I'm Somebody!

First, this is how I feel today having achieved Marksman classification in two IDPA divisions!

There was an outdoor match that included classifier stages last weekend. It was a stunningly pretty day to shoot, too. As things were arranged, I was in a squad with a few first time IDPA shooters and we had a great time.

The logistics turned out well to use two sets of targets and change them out as each shooter completed a stage. The offline targets would be scored and pasted while the online targets were shot, then swapped. This worked really well for the first stages, which took a little while to complete. Once shooters started on stage 3, it was harder to keep up.

Somewhere in the shuffle, a couple of my raw times were not recorded on my scoresheet. When the Match Director was later compiling the scores, he had to use the maximum 30 seconds for each of those strings, which made my score at least 45 seconds longer than it really took. That and 45 points down combined to give me a total score of 230+ seconds, pretty firmly into "Novice" classification. For my own part, I should have been much more intimately engaged with my own score sheet, which would have let me catch this before it happened. There is no specific rule that addresses this particular issue, however the powers that be discussed it amongst themselves and determined that they could still classify me as Marksman based on their personal observation of my performance. The score was adjusted, posted and finalized and as of this morning, my classifications are official!

IDPA rules permit using one score to classify in multiple divisions, so long as the weapon used meets the criteria of the divisions in question. In my case, my Colt 1991A1 can be used in either CDP (Custom Defense Pistol, essentially any 45ACP pistol) or ESP (Enhanced Service Pistol, essentially pistols with a certain degree of customization beyond stock) so I used it.

In preparing for the match, I was not sure I would have time to load the recommended 200 rounds of 45ACP, so I dashed by Cabela's on the way home Friday night and bought some PMC Bronze to ensure I would have ammo to shoot. When I got home, it turned out I did have time, so I loaded about 250 rounds and brought 200 with me on Saturday for a total of 400 rounds. If I didn't get to shoot or complete, it was not going to be because I didn't have ammo. Furthermore, I brought my Glock 20C with the 40S&W barrel and 200+ rounds of ammo for it just in case something went terribly terribly wrong with the Colt.

A highlight of the classifier stages was that I had no ammo issues, though I didn't seat the magazine completely at least twice. Each time, I burned a bit of time cycling the slide and retrying before bumping the magazine and cycling. Similarly, I apparently haven't drilled enough on establishing proper grip upon drawing or if I do then, I revert to poor grip after a magazine change. All of that refers back to very old habits from stationary non-timed shooting and I just have to practice until I stop doing that kind of thing.

In the rest of the match, there were a few fun stages. There was one scenario in which the shooter is basically a spy in a foreign facility. The shooter starts with their hands on the keyboard of a laptop. At the timer start (the alarms sounding), they gather a stack of floppy disks, throw them out a window (presumably to be collected for later analysis) then proceed to shoot their way to safety.

This stage included a disappearing target, which I had not encountered before. This is like a swinger designed to swing only once. It has barbell weights on a peg, which is supported by a stick with a cord attached. The cord was routed such that knocking down a steel popper target would pull the cord and free the weights to fall, pulling the target into view. When the weights pulled it all the way down, they would fall off the peg and the target would now swing back up into the hidden position. The shooter proceeds through the rest of the stage, then from the final shooting position, the disappearing target is again in view. Many shooters took at least the required two shots at the target when it moved, then once the rest of the targets had been addressed, emptied their last magazine at the now stationary disappearing target to ensure it had hits.

When the dust cleared, I had used 151 rounds of ammo, had a mild sunburn on my shaved head due to forgetting to bring a hat and the English muffin sandwich I'd had for breakfast had worn completely off. :)

In very vaguely related news, on Monday I received my spiffy new air rifle, a Benjamin Titan NP, and a couple varieties of heavy pellets. I did some very informal indoor sighting in and it appears to be reasonably accurate at very close ranges and pretty powerful. More as I get it sighted in and tested.

And finally, last night I was killing a few minutes while the horses ate their dinner and decided to load a few rounds of 45ACP. About 20 or 30 rounds in, the toggle that the handle attaches to snapped.

In the interest of full disclosure, when I was loading ammunition Friday night before the classifier match, the press started making a metal-on-metal creaking noise, particularly with the handle at the bottom of the stroke. I looked to see what parts were moving when the noise happened and I lubricated the ram and the pivots on the toggle because it seemed that the noise may have been coming from there. The lubrication did not affect the sound at all, but I continued loading as needed. Now that I was holding the handle swinging freely in my hand, I suspect that one or more of the four individual stress points on the toggle had probably already cracked when the noise started and the continued use of the press just worked away at the others until it failed completely.

The toggles themselves do not appear to be available as a replacement part, however, the toggles and handle together are available as a conversion for presses using the older cast aluminum handle. Directly from Lee Precision, the conversion kit is $32 but MidwayUSA sells it for $25, so I ordered one today. Unless something very serious happens between now and when the parts arrive, I should have enough ammo to get through it.

Airsoft Drilling

Other than the blaze orange barrel tip, the Black Ops USA 1911 is a remarkably realistic airsoft pistol. It's hefty, fits my holster perfectly, the controls are all there and operational. The slide cycles when it's fired, giving it a little recoil. Its more like 22 than 45, but it still kicks a bit. It makes enough report to trip a timer.

It shoots airsoft BBs reasonably accurately at short ranges. Since I have targets now, I will do some live fire drills soon. For now, I'm just moving, covering and watching that darned trigger finger.

Normally, the slide locks back on an empty magazine, so I had to do a simple modification to keep it from locking back. I tried a couple of blocks, but what works best is a wire bent into a double hook to keep the magazine spring compressed.

I get about 40 shots out of a cylinder if I don't run it too fast.

Since I'm doing these drills indoors, every doorway is cover and anything I can focus on becomes the target. I pay special attention to maintaining cover and getting my finger out of the trigger guard before my feet move. On the other hand, I can claim that all stages are 0 down :)

Chootin' birds

Several coworkers and I attended an upland game bird hunt a couple of weekends ago, hosted by one of our premier partner companies, people we have known for years. It was great fun. I had never hunted with the help of dogs before. It is definitely the way to go for game bird quarry! Oh, and what a gorgeous January in Texas day it was, sunny and high 60's, maybe low 70's. I had purchased a suitable coat for hunting in the cold specifically for the hunt (although I *did* actually need one anyway), but the coat didn't even come out of the truck. I was in shirtsleeves all day. The hunt itself had been rescheduled from an iced out date in December, so the contrast was even more welcome.

Before heading out for the hunt, we first shot 5 stand clays. It was fun, though I did miserably at it. I think I used 3 boxes of shells and got maybe a half dozen clay pigeons. It was pretty pitiful :)

Though I didn't realize it right away, my old Stevens Model 67 20ga shotgun lost a screw. It may have actually been lost during the clays, but I didn't really notice until I couldn't get the action to move for followup shots at actual birdies. My pump became a cumbersome single shot. After a couple of these snag up events, I looked more carefully and finally noticed that the screw was missing.

Our host loaned me his 12ga Browning Goldhunter for a while; he was taking a lot of pictures anyway. I, having shot the old pump action 20ga intermittently but pretty much exclusively for about 30 years, tried to pump the forestock of the autoloader. *I* laughed. Even so, I was able to take at least my first bird with it.

The folks from the the lodge brought out a spare for me to use, a 12ga H&K, which I am pretty sure was actually a Benelli M1. In any case, it seems to have liked me well enough. I dispatched a Hungarian partridge, several quail and a pheasant rooster with it.

The club handles your take in a clever and sensible way. Your guide counts up your group's whole take and splits it evenly between the team members. Then they send you home with dressed out frozen birds to meet (or exceed) that count. You don't have to clean your own nor wait for someone to clean them for you. You just go home with ready to thaw and cook birds. In most cases, a few more than you shot.

As for the missing screw, it is for the cartridge stop pivot. The jamming was largely because there was usually a new live shell in the bottom of the action, blocking everything up. I located a new one and it's mating nut at Numrich and ordered them. A whopping $8.40 for both. They are expected any day now.

The order confirmation email included a USPS tracking number. It occurred to me earlier today that I had not seen the parts arrive, so I thought it wise to check the tracking of the package. The last status said it had been picked up on Friday. Makes sense; it was actually Thursday afternoon when I ordered it, so I'm sure the tracking number had been generated then but the package not actually picked up until Friday. Even so, that was the last entry in tracking. I have always wondered about the value of package tracking as provided by USPS, at least as compared to UPS and FedEx. I have often checked tracking several times with no updates, then received the package. After the package would already be in my hands, tracking info would suddenly update with all these way points and dates, all of which mattered very little since I had my thing already. Ironically, as I tracked this package, USPS.com popped up a survey page, so I went through the whole survey, noting that I was 3 out of 5 dissatisfied with their tracking in general because usually I check their tracking and it shows no updates until I have the package in hand, then suddenly there will be some details... So, I finished the survey and went back to the page and pretty much out of habit, refreshed the screen. There was a new update! My Numrich package left the Austin sort facility today... that wasn't on there before the survey popped up.

Match #5

Last Thursday's match was a fun one for several reasons.

A bit of friendly banter on the forum about the virtues of venerable handguns vs modern handguns brought a lot of 1911s to the match; at least 12 of 27 shooters were shooting 1911s, including me.

We managed to cram in six stages, though we were 30 minutes late leaving the range. The stages generally had less movement, which sadly wasn't enough to keep me from getting one trigger call (More on that later) but I generally shot well because it was the kind of shooting I have done before IDPA, mostly stationary.

This match was a continuation of a series of "hose'm" matches, designed for lots of rapid shooting. The longest raw time for all 6 stages was 97 seconds and the average was 55 seconds. My ammo was a bit scrambled in mismatched boxes, so I'm not sure exactly how many rounds I shot, but it was just about 100, probably only a few less.

Because we ran late at the range, the score sheets were not all processed on site. Consequently, I did not know my total score until today when the official scores were posted to the forum.

My own raw time was 68.33 seconds, total time 91.33. Rather than being miles below most shooters, the bottom 25% or so shooters' raw times were almost all within 5 seconds of one another, with me bringup my kinda usual second to last spot. But this time, 2nd to last is not as many seconds from the mean as in previous matches :)

I only had four procedurals, two on one stage and two on another. On stage 2, I was out of cover on the first cover and had the dreaded trigger call moving from one cover to the other. This one kinda surprised me because I misunderstood the call, thinking someone had called "cover!". It was only when we were scoring that I understood that it was a trigger. I didn't do that anymore, but then none of the other stages had a transition between target engagements. Friday night, I ran about 45 minutes of airsoft drills, a little bit doing cover, but mostly working on that trigger finger.

My other two were kinda funny. Stage 4 had one target on either side of a non-threat and had us starting seated with the pistol and magazine on a table. The COF was to put three in the body of two targets in tactical sequence then one (I think) in the head zone of each. I put two in the first target which got me a procedural for breaking tactical sequence. I completed the body shots, then for some brain scrambled reason, two in one head, one in the head of the non-threat, then two in the other head. I found myself chuckling out loud over that one. I turned a non-threat into a never-threat. Score-wise, that one hurt. My raw time was 7.01 but 3 down, one procedural and one no shoot put the stage time up to 16.51.

I had one plain miss on the first stage, though by now, I can't tell you which target it was. Otherwise, I shot generally better than probably any match I've shot in to this point.

I did have one issue with the pistol. I forget which stage, either 1 or 3, there was an odd lockup of the slide at LAMR (load and make ready). I was using a cheapy magazine to put the first round into the chamber so that I could shorten the LAMR juggle sequence. Somehow either the magazine or I (maybe both) pushed the slide lock lever very slightly out of the frame. This made it catch about 1/4" from going into battery. It was easy enough to clear. I left the crappy magazine in the range bag and I had zero issues with it the rest of the match.

I also got some really good grip coaching. Someone noticed that my pistol was bouncing a lot more than he would have expected with my hams. He coached me in what my subsequent internet research reveals to be the "thumbs forward grip". The strong hand is in the normal natural position, but the weak hand is tilted down more than I'm used to, basically making a pointer of the top of the arm extended out to the end of a straightened thumb. I don't think I did well trying to remember to do it for the rest of the match, but I drilled on it Friday night. The tricky bit is drilling it enough for it to be automatic then not forgetting it when I have to do it under the timer next week :)

Finally, one of my best feel good moments was when I was complemented on a nice even cadence on my final stage, which was two shots each into six targets from a kneeling position behind partial cover. It is probably not a coincidence that was also my only zero down stage.

Polymer coated bullets

I received my first order of bullets from Black Bullets International

There was a very minor packaging problem, wherein two corners one of the smaller boxes containing the bullets tore, spilling a hundred or so units into the larger shipping box.

Interestingly, the printed labeling indicates that a box is 675 units, yet they sell them by the 500 or 1000. The box that breached was the 675 unit box. The other has a hand-edited label that says 325 units.The world has not yet shifted on it's axis, so I think we'll be ok.

I am looking forward to loading these. I have brass for 40 S&W and 10mm, so I ordered 1000 in 40/10.

Great Range, Fun Stages, Atrocious Scores

Lone Star Gun Gallery & Gear is a *very* nice range. All shiny and new, well lit, well ventilated. The distances are substantially longer and most stages took advantage of that.

The stages were fun; lots of movement. Stage two had a swinger initiated by the shooter at the buzzer. It emulated flushing the toilet :). Stage five had three targets. The shooter had to engage in tactical priority on the advance, completing two in each target by the time you crossed a line, then cross back and place two more in each target on the retreat.

It was fun, but it was not my night to score. I had two primary failure modes. Most *often*, I missed long distance targets, but couldn't tell with my split contact lens prescription. This makes it hard to even guess whether I need to make up shots.

The other failure was copious procedurals. Some of those long range misses were also hits on non-threat, which is a 5 second penalty. At least they don't accumulate per target.

The prize for the silliest miss was on stage 4. I completely missed engaging a target. So one target assess 13 seconds of penalties: down 10 (5 seconds) for two misses, 3 seconds for failure to engage procedural and 5 seconds for failure to neutralize. The raw time on the stage was only 19.85 seconds.

In short, 4 out of 5 stages had penalties essentially equal to or exceeding the raw time.

It was fun shooting full power 10mm, but I presume it was at least a factor in some of my misses, especially the long distance ones. I couldn't see well enough to tell if I missed and needed to do makeup shots and just controlling recoil is a thing with that much power. I distinctly remember at least one bad pull down, anticipating the boom. If I remember one, I'd bet there were others I didn't catch. I have plenty of much more sane 10mm handloads and until I solve a lot of the other problems, it's probably best not to stack the deck against myself with hot loads.

In happy news, I had no ammo issues. It did look a little like the pistol failed to go into battery once. The SO and I checked it out pretty carefully. Then and always, it operated correctly. Just the way the slide fits the frame.

Big Boom and DQ

Fourth IDPA match tonight...

My new Glock 20 barrel worked pretty well. Full power 10mm is fun to shoot. I also enjoyed hearing someone comment about their ears bleeding while I was shooting Stage two :).

I did have a feed jam on the third stage, but since my off hand thumb got bitten by the slide on the previous stage, it may have been a poor grip. Doesn't seem terribly likely, but I suppose there is a chance. This drawing and moving while shooting thing is pretty new to me. It possible my brain is letting that fundamental slide while it struggles with all the new stuff. In any case, that's one of several elements I need to run drills on.

One of the elements is keeping my finger out of the trigger guard when I'm moving. That happened twice tonight and the second earned me a DQ.

Stage three was the first time I would have gotten to shoot at a swinger target and in fact, I did get a shot or two off at it. For this stage, you begin with 4 shots to a target then step forward to retrieve an injured victim, played by a large gear bag loaded with a sack of concrete mix. This victim needs to be pulled into the cover area. Moving the bag triggers the swinger, which needs two hits taken while retreating and dragging the bag. I got two shots at the first target when I had a round jam. It took a couple of slide racks to clear it. I finished the rounds at the target. It then took two or three grabs to get the handle of the bag and I think it was at this point that my trigger finger probably relaxed and curled into the trigger guard while I was struggling with the bag. I tripped the swinger and started shooting, but somebody hollared stop and I froze.

There was some discussion amongst the SOs about whether calling stop was appropriate, but in either case, I was still disqualified and done shooting for the night. While I don't have specific memory of either of them, that is really why there is so little tolerance for it. Keeping the finger clear of the trigger while not engaged with a target is very basic firearm safety. You are millimeters from a situation where the *BEST* thing that can happen is an unexpected discharge into the berm and the worst is manslaughter. It is not to be triffled with.

I geared down and put away my pistol, but I stayed to help with the rest of the match. I got a several pep talks and several tips suggesting drills to help train that trigger thing out, stuff like "dry shoot, finger out, move to the right, dry shoot, finger out, move to the left, rinse repeat". I will probably do these drills with the airsoft pistol.

There is another match tomorrow night, at the Weatherford range, where I have not yet been. I plan to be there to complete a match with the boomer.

My incomplete score sheet still needs analysis....

Stage 1, T5, was actually the first target I shot. This was two 1's and a miss. Im not sure how I did the miss. One procedural was for shooting two targets out of order. They should have been right to left from behind cover, but I took the left one first, perhaps because it was closer. The other procedural was my first trigger call. There were three fairly major movements and I'm not sure exactly where I violated it.

Stage two was cool. Three shots each in two targets from behind cover, then move to the other end of the barrier and place three shots in each of two more targets, then move into a center room and place two on each of two targets while moving. It was on my first target that I got my left thumb under the slide. I remember noticing it and correcting my grip. Finished the stage and only when I was reloading magazines did I notice a bit of blood. I suspect the miss on scored T6 was really that first target with the slide hit.

Except for the two misses, either of which could have been made up had I noticed them at the time, I shot reasonably well. Then, of course, the DQ...