collards

http://www.ruger.com/products/redhawk/features.html# Now shoots .45 colt and .45 ACP with moonclips out of the box!

Color me convinced. Federal it is! I mean as I said above too, there was a massive dent in these misfired primers so I am hesitant to go tightening up my springs.

Well nobody is intentionally trying to circumvent rules, I'm just going into the stage knowing it is a 12 shot stage and I don't want to shoot more than 12 shots. I haven't seen a rule anywhere that says you have to bring as much ammo as you can hold on your person.

Well what about this. If I am on a 12 round stage, can I just bring one speedloader? So in other words, walk up to the line with ONLY 12 rounds? Would the rule still apply?

Light strikes are not a common occurrence, and I retrieved the round. My GP100 crushed that primer in something fierce but it just didn't go bang. Now, I am using Winchester primers and that's probably a mistake.... I wasn't aware of rule 3.6.5 applying in this situation. Let's say I leave a shooting position with only one shot on a target that needed 2. Would I have to go back to the previous position to finish the shoot?

I really blew two stages of my local match this month. Went home cursing my crappy ammo and hating REVO division, but on reflection I think it was due to poor planning on my part. IDPA match had two 12 round stages and on both stages I suffered a hard primer fail to fire. On both of these stages, I did a reload and finished the stage, but today I'm thinking why the heck didn't I just take the -5 points down and be done with it? On one stage I am embarrased to say I actually cycled back through the cylinder to hit the primer again, then reloaded, then got back into the port I was shooting through to finish shooting the last shot for the stage. *bonk* Obviously if you're shooting over a steel or trying to avoid a FTN or something you might have to reload, but if you've already got a shot on every target is it always going to be the smart play to take the -5 in these situations?

Thanks for the replies. You helped confirm what I was thinking.

Hi everyone, I am about to move down to SC into an area where an outdoor range will go from a 5 minute drive to a 45 minute drive. As a result, I am going to need to likely make dry-fire training a bigger part of my regimen than ever before. Right now I shoot a GP100 in SSR IDPA, and I do like shooting the revo, but all the fun dry-fire tools are mostly available for the pistol market. I was wondering if any other revolver shooters had experimented with the SIRT and the LASR software or other options in dry-fire, and whether or not they had seen gains as a result. Now, I fully realize that the BEST gains would likely come from dry-firing with the same platform you use in live fire and competition, but I am really asking about the potential for cross-over gains on things like bill drills, target transitions etc (not reloads obviously).

I think this could be the pro tip I'm looking for. I've also struggled to find the best way to get rid of the loader, and what you're describing could very well be what I experience. This could also be why I haven't really reproduced this in practice, because in my dry-fire I'm not in the habit of chucking my speedloaders across the room. Thanks!

Sorry title should read: "How to make speedloader reloads more consistent" I'm still new to the game, but I'm at my wits end with my stock revolver reloads. The aspect I find most frustrating is that I can achieve no consistency when reloading .38s with my jet loaders. Very often, I'll get a quick reload, only to discover that a round has not gone into the chamber completely, which necessitates that I manually push it in with my thumb before closing the cylinder. This costs me tons of time over the course of the match. I can imagine multiple things causing this. For example, cylinder length for .357 and carbon fouling in cylinders from the shorter .38s, but how do people actually prevent this to get consistently fast reloads? I am also frustrated at the difficulties in trying to duplicate a true revolver reload in dry fire practice. Issues like case expansion and sticking cases don't come up in dry fire, but they are a constant problem in matches for me. Thanks!

This makes a lot of sense. As I said in my original post, I know there are probably plenty of practical realities people have discovered. It seems from some of the replies though that those who have done this enjoyed the experience.

I think its interesting that in IDPA and USPSA (among others) you get a detailed walkthrough and opportunity to plan the way you want to attack a stage. To me, this is probably the most impractical aspect of practical pistol shooting. However, I know there has to be plenty of good reasons for why you don't do "blind" stages. Maybe some wiser shooters could provide some of those reasons?

Whew that's a pretty advanced concept. I've got some work to do!

Thanks for the replies. I don't want there to be confusion though. I'm not saying that I would work the trigger without sight alignment, I'm just saying that practicing some drills that work on fast or wide transitions against a par time, I find myself accepting less than ideal sight alignment while moving from one target to the next. I think this is encouraging me to "go fast" rather than work on being smooth so that I "am fast". This is what makes me wonder if practicing my trigger stroke at the same time as transitions is realy a great idea.

This is actually very helpful. I just need to reduce these times significantly so that I can have good trigger mgmt. I tend to get sucked up into hitting a certain par time rather than my personal best times. Thanks!

I shoot a revolver so I have the advantage of a self-resetting trigger. I am starting to wonder how much of an advantage that really is in dry-fire, however. I feel that I might be better off trying to split up trigger control and sight alignment. In other words, working on things like the Wall drill, and the bill drill for trigger control, and then using many of the later drill's in Ben Stoeger's dry-fire book as movement and sight alignment drills without pulling the trigger. My concern is that, by pulling the trigger while going through some of these drills, I'm getting unrealistic feedback on how good my trigger stroke really is. Moreover, since my eyes are waiting on my trigger finger, I feel they aren't getting as fast as they could be.

Not sure what you are asking here. The difference between a 38spl and a .380? IMO you should not be comparing the two for load data. Way apples and oranges here. If you load down to a .380 level load for a 38 spl you may get a dirty gun from not fully burning the powder. You may get some breech face erosion from blowback from the primer not fully sealing. If you load low enough you may even get a squib rd. What you won't get is pressure spikes. Are you loading .380 bullets into a 38spl gun? The .380 bullet is a hair smaller than a .38spl. BTW, Where did you find load data on a 100 gr wadcutter with unique powder in a 38Sspl? You've answered my question, and I appreciate it. I'm not really comparing .380 to .38 special, just wondering what kind of issues the increased .38 headspace can cause. I think the answer here probably is some trail boss powder. unique is just not going to be useful for this application.

I've got a ruger LCR and I bought a thousand 100 gr wadcutter bullets I thought to use as light shooting practice loads. My load manual is recommending a starting load of 5.0 gr of unique for this bullet in a .38 special. However, the same weight bullet in .380 has a recommended weight of 3.1. I've loaded and shot some 5.0 loads and they are fairly hot, hotter than what I'm looking for anyway. What is the danger in downloading the load significantly? Pressure spikes?

Bingo. Revo's don't have to fit in the box, regardless of the level of the match. Awesome!

Well multiple kinds, I have a mix. I've loaded plenty of it before though.

No its not a dumb question. I did read that tip in the manual, but I have it on right side up. There is a big number 2 stamped on it and that's pointing up.

I've got a couple of thousand rounds reloaded on my 550B. Today while I'm loading .38 the sprocket becomes difficult to turn. I am not sure exactly what happened, but I believe that the little brass-tipped screw came loose, allowing the shell plate bolt to turn and tighten up. I took off the shell plate, realigned everything and put it back together, but for the life of me I can't realign it successfully. When I try to get back to the previous bolt tightness, where I can clearly feel the shell plate clicking into place with the little ball and spring thingy underneath, the primers are no longer seated anywhere near deep enough. Even when I tighten the bolt far more than it was prior to this problem, I'm not getting primers seated deep enough, and then I can barely turn the shell plate. Something is seriously out of whack, and I'm just not sure where to look to fix the problem. Any help is very much appreciated. Edit: One thing that seemed weird when I was messing with this last night, is that when I put the sprocket on top of the shellplate, it doesn't quite go all the way into all four holes in the shellplate. It is sort of at an angle where metal bar comes across the face of the plate. This seemed a bit wonky to me, but some aspects of the machine are indeed wonky (primer system). Edit: SOLVED! The ejector spring had risen up some and started rubbing against the shell plate sprocket. A 5 second fix took me an hour to diagnose...sheesh!

I was discouraged at my last club match when my 4 inch gp100 would not fit in the IDPA box. The gun has the older style of factory grips. The ones with the wood insert, not the Hogue. Otherwise it hasn't been modified in any way. The club let me shoot the stages of course, but I'm frustrated that I'll have to find some other option if I want to do higher level matches.

That helps a whole lot! The fact that its supposed to be moving straight is proof enough that I have work to do.

With the way I have my 550B set up, if the screws are not tight, the metal rod that goes between the pulleys kind of wants to make it jerk to the side. It feels wonky. If I over-tighten the screws, the primer bar can't glide smoothly. If I undertighten them, they eventually become too loose during a reloading session and the system starts to jack itself up. Is this how its supposed to work? Why doesn't the bar come straight back without being jerked around?