First match of 2012

Sick as a dog last weekend and missed the first Steel Challenge.  Bummer

However, this weekend was the first USPSA match of the year.  The gun was an absolute jam-o-matic.  I had several over-sized pieces of brass.  I failed to chamber check my match ammo last night which would have almost completely eliminated my problems.

I'd already noticed that accuracy was my biggest problem last year.  This first match I slowed way down and was rewarded by lots of A zone hits.  I dramatically reduced my penalties and hence was the 'first' D class shooter in the match.  I wonder how well I would have done if I hadn't had so many problems running the gun?

2011 Review and 2012 Goals

This was the first year that I got serious about USPSA shooting and I've learned a TON.

2011 Goal.  Make all practice sessions and local matches.
I made the Monday practices about 50% of the time and averaged 200 rounds every time I went.
I missed three matches, that family stuff sure does cut into my personal time.
I would have liked to go more, but I'm happy with the time I spent.

2011 Goal.  Get classified
Almost didn't make this one.  Had to run up to Bozeman to shoot their fall classifer.  Ended up a D class shooter
Definately achieved the goal here.  Bonus to being D class?  I can only go up from here.

2012 Goals
1.  Make C class
 Accuracy will be key to this goal.  Penalties and misses really hurt me this year.  If I shoot clean, I'm perfectly capable of making B class.
2.  Try out NRA highpower.
I'd really like to get into some competive rifle shooting.  I expect this will help my accuracy in pistol as well.
3.  Remove magazine disconnect from my 22/45.
This one is a cheater, I just got done doing it.

Been a long time

I should write here more often but I just never seem to make time.

The match with the Texas Star was awesome.  They had some really awesome stages that were a complete hoot to shoot.  I placed about like I have all year.  Bottom Third.  This winter I'm going to attend some bullseye matches.  I'm just not shooting accurately enough.  Hopefully bullseye matches will help me focus on breaking the shot with more precision.

For Christmas I got myself a case feeder for my Lock and Load press.  It's pretty cool.  Now I just need someone to fill primer tubes for me and I'll be able to load ammo faster than I shoot it.

I also purchased a Tuck This by DeSantis.  Less impressed with this holster.  It's really just a slip cover and does just fine holding the gun in normal walking around.  But will allow the gun to fall out with vigorous activity.

Today's pet peeve.  Magazine Disconnect Safeties.  Why does anybody think this is a good idea?  It complicates the action of the pistol making for a rougher trigger pull.  Usually keeps the magazines from dropping free for reloads.  AND makes the gun useless if you are performing a reload.  Stupid, Stupid, STUPID.  I hope Ruger get's their head out of the their ass soon.  I'd love to buy some of their new pistols but not until they get rid of magazine disconnects.

Match Next Weekend

It's going to have a Texas Star.  Should be a great time!

Life sucks

As I move through life, I make friends.   My life seems to get better and better.  Then one of those 'friends' stabs me in the back.  Now I'm angry and when I'm angry everything that happens seems magnified.  Little crap pisses me off.  Everyday is hard.  I pull back from everyone.  Even knowing what is happening doesn't seem to help.  I hate this fucking shit.

Reasons

One thing I really disagree with in a lot of the blogs I read is the reasons for terrorism.  Religion rarely has anything to do with killing people.  Don't get me wrong.  Religion is great for motivating low level troops and public propaganda.  It's a really stupid reason to spend large chunks of your resources and thousands of lives.  Osama wasn't interested in religion, although he certainly played lip service to it.  He was interested in the huge inequities in his native land and the oppressed people of Palestine.  Say what you will about horrible things done to the Jews, they've done most of those things to the Palestinians as well.  There are no clean hands in that mess.

Time and again religion has been used to cloak the true reasons for war.  If you really want to know why wars happen, follow the money.

Don't believe me?  Look at the crusades.  Sure, religion was used as the excuse but land for generating income was the real goal.

Ten Years

Ten Years after 9/11.  That day my son was upset that his cartoons weren't on.  "Some plane ran into a building."  I walked into the living room just as the second plane hit.  I didn't feel angry that day.  Sad yes, angry no.  Maybe that is what is wrong with our country.

Today my son is back from basic training.  He'll finish High School, then AIT, then college.  Maybe it really has been ten years.

Classifier Match

Last Saturday I ran the bike over to Bozeman to compete in a Classifer match.  I had an average day.  One squib round cost me a stage.  That sucked.  I did really well on stages that were Virgina Count or Timed Fire.  And pretty bad on stages that were Comstock.  This tells me one thing that I can't seem to get through my head no matter how many times I say it and think it:

SLOW DOWN AND GET YOUR HITS!

You really can't miss fast enough to win.

Pistol Match

Worse day at the range ever.

Testing

Waiting for backup to complete.  It's amazing  what you can do with a phone

Random Things

I know who I'm voting for next election cycle.  The Non-Incumbent ticket.  If you've been there before, I'm not sending you back.

Living without Dr Pepper... SUCKS

Reloading is more difficult than it appears.

Why training extends to all your gear and not just your gun.

http://pistol-training.com/archives/4926

That looks like it hurt!  So, an Negligent Discharge that caused a self inflicted wound.  What cardinal rule of gun safety did this very well spoken gentleman commit?  Keep Your Booger Hook Off the Bang Switch Until the Sights are on the Target!

I've heard people complain about Serpa holsters in the past.  I've owned them for two different guns.  I've never used one for concealed carry because they are just to bulky to hide well.  I use them on the range.  I've never accidentally ended up with my finger on the trigger.  Nor have I accidentally lit off a round.  That doesn't mean it'll never happen. 

I work diligently to prevent it, even going to so far as to avoid 1911s.  Not because I don't like them or think they are unsafe, but because I don't want to complicate my manual of arms.  Incidentally, Sig slide releases are in the same place as 1911 safeties.  I've specifically trained myself not to ride that lever.  Completely at odds with the 1911 manual of arms.  That training habit would be just as dangerous to me as this man's was to him. 

None of my carry guns have any form of manual safety.  Under stress I don't want to think about which gun I'm carrying, I just want to know that when I pull that trigger, it's going to go off.  Training back to back with two different holsters and two different guns is going to mess up your reactions and motions.  That, IMO, is what really caused this accident, not a particular brand of holster.

4th of July tidbits

Did you know that the Continetal Congress voted to declare independence on July 2nd?  This was a big vote, these folk's vote was treason.  Treason wasn't any safer then than it is now.

So why do we celebrate July 4th as Independence Day?  That was the day they ratified Jefferson's Declaration and sent it off to the king.

Yellow journalism isn't new either.  British papers used three full columns to talk about British General Howe kicking our ass off Bunker Hill, but only three inches were devoted to the Delaration and those three inches were satire.

Jefferson's original Declaration was a bit longer than the one Congress ratified.  Each change they made cut Jefferson like a knife.  The lesson?  Never write a document that is going to be reviewed by a committee.  I think this is still good advice.

Washington wasn't a very good military man when he was appointed Commander and Chief.  Fortunately he knew it and the British were very arrogant.  Otherwise we'd probably still be a British colony.

Montana Grand Lodge AF&AM

I went to Grand Lodge this week.  It was the first time I've gone and I went because as the JW, I've now got a vote and a obligation to spend it wisely.  Several interesting things were brought up this year by various GMs and guest speakers.
1.  The level of rhetoric has never been higher.  And the level of respect for the person on the other side of the debate has never been lower.
2.  More and more, nobody is looking at the larger picture.  All politics might be local, but the effects of local actions are not confined.
3.  Consequences are often hidden until long after the decisions have been made.
4.  Nobler thoughts and well considered actions might just save the world.

I hope that I and my fellow countrymen are up to the task because the end game is never pretty and rarely worth the cost.

Monday Night Practice

Went to practice on Monday night.  There is something of a debate at the range these days.  The silhouette shooters, action pistol guys, and cowboy action guys have done a great job dividing the range up among themselves so they can all play their respective games.  But now the range is making some changes.  First, a berm on the west side of the pistol range.  Handy, right now if you were driving to the rifle range and a ND happened on the pistol range there is a very real possibility that there would be damage to your car or worse.  All the berms need to get taller as well.  All this costs money and moving and adding berms changes the way the pistol bays will get used.  After listening to two hours of debate last night I've come to a couple of  conclusions, old guys don't like change and young guys don't think about others unless forced.  As for the berms, it's still up in the air except for adding the west berm.

Pistol practice went pretty well.  On my last run of the night, I ran the course in 15.71 with three misses.  Without those misses it would have been the highest score of the night.  With the misses, it came in third.

The P226 is getting more and more comfortable.  I've got my loads figured out and the trigger is starting to disappear from my conscious control.  When I don't have to think about the trigger press, that leaves more attention for sight alignment, ammunition management, and moving through the course.  As for the trigger, I try to take some time every month and make sure that my fundamentals are strong so even though I'm not thinking about the trigger, my trigger finger is still 'Doing it Right."

Boolit frustrations

Well I cast a bunch of bullets today.  Casting is certainly cheaper than buying bullets and much cheaper than buying ammo.  But like all things in life there are tradeoffs.

1.  Time.  I cast a batch this afternoon.  I started the melting pot at 1:30 pm.  I shut it down after casting a full load of lead at 2:45.  Then I lubed all the bullets and sized them while they were still wet.  It's messier that way, but I hate waiting.  They all went in the dryer at 3:40 pm.  I haven't counted this batch but I expect it's somewhere between 3 and 4 hundred bullets.  That may seem like a lot but I'll have to do it all again before the end of July.

2.  Consistency.  I use scrap lead.  Now the mold I'm using supposedly drops 124gr bullets with pure lead.  This latest batch I cast dropped them at 118gr.  The load before that was 115gr.  The one before that 113gr.  These weights tell me I'm proabably getting closer to a pure lead alloy.  That also means the bullets will be softer.  There are a couple of ways I can deal with this.  I could stop using scrape lead and buy or make good alloys.  Expensive.  I could buy ready made bullets.  Also expensive.

I choose to deal with it by being very careful in my load development.  First I test the hardness.  Even at 118gr they should be plenty hard enough for any minor load I care to use.  First I'll try my last load, 4.2gr of titegroup seated out pretty long.  This is under the max load for 124gr rounds and the worst thing it will do is lead up the barrel.  Accuracy is the next problem.  If the load is too hot, it'll strip off in the rifling and tumble.  If the load is to light it will fail to fully expand into the grooves and cause the same problem.  Titegroup has a narrow range of acceptable pressures so it's doubly hard to control.  Changes as small as .2 grains will seperate the upper limit from the lower with a given lead bullet.

Off to the test bench.

Match Results

I felt like a shot pretty well today.  However, lots of really good shooters showed up as well.  I shot about 35% as well as the top shooters who were there (who were really dang good).  That makes me a solidly D class shooter.  That's the bad news.

The good news is, it's pretty easy to get improvement on that.  Simply improving my reload speed by 0.5 seconds would probably get me into the C class.

Things to work on in dry fire-
Reloads
press out
double taps

Things to work on at the range-
Accuracy - C zone hits really hurt.
Focus-  I need to be able to call my shots.  It's the only way to know if you should take another shot at that target.

Pistol Match Tomorrow!

Went to the range tonight to chrono all my various loads and help set up for the match tomorrow.  All the rounds made power factor, which is awesome.  When I load I aim for 135 pf.  125 is minimum but give yourself some room.  It would suck to show up at a match and fail equipment check. 

The bad news was, I was one of only a few that showed up for set up.  Setting up for a match is a pain in the butt.  Everything has to be measured and most of the stuff is made out of steel.  Steel is heavy and my back and shoulders are telling me all about it.  Advil for me tonight.

Local Match

I've got a USPSA match this weekend.  I didn't think I was going to go because we had a family camping trip planned.  Unfortunately the snow level is still at about 7000 feet and our proposed hike was going to take us up to 10k.  A great recipe for an adventure, not so much for a family camping trip.

The stages for this match look like fun.  A couple of them will start with the gun on a table unloaded.  I've never done a stage wear I didn't start from the holster.  Hopefully it won't mess me up to much.  I've been thinking about ammo all day.  Do I go with factory ammo?  Do I use the lead rounds that I used for steel last week?  Do a finally bite the bullet (so to speak) and work up a new load using Titegroup?

Well, the Titegroup option is out, the match is tomorrow and that doesn't leave me enough time for testing.  I think I'll build some with Titegroup tonight and work with them during the Monday night practice.

The leads performed well last week and I do have 300 of them on hand.  I'll probably run these as primary and have a 100 or so factory rounds in case I have problems.

Incidently the reason I want to work with Titegroup is the economy.  Titegroup is under $20 a pound and a charge for 9mm is like 5 grains or less.  That means at least 1500 rounds per pound.  That's a pretty dang good price per bullet.  The downsides?  It's a very small charge so you risk a double charge.  It's also a very tight range from minimum charge to maximum charge.  Typically less than half a grain.  There is no margin for error.  I think I'll do dinner and then do some slow and steady loading while weight each charge.

BTC

Got a letter from the oldest kid.  He's at basic training.  Sounds like he's had some ups and downs in his first week.