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Bill in Oregon

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Can I recommend a CR Speed belt & Bladetech holster. As far as the extra mags....good luck. It would appear most places that carry them for the M&P are out of stock. For the range bag my only recommendation is to get one that works for you. Just make sure that it has a rigid bottom and sides and that you purchase one large enough. Before making any large purchases check with other shooters and find out what they use and why. It may save you a lot of money. Good luck and welcome to the fun.

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Welcome! And good for you!

Yes. Uncle Mike's kydex holster and dbl. mag holders work just fine. A good leather 1-1/2" wide belt will do OK for now too. My first "range bag" was an olive green tool bag. Under $30.00 invested and I still use for actual hand tools today. Save your money for practice ammo! You can upgrade when you feel the gear is affecting your scores negatively :goof:

Join the USPSA if you haven't.

Jim

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Bill,

I'm very new also, but thought I'd pass along this advice I was given. If you're shooting .40S&W or bigger, you'll be better off in Limited or L-10 than in production. There is no major class in production, thus you'll be up against a slew of 9mm's.

Everyone, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but that is what I was told at my first match.

Andrew

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Just picked up an S&W M&P in .40, and hope to use it to try practical shooting in production class. Sooo, I need a good, stiff belt, three more mags, a mag holder, a holster and a range bag. Will an Uncle Mike's Kydex work? Blackhawk Serpa? Thanks for any advice.

Mikes is fine...

Welcome to the forum.

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Just picked up an S&W M&P in .40, and hope to use it to try practical shooting in production class. Sooo, I need a good, stiff belt, three more mags, a mag holder, a holster and a range bag. Will an Uncle Mike's Kydex work? Blackhawk Serpa? Thanks for any advice.

Welcome!

Production is just fine for now. Yes, some folks will be shooting 9mm or .40 with light loads, but none of that will matter for a while. As others have mentioned, a CR Speed blet and Blade Tech DOH holster will be hard to beat, but almost anything that you have or can get cheap will work too. Make sure you have at least four mag pouches on your belt and five mags. Many stages require 30-32 rounds and if you only have a total of four mags, that allows only 9 extra shots...from experience I can say that's not always enough ;)

CDNN has M&P mags in stock for what seems like a reasonable price:

http://www.cdnninvestments.com/smwemp4015ma.html

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For the money, the newer cheap flat molde blade-tech revolution is probably the best bang for the buck. The changes uncle mikes made to their holsters (especially the belt loops) makes me dislike them quite a bit. The older ones were much nicer, now I tend to think even the fobus ones are less craptastic, and the fobus holsters are not very good.

The serpa and pretty much all the hand folded kydex holsters are decent. For uspsa, you probably want to disable the push button lock on a serpa though.

The uncle mikes double mag pouches are adequate. I use them with my M&P. The fact they are two mag pouches with one tension screw makes them a bit of a pain, but theye usable. In the best bang for the buck area, the blackhawk single mag pouches with the plastic leaf spring are very usable and a great value when on sale (on occasion you'll find some online places sellign them at $10 or $11 a pop).

As far as being competitive in production, you can be if you load your own ammo. IF you are shooting factory ammo, you will be at a disadvantage. 165gr bullets at about a 135pf function well and cycle quickly.

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Great advice so far.

If it were me, I'd get the CR-Speed belt, a Blade-tech kydex holster, and CR Speed mag pouches.

The belt and mag pouches can be used for every division (besides revo for the pouches) so while they may be a little more expensive initially, they won't be items that you necessarily 'grow' out of.

I have a brand new CR-Speed belt (size 38) and four new CR-Speed pouches that I'm planning on using for Singlestack. You're more than welcome to use them and try it out. (I'm in the Tualatin/Portland area.) You'd have to get your own holster though. I also have new .40 mags for sale if you're interested. You're probably going to need at least 4 total (ideally 5-6) to start out with.

As for the bag, I'd get a shooter's connection if $ isn't an issue. They're the best and will last you a very long time.

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Welcome to the sport! I totally agree signing up with USPSA, earlier the better. +1 on getting the right gear the first time but I highly recommend that you try your options if you can. The CR Speed belt/Blade-Tech combo is hard to beat and might just be the best.

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I just started shooting USPSA this year with Fobus stuff. If I was going to do it over again I probably would have spent the extra money on a Blade-Tech holster and CR Speed Mag pouches/belt. Still using the Fobus Mag pouches but going to upgrade soon. From what I have seen in the Classifieds section on this board that stuff doesn't loose a lot of value. If you decide to get out of the sport there is a good chance you can get a good chunck of your money back.

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Bill,

Where are you? I live in Salem, work in Corvallis, and shoot in Albany, Dundee, and Tri-County.

Have you been to any events yet? If you're short mags, you could try speed steel. People will refill one of your mags for you while you shoot with another. It's not ideal, but works until you can get more mags. With a hi-cap, you can usually shoot two strings (out of 5) on a stage with one magazine.

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One more bit of info: If you get the CR Speed mag pouches you are going to have to do some filing to the CZ inserts so you can use them. The Glock inserts are too small and the CZ is a little too tight. Unless CR Speed has started adding inserts for the M&P mags?????

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