CHA-LEE's Tale

[CHA-LEE]

On another note one of my fellow Colorado shooters let me borrow a shooting book written by Michael Plaxco. Its called “Shooting from Within: A Guide to Maximum Performance”. This book was really, really good and I am surprised that it does not get more publicity in the practical shooting community. Plaxco does a very good job of explaining the “Why” of executing skills in a specific way. It also covers a broad range of skills that are leveraged for practical shooting. I would consider this book a very good tool to bridge the gap between Think Practical Shooting by Saul Kirsh and Practical Shooting, Beyond the Fundamentals by Brian Enos. Since this book was initially published in 1981 some of the content is outdated but the vast majority of the content is solid and applies to what we do in practical shooting today. I would consider this book a MUST READ for any serious Practical Shooter. If you want to buy this book do a search for it on Amazon.com. Even though I borrowed this book to read, and have read it, I am going to buy my own copy so I can reread it in the future.

[CHA-LEE]

I was able to get out to the range yesterday after work and shoot 300 rounds in training. I kept reusing the same three magazines to see if a failure would occur and I did run into two magazines issues. The first issue was a nose dive jam about 13 rounds into a drill. The second issue was a round slipping under the follower during another drill. This situation didn’t cause a jam, but I was one round short because the round was under the follower instead of on top of it. This happened on two different magazines and both of them had been reused many times without being cleaned or relubed. So I am not sure if these issues are follower based or simply due to being too dirty or not lubed enough.

The good news is that I still have not had any failure to go into battery jams in the last 400 rounds. All of the spent brass is getting flung solidly out of the gun as well. The quality of the feeding has also been very smooth and not clunky. So far it’s looking like the fiddling on the barrel kidney and extractor have resolved the failure to go into battery jams. I still want to get at least another 600 rounds down the pipe error free before I consider that issue truly resolved.

While driving back from the range I was thinking about the nose dive jams and it dawned on me that these inconsistent and infrequent jams started when I switched from using Grams followers over to the Taran Tactical ones. The Taran Tactical followers I am using is the only universal component I can think of that would cause these random inconsistent nose dive jams across all of my magazines. The thing that sucks is that the only Grams followers I currently have are worn out. I have ordered some new Grams followers and hope to get them early next week. In the mean time I am going to polish up the inside of the magazine bodies to help make it more slippery. Hopefully this will get me through this weekend of shooting without battling more nose dive jams.

[RangerTrace]

I'm pretty curious about your recoil spring weight. I've gone as low as 10 on my 6" gun and I'm running a 12 in my 5.4. How much does your slide weigh and are you using a shock buff of any kind?

[Vanniek71]

What about springs Cha-Lee? Could those be getting worn out? If there wasn't enough spring tension could that cause the follower to tilt and allow the round to drop below?

Edited May 23, 2014 by Vanniek71

[CHA-LEE]

I'm pretty curious about your recoil spring weight. I've gone as low as 10 on my 6" gun and I'm running a 12 in my 5.4. How much does your slide weigh and are you using a shock buff of any kind?

I am using an 8lb recoil spring. My slide weighs 10oz stripped and the majority of the weight was taken out of the back of the slide. I do not use shock buff's. I tried them a long time ago and they only marginally reduce the felt recoil but usually cause feeding or jams because of the short stroking of the slide or they start to disintegrate and jam up the works.

I thought that the failure to go into battery jams might have been due to using an 8lb recoil spring, so I switched to a 9lb and 10lb and the same jams happened.

For the record, using really light recoil springs only works if you grip the gun hard. If you limp wrist the gun or have a crappy grip it will cause jamming issues. If you watch me shoot, my gun muzzle flips very little during recoil. That is because I am gripping the gun HARD.

Edited May 23, 2014 by CHA-LEE

[RangerTrace]

I'm pretty curious about your recoil spring weight. I've gone as low as 10 on my 6" gun and I'm running a 12 in my 5.4. How much does your slide weigh and are you using a shock buff of any kind?

I am using an 8lb recoil spring. My slide weighs 10oz stripped and the majority of the weight was taken out of the back of the slide. I do not use shock buff's. I tried them a long time ago and they only marginally reduce the felt recoil but usually cause feeding or jams because of the short stroking of the slide or they start to disintegrate and jam up the works.

Yeah, I've seen them come apart in matches for a lot of folks. Shred shared his secret with me and I've been running a Dawson alumabuff in front of a Wilson shock buff for a couples years now without any issues. You're making me want to drop my RS spring weight again.......

[CHA-LEE]

What about springs Cha-Lee? Could those be getting worn out? If there wasn't enough spring tension could that cause the follower to tilt and allow the round to drop below?

My mag springs are all "Fresh". I replace them frequently when they start to get even slightly shorter than a new spring. For example, I replaced ALL of my mag springs after attending the Oil Field match last month to completely eliminate "Weak mag springs" as being a possible cause to the slow registration of the next round. Since then I have replaced two springs due to being a little shorter than the others. This usually happens when I cram 21 rounds into a mag several times.

[CHA-LEE]

I also want to point out that so far this year at every major match I have attended my ammo has been in the 177 - 180 Power Factor range on the Chrono Stages. These jams are not due to running "mouse fart" loads.

[TaranTactical]

I was able to get out to the range yesterday after work and shoot 300 rounds in training. I kept reusing the same three magazines to see if a failure would occur and I did run into two magazines issues. The first issue was a nose dive jam about 13 rounds into a drill. The second issue was a round slipping under the follower during another drill. This situation didn’t cause a jam, but I was one round short because the round was under the follower instead of on top of it. This happened on two different magazines and both of them had been reused many times without being cleaned or relubed. So I am not sure if these issues are follower based or simply due to being too dirty or not lubed enough.

The good news is that I still have not had any failure to go into battery jams in the last 400 rounds. All of the spent brass is getting flung solidly out of the gun as well. The quality of the feeding has also been very smooth and not clunky. So far it’s looking like the fiddling on the barrel kidney and extractor have resolved the failure to go into battery jams. I still want to get at least another 600 rounds down the pipe error free before I consider that issue truly resolved.

While driving back from the range I was thinking about the nose dive jams and it dawned on me that these inconsistent and infrequent jams started when I switched from using Grams followers over to the Taran Tactical ones. The Taran Tactical followers I am using is the only universal component I can think of that would cause these random inconsistent nose dive jams across all of my magazines. The thing that sucks is that the only Grams followers I currently have are worn out. I have ordered some new Grams followers and hope to get them early next week. In the mean time I am going to polish up the inside of the magazine bodies to help make it more slippery. Hopefully this will get me through this weekend of shooting without battling more nose dive jams.

I'd be more than happy to troubleshoot the issue with you!

[CHA-LEE]

I was able to get out to the range yesterday after work and shoot 300 rounds in training. I kept reusing the same three magazines to see if a failure would occur and I did run into two magazines issues. The first issue was a nose dive jam about 13 rounds into a drill. The second issue was a round slipping under the follower during another drill. This situation didn’t cause a jam, but I was one round short because the round was under the follower instead of on top of it. This happened on two different magazines and both of them had been reused many times without being cleaned or relubed. So I am not sure if these issues are follower based or simply due to being too dirty or not lubed enough.

The good news is that I still have not had any failure to go into battery jams in the last 400 rounds. All of the spent brass is getting flung solidly out of the gun as well. The quality of the feeding has also been very smooth and not clunky. So far it’s looking like the fiddling on the barrel kidney and extractor have resolved the failure to go into battery jams. I still want to get at least another 600 rounds down the pipe error free before I consider that issue truly resolved.

While driving back from the range I was thinking about the nose dive jams and it dawned on me that these inconsistent and infrequent jams started when I switched from using Grams followers over to the Taran Tactical ones. The Taran Tactical followers I am using is the only universal component I can think of that would cause these random inconsistent nose dive jams across all of my magazines. The thing that sucks is that the only Grams followers I currently have are worn out. I have ordered some new Grams followers and hope to get them early next week. In the mean time I am going to polish up the inside of the magazine bodies to help make it more slippery. Hopefully this will get me through this weekend of shooting without battling more nose dive jams.

I'd be more than happy to troubleshoot the issue with you!

Sweet!!! Now that is customer service!!!!

[Vanniek71]

Did you check out your mag release yet?

[CHA-LEE]

Did you check out your mag release yet?

Yes, I took it out and compared it to a brand new one and they are both exactly the same. So the height of the mag catch isn't different compared to a new one.

[CHA-LEE]

I decided to inspect the upper tonight after my last training session. I found a small crack in the slide right at the junction between the frame rail and guide rod tunnel. In the exact same location where my last slide cracked.

I have mixed feelings about finding this slide crack. It sucks to have broken another slide and now I have to start over. But I am glad to be done with this upper which has given me so much trouble. Hopefully the next build will be more reliable than this one.

In the mean time I will be using my backup gun which has a full uncut slide. It will be interesting to see how the old work horse shoots compared to my primary gun.

[thermobollocks]

Were both slides milled in the same way to lighten them up?

[CHA-LEE]

Were both slides milled in the same way to lighten them up?

Nope. Totally different cuts. I think that 180 power factor + 8lb recoil spring + Big Panda mega grip = broken stuff.

Oh well, it looks like I am going to have to buy another upper or whole gun to replace it. Not the best excuse to buy more guns but it will work

[CHA-LEE]

Holly cow this past weekend was crazy busy with shooting and gun wrenching. Since I found that the slide was cracked on my Primary Limited gun I decided to stop shooting it before it wipes out the frame. Since my Primary Limited gun was out of commission I decided to switch over to my old school backup gun. This backup gun is actually a Frankenstein being my very first EAA Witness Limited Frame and a replacement upper that was put on it a couple of years ago. I shot the crap out of the gun in that configuration and it always worked solidly. The slide does not have any lightening cuts so I run this setup with a 10lb recoil spring. The sucky thing is that the barrel has been shot out from a velocity perspective for a while. Since I was going to shoot a steel challenge match on Saturday with my wife I decided to swap the upper on my backup gun with my super lightened minor .40 upper that I built a few years ago. I wanted to burn up the extra .40 minor ammo I had laying around at this steel challenge match so this was a perfect opportunity to do just that. This steel challenge match is the only match a year that my wife chooses to attend and I am not really into steel challenge so it was really about her having fun and me just tagging along and blasting some rounds at steel. She had a great time and did her best performance yet so that was a win. I didn’t take it too seriously and did more screwing around with trying stuff out during my runs so my finish was pretty crappy, but I really didn’t care. My goal was to burn through all of my .40 minor ammo and I did just that.

At the end of the Steel Challenge match I was able to swap my upper back to the standard one and shoot some major ammo through it to see how it felt. The felt recoil was less than my primary gun and I also noticed that the front sight would track higher during recoil. The difference wasn’t huge, but there was a difference.

When I got home that night I decided to move the mag release button from my Primary gun over to the Backup due to the one on the Primary having a slightly different button setup that I prefer. Well to swap mag releases you basically have to completely disassemble the whole frame to get the parts out, so I decided to do a detailed clean and inspection on the Backup gun. I noticed that the trigger return spring was a little weak so I swapped that out with a new one. Then I noticed that the rear sight was starting to have a crack at the dove tail so I swapped that out too. Since I had already made these two significant changes I figured I would go for broke and replace the barrel, extractor, and extractor spring as well. After a few hours of tinkering I got it all back together and it felt good on the bench but I would have to see if it would actually work in live fire. Given that it was already late in the evening and I was planning on attending a local USPSA club match the next day I would just have to cross my fingers and see if it would work the next day at the match.

On Sunday I attended the Clear Creek Practical Shooters match in Dumont which is slightly up in the mountains. The weather forecast was grim calling for scattered thunderstorms through most of the day. But the match director said the match was on rain or shine so I figured I would go and just deal with the weather. I got to the range and it wasn’t raining during setup, but as soon as the actual match started it did start to rain and it even hailed a little bit. Given the crappy weather I didn’t have any time to test fire my gun before my first stage run so I had to see how it would go on the first stage of the day. When my turn came up to shoot it was raining so I had the opportunity to shoot in the rain, which hasn’t happened to me much in the past. The buzzer went off and I shot the stage solidly and the gun ran flawlessly. Most of the targets were fairly close so I wasn’t too worried about the rear sight being slightly off left or right. I was happy that the gun ran and it was interesting to shoot a stage in the rain. Before we started the next stage we had to wait for the prior squad to finish so I had a chance to shoot a group to double check the left/right adjustment of the rear sight. Very much to my surprise it was dead nuts on and no adjustments were needed. Since I was able to confirm that my sights were on I didn’t worry about that any more during the rest of the match. I shot the rest of the stages solidly and the gun ran flawlessly on every single stage. It was a fun match even though the rain came and went several times through the day. This club was using Nooks with PractiScore for their first time this match and one of the stage Nooks got left out in the rain causing it to go belly up. No scores could be captured from it and unlucky for me, it was my squad that lost their scores on that stage. It sucks to not have a result for that stage but I remembered what my hit factor was on it so I could figure out where I would have finished overall with it. It’s a club match so its really not a big deal. It just sucks that the club lost a Nook due to the rain.

There was another local USPSA match at the Centennial Gun Club on Sunday evening. So I had to run home after the Clear Creek match, rework my shooting gear, get some dinner then head over to the Centennial match. This is the first time that I have shot two different USPSA matches in one day so it was a unique challenge. The Centennial match is held at an indoor range so all four of their stages were setup with all rounds impacting straight into the bullet trap. Poor lighting and seeing my sights is always a challenge for me at these indoor matches so I knew I was going to have to use the “Force” to will some of my hits onto the targets. Luckily for me I was able to get my hits when I was forced to point shoot targets on a few of the stages. My gun continued to run flawlessly through the entire match so that was awesome as well.

Being able to shoot two different matches on Sunday and my gun working 100% the whole time was a lot of fun. I was worried that I might have induced some other funky gun issue with all of the fiddling I did on the backup gun but it ran like a well oiled machine. I will be using this backup gun at the Rocky Mountain 300 match next weekend and hopefully it keeps on running solidly. I am going to try to get my next Limited gun built before this coming weekend, but even if I do get it together I will not have time to shoot it enough to feel comfortable with putting it into service as a primary or backup pistol. I am setting a goal of getting the new gun built and tested before I head to the Double Tap match in the middle of June. Hopefully it can at least serve as a functional backup to my old work horse.

With this being my second cracked slide on my lightened slide setups I am thinking that the 8lb recoil spring + lightened slide configuration is too close to the edge of reliability. The slide velocity in this configuration may simply be too much to handle with major power factor loads, especially when using 180pf ammo. I already lightened the slide on my next Limited gun so I am pretty much stuck with that configuration for at least one more go around. The only saving grace on this next gun is that the guide rod tunnel has not been cut, unlike the other two lightened slides that suffered cracks in that area. Maybe having an uncut guide rod tunnel will allow the slide to last longer in these conditions? We will see how it goes. In the mean time I am going to start looking for a completely new EAA Witness Limited gun so I can start the build process on it. Right now I am thinking about running my old backup gun for the rest of the season as I know it is a solid and reliable performer. I have already wasted too many matches on bullshit gun/mag jam issues this year and will settle for a less than optimal slide setup to gain reliability.

All I know for sure is that I am getting REALLY good at breaking stuff. Maybe I should apply as a product reliability tester for some of these gun companies

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I attended the Rocky Mountain 300 match. In prior years this match has been plagued with wet weather turning it into a complete mud bog. This year the match director pushed the match out a month to try to avoid the wet spring weather and it was much better. Mother nature still tried to cause some trouble by producing a little rain on Friday in the morning and more in the evening. But there wasn’t enough rain to create super muddy conditions. All of the stages still had “dry” shooting areas so that was good.

The Rocky Mountain 300 is a unique match that only has 5 stages, but each stage has 60+ rounds. This means that every stage has a boat load of blasting needed to get the job done. I like attending this match because it always pushes my limits in stage planning and execution over an extended amount of time. That and its really strange to reload a bunch of times during a stage when shooting Limited. When I am reaching back for the 3^rd or 4^th magazine during a stage run I can’t shake the thought of something not being right. Being pushed outside of your comfort zone is what practical shooting is all about so it was a fun experience.

This match is shot all in one day on either Friday or Saturday. I chose to shoot on the Saturday schedule because I didn’t want to take a day off of work to shoot it on Friday. I wasn’t planning on checking out the stages on Friday but one of my shooting buddies that helped setup the match said that one of the stages was a memory stage and I should probably go check it out so I did. I made it to the range on Friday to check out the stages and I was glad that I took the time to check out the stages. Most of the stages had pretty straight forward plans needed, but the memory stage did need some extra time to figure out. I spent about 30 minutes on that stage breaking it down and figuring out my plan and it was well worth the time invested. Programming a 60+ round memory stage was a fun challenge to tackle. I also came up with solid stage plans for all of the other stages in the match so I was ready to go for Saturday.

On Saturday we started on the all steel stage 5, which was a daunting sea of poppers, plates, and Texas stars. This stage usually ends up being the widow maker of many shooters as many shooters come to the line with 100+ rounds but still end up running out before taking down all of the steel. My goal was to shoot the stage aggressively but in control and that seemed to work out at the start but the wheels fell off the wagon about half way through the stage. I reverted to a hard target focus and that lead to a crap ton of make up shots needed. I ended up running the gun dry half way trough the stage and needed to do a standing reload and reengage a plate that I kept missing after the reload as well. I should have just blown off the plate and ate the miss, but I was in the heat of the moment and didn’t want to leave any steel standing. I ended up wasting at least 2 – 3 seconds on that troublesome plate and that really hurt my overall stage time. In the end I survived the steel stage but it wasn’t pretty. I left at least 5 seconds of time on the stage with too many misses. All I can say is that much steel on one stage is pure evil, but a lot of fun at the same time.

The next stage was the hoser stage of the match, stage 1. All of these targets were up close and promoted a bunch of mega fast blasting. The target arrays were setup in a bunch of 16 round arrays with plenty of time to reload between arrays. So this stage really came down to not going bonkers on the fast shooting and ending up with a bunch of crappy hits. I ran this stage pretty solid until the last reload. I completely botched the last reload and had to ditch the first attempt and go for another magazine. This botched reload cost me about 2.5 seconds on this stage which was super painful in the overall result. When the high hit factor is in the 16 range, wasting 2.5 seconds on a reload is like having two and a half misses. I got all of my hits and they were good quality hits, but the wasted time on the last reload kept me from taking the win on this stage. Even though I screwed up the last reload, this stage was super fun to shoot. Unloading mass quantities of lead in a short amount of time is always fun.

Stage number 2 was the memory stage. This stage had all of the targets stapled to a huge back board at random angles and then a bunch of Christmas Tree’s made of plywood set in front of them. With a few walls thrown in for good measure as well it made for a very convoluted presentation of targets. You could see the same targets from many different locations but there was always one or two that were right in front of you that you couldn’t see due to the trees. It required a pretty complex target engagement order plan to keep from leaving a target out or double engaging a target. The best plans had you pushing each mag to 18 rounds so there was very little margin of error for making up shots and pretty much no room for double engaging a target. This is the stage I spent the most time on figuring out the day before and my plan was solid. I was able to program the stage properly enough on Friday that when I walked it on Saturday I was able to dry fire my plan without any hiccups. I was confident in my plan so I knew I wouldn’t get lost mid stage run so it came down to executing it properly. At the start of the stage I engaged a plate rack on the left side and needed a crap ton of make up shots on the last plate due to engaging it partially through a tree. I am not sure if my shots were getting deflected by the plywood in the tree or if I was simply mashing the trigger and missing that way, but it took way too many shots to take the last plate down. After that I told myself to chill out and let the shooting happen at its own pace and the rest of the stage run went well. Even though I wasted a couple of seconds on the left plate rack I still ended up winning this stage which was nice.

Stage 3 was a wide run and gun field course that basically forced you to move to every corner of the stage. There were only a couple of different options or decisions on how to best shoot this stage so it really came down to executing your plan properly. I felt that this stage was probably my best shooting performance of the match. I hit all of my shooting positions and shot at an aggressive pace. I did have a strange case head separation or split case issue not to far into the stage run. The sixth shot fired after the first port I got peppered in the face with powder or whatever from the bad round. I was worried that it was a case head separation/split case and it had wiped out my extractor and would start jamming but the gun kept on running. After the run I double checked the extractor and it was fine, so I don’t think it was a case head separation but instead a split case. I wasn’t able to find the brass from the issue so I will never know for sure. But this run went good for me and netted me another stage win.

Stage 4 was another field course setup with a little left to right movement but a lot of down range movement. You started with the gun unloaded and holstered and then engaged targets on the left and right as you advanced down range. I shot this stage ok until the very last position where I got a little lost in the target engagement order which cost me some time. It wasn’t horrible but it did cost me a second or so in wasted movement and consciously trying to solve the issue. I felt that I had shot this stage at about 80% of my ability. I am not sure if I didn’t put enough effort into programming the stage or if I was simply worn out from the long day of shooting. I felt that I had a solid plan and put enough effort into programming it, so I think the lack luster performance was more due to being worn out. The good thing is that I got all of my hits.

After all of the results were tallied I had shot a clean match with only 2 D zone hits. This netted me 96.5% of the available match points. It was really nice to shoot really good points for this match. I ended up finishing 2^nd in Limited at 95.8% of Paul Clark Jr. I finished just ahead of Ron Avery by a narrow 18 point margin so it was a tight race for the top 3 in Limited division. I was happy with how my old work horse backup gun ran through the whole match. I didn't have any gun or mag issues the whole match which was a welcomed change. It was a fun match to shoot and I got all but one of my stage runs on video. I have uploaded all of my stage videos to my YouTube channel if you want to check them out.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend was chocked full of training I was presenting. I presented a one on one training session on Friday and Saturday. That was a lot of fun and it was cool to see the student make improvements in their skills as the training progressed. On Sunday I had a group training class that was going well until about 2PM when the weather turned for the worse and it started raining and hailing. We had to call it quits before the training was completed, but there wasn’t much we could do given the situation. I am going to setup a “Make Up” training day for those students so we can get through the rest of the training class. Hopefully the weather cooperates the next time around. I didn’t get to do much shooting myself over the weekend but that is normal when I am presenting training classes.

This coming Wednesday evening I have another Dry Fire training class. So that should be fun as well.

On Friday I am flying to Texas for the Double Tap Championships. I am looking forward to doing some blasting of my own at this match. I have skipped this match the last couple of years because it was too hot the last time I was down there (110+ degrees). The weather forecast is currently calling for temps in the high 90’s so its looking like it will be hot, but at least it won’t be triple digit hotness. Either way it should be a lot of fun.

[CHA-LEE]

This week I was able to get my next EAA Witness Limited built up, sighted in, and function fire tested at the range. It ran without any issues but I was only able to shoot about 100 rounds through it so I don't have a bunch of confidence in it actually working solidly over the long run. I will be using my old blaster for the Double Tap match and put the new one into "Backup Gun" duty. I was worried about going to that match without a backup gun and Murphy's Law says that the one time when you don't take a backup gun your primary gun will break during the match. Now I have all of my bases covered so I feel better about the situation.

I am also working on another Limited blaster project with local gunsmith Rick Hebert to see if we can get an STI 2011 to actually work with my chubby hands. He made a cusom beaver tail that is longer and wider to help keep the "Chubby" part of my hand pushed down so the slide won't hit it. Then we played around with some different magwells that allow my wide hand to fit between the beaver tail and magwell without squishing my hand up into the beaver tail more than it should be. Its a work in progress but so far, its looking pretty promicing. I might be shooting an STI 2011 in the near future.........

[Jerome]

On the 2011, you might also consider a shielded thumb safety. My thumb used to hit the slide occasionally and slow it down. I've been using a Swenson but Phoenix Trinity has developed a better one. There's also the thumb shield from Brazos.

[CHA-LEE]

On the 2011, you might also consider a shielded thumb safety. My thumb used to hit the slide occasionally and slow it down. I've been using a Swenson but Phoenix Trinity has developed a better one. There's also the thumb shield from Brazos.

Thanks for the info. I will look into that stuff. Its crazy how much more after market parts are avaialble for the 2011 guns verses the EAA/Tanfo.

[CHA-LEE]

I attended the Double Tap Championships last weekend and have been super busy since getting back from the match. It has been a couple of years since I attended the Double Tap because of the super hot weather the last time I attended. This year it was hot as well, but not super hot. The average temp was in the mid 90’s which wasn’t too bad and the humidity was fine until Sunday when it rained for a little while in the morning. I am a confessed hot + humidity wimp so the weather on Sunday was pretty rugged for me, but not miserable. I traveled to this match with my friends Price and Sterling and we had a great time on and off the range. We flew in on Friday morning and got a chance to check out all the stages while the Friday shooters were doing their thing. This match had several stages with some very different mover or activated targets so being able to see them in action on Friday was a bonus.

I was on the Sat/Sun shooting schedule on Squad 22 and everyone on the squad was great. We all had fun and worked hard to churn through the stages as efficiently as we could. My shooting for the match was fairly solid with only a few screw ups. My backup gun and mags ran without issue so that was a welcomed change. On Saturday I had a total of three misses. The first was a stupid “Lets shoot fast and not look at the sights” miss where I got sucked into point shooting some close targets. The second was a called miss on a bobber that I chose to eat because it would have taken too long to wait for the target to appear again. Then the third was a strange wall hit. This match uses the square metal tubing for the frame of their walls then they put orange snow fence in the middle. One of my shots ended up hitting the 1 x 1 inch square tubing of the wall instead of the target behind it and that lead to another miss. I still find it amazing that I can manage to hit a 1 inch wide square tube 10 yards down range instead of the huge paper target behind it while shooting the stage at full Panda speed. I don’t think I could manage that kind of shot if I was trying to do it on purpose. Oh well, it is what it is. Sunday I shot the remaining stages penalty free which was good, but I knew that the three misses the day before would be a deep hole to dig out of from an overall results perspective.

The good thing is that my buddy Price was able to get all of my stage runs on video and I have uploaded them to my YouTube channel. When the results were tallied I ended up 4^th overall in Limited at 94% of the winner Bob Krogh. Second place was Travis Tomasie at 98% and Third was my Canadian friend Scott Penner at 94%. Scott beat me by a narrow margin of 4 match points to take third place. Scott has been working really hard this year at improving his skills and its awesome to see him succeed. I wasn’t really pleases with my own performance as I knew I could have done a little better on several stages, but it is what it is. I wasted a decent amount of time needing a bunch of extra shots on steel and that is going to the top of my “I suck at this” list for my future practice and training sessions. Time to put in the hard work to get the issues fixed.

[CHA-LEE]

When I got back from the Double Tap match I put in a lot of wrenching time into tuning the new STI 2011. I put a stainless steel CAPE magwell on it and did some additional grinding to make room for my wide hand. With this modified magwell setup my hand is no longer getting “Pinched” in between the beaver tail and the lip of the magwell. This is good because it further reduces the web of my hand getting pushed up into the beaver tail excessively which further promotes the slide bite issue.

I put a gunsmith blank trigger bow in the gun and tuned the depth of the trigger shoe to match how my finger lays on the trigger. I set it up with a flat front surface so the depth of the trigger is the same no matter where the tip of my finger actually lays on it.

Lastly I did some grip resurfacing to round the font corners a little bit to make the grip feel less “Square” in my hand. I then smoothed off the stock checkering on the left side and put some grip tape on the left side. This reshaping and grip tape addition makes the grip of the gun feel pretty natural in my hand and provides enough friction to ensure a solid grip on the gun.

I need to get some more work done on the thumb safety to build up some material to keep the side of my thumb out of the slide. That seems to be the only remaining area that will cause me some slide bite while shooting. Rick Hebert is working on that today so hopefully it will be done soon.

My funky undersized brass EAA/Tanfo ammo does not feed very smooth so I need to build up some “Normal” brass ammo to see if it will feed better. My goal is to get all of this stuff figured out and tested this week so I can give it a try during the club matches this weekend. That is a lofty goal, but an achievable one if everything falls into place as it should.

[rtr]

Congrats on going to an STI, didn't know you were finally doing so!

[Vanniek71]

Congrats on going to an STI, didn't know you were finally doing so!

Pics or it didn't happen =)