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Chris's World Shoot Blog


swordfish

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This is more for me, but whoever wants to read is fine, it's why I'm putting it here.

Saw some Instagram videos from a lot of people I followed during the 2017 IPSC World Shoot in France, thought it would be cool to go. Decided the easiest way is the path of least resistance, the old lost forgotten dark art of revolver shooting. Surprised it even counts as a division anymore. Never shot USPSA in my life. Still haven't. Thought about it and bought a Para and did some work to it, thinking I would shoot Limited in some local matches. Totally forgot about USPSA because of 3gun, until the World Shoot popped up.

 

Sold the Para and a few other things and bought myself a 929. Learned how to do an action job from a retired gunsmith that used to build PPC guns back in the day, but couldn't ever get them below 8lbs. 929 is now just over 6lbs with stock parts.

 

Working up a load right now to make power factor, slow going because it's 17 degrees outside and the chrono only works sometimes indoors.

 

I need to be more athletic, starting out at 240ish, started a limited calorie diet a few weeks ago, going well so far. Changing my diet, rather, it needs to last, so long term habit changes and making better choices. Going to the gym more often. The plan is 3 days a week at least, but also doing speed drills and endurance training. Right now for 3gun I get tired after about 6 hours of pasting along with setup. I also run my ass off, but haven't shot any major matches.

No clubs within an hour shoot USPSA so I'm trying to get my home club set up with it, but it's probably too much work. I should just train more and shoot matches when I feel like driving.

 

Dry firing is a lot nicer now that I have a 6lbs trigger and TK moon clips. Was also gifted a giant jug of mostly Blazer Brass which works really well, but I'm planning on shooting 30-40k a year so it won't last very long. Also I'm very worried about primers. The shortage of Federal primers means I might have go to a heavier trigger to ignite Winchester. I'm already at a disadvantage because my 3gun pistol trigger is 1lbs 7oz, so my finger is getting one hell of a workout. Got a Ruger SP101 that I use for strength training, plus lots of dry and live fire with the 929.

I mostly dryfire at work when it's slow, but I'll have to switch to at home when the weather gets nicer as we'll have more customers coming in. Reading Ben Stoeger's books for new ideas for dryfire and live fire drills.

 

Goals are to get down to 170lbs and make GM by the end of 2018. Also the shooting schedule is very crowded, lots of big regional matches I need to attend across the country. Shoot some locals for sure, but I need to compete against top level guys to know where I stand. Also the lack of revolver shooters means it's hard to find anyone I'd actually be competing against.

 

MWP is helping me out a ton, and has basically done the same thing, gone from not really competing to winning the World Shoot in 3 years. I'm not exactly trying to win, but I need to train hard enough to give myself a chance of beating him if I even want to make it.

I'm going to use this thread as much as I can remember. I have a range diary I keep in my bag to record all sorts of times and chrono data and whatever else, but this too has its place.

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Shot an indoor match last night. Shot the same place before and it wasn't that great, but they're really starting to improve. I came in 4th overall, which kinda bums me out because one dude that beat me is D class. Doesn't matter that he was using an auto. Anyway, gonna load up some more ammo and work on shooting while moving and transitions. Also dryfire today practicing unloaded table starts. Soon I'll build a wall with a low port to practice those and shooting while entering/leaving positions.

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I wish you the best of luck and also have a goal to shoot the 2020 World Shoot.  My biggest piece of advice, go get training. You don't know what you don't know. I've done 2 classes with a GM and by far they have helped me improve better than anything else.

 

 

Good luck, I'll be following this thread.

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3 hours ago, SCTaylor said:

I wish you the best of luck and also have a goal to shoot the 2020 World Shoot.  My biggest piece of advice, go get training. You don't know what you don't know. I've done 2 classes with a GM and by far they have helped me improve better than anything else.

 

 

Good luck, I'll be following this thread.

Thanks! Gonna take a JJ Racaza class this year and MWP said he might teach a class too, so of course I'll go up there for that. He's been helping me out a ton already and is a great resource

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  • 2 weeks later...

Trying to get the 1050 set up to run 9mm. Apparently we don't have a small primer slide, so a call to Dillon will be in order tomorrow. Spent a few hours messing around with it and cleaning it last night, plus trying to track down all the parts that my buddy left lying all over the place. Also cleaned off more of his bench, so it's starting to come together. For now I'm stuck with the 550, which I normally love but getting a good smush on the Federal primers is a pain in the arm.

Might have a match this weekend at an indoor range that is a USPSA sanctioned event, and they usually run a classifier.

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Shot my first official USPSA match yesterday. Indoors. 2 stages plus a classifier, but the second stage was the first stage but you started facing down range with hands on head instead of up range hands on post. Meh. Had a Production GM show up, but apparently he's only A class because he shot 80% of Ben at nationals. I ended up with 74% of him and 5th overall out of 15 shooters. First in revo out of 3, which I was kind of surprised to see another revo guy (VSchneider on here shoots with me and I drag him everywhere I can with his 627).

 

Totally bombed the classifier. I think I had a 2.9 hit factor on Disaster Factor, which is a fitting name now that I've shot it. Thought it might have been the gun/ammo because I've heard stories of the 929, but I went a shot another match after (won it) and was shooting tiny targets and shotgun hulls at 25 feet no problem, so it was definitely me and not the gun.

 

During one of the strings during the stage, I thought to myself (man I need to grip the gun harder) and I did and the muzzle flip went down considerably. Have about 350 rounds left over loaded up, was going to practice shooting while moving but I think I'll practice bill drills and partial targets at distance.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Wore a hole in my thumb from the cylinder release. Experimenting with slightly different grips but my hands are just too small to reach the trigger without getting super high on the gun.

 

Also I think the Chrony is acting up under electric lights and reading lower than what the bullets are actually going. Loaded up more 3.0, 3.1, 3.2 gr of bullseye and varied the OAL in 2 batches, with one set between 1.140-1.150 and one a bit longer.

 

The 3.2 I'm running now is 135PF, and the 3.0 was 120PF. But the difference between shots is only 30fps or so, so there has to be a sweet spot I'm missing.

 

Once I figure out a load, I'll start using regular Federal primers to run at matches, and use the Match primers for when I go to a big enough match where they confirm PF with a chronograph.

 

Also up next is accuracy testing, but it seems to be shooting ok as I can hit shotgun hulls at 25feet offhand 50% of the time. (4 hulls, 8 shots).

 

Then slug the bore and chambers just for shits and giggles, and once I settle on a load figure out what front sight height I need. The factory front sight that I turned into a fiber optic is working pretty well for what it is (and how much I paid for it; free), but I want something that looks a bit more professional. Also I think it's too short by about .020, so that's the main reason I'm going to buy something.

 

I've recently gotten faster. I don't know if it's a confidence thing, but I couldn't get my reloads below 2.3 seconds. Now everything just feels super freaking fast and my times are dropping like crazy. It has to have been a mental block, but I'm sure part of it is less fumbling due to practice. I just willed myself to go faster, and now I am. Going to maybe test times today at work for things like reload and draw, but my arms and hands just feel a ton faster.

 

Also I've been working on relaxing my upper body a lot, and trying to grip the gun harder. I think when I get a slightly softer shooting ammo it will help a lot with recoil mitigation and wearing the skin off my thumb.

 

Missed a shoot last night because I did something to my foot. Also I want to let my thumb heal because I cut it open, told myself I wasn't going to shoot until it healed, then went out and shot and f*#ked around while I was running loads over the chronograph and cut it open again. Mike says eventually I'll get a callus, but until then it's just constant abuse, especially with the round count I've got coming this year.

 

Off to a good start on that too. It's just now turned February and I've blown through 3k primers so far. I need to pick up some more Match primers, but the biggest expense is definitely going to be bullets. Debating on switching to something lighter but maaaaan, the 150s are just so soft shooting. And I'm not sure I'd be saving too much over 6.6 ¢  a piece by switching to 125s.

 

EDIT: Sub 2 second reload in dryfire after I get warmed up, about 70% of the time, and getting back on target with an A trigger pull. Feels good too, not ragged.

Edited by swordfish
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1 hour ago, AlphaCharis said:

Awesome!  World Shoot looks like an amazing experience.  I haven't shot an IPSC match, yet, but would love to go to US IPSC Nationals this year.  Did you shoot revo before your 929? 

Never! I mean I owned a couple, but they mostly just sat around. Colts, a 38 Police Positive that I never shot, and a Cobra that I occasionally carry, but never seriously shot revolvers. They're slow and have heavy triggers lol. Started shooting 3gun maybe 2 years ago with an M&P 9. Back when I thought I knew how to shoot. Then I learned I had no idea how to shoot, and now I'm learning how to shoot, and I'm ok. It's a helluva lot harder than an automatic. Now I'm trying to beat all the autos at the local matches and shoot as many big USPSA and ICORE matches I can this year. Also planning on shooting IPSC nationals too. Maybe I'll see you there

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On 2/2/2018 at 5:46 PM, swordfish said:

Never! I mean I owned a couple, but they mostly just sat around. Colts, a 38 Police Positive that I never shot, and a Cobra that I occasionally carry, but never seriously shot revolvers. They're slow and have heavy triggers lol. Started shooting 3gun maybe 2 years ago with an M&P 9. Back when I thought I knew how to shoot. Then I learned I had no idea how to shoot, and now I'm learning how to shoot, and I'm ok. It's a helluva lot harder than an automatic. Now I'm trying to beat all the autos at the local matches and shoot as many big USPSA and ICORE matches I can this year. Also planning on shooting IPSC nationals too. Maybe I'll see you there

Ah! that's so interesting.  I don't think I could give up my pistol matches to shoot revo lol.  It looks painful on the reloads.  I DO want to try revo, though.  That's the only division in USPSA that I have, yet, to be classified in.  Definitely a different game.  I'm assuming you enjoy it, though, since you're committing to it for the next TWO YEARS.  Well, I look forward to reading about your journey and you kicking butt at WS2020!  

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On 2/5/2018 at 3:29 PM, AlphaCharis said:

Ah! that's so interesting.  I don't think I could give up my pistol matches to shoot revo lol.  It looks painful on the reloads.  I DO want to try revo, though.  That's the only division in USPSA that I have, yet, to be classified in.  Definitely a different game.  I'm assuming you enjoy it, though, since you're committing to it for the next TWO YEARS.  Well, I look forward to reading about your journey and you kicking butt at WS2020!  

Thanks! Dude it's hard though! I miss my 1.5lbs trigger and 1 second reloads. Reloads are getting faster though. Less than 2 seconds in dry fire.  Still really slow compared to a semi, but thankfully I only compete against other revolvers. I told my dad about practicing to try to make the team and he thought I had to compete against guys shooting open, or that it was one big competition not broken down into classes. He told me to forget about it because revolvers are so slow lol, I'd never make it. He was much more supportive when I told him I was only going up against other revolvers. Little does he know who I have to beat to get on the team though. :/

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More dryfire today at work.

 

Sub 2 second reload in dryfire, but live fire is a totally different animal. I dunno if I'm just psyching myself out or what, but I can't get below like 2.4 seconds. I've started practicing with a moon clip loaded with 2 rounds in the gun (dummies) and 6 empties and ejecting it to work on my technique. A lot of times in live fire the moon would just sit there on the side of the gun right in the way of where I needed to be. It's nice with the aluminum cases I'm using and a mostly empty moon clip I don't have to worry about it hitting the floor too hard.

 

Gonna work on draws, transitions, and reloads as much as I can today. Tried to make it to the range the other night but there were 50 cars there and they had some event going on. Roads are shit today so I'll have to wait until later in the week to try again. Also maybe Friday, my friend wants me to help him out, maybe set up some stages.

 

Possible second USPSA match on Sunday depending on the weather. I think it has to be above 30, and the weatherpeople are calling for 29 degrees.

 

I don't feel like I've been getting very many tangible results lately. Just sort of floundering and still trying to figure shit out.

 

My index is weird, and when I get back on the gun after a reload my thumb wants to index off of the cylinder release and boy is it smarts when I pull the trigger in live fire. Thinking about switching out the Hogue and welding up a stock release because it doesn't stick back as far. With me being so high on the gun I don't need the added length that the Hogue provides. But the stock release is so flat that I'd have to modify it somehow.

 

Tax return just came in so I ordered 10k bullets. Have maybe 600 left which should last me a week or two.

Loading with the 1050 is such a breeze. So easy, and fast! It's still a bit finicky but it's a lot easier on my arm than the 550 when it comes to priming.

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ok, before I forget. 

 

work on headshots at 10 yards and longer

 

get a higher front sight

 

work on manipulating the gun with the left hand while reloading and running in every direction possible. hella awkward in certain directions and weak hand reload just isn’t great. 

 

work on turn-n-draws

 

meditate and work on relaxing.

 

keep working on reloads

 

-something for the future: aggressive wide transitions

hop steps

more aggressive everything

looking cooler

 

 

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Phew, ok.

 

Second USPSA match is in the books.

 

First stage came on strong. Everything was pretty solid but I wasn't seeing the sights as well as I wanted. Ended up 3rd overall for that stage. Took a breather and got ready for stage 2.

 

Second stage I was on fire. Called all the shots, shot only as fast as I could see and eased into the trigger on the long hard ones. But then running from right to left I didn't want to break the 180 so I changed my reloading tactic and used my left hand to put the moon clip in. I hadn't checked my yoke screw in a few hundred rounds and when the moon clip landed home, the momentum (and the extra pressure from me slamming it, ham-handedly) ripped the cylinder and yoke right out of the frame. It landed with a "tink" on the floor. I was mortified.

 

Went and fixed the pistol but I was still shaken up, and shot horribly my next time around, placing 11th overall for that stage. 2 Ds. Same target arrays as the first stage but they moved the walls around so the shots didn't get any harder, just had to move differently. I felt like I was in a fog.

 

Classifier/stage 3. I haven't been working on turn and draws lately. Last time I did I worked on them until I was dizzy and not sure I really gained much. 10 yard targets and basically only working with head shots. My front sight is too low and I still haven't bothered to get a correct height one, or get a lower rear sight yet. CM 09-14 Eye of the Tiger. Missed both shots on the middle target completely. Should've made them up, couldn't have made it any worse. Dead last place overall for that stage, and a hit factor of 0. I was crushed.

 

Having not really seen anyone else's hit factors besides the one guy I was shooting with, I thought I was doing pretty poorly, but I ended up winning revo division and beating a B class shooter for the match. 9th overall and 70% of a Master open shooter. Not bad but lots of screw ups and lots to work on. It's going to be a different story when we go outside for long field courses.

 

Now I need to figure out a way to work on headshots, but the indoor range I go to I clip the heads into hanging target holders so that won't work. Also going to order a front sight right now.

 

MWP being the great mentor has showed me a trick by marking the frame where the screws go so I can tell if they've moved at all. Going to have to keep my eye on them.

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On 2/7/2018 at 8:21 AM, swordfish said:

Sub 2 second reload in dryfire, but live fire is a totally different animal. I dunno if I'm just psyching myself out or what, but I can't get below like 2.4 seconds. I've started practicing with a moon clip loaded with 2 rounds in the gun (dummies) and 6 empties and ejecting it to work on my technique. A lot of times in live fire the moon would just sit there on the side of the gun right in the way of where I needed to be. It's nice with the aluminum cases I'm using and a mostly empty moon clip I don't have to worry about it hitting the floor too hard.

 

Late in 2016 I decided I was going to make GM and ended up getting it done by August of 2017.  I shot my first USPSA classifier on 9/3/16 and made GM on 8/5/17.  One of the key points for me to improve was related to your statement "live fire is a totally different animal".  I used to rely solely on live fire because I didn't think dry fire was very useful.  Once I was able to treat both equally, it became a lot easier to progress.  My best advice is to start dry firing at the range in between live fire drills.  Then test yourself by loading only 2 or 3 rounds in an 8 round moonclip.  Space them out and don't look when you close the cylinder.  If your "shots" on an empty chamber are not consistent with live rounds, you'll know something isn't right.  This can be very helpful in your training.  It's a lot easier to practice anytime you want if you don't need to fire live ammo.  I went so far as to start treating each practice session, in either dry fire or live fire, as a match.  Do the full sequence of range commands and take short breaks in between drills.  You also made a comment about your skills cold versus warm.  If you can replicate match situations in practice, the difference between warm and cold scores will become very small.  

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10 hours ago, Alaskan454 said:

Late in 2016 I decided I was going to make GM and ended up getting it done by August of 2017.  I shot my first USPSA classifier on 9/3/16 and made GM on 8/5/17.  One of the key points for me to improve was related to your statement "live fire is a totally different animal".  I used to rely solely on live fire because I didn't think dry fire was very useful.  Once I was able to treat both equally, it became a lot easier to progress.  My best advice is to start dry firing at the range in between live fire drills.  Then test yourself by loading only 2 or 3 rounds in an 8 round moonclip.  Space them out and don't look when you close the cylinder.  If your "shots" on an empty chamber are not consistent with live rounds, you'll know something isn't right.  This can be very helpful in your training.  It's a lot easier to practice anytime you want if you don't need to fire live ammo.  I went so far as to start treating each practice session, in either dry fire or live fire, as a match.  Do the full sequence of range commands and take short breaks in between drills.  You also made a comment about your skills cold versus warm.  If you can replicate match situations in practice, the difference between warm and cold scores will become very small.  

:D Thanks for the tips! I'll have to try it out. Right now I use live fire to confirm my dry fire practice, but I'm only making it to the range twice a week because of my work schedule. Right now most of the practice is dry. But already I do a couple slow warmup dryfires before a drill just to solidify it, sort of how I practice gripping the pistol, or on the "make ready" command I practice drawing and get a few clicks in, then do a speed reload to ready the gun, bring it back up to find my sights before I holster. Just one more rep. Then move my hands to the gun a couple times to further reinforce and make sure I know where it is. Then the beep goes off and I shoot only as fast as I can see the front sight.

Do you think randomly staggered rounds helps? I'm not necessarily worried about flinch (fixed that problem with tons of dryfire and doubling up on hearing protection) but... Well I dunno. I've never tried it. It just seems weird. Although with dryfire I don't always grip the gun as hard as I should, but lately I've been really working on it and my split times have halved (but not at the cost of accuracy).

 

With simulating match situations, it sort of works, but I can't duplicate the stress. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing because when I get up to the line I feed off of it. I guess I could try to hop myself up on caffeine or something lol. But really yeah I write down the cold times and hits, then work until I can either see a little better or the times come down or I figure out what was wrong with my technique. Then I move on to something else and maybe at another range session I'll come back to the same thing if I haven't gotten to where I wanna be. Right now with the revo I'm really not where I want to be at all but I need to practice a lot of different things because I'm basically good at none of them. Headshots are gonna be key but I REALLY need to live fire weak hand. Haven't experienced this in a match yet and I know it's coming up. Hell I barely even dry fire weak hand. But I did work on technique of changing hands the other day and it seems safe and reasonably consistent. Not really fast but whatever, I'm mostly worried about getting a solid grip on the gun more than anything. I think hits are more important than speed with weak hand.

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16 hours ago, swordfish said:

:D Thanks for the tips! I'll have to try it out. Right now I use live fire to confirm my dry fire practice, but I'm only making it to the range twice a week because of my work schedule. Right now most of the practice is dry. But already I do a couple slow warmup dryfires before a drill just to solidify it, sort of how I practice gripping the pistol, or on the "make ready" command I practice drawing and get a few clicks in, then do a speed reload to ready the gun, bring it back up to find my sights before I holster. Just one more rep. Then move my hands to the gun a couple times to further reinforce and make sure I know where it is. Then the beep goes off and I shoot only as fast as I can see the front sight.

Do you think randomly staggered rounds helps? I'm not necessarily worried about flinch (fixed that problem with tons of dryfire and doubling up on hearing protection) but... Well I dunno. I've never tried it. It just seems weird. Although with dryfire I don't always grip the gun as hard as I should, but lately I've been really working on it and my split times have halved (but not at the cost of accuracy).

 

With simulating match situations, it sort of works, but I can't duplicate the stress. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing because when I get up to the line I feed off of it. I guess I could try to hop myself up on caffeine or something lol. But really yeah I write down the cold times and hits, then work until I can either see a little better or the times come down or I figure out what was wrong with my technique. Then I move on to something else and maybe at another range session I'll come back to the same thing if I haven't gotten to where I wanna be. Right now with the revo I'm really not where I want to be at all but I need to practice a lot of different things because I'm basically good at none of them. Headshots are gonna be key but I REALLY need to live fire weak hand. Haven't experienced this in a match yet and I know it's coming up. Hell I barely even dry fire weak hand. But I did work on technique of changing hands the other day and it seems safe and reasonably consistent. Not really fast but whatever, I'm mostly worried about getting a solid grip on the gun more than anything. I think hits are more important than speed with weak hand.

 

I would say randomly staggered rounds can be very beneficial to determine if your dry runs are representative of live ones.  Next time you practice, do something standard like El Prez and run it a few different ways.  Do one run with no live ammo in the gun, one run with only live ammo, and one with  2-3 rounds randomly spaced in your moonclip.  Best case scenario, your runs will be about the same in accuracy and time.  If they aren't, you are doing something different.

 

As for simulating the "match environment" during practice, this is most useful as a benchmark  to compare your cold skill set.  If you are struggling with a particular skill, by all means put some dedicated practice into it.  However, if you just did 50 practice reloads and are hitting a particular time, don't expect to do the same cold.  I kept a log of certain drills that were easy to set-up and would run them all once at the beginning, and once at the end of a session.  I eventually got to a point where the cold run could sometimes be faster than the final run.

 

Furthermore, it's not a bad idea to pick goals you don't think you can achieve.  My old range put a 10" steel plate at 100 yards on our sight in bay.  My first moonclip of the day was usually at this plate in slow fire.  When I first started I was lucky to hit 1 or 2.  After a while, I was able to hit 4 out of 8 cold on average.  It's good to have different metrics that provide insight on where you are improving, and where you aren't.

 

 

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Bombed 2 classifiers in the past week. Had to do a few things at matches I've never practiced in dryfire or live fire, so I get to incorporate those. 1: Hands all the way up elbows locked, and 2: weak hand. I mean ok maybe I've practiced weak hand dry fire once for a couple shots. But the next range session I'll probably work on 100 shots weak hand only, and try out some classifiers weak handed, and work on weak hand transitions between targets.

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Shot an indoor match Sunday. Didn't shoot as well as I wanted to, but not really sure why. Maybe I wasn't relaxed or something. Ran into an 8 shot array, hit a no shoot, started to move towards the next position, somehow inexplicably turned around and went back, made the shot up to get an A, then ran to the next position that was a 6 shot array. Not very smart honestly, probably lost HF more than I gained making the A.
 

Next stage started out hot hot hot, but I got stopped cause my buddy got in the way of the RO and the rangemaster started yelling stop. Could barely hear him. Freaked me the hell out, I didn't know what was going on. It was kind of a weird transition because of how I'm loading and which way I'm running and how I have to hold the gun, and my first thought was "oh, I just got a DQ, I broke the 180 or something." But no, wasn't me. Totally bombed the reshoot because I was at the end of the order, and had to hurry and get my stuff. Also skipped over (short stroked) a cylinder and took a miss, but in hindsight since it was at the 2nd target in an array, it would've only taken half a second to get back to the same cylinder I missed. Ended up with a dismal 2.0HF, and clipped a barrel so the ricochet/passthrough didn't count and I got another mike.

 

Classifier, I vowed to settle down and burn it down. 13-02, Down the Middle. Then I came to my senses and vowed only to shoot as fast as I could see. Went to the safe area and practiced drawing and getting a sight picture and trying to relax my body but squeeze as tight as I could with my hands. Then went to the range and practiced moving my hand to my gun as fast as I could while staying relaxed. When I got up to shoot, at the "Make Ready" I did the same thing, relaxed, moved my hands as fast as I could, drew the gun and dry fired the course once before loading. Called a couple mikes because of the hard cover.

 

3.38 seconds after the beep, it was over. 7As, 1C. 11.2HF, 99.7% 3rd fastest, but 2nd for points against a GM and M open shooters. Everyone except me and my buddy shot it backwards too. They all thought to start at the big close target and somehow slow down as they went. Or just go full bore and get a bunch of mikes. Plus most shooters were right handed so they were working against the recoil moving the gun right to left. Oh well. Now if I can just stay consistent. Also I noticed there were no no-shoot targets in the classifier so I wasn't worried as much about going fast. Not that it matters, there were a lot of mikes with the hard targets. But psychologically it seems to make a difference. I'm going to put more no-shoots in my practice instead of just drawing a line for where I want to hit.

 

Also started practicing running around in different directions while trying to load the pistol, or at least keep it pointed in the right direction. I don't think I came close to breaking the 180 but I solidly remember one instance where I slowed way down on my way out of a position just to make sure. I've never practiced running in weird directions in dry fire, and doing it the first time in live fire made me pretty nervous. Just one more thing to incorporate. But also I want to up my dryfire/livefire game and get ahead of the curve instead of waiting for the next match to see what I will need to work on. But at the same time, it's hard to know what I'm going to need until I need it.

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Shot my first "classic" targets today. HF seemed ok, almost kept up with some Limited B guys. But I shot too many As. Need to go faster, I think. More Cs. That'll be my goal for next match. Way more Cs.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Shot an indoor match Saturday and an outdoor on Sunday. No one showed up to the indoor so I took 6th overall. Thought I shot pretty well besides. Outdoor match I took 31st out of 67. Shot 4 of the 5 pretty well or so I thought, 5th stage I shot a barrel, heard it, but didn't have time for a reload. But after I left that position to run around to the other side of the stage I had 2 shots left in my clip I could have utilized instead of getting the mike. But by that time I had mentally moved on and totally didn't think of it until after I was done.

 

Stage 4 I found a workaround that allowed me to shoot the whole stage from one spot that no one else in the squad had seen. Initially there was supposed to be moving no shoot targets but it was 20 degrees and the activator had frozen solid to the ground. The targets were so close and it was just standing reloads so I blazed through it. Everyone cheered and clapped at the end of my run. I ended up 34th on that stage.

 

Man, shooting revolver is really disheartening.

 

There was a B revo guy there that ended up DQing himself on his last stage. He got a screenshot of his stats from the MD and it looks like he got me by 12 match points from the 4 stages we did together. The stage he didn't complete was the one where I had 2 mikes, so he probably would've edged me out for the match.

 

It was kind of weird to see a facebook post for the match and being tagged as "top revolver." I don't feel like I won anything though.

 

 

Anyway, more weak hand work this week, and my new Protocall Design front sight comes in today. Had 2 mikes on weak hand string of El Strong and Weak Prez, but still managed a C class finish. Been hitting the gym and lifting 4 times a week, but I need to start doing cardio and eating better.

One time I will put up for today. Dry fire, 10yd simulated head shot start, at beep reload, weak hand back to head without pulling the trigger is 2.80 but I only nail it if it goes perfect.

 

Also I need to chamfer my cylinders more. got really aggressive on my friend's gun and I love how it turned out. But the titanium is just so freaking hard to cut with the tool.

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Pinched a nerve while lifting the other day, thought I had injured my hand somehow. Went to the range anyway last night to adjust elevation because I bought a new front sight from Protocall Design (good stuff btw.) I had taken ammo with me and prepared everything the night before, but decided to scrap my original range plan (because of my hand) and shoot weak hand only instead. Shot a little over 200 rounds, worked on target to target transitions with weak hand only, and also a particularly tricky reload while running up range.

 

By the end of the 200 rounds I am feeling really confident in my ability to shoot weakhand now. Going to take a lot more practice, but I think I'll try to do at least 200 rounds every other week, so basically 1/4 of my practice. I need to work on strong-hand only also, but that doesn't need nearly as much work. Also I've learned I shoot my revolver weak handed much better than one of my carry guns weak handed, even though the Shield has a 4lbs trigger.

 

all in all a pretty productive range session. But I need to get some .357 diameter bullets to test out because the 9mm bullets don't have that great of accuracy even at 10yards. Kind of pissed at Smith and Wesson for making a "9mm" gun but the barrel and throats for the cylinders are more .38/.357 caliber. But that's basically Smith and Wesson nowadays, and they're the only game in town. Oh well.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Waiting for some clubs to send in payment for my classifier scores, and then the classification system to run. Depending on who gets their money in first and how often the system is updated, I've made it to A class as my initial USPSA ranking. There is a classifier match this weekend I'd really like to go to, but if I bomb any of them because of the cold and rain, I'll have set myself back, so maybe I won't go.

Running drills in Ben Stoeger's Skills and Drills book, definitely made progress in one range session. Set up a 25 yard target for group shooting, draw +2 shots, and a 25yard bill drill. Finally learning how to pull the trigger. Next up is some 50 yard stuff and The Dots drill. I already do Dot Torture but The Dots seems more tuned for consistency. I just need to find the time to practice everything I want

Oh yeah, shot an indoor match Sunday because it's still stupid cold in Ohio. Got 1 stage win, 76% on a classifier, and 2nd overall. Only shot against C class open guys and like 2 B guys though. I'll still take it.

Edited by swordfish
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Sounds like you're making some good progress.  Here's a few thoughts:

 

For bullets I've had great luck with the Blue Bullets 147gr RN in my 929.  As you mentioned the cylinder throats are .357 and the barrel is between 0.356-0.357.  For whatever reason the standard 0.355 size shoots well out to 100 yards in my gun.  I've shot several cases of them and have zero issues with fouling or accuracy.  They do offer a .356 version of the same bullet in the special order section.  I just got some in but haven't had a chance to load and test them yet.  Should perform better than the .355 in theory.

 

13-02 is hard for some people.  The best way to shoot it is far to near, but many shooters go way too fast and pick up Mikes.  On those classifiers with 8 or less shots, one Mike can be the different between 100% and 60%.  Sounds like you shot it very well, nice job.

 

WHO is fun to learn with the revolver, sounds like you've got it figured out though.  I used to run drills where I swapped between WHO, SHO, and freestyle after each reload.  It helped to get comfortable switching back and forth on the clock.

 

"Shot my first "classic" targets today. HF seemed ok, almost kept up with some Limited B guys. But I shot too many As. Need to go faster, I think. More Cs. That'll be my goal for next match. Way more Cs." 

 

You can never shoot too many As.  In the HF scoring method you can shoot  67% slower hitting all Alphas compared to all Charlies to get the same score.  I remember one match where everything felt slow as molasses, but I ended up getting 97% of possible points on target.  When looking at video afterwards I was shooting much faster than I thought during the runs.  Perception of time is quite hard to judge when the timer goes off.  Last weekend I went all Ricky Bobby on some targets and only shot 86% of possible points for the match.  It was definitely a reminder that I need to practice and find that balance again.  I try to get around 95% if I can, that seems to give me the highest HF overall.

 

If you're starting to toss some 50 yard targets in the mix, I'd suggest staggering a few random ones around at 7, 15, 25, and 50 yards.  Put a few inline and some with wide transitions. 

 

 

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On 4/10/2018 at 1:00 PM, Alaskan454 said:

Sounds like you're making some good progress.  Here's a few thoughts:

 

For bullets I've had great luck with the Blue Bullets 147gr RN in my 929.  As you mentioned the cylinder throats are .357 and the barrel is between 0.356-0.357.  For whatever reason the standard 0.355 size shoots well out to 100 yards in my gun.  I've shot several cases of them and have zero issues with fouling or accuracy.  They do offer a .356 version of the same bullet in the special order section.  I just got some in but haven't had a chance to load and test them yet.  Should perform better than the .355 in theory.

 

13-02 is hard for some people.  The best way to shoot it is far to near, but many shooters go way too fast and pick up Mikes.  On those classifiers with 8 or less shots, one Mike can be the different between 100% and 60%.  Sounds like you shot it very well, nice job.

 

WHO is fun to learn with the revolver, sounds like you've got it figured out though.  I used to run drills where I swapped between WHO, SHO, and freestyle after each reload.  It helped to get comfortable switching back and forth on the clock.

 

"Shot my first "classic" targets today. HF seemed ok, almost kept up with some Limited B guys. But I shot too many As. Need to go faster, I think. More Cs. That'll be my goal for next match. Way more Cs." 

 

You can never shoot too many As.  In the HF scoring method you can shoot  67% slower hitting all Alphas compared to all Charlies to get the same score.  I remember one match where everything felt slow as molasses, but I ended up getting 97% of possible points on target.  When looking at video afterwards I was shooting much faster than I thought during the runs.  Perception of time is quite hard to judge when the timer goes off.  Last weekend I went all Ricky Bobby on some targets and only shot 86% of possible points for the match.  It was definitely a reminder that I need to practice and find that balance again.  I try to get around 95% if I can, that seems to give me the highest HF overall.

 

If you're starting to toss some 50 yard targets in the mix, I'd suggest staggering a few random ones around at 7, 15, 25, and 50 yards.  Put a few inline and some with wide transitions. 

 

 

awesome thanks

 

For big matches, I'm using the Blue Bullets 150gr .358 bullets, and dropping .3gr of powder and getting incredibly tight groups at 25 yards with almost identical velocity/point of impact as the .355. Like 4 in 1 hole. But for practice and smaller matches the .355 are still very adequate. But I think I might keep a few spare clips worth of .358 if I have to make any distance shots at an outdoor match.

My throats are .359 and after slugging the barrel, the groove diameter is .358 at the widest part.

 

On my M&P9 I'm running an Apex barrel and the .355 bullets are accurate out to 200yards on 12" steel. But the barrel is .355 too.

Not ALL charlies, but more than 5 a match. Shooting all As is just way too slow. No revolver guys to compare myself to, so I try to keep up with A/M/GM production guys for now, or at least use them as a benchmark of how I should be shooting.

 

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