Trial by fire

[G-ManBart]

I had something interesting happen at the match today. It was my first match with the new Open gun and I thought I had it all worked out ahead of time....oh, how we learn. I'd previously found that several of my short mags would occasionally jam the follower if loaded to their max capacity....pretty common...but they all worked 100% loaded one short of that (for some this was 22, others 23 rounds). I'd put probably 1,500 rounds through the gun without a single malfunction. Well, I learned today that if you load those mags one short of capacity and then perform a typical reload during a match, the follower gets pushed down enough as it's seated to jam the follower. Ooops. I was smoking through a stage, hit the reload, take two shots and the gun is totally hung up. Clear it, hit another reload, two shots...hung up again. Third mag worked fine and I finished the stage. Got home and tested the theory and sure enough, they'll all do it if you seat the mag firmly.

The moral here? There is no substitute for shooting matches when you're trying to sort out a new combo. The other thing that it made me think of was that the closer you can make practice to matches, the better it will be for finding these sorts of things. So, it hosed my match but this was the kind of stuff I was looking for since I'm planning on shooting Open at Area 2 .