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Dot drop


Rckymtnshooter

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I've seen people touch on this subject before but it's really starting to frustrate me. I'm working on shooting open and am having a problem with my dot dropping well below my point of aim. At 15 yards aiming center a zone the dot rises slightly then drops to the mid to bottom c zone area before it returns. I don't feel it's anything in the gun set up and it's just me over driving the gun. I've tried to relax more with no improvement and tried to focus on keeping the dot up but that builds excess tension. I've only been shooting about a week with the open gun. Am I missing something or just need to give it more time to adjust. Any suggestions.

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If you are used to a limited gun, you have learned to drive the gun back down to the target. It will take a little time to unlearn that.

You will get a bunch of posts about recoil springs. If the gun is running right, hold off on changing anything.

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I've seen people touch on this subject before but it's really starting to frustrate me. I'm working on shooting open and am having a problem with my dot dropping well below my point of aim. At 15 yards aiming center a zone the dot rises slightly then drops to the mid to bottom c zone area before it returns. I don't feel it's anything in the gun set up and it's just me over driving the gun. I've tried to relax more with no improvement and tried to focus on keeping the dot up but that builds excess tension. I've only been shooting about a week with the open gun. Am I missing something or just need to give it more time to adjust. Any suggestions.

Hand it to another good shooter that runs an open. Ask them if it does it for them... before you go crazy making changes to your grip or running in circles, verify it happens to another shooter. I've had the problem in the past... if it comes back then you can also ignore it. :o

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I had a true world class Limited/L10 shooter shoot my Open gun a couple weeks ago, he is SO dialed in to the recoil of an un-comped 40 that he was convinced my Open gun recoiled down and not up. The dot dropped in recoil for him. He saw what he saw in the dot. The gun recoils UP, but not very hard, and he was pressing it down as it was firing. The amazing part to me is he was shooting under an inch at 15 yards doing that with a gun he had never handled before. It proved to me without a doubt that you can learn to press the gun down as it is firing and more or less hold the gun flat. We have all seen people shoot a Limited gun with very little muzzle rise...

A heavy slide or a heavy recoil spring WILL drive the dot down on slide closing, and with a big steel comp it is even worse. See what shakes out over the next few weeks before making any decisions though. You will need a thousand to a couple thousand rounds to really dial in the timing of an Open gun if you aren't used to it.

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I've shot friends open guns and get the same effect, when they don't, so I'm pretty sure the guns not the problem. I'll keep working on it. I just feel i should be able to tell myself to stop doing this and have it happen. I guess that just shows ya how strong the sub conscious mind is when the couscious can't control it. Thanks for the input.

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Even switching between open guns that aren't all that dissimilar, you can see this effect ;) Some guns do have a tendency to dip when they close, yes - the heavier they are out front, and the heavier they are sprung, the more pronounced the effect tends to be. But.... until you spend a lot of time with a given gun, you can't truly be certain its not your instinctive motion to pull the gun down during/after each shot as part of the recoil management you've set up for the previous pistol you've been shooting and have gotten used to....

Bob has the right idea as to how to fix it - timing drills help. More so, I'm finding that actually just forgetting about "timing" and just shooting the darn thing on some stages or drills will make a difference. When you find you can't adjust to it, or when you've adjusted but it still seems off some, then start adjusting the gun...

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Dave, part of the reason I say timing is I agree with you 100%. I have been playing back and forth between my long slide and short slide open gun. I see a huge difference in them. I have to seriously drive the shorty, when I switch to the long gun the first 100 or so rounds I get dot drop. After that it is all good. Needless to say I am making some seriuos decisions as to what gun to shoot.

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Also keep in mind that the dot dipping in recoil isn't a bad thing. It doesn't matter what your sights do as long as they do the same thing every time. If you want to change it because you just don't like it, that's something else...but don't think you can't still shoot with it.

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Dave, part of the reason I say timing is I agree with you 100%. I have been playing back and forth between my long slide and short slide open gun. I see a huge difference in them. I have to seriously drive the shorty, when I switch to the long gun the first 100 or so rounds I get dot drop. After that it is all good. Needless to say I am making some seriuos decisions as to what gun to shoot.

I had the opportunity to shoot a bunch of Open guns back to back, recently. Let me tell you, I was all over the place with them. One of the 5 was mine, but they were all shot with strange ammo (loaded w/ 4756 rather than my usual 7625), so none of them really felt familiar to me at all. Its funny how you can notice differences between guns, that way. Two of the guns were short guns, my gun was sort of in the middle, being a 5" recoil system, but short comp, and two of them were 5" guns built on different barrels (one was a TruBore based barrel, the other a BarSto w/ a comp on the front). I definitely noticed the shorter guns required more "work" or "muscle" - and the long guns actually flipped more when I put more muscle on them....

I say that to highlight two things - the long guns tended to "dip" for me, to some extent - especially w/ too much muscle on them, but when I focused on shooting them with what felt like no muscle, the were flatter shooting than the others (as evidenced by apparent dot movement, and by apparent flip noticed by an observer). And, secondly, Jake is 100% right - as long as the gun moves consistently, you can shoot it - even when I'd over muscle, and the gun dipped and came back up, I could follow it and shoot accurately with it (though it required conscious adjustment at the time, which was a bit slower...).

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