What drills did you run this week and how did you do?

[backtrail540]

Unexpected session with a friend today.

Rangmaster DOTM for a cold start. HF ended up being 10.91 - 190 points and 17.4 total time. Like MVS above, I realized too late that I had unnecessarily ran the last two strings from the holster. But no matter. Pro tip - a large baby forumla can makes a nice template.



Next up was the Triple Nickel. First run was a disaster. I had uspsa targts up so just used the A/C zone. I went for the reload before the second shot broke and ended up with a magazine in my hand when it shouldn't have been. I took a sho shot and finished for a 6.01 with a miss and it was ugly. My buddy wanted me to do one more run since I screwed it up and it was a clean 4.91.


I gave the MXAD four runs but none were clean. 2.79 (1c, 1d on the 12 yard target, 6 A on the 5 yard), 2.79 (1A 1C at 12, 6 A at 5), a nasty draw with a handful of shirt that I took a mulligan on....a 2.86 (1A 1C at 12, and 5A 1C at 5), and finished with a nasty 3.02 (2A at 12, 3A 3C at 5). I got video but the camera man cut off the video early on the first one and the second was a long continuous video that isn't too fun to watch. If somebody wants to see what it looked like, mulligan and all, I can upload it but otherwise won't bother. I struggled with changing gears and applying the proper care to the trigger and sights needed on the far target despite decent transition time and cadence.

A single El Prez with ugly hits in 8.07 and an 11 round group at 25 to finish.



Checked zero with hst. Keeping it as is.

Messed around with his DD rifle with Holosun aems. It's a nice setup. Met the standards with it after getting it zeroed, at least the stages I was willing to do without support gear.

 

[Kirk Freeman]

We shot the MPFQC Sunday.

Was on track for expert and then at 35M my rear sights on my M17 failed its saving throw against existence. One screw came loose and the other went sideways (COTS pistol).

I reshot later with my M18. Did very well.

 

[cedartop]

So I am going to get this out of the way right up front. Wow! YMMV, but for me, there is a big performance difference between a mid to full size dot gun and a subcompact with iron sights. I started the range session out with the Canik that I hope to shoot in BUG a time or two this year. I ran the Wilson/IDPA classifier 4 times. The first run I ran at Master class speed, but was 19 points down! THe next two runs were a little slower but was down fewer points. Finally on the last run I managed to pull an Expert level run out. It turns out that at the 10 yard distance with that small gun, I can't just use the front sight like a dot, I have to actually put it down in the notch almost like getting a real sight picture. How terrible. I remain impressed by the low recoil of the gun though and reloads weren't terrible. (You have to do a lot of them in BUG division)

After that I pulled out the Q5 and ran the practical portion of the Bianchi cup match. I ended up with a 405/480. This is not quite as good as I shot in the actual match last year, but not going prone at 50 definitely cost me. If I am going to do that at the match I need to work that stage a little more. Center the dot, call the shot.

 

[backtrail540]

So I am going to get this out of the way right up front. Wow! YMMV, but for me, there is a big performance difference between a mid to full size dot gun and a subcompact with iron sights. I started the range session out with the Canik that I hope to shoot in BUG a time or two this year. I ran the Wilson/IDPA classifier 4 times. The first run I ran at Master class speed, but was 19 points down! THe next two runs were a little slower but was down fewer points. Finally on the last run I managed to pull an Expert level run out. It turns out that at the 10 yard distance with that small gun, I can't just use the front sight like a dot, I have to actually put it down in the notch almost like getting a real sight picture. How terrible. I remain impressed by the low recoil of the gun though and reloads weren't terrible. (You have to do a lot of them in BUG division)

After that I pulled out the Q5 and ran the practical portion of the Bianchi cup match. I ended up with a 405/480. This is not quite as good as I shot in the actual match last year, but not going prone at 50 definitely cost me. If I am going to do that at the match I need to work that stage a little more. Center the dot, call the shot.

Do you see a similar or closed gap from the iron sight sub vs a slimline dot gun per your p365?

 

[cedartop]

Do you see a similar or closed gap from the iron sight sub vs a slimline dot gun per your p365?

No, but there are a couple things at play there, the dot is huge once you start getting 10 yards and out, and the 365 is an XL with the Wilson combat grip so it really does shoot closer to a mid size gun. I will say I prefer the trigger and ambi controls on the Canik, but at speed trigger doesn't make as much of a difference for me as when going slow.

I think some of it is just that I have gotten used to target focus with the dot and for me I never shot that way with irons.

 

[backtrail540]

No, but there are a couple things at play there, the dot is huge once you start getting 10 yards and out, and the 365 is an XL with the Wilson combat grip so it really does shoot closer to a mid size gun. I will say I prefer the trigger and ambi controls on the Canik, but at speed trigger doesn't make as much of a difference for me as when going slow.

I think some of it is just that I have gotten used to target focus with the dot and for me I never shot that way with irons.

I've only playd with a few slimline guns and never a subcompact but my suspicion (and little experience shooting) was that the dot made the delta much smaller and added to the viability of the small guns. Particularly outside of the absolute performance envelope. I guess that is likely obvious but your post just made me say it out loud.

 

[backtrail540]

More with the GPT today. I like it quite a bit. Certainly not going to get rid of it. I'd like to get a 34 run it in. Currently it's in my g19/holosun407/gripanchor/glockperformancetrigger setup.

Cold test was a pair to a TA targets mini adap at 50. 3.45 time with 2.18 draw, both hits.

Next i ran a modified LAPD Swat Qual. Despite missing 2 high on the first set at 25, I still cleaned up the rest of the qual well enough to beat Dobbs 90% with a 331/360. Would those two not been high, any scoring hits would have put me into PR territory. Woulda coulda shoulda i guess.

Next was Gabe's Foodcourt standards. I botched them. Agg time was 21.17 with only the immediate incapacitation being turbo runs. I had a complete miss high over the head for a 2 second penalty that really hurt.

After that I shot a 91 at 25, despite 4 in the 8 ring.


I played around with steel with an iron sighted g45. woof. I'm glad i'm past running those things hahaha.

I also got to play with a friends 43x that had horrid blackout out glock night sites. Still managed a nice run from the test though. I always seem to shoot these guns well enough. I should probably get one.


Hundo test with 43x and irons.

 

[cedartop]

An almost great day at the range today. I wanted to test the new plus extractor I put in the Q5 and continue to get as much trigger time as I can until the match this weekend. I started with trigger control at speed. If you aren't sure what this is, you aim in finger on the trigger and hit your timer. At the beep you press the trigger as fast as you can, hopefully while not moving the gun. This drill is particularly well suited for dry fire, but is good to confirm live fire as well. It went pretty well averaging a .17 reaction time with a fastest of .13 over ten shots. There were a couple out of the group but I think I figured out what happened later.


Feeling good I ran Spaulding's 3 round fadeback, it was like I couldn't miss.


To test the new extractor functioning under various conditions and continue getting a feel for this new trigger I ran Pannones 10-8 drill again. It went pretty dang well until I got back to the 25 yard D3R3 string. It's not like at can't shoot at 25 yards but trying to draw shoot 3 and then reload and shoot 3 more accurately in the times he is talking about is tough for me right now. My first run was a 6.68 with 2C's and 1D to go with my 3 alphas. Second run was a trainwreck as I lacked visual patience and even though on 3 shots in a row I was looking at the right shoulder I pulled the trigger anyway. Of course 2 of those shots were in the shoulder and 1 was a miss. 3rd run was a little better at 7.02 with 2 C's.

I was getting my drills out of order but didn't want to miss the 10-10-10 all hands so I did that next at 7 with a 9.26 and either 98 or 99 depending on how strict you are.



Next up was the practical portion for Bianchi. I had some really great runs on most of these strings including all the points at 15. I did drop 30 out of 120 at 50 but at least I had no Mikes and that still allowed me a very respectable 442/480 for that event. I hope to do that well Saturday especially if I try prone at 50. Depends how much pain I'm in at the time.

I ran the plates portion next and that went well until the 25. I ran it there 3 times finally realizing that there was enough time to treat each plate as a separate target and had 2 clean runs.

Next for a little fun I used the plate rack at 15 to do some one shot draws. Over 15 runs I did manage a 1.20. Yay me.

So I finished up trying the trigger control at speed on a B8 at 25. The funny thing is it wasn't that bad. I did have one off the paper but ironically it was a shot that was the slowest. Just before the beeper the dot drifted a little so I hesitated on slapping the trigger netting a .48 and a miss. I was averaging about a .20 per shot. As I thought back to the 10 yard version I realized there were a couple of hesitated shots there also and those were probably the wild ones. Interesting.

 

[cedartop]

Trying to live fire every day this week for the Cup match this Saturday. Hit the plate rack tonight. Not a ton of ammo to burn so I did one string at 10, 1 at 15, 2 at 20 and 4 at 25. I wanted to see how much difference there is at 25 between standing and prone. There is a reason the pros almost all go prone, you have to shoot a lot faster, but it is way more consistent in getting your hits. I think despite the hernia pain, I will have to hit prone on this stage at the match.

 

[backtrail540]

Trying to live fire every day this week for the Cup match this Saturday. Hit the plate rack tonight. Not a ton of ammo to burn so I did one string at 10, 1 at 15, 2 at 20 and 4 at 25. I wanted to see how much difference there is at 25 between standing and prone. There is a reason the pros almost all go probe, you have to shoot a lot faster, but it is way more consistent in getting your hits. I think despite the hernia pain, I will have to hit prone on this stage at the match.

Good luck! I'm confident you'll have a strong performance and look forward to the AAR detailing just that.

 

[cedartop]

Ran the barricade stage tonight. 426/480. The majority of points I dropped were at the 35 yard line. (30 points). If I had actually figured out a way to brace with the barricade I could probably do better. The problem is it is something you have to work on because of the par times you really have to get into position quickly.

 

[backtrail540]

50 rounds plus a few today.

Came up with a quick cold drill using the 99 drill strings but scored hitfactor with the baseline HF being a clean run at the regular 99 drill pars. A single run of each. This allowed my low skill company to shoot the drill and not get discouraged that they couldn't hit a par while giving me a goal to strive for. I told him about the hf i wanted to get and explained the normal 99 drill a touch but told him it was something he could track over time if he wanted and use the hitfactor as a goal to beat each time, essentially making it something that scales to infinity. I just scored it 5 points or nothing for the 3x5 but may mess with it and put it on a b8 or 8" and do scaled scoring zones. (I like 5 for the 3x5, 4 for the black of a b8, 2 for anywhere in the rings - in theory but I'll have to play with it and see how it shakes out between several folks at differing skill levels.

First string was d3 to the 3x5 at 7 yards. A par run on the 99 would be 6 HF (15 points/2.5 seconds). I got 15 points in 2.65 for the first rounds of the day for 5.6 HF.

Next string was 1r2 to the 3x5 at 7 yards. A par run is 3 HF (15 points/5 seconds). I got 10 points in 4.49 for a 2.2 HF.

Third string was d3 to the 3x5 at 10 yards. A par run is 4.2 HF (15 points/3.5 seconds). I only got 2 hits, so 10 points, in 2.65 seconds. 3.7 was my HF.

Final string is d3 to the 3x5 at 15 yards. A par run is 3 HF (15 points/5 seconds). I managed to only get 5 points because I put two high off the card. My time was 3.35 but because of the two misses I only had a HF of 1.1.

I also calculated overall HF. Par HF would be 3.75(60 points/16 seconds). My overall was 3 HF(40 points/13.14 seconds).

My companion had a .9 HF overall and now has both a starting point and goals to work toward going forward.

Next while he was working dot torture I did some d2's to an A zone at 3, since we were already at that yard line. My best was 1.09 for a pair (.88 draw).

Next I did the same at 15 and 20. (1.5x-1.8x range at 15 and 1.8x-2.1x at 20 if I recall correctly, though I didn't record these).

I ran back to back runs of a drill I got from an internet acquaintance years ago, d5 to a headbox at 15 yards in 5 seconds. My second run i put one high. I believe this was part of the 10-8 standards years ago.



I finished with some more runs of d2 at 3 and 15 using his iron sighted 43x. At 3 I was very comparable to the dotted 19 but was about .2-.3 slower and with poorer hits at 15. Probably will get a dotted slimline at some point. I like it and it conceals just enough better in fitted clothing to make it worth it for summertime, I think.

It felt like a productive enough session for 50 rounds and he is getting hooked, which is the best part. Next week, if we make it, he wants to try out some DA/SA guns for fun. My man!

 

[cedartop]

Current plan is to shoot BUG division at the IDPA match this weekend. This club is much more old school/defensive minded IDPA and as such makes shooting a small gun a little better prospect. With this in mind I took the Canik MC9 out tonight.

Started with a couple of slow fire 5 round group shots just to get the feel. I then went right into Stoegers practical accuracy drill. This is reactive shooting where you are shooting in my case five round strings letting the gun recover from recoil and pressing the trigger as soon as the sights land where you want them. I did this at 5, 7, 10, and 15 yards. It went ok but I am having a problem with eye sprint going back and forth between target focus and sight focus. After that I went into the doubles drill at the same distances. I kept them all on the target I had put on the silhouette but it wasn't exactly a group.

I finished up with using my last 8 rounds at 7 yards just trying to focus on one small spot and put the rounds there. (Target focus). 5 rounds in one hole and the other 3 not too awful far away.



I need to change the front sight out to a thinner fiber optic sight. The current front sight does not let enough light in.

 

[cedartop]

Took the Canik out again today to try and get a handle on it before the match tomorrow. I started off with a 10-10-5 all hands. First time was target focus and it was not pretty. Second run I went to sight focus and shot this nice 96 in 9.65.





I ran the Justin Dyal "Par 5" drill next. This was a bit of a stretch for my skills with this gun but this was experimenting. At 25 yards on a B8 you are looking for 100 points from 4 strings of fire with a 5 second par on each string. I left the B8 on an IDPA backer. First time through with target focus was again ugly. 49 points with a number of shots being low. None were fortunately off of the target though. Ran it again using the sights and improved to a 56, still not great, but I look forward to trying it with a real gun.
Next I took a number of runs through the Blake drill using accuracy mode, speed mode, and match mode in that order. Accuracy mode yielded a 4.5 second ave., Speed mode 3.25 with a few wild shots but not bad, and match mode was 3 5. These were all run target focus which appears to work fine at 7 yards on an IDPA 0 down circle
To try and nail this down I set up a small stage with an open target at 15 yards and 2 targets to be fired from cover at 7 yards that I had to move to. I started with 2 rounds in the gun to get some reloading practice while moving in. It turned out that sight focused was a half second slower on average, but the hits were much better.
I ran some 1R1 drills where I pinched the heck out of a finger again while bleeding all over and then with the 13 rounds I had left finished with trigger control at speed. That yielded satisfactory results.

I would say the facts bear out that at least for now, I need to shoot this thing using sight focus. I look forward to giving it a go at the match and hope to not come on last as typically no one else shoots BUG division.

 

[cedartop]

Well not drills but related. Haha, those of you who are friends on FB already know of today's shenanigans. As I had mentioned we were going to BUG this match because it is well suited for the normal style, welllll, we show up to help set up this morning and find out all of the stages are John Wick themed. That is a lot of reloads for a six shot pistol. Good thing I practiced those yesterday. Didn't do horrible but I did make some bad calls on sight/target focus to include missing an 11 yard head shot.

 

[backtrail540]

Our shooting group has fluxed a bit over the last year. A guy from work joined at the end of the season but decided to quit this year but one of my best friends decided to get more serious this year so we are at 3 again. He is really taking to it and a sponge at the moment so it's motivating me to help.

MVS's recent Action Pistol match has me jonesing and since I won't be making a match any time soon I'm going to run the courses in practice instead, though somewhat modified to work with my gear. I'm using Julie G's cheat sheet from BulletinX
( https://www.juliegolob.com/bulletinx ). Tomorrow we'll run the plates, though with two plates since I only have gear for two. It will be interesting to see how changing directions affects pars vs using momentum to clean a line of plates. I've ran the practical in the past and enjoyed it.

I am going to run a wheelgun (s&w ssr with an sro on top) as that is what i would choose to run in the cup or at a match per preference. I may run it with a glock as well, pending time. The new guy wants to check out all of the non glock options we have. He's been a glock shooter for a bit and is curious, particularly in DA/SA guns which are what I cut my teeth on.

Should be a fine day!

 

[cedartop]

Back to regularly scheduled programming, sorta. Though I will continue to do some accuracy work and some drills that just catch my eye for fun, I am really going to hone in and work the whole grip/trigger/vision thing through accuracy at speed. I will be trying to use more focus to improve one area at a time. Since I am back on a pretty much full dry fire schedule almost everything except recoil related stuff can be worked there.

Tonight I started with Trigger control at speed, then reset at speed, moving on to doubles which I interspersed with trying to relax the firing hand as much as possible using a Hwansik Kim technique where you just basically fire SHO into a berm seeing how loose you can grip the gun before it actually moves in your hand and then tighten up just a bit.

I worked some cadence work starting with 1 second per shot for 5 shot strings, cutting that to .5 and then to as fast as I can pull the trigger and keep the hits in the target area. today for me that was .22 spits. A long way to go there to get to .15 but at least I have a plan. The splits aren't really the goal, being able to shoot that fast and still see what is going on and hit what I want to is.

Ran 1 string of the Dyal Par 5 drill. Didn't do great at an 83 but that beat the small gun by about 30 points. Finished up with the RM DOM, Super Test with a bit of a disappointing 285/300. I really just ran too fast for me at 15 yards finishing in 10 seconds when you have 15.

 

[backtrail540]

We setup two 8" plates 12" apart (20" center to center), alternating between plates for 6 hits, and ran the COF for Falling Plates as written on BulletinX cheat sheet. I used a S&W 686 SSR with Trijicon SRO in a bladetech owb. I very much enjoy running wheelguns and particularly in the competition setting. We ran this cold as if we were in a match.

Total - 41/48

10 yards - 6 second par for 6 plates

4.42 - 6 hits
4.33 - 6 hits

15 yards - 7 second par for 6 plates

5.39 - 6 hits
5.74 - 3 hits

20 yards - 8 second par for 6 plates

6.17 - 6 hits
5.81 - 6 hits

25 yards - 9 second par for 6 plates

7.47 - 5 hits
7.66 - 3 hits

I should've been clean through 25 but I let a bad grip get me at 15 and didn't give the trigger proper attention for the grip. I should have adjusted the grip but just went with it and hence missed the right plate every time i went to it. 25 was a trigger issue. I doulbe clutched and then tried to catch up and missed the next three not letting the dot settle enough for the shot needed.

My buddies scored 20 and 14 respectively (the 14 was running a wheelgun just to entertain me but he doesn't like shooting it and isn't very good) he cleaned several stages with his S2 later).

I wanted to run it again from concealment with my 19/dot/grip anchor. I'm back to the stock trigger and gadget.

Total - 46/48

10 yards -

4.48 - 6 hits
4.38 - 6 hits

15 yards -

4.97 - 6 hits
4.88 - 6 hits

20 yards -

5.97 - 6 hits
5.67 - 6 hits

25 yards -

6.98 - 5 hits
6.78 - 5 hits

The pressure was on after the first two strings being clean. I had it together mentally and executed everything as needed to clean the 20. Pressure built and I had a nice clean run at 25 - right up until the final shot of the string. I relaxed just enough prior to breaking the shot and watched the dot move just off the plate as it broke. With the miss on the books the pressure was gone and I delivered a decent draw and transition with solid hits but stopped short of the plate and broke the shot early resulting in a 3rd shot miss. Shrugged it off and ended with 3 clean hits. Down two from concealment is not anything i'm ashamed of.

The one buddy had to try a few da/sa guns and other strikers to be convinced that he just is a glock (or shadow systems) man. I told him the gun didn't matter much at his stage but rather to pick something and you'll get good with whatever you stick with but he was convinced because he shot the others poorly it was a glock is superior thing. Can't help them all haha.

I did a single pair at 3 working on a pair under 1 but with a .94 concealed draw i had a 1.1x time today. I ro'd those guys for a while then we finished with a competition. Fastest to get two hits on two plates at 10 yards out of 5 tries. I handicapped myself by using a 43x with blacked out night sights from concealment. The guy who had a chance was running a s2 with sro and lok brass grips. The other guy decided to run the 43x from concealment as well. My best run for a hit on two plates was 1.86. The contender came out of the gate with a 1.96 but then zero or hero'd the rest and didn't get another clean run. The other guy with the 43x didn't get a shot off in time to win. Fun little competiton though the skill gap is such that it isn't much pressure on me. I hope that one day it is.

Next time we'll run the practical, or a close rendition of it based on the gear I have.

 

[cedartop]

We setup two 8" plates 12" apart (20" center to center), alternating between plates for 6 hits, and ran the COF for Falling Plates as written on BulletinX cheat sheet. I used a S&W 686 SSR with Trijicon SRO in a bladetech owb. I very much enjoy running wheelguns and particularly in the competition setting. We ran this cold as if we were in a match.

Total - 41/48

10 yards - 6 second par for 6 plates

4.42 - 6 hits
4.33 - 6 hits

15 yards - 7 second par for 6 plates

5.39 - 6 hits
5.74 - 3 hits

20 yards - 8 second par for 6 plates

6.17 - 6 hits
5.81 - 6 hits

25 yards - 9 second par for 6 plates

7.47 - 5 hits
7.66 - 3 hits

I should've been clean through 25 but I let a bad grip get me at 15 and didn't give the trigger proper attention for the grip. I should have adjusted the grip but just went with it and hence missed the right plate every time i went to it. 25 was a trigger issue. I doulbe clutched and then tried to catch up and missed the next three not letting the dot settle enough for the shot needed.

My buddies scored 20 and 14 respectively (the 14 was running a wheelgun just to entertain me but he doesn't like shooting it and isn't very good) he cleaned several stages with his S2 later).

I wanted to run it again from concealment with my 19/dot/grip anchor. I'm back to the stock trigger and gadget.

Total - 46/48

10 yards -

4.48 - 6 hits
4.38 - 6 hits

15 yards -

4.97 - 6 hits
4.88 - 6 hits

20 yards -

5.97 - 6 hits
5.67 - 6 hits

25 yards -

6.98 - 5 hits
6.78 - 5 hits

The pressure was on after the first two strings being clean. I had it together mentally and executed everything as needed to clean the 20. Pressure built and I had a nice clean run at 25 - right up until the final shot of the string. I relaxed just enough prior to breaking the shot and watched the dot move just off the plate as it broke. With the miss on the books the pressure was gone and I delivered a decent draw and transition with solid hits but stopped short of the plate and broke the shot early resulting in a 3rd shot miss. Shrugged it off and ended with 3 clean hits. Down two from concealment is not anything i'm ashamed of.

The one buddy had to try a few da/sa guns and other strikers to be convinced that he just is a glock (or shadow systems) man. I told him the gun didn't matter much at his stage but rather to pick something and you'll get good with whatever you stick with but he was convinced because he shot the others poorly it was a glock is superior thing. Can't help them all haha.

I did a single pair at 3 working on a pair under 1 but with a .94 concealed draw i had a 1.1x time today. I ro'd those guys for a while then we finished with a competition. Fastest to get two hits on two plates at 10 yards out of 5 tries. I handicapped myself by using a 43x with blacked out night sights from concealment. The guy who had a chance was running a s2 with sro and lok brass grips. The other guy decided to run the 43x from concealment as well. My best run for a hit on two plates was 1.86. The contender came out of the gate with a 1.96 but then zero or hero'd the rest and didn't get another clean run. The other guy with the 43x didn't get a shot off in time to win. Fun little competiton though the skill gap is such that it isn't much pressure on me. I hope that one day it is.

Next time we'll run the practical, or a close rendition of it based on the gear I have.

I assume you have seen SLG's latest report on the Bianchi Cup?https://pistol-training.com/bianchi-cup/

He did amazingly well especially considering it was his first time at the big match. The guy that won production optics shot the same gun as me, but he apparently didn't have any malfunctions with his.

 

[backtrail540]

I assume you have seen SLG's latest report on the Bianchi Cup?https://pistol-training.com/bianchi-cup/

He did amazingly well especially considering it was his first time at the big match. The guy that won production optics shot the same gun as me, but he apparently didn't have any malfunctions with his.

I did! I'm thinking of planning a short family vacation to Columbus later in the year and slipping away for a day for an Action Pistol match at Pickaway. I doubt it will work out with my current schedule but that is the most likely way i'll get to try it out anytime soon. Definitely enjoying his articles and the dialogue in the comments.