From humble beginnings - Learning this "action pistol" thing

[jmtyndall]

12 hours ago, AlphaCharis said:

Hey!  A local!  I shoot at PB as well.  We may have met but I'm really bad with names and faces, especially when people are in their range gear - so if we already met... or talked at the match...  sorry - takes a few times lol  Paul Bunyan is mostly my home range (along with Jefferson) even though it's an hour 15 minutes away for me.  I shoot at Jefferson, Renton, Marysville, Custer as well for USPSA.  Only shot a few IDPA matches, though.  Nice to see you go all in and dryfiring and getting some livefire in!  We have a lot of people in our area that practice, I know you've met a bunch of them already.    You're doing very well for just starting out, welcome!

I just read through some of your range diary and watched some videos. Nice shooting! But I don't think we've met yet. I've definitely met a few of the high-ranked open shooters and even briefly talked to Hwansik Kim at the last Custer match, but I didn't get a chance to shoot with him. Hopefully as I get a few more matches under my belt I'll get to know more of the local regulars. I like having a high-bar to measure myself against.

 

Speaking of high-bars, I just realized I'm signed up for a sectional match that's only a month away! And I have a new gun to work up a load for, get sighted in and load a bunch of ammo for. Can't let that fall through the cracks.

[jmtyndall]

Spent last night modifying my magazine pouches to fit the Q5 mags. Also got the BOSS hanger all setup for the Q5. So far so good. Got a dry fire session in today. Definitely a bit of adjustment to get a consistent grip but draws went about as good as they have been with the M&P.

Then came reloads. I have heard some rumors that the Q5 magwell was not good so I was a little apprehensive about this. Turns out...the magwell is way better than my M&P! Had much better success today than I have in the past with reloads.

Another note is that I like the slightly wider front sight. I think it's easier to keep centered in the notch than the super thin front on the M&P. I think overall I'm going to like this gun a lot more.

Side note, I think I'm going to try and buy or borrow a red dot and try the whole carry optics thing. Might be too late to change my division for the major matches this year but I just have to scratch the itch and find out of the red-dot hi-cap division is the one for me

[jmtyndall]

Finally got back out to the range. It's been a while, but with a new gun and a major match coming up I had to get it sighted in and dial in my loads.

 

The good; I like the new gun and it shoots dead on. I got a load worked out.

 

The bad; It was a cloudy day and my inability to get a sharp focus on the front sight reared it's ugly head. I shot several 10 shot groups in the 1.1-1.5" range at the 10 yard line before heading to the 25 yard line, where my inability to focus had me shooting 6-8" groups. I want to keep working on this some more and see if I can resolve the issue, but it just might be a fact that my eyes are always going to have trouble picking up a hard front sight focus. Just ordered a Vortex Venom to try out, maybe CO is a better division for me. 

 

I have my first major match in about 2 weeks so it's not the time to go trying out a whole new division, but I might bolt it on after that match and see if optics are any better for me.

[jmtyndall]

With the move going on I haven't been able to go out to the range or get a real dry-fire session in. I was able to get out to a Tuesday night match at the range that's near my house. Overall it went okay, but I could definitely have done better. 

 

Time-wise I was 12 seconds off the production winner, and 10 seconds of that was on the first stage. I showed up a bit late and ended up being first to shoot. First stage was an unloaded table start with a large shooting area. Targets on each side and some in the middle. I loaded and shot from the start position but it became clear to me afterwards that the right stage-plan was to load while moving all the way to one side then reload, stop in the middle to engage targets before moving to the last position.

 

Then on the classifier I rushed the transition to the last target and shot 2 mikes on a 15 yard open target. There's absolutely no reason I shouldn't have been able to shoot at least charlies on that. What should have been about a 60% classifier ended up as a zero. 

 

Overall 3rd/5th in Production. Just over 1 week until the sectional match. Won't be making any big gains but I'm going to try to work on my grip consistency during the draw and target transitions in dry fire until then.

[bimmer1980]

To me it looks like you get really good. Some stages look really solid.  

[jmtyndall]

To me it looks like you get really good. Some stages look really solid.  

Thanks for the kind words. I'm having a lot of fun and feeling really motivated. I'm hard on myself and pick my shooting apart but there's clearly a lot of stuff I'm doing pretty okay at considering I'm 5% away from B class and generally beating other C-class shooters at matches.

That said I know that the only way I'm going to improve is by identifying and targeting things I'm not good at.