Short 4-4.5" Vs./ 5-5.5" IPSC Open

[Cal Brady]

After a 20 year absence from IPSC Open, I want to get back in. My favorite gun used to be a short single stack 38 Super on a Commander 1911 frame with a single port comp. With light loads and spring it worked well for Steel Challenge stuff and with a heavier spring and lots of shotgun powder it shot major well as well. I suspect the real reason I liked it is that it fit my small hand.

Now I'm looking at 3.9" and 4.5" smaller 2011 sytle guns. I know, the conventional wisdom is more felt recoil with the sorter setups BUT I was wondering if anyone had shot alot with both a short and a long open gun and what your observations might be. Also interested in any thoughts you have on poppleholes or similar porting holes in the barrel to soften the gun. Does it work ? Is there really only a 20 fps tradeoff with the Brazoz SX/SC ?

Thanks a lot.

This forum is great.

Cal Brady

Astoria, Oregon

[Kingman]

I have a commander and a full size open gun. I am selling my shorty.

I shoot splits about .06 slower and not as confidently with the shorty. Part of what I feel is important is confidence in the gun.

The shorty bucks more and not in quite as predictable of manner. It is flatter, but has a lighter slide and barrel ports, but the recoil bounces the dot a bit more. By bounce I mean not as predictable. After a day of shooting the short gun I have some pain in my hand etc. after 500 rounds or so.

The long gun, softer shooting, after that same 500 I am still ready to shoot it. The dot sort of fuzzes out on this gun. It is flat enough that the dot does not come up and down, it just gets fuzzy where it is. Overall for me a better choice.

[Cal Brady]

I have a commander and a full size open gun. I am selling my shorty.

I shoot splits about .06 slower and not as confidently with the shorty. Part of what I feel is important is confidence in the gun.

The shorty bucks more and not in quite as predictable of manner. It is flatter, but has a lighter slide and barrel ports, but the recoil bounces the dot a bit more. By bounce I mean not as predictable. After a day of shooting the short gun I have some pain in my hand etc. after 500 rounds or so.

The long gun, softer shooting, after that same 500 I am still ready to shoot it. The dot sort of fuzzes out on this gun. It is flat enough that the dot does not come up and down, it just gets fuzzy where it is. Overall for me a better choice.

Thanks, that's the type of input I was seeking. Way back when.....I got out of IPSC Open before red dots came around and I do worry about the dot image bouncing around no matter what barrel length I wind up using.. I hear that getting use to the dot takes some time and the less it is moving on me the better. Use to smoke the living daylights out of the of the siights and chant

"front sight" till the buzzer went off. Nice sight picture for the first shot and after that I think it was more muscle memory than anything else for the 2nd tap but I did hit what I was aiming at and very quickly.

Tell you the truth, except for those 25 yard shots, this C More thing is a little intimidating to an old timer IPSC dude like me.

Cal

[HSMITH]

Cal, drag out whatever you have now and shoot a few matches, while doing that ask the Open shooters if you can try their guns out. See what it looks like for YOU. There is a local high Master class shooter, his gun is heavy, INCREDIBLY loud, and I can't see what the dot does when I shoot it, but it works for him and it works VERY well. My gun is a lot lighter, the dot goes up and comes right back down, and it works a lot better for me.

I don't care for the pop holes, they don't add anything positive for ME. To me they add noise and more powder burned, but I am one of the guys that going absolutely flat out as fast as I can shoot will be shooting .18 splits on a great day and .21-.22 splits on most days. The dot has gone up, come down and settled long before I am able to press the trigger again. Pop holes or a flatter shooting gun present no advantage at all for me. For someone like Kingman that can shoot splits in the .12 range or even faster every day on demand a flatter shooting gun will make more of an impact.

Fit the gun to what YOU need, not the other way around.

[ipscbob]

I have a backup gun that had popple/barrel holes when it was built. The holes have since been removed and the gun shoots just as flat as before without all of the blast from the holes.

[CenTX]

Welcome back, I took a 20 + year rest from the game and besides the variety of classes, the thing I noticed is that there are a lot more fast shooters now than in the early 80s, of couse it may just be that I am much slower.

I am on my second Open gun the first was a 5" barrel and the second is a 4.5". I shoot my 4.5" gun better than my old 5". Being a C shooter I may not have the ability to tell exactly what is going on, but this is what I think. My 4.5" gun is built from a 5" gun, has a 5" gun recoil system and so feels very much like a 5" gun.

The dot moves differently with different powders, loads and bullets, try some different loads to "tune" the dot to what you like. It would be nice if the dot didn't move at all, but as long as it easily stays on the glass, moves straight up and down, moves consistently and returns to the exact same spot on the target without "dot dip", I'm satisfied.

Learning to draw to the dot is pretty easy, be sure to practice things like finding it strong hand, weak hand etc., those is harder to learn.

Good luck.

[XRe]

Realize that there's a lot of individual differences between so-called "short" and "long" guns. I've shot several different configurations of "short" gun, and they all handle differently. The biggest effects seem to come from a shorter recoil system, and overall weight in the system. The lighter/shorter the gun gets, the more quickly it moves - at some point, it may appear to become more quick than you can follow, and depending upon how the recoil impulse and concussion are experienced, you might begin to term it as "violent". The comp and port setups on the guns will have some mitigating effect, as will the recoil and main springs and the cut on the firing pin stop where it engages the hammer. All of that together determines how the gun shoots.

In general, my experience has been that guns built on shorter recoil systems require more muscle and effort from the shooter in order to perceive them as cycling consistently (ie, ideally, the dot moves straight up and down). The recoil impulse (ie, the time it takes for the gun to appear to go off, and then be ready to fire again) appears quicker - which can lead to sense of it being harsher, depending on what you're accustomed to. However, for many GM/M/A level shooters, that "snappiness" is a desirable thing - once mastered, the gun can be driven and shot faster for those folks than other guns. One shooter on this forum chose the short platform because he had to pay more attention to it - he couldn't get lazy about shooting the gun - and that resulted in better scores for him.

On the flip side, the longer recoil system guns tend to be a bit more smooth feeling, to me - again, this depends upon the full system in play (per my first paragraph above). I tend to "feel" the gun move more distinctly, in that I can feel the slide throughout its movement, unlocking, hitting the rear of travel, stripping the next round, and then locking up. The gun still cycles very fast, but does not appear to be anywhere near as quick or snappy as the short recoil system gun. I have found that the longer recoil system guns with appropriate compensator/port configs tend to be the flattest shooting guns, for me (the tradeoff being that more of the felt recoil is in the palm, vs. the flip). Importantly, for B or lower shooters especially, the gun seems to require less effort to drive consistently.

I recently did a comparison between my current gun (a full length recoil system, but with a small comp and lots of ports - its short in overall length, but perhaps not a "shorty", per se) with 4 other configurations of short and full length guns (combos of lighter/heavier, long and short). I found that I shot the light, short recoil system configuration best on Steel Challenge stages, running consistent Roundabouts in the 2.19-ish range (fastest I'd ever run that stage, BTW). However, when doing shoot on the move drills, and other IPSC specific stuff, I shot the light, full length gun best (more comp than my current gun - heavier overall, but balanced differently). In fact, the config that I shot best for IPSC is similar in configuration to what Max Michel is currently shooting.

Its easy to be intimidated by the dot at first blush. The key is some solid, focused dry fire practice, where you basically move at a snail's pace - practice the draw forwards and backwards, slowly slowly slowly building up in speed. Do part of it in front of a mirror to make sure only your shoulders and arms are moving - your head should stay steady. Same goes from strong and weak hand shooting. You will learn the feel of your natural index, and will naturally begin bringing the gun up exactly where it needs to be in no time. In fact (and I say this to everyone here on the forum), if you can't line up on a target, holster the gun, close your eyes, and draw, and not only find the dot but be on target... you need to work on this It doesn't take much work, in the end, and it will save a lot of frustration later.... (like after that beep goes off... ).

[Steve Moneypenny]

I have actually shot king mans guns, and quite a few others. some of my observations.

Sorter the gun the more violent the blast.

longer the gun the less dot movement you have.

Longer gun does not hit you the shooter as much . ( while this may not be a problem to some... lots of shooters develope injuries due to thousands of rounds out of the gun)

Shorter gun "appears" to cycle quicker. but you generally lose the dot in the glass at some point so my splits were called far less than they should be.

If I ever delve bakc to open class it will be with a full length gun.

[Kingman]

Steve, it seems to me you have a long open gun somewhere that someone helped put together for you.

[Cal Brady]

Thanks for the input, I'm still reading.....I think I'll start with a good used 5- 5 1/2" and look for another super deal on a low mileage Brazos SX style shorty (just missed one on this site unfortunately). That way I can get into the game now and later appreciate or hate what the shorter guns bring to the table for me . I'm thinking that 20 years later in Open gun technology and development, even someone's 2 year old full-size gun ought to amaze someone like me who's been "retired for 20 years of IPSC" and help me get back into things.

Cal

Steve, it seems to me you have a long open gun somewhere that someone helped put together for you.

[Kingman]

Cal, they are out there. You just have to watch for them.

[BSeevers]

I would only use a regular length and really like a lighter snappy gun but don't think a shorty is ever going to work for me.

Pick one and practice.

Any advantage preceived or real is probably much less than 1%. Practice is worth tens of percents. Maybe more

[al503]

It's kind of a drive (Tri County in Sherwood) but hope to see you at a match sometime. I'd be happy to let you shoot my Pro Sx. It's a shorty at 4.5" but it's built on a slightly longer dustcover than Bob usually uses and the slide is fitted accordingly.

http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?...mp;#entry593549

[DJM3808]

I'm currently running 2 shorty's, 1 has a commander length slide and the other is a cut down 5" so the slide travel is different from one to the other. Both are 38 super with ported barrels and Biddel titanium comps.

I believe the cut down 5" is the faster of two, maybe a little softer feeling.

I shoot alot of steel as well as IPSC with both and I like the way they feel for draw and indexing targets as opposed to the 5" gun I had before, unfortunaly I don't have a 5" now to compare directly.

It seems most of the Masters and GM in this area that tried shorty's have gone back to longer guns.

[AWLAZS]

All of this talk got me to look at my old gun. My old gun is a full size and my new gun is a Bedell shorty with a full size recoil system. My long gun is actualy shorter then my short gun. I guess I will have to bring both to the range.

I really thinks its what you get used to pick one and shoot it alot