Sdlrodeo

Mom currently using WiFi on an airplane and cannot look up the rules due to connectivity speeds. I don’t know what exact rule it would go under. But it was an AD. I know that walls are shot often. Especially on the edges when in front of a target. Say a wall is 5’ in front of a shooter partially covering a target and the shooter hits the wall on the EDGE while transitioning (swinging thru) from another target. I don’t think anyone would DQ. A hard cover mike yeah if he didn’t make it up. But What if he hits the wall 3” from the edge? 12”? 2 feet? still waiting for the rules to load.

Basically I swung my gun from a target on the right to a target on the left. There was a wall in between. I believe I brought the gun back in towards me just slightly (to avoid hitting the wall) and when I did I squeezed off a round. Happened to be almost dead center of the wall. I may have moved one foot a bit. But I did not hange shooting positions.

Ok, here goes... It happened to me. I’m trying to learn from it. Snarkyness neither intended nor invited. Scenario: SC State this past weekend. Stage 5. Start with toes touching fault line (in or out) draw to an Open target to the right of a 4’ wall about 1.5’ in front of the shooter. Transition to a port to the left of the shooting position. Beep. Bang bang (bang wall) bang bang through port. Stop. I gave a very brief, unenthusiastic, almost tongue in cheek statement that I was aiming at a target. I did not really argue as I would have DQ’d me if I were the RO. There was a nice bullet hole right thru the landscape cloth. However on on the long ride home I gave it Some thought. While my particular incident was obvious, Walls DO get shot a lot in USPSA and do not usually end up in a DQ. A mike maybe due to a hit on hard cover maybe, but not usually a DQ. here are my questions: 1. when is it ok/not ok to shoot a wall? 2. How far does the wall need to be from the shooter? 3. how close to the wall do the targets need to be in order to be “aimed at”? 4. How far ‘into’ the wall (from the edge of he wall) is acceptable to hit without a DQ? note: I’m currently looking in the rule book. go...

I’m running an 8.5 hammer spring. I get a few light strikes out of 1000 WSPs but it always goes bang with Federal. If I run out of them I may have to step up to an 11. Why doesn’t someone make a 10? Seems like that’d be a happy medium.

I may be a tad in the minority here but I run an 11 lb recoil and 8.5 hammer spring with extended firing pin. All CGW parts. I shoot WSPs for practice ( I probably have about 2/1000 that I have to pull the trigger again) and Federal primers at matches. My reloaded 147s make about 128-131PF. I’ve tried quite a few different grips but I’ve settled on the Scales 2.0 from SSI as they most closely resemble a PT Evo grip shape. Definitely personal preference. I have two Shadow Targets so sights and trigger work were already done. Both are set up the same way though. For Factory Ammo, I liked Atlanta Arms 147 select.

I shoot strictly 147s out of my SP-01 Shadows both in CO and Production. When I had an S2 It seemed to like the 124s a little better. With more weight, the snappier 124s didn’t seem to effect it much and the gun seemed to run a tad faster. Of course recoil spring tuning is necessary for all of the above.

I know that I’d have never bothered with buying a used STI if I’d have known how an Atlas shot. So I’m curious as to Why don’t you just bite the bullet once and get another Atlas SS? You know they make a good gun and have great customer service. Yeah, it might cost you a little more now. But man, I know it would be totally worth it. That’s my opinion anyway.

As Tomjerry1 said, it helps with getting the same grip. I shot my STI which was drilled and tapped for a *thumb rest [generic]* and has a slide racker. I liked the thumbrest that the *thumb rest [generic]* provided. Then my life changed. I got my Atlas Titan with a nitrofin. Holy Shamoly! It just feels soooo much more natural. The placement is perfect for my hand size. I’m debating on wether or not I’ll keep my STI, but if I decide to keep it, its getting a nitrofin. That gun just naturally points so perfectly for me it’s crazy.

I clarified my post to indicate that I was doing the drill shooting CO. I should note my classifiers are in the 60% range for CO. I’m high A in PROD. Therefore I would think that I could do it faster with a dot! But the clock don’t lie.

Sir, thank you for all of your very informative posts! I’m glad you wrote a book! It seems that sharing your experience comes quite naturally. I for one am thankful for the time you put in.

First training scenario: shuffle step drill. Shooting CO I made a ‘wall’ three metric targets wide about 15 yds away from two metric targets about 5yds apart. Drill: start standing with hands on center wall target. On signal draw and fire two on right target from right of wall then move to left of wall and fire two on left target. My average for all As is about 3.4sec. That’s 4 shots at 15 yds with two movements. No matter what I did I couldn’t get faster with all As. If I dropped a C I could do it in about 3.2. How is does that seem?

Or should I say “slog up the ever steepening ladder of doom, despair, and distraction?!?!” I’m actually fairly positive minded really, i just let life get in the way now and then. I’ve been at this game for a while now. Started in IDPA around 2002. Dabbled in USPsA around 2009 amongst other hobbies. Started getting back into USPSA around 2013(?) and really started making a go at it in the last year and a half or so. Mix in Marriage, two kids and two cross country moves and here I am 83.9% in Production and just “auto” classified as B in LTD (74.3%), PCC (65.1%), and CO (60.3%). My my goal is to win my class advancement, or at least win my class and division at a major, before moving up. I’m planning on shooting all 9 days of Nationals as long as I can get slots. So we’ll see how it goes June 1st.

Agree with what PAULIE says. Full disclosure, I’m not very experienced with Limited guns. I own a used STI Edge HC that I bought locally. I liked the gun and ran it a bit in some local matches. Last New Year’s Eve (yes Sunday) I talked to Adam (he was at the shop) and bought an Atlas Titan. See, when I first got my STI I watched all of the videos from Atlas on YouTube. They constantly say to call them up with any questions. I was having an issue with my STI (a gun that never crossed their bench) so I called Adam. He talked to me for 45 minutes. A month or two later I was able to hold and dryfire a Titan. Night and day from my STI. I needed to get another bit of purchasing in before the end of 2017 so I messaged Adam on 12/30. He said to call him the next day: New Years Eve. We talked for about 90 minutes and he put the order through. I was warned it would possibly be longer than the normal 2 month turnaround due to some semi custom work on the titan. Sure enough, three months to the day I received my Titan. I won’t go into detail here, but believe me, it was better than I expected. Adam and the crew went way above and way beyond my expectations. I’ve played with it a bit and it runs flawlessly. I’m shooting Carry Optics this week at SC State. Then I will finally get to stretch its legs a bit since I’ll be shooting limited only to prepare for Area 8. PS, I don’t know enough about Akai or CK to say anything about them.

Fair enough. I remember reading somewhere that SIG specifically designed the carbine barrel to be less than 14.5 as it was apparently more efficient. Could it be that the 1” change with my factory carbine barrel made the difference? At some point there is a diminishing return on a longer barrel.

Definitely truth to that. I have two SP-01 Shadows that give a 1.5 PF difference with the same load. (10 round group, avg velocities).

Intense, thanks for running those chrono loads and providing that data. Interesting read. I do have to admit I have only been able to chrono my loads between my SP-01 Shadows and my MPX. I have not been able to chrono the same loads out of a blowback PCC. That being said, I had increases in PF from the pistols to the MPX. I have ‘heard’ of others who shoot the loads that make minor PF out of their pistols but do not make minor PF out of their blowback PCCs. I wonder if there is a point of diminishing returns or even an opposite affect depending on the load. I’d like to try some side-by-side-by-side testing with two PCCs (MPX/Blowback) having nearly identical barrels, and pistol with the same load.

Ok, So I have been shooting my Sig MPX kitted out for PCC. I have a ‘newer’ generation factory carbine barrel (13” +ringed birdcage). I have no problem making minor power factor with my normal 128-130PF loads for Carry Optics and Production. But, I’ve talked to some folks who are not able to use the same pistol round in their blowback AR style PCC. So, my theory is that with the blowback, enough gas pressure is lost between ignition/extraction and the bullet leaving the barrel that it is slowing down the velocity with the increased friction of the barrel. But in a gas system with a rotating/locking bolt, the timing works so that the bullet is out of the barrel before the casing is extracted due to the time it takes to rotate the bolt and extract the case. I’m sure there is some negligent bleed of gas through the gas system itself, but since that is soooo short in the MPX, I don’t even consider it. I say this because ‘normally’ most loads actually increase due to more of the powder being used in the longer barrel. In fact, in my MPX, I see a 1 or 2 point increase in PF whereas folks with blowback operated PCCs sometimes see decreases in PF. Thoughts? Steve

Nothing wrong with that. I tend to look at over all ‘value’ — to me. That doesn’t necessarily mean cost although it does come down monetary quantification of a sort. All just depends what it’s ‘worth’ to the person buying it.

Just curious about the cost of buying the used gun and having all that work done vs just buying a new (or used) one chambered in 9mm off the get go. Seems like it’d be a wash. Is it something having to do with quality or s personal preference of components? thanks

My first experience with running bullets that were “too long” was at a club match. Gun kept not going fully into battery so I would tap rack which took out the round, and it would fire a few times then not go into battery again. Second time I tried just tapping the rear of the slide thinking it was maybe a weak recoil spring. This particular time it was not a good idea as the bullet seated itself on the lands of the rifling. After some work, I got it out and inspected it. I should’ve mentioned that the COAL was right at 1.120 on those bullets, BUT it was a different profile! Turns out that particular bullet needed to be at 1.110 maybe 1.115 (I forget the brand/type but I think it was a RNFP). Yes, before you jump to conclusions, I did do the plunk test. However i did it on my other SP-01 (prod) not on my newly converted to CO SP-01. So, lesson was plunk test for EACH gun. But really, I just do my plunk test on the ‘shallower’ barrel of my CO gun. I’ve finally settled on a good practice, and a good match bullet that both work in the CO gun at 1.120, loaded to right at 129-131 PF. The quest for that balance of PF/affordability/Accuracy has been a little bit of a journey, albeit enjoyable. Next step, as evidenced by this thread, is to go with same headstamp brass. I’ll see if that’ll shrink my groups ever so slightly...

Thanks for the good info. I’ll finish up my mixed range brass and then try a batch of the same headstamp. However, i’m Actually pretty happy to hear that most folks don’t see much difference in performance when there is a +/- .003-.004 variance in coal. I had the assumption that there is going to be some variance in a machine that is built to run at speed. Glad to hear I’m not alone.

Im talking about the components in the press being made of steel (seating die and shell plate) which are much harder than the bullet components. I would think due to the differing hardnesses and using a flat seating head the COAL could not possibly be longer. (Alas sometimes it is) If anything the bullet tip would be smushed (because copper and lead are softer than steel) if there were resistance from the bottom (like hitting a shelf in the case with a long bullet?) keeping it from being seated to the set depth.

Ahh. I understand what you’re saying. I’m not home right now but I’ll definitely have to look at that. However I seem to remember a bit of slop in the shell plate with all of my cases. If there is slip, the case ‘should’ sit on the bottom ledge of the shell holder. But interesting point if it stops on top of the ledge going into the case groove.

Any more info on the Rev 2? And specifically if it fits on a DPP plate? thanks.

Ok so after a bit of sitting through the other threads it seems my coal variance is appropriate for using mixed brass. I too am happy with the accuracy I get. I’m still curious how the Max can grow with a flat seating head. At some point the steel has to hold against the softer copper/lead/brass. Ah the joys of working with metal. Fascinating really. I enjoy all the learning involved.