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shooterDrew

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Posts posted by shooterDrew

    Should I get a bullet feeder?

    in non-Dillon Reloading Equipment

    Posted

    So after reading some threads my question about which bullet feeder to get is pretty much answered... Mr BF... sounds like its pretty heavily favored even tho the GSI BF has some strong plusses.

    So this brings me to my final question.. Do I really want to drop the coin on one at all? I have loaded about 15k this year on my 650, probably 13,500 of 9mm. At the start of the year I did not even have a case feeder. Adding the case feeder was AWESOME. Had I known the difference I would have ordered it originally with my press. Is the bullet feeder the same in that respect? Most people seem to love them, but I've seen some reviews that are take-it or leave-it. Heading into the cold season I'm going to try and get as far ahead in my loading as I can, so if this will make loading considerably easier/faster I'm down for giving it a try. What say you, Mr Bullet-Feeder owners? Worth the cost?

    Most definitely it IS worth its cost.

    thanks for the feedback! sounds like its the way to go then

    You'll tell yourself after you get one, "I should have gotten one sooner".

    thats what I was hoping

    Should I get a bullet feeder?

    in non-Dillon Reloading Equipment

    Posted

    They are faster and less work, the MBF forces you to loose your powder check die or seat and crimp at the same time.

    That shouldn't be an issue, I don't have a powder check die

    Thanks!

    You will like the improvement almost as much as the case feeder. You only concern is to look in each case in every pull. Easy

    Excellent!

    Should I get a bullet feeder?

    in non-Dillon Reloading Equipment

    Posted

    So after reading some threads my question about which bullet feeder to get is pretty much answered... Mr BF... sounds like its pretty heavily favored even tho the GSI BF has some strong plusses.

    So this brings me to my final question.. Do I really want to drop the coin on one at all? I have loaded about 15k this year on my 650, probably 13,500 of 9mm. At the start of the year I did not even have a case feeder. Adding the case feeder was AWESOME. Had I known the difference I would have ordered it originally with my press. Is the bullet feeder the same in that respect? Most people seem to love them, but I've seen some reviews that are take-it or leave-it. Heading into the cold season I'm going to try and get as far ahead in my loading as I can, so if this will make loading considerably easier/faster I'm down for giving it a try. What say you, Mr Bullet-Feeder owners? Worth the cost?

    shooterDrew's progress journal

    in Range Diary

    Posted · Edited by shooterDrew

    Local match today, had a great day in the awesome fall weather. The shooting could have been better, but thats always the case. I decided to shoot my production gear and accushadow in limited division today (minor PF), mainly to give me a break from all the damn reloading! A lot of the matches I've been shooting have been long field course focused lately, which is fun, but I wanted to try running a match with a single reload per stage vs the usual 3-4. I also wanted to focus on picking up the pace a little. I successfully slowed myself down last week at the KY state match and I wanted to use today to try and prove to myself that I can shoot quick as well. I went in to this expecting my points to take a hit. The goal was to identify the pace at which I would like to be able to shoot 90-95% of points and then start working toward keeping the speed and adding the accuracy. I think I accomplished that. I shot the match fairly quickly, a little faster than some guys I know are fast A and M shooters and at the same overall time as an open GM, but dropped a lot of points and ended up shooting 75% of points after penalties (Thank you minor PF, and I had 4 mikes and a NS hit). The points are obviously unacceptable, however, the pace was decent. I had a few bobbles and stage plan hiccups (Mainly cause it was hard to ditch the habit of dropping a mag every time I leave an array). Today the classifier was Roscoe Rattle - 13-04. In keeping with my theme of the day I went for speed over accuracy, and as expected I ended up with a crappy run. Landed one shot on a NS and had a few deltas, leaving me with a HF around 5.1, good for about 40% in limited... ugh. Seems like lately classifiers are a rarity, I've shot probably 3 to 4 locals now without them and this is the first one for a while, so it stings to puke on it like that. One thing I've heard from much more accomplished shooters than I, is to treat classifiers like any other stage in the match... It seems like sound advice, unfortunately I have yet to follow through with it. I tend to realize as I'm on the line that this is the only stage that really matters outside the match and as a result I tend to push a little too much and usually end up dropping way too many points. I need to change this if I want to truly get better overall. Consistency is needed.

    Moving on from here gonna work on pushing speed, but really continue to focus on points. Hopefully I see those things become less mutually exclusive.

    Things to work on.. Mechanics-wise I need to think about gripping the gun a little harder, and hitting my grip better in the draw. These are things that can be accomplished in dryfire, which I've admittedly been slacking on lately. Another change I'd like to make is developing a wider stance. I tend to keep my feet about shoulder width apart and stand pretty straight up. I would like to get my feet wider. I think this will help me to move a little quicker in and out of positions as well as give me more stability when doing wide transitions.

    Positives: I had a few stages where I was able to put together decent runs. My speed was decent, my splits and transitions were solid, I also felt like I moved pretty efficiently. I need to recognize this stuff as it happens and work to make a mental note of it, and hopefully it will happen a little more consistently.

    Match video below:

    shooterDrew's progress journal

    in Range Diary

    Posted

    I'm still not in the habit of typing into this journal.. so I've got a couple matches to go over. First off, practice: Haven't been doing enough lately. We recently put our house on the market and that has caused for MUCH less time to be able to dry fire and get to the range. Unfortunately earlier this year I was doing a much better job of making time. Anyway..

    I found a local match to hit before the KY state, it was a 6 stage monster match (all stages 35-40 rounds) a couple of hours from home. I felt like I did alright, tried focusing on accuracy. Would have been successful in that, except that I completely spaced a wide open target on one of the stages which resulted in me getting 2 mikes and FTE. ouch. Other than that the match seemed to go ok. At the end of it I looked back and really noticed how much reloading was involved. I found it hard to get into a groove on such a long stage. The bays were fairly small too, which made for a 18 targets being squeezed pretty damn close together, thus lots of nearly standing reloads for production. I am having trouble finding a good rhythym and keeping my plans in tact on larger stages.

    Moving on to KY state. I went in to this match again with the goal of shooting cleanly, even at the expense of "feeling fast." I say that because I know that what feels faster isn't necessarily faster (and almost ALWAYS isn't worth the loss of points), and I'm trying to get myself to understand that a little more. To start off, this match was a 10 stage no steel all field course set up. Every stage was 32 rounds and there was a mix of hoser stages and longer more complex stages. I started off in the hoser stuff out of the gate. This was ok, however, I again found myself getting caught up in the reloads and losing track of my plans. Over the course of the match I felt like I had a significant (not for the better) plan departure on at least 3 of the stages, with probably another 2 or 3 I had minor unintended variations that did not seem overly damaging. I really took my time and waited on the sights all day. Came close on at least one no shoot where I was touching the paper but failed to break the perf, WHEW! and a couple similar hard cover hits. My resulting 92.6% of possible points w/ zero penalties tells me that this approached worked out in the end. My overall finish of 13th (production), being middle of the pack in A class at 83.4% of the winner was satisfactory. This is my highest percentage finish at a major so far, and to walk off the range feeling like I really put the brakes on all day tells me that my priorities in other matches were clearly out of order. . .

    Positives:

    Good accuracy / Points - It was and still is a goal to shoot 95% of points in a major, this did not accomplish the goal but was a significant step towards it.

    ZERO Penalties!- Major goal of mine was to shoot a major cleanly. I have really struggled with this so far. I'm very happy w/ my ability to stay in control all day and keep every thing on paper and off of NS or hard cover. -- This was a big accomplishment for me when looking back at my SStk Nats performance earlier in the year w/ 15 (FIFTEEN) mikes....

    Consistency - This contributed to the above 2 mentioned. For the whole day I felt like I was keeping a really consistent tempo, even on some of the stages where my plans really faltered I felt like I could have ended up much worse if I had not adapted and kept myself moving.

    Negatives:

    Transitions- I felt very slow on transistions to close targets, especially when hard cover and NS were involved. Recognizing that I've come up short in my previous attempts at shooting a match clean probably made me move even slower on those transitions in an effort to protect myself a little more. For this match I'm ok w/ it, but its definitely something that needs improved, a lot.

    Splits- on longer targets I felt like I did a fairly decent job of breaking accurate shots quickly, but then when I would transition to closer targets my shot cadence rarely sped up. I need to focus on smoking the close targets and moving on. This is not a big amount per target, but in the overall I'm certain that several seconds can be made up by a quicker cadence on open targets inside of 7 yards. I'm confident in my ability to make the hits at a faster pace, I've just had a hard time transitioning between the more difficult targets and the easier ones while maximizing my HF.

    Movement- I still feel slow in my non shooting movment. This will continue to be something I will try and stress for future matches, getting from point A to B faster.

    New to USPSA

    in USPSA/IPSC Shooting

    Posted

    I saw it described recently as thinking of scoring IDPA like stroke play and USPSA like match play... If you're a golfer that should make sense. In IDPA jacking up a stage horribly with a terrible malfunction and costing tons of time can totally jack your whole day. Where as in USPSA worst that can happen is you zero a stage and lose you chance at any of those specific points (usually up to 160)

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    shooterDrew's progress journal

    in Range Diary

    Posted

    Well yesterday was the Indiana IDPA State Championship. I haven't shot much IDPA for a few months, and switched guns since the last one I did shoot. Last week I had one dedicated practice session with IDPA gear, then I went back to USPSA gear for a session to break in my new AccuShadow.. side note, the accu is badass. Anyway, lately I've been haunted by WHO stages showing up in big matches and costing me mikes and NS hits... so at each practice I've been doing at least a few magazines of WHO, usually focusing on head shots or at distances beyond 15 yards to keep it tough. In doing this I've noticed that one of my issues I believe has been grip tension with WHO shooting. I tightened it up and started gripping a little harder and notice that I'm a little more in control. This practice paid off at the IDPA match when the dreaded WHO standards type stage with targets plastered with non-threat targets showed up. I was a little less nervous and performed considerably better. A few points down on 6 targets but no NT hits and that ended up helping me win Stock Service Pistol overall.. yee haw. I haven't been able to shoot a classifier since early (like in the snow / february) last year and I went in to this match as SSP-expert, so I got a match bump to SSP-master! Overall I felt my performance in the match was pretty decent. I went in with the plan to give up on trying to go fast, and focus instead on avoiding procedurals and shooting accurately. I anticipated getting a few procedurals just because I've almost completely switched over to USPSA shooting and IDPA stages can be extremely specific in the way they're supposed to be shot, however, when it was all said and done I did shoot it without penalties, mikes, or hits on NTs. I did not feel like I moved very quickly, and at times bobbled my draws and reloads, but shooting at the pace that I did allowed me to keep my points down to a minimum. My raw time in the match was almost 8 seconds slower (over 10 stages) than the 2nd place shooter, however, he had almost 2x the amount of points down, which is TOUGH to come back from in IDPA scoring.

    Moving ahead, I'm now looking forward to the Kentucky USPSA Handgun Championship in a couple weeks. This will be my first match with the Accu, unless I can find a local USPSA somewhere in the region next weekend. I was able to get a load worked up and after a 400 rnd practice session last friday I feel pretty comfortable with its accuracy and confident in it feeding reliably. Another side note, loading jacketed bullets is great compared to loading coated lead.. too bad the price difference is so much. For now I'm shooting the Montana Gold 124 JHP over titegroup and I like the recoil as well as the reduced smoke from coated bullets. This week I intend on working on transitions in dryfire and live fire, as well as distance change ups. I want to speed up how long it takes me to go from a close hoser type shot to a longer precise shot. Also continue work on position entry and exit, as well as keep pressing the WHO and SHO shooting.. I'm sure it will continue to show up so I better keep working on it.

    Titegroup and ideal gas law PV=nRT

    in 9mm/38 Caliber

    Posted

    I am not one of the TG fans since it melted the FO out of my front sight for the third time and melted my gun to my holster after a long string of rapid fire steel. I do not think it recoils softly, i do not think it is even remotely clean, it smokes like a Civil War cannon with cast bullets. I would pick most any other powder and I avoid TG like the plague. If TG was all I could find, I would stop shooting. There are a lot of people who like it and I don't have any problem with that. To each his own I say. But for me, I would rather be so galded I couldn't walk than to shoot anything loaded with TG. This is just my opinion, you can take my opinion and about 2 bucks and buy a cup of coffee most anywhere.

    I had a pretty good chuckle at this...

    I guess I've not loaded much of anything else to know if I prefer it to TG. I can attest that my guns get hot as hell of I'm doing some high volume shooting. I've never had a fiber melt or damage my holster, but I been pretty sure I was going to get a burn blister on my thumb a couple times.

    Up till now I've loaded mostly coated bullets and don't notice the smoke terribly until I see a video of me shooting ... Then it looks like a locomotive. I just switched to MG jacketed bullets so we'll see what these are like in comparison.

    As to whether TG is softer/harder recoiling than anything else, I don't know. It's the powder I started with because a friend recommended it and I just stuck with it. I've got about 18lbs left so when I'm done with it maybe I'll give something else a try.

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    shooterDrew's progress journal

    in Range Diary

    Posted

    Had a rather unproductive week so far. I was able to get up to the range on monday and do a little practice, tho at the end of it I felt like I mainly accomplished creating a pile of brass..

    This weekend is the Indiana State IDPA match, which will be the first IDPA match I have shot in months. I'm eager to see how I do, and if I can avoid a huge amount of penalties. On monday I took an IDPA target and my IDPA gear to work on draws and reloads from concealment, as well as proper points of aim for the IDPA target vs USPSA. They're pretty similar, but low A's result in -1 penalties so you have to be a little careful. One thing I remembered quickly is that draws and reloads from concealment are slower.. and reloads with retention feel odd. Coming from a LE background doing "tactical" reloads is nothing new, but for the last year I've probably done more shooting than I did in the 3 or 4 years (combined) prior so the USPSA "tactics" I've been picking up and teaching myself have taken hold well. When I started USPSA last year I remember having to work at stopping myself from shooting the gun to slide lock all the time. Now for this match putting in some time going back to that stuff has thrown me for a bit of a loop. Unfortunately I will not get much more live fire time before Saturday, but I will make sure to do at least 2 more dry fire sessions with the IDPA gear to help me get ready. I think I will be best served in the match to make a point getting my hits in the -0. That definitely doesn't sound like much of a revelation, however, I'm still working on controlling the throttle in USPSA to maximize my points, and I think its even more important in IDPA as any shots outside the -0 generally cost you way more than it would have taken to clean up the sight pic and get it right the first time. In USPSA you have the chance to pick up speed or stage time somewhere else if you end up dropping some pts (not usually enough to justify, but potentially make a dent) however with IDPA the stages are all pretty much dictated in how they're shot, so not much hope of that. I need to get my hits, and focus on shooting stages in a way that avoids procedurals. If I can do that I think I will perform ok.

    In an effort to continue to work on my SHO and WHO shooting I used some large steel plates that had been left out. They're pretty big 18"x18" or so, to make them useful I did my shooting back at about 40 yards. I did a 4 or 5 magazines at this distance, doing a little SHO WHO and freestyle. One thing I've noticed about switching to the CZ is that the front sight is much larger. I'm not sure the measurement, but the dawson front sight on my MP was .090", this one seems considerably bigger- its stock as far as I know.

    Speaking of the CZ.. my accu-shadow arrived today! I actually took initial delivery last week, however, right after taking it out of the box and checking it over I noticed that it had not gotten the competition trigger job I ordered. The rest of the gun was just as spec'd, but the trigger was still pretty heavy at 8.5lbs DA and 3.5lbs SA. I emailed Stuart at CZC and he responded promptly with a label to get it sent back. Gun went back and was tricked out and returned to me within a week(which is still a few weeks ahead of quoted build time), cant beat that customer svc. I ran out to the range this morning to try some test loads, ended up buying some Montana Gold 124 JHPs for the new gun. I've been loading coated lead all year and figured I'd give these a try. Since I spent so much on a gun I should probably feed it some good ammo. Seems like 3.9gr of TG under the 124 at 1.095" is gonna be the load. It fed fine, and chrono'd at 129.5pf. I'll load a bunch up and put it through its paces next week and then at the Kentucky Handgun Champ match in mid Oct.

    Sweaty Hands

    in Handgun Techniques

    Posted

    I found pro-grip (and another similar brand I can't think of off hand) to be like using case lube while reloading. I got along fine before I ever tried it, but now that I've tried it I would much prefer to use it than not. One thing for sure is that if you're going to use it in a match definitely practice and dryfire with it as well. Cause it does create and artificially dry situation while gripping the gun or mags

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    shooterDrew's progress journal

    in Range Diary

    Posted

    Local match near Indy today. Overall I'm not unhappy w/ my performance, that's not to say there weren't a LOT areas needing improvement.

    First I'll pick out a couple things I think I did fairly well:

    I was satisfied with my stage plans and tempo. I tried to keep it fairly simple and just focus on a straight forward plan of attack. I did not get too tricky, and despite keeping everything fairly easy I felt my stage times were decent. My overall match time was within 1 second of a solid M class limited shooter, and our hits were almost exactly the same. This was only a problem for me because he was shooting major and since I'm in production, I was not! That leads me to one of my areas needing improvement..

    Improvement needed: Accuracy! Speed shoots!

    Ugggh. While I felt I was moving, shooting, and reloading at a decent pace, my accuracy on target was lacking. My shots werent terribly inaccurate (I only had one mike and it was on a speed shoot stage), but I was settling for a lot more Cs than I should. I will blame some of this on the NS plastered on everything! haha. While this makes things difficult, its great practice for majors where the shots tend to be a lot harder than some club level matches. Next, speed shoots. If I was able to keep up with an M level shooter overall on stage navigation, then I was barely able to keep up with a low B class shooter on the two speed shoots. The classifier smoked me, not the other way around. Disaster Factor 13-01. I managed to finish with 31 of the 60 pts in 6.85 with a mike. For this classifier it starts facing up range and you turn and shoot either the upper 3 targets or the lower 3 targets, do a reload and then engage the other 3. My first two shots were low and right deltas, followed by A/C A/A I think. Reload wasn't great but wasn't terrible and then my shots to the top (NS obscured targets) were terrible. Not sure if any of them were As, and on my first target I had one in the C and the other was never found.... Next speed shoot was a similar set up but with steel on either side, and after the draw shots were free style, then reload and move forward about 5 yards and shoot the remaining targets SHO. I plunked a NS on the 2nd target. Thankfully I called the terrible shot and made it up without much delay, saving myself from a mike on that stage as well.

    Skills to focus on: Stand and shoot type stages. Continue working on cleaning up my sight pictures at speed, as well as SHO and WHO shooting.

    My hits for the match were 95-A 1-B 43-C 4-D 1-M 1-NS ------- way too many Cs. I was able to get someone to video this match for me, it really is a much more valuable perspective for critiques than the POV.. but there is some to be learned from the POV as well, at least by me since I was the one shooting. I can see a few spots were my movement felt fluid but I really think I could have been moving quicker or a little faster between arrays.

    3rd pers:

    POV:

    load for 135gr moly coated lead rn bullets 9mm

    in 9mm/38 Caliber

    Posted

    I've shot a lot of titegroup under 135gr bayous recently. I'm not sure why that's not ideal for competition, I've had good experience. My load is 3.5gr TG loaded at 1.135-1.140" with either S&B or federal primers. It gives me between 132-137pf. A little smoke but seems to be accurate enough (no testing from a rest) and recoil is mild.

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    Thoughts on DA/SA and Sa only

    in CZ

    Posted · Edited by shooterDrew

    I'm fairly new to CZs as well... Does your shadow have the short reset trigger or a pre-b disconnector? The shadows I've got (ones got CZ custom short reset and once had a pre-b disconnector installed) have VERY little single action take up. I have not handled a shadow with similar trigger to mine with the SAO trigger installed. If it's got the same take up and trigger stroke as mine in SA.... Holy crap that would be a solid gun. Regarding shooting sports it will all depend what division you're looking to shoot. Will have to stay da/sa for USPSA production or IDPA. For USPSA limited you can do whatever you want to it. There will be a lot you need to figure out about your sporting use for the gun before you can know exactly what you want to do with it.... One thing I do know is there is a lot that can be done to make the CZ trigger fantastic.

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    Anyone make adj rear sight for an SP01?

    in CZ

    Posted

    My SPO1 Shadow came with one from the CZ Custom shop.

    Which requires the slide to be machined to fit. The LPA sight sold by CGW (and likely others too) slides right in.

    I don't think the HAJO rear sight requires milling. But it's elevation adjustable only...

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    shooterDrew's progress journal

    in Range Diary

    Posted

    Had a short-ish live fire practice session today. Took a couple hundred rounds out with the intention of getting some practice with my #1 enemy.... WHO. I snagged a 12" steel plate from the steel challenge equipment at the range and went back to about 21-22 yards (not that specific distance for any reason, just happened to be where I set the steel and how far back I was able to shoot). This was a little bit of a confidence builder. I did 6 or 8 WHO bill drills at this distance. Obviously looking for all hits on the steel and no worrying about anything else. I dropped a few shots. Happily only 1 or two on the runs where I did have a mike, and I did have several clean runs. These were NOT blisteringly fast, nor did I want them to be. In fact I was more hoping for all clean runs even if it took me a day or two to complete. Unfortunately that didn't happen, and I pulled a few shots off steel to the right. Most of the mikes were pretty tight misses and I could knock them out entirely if I would be a little more patient with the sight pic rather than squeezing off shots early. I think my worst runs were 4/6 hits.. and I only had a few of those. Most WHO runs took me between 8-10s. I also used this opportunity to shoot a little SHO as well as freestyle. I was able to get 6 of 6 hits just under 5 seconds without feeling very rushed while freestyle, however, I was not able to consistently get this done several times in a row. I found myself accepting a less than acceptable sight picture a few times and this caused a mike. This was almost exactly what I noticed during the last match and my misses on steel. Its not that the shots were overly difficult, I just caught myself starting to press the trigger before I had the sight pic I wanted, and rather than slow up and get it, I just go ahead w/ the shot and it ends up a mike.

    I also ran through a short 2 position stage a few times. This was a little work on position entry and exit. Started off with a close target (3-5 yards) and then a longer target (10-12yrds), two on each then move laterally to the left about 10-15 feet and engage the steel plate from before as well as a short paper target (3yards). I ended shooting both positions near then far and probably cheated myself a little by not moving and going straight to the steel-which was the harder shot. I opted to go for the close target first, which I was able to get away a lot more because it was so close. Next time I do something similar I'll probably force myself to go for the harder shot right after I get into the position, thats got to be a little more demanding of me, and therefor better use of practice time.

    For now I'm going to keep working on the DA trigger of the new gun. I've got a club match coming up this weekend and not sure if I'll get back out to live fire before then. I will work on some WHO dry fire as well. For now the focus will be less on the speed, and more on just getting lots of reps pressing the trigger while not disturbing the sights.

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