. Mike

Dave, as you have been correctly informed by the other folks here, this is not a USPSA problem, it's a problem with that particular club. I'm happy to say that my son Sam (now 12) and I have shot USPSA matches together in 8 or 10 different states over the past year and a half, and have never experienced anything like that. At this point, with a bunch of state/sectionals, an area match, and a USPSA Nationals under his belt, I think I would react pretty strongly if anybody tried to arbitrarily deny him entry at a USPSA match. We look forward to shooting with you and Alden somewhere! Great to hear about another competent young shooter! If you guys are ICORE shooters also, consider Bud Bond's Rocky Mountain Regional ICORE Championship in Ft. Collins this spring. Bud really goes out of his way to get young shooters to his match. If the plans work out, there will be three of us dads bringing our boys (all about the same age as Alden) to Bud's match from Iowa in '06! Mike

Heh-heh! Same question came up after I posted a picture of Jerry standing around talking to Rudi and Pat at the Nationals. His moonclip holders are conventional "shoot the moons" but with the long metal center posts, he just sticks an extra moonclip (maybe two) upside-down on the post and then uses that one in the gun to start the stage.

If we do this, I want to coordinate it with one of the events that we are already doing at the club. I think I can garner the help to put together a really good "add-on" match, but I'm not sure I would get the support to do another whole separate weekend stand-alone match, if you know what I mean. That means we align it with either the Iowa Single-Stack in the fall, or the Iowa Sectional match, which was held Memorial Day weekend this year. However--my trial schedule throughout the spring is extremely heavy already, so if I'm going to be a prime mover and shaker on this, it probably needs to be later on in the year. I do not want to step on Hop's toes--he had this idea first--Sam, how are we doing on the plans for the Southern Revolver Championship? Are you still looking at fall dates? Also, just to reiterate, if we do an Iowa revolver match, it would not be a prize table situation--at least not for the first year. However, I think we could draw enough local shooters, plus some die-hards from around the country (all of you who have expressed interest here, for starters), to have a hell of a good match. Keep the thoughts coming. I'm encouraged by what I'm hearing so far. Mike Gary, we are just to the east of Springfield, Nebraska, so you should have no trouble finding us.

Dave, I think this a great idea! It would be really fun to have this option--and it might expand our shooter base without the need for any extra divisions or awards. I see no downside whatsoever.

Tekno, I agree that a 5" 625 is perhaps the best choice for IPSC (avoid the Model of 1988 unless you can thoroughly test-fire it first, they are known to be problematic). Another very viable option is to find a nice tight 25-2 with a 6" or 6.5" barrel, and replace or grind the target trigger/hammer. Mike

No discussion yet on dates....again, right now this is just me floating the idea, but I'm pretty sure the club would be fully supportive. If we do this, it would probably be best to coordinate it with our Iowa Single Stack match (last year we ran that shoot on Oct. 1). That way, walls and props and everything are largely set up. It would save a tremendous amount of work. For example, we might be able to do the Single Stack on the Friday and Saturday, and do the revolver match on the Sunday of the same weekend. Or, we could probably run the revolver match on the weekend following the Single Stack. Which would you guys prefer? (Honestly, I'd rather do consecutive weekends myself, but I'm guessing those who are traveling in from a distance might enjoy shooting both matches in one weekend.) Do you like the idea of an real "old school" double IPSC match? (Again--please understand--this all remains tentative until I can consult with the club...)

Our local club (OOPS in Osceola, Iowa) hosts the Iowa Sectional and the Iowa Single-Stack match each year, and these have been very successful and enjoyable matches. We're going to be discussing plans for next year shortly, and I have an idea I want to float past all my wheelgunning buddies here on the forum: --10 stages plus chrono, round count at least 180 --$50, includes T-shirt with early entry --plaque only (probably awarded Lewis-style, at the USPSA percentage breaks, but with special plaques or medals for high lady, high junior, high non-moonclip shooter) --USPSA rules, all Revolver division restrictions in effect (at least for the first year) --at least two stages run through the woods, Rambo-style, probably including one shooting off a rustic foot-bridge --vehicles, activators, plenty of steel, Texas stars, run 'n' gun, not necessarily revolver-neutral, but who cares if we're all in the same boat! So guys--would you attend if we set this thing up in 2006? Thoughts or suggestions? Talk to me. Mike