llamasabound

I have had 3 slides milled by fire4effect for SROs on a S2. I’ve replaced three SROs but haven’t yet cracked a slide.

My goodness, so relatable — although I haven’t applied myself as thoroughly or collapsed as hard. Nothing like practicing all the time and shooting 80% of top shooters…and then a year later shooting 80% of top shooters. Or sitting perched atop the M class top 20, and then sliding down it to high 80s obscurity. From needing one 95 to needing six… Not for lack of wanting, not even really for lack of trying. Some combination of age, ineptitude, ego protection, lack of observational clarity, je ne sais quoi. Recognizing that everyone you compete with does what you do — and many of them better. Watching a wunderkind lap you 12 months after starting. Simultaneously holding that you shoot a handgun better than 99.9% of people who have ever shot one and knowing that you won’t get within 15-10-5% whatever of the top. I was so hopeful for your velocitization experiment. Heck, I adopted it, as much as a habitual 95% of available points minor shooter can. Shot some mikes and deltas. Mostly noticed them. Better at so many things and yet impossibly somehow worse at shooting. Oh, let’s do division next! Two years ago, a forty something with dedication and work ethic could have crept into the top 20 of CO. Now with the absolute abundance of skill and youth. Well, that moment passed. If you aren’t already there, you probably aren’t making it. I will still be shooting long after I have a reason why, but I respect the run you made at it. One life tip — if you still feel compelled to look, there are 3rd party Instagram viewers, and it’s easy to make a new Reddit account every month and not get caught up with being right or smart or talented. Just some dude with drive by insights.

Reading through this thread was fascinating, and added some depth to my thinking about the classification system. I’ve always liked the “save GM for National / Level 3 performance argument,” without realizing that in practice it would just take one of the widest classes in skill (M, for most divisions) and make it wider still. If there’s 3XXXX members, and half of them go to more than 2 matches a year, there are still only XXX-XXXX members going to multiple level 3s. For the overwhelming majority of shooters, the classification system is the closest they get to a broad benchmark.

also, an RM can just hit above the calibration zone on a USPSA style popper and get the shooter a reshoot. This has always been my preferred solution, glad it survived.

I would shoot better/different ammunition before purchasing a different barrel.

Agreed on all points. Among the many reasons Max hit the ground so dominant at CO is because he shoots it similarly to how he shot open. People coming from production need to revise their strategies more significantly.

largely agreeing with you — the scoring strategies probably play the bigger part. That said the equipment differences play into the scoring systems too. The ease of holding “center of brown” on a tight NS partial is still a factor. It is demonstrably true that a tuned open gun with a frame mounted optic stays visually closer to the point of aim throughout recoil and during multiple shots. It’s not only that 2 quick charlies score well — it’s also easier to shoot 2 quick charlies on a challenging target presentation.

Not to be a jerk, but local results don’t indicate much. I’ve won HOA in production against Open Ms. That’s less testament to the equivalence of production and open and much more about the fact that I was 35 years younger than the open M and currently training. Majors are more interesting, and they basically confirm what most people are saying: CO is a very fast division, typically close (but behind) open. Given shooters of equal skill (or the same shooter!), open times will typically be faster.

OP didn’t shoot it. very international in feel, on the closer stage, a long retreat to depress the hit factor. Timing and positioning oriented. Best stages required rapid change ups in aiming schemes. A little light on movement overall, partially due to space constraints. Much more 20-25 yard shooting than a typical 10 stage match. Partialed up, but good balance of vertical and horizontal. it was of a flavor with area 8, although more shooting challenges than positional. were the MD to MD again, I would prioritize attendance — it may be the closest I ever get to shooting in Europe. as an aside, lots of people going full send in a match that specifically punished that.

give a competent shooter an open gun and they will be faster than they are with a CO gun. Up close it might be negligible (although still apparent in terms of splits), but at higher risk targets it will be obvious. Minimal dot movement coupled with major power factor is a significant time saver. If raw times at your matches are the same, that’s not commentary on the divisions, just a reflection of who is currently shooting it.

My TG and coated rounds smoke like black powder. 90+k rounds later I haven’t noticed any barrel leading, but I don’t really clean my barrels, so barring a massive accuracy degradation I wouldn’t know.

Talk to your AD. They’ve been entertaining proposals on this for a while and are quite close. It will probably be shortened paper only stages, perhaps run after level 1 matches. I share the broader concern that it will take over, and not in a good way, and 10 years from now all that will be left is indoor airsoft. Okay, maybe not that extreme, but an unwelcome development from where I sit.

This is coming from USPSA next Feb. Action 22. Lots still being worked out. It’s supposed to be a starter game, but once young people learn how fast you can go with .22 I bet it takes over. Just need reliable reloadable .22 mags.

Bumping this very long running thread. I practiced excellent range hygiene, and don’t actually touch bullets while reloading. My children have always been below the reference level. When I got a BLL test this spring I was over 9 times the reference level. Shooting multiple times a week in poorly ventilated indoor ranges — and running matches and shooters in those same ranges — got me there in about two years. I stopped shooting indoors entirely. Six weeks later my levels had declined 18%, and I’m hopeful my next test will reveal a similar decline. I was in a range where chelation was recommended, but I figured I’d reduce exposure first. In those six weeks between test 1 and test 2 I attended a couple of majors and multiple locals. I continued to shoot live fire 2-3 times a week relatively high volume. I’m pretty confident the long term solution for me is no indoor ranges — certainly not for high volume practice, and definitely not as match staff inhaling vast clouds of aerosolized lead.

agree, and agree with subsequent comments that the dot is much kinder on (aging) eyes. You can definitely call shots with irons and observe them in real time — the bar to doing so is much lower with a glowy red circle superimposed on a crisp target!

I made this switch a little over a year ago. Conveniently, I shot a classifier match in production immediately before switching, and another one after one week of daily dryfire with a dot. My initial % was within one percent of my production classification. I would say (mostly because of artifacts of the classification system), I then jumped 5% without really improving at fundamentals, because shooting is easier with a dot. Last summer I shot a a level 2 with my CO rig, and came back a couple of days later and shot it in limited minor with an iron-sighted carry gun. I shot the same points, about 10% slower. Shooting a dot exclusively for a year neither helped nor hurt my ability to shoot iron sights, although another year of shooting helped my fundamentals with both. Acquiring the dot with 100% consistency from presentation drills took about 2 hours of dryfire in total, split across a few days. Along with SHO and WHO-transfer, practice presentation drills to less-common shooting positions (hard leans, squats). You may find that your 100% dot index on a preferred position presentation isn’t as 100% when other shooting conditions obtain. Dryfire with a dot is dramatically easier to assess, especially movement drills. There is no excuse for not calling every single shot in training. If the red moved off an acceptable location when the real or simulated shot broke, it’s good. When I shoot unplanned makeups I *still* throw in an “unnecessary” reload, but I’ve watched national champions do the same, so I don’t worry about it. Coming from production reloads are a subconscious skill. (Note the winning times for the stages that became 20-02 and 20-03, and how top production guys did). An unnecessary reload incorporated into a broader transition costs me nothing. Note I don’t mean reloading every time my feet move (which would be a lack of stage planning) — I mean reloading on an 16 rounds stage after 2 make ups with 24 to start. My commitment to production was partly sentimental (i started there), partly enjoyment-based (I like the level of planning required by PF and capacity constraints), and partly misguided pride at some notion of shooting purity that artificially celebrated simple(r) firearms and rudimentary sighting systems. I still think Production is interesting. I personally enjoy shooting carry optics more: it reduces the strategic demands of planning and the visual specificity of irons, which has allowed me to improve other dimensions of shooting much quicker: shot calling, leaving sooner-and-shooting sooner, and processing minimal visual requirements at speed. The information to assess how you are doing in real time (while shooting on the move, for instance) is *so* much more available that you can make rapid gains not only in technique, but in confidence.

Hey OP: here’s the funny run I described with my left hand across my body keeping it in the holster. The procedural from the ballot ejection was the difference between me and my division/class win.

Retention is not part of 5.2.6 Running with holstered guns is a terrible idea in USPSA. But thanks for the criticism! I specifically asked the CRO: "do you mind if I see if this *cleared, holstered* gun will be retained by this holster? Neither the CRO nor the RM had an issue with it.

Hey, I shot that on Thursday. I got to the stage (big heavy CZ in an RHT), looked at the RO, and said, "when I grab that ballot off of the post, my gun is going flying." It was the walk through, so I ran it full speed. I grabbed the ballot of the post and my pistol went flying, deep into the sand. RO cleared the gun, I called for the RM and arranged to swap pistols to my backup gun. When I got back from switching guns I was up. I ran the stage from the start box with my left hand crossing my body holding the gun in the holster. My time was about 1.25 seconds behind Max Michel, but I think most of that was during the shooting, not the getting to the area. Incidentally, my ballot bounced out of the box, giving me a procedural on the day. I hadn't shot chrono yet, so they had to run my sandy gun too. First shot (barrel full of sand) was 50fps off the pace, but surprisingly it still worked. I had to completely strip the gun to get the sand out of some nooks and crannies. Rough luck, but I've had both my RHTs dump CZs on walk through. If you dryfire a lot, its pretty much guaranteed to happen. If I suspect it might, I do it during the walk through. (Full speed, sudden direction changes, etc).