38superman

When I started my IPSC career 18 months ago, my motivation was just to have a little fun. However, once I got into it, my competitive nature soon began to take over. I became dissatisfied with always finishing in the middle of the pack. I started investing in better equipment, and working at improving my technique. It is my ambition to some day win a major match and claim a championship. That may be unrealistic as I was already a senior when I started. There is a limit to how long you can compete against kids half your age. I have yet to place higher than 27th in a major match, but my skills still continue to improve. In other words, I can still cling to hope that my day will come. Yet I wonder if I will be able to stay motivated once my shooting skills peak and begin to decline. I see a lot of casual shooters that will never be competitive for one reason or another, but they continue to come out to the range. Will the pure joy of the sport be enough to keep you going when your competitive edge fades away? Tls

This year, Fla Open Alabama State (Limited) Area 6 USPSA Nationals Georgia State Mississippi Classic I wanted to make as many matches as possible because I was in the point series. Signed up for Indiana State and Tennessee State but had to withdraw. That pesky job of mine kept getting in my way. Tls

Bruce, Starline is a quality product. Many of the guys I shoot with consider it to be the best there is. Don't get me wrong, WW is a good product and I have used it for years. However, when I tried Starline it shrank my groups by about 25% in my 40 cal limited gun. BTW, I have about 200 rounds of once fired 10mm WW brass. Make offer Tls

Favorite Brass? Starline. I have documented that using Starline brass improves the accuracy of my loads. The conventional wisdom would be to use it in competition and load the cheaper stuff for practice. However, I do it the other way around. Most major matches are "lost brass". Starline is great, but new brass is about $100/1000 (.10 cents ea). I can't quite bring myself to leave the Starline on the ground. I use it to practice and load develop so I can pick it up and reuse it. I use WW for matches which I can get from a local range for about .02 cents each. It's used brass but I clean it up and inspect it. I only need to fire it once and then I can walk away from it. Tls

Duane, I load the Montana Gold 200 gr fp to 1.210" OAL. I can't give you load data on VV310 because I don't use it. However, 7.1 grains of VV340 with this bullet gives great accuracy in both my 45's. It chronos at around 865 fps which translates to about 173 power factor. Tls

Cuz, I bought the gun from Speed Shooters Intl at the vendor tent during 2004 Nationals. It is the "California Legal" model. My mags are STI tubes with Dawson +1 basepads. FYI, Mark Agerholm from the Infinity shooting team happened to be present during the purchase. He invited me to walk down to one of the near by ranges and try out my new gun. Mark provided the ammo, and we both knocked down dozens of plates with the the greatest of ease. He then picked up a fired 40 cal casing, walked down range and placed the piece of empty brass on a post. He said "This gun is insanely accurate, ...watch this". At a range I would estimate at about 20 yards, ( I could barely see the casing) Mark took aim and blasted the casing with a single shot. I would not have believed it had I not seen it with my own eyes. I hope you enjoy your new pistol as much as I have mine. It is my most prized possesion. Tls

David, Just to add my voice to the chorus, Dawson, Bedell, Brazos and others all make fine guns. However, I really love my SVI Infinity and I would not trade it for any gun you could name. It is exceptionally accurate, runs flawlessly and has absolutely the best trigger I ever felt. Furthermore, at $2200 it was a little less expensive that some of the others I considered. Before you pony up that kind of money, consider all your options. Tls P.S. Speed Shooters International (speedshooter.com) normally stocks several configurations. No waiting.

Just because a load barely makes major PF doesn't mean it cant be too hot in terms of pressure. I never like fast powder / heavy bullet combinations. It is asking for trouble. I would recommend going to a slower powder with a heavy bullet in the 45 ACP. I like vv340 or AA No5 but if you don't want to go that slow try vv320. If you insist on using 310 try a different primer such as Winchester Large Pistol or CCI 300. Back off your load a bit and work back up to 4.3 gr. If the different primers flatten, you may be treading on thin ice with pressure. Are you tampering with the flash holes on the brass? Remember, there are dozens of factors that can affect pressure. Temperature. Chamber tolerance Lot to lot variations in primers Manufacturing tolerances in bullets and brass. The list goes on and on. Err on the side of caution. Tls

I find this very interesting because it is almost the same load I shoot in my SVI, except I shoot a heavier bullet and longer oal. It is a load suggested to me by Mark Agerholm from the Infinity shooting team. 200 gr Montana Gold at 1.175" oal. 5.4 gr. Viht 340 WSP primer Winchester or Starline Brass This load is very accurate, burns clean and (by my CED chrono) runs at about 860 fps for a 172 power factor. I try to hold my pf to at least 170 to account for variance in temps, different chronographs, etc. This same load chronographed at 875 last year at the Fla Open and came up at 826.5 at Nationals. That is a swing from 175 pf down to 165.3 pf. Allow yourself a litte margin for error or you will run into trouble sooner or later. K'm Plaa Tls

I recently bought a speed holster (in LH) for my P14 from Chris Patty at CPWSA.com I am not sure about the manufacturer because it was not marked on the packaging. The only marking on the holster is a logo I did not recognize. However, it appears to be the same holster sold by Shooters Connection labeled "SpeedSec". The make and model I bought was designed specifically for the Para and seems to work well. During my first practice session with the new holster, I ran about 200 rounds doing bill drills. My times for first shot from a holstered position seemed to improve with the new rig. Now that I am getting comfortable with it, I would recommend it highly. Tls

If your main concern is moving up in classification, the best way to do that is work on your fundamentals and eliminate penalties. Magazine capacity is not a factor in most classifier stages. However, overall scores on major matches do count as classifers. In a match anything can happen. I'm a firm believer that even 1 or 2 extra rounds can and will make a difference. For example: While shooting a long field course in lim10, I failed to notice a mag falling off my belt. I went to make my last reload and my belt was empty. I grabbed a spare mag from my hip pocket, but it was only a 7 round mag leaving me two rounds short of finishing the stage. I have had stages where I took extra shots at swingers or steel and ran the gun dry at the end with one popper still standing. This happened because I didn't remember to use my "Barney" bullet and began the stage with 19 rounds instead of 19+1. If every round didn't count, the open crowd would be shooting 40's instead of loading 38 supers to the extreme so they can stuff the big sticks with a few extra rounds. When it comes to mag capacity, size does matter. Tls

As I stated when I started this thread, I have never complained about a stage design until I encountered one that forced me into a very unhappy choice. 1. Allow yourself to be forced into an extremely awkward off balance position and risk falling down with a hot weapon. or 2. Shoot the target weak hand even though this was not part of the stage description or intent, and change hands (twice) with a hot gun while on the move. I don't think its unreasonable to expect the following: Stage designers should recognize that there are two groups of shooters based on strong hand/weak hand. Its a fact of life. Almost any target will favor one group or the other...no problem. However, all targets should be reasonably accessable to all shooters without anyone having to shoot backward and aim with a mirror. TLS

I have noticed a trend lately that is a bit disturbing to me and I think it bears some discussion. IPSC shooters are divided into two groups. Not by rule but by nature. You are either left or right handed. In the course of shooting around barricades and other obstacles, some stages will favor one group and disadvantage the other. As a left handed shooter, I see no reason to complain about this. Sometimes it works against me but sometimes it works in my favor. However, it does disturb me that in some of the stages I have encountered lately, the bias was so exteme that it was next to impossible to shoot at certain targets with the stong hand. One stage at nationals was particularly bad because the fault line coming off the barricade was at a very shallow angle forcing a leftie to reach way out and around to engage the target. I made an off the cuff remark to the RO that about the only way I could shoot that target was to ricochet a round off the wall. His reply was "tough sh*#. Theres nothing in the rule book about being left handed". When shooting the stage I did manage to hit the target but almost fell in the process. The time I lost trying to recover my balance cost me. My feeling is that if a stage is designed with a bias this exteme it becomes a safety issue. There are some very general statements in the rule book that might apply to this but they are not specific enough to address this particular issue. TLS