CHA-LEE Posted July 7, 2015 Share Posted July 7, 2015 If the "Top" of the hammer hooks is wearing as it is there isn't enough over travel and the bottom of the sear lip is dragging over the top of the hammer hooks when the trigger is pulled. You need enough over travel for the bottom side of the sear lip to fully clear the hammer hooks. The over travel setting is a little hard to set properly on the CZ/EAA guns on the bench because the sear cage does not "Squirm around" in dry fire. You can make the over travel really tight on the bench and it will function properly in dry fire, but then it will screw up in live fire because the sear cage is squirming around when you are actually shooting. I always had the best of luck with setting the over travel to the point of it just dropping the hammer then giving it an additional half turn of extra over travel. The extra over travel would ensure that the sear was coming up high enough to clear the hammer hooks even when the sear cage was squirming around while shooting. This sear cage squirm issue is unique to the CZ/EAA style guns because the ejector prong is part of the sear cage. Every time a shot is fired the brass bashes into the ejector prong and the sear cage moves around. There isn't a good way to consistently eliminate this "Squirming" of the sear cage, so you have to account for it with your pre/over travel settings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted July 7, 2015 Share Posted July 7, 2015 The bad thing is that if you are already getting hammer follow issues due to the top edge of the hammer hooks getting rolled over, then the only way to "Fix" it is to replace the hammer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted July 7, 2015 Author Share Posted July 7, 2015 (edited) Thanks man. So I actually was on the right track with the overtravel. Hopefully, a new sear will fix the issue rather than having to buy a new hammer. ETA-Just saw your post.... Well, lesson learned the hard way. Gonna back out the over travel screw on both guns and order a new hammer. Now I know why you have 3 guns. Edited July 7, 2015 by d_striker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted July 8, 2015 Author Share Posted July 8, 2015 (edited) Still trying to overcome being visually patient. Got a couple profound bombs dropped on me about the subject. Something I arrived at independently about 10 years ago was that if one expects to perform an action with grace, agility, and balance, they should strive to perform every action in their life, no matter how mundane, with grace, agility, and balance. The simplest of things such as pouring a cup of coffee, walking, getting out of your car, tying your shoes; EVERYTHING. I'm perhaps one of the most impatient individuals out there. I generally have high expectations of people. Especially employees, vendors, co-workers, spouse, etc. High expectations combined with impatience is generally not a good quality. If I expect to be patient with my shooting, I need to be a patient individual, period. Edited July 8, 2015 by d_striker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted July 12, 2015 Author Share Posted July 12, 2015 (edited) Shot the super classifier at Byers on Saturday. I don't really care a whole lot about classification as I feel like if I keep achieving micro goals, the classification will follow. I just figured trigger time is trigger time. I shot two decent classifiers and the rest were pretty meh. The two classifications will bump me up to A class next month, though. PPPS match was fun. It was in the 90's but it didn't feel bad at all. There was a good breeze most of the day. Either the breeze REALLY helped or my body is getting more acclimated to shooting matches in hot weather. Usually, I don't do well in the heat at all and I just lose it physically and in turn, mentally. All I've been thinking about is being patient, truly seeing the front sight in the A zone, and calling EVERY shot. Been thinking about it 24/7; at work, at home, and even while falling asleep. It feels so slow refining the sight picture after transitioning to each target but it is what absolutely has to happen. It's crazy to say but it feels like a completely new skill to learn. I think that if I can keep on it, the speed will come. One thing I started doing today is trying to incorporate which part of the A zone I'm supposed to shoot in my stage plan visualization rather than just which target. There were quite a few partial targets that would go from the upper A to a diagonal portion of the lower A. Visualizing the specific portion made transitions a little quicker but I really need to work on it as it's a different level of stage plan programming. I'm pretty happy with how I shot but made a couple errors. First stage was a full diameter hit towards the edge of a no shoot which turned 2A into A/M, NS. Another miss was an uncalled M which is really the only shot that I'm actually bummed about. I shot 13-02 Down the Middle at the Byers match in 4.66 seconds with all A's. This is 90.7% according to classifiercalc. We shot it at PPPS also so I figured I'd just try to burn it down. I shot it in 3.86 seconds with 3 shots in the hard cover. I ran it again for fun after we were done and tried running it at the same speed. It was around the same time with 2 mikes. It was good reinforcement that I simply can't shoot that fast and still hit the A-zone . To shoot at that speed, I am really forcing the shooting which doesn't work. I ended up zeroing the stage which meant that I gave away 40 points and probably the match. One light strike on the first stage of the day. I think I'm going to run an 11lb spring. Although I've only had one light strike in 1000 rounds, it's one too many. Edited July 13, 2015 by d_striker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thermobollocks Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 You ate your Wheaties near as I can tell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted July 13, 2015 Author Share Posted July 13, 2015 You ate your Wheaties near as I can tell. Someone's figuring out how to use their sights....Look out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richc2048 Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 Yea. It's funny how the gun shoots only where you point it to. Not where you want it to. I'm just realizing what a great grip on a gun does to finding those sights faster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thermobollocks Posted July 14, 2015 Share Posted July 14, 2015 I've been trying to will the bullets on target all this time Light strike aside, do you feel like you've worked through the dust bunnies of the Accushadow? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted July 14, 2015 Author Share Posted July 14, 2015 I've been trying to will the bullets on target all this time Light strike aside, do you feel like you've worked through the dust bunnies of the Accushadow? I think so (knock on wood.). The light strikes are purely because I choose to run an 8.5lb hammer spring. Other than that, they both run great. They definitely have way more moving parts than plastic guns, but once you understand how they work, they are pretty simple. I have the non accu guns but they are still really accurate. I know when I miss a 20 yard plate or head shot, it's me and not the gun. With the xd, I was never certain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted July 15, 2015 Author Share Posted July 15, 2015 (edited) Been trying to hit the dry fire hard. Really working on transitions to the A on partials. I figure if I can transition the gun exactly to where my eyes are looking, I won't need to refine the sight picture as much. I don't know if I'm still getting used to the weight of the gun on transitions or if I've just never really been precise or a combination of both. I've eliminated using a par timer on any dry fire drill that requires transitions. I think that trying to hit par times that are above my skill level has been contributing to my impatience and also encouraging aiming at brown or "that looks close enough." I'll use a par timer every now and again to see if I'm improving but it's not going to be a regular part of dry fire training. Going to try to get outside for some live fire practice today. Brewing beer right now which means I had to get up at 4AM today. We'll see how I feel later this afternoon. Edited July 15, 2015 by d_striker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted July 15, 2015 Share Posted July 15, 2015 If you are over shooting your aiming point on target during an aggressive transition its usually due to transitioning with your arms or waist instead of your legs. Look for the next aiming point with your eyes, but don't move your head to the target. Keep your whole upper body locked up and use your legs to drive the transition to the next target. Its super hard to break the habits of turning your head to the next target as well as driving the transition with your arms. Both of these bad habits keep people in B class for a long time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted July 15, 2015 Author Share Posted July 15, 2015 If you are over shooting your aiming point on target during an aggressive transition its usually due to transitioning with your arms or waist instead of your legs. Look for the next aiming point with your eyes, but don't move your head to the target. Keep your whole upper body locked up and use your legs to drive the transition to the next target. Its super hard to break the habits of turning your head to the next target as well as driving the transition with your arms. Both of these bad habits keep people in B class for a long time. Thanks man. I'll try that in live fire today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richc2048 Posted July 15, 2015 Share Posted July 15, 2015 There he goes giving out A card nuggets! He is right about it being the hardest thing to break. I'm still not sure if I'm doing it right. I'm trying though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted July 15, 2015 Author Share Posted July 15, 2015 It's hard for me on the shorter transitions to not use just my arms. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted July 15, 2015 Share Posted July 15, 2015 Widen your stance so using your legs becomes easier to leverage on the shorter transitions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thermobollocks Posted July 16, 2015 Share Posted July 16, 2015 That's basically thing #1 I try to do for Steel Challenge. I'll stand around in the box swiveling like the ugliest ballerina when I make ready. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted July 18, 2015 Author Share Posted July 18, 2015 (edited) Got a new sear to see if I could get by without getting a new hammer and just touching up the hooks on the old one. It's strange but the hammer only follows to half cock when I rack the slide when the hammer is down. It will also follow when it's at slide lock and I insert a mag and it auto forwards. It doesn't follow after a SA shot. When I was installing the sear, I tested it on the bench without the left side safety detent and extra power spring. It wouldn't follow at all. Put the extra power detent spring in and it follows as described above. Weird. I have a new hammer on the way and some very thin safeties. I can get by with the standard detent spring with the thin safeties. Side note: old brake rotors work great as a bench block for punching out really stubborn pins. A 1/16" punch with the tip broken off from the trigger pin out works great as a starter punch. Edited July 18, 2015 by d_striker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted July 20, 2015 Author Share Posted July 20, 2015 (edited) I shot Weld yesterday since HPPS was cancelled. It was a fun match with fun stages. I felt really good about getting and staying on my sight for most of the match. Didn't shoot horrible, didn't shoot great. Lot's of misses on steel causing stage plans to go down the toilet. Felt really slow. I had two light strikes on the last stage. Primer depth on each is .016" and .018". Very faint firing pin kiss on the primer. Federal brass on both. Will see if an 11.5lb spring will set them off once they arrive. Starting to notice that light strikes are now occurring primarily on Federal and Speer brass where the primer is set very deep. Might be too deep. I've got 10k 147 Xtreme's on the way but am down to my last 1k primers. I've had 10k Federal primers on backorder with Cabela's for a couple of months so hopefully they show up soon. I already loaded up match ammo for A3 but I may load a new batch and back off of seating the primer so deep. Edited July 20, 2015 by d_striker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted July 23, 2015 Author Share Posted July 23, 2015 (edited) I pulled all of the deepest seated primers out of the ammo I had designated for Area 3. I ended up with about 300 rounds of Federal, Speer, and Blazer. I installed the 11.5 lb main spring and decided to shoot this culled ammo at the local steel challenge match today. I shot a little under 300 rounds and every single one went bang. I think that the 8.5lb spring just didn't have enough oomph to set off some of the really deep primers (.018"-.024"). Even with one coil cut off of the reduced power firing pin spring. Although the failure rate was only like 1-2 per thousand, it's not acceptable to me. I'm going to run the 11.5 lb spring in both guns and make myself get used to it. DA pull feels like it's around 5.5-6lbs. SA feels right around 2lbs. I'm still shooting Shadow #2 and am just going to make this my primary gun. Today I got a new hammer and thin RAMI safeties in the mail so it's off to the garage to get it all installed. After this, I should have a fully functional backup gun going into Area 3. I'm going to try to get out sometime next week to test out Shadow #1 with new parts and chrono Shadow #2 as I haven't chrono'd my ammo out of this gun yet. Shooting steel went pretty good. After getting torn up on the steel at Weld, it was good practice to ring some steel. I only truly called about 10 shots on steel using my front sight. I'm still waiting for visual and/or audible confirmation of a hit on steel. The positive, though, is that I managed to wait for a good sight picture on about 90% of the plates. In addition to being patient for a good sight picture, I need to learn to trust that I hit the steel based on that visual information. My load and my guns are accurate enough that I know the bullet is going to go where the sights are pointed. I got a DAA Race Master mag pouch to use as my first pouch. The Ghost pouch felt just a little too close to my torso and my hand would often hit my side as I'd snatch it up. I slapped it on and canted it outwards. I like the clearance it provides and it's still within 2" of my belt. Edited July 23, 2015 by d_striker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j1b Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 Still trying to overcome being visually patient. Got a couple profound bombs dropped on me about the subject. Something I arrived at independently about 10 years ago was that if one expects to perform an action with grace, agility, and balance, they should strive to perform every action in their life, no matter how mundane, with grace, agility, and balance. The simplest of things such as pouring a cup of coffee, walking, getting out of your car, tying your shoes; EVERYTHING. I'm perhaps one of the most impatient individuals out there. I generally have high expectations of people. Especially employees, vendors, co-workers, spouse, etc. High expectations combined with impatience is generally not a good quality. If I expect to be patient with my shooting, I need to be a patient individual, period. Interesting post. I think you're right in the need to see and having what I'm calling the "discipline" to see. The term patience is challenging for me, I associate it with "waiting" which I'm certain is not your intent. It's just my perception. In my shooting, and to your very point in my everyday life, what I'm trying to do is see more, and see faster. I only mention this to give a different perspective (I hope you don't mind). I believe the key to me shooting better points, and shooting those points faster, is all about seeing more and seeing it faster. So that the end result isn't so much waiting to see what I need to see its more so seeing what is already there faster. All while being disciplined around the fact that I can't "go faster" than I am seeing. Your post gave me some good perspective and helped generate some good thought. Thanks! J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted July 23, 2015 Author Share Posted July 23, 2015 Interesting post.I think you're right in the need to see and having what I'm calling the "discipline" to see. The term patience is challenging for me, I associate it with "waiting" which I'm certain is not your intent. It's just my perception. In my shooting, and to your very point in my everyday life, what I'm trying to do is see more, and see faster. I only mention this to give a different perspective (I hope you don't mind). I believe the key to me shooting better points, and shooting those points faster, is all about seeing more and seeing it faster. So that the end result isn't so much waiting to see what I need to see its more so seeing what is already there faster. All while being disciplined around the fact that I can't "go faster" than I am seeing. Your post gave me some good perspective and helped generate some good thought. Thanks! J I like using "being patient" rather than using "slow down." When you start hosing targets and squirting mikes here and there, the first thing people tell you is to "slow down." For awhile I told myself to "slow down" and I started doing everything slow. Slowly reaching for a mag, slowly leaving a position, slowly getting the gun out of the holster, etc. I like the term "visually patient" as I think it helps me isolate taking the required time to getting a good sight picture from still performing other actions as fast as they can happen. It may not work for everyone but it seems like it's helping me. I like what you're laying down about seeing faster in every day life. Every now and again I'll bust out the old Call of Duty and Rainbow Six games on the PS3 and run around with a pistol. Although I'm not certain it makes me see faster, I feel like it helps. I'm going to try what you're saying about trying to see faster during every day life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted July 26, 2015 Author Share Posted July 26, 2015 (edited) I shot Aurora today which is the last club match before A3. I haven't really gotten any video this year but Richard filmed Stage 5 on his phone. I haven't seen myself shoot in awhile. It was my only really good stage of the day and there's a few things that I like seeing in the video. I missed the magwell on reload 1 and 3. While running the stage it felt disastrous. On video, it doesn't look that bad. I like that my gun is up going into my third position and I'm firing as soon as I get there. Also, after array 3 I got a little confused that I was going to transition 180 to the target on the right. It felt like it took forever to make that transition but again, it doesn't look horrible in the video. The targets were pretty close and easy but there were a few partials thrown into the mix. I like seeing that my shooting cadence varies depending on the target difficulty. ETA-I took a class with CHA-LEE yesterday. Based on some of what I learned in the class, I see a few glaring issues with that run. -The second array was just 4 paper targets with some hard cover on a couple of them. I think that I could have shot that array more aggressive as it was just hard cover. The only penalty for hitting hard cover is having to fire an extra shot. I had plenty of rounds for that array. Shooting Production, I think I sometimes get a little too cautious after getting too loose. -All of those targets, with the exception of the last array were VERY close to each other. I think my splits sound good but it's obvious that the transitions are really slow. Richard is going to run it through his shot coach app so it'll be interesting to see what they work out to. -I'm reaching for mags way too slowly. Edited July 27, 2015 by d_striker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted July 27, 2015 Author Share Posted July 27, 2015 (edited) I took another group class with CHA-LEE yesterday. I had taken this class about 2 years ago but I got a lot more out of it this time around. I think the major reason I got more out of the classroom portion is purely due to where my skills are at now compared to where they were back then. The information was pertinent back then and I could understand how it was important, but it just wasn't "digestable" at that point. As CHA-LEE points out, the information he presents is so vast that it's sort of like trying to drink out of a fire hose. There's a lot of truth to that as the first time I took the class a lot of it went completely over my head. I think based on where my skills are at now, compared to two years ago, the classroom portion was more like trying to drink out of a garden hose for me this time around....Still more "water" than I could drink compared to say a kitchen faucet but I was able to get more. It's very fortunate living in the front range of CO, to have access to such a great practical shooting resource such as CHA-LEE. I know he has not been doing many of these classes lately due to focusing on his own training so it was awesome to be able to attend this class. The class is very reasonably priced and also convenient. I walked away from the class with a few major things to work on. Well, there's more than a few but I'm going to immediately focus on 3. 1.) I'm still not transitioning with my legs. I think on a wide array I sometimes get set up wide and I'm using about 60% legs, 40% arms to transition. On arrays that aren't so wide, I'm still using about 99% arms and it shows in my time and hit quality. 2.) Left hand speed to my mag is too slow. I have good hand speed....Why am I grabbing my mag so slowly??? Snatch that thing up like you mean it. 3.) Calling EVERY shot is the only way to shoot fast. There is no time to look for bullet holes. I am capable of shooting A's fast when I choose to call every shot. So why are you looking for holes??? Edited July 27, 2015 by d_striker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thermobollocks Posted July 29, 2015 Share Posted July 29, 2015 So why are you looking for holes??? Old habits from your teenage years? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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