whitetail1

lots of great ideas guys. Thanks

I have been shooting IDPA for 5 years. I shoot almost every weekend. I am SSP EX and ESP EX. I know i have what it takes to make Master but my accuracy seems to be killing me. I wear glasses and am left eye dominant. I am always in the top 3 or 4 overall but struggle to make any ground over that. A couple weeks back i shot a match and dominated all but 1 competitor. I am talking about 25 points over my piers. When i got home i sat and thought about what it was that made me shoot so well. I had 15 pd over 6 very difficult stages. (good for me) I realized i finally ran the stages with complete sight focus verses target focus. A blury front sight has haunted me for years and this was ground breaking for me. I immediatly went outside, set up several targets and dry fired to see if this was indeed what happened and it was. I was, for whatever reason, seeing the sights crystal clear with a slightly blurred target. Well, this last weekend i had another match and the sight focus only lasted a stage or two and went away. Very disapointing. I am now dry firing and really focusing on the sights again. When I set up an array of 6 targets doing transitions, sight focus is good until about target 3 or 4 and it returns to target focus. I cant seem to keep it turned on. Are there any training drills to help me thru this? Thank you in advance Andy

Well I did a little test with him with random dummy rounds and slow fire. He flinches like mad on slow fire but does well on quick shots. When i ask him to take a 2-3 second sight picture while squeezing the trigger he fails. He quickly takes up the slack in the trigger each time but struggles to squeeze the last bit out in slow fire. Any more drills or advice???

He shoots a Gen 4 Glock 34. 3.5 Wolf trigger connector. #13 recoil spring. 160 grain bullets. very low recoli.

3.5 TRIGGER. Not certain what the Dot Drill is???

My 13 year old son is going thru a stage right now that has me perplexed. He is yanking the trigger during slow fire and shooting low left. He seems to have it under control when shooting quickly or at least the bad hits are not as severe. We shoot IDPA together. He will go weeks without an issue and then all of a sudden just goes to crap. I have a suspicious feeling that he is not being true to himself during dry fire practice and gets sloppy. I'm not certain. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Too much crimp!!! drop a suspect round into the barrel. If it does anything but go "CLUNK" there is a problem. The case mouth of the round needs to hit the counter bore in the breach. It could be your COL but I doubt it with the info you provided. I load 160 grain RN in my Glocks at 1.160 all day and are not even close to hitting the rifling. Drop your crimp to .378 and it will fix it.

Great advise guys. Funny how 4 months of snow cover on the ground here in Michigan can make you forget even the basics. I appreciate the info.

I am really good at aquiring the next target visually prior to moving the gun. This is why i see my sights pass the centerline clearly when i make the transition. I know where I want the gun to stop but it just seems to slip past for a split second.

I am finding that when I transition from one target to the next that i slightly overshoot the target and have to bring the gun back to find the zero. This is not so noticible with short transitions but rather when i have to really swing to get to the next target. I am thinking of trying to retract the gun to my chest slightly when begining the transition and focus on driving the gun outward to the target to minimize the overshoot issue. Your thoughts are appreciated. Thanks Andy

I recently picked up a new 550 and was struggling with the cases sticking to the powder funnel on the up stroke of the handle. I talked to the great people at Dillon and they advised i was possably cleaning my cases too good and removing the carbon from the inside of the cases. That was not good news for me as i am a shiny case junky and was actually in the process of buying a stainless steel tumbling operation for home. I knew there must be another option. I measured the ID of a case after it had been thru my sizing die. (I am using all Dillon dies in 9mm) It measured .350. I then measured the shank of my powder funnel (the straight section that goes down into the case prior to the flaring section) and found it to be .353 This told me the powder funnel is actually opening up the case again along with flaring the end. I emailed Dillon again and informed them of my findings. They stated that this is correct and the .353 diameter of the shank was "optimum" in regards to size. I am certain that this was the reason for the sticking cases. I decided to reduce the diameter of the shank to .351. THIS HAS SOLVED MY PROBLEMS ALL TOGETHER...The cases do not stick at all. The handle runs a smooth as ever on the upstroke. I guess i understand that if i am loading soft lead the .353 shank diameter would prevent deforming the bullet upon seating it. But...When loading hard cast, jacketed or plated rounds i do not see the need. This is just my oppinoin. The process for grinding the .002 from the shank is not something that can be done at the work bench in your basement. I am a seasoned machinist and it was feasable for me as i have axcess to many grinders. The powder funnel has been hardened and i would think that polishing it to size manually would be next to impossible. The ends of the funnel are not condusive to being put between centers and ground either. I had to grind off the material and blend the corner radius back with the flaring angle. If anyone is interestewd in the process i used just let me know. Again...This might not be what Dillon reccommended but it has certainly worked for me. And come on...Whats a few thousandths between friends... Andy

I run a lot of range brass thru my press. One thing i have found is that periodically i will find a little piece of dirt or debri in the case that failed to come out when tumbling. It will appear to be a slight overcharge when looking at it prior to pushing the projectile into the case. It doesn't take much of a chunk of crap below the powder to make the CUP rise dramatically. Check each case before loading and when dropping in the bullet. It saved me more than once. Best of luck Andy

I have been on the outside looking in for some time now. Finally decided to sign in and say hi. I shoot IDPA with my 11 year old as often as we can. I have a lot to learn and look forward to many of the discussions.