tacomandood

Looking for some more info on these, if anyone else has an additional opinion or review update in the last year now. Seems it would be nice to have a tiny package, adjustable volume/tone, and rechargeable battery. I currently have a Pact Club III and it's nice for its simplicity, but the tone is way too loud for use indoors and my wife is starting to hate me for dryfiring with it all the time in our ~900sqft house lol. I've also had several issues with it reading out ridiculously random numbers when reviewing my string, even after trying to adjust the sensitivity. Pair that with the issue of the "GO" button sticking all the time, and I'm just about over this thing and ready to throw it off a cliff. Accelerometer and string memory would be sweet to have since it's easy to forget my times when practicing without writing them down. The features mentioned before and pretty much everything about the Shotmaxx-2 is better, except for the tiny and minimalist display. I'm not old, though, so that's not as big of a problem for me. My main concern is that I see very few people talking about it. There are just a few videos online, most of them from Double Alpha's marketing, and I haven't seen many reviews outside of their website either. Figured I'd come here to ask what you guys think. Here are my main questions: How have they held up for you folks in the time you've had them? Would you recommend the extended warranty? Is there anything that's broken easily in the time you've had it or had to make a warranty claim? Would anyone recommend just getting the CED7000 instead? I've messed with the PocketPros at my local club and don't really like the way they function. Figure I should do more research instead of just going straight to DAA, but the portability and convenience of the Shotmaxx is what's really got me interested.

Never seen why people like those micro adjustment knobs for the powder measures. I usually don’t go between more than two charge weights since I’m loading the same round for practice and matches, but I guess it’d be nice if you’re switching bullets or powders often? Even then, I’m usually able to adjust my powder drop with just a few small adjustments with the 1” bench wrench and it’s not much of a hassle. Of course, if you think it’d be worth it then more power to you. Maybe you’ve got a better reason than I can think of too lol.

Man do I love my 1050. I actually went straight for it as my first press. People told me I should start small with a 550 or MAYBE a 650, but I figured I may as well buy what I was going to end up wanting anyway. Being a full-time college student and working at the same time, I needed something that could kick out rounds as quick as possible when I've got little time to spare. Have had it for about 4 months now and around 6000-7000 rounds through it so far. Switching from 9mm to .40 wasn't cheap, but I should be covered for quite a while now. I'd imagine I'll get a separate machine if I start loading rifle rounds, but don't shoot them enough to justify it right now. I would definitely recommend a couple upgrades for the press, though. It's a sweet machine, but Dillon has definitely skipped a few steps in production that have been fixed by others. I'd say head over to Reloadin Innovations and get their bearing and spillstop kit if you want to have smooth operation while moving fast. Though not 100% necessary, I've had no powder flip since adding this to my press. I'd also recommend you get their lighting kit. A bit pricey at $50, but that thing lights every station up like no other! These upgrades for the 1050 can be found here. I'd also recommend some XL bin barriers from Inline Fabrication and a primer tube rack. I can hang 12 primer tubes at a time and hold about 1100 9mm in the bin at a time with these. Found here on their site. I need to probably get a Redding Competition Seating die, as I get some bullets that seat crooked and bulge the case when I gauge my cartridges. But as someone mentioned, that'd be more of a luxury than anything. Obviously, you're gonna want a Hundo case gauge now too if you don't have one already. I tried to get by with a Lyman single gauge and an EGW 7-round gauge for about two weeks before just buying the Hundo from the Stoeger Pro Shop lol. Reduced my case gauging for competition loads from about 20-30 minutes down to like 10 minutes, at most. With this setup and upgrades, I'm easily kicking out 700-750 rounds per hour, and that's without even using a bulletfeeder. There's a guy on Facebook 3D printing bullet feeders that work just as well as the DAA one and only asking $200 for them. Might be something you'll want to look in to depending on how much you're loading. That's gonna be my next press purchase, since I just spent like $200 on my .40 conversions to start loading for my new Limited gun. Let me know if you want a link to they guy for the bullet feeder too.

VIR looks like it’s actually another hour further from post than the others, but I’m not ruling out that I’ll have a car if I need to travel a bit. A few matches a month makes it a lot easier to attend at least one of them too, thanks for the suggestion!

Sweet, this is a good bet for regular shooting at least. Having at least one other option definitely helps.

Yeah, I've seen the Richmond USPSA club, and I'm not sure I'll be able to make it up there since it'll be about an hour and change drive from post. The club/range that hosts the matches has a 2-year wait to join so I'm thinking practicing there is out of the question. Plus, I'm not even sure I'll have a car to drive up there. Unfortunately, it looks like that'll be my best bet of getting any actual shooting though. Hoping some people from the Ft. Lee area might have other advice?

Hey all, I'm heading out to Fort Lee, VA next year for training. I'm not sure on my exact lodging and transportation situation until I get closer to the date, but let's assume I can't go much further than Richmond or an equal distance South/East/West from post. All I've found for myself is that they have a range on post, but it's only open two days a month! Anyone know of any other ranges or places to shoot nearby? Preferably outdoors so I can practice draw, movement, transitions, etc. I don't know how likely an outdoor shooting spot is out there on the east coast for shooting, since I'm used to just being able to drive 20 minutes out into the desert and shoot when and what I want lol. I don't even know that I'll be able to shoot in any USPSA matches there, I'm just hoping I'll get some time to do live-fire practice so I don't get too rusty during the time that I'm there. As of right now, my best case scenario is to hope that I get lodging off-post and can dryfire in my hotel room, but If I'm stuck on-post I'll have to keep my gun in a vault with the unit. If that's the case, I'd at least try and get out to do some live-fire, and maybe get a Blue Gun to practice draws and whatever in my room. Any other recommendations or suggestions?

About 0.12” for the rear gap. A little tight for my preference, at first, but now that I’ve had it a little and had a chance to get used to it I’m starting to like it more.

First stage of the match and he was like the third shooter, so I think he was trying to be nice. I think he should’ve been DQ’d, and then he would’ve had to sit around the whole match while I shot since we rode there together lol.

I have a friend who started shooting at the same time as me, so we usually go to matches together. Then, he’s always asking me questions about everything and it pisses me off because he still hasn’t read the rule book. I always tell him to go read it himself instead of asking me all these questions he should know by now. The idiot should’ve been DQ’d last match because he unholstered his gun for a table start before the RO gave him the “make ready”. His excuse: “oh that’s a rule? I didn’t know that”. Luckily, the RO that was in our squad let it slip for him.

This one was of the things holding me back from getting a TSO for a bit. The mag release would dig into the meat of my palm/thumb and get painful after just a few minutes of holding and dryfire. The new mag release and extended safety help with this a ton. I’d say go for those parts when they’re available.

Thanks! I was hesitant to buy it since I’m a very new shooter to the sport. I’ve been shooting about 50%-65% classifiers and overall match placement for Production so I’m hoping this gun sticks with me all the way to A class and maybe even higher within the next couple years. Either way, I’ve got a gun that I love shooting now, so whether I’m good or bad it’s still worth the money. Plus, I’ve got no excuses for missing now; even my wife was consistently hitting 6” plates at like 10 yards, and normally she couldn’t hit anything to save her life lol.

I actually made a sweet deal with someone selling on GB. He said he was going to switch to Limited, but I guess he quickly decided not to because the gun was still unfired (except from the factory). Ended up getting 9 mags total with it for basically the cost of the gun new, plus it was the updated model so I had no choice but to buy. At least, that’s what I told my wife lol.

I could see that outside of a local match. Usually, we’ll switch the RO once or twice per stage depending on number of shooters and where they’re at in the lineup so I haven’t paid too much attention to that in the past. I’m usually talking to everyone else on the stage or double checking my mags during that time though. Guess that could give you a slight edge if you really focus on it.

Makes sense. I’d imagine the RO would yell “Stop/cease fire” in such a case anyway, but it does make sense that they need complete control of the start signal. On the Pact timer I know you can’t stop the countdown once it starts, unless you’re fast enough to turn it off before then. Maybe a feature that could be added in to later models? I don’t know, I’m not an RO and pretty new for the sport, just figured I’d add my 2 cents.

I'll throw my input into the mix here, even though I'm only reloading pistol brass. For a little while (like two weeks) I tried loading on the 1050 without any brass prep at all. The issue with this was that the resizing, especially without any case lube, required a good deal of force. Normally, that's not an issue, but with the 1050 there are so many moving parts and operations happening at the same time that it gets harder to "feel" when something is wrong with the press. For example, the swage in station 3 is great for catching any primers that didn't fully pop out. If a primer is left in the brass, the swage rod will smash it up and you'll get a kind of "spongy" feel at the bottom of the stroke. Knowing this now, I haven't missed a stuck primer in a while, but when I first tried loading on the 1050 without prepping brass, I would be focusing on exerting so much force for resizing that I'd miss the spongy feel of a stuck primer. I would have issues almost every 50 rounds once they hit the priming station, and get either a smashed primer or a case that got pushed out of the shell plate and damaged the lips. Since the primer slide has such tight tolerances, this would jam up the whole machine and create inconsistent primer seating until I took the assembly apart and cleaned it again. As far as the other stations go, it's been better to have a controlled powder drop than to have to exert a ton of pressure on resizing. Same goes for having a controlled bullet seat as well. So now, I simply do a couple brass prep runs on my 1050 before getting a good loading session in. Setting it up for brass prep is as easy as removing the powder drop, the crimp die, and making sure there aren't any primers loaded. Then, I just do dry tumble of my brass to knock of the majority of dirt and dust, lube the cases, and run them through a few thousand at a time. After the brass is resized and deprimed, I run them through my wet tumbler to clean out the primer pockets and remove any leftover case lube. The brass processing sucks since I have limited time to reload (2-5 hours per week), but once I've got at least a 5gal bucket of brass more than half full I'm set to go for at least about a month depending on caliber. With the whole process running smoother overall, I'm able to hit about 600-700 rounds per hour without breaking a sweat. Eventually, I'll get a bullet feeder, and after that, one of them fancy pants Mark 7s after I finish my undergraduate degree and start making decent money lol.

I think their discount only ended up being 5%. However, if you're eligible and sign up for their military discount it goes to 10% off. I really thought I'd see better prices for Black Friday, but that's still a pretty good deal when you can get almost $200 off a brand new 1050 lol. Of course, they always seem to be out of stock, and I'm not sure what their backorder times are looking like, especially now in the holiday season.

The PACT timers have a built in delay that will start anywhere from 1-4 seconds after you press the start. I don't know if the Pocket Pros have that, but I do see them being used more often. Regardless, would you agree that maybe using that timer-randomized start time for everyone would be a good way of ensuring competitor equity? I get where as an RO you can "plan" the start at a set time, but the fact is that people subconsciously create patterns without realizing it and especially when trying to randomize. Now, I doubt any shooter is out there hyper-analyzing this to find out when their beep is gonna be, but using a timer with a built-in randomized delay almost completely eliminates another variable. In turn, maybe people would be less likely to "creep" before the start signal goes off.

Awesome gun, just picked up my TSO last week. It seems I have one of the “updated” ones, with a test fire date of 8OCT2018. First major gun purchase I’ve made, and decided to make the switch to Limited Major since mag/gear restrictions and minor scoring irritate me lol. Anyway, this thing is freaking awesome, I’ve never held or shot anything so accurate before. Maybe some of you guys could confirm, but it seems I have the “older” Czechmate-style frame and need that holster block from DAA? Interesting that it’s the newer one but seems to have the original frame.

I guess that's a better way to see what's going on. I guess if you go off of activity on the whole site it's not bad. I'm just more used to other forums or even reddit where there will be one thread and several comments on it within an hour.

Surprised he didn’t get banned from the club, even if just temporarily lol. I’d require them to do the new shooter safety briefing for a few matches at least. As embarrassing as it is, I wouldn’t feel comfortable with that guy in my squad, even if I wasn’t the RO lol.

Can’t name any specific parts off the top of my head, but it seems like most threads were started months ago and seem to only be revived every once in a while by someone throwing their input into the mix. Most sub forums will get a few posts per day, but I see a lot that are showing threads from like 8 months ago on the first page. Most of the specific firearm ones seem pretty active, and obviously the classifieds are active. I just have a hard time finding a thread that I can contribute anything to that’s meaningful or doesn’t have something said 6 months ago that’s exactly what I was thinking. Still, that doesn’t mean there isn’t good information here. Sometimes I’ll go through those old threads just to see what people were thinking and if anything’s changed since then.

Same here, I usually lurked since almost any of my gun-related or reloading-related questions ended up being from these forums lol. Seems most parts of the forums are dead now, but there's still a few active ones.

Looks like a tough one for your first classifier. But, as mentioned above, POI is gonna shift maybe 1" at that distance? Depends on your gun and numerous other variables, but I'd say maybe it was just a bad classifier. As far as your equipment testing goes, I've made the mistake of running something that I've only tested once pretty recently too. It wasn't ammo for me, but I decided to drop in a new hammer spring into my gun since I was having light strikes with an "11#" spring. In theory, a heavier spring should have less issues, right? That's what I assumed, so in went the "heavier 12#" spring the night before a match. Completely blew the whole first stage with about 20 light strikes before finally finishing lol. I think the average time for the stage was 20-30 seconds, and it took me like 69 to finally hit everything. So I go to the safety area to check my gun and just throw in the stock spring... and the supposedly heavier "12#" spring ended up having about 2 less coils than the "11#" spring. I'll just chalk that up to mislabeling by the manufacturer on both springs they sold me, but man did I pay for that for not testing before a match. Anyway, I've learned that it's best to try and be consistent in everything you practice, and won't be switching gear and equipment the night before a match in fear of repeating what I did last time. Going back to your ammo, it'd probably be best to test and practice with it more... but I still don't think it affected your classifier that much. Maybe just some more practice? good luck in the future ones though!

I’m in a dry desert climate, so I usually leave powder in my hopper for up to a week or more at a time. However, I hardly ever fill it more than half way unless I plan on loading 1000+ rounds that day. Using a Dillon 1050, and haven’t had any issues with inconsistent powder throw... I thought that’s what the baffle is supposed to prevent? Anyway, the only times I empty the hopper is when I’m only resizing/depriming brass, adjusting the die, or changing powder. Haven’t had any issues with the hopper turning yellow or corroding, but it’s still pretty new, I guess. I figure I’ll get one of those Pyrex glass ones eventually, just haven’t had the need for it yet.