Sir Jitter of Stimula

Caffeine.

I have enough bad habits and few enough rounds downrange that I don't need to pile on The Folger's Thumps.

Even with my difficulties in printing a good score, the stages were fun. There was a mix of moving and staying aware of your cover with challenging standard stages, made all the more challenging by the shakes. Lunch was light and coffee seemed yummy in the afternoon, but by match time, it was in full effect.

There was a consistency in the score sheet. Points down and penalties added 8.5 to 10 seconds to every stage.

I must admit, I don't remember what my procedural error was on Stage 1. I definitely remember that Stage 2 was the only stage without one...

In stage 3, I had one procedural and one bad idea. You start seated in cover behind a barrel. Three targets, two each in tactical sequence. Move way back to P2, behind cover at a long hallway, two rounds on one target. Most shooters (the good ones, I might quip) continued down the hall to take a target to the left, then two more to the right. *My* plan was to avoid the easier breach of cover and take those last targets from the farther hallway. It was doable and had the potential of not harming my raw time. Where it was bad was that I took the first long target from cover, moved to the other hall and took one target, reloaded, then went down the hall. The first target to come into view was the one I had already engaged, but I stopped and gave it two more anyway. To add that extra little something, I had one miss each on the last two targets. My PE was failure to take the first three targets in tactical sequence. Moments before the timer started, I verified with the safety officer that they were to be taken in tactical sequence. Timer goes off, two rounds in the first target.

Stage 4 suffered a similar fate. The description was from P1, two shots each target, tactical sequence, freestyle. Reload, advance to P2, two shots each target, tactical sequence, strong hand. Reload, advance to P3, two shots each target, tactical sequence, weak hand. Limited Vickers count. First rattle out of the box, I had a round fail to go into battery. I cleared that round and continued, but in that confusion, broke tactical sequence. Due to the lost round, I had to reload early for the last shot from P1. That obviously meant I needed to reload early from P2 as well. Somewhere in that reloading fiasco, I took an extra shot at one of the targets. Since I also had a miss on that target and the penalty for exceeding round count is to have the best scoring round dropped, I lost a zero and gained a miss.

I had the GoPro but operating it apparently suffered similarly from my mental compromises and I only captured stages two and three, presented here in reverse order. I guess I still have some chemicals in my system.

I failed to mention that the ammo issue above was not the only one, but it was the only one to interfere with the match. I had trouble a couple times at load and make ready. The SO suggested they might be seated short. It occurs to me that must exactly be it. The seating and crimping die on my press was set the 165g RNFP bullets that I had originally gotten from Xtreme Bullets. When I loaded a batch of BBI's, they were pretty much identical in profile, so very little adjustment was needed. However, what I was shooting last night are plated bullets from Rainier Ballistics. Their RNFP profile is slightly different, closer to RN than the other two.

This is a catalog picture of the Xtreme bullet:

... and this is the Rainier:

Compare the ogive of the two. Though they are of the same nominal weight, the Ranier is slightly longer and has a slightly more acute ogive. The longer bullet means that it gets seated deeper in the case and the sharper angle presents differently to the ramp.

This picture, borrowed from another blog about the affect of bullet profile on rifling engagement, also shows the effect of the ogive and seating depth on the overall shape of the cartridge and THAT can cause chambering problems.

So, this morning I measured and compared a few rounds of both types and I discovered that the cartridges with the Ranier bullets were seated even deeper than just the bullet profile would explain. You may recall that I was having troubles getting cartridges with BBI bullets to gauge well. Some of them, due most likely to a thicker coating of polymer on the bullet, needed to be pushed a little deeper because they were engaging the rifling and jamming into battery. This was not as often a problem for actually shooting, but it frequently meant a jam clear at the end of a stage.

So, let me reiterate this again.... :)

Don't load a bunch of bullets until you have verified all the dimensions and that they will function smoothly and correctly in your pistol...

...especially with your first major match a week away...