Fishbreath

Thanks for writing this so I didn't have to. For the revolver case specifically, it's not merely that the hardware is uneven, it's also that the handicap varies substantially based on stage design. For instance, if the locap plan involves a reload in a step or two, I'll be slower with a wheelgun. If it involves six or eight feet of movement, it might be almost even. If it's a longer movement, the semiauto pulls ahead again, because it's easier to seat a magazine at a run than it is to land a moon clip in the cylinder. I think there's a plausible argument for '8maj 10min locap semiauto irons' as a division, but I wouldn't want to dive into that until Production/L10 changes settle down. If L10 turns into the awesome bonkers 10-round frame mounted optic division everyone secretly wants, and Production goes to 15, then opening up Single Stack to anything, with the 8 major/10 minor stipulation, makes sense to me. I don't shoot it, though, so I defer to the Single Stack die-hards.

Same for DAA holster blocks, too, for what it's worth.

I put all of mine under the left flap of my vest, opposite the holster—easier for me to sweep the garment out of the way going back and out than it is going in and back.

150gr, 3.25gr N320, 1.135" is my .38 Short Colt load, which isn't terribly helpful, but might get you on the right track as the base of a loading ladder.

Classifiers are only B flagged when entered for the first time—if you shoot a 54% C classifier, then later reach B, the 54% stands. You'll never have a classifier get B flagged after the fact. When the 38 drops off, the F flag will move to your 57.

There's a tiny bit of takeup in all three of my guns before the DA hook on the trigger picks up the hammer dog, but you may be able to smooth out the rest of the pull by working on parts of the mainspring strut. Try a bit of oil on the round tip of the strut. If that helps, a tiny dab of Flitz and a thousand or so dry fire pulls will make it more permanent. If not, try generous oil on the interface between the strut and the strut seat. If that helps, smoothing and polishing the strut at that point will help. To reduce the cylinder latch click, you can smooth and slightly round the underside of the arrowhead-shaped nose of the trigger plunger (the part that moves back and forth around the trigger pin, under spring tension from the pawl plunger spring) if you have a lot of room to spare in cylinder latch timing (i.e., if it's not hitting the cylinder right next to the previous notch). I don't bother, though—even shooting DA groups, I don't notice it. Numrich sells new trigger plungers, so it's not the end of the world if you go too far. There's a section on fitting them in my video. All that said, my 6-round gun is a little less smooth than my 8-round guns, and I haven't figured out exactly why yet.

The lightest one in the Wolff kit is a 9lb, IIRC, and those have always been a little iffy for me. (I'd love to get one working 100%, though.) One in eight light strikes is probably a bit too much for this trick, but if you're closer to 1:100, you can use an M5 washer on the hammer strut between the spring and the spring seat to add a bit of preload, and thus a bit more ignition energy out of a given spring.

How light on the mainspring? Wolff 10lb is as light as I've reliably gone on any of my GP100s. (Or, measured just under the hammer step, a hammer fall of about 1.75lb-2lb on GP100-size guns, depending on where in the tolerance band the spring is.) If you haven't yet, get a pack of shims (I like Lance Shively's, at TriggerShims.com, because they have a bit more outside diameter and therefore more anti-tilt properties) and shim until the hammer fall weight goes up, but no further. I turn in the noses of my hammers a bit, filing a 10-20° angle in, so that the hammer falls further without any possibility of interference. Not sure if that's a cargo cult modification or a functional one, however. Bowen makes an extended pin for both GP100 bushing styles. I don't know if it made a very big difference for me, though. I've had some luck with a reduced-power firing pin return spring in my guns, but I'm pretty sure the spring is different between the old and new bushings. If you do go the extended route, I'm pretty sure tip shape makes a significant difference, and some fitting is necessary. Note that a reduced hammer step appears to lead to faster firing pin spring wear, in my experience. The firing pin will extend a little beyond its rest position with the trigger pulled. if you take the trigger assembly out of the gun and push the firing pin in with a punch, that's the full extension. (At least with the new-style guns, and Iowegan's Book of Knowledge, which was written before the new bushing, says the same.) Spec for protrusion is 0.055-0.065. I think you can also angle a punch in behind the transfer bar to push the pin in without taking the gun apart. I have some anecdotal evidence that a lightened transfer bar can make a difference, too, although that's on my Super-size guns. I think there's a factory lightened option for the big guns, at least based on part numbers I've seen and what's come with my 9mm guns, but the principle may still hold for standard GP100-size transfer bars. I also put everything I think I know about GP100s into a video, which may be of use.

This is precisely my issue with them: almost all the time, they're not meaningful options. There's one best place to start, and everyone starts there. You might as well just have a start stick (or two, for lefties on side-to-side stages). My general feeling is that a fixed, neutral start position is at least as good at generating a variety of stage plans as a start-anywhere stage.

I don't hate them, but I think a thoughtfully-chosen start position is never worse and usually better than 'anywhere'.

The 510 is much bigger than the 507s—I don't think Allchin makes a mount for it, actually. It's a rifle optic, and the attachment screws are on the bottom, so it wouldn't be trivial to screw to a top strap, either. You need access to the bottom of the mount to attach the sight to the top of it, and to the top of the mount to attach the mount to the gun.

124gr with AA #7 at reasonable lengths calculates as major at around +P levels in Gordon's Reloading Tool, for what it's worth.

I got some numbers as I was wrapping up dry fire earlier tonight, starting with the finger resting on the trigger but no staging. (And with the Ruger, I have a long way to go.) 10y USPSA A-zone 0.19 0.21 0.22 0.20 0.22 25y IPSC A-zone 0.26 0.25 0.27 0.26 0.24 Staged trigger on the 10y A was 0.15-0.18, SA trigger was 0.12. One of the more interesting things that happened to me as I developed my speed of sight in 2020-2021 was that I started noticing I would react to an auditory stimulus before I perceived the associated visual stimulus—say, if I knocked a spoon onto the floor, I would jump, and then at a very small delay, I would see it hit. I'm not sure the time matters, but I do the drill a lot for grip and trigger mechanics.

There should have been something far more substantial. "There has got to be" is, at this point, a pretty generous reading even to me, and I have been pretty generous in interpreting the board's motives in the past.

I guess I'll have to be on my best behavior at Nationals. Maybe I'll only speak in range commands. "How's it going so far?" *friendly nod* "Stand by."

I think the material matters at least as much as the shape. I have a bunch of stainless TK moons, which have a round hole in the middle and stick to my magnets pretty well, and a bunch of plated steel Revolver Supply moons, which have the octagon but stick even better.

Holsters probably not, given: Practiscore says 210 rounds minimum.

I did a little bit of analysis on this on Instagram. Here's the raw data. Short version is that it does look like a substantially worse problem in 2022 than it was in 2021. I'll be curious if my match fills up this year. If it starts to, I'd take that as solid evidence that we're getting more crowded again. (Some fellow Western Pennsylvanians who have been around longer tell me that pre-COVID it was pretty common for matches to fill up here.)

Membership dues, Nationals entry fees, and activity fees total $2,444,000 or so; $57,000 of bank fees is 2.3% of that.

TK Custom made one called the Moon Clip Saver, although they don't seem to have it in stock right now. It works very well for my TK .025 .357 moon clips, relatively well for my Revolver Supply .035 9mm moon clips, and not very well at all on my TK .035 9mm moon clips or 0.050 .40 S&W moon clips (but the latter two also don't bend very easily).

I agree. There's nothing wrong with that. A lot of the conversation around locap divisions seems to be how to convince people who mostly shoot hicap to occasionally shoot locap. Will rules changes really bring them into locap divisions permanently, or even make their locap participation more frequent? Probably not. I tell everyone who shows the slightest interest in revolver that I'll spot them a belt, a gun, and ammo if they want to try it out for a match. I might get my first bite on that offer this year, four years into shooting the division. There are ideas that make sense to me, like Production 15 or Locap 8maj/10min (not for participation reasons, just because they're tidy from a rules standpoint), but since I don't shoot Production/L10/SS regularly, and probably wouldn't even if they made those changes, I won't presume to tell people who still stick with those divisions what, if anything, ought to be done with them.

We set up Thursday night for a Saturday match. I go straight from work, which is close to the range, and a lot of the other volunteers live nearby. A fair number of them help because the pistol guys at the club go out to dinner on Thursday nights. On match weeks, we bump dinner back two hours or so for setup.

My newer 9mm Super GP is, so far, resistant to ultralight springs, but I did find one that will reset my .357" 100% of the time, rather than 99.9%. I think the new 9mm gun needs a bit more trigger plunger work, and might also need a bit of pawl fitting to advance cylinder timing a bit, so I can run a shorter trigger plunger. My 10mm Match Champion, so far the only 6rd Ruger I own, has a bit of staging to it in double action. A few chambers seem worse than others, which points to pawl/ratchet fit, but I don't have a good sense for that interaction yet, and don't want to mess with it until I'm done with the IDPA match this weekend.

It's kind of like PCC—classification is tied up heavily in gun manipulations unique to the division.

I'm asking about trends in 2021 and 2022—I think most places were fairly uncrowded in 2020 and 2021. I may follow up with another survey at the end of 2023, since signs point to more attendance.