CHA-LEE's Tale

[CHA-LEE]

you may want to try tuning the mags in the front to back axis. I have had one mag from the factory that I had to squeeze down a little to make it drop free. Not saying the mags wouldn't work for us mere mortals, but you do have a "solid" grip and making them a touch wider and shorter from front to back may work for you. The mags for "us" with a mediocre grip strength probably slide by on a typical tolerance "front to back" but you may need an extra .05-.10 of an inch of room for the compression of the grip itself. The OAL may also need to be adjusted slightly but it's probably woth testing while you wait for the PT grip. If it's not front to back compression of the grip, it's side to side compression, either way, you probably aren't compressing it in both directions at the same time or it would crack and implode.. You would also probably be having major feed issues because the cartridges would be rubbing all the way up the mag at the head and base. Just thinking out loud, but it's like a balloon, squeeze it and it has to displace or pop. You haven't cracked it yet so the flex is going somewhere.

- PS to everyone.., If you've never shaken his hand, "normal" advice on the situation is next to worthless.... He doesn't need to palm a basketball, it deflates at the sight of his hand.

"

Its funny that you mention pinching in the magazines front to back. Rick recommended that and had some magazine tubes in his shop that were reduced in size front to back and they were a little better but I could still trap them in the grip while pressing the magazine release with a solid grip. We even tested several different grips on different guns in his shop with varying levels of grip modifications and no modifications at all and I was able to trap the mag in every single one of them. What can I say...... I am just a freak. I think that the only long term fix is going to a metal grip. It just sucks to wait for it.

[CHA-LEE]

I got another box of 2011 goodies yesterday. In the box was an EGW Tungsten Guide Rod, and a Rescomp Mag Button. I threw in the Tungsten Guide Rod and it did add a little bit of weight to the front end of the gun, but not a bunch of weight. I then spent a decent amount of time fiddling with the size and shape of the new mag button. After a bunch of hacking and grinding I got the mag button installed in a way that kept my weak hand from pushing it while gripping the gun hard and also allowed me to reach it with my thumb without shifting my grip. I would prefer a stiffer mag release spring along with this new button, but that is something I will have to look into later.

Since the version 2.0 of the grip safety was installed and it looked like it would work properly in dry fire I wanted to do some live fire testing. So I headed to the range to give it a go. I shot about 100 rounds and did a lot of draws and I am happy to report that the new version 2.0 grip safety effectively kept my hand out of the way of the slide. I didn’t get chopped even once which was a nice change of pace. The gun also fed flawlessly so that was good as well. The new spring and firing pin stop combo felt really good while shooting. The extra weight of the tungsten guide rod also helped a little with the gun displacement issue, but it was still there. If I artificially slowed down my shooting to give myself time to drive the gun back to the original aiming spot I could get solid hits. But if I tried to shoot as soon as the sights came back to an aligned state the whole gun was still displaced off of the aiming spot and I would end up with very inconsistent hits on target. I shot my EAA back to back against the 2011 and the shooting speed difference between the two to yield good consistent hits was significantly different. With the EAA I could crank out .15 - .20 on target splits. With the 2011 I had to slow it down to .25 - .30 on target splits to yield the same quality of hits. This time difference may not sound like a lot, but it feels like an eternity while shooting.

I was going to try and shoot the 2011 as a second gun at this weekends match, but I am going to hold off on doing that. Even though its functioning correctly, the whole gun displacement issue is very distracting and I still have the magazine not dropping free issue. So I basically don’t want to try to “relearn” how to shoot the 2011 when its in this less than optimal function configuration. I will wait for the Phoenix Trinity grip and go from there. It’s a bummer to have to wait for the metal grip, but there isn’t much I can do about it. The awesome thing is that I can actually shoot it now without it chopping my hand!!! That is a huge step forward in the right direction!!!

[BritinUSA]

Regarding the displacement, I'm wondering if that may be a result of the different types of barrel, traditional vs polygonal and the twist rate.

[CHA-LEE]

Regarding the displacement, I'm wondering if that may be a result of the different types of barrel, traditional vs polygonal and the twist rate.

That might be playing a roll. But I think a bigger difference between the two barrels would be in the EAA being a heavy bull barrel and the 2011 having a lighter bushing barrel. When I hold both guns in my hand one after the other, the EAA feels a lot more frame/grip heavy than the 2011. The 2011 feels a lot more slide or upper heavy. I weighed both guns last night. The EAA comes in at 44oz and the 2011 comes in at 42oz after installing the tungsten guide rod. So they are getting close to the same overall weight, but the weight distribution between the two guns is dramatically different. The stainless steel grip will add another 9oz to the 2011, so it will bring its overall weight to 51oz. That seems like a really heavy pistol but in the research I have done that is about average weight for the metal grip SVI pistols out there.

At this point all I can do is wait for the metal grip to show up and continue testing from there.

[drewbeck]

What was your reasoning for the bushing barrel? Did you try the bull before making the decision?

[CHA-LEE]

What was your reasoning for the bushing barrel? Did you try the bull before making the decision?

The barrel type used on the 2011 was totally up to Rick. He prefers to use bushing barrels because they are more accurate and the bushing can be refit if needed to fix accuracy issues. I guess you can't really do that with the bull barrels since the barrel it fit to the frame instead of a bushing. I didn't want to mandate any kind of special configuration of the barrel or slide cuts/weight on this pistol as I figured it would be best to leave that stuff up to Rick to use what he knows works. Kind of like allowing a mechanic to do whatever he feels is best when working on your car.

Maybe a bull barrel config would feel better or displace less than a bushing barrel setup? I am not sure, but I don't want to rule out the bushing barrel setup until I have exhausted all other options.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I was able to shoot a local club match on Saturday and then did some training on Sunday. On Saturday I knuckled under to temptation and decided to shoot the 2011 as a second gun through the whole match. I knew that shooting two different guns at the same match was going to negatively impact my match performance. But I wasn’t expecting it to be the disaster it turned into. My EAA pistol feels and shoots differently than the 2011 and the sights on my EAA are slightly different as well. These differences in how they feel and what I see while shooting them really threw me for a loop. As expected I trapped the magazine in the 2011 every time I pressed the mag release during a reload. This expectation of the magazine not dropping free somehow mentally transferred to when I was shooting my EAA as well so I wasted time on some stages trying to pull the magazine out of the EAA when it was already gone. Forcing myself into this strange equipment distraction condition basically ruined my ability to simply let the shooting happen subconsciously. Getting distracted by the strange stuff dominated my performance and it resulted in a pretty poor overall match performance. Sucky shooting aside, I was glad that I got a chance to run the 2011 in match conditions. It functioned flawlessly through the whole match. I am also happy to report that I had ZERO slide bite while shooting it. I am going to get the rear sight notch cut deeper so the sight picture looks the same as my EAA. I also have some different weight recoil and hammer springs coming so I am looking forward to trying those out as well. In the mean time I am eagerly waiting for the Phoenix Trinity metal grips to me made and shipped so I can give it a try. At this point in the testing process I am thinking that the metal grip is going to be the silver bullet needed to solve the gun displacement issue while shooting.

On Sunday I did a group training class and it was a lot of fun. We didn’t get any rain and that was a welcomed change but it was a long hot day at the range. With fairly cloudless skies and temps in the high 90’s we were all feeling pretty run down by the end of the training class. Everyone enjoyed the class and much was learned which is just how it should be. I even got to shoot a little bit at the end of the day so that was fun as well.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I got a chance to do a decent amount of tweaking, testing and shooting with the 2011. I went hog out crazy on the inside of the magwell / grip area to keep from being able to trap the magazine in the gun during the reload. This extra hogging worked and pretty much resolved the dropping free issue unless I grip really hard during the reload. I also got some different recoil and hammer springs so I wanted to test those out as well. I threw in a 7lb recoil spring and a 15lb hammer spring and it felt pretty good on the bench and seemed to cycle ammo through it fine manually. We were also able to get the rear sight notch chopped down to a depth of .140 so the sight picture looks the same as my EAA.

On Saturday I went out to the range for an extended live fire practice session with some friends. We setup a long field course stage and shot it a bunch of times. The stage had a good mixture of different shooting challenges and speed along with needing reloads during each stage run. On my first run I used the 7lb recoil / 15lb hammer spring setup and the recoil felt really soft but it took forever for the slide to close post shot. I found myself pulling the trigger before the slide was closed and nothing happening so I had to pull the trigger again to break the shot. This was a super strange experience, but not really a surprise as the 7lb recoil spring was just too slow in returning the slide to the forward position. I put the 8lb recoil spring back in and then used the 8lb / 15lb hammer spring setup for the rest of the practice session. I like the 15lb hammer spring better than the 17lb as it does reduce some of the gun tip up or displacement during the initial part of the recoil. The whole gun was still displacing a little bit like it was before, but its doing it to less of an extent now. From a spring and firing pin block tuning perspective I think I have maxed out the adjustments to try and eliminate the gun displacement issue. I think the only other step to take is to add the heavier stainless grip to add more mass to the frame of the gun. The good news is that I shot 300 rounds through the gun and was able to call my shots better with the new deeper rear notch sight setup. Even though I felt like I had to shoot a little slower due to the displacement issue it was feeling pretty solid and not chopping my hand. Since it was running so smoothly and I was getting more use to it I decided to shoot it in the match on Sunday.

On Sunday I shot the 2011 and it was a little strange in needing to wait for the gun to return to my aiming spot but I was getting a little more use to it. On the second stage of the day I had a really funky jam during a really fast hosing portion of a stage. The hammer wouldn’t drop to fire the gun and I was caught off guard by this. It looked like the slide was fully forward and the safety wasn’t accidently flipped on. I tried hitting the back of the slide to make it fully close but it didn’t help. I then racked the slide to eject the unfired round and then it started running again. After this mega jam debacle my stage plan went completely off the reservation and all told I wasted about 10 seconds on a 14 second stage. Needless to say, almost doubling your stage time recovering from a jam isn’t a good way to finish well overall in the match. The gun ran solidly the rest of the match, but the strange failure to fire condition was lurking in the back of my head. I also think I have the trigger set a little too heavy at 2.75lbs as there were a couple of times where I anticipated the shot and flinched the gun down before or as it fired.

When I got home after the match I cleaned the 2011 up and started looking into the chambering of the ammo. I thought that maybe the chamber was cut too shallow and the brass was getting jammed between the front of the chamber and the breach face on brass that was a little longer than normal. When I test fit a couple of live rounds in the chamber I noticed that the sides of the bullet were getting scratched a little bit by something sharp right at the step in the forward section of the chamber. I polished up the chamber and just past the step at the forward section then test fitted several rounds and no more scratching was happening. I think that there was a metal bur at the step section and it would carve off some of the plating on the side of the bullet and jam between the step and the leading edge of the brass, keeping the barrel from locking up fully. This is just my guess as it was the only thing I could find abnormal when manually chambering rounds. I also reduced the trigger pull break to 2lbs as this should minimize the anticipation of the shot breaking . With the 2lb trigger break I don’t feel like I have to mash the trigger to get the hammer to drop. I simply have to row my finger back like I do on my EAA and the hammer falls as it should.

Teething pains are expected on a new gun. It sucks to learn some of these lessons in a match, especially when it ran so well for 300 rounds in practice the day before. But it is what it is. All I can do is learn the lessons as they come and keep working through it one challenge at a time. If the metal grip solves the gun displacement issue the 2011 will be a viable replacement for my EAA gun. I am hoping that it does solve the issue because I have always wanted to shoot the same platform as the majority of the shooters in Limited division.

I am planning on shooting an indoor USPSA match tonight with the 2011. If everything runs smoothly I am thinking about using the 2011 at the Great Plains sectional match this coming weekend. Its probably not the best decision to take a new pistol to a major match, but I need to get some more match based run time on this blaster to work out all of the kinks and get use to how it shoots.

[Jerome]

I'm enjoying your 2011 build history. So far I vote for the EAA. :-)

I find the light recoil springs interesting. My STI is different as it has a bull barrel and the slide is not lightened but anything less than a 14lb spring and I will have feeding issues. Never mind it seems to take forever for the slide to close. Friends with a lightened slide go down sometimes to a 10lb spring.

I got to handle an Open gun with the Phoenix Trinity grip this weekend. Nice balance was the 1st thing that came to mind.

[CHA-LEE]

I shot the Whistling Pines indoor USPSA match last night with the 2011. We only had three stages and about 60 rounds of shooting, but it was a fun time doing some high speed blasting. Most of the stages were all out hose as fast as you can type of shooting which was a good test of cranking out rounds quickly with the 2011. I was able to produce .12 - .15 splits while in full Big Panda blasting rage mode and the gun ran flawlessly at that pace of shooting. With the trigger lightened up to 2lbs I didn’t have the feeling of needing to push through the sear to break the shot like I did on Sunday. This is how it should be and the trigger action feels very close to my EAA pistol. The gun functioned flawlessly and I couldn’t feel any clunkiness as it fed rounds while shooting. I also forced a reload on every stage and didn’t have any issues with the magazine dropping free. I know that 60 rounds of shooting isn’t a solid test of reliable functionality, but its at least a good start. I am planning on doing a little more shooting with it this week before I head off to the Great Plains sectional match. As of right now, I am planning on running the 2011 for that match and we will see how it goes.

Edited July 8, 2014 by CHA-LEE

[MarkCO]

Best of luck out there!

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I attended the 2014 Great Plains Sectional in Louisville Nebraska. This was a one day match happening all on Sunday. My buddy Nick and I drove out there on Saturday so we could check out the stages then shoot the whole match on Sunday and then drive home Sunday evening. This was an “Iron Man” type of match with all of the driving mixed in with hot and humid shooting conditions. I went to this match last year and it was a lot of fun. This year was no different. All of the stages were well designed and gave you many choices in how to shoot them. It was also cool that many of the stages had 34 or 36 rounds which pushed the limits on how many targets you could engage before or after reloads. I usually opted to take the safer rout and simply do two reloads during these stages which was fun and pushed my boundaries because I rarely have to do more than one reload per field course stage. My squad mates were able to get all of my stage runs on video and I have uploaded them to my YouTube channel. Some of the follies during the stage runs are entertaining to watch.

I shot the 2011 at this match and didn’t bring my EAA gun as a backup. This forced me to focus on shooting the 2011 and get some more experience behind the sights. I felt like I was shooting more conservative on target splits than I could have with the EAA, but it is what it is until I can get the heavier stainless steel grip. I had one failure to go into battery jam during the match with forced me to rack out the round after getting into a shooting position costing me time. Then I had one stage where I trapped the mag in the gun during a reload and had to rip it free, then several other stages where I was waiting on the magazine to slowly drop out of the gun during the reload. Other than these issues the gun ran well and it was fun to shoot.

I would rate my match performance as “ok” but nothing special. I shot pretty good points on every stage. I had one no shoot on the Texas Star stage where I missed a plate and the miss went into a no shoot. Then I had another stage where I edge hit a big popper twice and it didn’t fall. I called for a calibration and it went down as it should have so I ended up with a miss on the steel. I had significant issues with hitting steel one for one. I could feel myself anticipating the shot and flinching the gun off target or I was simply mashing the trigger too much on the steel targets so I think I need to make the trigger a little lighter and crisper. Since the 2011 has a significantly lighter pre-travel before the sear/break point verses my EAA trigger it’s strange and distracting to know exactly where in the trigger pull the gun is going to fire. I also had a stage where I repeatedly created the incorrect weak hand grip on the gun which lead to pushing the mag release with the palm of my hand and dropping magazines when I didn’t intend to. Beyond that with the hot and humid weather I was sweating constantly all day at the range and this made for a challenging day of shooting. I tried my best to stay hydrated and nourished through out the match day, but I could tell I was running out of gas during the last couple of stages.

I knew that I had some stages with less than optimal performances but I didn’t have any mega bad disasters. There were no other GM’s competing in Limited division at this match so I figured my performance would be good enough to win, and it was. I was just lucky that there wasn’t some other GM’s competing at this match because I am sure I would have been playing second fiddle to them given my performance. Regardless of where I finished I had a lot of fun shooting this match. The Match staff did an awesome job with putting on this match. There was zero match or RO drama and everything ran like a well oiled machine, which is just how it should happen. I am already looking forward to attending this match again next year.

[CHA-LEE]

This week I have been doing some more fiddling on the 2011. Since I am not a fan of the adjustable rear sights I replaced it with a fixed one made by Harrison Consulting. The fixed rear sight is setup to be a direct replacement for a BoMar cut so it was quite “porky” to fill in the gaps of the cut. Rick went after it with the mill and was able to cut off a significant amount of dead weight from it and also opened up the rear notch to .140 wide by .140 deep. After all of these modifications the sight weighs just under 1oz. Since this fixed rear sight is a little taller than the adjustable one we had to put a taller front sight on the gun so a .200 tall by .100 wide Dawson Precision sight was installed. Rick did some more work on the trigger and brought the overall trigger pull down to 1.75lbs which is lighter than I am use to but when I dry fire it the pretravel to sear break weight difference is reduced so maybe this will work better for me.

To try and resolve the failure to fire / not going fully into battery issue we noticed that the cut in the bottom of the slide that is used as a “Pocket” for the disconnector to sit in when the slide is locked up was biased rearward a little too far. If you pushed the slide back at all the leading edge of the “Pocket” would push down the disconnector and put the trigger in a reset condition. We double checked how much rearward slide movement was needed to recreate this “trigger reset” condition on a bunch of other 2011’s in his shop and all of them required significantly more rearward movement of the slide before it pushed the disconnector down. He brought the “Pocket” in the slide forward slightly to mimic the “trigger reset” point during slide movement of the other guns. He also opened up and polished the chamber to give the ammo a little more room to work with when chambering. Hopefully these two things will resolve the very inconsistent failure to fire / not going fully into battery issues I was having.

I was able to get out to the range yesterday after work to sight in the new Fixed sight setup and give the new trigger setup a test run. I got the gun sighted in properly but didn’t have a bunch of time or ammo to really give the trigger a solid work out. I did notice that I was pulling my shots to the right when I was doing the little bit of fast shooting I was able to do. This is usually due to the trigger being a little too forward of where it should be within the trigger guard. I double checked this when I got home by dry firing with an aggressive trigger slap and the front sight would almost always move to the right at the drop of the hammer. Since the trigger was too far forward I started to cut it back a little at a time then retesting it in dry fire. I decided to ditch the flat trigger type of cut and instead cut a finger pad groove in the leading edge of the trigger to set the correct depth. This makes my finger lay on the trigger more like it would while shooting the EAA, so that was a welcomed change. I didn’t take off too much material from the trigger and I think I have it cut back far enough, but I will only know for real in live fire testing. I am going to leave it as it is for now and see how it goes over the weekend.

The every evolving 2011 fiddling process continues. The last major modification will be the addition of the stainless steel grip. Hopefully that will be shipped in a couple of weeks so I can see how it runs.

[CHA-LEE]

Last week I did a lot of trigger fiddling on the 2011. I finally got all of the trigger stuff figured out in how the parts interact with one another. I didn’t realize how critical the middle leg of the trigger bow spring was to the whole setup. I wanted to change the trigger setup to have the pre-travel stiffer and the sear push through lighter and it took a ton of spring fiddling to get that done. After quite a bunch of iterations of take it apart and fiddle with the spring, then put it back together and test it out I now have a solid understanding of how much bending of the trigger bow spring legs affects the trigger pull. I was able to create the desired trigger pull that is very close to how my EAA trigger feels. The take up is somewhat heavy and the sear push through is light with a total trigger pull weight of 2.25lbs. This trigger setup allows me to simply slap the trigger with a single full rowing action of my finger and it will drop the hammer without displacing the sights.

The last time I sighted it in with the Fixed sight I noticed that it was not grouping well, even from a supported position. I was not sure if it was an ammo or gun issue so I took it over to Rick’s and we did some testing of different ammo. Regardless of the ammo we used it would have a random flier here or there. We swapped out the 8lb recoil spring with a 10lb and the group was dramatically reduced and no more fliers where happening. He thinks that the combination of a really light recoil and hammer springs were just too light to keep the barrel locked up consistently when it fires. The 10lb recoil spring creates a little more muzzle flip but I will gladly take that verses the bullets not going where I intend them to go.

Since we changed the recoil spring and the trigger was changed once again, I was putting myself back into discovery mode for the weekend matches.

On Saturday I had to put on my Match Director hat to run the local High Plains Practical Shooters match. Our score keeper was out for this match as well so I had to do the scoring stuff as well. It was a lot of work, but the match turned out well and fun was had by all. We even had Angus Hobdell show up for the match as he was in town for another event and decided to do some blasting while in Colorado. I was able to squad with Angus and he was a lot of fun to shoot with. I was too busy in the morning to take a look at the stages from a competitive perspective so I was forced to figure them all out when we got to them during the match. Most of the stages had several different ways of shooting them so it was fun figuring them out as the match went on. Through the whole match I was trying to get use to the new trigger pull and 10lb recoil spring so my timing was off a little and it was distracting. But by the end of the match I was getting more use to it. I shot an ok match, but it was nothing special. I am actually surprised that I performed as well as I did given that I was running the match and basically shooting a new gun. The good news is that the gun didn’t have the failure to fire jam so hopefully that issue is now resolved.

On Sunday I presented a training class and it was a hot day at the range. All of the students had fun and learning was had by all. I was only able to shoot a little bit that day, but that is normal during these training events. I prefer to show examples in how things should be done in dry fire verses actually shooting it.

Monday night I headed down to Colorado Springs for the Whistling Pines match and that was a lot of fun. As always they pretty much have “Box to Box” style stages due to the range limitations. This is fine as its always good to practice the shooting position entry and exit skills. I shot the match fairly solid and only had two issues. On one stage I clipped a no shoot target on a tight shot and had to eat the penalty. Then on the Classifier I shifted my grip during the reload to reach the mag release and then couldn’t get my strong hand shifted back after pushing the button. This lead to a funky front sight displacing grip after the reload so I had to drive the sights back to an aligned state then break the shot on every round fired after the reload. This wasted a lot of time but I at least got my hits. I think they have a swamp cooler type of air conditioning in that range and it made my hands feel pretty sticky, which lead to the grip displacement issue on the classifier. The 2011 ran solidly through the whole match so that was a good thing.

I am starting to get use to shooting the 2011 platform. I can still see and feel the gun displacing situation but I seem to be adjusting my grip tension and shooting speed to minimize its affects. Hopefully the stainless steel grip totally eliminates the issue and I can get back to my normal shooting style.

[leath4m]

Hi mate, I realize you have a PT grip coming, but have you ever thought of applying JB weld and some course media to your STI grip? A friend at our local club has this set up on his Edge. It feels great. And if your worried about the thickness you could sand off the existing checkering before you start. Enjoy your thread! Sat down yesterday and read the whole thing

[CHA-LEE]

Hi mate, I realize you have a PT grip coming, but have you ever thought of applying JB weld and some course media to your STI grip? A friend at our local club has this set up on his Edge. It feels great. And if your worried about the thickness you could sand off the existing checkering before you start. Enjoy your thread! Sat down yesterday and read the whole thing

Thanks for the suggestion, but the gun displacement issue isn't due to poor friction between my hands and gun. I have grip tape on the grip already and the gun isn't slipping around in my hand due to not enough friction. The gun is simply lighter, especially in the frame and grip area compared to my EAA. This reduced mass down low allows the whole gun to displace off target when I shoot.

[leath4m]

No, I'm sorry. I meant with the trapping mag issue with squeezing too hard. The JB weld seems to stiffen the STI grip up

[CHA-LEE]

The grip is big enough as it is. Adding more material to it will just make it more bulky. Since I hogged out the inside of the grip I haven't had many failure to drop free issues. I have also been working on relaxing my grip during the reload so that is helping as well. The only time I run into it now is when I miss my grip during the draw and my hand is biased to the right side of the gun. Then I have a hard time reaching the mag release and end up gripping really hard trying to get my thumb to the mag release. This is the only time I can trap the mag in the gun during a reload right now. But that is a failure on many different levels to create that situation.

[CHA-LEE]

This coming weekend I am helping with and attending a Manny Bragg training event here in Colorado. I have coordinated these Manny Bragg training classes for several years and it’s nice to get some good training from an outside resource at least once a year. The training event is actually four days starting on Saturday and ending on Tuesday so there will be many opportunities to learn something new. I am looking forward to getting an honest break down of my practical shooting skills and being given some solutions on how to fix my issues. Like always, I am going into this training event with an open mind and zero expectations. Doing this usually results in the best return on investment as it allows me to get the most out of it. It’s going to be nice to get back into training for myself mode, which I have not had much time for lately. We will see how it goes.

[CHA-LEE]

This past week has been crazy packed with shooting activities. Last Sat – Tues I attended a Manny Bragg class here in Colorado. I coordinate this class every year and use the first two days of his “Standard” class to rework the club props and get stuff cleaned up at the range. I worked my butt off all day long both Saturday and Sunday going through all of the club props to get stuff fixed or maintained. Then on Monday & Tuesday I attended the Advanced class with the rest of the students. Manny and I did more talking and conceptualizing than actual shooting during our one on one training. We also did a lot more dry fire of the skills in question verses actual shooting and that was fine with me. It doesn’t have to go “Boom” to observe and learn things. I took away a few good “Nuggets” of good information from our training time together and am looking forward to trying integrate these skills into my current style of shooting. The only bummer about the training class was that we only got a half day of training on Tuesday because the skies opened up after lunch and rained super hard for about an hour. We had to call it a day after that much rain had fallen and we ended up putting away all of the props in the rain.

On Wednesday I presented a Dry Fire training class in the evening at a local indoor range. That was a lot of fun. Its cool to see the light bulb come on when shooters realize how easy it is to identify inefficiencies in their gun handling mechanics.

On Thursday I picked up by shooting buddies Josh and Lauren and we hit the road to Grand Island Nebraska to attend the Area 3 match. We got to the range at about 2PM and had a chance to check out all of the stages. With 14 different stages to inspect, break down and figure out a plan for it was a long day. I felt that I had pretty solid stage plans for all of the stages and looked forward to shooting the whole match on Friday.

On Friday morning we got to the range and two shooters didn’t show up on our squad so we were down to an 8 shooter squad. Everyone on the squad was really nice and we all worked hard to get the stage taped up and reset for every shooter. One of the shooters brought his young daughter along and she zipped around the stages taping targets like a ninja. She genuinely loved taping targets and would race us to the next target available to tape. The only targets she couldn’t tape were the ones that were too tall for her to reach. It was super cool to see this young girl enjoying a day at the range with her father so much. This sport makes me smile in new ways all the time.

We started on stage 1 where the shooting area was made of single file railroad ties that you had to get up onto to shoot from. The early morning dew had given these oily railroad ties a solid coating of water and they were really slippery. This stage required you to run hard in the grass then jump up onto a railroad tie for some shooting then jump down again and run hard some more. Since the railroad ties were super slippery in the morning you had to really take it easy or risk slipping. I had two mistakes on this stage. The first was hitting my mag release by accident while shooting which dropped the mag and lead to an empty chamber situation. I had to pick up the mag and put it back in the gun but I didn’t realize that there wasn’t a round in the chamber until I got to the next shooting position and had a “click” on the first target instead of a boom. I had to rack the gun to get a round in the chamber before the blasting could continue. Then I slipped as I tried to exit the first slippery railroad tie so that put me into mega granny mode when I got to the other sections of the stage where I had to get up and down off the railroad ties. Starting off the match by wasting at least 5 seconds in ginger movement and gun handling problems wasn’t very good.

This lead to stage 2 which was an all steel stage. All of the poppers were painted target colored brown and they blended in very well against one another when they were stacked up. I didn’t fare much better this time around as I was shooting slow and deliberate but still missing. I wasted a lot of time on this stage with extra shots while missing these pesky brown steel poppers.

The third stage was a fun field course stage that had a large shooting area that allowed you to shoot from the ground or on a platform. I figured out a plan that allowed me to shoot the whole stage from the ground but it left me with not knowing when the right swinger was going to be available to shoot. I felt that I shot the stage pretty solidly but gave up a second or two waiting for the right swinger to appear.

At this point one of our squad mates lost the reverse plug on his guide rod and didn’t have a backup gun. One of the RO’s offered to lend him their gun to finish the match and I let him borrow some extra magazines. But when he made ready for the stage, he dropped a magazine during the process and bent over to pick it up and ended up sweeping his arm with the gun. Off to Dairy Queen he went. Our squad was now down to 7 shooters.

The next berm was a double stage situation with two speed shoots. There wasn’t much excitement about these two stages and I felt that I shot them ok.

Stage 6 was a crazy contraption stage where you had to push and hold two different levers to both activate a swinger and hold open a port. The levers were made in a way that basically had you shooting one side Strong hand only, then the other side weak hand only while holding the lever forward with your other hand. The ports had two targets behind each and one was a head shot on each side. I don’t know what the distance was to the port targets but it was a good distance away and both targets were in heavy shadows. One handed shooting + shadow targets = fail boat for me. I ended up with a miss on the weak hand side head shot with a slow time due to all of the makeup shots needed. This really wasn’t even a fun stage to shoot, just something to survive.

Stage 7 was another funky stage where you had a range bag tied to your strong hand wrist. You had to basically let the range bag dangle on your wrist as you shot on the move through the stage. The range bag wasn’t really that heavy but it was heavy enough to pull your gun off target while shooting on the move. I shot this stage pretty tentative as I simply wanted to get my hits while the range bag was moving my arms around.

At this point it was lunch time and we took a break to have a meal with friends. The weather was nice compared to prior years so that was a welcomed change. Its hard enough to shoot 14 stages in one day without needing to battle really hot and humid weather as well.

After lunch we jumped back into the action hitting stage 8 which was a strange drop turner stage. You went through a door and opening the door activated two drop turners, then when you pushed the door all the way open, it activated two more drop turners. Controlling how much or how aggressively you opened the door would prove to be a significant challenge. And wasting time opening the door gently then pushing it again to fully open it and activate the second set of DT’s was more wasted time. The least brain damage way to shoot the stage was to simply blast the door open aggressively then shoot the static targets from the platform then run forward and engage the DT’s from their stationary position. This stage is where disaster struck for me. I don’t know if it was a post lunch meat & cheese coma or what, but I totally screwed up this stage. I ended up with 4 misses and a slow time. At this point I knew that my chances of salvaging a really good overall finish at this match were over. You simply can’t eat 4 misses on a stage and expect to do well overall.

To make matters worse another one of our squad mates swept themselves while opening the door and were sent to Dairy Queen. Our squad was now down to 6 shooters.

The next stage was a fun field course where you had several options in how you could move through the stage. I chose a plan that had me standing and shooting more than shooting on the move to eliminate a couple of shooting positions. The stage also had a windmill of four targets in the back that were activated by opening a door. There wasn’t any hard cover or no shoots on the windmill of targets so it was pretty easy to shoot by simply tracking the targets in a circle as you shot them. I felt that I had a solid stage run but ended up with a miss on one of the longer distance targets. I called the second shot on it marginal but it ended up being a miss. I am blaming this miss on the strange whole gun displacement issue the 2011 has.

Misfortune struck my squad again on this stage as one of our shooters decided to engage a target beyond the 180. Off to Dairy Queen they went. This brought our squad down to only 5 shooters. I hate to say it but having a squad this small really did affect the rest of my match because there wasn’t enough time to mentally get prepared for shooting the stages. We were in rapid fire mode churning through the stages pretty fast and I wasn’t really prepared for that. I hate to make excuses about having a poor match performance, but this really small squad situation really did jack me up. If this happens again in the future I am going to see if the squad can be broken down and distributed to other squads or something like that. Doing this would at least give you a fair amount of time on each stage to get mentally into it and prepared to shoot the stage.

I felt like I stumbled through the remaining stages of the match simply trying to keep up with the pace of churning through the stages. I only had one good stage run in the match which was on stage 11. Everything clicked for me on this stage and I didn’t feel like I gave up much time or points while shooting it. This performance actually ended up being a stage win which was about the only shining light of hope during this crazy day of simply trying to survive the match. At the end of the day I was at the top of the heap in Limited from all of the Thursday and Friday shooters. But I knew that lime light was going to be short lived when the weekend shooters had their chance to tear up the stages.

When all of the shooting was done and the final results were posted I ended up 7^th in Limited at 82% of Blake Miguez, who pretty much destroyed everyone. Second place was fellow Colorado shooter Bob Krogh and he was at 91%. I am glad that I attended this match as the stages were challenging and the match staff puts on a great match. But I am not going to try to shoot the whole thing in one day again. That is a good lesson learned for me.

Since we got back home on Saturday afternoon, and I am a glutton for punishment I decided to shoot the local AGC club match on Sunday. That was a fun day of shooting and I had a chance to squad and shoot with Ron Avery. He was having some gun issues during the match so that pretty much took him out of contention for winning Limited. But either way it was fun shooting with him during the club match.

[CHA-LEE]

I got the Phoenix Trinity grip yesterday. That thing is a work of art!!! I promptly tore down my 2011 and tried to slap the PT Grip on, but it wasn’t fitting as the frame was a little too wide verses the dimensions of the PT grip. I did some measuring of the PT grip and the STI frame. All of the measurements I took on the PT grip were dead nuts on but the STI frame was kind of inconsistent. With the STI frame on the slightly “Chubby” side I had to do some fitting of the frame and grip to get it installed. After a couple of hours of careful fitting I was able to get the grip onto the frame in the fully seated position. I then spent another hour of fitting to get the main spring housing to fit into the rails in the back of the grip.

At this point I was able to get the gun back together and do some gun handling and a little bit of dry fire. Before I took the gun apart I weighed it and it came in at 42oz. After adding the PT grip it was right at 51.5oz. Handling the gun on the bench I could feel a significant increase in weight in the grip/frame area. From a top vs bottom weight distribution perspective it feels very similar to the EAA now, but overall heavier. My EAA weighs 44oz so this 2011 is almost half a pound heaver than that. The 2011 still has the heavy stainless steel CAPE magwell and Tunsten guide rod, so those two things combined add about 8 oz to the gun. I have an aluminum version of the CAPE magwell coming and a stainless steel guide rod so the next time I get out to shoot I can play around with different weight configurations to see how it affects the shooting and tracking of the gun. I am going to start out at the Super Tanker 51.5oz weight though and go from there.

I still have some more fitting and fiddling to do in order to get this PT Grip fully setup and functioning properly so I am going to focus on that this week. Hopefully I can get the majority of this stuff done tomorrow and Thursday so I can do some test firing on Friday.

[BritinUSA]

I think you should call your gun 'Sherman', cos its built like a tank.

[CHA-LEE]

I got the PT grip installed along with fitting and tweaking the rest of the supporting goodies. This took a lot longer than expected, but its at least done and ready to rumble now. I did a little bit of dry fire with it last night and the increase in overall weight was very apparent while handling it. I like the feel of the grip tape instead of the checkering on the plastic grip but I am sure I will need to go through a couple of iterations of grip tape coverage to have just enough without going overboard.

I did a few reloads and noticed that there is less of a fudge factor in getting the magazine into the gun at the wrong angle due to the unforgiving metal grip. This is nothing new though as I had the same challenge with the EAA/Tanfo pistols. The cool thing is that I can grip the crap out of it while pushing the mag release and there is no way of trapping the magazine in the gun.

Its been raining here in Colorado during the day so I don't think I will get a chance to take it out for a live fire session after work. That is probably a good thing though as I am waiting for the aluminum CAPE magwell to come in today and I would rather have more weight tuning options to work with when I do take it out for live fire. It will be fun to try it in different weight configurations to see how it shoots differently. Tonight I will do some more dry fire with it to see if I can get use to the weight and slightly different feel of the grip compared to the plastic one.

[CHA-LEE]

On Friday I was able to get out to the range to test out the 2011 with the Phoenix Trinity metal grip in the 51.5oz weight configuration. The significant weight of the gun was vary apparent with a fully loaded magazine. In this full weight configuration the felt recoil and muzzle flip was significantly reduced. My major power factor loads felt like minor power factor and the gun wouldn’t displace or muzzle flip at all while shooting. I really didn’t notice the weight increase during target to target transitions but the strange thing I did notice is that the fastest on target splits I could muster were .20 - .25. I swapped the stainless steel magwell for an aluminum version and this reduced the overall weight to 47 oz. This made the gun feel less bottom heavy while handling it and transitioning during dry fire. While shooting it in this configuration I did notice that the felt recoil and muzzle flip was increased slightly but the gun wasn’t displacing off target like it was with the plastic grip. I didn’t see any difference in target to target transition times but I did notice that I was able to produce .17 - .20 on target splits. Since reducing the weight of the gun allowed me to shoot faster I decided to swap the Tungsten guide rod with a regular stainless steel version. This took another ounce out of the frame bringing the overall weight down to 46oz. This made the gun feel a little less muzzle heavy while handling it and dry firing. When I shot the gun in this configuration the muzzle flip was a little more pronounced but the overall felt recoil was the same and it wasn’t displacing off target. The very surprising thing was that I was then able to crank out on target .10 - .15 splits with relative ease. I was confused about how reducing the weight of the gun would change how fast I could shoot it, but after thinking about it for a while I believe that the slightly increased muzzle flip promotes the reset of the trigger during the firing cycle. I played around with this a little bit and if I held my trigger finger on the trigger with just the right pressure I could induce a wicked bump fire scenario producing splits below .08 where my timer couldn’t pick up the individual shots any more. While bump firing like this isn’t an effective tool to leverage during a stage run, its at least pretty cool to basically be able to do on demand.

With the 2011 in this 46oz configuration I did some back to back shooting against my EAA Limited blaster and they both had about the same felt recoil, muzzle flip, and not displacing off target while shooting. I am super glad that the metal grip on the 2011 has successfully solved the gun displacement issue. The metal grip also eliminates the trapping the magazine in the gun while reloading due to gripping hard during the reload. The only drawback I can see so far is that the metal grip is a lot less forgiving in getting the new magazine into the gun without jamming up when the mag isn’t at the correct angle. This issue really isn’t that much different than how the EAA Limited gun is as the metal grip/frame isn’t as forgiving as a more slippery plastic grip.

Now I need to put in a lot of dry fire and live fire time with the gun to get 100% use to it. It is still a little strange when shooting and I haven’t gotten it to a point where every time I draw the gun and point it at a target the sights are already aligned perfectly. Its frustrating because I can pick up my EAA limited gun and point it at a target and the sights are perfectly aligned all the time. It will take some time and a lot of repetitions to get the 2011 to the same level as the EAA. The good thing is that now I have settled on a final hardware configuration of the 2011 I can really work on getting use to it. I should have enough time between now and the Nationals to get totally use to the new gun.

[CHA-LEE]

On Saturday I attended a local USPSA match at the Colorado Rifle Club. I was eager to give the newly configured 2011 a go in match conditions. I didn’t have a very good match performance that day, but the gun ran really well and I liked how it felt while shooting. I did have a couple of stages where I fumbled the reload a little bit due to the less forgiving metal grip, but that wasn’t a huge issue. I tried a skill that Manny suggested I try when encountering a large left to right transition and it didn’t work out too well for me. I basically took a single stance with my natural point of aim facing straight down range and then twisted my waist to the extreme left and right to engage two close targets on each side. While shooting fast I felt that I didn’t have the same amount of recoil management and this lead to a miss on one of the targets due to trying to shoot fast while using a twisted up stance. My transition from side to side was fast, but without good hits a fast transition is kind of pointless. I shot that stage again for fun using my old method of taking two separate stances to get my natural point of aim centered on the targets and I was able to hose down the targets very fast and get all A’s. I need to do some more testing with this twisted up shooting scenario before I totally rule it out. Trying it out in a match was probably not the best idea.

My major issue during the match happened when I decided to change my whole stage plan right before I shot a fairly complex stage. The new plan was a better plan, but I didn’t have enough time to properly program it so I ended up derailing half way through the stage run. I ended up doing half of the new plan and half of the old plan and it was a complete train wreck. That is what I get for ROing all the way up to my turn to shoot then deciding to change my stage plan right before I shot the stage. This was a rookie mistake but I really didn’t care as this club match was more about learning how my 2011 shoots with the metal grip. I was really happy with how the 2011 performed during the match and I am pretty much sold on the new configuration. I am looking forward to doing some serious practice with this new configuration so I can start getting use to it.

When I got home after the match I broke out the files and grinding bits to work on the opening of the metal grip. I was able to round off and smooth out some of the sharp corners that were causing some of the magazine binding during aggressive reloads. I also polished up the sand blasted finish on the inside of the grip so there is smooth metal that the magazine is rubbing against instead of the somewhat rough sand blasted finish. I did some dry fire with the reworked grip opening and it was a little more forgiving on the less than optimal angle magazine entry into the gun so that should help a little bit. This will be a work in progress as I think I can make some minor changes to the magazine bodies to further reduce the sharp edges that seem to catch or hang up during a reload. As always more fiddling is needed.