askomiko

Yay! Standard championships are over, 111 competitors in class, I was 9th. The first stage of the match, and the first stage of the year with a standard gun for me, and I won it. The next wasn't so good, but not a disaster either. I had two misses in the match, the latter was a really stupid one - a close and wide open swinger as a last target of the stage, I threw two shots at it, and felt almost immediately that there was a miss, but I did not pick it up for some idiot reason. I brought the gun back up, then down, and then up once again, and still didn't take the extra shot. I guess the first paper target mixed my head, since that one felt like I shot a mike no shoot, when in reality I had two A's. I had to pause and check it after shooting 5 plates in between. So, that was a disaster stage. That stage alone cost me enough points to drop from 7th to 9th. I'm happy about my 9th place finish, but a proper focus would have gotten me higher, breaking 90% for the first time with a standard gun. The open shooting has definately improved my shooting this year! Now, the highlight of the year, open championships is two weeks away... And then some other little match in few weeks, with just 1200 competitors, full of no-names like Grauffel, Kirsch, Hobdell and the rest. I will kick their asses! *cough* Video (it is HD, you can click it and watch on youtube to get a bigger image):

*Makes waves for the longer trigger*

How does it work after shooting a lot, when the gun is covered in black goo from the inside? Wouldn't the roller get stuck?

Throw the fork and knife to the nearest target for extra points.

What kind of thumb rests folks use with a 90' mount? I love my thumb rest in my upright mount, and would not want to lose that.

Any user experiences so far? I've smoothed out my original plungers, but on one gun I don't seem to get it right, there is always some grinding feel in the free trigger movement. On others, it's very smooth already. And I like to pimp up my guns, so I'm thinking about adding this to the shopping list of tuning parts.

A match from few days ago. I felt it went good, but the competition was better.

A match. This time I didn't do any huge mistakes. No mikes, no penalties, no brain farts. All stages except 6th had no shoots, but I managed to stay off them. I only shot one stage badly, and that was enough to drop me from 2nd to 4th. Good competition, with a world class shooter winning the open. Nothing went seriously wrong, and I got good performances, specially towards the end, which left a very good feeling. It's also fun to get a good performance and be happy about your match, and then look at the stage percents and see that you're getting 70%. That's the problem with those Really Good Shooters, they rape the percentages of us mortals! (And I want to do just that some day!) Stages as I shot them: Stage5: I failed with the last steels and lost out around 20 match points. Stage6: It might have been a better idea to shoot the steel once, and then shoot the static targets. Anyway, I would have won without that last make-up shot, which was not needed. Stage7: One shot per target, tight shots if you decided not to move in the shooting area. Stage1: Table start, two targets on extreme right with a N/S in between, then two poppers with a N/S popper in between, and again two targets in extreme left with a N/S. Stage2: The longest stage, I was a bit too slow. Long distance shots. The first steel which I shot form the end of the first corridor took too long, I hit it with 3rd round. Stage3: A fun little finger excercise. Mag in place, chamber empty, I got a good start, 1.13s. I shot the last targets differently from our squad. There were 3 targets from the window, one straight ahead and high, and other two low on the ground, left and right of the window. Everyone else shot them left to right, which was a bad decision IMO, and so I shot the high one first, because you could see it earlier, and then the transition on the low ones was easier, when the high and longer target doesn't mess you up. Stage4: Again I shot a bit differently from others, deciding to take targets in a different order so I could shoot them on the move. This one felt good, but as an afterthought, it might have been better to shoot the popper on the right in the beginning, not at the end. But that would have been a difficult shot on the move, and slowing down would have eaten the benefit I got from it. I didn't quite hit my foot placement and had to hunt the targets a bit through the very small shooting ports. A very fun stage. The target I shot last: I forgot about it, I originally wanted to shoot it as I come to the shooting ports. Luckily I remembered about it while shooting the 4 poppers.. It would've been great if the hat cam worked, but it seems to have died. And here's the video: Argh, there's something wrong with youtube, it shows slow speed. Arr, I'll try re-upload later. E: Now it works!

My load is (Archipelago TC) 180 grain copper plated lead bullet, OAL 30,45mm, 5.2 grains of N320. PF 175.

Shooting steel today, in wonderful +32c weather. Stationary steel plus lots of ammo = . Gotta have more of this. Shooting steel is not allowed on my regular range, that's a serious flaw. Stationary steel targets would triple my ammo consumption. I am in the top 10 of Finnish open nationals this year.

Nowadays my thumb feels lost without one.

For me, it's the exact opposite - CZ / Tanfoglio guns kind of glue my hand to the safety lever, and are extremely comfortable to hold, much more so than 2011. Is it that your thumb cannot reach over the safety? If so, let the gun sit in the middle of your palm = turn your hand to bring the thumb a bit more forward and other fingers back. While being as high as possible on the grip, and then a bit higher still. That, while feeling a little weird at first, also improves recoil control by a mile.

Lots of good info here. Double plugging and shooting the berm help, and what also elped me was keeping my face relaxed and both eyes open and not squinting the left eye. And what helps me to do that is placing a tape on the left lens on safety glasses, so I don't see double image. Half-closing the left eye while shooting is very bad for me, it spreads tension all over the body, and therefore increases flinch and hurts accuracy. But I can't keep it open without taping the left lens, because I would see a double image, which again makes everything go bad.

Awesome! CZ is the winning solution. I'd love to have a smith with that level of skill available.

Yes, right handed, right side everything. The racker is on the right because it's a straight thick short rod, not a bent sidewinder-type thingy. On the left side, it would break by thumb which is resting on the safety. (Tanfoglio, the slide is half as high as on 2011 guns, not as much space there.) Now that I think it, I must get and try a left side racker. Right side knob lets the left hand be almost in shooting grip while racking, but the gun must be canted. Gotta go try new things. Eh, thanks everyone for your time.

Lots of dryfire, and Mr. Anderson has good books for that. Brian's book should be in everyones bookshelf by now, it's a mandatory. Sauls book "Thinking practical shooting" is great too, it covers the other aspects of shooting than technique. Lanny Bassham: With winning in mind. Saul's book covers a part of Lanny's teachings, but books are cheap and good use for your non-shoot time, so get them all.

Yes, I like this start too, now, after practising it for many nights in the recent weeks. I now know that the square mag bases start to hurt my palm after ~200 repetitions with a full mag. Things like this are the super easy seconds to shave off your time, if you haven't practised at all. I feel the right side racker and racking with left thumb makes the left hand end up closer to the shooting grip than a left side racker would. On the other hand, the right hand racker needs that flip or cant of the gun. Gotta try both ways.

I've been doing fair amount of these recently. My open gun has the slide racker on the right slide. I can get the gun loaded ok, but the slow part is getting the dot to the target. How do folks do this type of start? Would a left side, sidewinder style racker be any different for this, I've never tried one?

I'm exothermic. Today, it was around +31c/87f, and shooting was so easy and stable. It was the same thing with baseball (or actually, finnish baseball, which is different): hot weather=hit the ball to the moon, +10c/50f = barely to the middle field. Now a cold . I've been working on my draw. The key seems to be "get the hand moving". A sharp start, instead of a smooth start makes for a much faster time, while still not rushing the sight picture any more than before. Also, unloaded starts. I now like unloaded starts, mag off the belt. My goal is to get it to a steady 1.8 second from 15 meters. I can load the gun pretty fast, but finding the dot on target is slow. I have the slide racker on the right side, and the slowest part for me is getting the gun from racking position into proper sight picture. Any tips for that? I've finally got the book "With winning in mind". So.... "I am in the top 10 of Finnish open nationals this year."

For my 550, the 223 plate works with Starline 38supercomp, but not Lapua supercomp. The 9mm plate on the other hand, has served me well with all 38 super and supercomp cases I've ran across.

Very nice looking magwell. It does fit a 150.00 +0.00 box, right? Around here, the boxes are tight, there seems to be a competition who makes their box closest to +000 tolerance, and from glass so it doesn't flex at all.

Hey, this little part has escaped my attention so far. Awesome piece of little tuning, gotta get a few of those!

The video here: Match from yesterday: one stage win, one crash and burn, one slightly failed stage (lost the dot and spent a week finding it, and then ran the gun dry), and the rest with basic performance. On a funny side note, a squad mate shot one very close target with so fast split time (open gun) that you couldn't hear two shots, it was just a bit louder boom. And you can't hear it on video either, only in super slow motion you can hear them separately. And the video shows that the approximate split time was 0.08 -> 25 frames per second: 1st frame: a smoke cloud above the gun=the bullet has left some time ago 2nd frame: nothing 3rd: a fire ball=the 2nd bullet has just left the barrel Awesome! Video: Stage 1: A very fast and close run and gun thingy. The challenge was to resist going madly too fast and get misses. Incredibly slow draw, gotta fix that. Stage 2: The crash and burn. I was sure of my hits when shooting, and then at the targets. 1 miss and two N/S. I was " , I did not shoot those, they must be someone else's bullet holes!" But I guess they weren't. Stage 3: this one I won, a simple stage. Stage 4: simple again Stage 5: A bit more challenging stage. There were 1 paper and 4 plates in about 20 meters. The plates were hidden behind a steel no shoot-target, if you shot from the starting position, so they were very tight shots. You could also decide to drop down in the left and right spots and shoot them from there, the no shoot target didn't bother then. But it is obviously very slow to get down and then up again, and as most people don't practise shooting pistol while lying down, the shooting isn't comfortable either. The three poppers in the middle were only visible from the low center port. Notice my super elegant low port shooting style... In my run, something went wrong... I just lost the dot, and thought "is it broken?". I guess that it was not, I just lost it. Weird. Never happened before in a basic standing stance... Then I forgot to reload and ran the gun dry. Ugh. At least I got the last damn poppers without trouble.

The micrometer thingy is super awesome. I have my loads in load book like this: 38super, 124gr AB bullet, 3N38 9.2grain, 255 in micrometer, pf 165. .40, 180gr AB bullet, N320 5.3 grain, 155 in micrometer, pf 173. It is spot on, when you need to change, just dial the micrometer and you're done. Slight adjustments for getting the desired PF are very easy, for example when the powder batch changes. Just make test loads with a spread of 2 micrometer lines, (155, 157, 159, 161...) and choose the one that is high enough, and you're set for that powder batch, eg. usually for the rest of season.

Hey G-Man, that was a nuggett of gold, I've gotta try that with our club practise.