alexmg

Thank you @racerba for a reply, very good advises, #4 is awesome, while naturally understand that obstacles block sound did not even think about such practical application of that knowledge

I have a question to those who have experience of running matches with shot timers, how do you universalize, so to speak, sensitivity setting on a shot timer, so you don't have to tweak it between every shooter? What are the traps for young ROs when it gets to shot timer's sensitivity? I understand that different shot timers require different approaches so this question is a bit abstract, but please maybe share what you can from your experience? My concern is that if you set sensitivity too much, it may pick up slide release sound or shooters from adjacent bay or stage, or shotgun cycling sound, or any other loud sound that is not a gunshot. But if you set sensitivity too low, you may not pick up shots if you too far, for example if its a USPSA or other match where shooter is on the move and RO did not catch up yet to shooter he may be too far and sensitivity of the timer may ignore the shot? I have seen at couple steel challenge matches when if RO set timer too sensitive to pick up some of those .22 rifles it was picking other shooters from adjacent bay so sensitivity had to be set higher than usual but not all the way and RO got timer very very close to the gun, like literally 10" close. ThenI have seen a YouTube video where someone claims that he was timed wrong because at the end of the stage he unloaded a shotgun and sound of unlocking triggered timer. What is the best way to manage shot sensitivity to get the best out of it with least adjustments? How cautious you need to be about proper sensitivity setting? What are the things to be on a lookout so you don't run a stage just to find out that you picking up shots from adjacent bay or not picking up shots at all, do you have two timers, one for loud guns and one for quiet guns or you manually juggling between two sets of settings? Do you rather try to have higher sensitivity and stay further back from the shooter or actually have lower sensitivity and stay closer to shooter. Any info regarding this matter is very welcome and appreciated. Thanks in advance.

With my current sight adjustment patterns are: 1. All 124 or 147grain subsonics go dead center 2. One particular brand of ultrasonic 115grain goes dead center too 3. Anything else that feel hotter and kicks more goes left, not low/left, but just left. So my scientific conclusion is that either I know it and gripping gun tighter or slapping trigger etc..... or indeed there is an an earlier unlocking (or other phenomenon, which as stated above has been observed by others) with hotter bullet causing barrel to constantly point a bit to the left. I can be wrong, but that is what I believe in and my gun feels my believes.

I ended up using dremel to cut it out, scratched slide a little bit so be careful if you do not want to scratch the slide. I think it is also glued because once removed there was a definitive outline of the sight that I had to remove with alcohol. I think the only realistic method to remove it without cutting is to use pneumatic hammer. PS: r u getting .100 blade? good choice

Not sure for how long you have been shooting or basically how embedded into your brain is this particular muscle memory. But I'd say, if you commit to 5 - 10 minutes of daily (every day, no exceptions, weekens and holidays) exercise of drawing pistol, acquiring sight picture before breaking dry shot, does not matter how fast, just do it right. In about 2 - 2.5 half month you will embed new technique into your brain and will be good to go just periodically practice that. Do not force it if you feel like you ready to speed it beyond your comfort, you will see at first there will be no visual improvement, then you will be observing little improvement every day-ish, but very little, keep doing that, and then in about 2 - 2.5 half month it should happen out of nowhere without warning, you will pick up a pistol and it will become a second nature, you will be surprised. But you need to do it every day to properly rewire your brain, e.i. do destroy old neuro-chain and build a new one. ps: Additionally when you go to sleep, just for 1 visualize pulling pictol out of the holster, raising it up, seeing that sight before breaking the shot, 1 minute is enough. pps: if you catch yourself rushing too much and breaking the shot without seeing that sight, stop, step it down a notch and repeat at slower speed but do not let you do that mistake again.

Thanks everyone for suggestions and info, I did little scavenging over internet to see if there are other people with similar questions and just like you saying above it is a known phenomenon. I am having hard time understanding how that is possible for bullet to deviate left and right, assuming barrel crown is not damaged, but perhaps maybe different velocities can cause different unlock time, thus causing shots to drift left, etc. Anyways I was happy to find out that this is possible because, frankly, it was driving me nuts, I sighted pistol, made some super nice groups, then loaded different brand ammo and shots low-ish left-ish, hard to diagnose because it is a classic trigger jerking/fingers tightening symptom. Well, with above being said, thanks everyone for input, I will all try to mix different brands of ammo together in one mag and see is that will cause group to be split into two sub-groups.

I went to range today to sight in new adjustable sights and came across weird issue. I can't quite understand if this is me doing my part wrong or indeed some brands of ammo can shoot slightly to the side when other brands straight. I had 4 brands of 9mm ammo on me, 1 box each: two boxes shoot very straight, pretty much dead center at 5, 7, 10, and 15 yd (those are may comfortable -ish distances, anything after that I would not trust my groupings) well, of-course at 15ys shots are slightly above center, but horizontally they still centered. Two other brands hit target about one inch lower left at 5 and 7 yd and so on at further distances, this ammo is also hotter than first two brands. I know depending on ammo, its velocity etc... shots can hit target at different heights, for example if one brand of ammo hit target dead center at 15yd, other brand can hit it 1" above etc... But not sure that it can drift left or right unless I jerk the trigger or do other trigger error on my side. Is it ammo or is it 100% me?

What is the best way to clean the grit? Mine accumulated some light dirt, what is the most effective cleaner/technique that won't wear off grit?

Those are magnificent!

Yepp, he is right, now I have to retrain my draw for the next match.

I've shot about 1000 rounds since application of grit and so far I love it. Yesterday was at local steel match and it is still super hot in Tampa so my hands were absolutely sweaty and I can tell you that when I grip the gun I can still feel how abrasive grit just grabs against skin even being a bit wet. Very happy with what I did to the pistol. I also like the choice of the size of abrasive as I know if I had chosen coarser abrasive it will be too aggressive. I am yet to make final conclusion about durability and life expectancy of this application because I have not even washed it yet but so far so good. if you opt to do same thing on top of all advises you get here I would also recommend to be careful with selecting area of application, make sure that when in use - it will not run against inner surface of holster and perhaps do not apply it on the very bottom of the handle if you plan to install magwell, or make sure that grit application won't block magwell installation. I will post more pictures few thousands rounds later.

I was shooting local steel challenge match yesterday. I have regular Blade Tech drop offset holster and RO mentioned to me that normally that would qualify my to division other than Production because my holster is placed on the belt too much forward toward the belly so to speak. And he said that the requirement for Production is that it places behind the hip bone. I tried to look it up in official rules of steel challenge and all it said "no race holsters". Can someone please tell me if this is true or not true? Thanks.

Mine was zeroed from the factory and even after I dropped it twice on tile floor ( once it landed directly on rear sight so much it dented it, and second time sideways so it scratched it a bit) but still held dead zero, no adjustment needed. I only adjusted it once recently after installing .100 front sight and took me only 1 click to get it back.

Just a small update as I put it together, so far looks and feels good, ready to shoot, will take it shooting next week.

I just wanted to say Thank You to "Ultimo-Hombre" for providing informational support as I was texturing my XDM's grip with Silica Carbide grit, it is a bit premature to conclude full success as I still yet to put pistol together, but so far results look very pomising. I played with two different sizes of the grit, coarse and medium, you can see in one of the images below it applied to two backstraps and one on left has smaller grit size. I chose smaller grit size and this is the handle after grit application. Today I will have to clean all loose grit and see how it assembles together. Then will give it a field test to see about durability and longevity of application. If it can hold 30k shots I will be happy.

I'm just curious if you heard back from them yet?

Oups, yes, I mean threat, sorry, still learning English .

That's what I thought too, then I believe some people doing it wrong, and drill need to be modified, because let's say if someone developed procedural memory to shoot thread immediately after they get the gun out, they do not even give a threat a chance to surrender or basically stop being a threat without being shot, so why even bother yelling "stop". I think drill to "draw and shoot to terminate threat" need to be a drill to draw->shoot->terminate, and drill to "warn and shoot if threat still remain a threat" should be a drill to develop ability to make split second decision whether to shoot or no. Just saying.....

While browsing youtube I came across some people doing this drill which kind of looks weird to me, I have a question: In this drill person will yell "Stop!" while drawing gun from the holster and then will immediately engage the target in front. What is this drill suppose to teach?

No, I only train with timer at home when drawing from holster, this I am talking about target-shooting at the in door range.

I am still learning but, for what I am practicing right now I've progressed well per my self-set standards, I can maintain sub-1" grops at 5 and 7yds, and consistent 1,5 - 2" groups at 10 yards. By consistent I mean 90% of all strings end up as a good group withing above mentioned numbers. However, I went shooting today and started at 7yd and it was a total mess, right from the beginning I shot fuzzy group top/right off center, which is weird, I even thought my sights were broken or something, then shot again, now low/left, shot another group, kinds centered, another group, low left. And so on an on and on for 200 rounds. Basically I totally blew it, well, I know that 99.9% the pistol is okay and shot as accurate as always so it was me that was shooting allover the place, I do however that my gripping technique was the same, my sight picture was the same, it's just somehow did not work today. So I am just curious, is it possible to just have a bad day when stars are not aligned or something? Does this happen to pro shooters when on one day, when nothing indicate metal or physical fatigue, you go shooting and it just does not work?

Not sure if this helps, but I had similar FTRTB problem with one of my factory pistols (non s&w), round just would get stuck on way in approximately 90% into chamber... This would only start happening after shooting approx 30 - 40 rounds when chamber starts getting dirty with carbon deposits. I tried 3 - 4 different ammo brands, same thing. Sent back to factory, received back with letter that said "re-throated barrel" Then I ran 150 rounds - no problem.

To MilkMyDuds: are you going to send it to m&p for diagnostics? If yes, can you please tell us what they ended up doing to the pistol to fix this?

I have similar situation, except my pistol is 100% stock, have not even fired a single shot through it, was going to shoot it for the first time tomorrow, just out of curiosity I pushed striker forward and it moves freely, I can even see firing pin sticking out of breach face when I do that, however if I lightly press striker back, I can hear audible click, striker block pops up a bit and now everything blocked properly. More so, I just took the pistol out of the box, and without disassembling I just locked slide back and I can press striker forward and firing pin sticking out of the hole, pull back a little, click and everything back in place. Unbelievable, brand new pistol and two problems out of the box already, have not fired a single shot yet and more likely on Monday s&w will want me to send it back to them under warranty. Somehow all 4 of my US manufactured pistols had(have) problems right out of the box, when both of my European pistols had zero problems.

The picture had a medium obe, small one has the same situation the large one is okay because it is quite chunky and have that tail at the top that provide extra tightness. The takedown seems pretty tight, no play, insertted all way in. I sent this to Smith, i hope they going to suggest something maybe it is just a bad batch of backstraps and the polymer base is out of specs.