Steve’s practical shooting journey

[Sdlrodeo]

Or should I say “slog up the ever steepening ladder of doom, despair, and distraction?!?!”

 

I’m actually fairly positive minded really, i just let life get in the way now and then. I’ve been at this game for a while now. Started in IDPA around 2002. Dabbled in USPsA around 2009 amongst other hobbies. Started getting back into USPSA around 2013(?) and really started making a go at it in the last year and a half or so. Mix in Marriage, two kids and two cross country moves and here I am 83.9% in Production and just “auto” classified as B in LTD (74.3%), PCC (65.1%), and CO (60.3%). 

 

My my goal is to win my class advancement, or at least win my class and division at a major, before moving up. 

 

I’m planning on shooting all 9 days of Nationals as long as I can get slots. So we’ll see how it goes June 1st. 

[Sdlrodeo]

First training scenario: shuffle step drill. 

 

Shooting CO 

 

I made a ‘wall’ three metric targets wide about 15 yds away from two metric targets about 5yds apart. Drill: start standing with hands on center wall target. On signal draw and fire two on right target from right of wall then move to left of wall and fire two on left target. My average for all As is about 3.4sec. That’s 4 shots at 15 yds with two movements. No matter what I did I couldn’t get faster with all As. If I dropped a C I could do it in about 3.2. 

 

How is does that seem? 

Edited May 1, 2018 by Sdlrodeo
Clarified that I’m shooting CO

[Hi-Power Jack]

I doubt that I could do it that quickly, but I'd guess that anyone at 84% might be expected

to do it a little quicker ??    Best I ever got was 63%, and that was 3-4 years ago, and I

haven't done an awful lot of shooting since then.

 

Tough to say, without actually trying it for myself    

Edited May 1, 2018 by Hi-Power Jack

[Sdlrodeo]

I clarified my post to indicate that I was doing the drill shooting CO. I should note my classifiers are in the 60% range for CO. 

 

I’m high A in PROD. 

 

Therefore I would think that I could do it faster with a dot! But the clock don’t lie. 

[Sdlrodeo]

Ok, First real range day with the Atlas Titan after doing a few hours of dryfire the previous days.

 

I spent a while doing chrono work. I’ve got a few hundred each of several different types of .40 so I wanted to find out which worked well. 

I don’t have my data handy but I may post at a later time. 

The other thing I did was bring a few recoil springs to see which would work better for different PF ranges. After testing a few, I settled on a 15 lb spring. It seemed to do well with all the factory ammo (180PF and up) I had on hand but a 14 lb spring worked better for the lower major PF ammo such as Atlanta Arms 180 (avg 173-175 PF if I remember right). I did notice a significant difference between the reduced lead and regular version of the Winchester Ranger FMJ 180. The reduced lead ammo was around 173-175 PF! So I’ll keep that for club matches I guess.

 

Also, I did some drills.

All were at about 13 yds from the same shooting position to the same single target (easier to pick up brass that way)

Draw and 1 - Avg 1.3, Fastest .83, slowest 1.67

Splits (2 from aimed in) - .19 avg, fastest .16, slowest .22

Draw and 2 - avg 1.6, fastest 1.19, slowest 1.9

 

out of 120 rounds or so I had 2Ds, 19Cs, and the rest were As. 

 

My goals for this range session were to decide on a type of ammo for club matches and Majors. Get some time behind the gun for familiarization. (Prior to this I’d only shot 200 rounds out of it). I’ve got to say I was being extremely conservative. I was DQ’d from my last major for an AD (in another thread on the forum) and that got in my head a bit. Add to that going from a really decent SA trigger on my CZ to the AWESOME SA trigger on the Atlas and I was a tad phsyched out. Trying to work through that while being safe.

 

So goals were met. I have ammo I can use for practice, club, and major matches. 

Atlanta Arms - Majors

Win Rang reduced lead - Club

everything else - practice 

And I did some drills.

 

I’ve got the conversion kit, tool head, dies, etc for the 650 so as soon as I have enough brass I’ll start reloading but that’s for another time.

 

It’s going to take quite a bit of dry firing to get comfortable with the jump from the slightly heavy CZ SP-01 to the REALLY heavy Titan. That and going from DA/SA of the shadow to the absolutely awesome SA on the Titan is going to take some getting used to. I should also add that I’m currently using a LimCat speed holster but I’ve got a Red Hill Tactical scabbard holster on the way. That should give me a lot more confidence in my draw speed since I’m nervous about the ‘trigger guard only’ holster.

 

Ended up shooting about 500 rounds without a single hiccup. All I did was spray a little rem-lube mid session. And not one single ‘AD’ with the new trigger.

 

Oh, and I will never need progrip with that PT Evo steel grip. Holy schamoly!

Edited May 13, 2018 by Sdlrodeo

[Sdlrodeo]

Ok, Yeah, I’ve been very neglectful on this. Again, Life has sort of gotten in the way but its been for good reason. I got a temporary assignment at work that got me home every night but I stopped having days off during the week. So when I’m home, so is the family. This has been awesome but has reduced my range time.

 

Shot the Titan at a club match recently with the .357 Sig and had quite a few FTFs and failure to Detonate as well. I contribute the former to tarnished shells (tumbled, but still a little dirty) and that the mags were quickly out of spec. Maybe due to trying to experiment with 21 rounds and thus overstuffing them? The ammo is pretty old and I don’t know how it was stored (in a way that the brass tarnished?) so I think that is the driving factor for the lack of detonation. About 10-15 in the batch of about 800 rounds.

 

So Lesson learned: Use only good ammo for ANY Match, club or otherwise. Save the cheap old stuff for practice.

 

Still I felt more confident with the RHT scabbard holster than I did with the LimCat speed holster.

 

Did a bit of dryfire practice and then headed to the range this week. Ended up using up all of that bad ammo at the range the other day.

Did a few ‘20 Alpha’ Drills at 10, 15, and 20 yds and ran my makeshift plate rack.

 

Got my draws down to an average 1.1 out of the RHT with a best of about .96. Played with recoil springs a little. Got it so that I could really shoot fast with the gun returning to zero pretty well. I could easily get 2 hits on an 8” plate at 15 yds with about a .18-.2 split. So that felt good. To accomplish this I’ve settled on a 13 lb for lighter PF loads such as the practice .357 and Syntech 205 .40 and I’m going to run a 16-17 for any factory ammo.

 

NOTE: I bought one of the recoil spring testers from Brownells. Great purchase although it may be had for less money if you cobble it together yourself. I discovered that MANY of my recoil springs were off by at least 1/2-1 full pound with some even more out of spec than that. And these were ‘new’ springs. 

 

It was a great range day.