CHA-LEE's Tale

[WFargo]

Man, second place at 12% ... so many rounds and only 23 C's. 

Wow.... congratulations!

Great video, as usual!

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend was a crazy one. I was scheduled to attend the Area 4 match in Houston Texas but the match got cancelled due to a tornado hitting the range on Thursday afternoon. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t hear about this until I was already at the Airport in Denver lined up to board my flight. At that point it was too late to cancel my flight as my guns and gear were already on the plane. Once we arrived in Houston the official match cancellation notice was emailed to all competitors. As we stood in the baggage claim area at midnight waiting for our luggage we discussed how we could change our travel plans to get home. Our options were to pay $400+ to change our return flight to Friday, or change our Rental car reservation to drive it back to Denver which was a 16 hour drive one way.

 

Since I didn’t want to incur any more travel expense loss I opted for the option of Driving back with the rental. This option would ultimately be void due to the rental car company running out of cars that evening. We waited at the airport for the rental car shuttle for 45 minutes and it never came. We ended up taking a Taxi to the Rental Car office and when we got there they said they were out of cars and that is why they stopped running the shuttle. Since our reserved hotel was in Rosenberg near the range and that was about an hours drive away, our only option was to walk to a hotel near the rental car office and get a room for the night. The rental car office said they would have more cars in the morning so the plan was to get a rental car early that morning and start our drive back to Denver. The next morning they kept dilly dallying on making cars available and wouldn’t have one until 9:30AM which would put us into Denver too late to turn it in at the Denver Airport. We had to change the plan again and go with the first option of paying for the last minute return flight on Friday. By that time the only flights available were at 5PM that evening.

 

Since we had all day to burn in Houston until our flight, we went back to the rental car place and got a car for the day. By this time it was about lunch time so we made the trek to Killen’s BBQ. Killen’s BBQ is my favorite place for Beef Ribs and they were once again AWESOME!!! To me, eating at Killen’s was the only positive event of this trip to Texas. We were able to get back to Denver by about 9PM on Friday so the weekend wasn’t lost.

 

This last minute match cancel cost me about $700 in wasted travel expenses due to non-refundable accommodations that I couldn’t use and a crazy expensive return flight. This is obviously a bitter pill to swallow. But to be totally honest, I would gladly pay that to NOT be at the range when that tornado hit. I seen pictures of the aftermath and it was crazy. Prop shipping containers and tractors were thrown around like toys. The stages and bays were completely shredded. Some bays had FEET of standing water. When Mother Nature decides to hand out a beat down, she doesn’t play around. Luckily nobody was hurt at the range during that tornado which is great. Matches, ranges, and equipment can be repaired or rebuilt. No match is worth loss of life or limb. As a Match Director myself, I absolutely would not want to be in the Area 4 teams shoes in dealing with that whole mess. Not only for the range/prop damage, but also wrangling hundreds of competitors in rescheduling the event. The Area 4 match staff is resilient though as they had already selected an alternate date to host the match on the weekend of July 20/21. This alternate date conflicts with the Big Horn Classic match in Grand Junction so I won’t be able to go back to the Area 4 match this year. I wish the Area 4 crew the best of luck though. They got dealt a rotten hand with the weather the first time around. Hopefully they don’t have to deal with that again, ever.

 

Since I was back home on Friday night, I was able to get some work done around the house on Saturday. On Sunday I drove down to Pueblo to attend their club match and it was a lot of fun. Given how crazy this weekend started I was happy to do some shooting anywhere. Sometimes our plans don’t go as we expect. All we can do is deal with it as needed and make the best of the situation. I think this is the "Practical" part of the practical shooting game we love to participate in. Life happens, sometimes in ways that we don't expect. 

[CSEMARTIN]

Ok....I'll stop complaining about the time the airlines lost my luggage on the way to Nationals.  What I went through is nothing compared to this story.  Wow!

[dmshozer1]

Panda,

Where are you?

[CHA-LEE]

9 hours ago, dmshozer1 said:

Panda,

Where are you?

 

I live near Denver Colorado. 

[dmshozer1]

13 hours ago, CHA-LEE said:

 

I live near Denver Colorado. 

No Charlie,

I meant You have not posted in awhile.

[CHA-LEE]

Been busy buddy. This time of year is crazy for me. 

[dmshozer1]

16 hours ago, CHA-LEE said:

Been busy buddy. This time of year is crazy for me. 

I hear ya.

[CHA-LEE]

Last weekend I make it up to New Hampshire to attend the Area 7 Championships. I got up there really late on Thursday night (or is that “early” when you show up to your hotel at 4am?). I slept for a little bit then headed to the range around lunch time to check out the stages. Being able to sleep in was a good thing because they had some rain at the range in the morning anyway. Unlike most other ranges that turn into a total mud bog with rain, this range is mostly sand so there wasn’t any mud to deal with which was great. Most of the bays have really deep sand in the shooting area so it’s like playing beach volley ball with guns. This is a unique challenge in itself because the deep sand makes it really hard to accelerate aggressively and the surface is always changing in height which makes shooting on the move much more difficult. Maybe I am a glutton for punishment but these super sandy range conditions is an interesting challenge to overcome and I look forward to experience it. I wasn’t able to walk all of the stages on Friday due to shooting squads being backed up on a couple of them. This wasn’t too big of a deal because all of the stages were pretty straight forward as far as stage planning goes. I was able to walk the remaining stages before the match started on Saturday morning. This match had good movement and shooting tests without any stupid stuff or crazy props to deal with, which is exactly what I expect of a high end match.

 

I was on the Atlas Gunworks squad for the all day Saturday shooting schedule and it was a lot of fun meeting my teammates. We all worked hard and enjoyed our time on the range. It was also cool to see all of the different Atlas blasters being used.

 

My squad started on Stage 9 which was one of the heavier “Aiming” biased stages in the match as it had several hard cover targets, no shoot partials, and a swinger. It also had two different ports to engage some zebra hard cover targets through where the wall was solid so you couldn’t see through it like most of the other walls in the match. These solid walls would ultimately be my undoing due to the heavy shadow condition the sights would be in after my gun was poked through the final port. You had to get all the way into the final port to get to all of the targets as well so it was unavoidable. I racked up two misses on this stage through the final port because I couldn’t see my sights worth a crap due to the mega shadow condition. I tried point shooting in a very deliberate manner at the zebra hard cover with three shots and had 1 miss there. Then I shot at the swinger with two very deliberate shots and had another miss there.  Starting off the match with two mikes absolutely sucked and given the level of talent that showed up for Limited division I knew my chances of a top 2 or 3 finish was blown out of the water with those two misses alone. I sucked it up the best I could and tried my best on the remaining stages. About half way into the match on the standards stage I ended up with an uncalled mike/no shoot during the strong hand only portion of the stage. Those additional penalties pretty much solidified my doom from an overall finish perspective. You simply can’t afford to give away 55 match points in shooting penalties at any Area match and expect to finish well overall. Knowing that your match is toast after only 5 stages in is a humbling place to be. It took me another stage and the lunch break after the standards stage to come to terms with blowing the match and accept that I need to make the most of what I have left. I focused my attention on trying to learn what I can do differently to help improve my Beach Volleyball sand scrambling skills. This was actually a good thing because I discovered that I can’t rely on a single trailing leg push as the primary acceleration force. I needed to deploy two 75% effort strides to accelerate aggressively without losing a lot of traction on either stride. This was a really cool discovery to make during this match and I honestly don’t know if I would have made it if I had not racked up all of the shooting penalties which allowed me to abandon the thought of winning. Interesting stuff happens when you take a negative situation and allow it to become an opportunity for something positive to happen.

 

Since I was done shooting on Saturday, but there was all of the Sunday squads to shoot I sought out the Match Director and asked him if he needed any RO/CRO help on Sunday. As any good MD does, he found a place where I could help out on Sunday and that was at the Chrono stage. This was actually really cool to experience running a real “Check everything out” Chrono stage. When people think of a chrono stage they only associate it with shooting their ammo through the chrono. But there is a lot more going on to make it all happen. In the morning we started out the day by capturing ammo from all the squads then going crazy on knocking out and weighing the bullets before the squads caught up to us. I don’t know how many bullets I knocked out but it was A LOT. Enough to create a decent blister on the palm of my hand from simply screwing and unscrewing the top part of the hammer while adding or removing the round then hammering out the bullet. Beyond that we did mag length gauging, gun safety function tests, gear location verification, and division specific gun size/weight measurements. For the majority of the time there were three of us running the stage. I was the gun handling / checking person, we had another that was the chrono shooter, then another that was dedicated to inputting all of the data on the tablet. It took a couple squads to get the whole process smoothed out, but once we got an efficient process figured out it ran like a well oiled machine. It was running so well that we would usually get the squad done well before the next squad was finished shooting the stage before ours. This was cool because it gave us some time to watch the shooters tackle the stages next to the chrono berm. I am glad that I was able to help make this match happen even in this small way. It beats sitting in the hotel twiddling my thumbs watching TV.

 

When the scores were final on Sunday evening I ended up 6th overall in Limited. Shane Coley DESTROYED this match by handing out a 5% beat down to the AMU’s John Browning. John shot a good match as well and I honestly thought that he would win overall. But Shane laid it down like the Mega Boss he is. My 55 match point “Donation” in shooting penalties gave away a potential 3rd place finish at this match. That really sucks to know, but it also tells me that I am not that far out of the mix in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes it goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, shown below is my match video.

 

 

 

[CHA-LEE]

On the Monday/Tuesday following the Area 7 match I was able to host a competition pistol class at the Harvard Action Shooters range. The weather on Monday was really nice but the forecast for Tuesday was calling for rain so we switched up the content a little bit to take full advantage of the nice weather on Monday. It was a little strange to deliver the training content in an abnormal sequence as the normal schedule is based on “Work on this thing first so it builds on the next skill better”. But it worked out in the end. I had to do a little bit of redundant content delivery on a few things with a few of the sections being delivered out of order. But it wasn’t bad. Most importantly I got all of the training content covered and the students were very accommodating with switching stuff around so we were not doing a lot of the stage based stuff in the rain. On Tuesday it started drizzling around 10:30am and kept going until we were done at 5:30pm. This constant drizzle rain was really different for me. Coming from Colorado where it’s either raining like gang busters or nothing at all this drizzle situation for hours on end was an interesting experience. The really cool thing is that the bay that we were using for the class had a large awning that we could do a lot of the Drills style training from to stay dry most of the time. The bay was also mostly sand so we didn’t have to deal with muddy conditions when we were doing drills or resetting targets in the rain. All of this combined made the drizzly Tuesday go WAY better than I thought it would be. I was expecting a “Colorado” type of rain which would have been horrible for that long of rain duration.

 

This class was also challenging from a student skill assessment and content delivery perspective because we had a wide range of shooter skill levels in the class. We had pretty much every classification represented in the class from U – GM. This required a constant juggling process while remembering each shooters individual cuts and then being able to convey potential solutions in a manner that they would understand. Even though this made presenting the class more challenging it was also very fun to tackle. This is the stuff that helps me improve my training skills. By the end of the two days all of the students had a long list of “Cut” to fix in their game. A lot of good discoveries were made and I am looking forward to seeing these shooters deploy their fixes over time. Hopefully they will have me back again sometime in the future.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend  was a rare event where I didn’t have any major matches, classes to present or other commitments so I took full advantage of it for my own practice. I did a group live fire practice on both Saturday and Sunday using a large field course stage. The stage was setup in a way that forced hauling ass between positions followed by needing to be really settled for tight partial paper shots and small steel. We all shot this stage a bunch of different times and different ways which was great. I tried pushing the limits of shooting aggressiveness on the difficult shots and had mixed results. I wish I could push the envelope a little harder on the steel but every time I did I ended up with inconsistent hits. When I would land hits it was mostly luck and not something that I could do with any level of consistency. Even though it was humbling and frustrating at times it was good to put some effort into attempting to embrace the suck. I was able to shoot about 800 rounds in live fire practice over those two days so that was a win.

 

On Sunday evening I attended an Outlaw Practical Shooting match up north at the Trigger Time gun club. This was only a 3 stage match but it was fun with a lot of scrambling around and stuff like that. This time around the stage were setup in locations within the bay that made the lighting worse than normal. I was having a very hard time seeing my sights and had to point shoot at the targets about 50% of the time because I couldn’t see my sights reliably. For the most part this worked ok, but it also caused one miss. Using the “Force” to get your hits while point shooting at targets isn’t very consistent. I also had a really strange failure to fire / jam. I was shooting a rage blast section of a stage and also using my 21+1 magazine when mid array it literally didn’t pick up a round out of the mag when the slide cycled. The gun went click on an empty chamber and when I racked it, nothing came out. The only way this happens is if the next round in the magazine was delayed in registering to the top of the feed lips before the slide finished cycling back and forth. I used this magazine again on the next stage in a 21+1 configuration to see if it would fail again, but the shooting was slower on that stage so it wasn’t an exact test as when it failed. But it did work. Either way this magazine will be getting a fresh spring regardless of how it functioned after the failure to rule the spring out as the root cause.

 

Beyond that one cool target that we got to shoot during this match was a rubber plate rack. This was an interesting target because it was obviously missing the “Ding” and each plate would do a little wiggle before it started to fall. This “Wiggle then Fall” behavior caused quite a few shooters to have some double takes looking at the plates to see if they would fall while engaging them. I did my best to call each shot and not get distracted by the rubber plate movement and it worked out really well.

 

On Monday Night I was able to make it down south to the Whistling Pines indoor USPSA match to wrap up the “weekend” of shooting. This match was their normal mixture of box to box type stages with one of them being a low light scenario. The lighting is better at this indoor range vs most others so I was able to call more of my shots but I still had to resort to point shooting too much. We also had a few target arrays that had hard cover and no shoot partials which made the shooting pretty difficult to execute in a point shooting scenario. I felt that I shot the match as well as I could given the lighting. I ended up nicking two different no shoots where the hit just barely broke the perforation of the no shoot. These were both on the furthest targets of the match in OK lighting the first time and a low light scenario the second time. It sucks to rack up no shoot penalties like that but it is what it is when you can’t see your sights well.

 

My Brooks running shoes worked great at producing good traction on the slippery concrete indoor ranges for both matches. I am so glad that I got those shoes as they work awesome in those conditions. But I also got a reminder that you can’t step on the PVC pipe used for fault lines while entering positions. On one of the stages I inadvertently stepped on one of the PVC fault lines while entering a position and it rolled under my feet and caused me to slip a little bit. Luckily it rolled under my foot quickly and I regained traction on the concrete but it was a little stressful because I was shooting a target while all of that was happening. Fun lessons like that are always interesting to relearn.

 

Overall it was a good weekend of local practice and matches which I haven’t had the chance to do in quite a while. I did feel like a trucker though as it took a little over 500 miles of driving to and from the ranges to get it all done. All of that windshield time isn’t fun, but it does give me time to think about stuff I need to work on getting better at. That being said, I wouldn’t turn down using a Teleporter to eliminate all of the driving.  

[CHA-LEE]

The four day 4th of July weekend is now over and much Pew Pew’s were had. I started off this long weekend by doing a live fire practice on Thursday. We setup a large field course stage with mini poppers at 25 yards followed by a lot of scampering while shooting on the move. You started the stage on 8 mini poppers which were humbling if you were not executing marksmanship fundamentals solidly. Then hauled ass to the first paper target while reloading and then blended into shooting on the move where the paper targets were just past your comfort zone. Then another reload to finish the stage with some hard left and right leans around a wall. Even though this stage gave everyone a Donkey Punch at least a couple of times through the day it was a great mixture of forcing you to perform while things are just outside your comfort zone. These difficult practice stages make most club match stages look like child’s play which is exactly why I do it.

 

On Saturday I attended an Outlaw AR Carbine match. This match had an interesting mixture of USPSA style field courses, standards and long distance steel. Like most gun owners in the US I have a few AR15’s in the safe but don’t make the time to actually shoot or practice with them on any regular basis. This match gives me a chance to bust out one of my AR’s and get some trigger time with it. This time around I decided to run my 14.5” Pin & Weld comp AR that has an MRO red dot and AR Gold Trigger. Everything else on this AR isn’t special or tricked out. I built this AR a while ago because I had the MRO sight and AR Gold trigger laying around and figured it would be cool to use those parts to build a basic blaster AR for plinking or home defense. I used quality parts for this build but nothing special or competition biased. I sighted it in at 50 yards which also produces a 200 yard zero using cheap 55 grain ammo. Since this AR has a no magnification red dot it puts me in the Limited division for the match. Shooting 8 – 10 inch plates at 200 yards with a red dot is no joke. Especially for a Carbine novice like me. For the match I shot the USPSA style field course stages solidly because I could leverage my pistol movement skills. But the standards stage and VTAC wall ate my lunch due to not having solid gun manipulation or funky body position skills. I felt like I shot the 200 yard steel stage fair but once again I got thrown off by the funky shooting positions that I didn’t have a good plan for which produced a stable platform. This match was a humbling experience due to feeling like a fish out of the water while shooting a Carbine. But it was also fun to do some Carbine shooting simply because I don’t get a chance to do it very often. The primary WIN from this match for me was that my gun and mags ran 100% the whole time with zero issues. Working reliable stuff is always important and I am glad that my gear passed that test.

 

On Sunday I attended a local USPSA match at the Aurora Gun Club. After eating a bunch of humble pie at the Carbine match on Saturday getting back to shooting my Atlas Titian Limited gun on Sunday was like wrapping myself in a comfortable blanket. This made me enjoy shooting my pistol that much more on Sunday. The weather was really deceiving that day though because the forecast called for high temp of 86 degrees which isn’t “Hot” but there was a higher level of Humidity and very little breeze which made it feel like 100 degrees at the range. This higher heat index than expected caught me a little off guard because I didn’t bring enough water for that, but luckily this range has running water so I could refill my drink container multiple times through the match which was required. Through the whole match I drank at least a gallon of water which was a good thing. This was a good test of physical and mental endurance through the hot day on the range which I seen several competitors fail at due to not hydrating or eating enough.

 

I shot the match solidly without any penalties. I did rack up 3 D zone hits for the match but two of them were called D’s and I was already exiting the position. There was only one that was a surprise Delta hit. The stages in this match had a good mixture of Aiming, Hosing, Scrambling, and Shooting on the Move which was great. If you had weaknesses in any of these skillsets it would get exposed which is just how it should be. It was good times and a lot of fun to shoot a club match with my friends.

 

During this match I was able to work with Paul Hyland from Liveshots.net to get some shooting action pictures that I could use to update my Big Panda Performance website. We were able to get some cool pictures and even a few that captured the bullet just past the muzzle which is crazy. That is really cool stuff and thanks to Paul for capturing it!!!

 

 

[CHA-LEE]

I was able to shoot two different outdoor USPSA club matches this past weekend. Both days were HOT with the temp maxing out at 99 degrees. Even though it was hot the low humidity and a slight breeze made it not so bad. Getting in the shade once in a while worked wonders on keeping me from overheating. With the hot temps I forced myself to drink a gallon of water while on the range each match. I never felt dehydrated which was a good thing.

 

The match on Saturday was at the Colorado Rifle Club in Byers. I went out early to help setup a stage. The MD asked me to setup a medium size field course with a bias towards aiming hard so that is what I did. This stage had all partial targets with about half Hard Cover and half No Shoots. None of the shots were unreasonably difficult, but if you were not aiming hard and pulling the trigger straight back you were rewarded accordingly. Not surprisingly this stage caught quite a few shooters off guard when they tried shooting too fast. When I shot the stage I didn’t care how long the shooting took and aimed hard for every shot. This allowed me to get all of my hits which not many others were able to do.

 

For the most part I shot this match pretty good. On one hoser stage I ended up pushing the mag release with my support hand while shooting the second to last target and it dropped the magazine out of the gun. I tried doing another reload to get the gun going again but I completely fumbled the load and dropped that mag on the ground as well. With all of my mags in the dirt at that point my only option was to pick up a mag off the ground and try to finish the last target with it. Well, the dirt at this range is a mixture of fine sand and clay which completely jams up mags. I inserted the mag in the gun and tried to rack it several times but the top round wouldn’t feed. After screwing around with this train wreck for about 5 seconds I conceded and unloaded the gun to show the RO clear. This whole train wreck cost me 2 misses and 1 FTE since I didn’t get a chance to even shoot at the final target. This happened on the second stage of the match and it was hard to push that failure out of my head for the stages after that. I did my best to forget about it and I was able to execute solidly on the remaining stages. I wish that I could say that I completely forgot about it but I didn’t. There was a little “tickle” in thinking about it through the whole match which was a mild distraction. It was a good learning experience for “Embracing the Suck” through a match.

 

On Sunday I drove down to Pueblo to attend their USPSA match. This match was a little bit of a strange one with two of the stages being standards and the rest field courses. The classifier was Close Quarters Standards which has three strings and forces you to shoot freestyle, strong hand, and weak hand. The shots are really not difficult on this stage as it has fully open targets at fairly close distances. The other standards stage was a completely different story as the shots were way over the top in difficulty. You had two shooting boxes that were separated by about 7-8 yards and there were six targets down range in a wide arcing formation. You had to engage each target with one round each freestyle, then reload as you move to the other box then reengage each target with one round each Strong Hand. The second string was a repeat of the first with the only difference in using weak hand only after the reload. The outside most targets on each side were about 17 yards away and head shots only with hard cover and no shoot just below. There were two other targets in the stage that had diagonal hard cover or no shoot blockage. This stage was a widow maker for all but 1 pistol shooter in the match who was able to shoot it clean without any misses or no shoots. I racked up 1 miss myself on the final head shot using my weak hand. To me, this stage was way too difficult of shots one handed for the “Average” skill level shooter. I am not sure why this stage was used as it was really nothing more than a s#!t sandwich that everyone was forced to eat. There is no way I would put that kind of shooting challenge in any of the club matches I run as it’s not even fun and wastes a bunch of time just to prove that, SHOCKER, people still suck at shooting difficult head shots one handed. What this stage did was give all of the PCC shooters a disproportionate advantage because their Strong/Weak side shooting still has the gun shouldered and both hands on the gun.

 

I understand that every match is a learning experience for everyone involved, even the stage designers and match staff. But at some point you need to call bulls#!t on certain things like this over the top shooting difficulty stage. When stages get so difficult in shots that it becomes more of a game of luck then it’s really not testing skill anymore. I don’t go to USPSA matches to gamble as that isn’t want these matches are supposed to be. I voiced my option to the stage designer during and after the match while trying to explain the situation. We will see if that makes any difference in the future.

 

Other than that crazy aiming stage the match went fairly well for me. I was able to hit all of the targets and didn’t have any major mistakes. Another weekend came to a close with two more local club matches under my belt. Now it’s time to get my stuff pulled together for the Big Horn Classic in Grand Junction this coming weekend. I am ready to rumble for this one!!!

[CHA-LEE]

As you may already know, I always have some kind of blaster "Fiddle Project" I am working on in my spare time. May latest project is setting up a CZ P10F for Carry Optics. I chose this pistol for this project primarily because the beaver tail is big enough to keep the slide from biting me. Secondarily the trigger is pretty good right out of the box. Lastly, its a fairly "cheap" pistol so I don't have to drop a bunch of $$$ to play with one. My primary motivation for setting up this Carry Optics blaster is to have a Dot Gun that I can shoot factory 9mm ammo with while attending dark indoor matches. I have had this pistol for a couple of months now and it has gone through several different iterations of setups to get it dialed into how I shoot.

 

I tried several different 9mm bullet weights using cheap factory ammo and surprisingly the 115gr Winchester White Box ammo produces the best sight tracking and muzzle return. I thought that heavier bullets like 124's or 147's would be the bee's knees as that is what most Minor Power Factor division shooters prefer, but the heavier bullet ammo created more muzzle rise and dip while shooting. To me all 9mm ammo feels "Soft Shooting" compared to 40 Major ammo so what bullet weight I ended up with in 9mm really didn't matter. Minor PF ammo is still wimpy feeling to me regardless of bullet weight. 

 

I did the trigger job on this gun myself by cleaning up the mating surfaces of the primary engaging points. Then I added two set screws to the stock trigger shoe to dramatically reduce the pre/over travel. The P10F uses Glock style strike and recoil springs and swapping out the striker spring with a 3lb Glock striker spring brought the pull weight down to a buttery smooth 3lbs. There are some after market trigger shoes available for this gun but I don't think they are needed since you can modify the existing trigger by adding some set screws to achieve the same goal of limiting the travel.

 

From a recoil spring perspective I swapped the stock spring and guide rod with aftermarket Glock parts. I used a Tungsten guide rod for a full size Glock which had to be trimmed back a little bit so it wasn't sticking out past the muzzle. I tried a wide range of recoil springs and settled on a 13lb flat wire spring for the best balance while shooting the 115gr ammo. 

 

The P10F has a big cover plate on the back of the slide that covers up the Red Dot mounting point. This cover plate is solid steel and weighs 1.75oz. I put a CZ Custom aluminum adapter plate with a Holosun 507C Red Dot on it and interestingly enough, this plate/sight combo also weighs 1.75oz. Basically put, removing the cover plate and adding the red dot didn't increase the slide weight at all. When shooting this blaster with the Red Dot installed it still had a slight amount of muzzle bounce as the slide snapped back forward. I couldn't eliminate this by changing recoil spring weights so I opted to remove 1.5oz from the slide. It took some creative milling to chop 1.5oz from the slide because there really isn't much extra "Meat" on that slide but we got it done. It may not look "normal" after the weight reduction, but it achieved the goal of removing the desired amount of weight. Since the slide was milled and had exposed steel I got the whole slide sand blasted then CeraKote in Sniper Grey.

 

For the Magazines I chose to use the Springer Precision 140mm base pads with Taran Thin followers and Grams 11 coil springs. This combo creates a reloadable 24+1 capacity which is amazing. I am not sure how many other Carry Optics setups can produce a reloadable 24+1 magazine capacity but I don't think its very common.

 

I had Long's Shadow Holster make me a holster for this bad boy and it turned out great. The holster fits the gun perfectly while also producing minimal friction during the draw stroke. The last thing that I need to wrangle up are some mag pouches for these smaller diameter mag tubes.

 

Last night I was able to get the gun put back together after the slide lightening and coating. I really like how it turned out so far and am looking forward to running it through its paces in live fire. I need to get it sighted in again and hopefully do some slow motion video while shooting to confirm the slide weight reduction eliminated the muzzle bounce after the slide snaps forward. I might be able to do this at some point this coming weekend while attending the Big Horn Classic match in Grand Junction. If not it may have to wait until the following weekend.

 

 

[Furrly]

can't waite for the feedback!!!

[HoMiE]

Cha-lee, with Nationals being in ST George during month of September, how much of a factor do you think it will make? Would you take hot and dry over slightly cooler and humid?

[MemphisMechanic]

5 hours ago, CHA-LEE said:

This combo creates a reloadable 24+1 capacity which is amazing. I am not sure how many other Carry Optics setups can produce a reloadable 24+1 magazine capacity but I don't think its very common.

 

You’re probably well aware that I’m up to speed on the mechanical side of things, and heavily invested in carry optics. 

Your suspicions are correct in that 24 in a mag is rare, and I’ve never heard of it being reloadable. 23 is the goal in every other platform, and seldom is it reloadable.

 

Does the gun still lock open on empty with those followers?

 

I run a TTI +5 on a Walther 15rd tube. With the grams spring and follower for a P320 it gets me 23 reloadable, but you do have to disable the slide stop. Deleting the lock-open isn’t a huge issue with 24 in the gun, but as a longtime Production shooter I always want that feature when I can get it.

 

Edited July 16, 2019 by MemphisMechanic

[CHA-LEE]

25 minutes ago, HoMiE said:

Cha-lee, with Nationals being in ST George during month of September, how much of a factor do you think it will make? Would you take hot and dry over slightly cooler and humid?

 

The time of the year vs the weather being a factor? It can get brutally hot in St. George during the summer with regular triple digit temps. With the Nationals being in September that should help reduce the chance of it being mega hot. Even when it rains there and is hot right after that the humidity level is nothing compared to normally humid states like Florida. I personally detest mega humid range conditions as it is never comfortable and everything is sticky. If I had a choice between shooting a Nationals in 110 Degree dry heat vs 100 degree humid heat, I would pick the dry heat every time.

[Vanniek71]

1 minute ago, CHA-LEE said:

 

The time of the year vs the weather being a factor? It can get brutally hot in St. George during the summer with regular triple digit temps. With the Nationals being in September that should help reduce the chance of it being mega hot. Even when it rains there and is hot right after that the humidity level is nothing compared to normally humid states like Florida. I personally detest mega humid range conditions as it is never comfortable and everything is sticky. If I had a choice between shooting a Nationals in 110 Degree dry heat vs 100 degree humid heat, I would pick the dry heat every time.

I'd pick 110 degree dry heat over 80 and humid heat every time lol....wait why am I moving to WI again? Dammit!

[CHA-LEE]

12 minutes ago, MemphisMechanic said:

 

You’re probably well aware that I’m up to speed on the mechanical side of things, and heavily invested in carry optics. 

Your suspicions are correct in that 24 in a mag is rare, and I’ve never heard of it being reloadable. 23 is the goal in every other platform, and seldom is it reloadable.

 

Does the gun still lock open on empty with those followers?

 

I run a TTI +5 on a Walther 15rd tube. With the grams spring and follower for a P320 it gets me 23 reloadable, but you do have to disable the slide stop. Deleting the lock-open isn’t a huge issue with 24 in the gun, but as a longtime Production shooter I always want that feature when I can get it.

 

 

I think the 24+1 reloadable is possible because of the thin Taran follower. Its at least half as tall as a Grams follower. When I consider something "reloadable" it means seating the mag with what I would consider a normal firm seat. If you pussy foot around with gently pushing the mag into the gun then its obviously not going to seat.

 

The Spring/Follower setup I am using does NOT enable the slide lock function. I actually ground off the slide lock nub on the follower to make it more of an even profile from front to back. Just like shooting Limited with 20 round mags, if you run the gun dry during a stage run you have done something WAY wrong already. Having the slide lock back in that scenario isn't going to mitigate the train wreck that has already happened. Carry Optics should follow the same advice. With 23 - 24 rounds in the mags you should NEVER be running the gun dry on purpose so who cares if the slide lock functions or not.

[Vanniek71]

17 minutes ago, CHA-LEE said:

 

I think the 24+1 reloadable is possible because of the thin Taran follower. Its at least half as tall as a Grams follower. When I consider something "reloadable" it means seating the mag with what I would consider a normal firm seat. If you pussy foot around with gently pushing the mag into the gun then its obviously not going to seat.

 

Are you just using the super thin SV/ST Followers and modifying them for the P10 mags?

[CHA-LEE]

14 minutes ago, Vanniek71 said:

 

Are you just using the super thin SV/ST Followers and modifying them for the P10 mags?

Yes sir. Is there any other way?

[Vanniek71]

7 minutes ago, CHA-LEE said:

Yes sir. Is there any other way?

Lol truth. 

[MemphisMechanic]

3 hours ago, Vanniek71 said:

 

Are you just using the super thin SV/ST Followers and modifying them for the P10 mags?

 

3 hours ago, CHA-LEE said:

Yes sir. Is there any other way?

 

This one, I assume:

https://tarantacticalinnovations.com/tti-sti-sv-ultra-thin-1-follower/

 

I’m on this. We’ll see how well Walthers like them soon, and if 24 will fit.

 

On the points of reloadability and running dry... of course I agree with you Charlie. Those are obvious. I was only asking out of simple curiosity.

 

Edited July 17, 2019 by MemphisMechanic

[CHA-LEE]

13 hours ago, MemphisMechanic said:

 

 

This one, I assume:

https://tarantacticalinnovations.com/tti-sti-sv-ultra-thin-1-follower/

 

I’m on this. We’ll see how well Walthers like them soon, and if 24 will fit.

 

On the points of reloadability and running dry... of course I agree with you Charlie. Those are obvious. I was only asking out of simple curiosity.

 

To make these Taran Thin Followers fit in the CZ mags I had to shorten their overall length to from front to back. I took material off of the back side of follower to shorten them. If you don't do this the follower will jam front to back in the tube because its too long. How much you have to take off is likely unique to each type of mag. I simply test fit the follower in the tube to see if it would fit front to back with it flat compared to the tube. Then I took material off of the back of the follower a little at a time until the follower fit inside the tube. For the CZ P10F mags the optimal follower length ended up being 30mm. I am not sure if that same length will be optimal in the Walther mags or not.