Before I even got to the range, I had mental issues. I left home without a holster belt or concealment garment.
Since it was raining when we finished up the BUG match, I didn't gear down at the range and my belt ended up in the closet at home with other belts. During cold weather, I have generally always had a jacket in my truck anyway, but with nice weather the last week or so, no jacket.
So.... at lunch I went to the nearby Dickies outlet store and got a 4X short sleeve work shirt. It's just about perfect for IDPA concealment. If the tail of it was a little heavier...
As for the belt, I was lucky that the gun store at the range had a Blackhawk rigging belt big enough. I figure if I have two main pistols and two sets of holsters and mag pouches and two range bags, I guess I can justify having two belts.
Going straight to the score sheet....
I had a four procedurals, one cover call, two for tactical priority from cover and one for 16 rounds in a 15 round limited stage. Both of the tac priority calls were while re-engaging previous targets after moving to cover and I simply did them in the wrong order after moving. I think a little forethought might have helped me avoid them both. The targets in both cases could be engaged in any order in the open, but needed tac priority from cover. Perhaps planning to engage them in the same order in both conditions would have helped because apparently, that's what I did :)
Stage 1 had a cover call, but otherwise, went well.
Stage 2 was just a mess. I hadn't slammed magazine home, so I got one shot followed by a few seconds of fumbling. A couple shots in, I had a round that failed to go into battery; I racked it out so I was short to finish the six shots while retreating. I reloaded and made up that last missed shot, which set me up to miss tactical priority for the rest of those targets. I hit a non-threat on one of the remaining targets from P2. Hey, I didn't drop the gun, so I had that going for me...
Stage 3 had a particular difficulty in that we had to shoot two of the targets from behind low cover. As soon as I knelt, my left calf cramped and I had great difficulty not toppling over forward from behind cover because I couldn't get my uncooperative leg extended properly. Due to that gyration I had a miss on the first of those two targets.
Stage 4 was a simple stage, presented with 5 targets needing two body and one head each in any order, but it was limited to 15 rounds total. I had a miss on one of the heads and made it up out of habit. Since all the body shots had already been taken, I didn't skip any of the head shots. Later I realized that a skipped head would have been 5 down (2.5 seconds) and the raw time might have been a second or so less. The procedural was 3 seconds, and so mathematically I may have been better off skipping the last head shot. Not that it would have made much overall difference after stage 2 :)
So, neither my worst or best performance, but it was still fun.
I got home and while the horses were dining, I thought I would continue loading the last of my 45 Auto brass. I am down to less than 200 left to load. I'm cranking along with no particular issues when I hear that snap/clunk sound that once before heralded the eventual disconnection of the handle.
Sure enough.....
The first one broke after about 5000 rounds. This one in less than 1000, more like 800. This will not do.
Since I need to keep loading, I ordered yet another handle and toggle set today, but now I am going to contact Lee and see if there is any chance it's something I'm doing.
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