Log of Malfunctions

[Vincent258]

I may be touching on a point that has been made before but, after playing at our local action shoot practice last night, I learned that numbering your mags and keeping a log book of the malfunctions your encounter can be a great asset.

Not necessarily to look back on multiple months down the road, but rather the next day or the following week after you have returned home and are trying to remember "ok, which magazine was it that gave me failure to feed issues" or (from personal experience) "remember not to index your trigger finger on the pin for the slide release during the 'safe handling' times"; to explain, on my P97, the slide release/take down pin protrudes about 1/16th of an inch on the opposite (strong hand) side of the gun and for some unknown reason the past couple weeks, I have been indexing my trigger finger on that, pushing it in, which pushes the slide release away from the frame just that much on the other side of the gun and translates into an inoperable trigger. That doesn't work very well when the shot timer beeps, I unholster my gun, acquire the target and.... nothing.

These notes can be valuable, as a new competitor, in your training regement to remind you of little nuonces to fix during dry fire or live fire practices. Or, they can be used to remind you which magazine you need to clean and oil to try or fix other issues with.

If there are other people out there that have any other tips and tricks from personal experience, I'm all ears.

Thanks.

[LPatterson]

In the beginning it is probably a good idea to have a log book to record everything. Draw to 1st shot - 2nd shot at 7 yards, 10 yards, 15 yards + score, at each range transition to tgt 3' to side time + score. Just about every pro that has written a book about practice has drills. Or you could buy Dave Re's deck of cards.

[MGMorden]

I do something similar. Whenever I shoot any of my guns, I have a spreadsheet entry on Google Docs that I enter the date, gun used, what I was doing (Ie, match, practice, load development, etc), ammo used, approximate number of rounds fired, and then a general notes section where I'll note, well, anything of note. Any malfunctions, changes in gun setup, etc all go in the notes field.

It seems to not only help in keeping track of issues, but also documenting the round count like this helps to know just how many rounds I have down the gun (which works well just from an informational standpoint, as well as knowing when to change springs and such).

[38supPat]

It's a good idea to track malfs, I know quite a few shooters who claim their gun never jams but I see frequently clearing them in matches...lol

[Biloxi23]

Also useful is investing in a digital video camera and having one of the other shooters video you stages. My friend has one and he makes me a copy of my shooting, and the last couple of times he inlcuded videos of him shooting the stages as well as some other shooters in the same squad. I think l learn more from watching teh mistakes I made as well as it helps diagnose why. And then occassionally I see that I did something really well. Nothing like a little positive reinforcement.