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

[BigRed]

Ran this one heavily yesterday and today...ran like a top!

 

[backtrail540]

Today was the rare chance to practice alone. I used the opportunity to play with my frankenstein gun that I use to test silly ideas and whatnot (a p80 with centurion slide and 509t). I had fitted a gen 5 trigger group to this gun and wanted to test if it worked. It worked great.

I had 5 loose rounds left from the last time out and decided to use those for a cold drill. I used an extrapolation of the No Fail shot drill that I got the blessing of Pressburg as far as approving the standard. On the original you get 3.5 for a 25 yard draw 1 to the black of a b8. Broken down I look at it as 1 second to get the gun out of the holster and oriented on target and 2.5 to work sights and trigger to get the hit. That works out to .1 per yard. So I have taken that and used the same formula to work other distances and use it as a standard that I like to maintain. For this drill I used a random number generator on my phone and did five 1 shot draws to the black of a b8 at five different distances using the above formula as a standard.

First draw was 6 yards so the par was set at 1.6 (1 second to get the gun out and .1 per 6 yards is .6 1+.6=1.6 for par). I got a solid hit in the 10 ring but fouled the draw. Shirt cleared fine but my hand placement was off (different gun with no practice leading up to this session) and I ended with a 1.89 and missed the par.

Second draw was 23 yards with a 3.3 par (1 second plus 2.3 at .1 per yard =3.3). My time cut just under the wire with a 3.23 but I placed the round an 1" high for a second no go.

Third draw was 21 yards (3.1 par). I got a hit in the black in 2.02. That's more like it. I didn't over think the press and simply pressed the trigger when the dot was on the black. 1/3 so far.

Fourth draw was 11 yards (2.1 par). Highish hit in 1.65. 2/4 now.

Final random number draw was 25 yards, naturally...I have yet to pass the original no fail shot with 10/10 under par so this would be interesting. I managed a hit in the black in 2.77. Good recovery from a rocky cold start. 3/5 and a fail but I know where i am today at my current lack of practice. at least...



Next up was my standard battery (advanced supertest, Gabe White skills test, and modified lapd swat qual). One of my favorite uses of 100 rounds.

Ast was average for me, coming in at a meager 288 (15 yards - 93 in 8.19, 10 yards - 96 in 6.29, 5 yards - 99 in 3.96). I did not give the trigger prep propper attention and pressed through while anticipating, pulling several throughout.



I was using one of the excellent ltt targets and so my Gabe White test was slightly modified from usual. Rather than a 3x5 and lower A zone on a uspsa target I used the 8 ring of the b8 and the 4" circle instead. It was a decent performance but not stellar with only 3 turbo times. My bills were both slow 2.78 clean and 2.45 with 1 c (2.53/2.45 after concealment bonus). The f2s's were 2.45 and 2.17 clean (2.2 and 1.92 after concealment bonus). My strong suit has always been the immediate incapacition and today was stellar. 1.9 and 1.88 clean (1.65 and 1.63 respectively, well within turbo time). One split bill was solid at 2.83 clean (2.58 after concealment bonus and a turbo run) and the other was a awful coming in at 3.05 with 2 close outside for a added .25 after concealment bonus. I track both single runs and aggregate on this and the aggregate was 18.26, 2nd best agg of the year for me.






On the lapd qual I also subbed the 4" for the 3x5 so I could use the ltt target. I put up a 331/360 with 1 mike ouside of scoring zones (a 4" miss @ 10). 2nd best run of the year and within the 90% threshold that Dobbs said was a very squared away shooter if they could hit that. My best ever was a 340 witht the same gun earlier this year.

I finished with some runs on garcia dots and they were pretty horrid with only 60% ish hits. Just not precise at that speed today. I did my final 10 rounds with my carry 19 and was 60% as well. I had trouble counting throughout this drill but I just rolled with it. Some runs were 7 some 6. The 19 was a 6 round and 4 round run. All pretty close to pace but the precision was lacking.






I've only got 3-4 sessions left before I pack it in and take the winter off. I'm ready as I'm starting to feel the burn out. Ready for knife season

 

[gregkl]

Ran Dot Torture again. Failed on SHO and WHO. So at least I know what to work on.

Ran the 99 drill. I thought I was doing better but my score was lower. Accuracy was up, but time was also.

Good day at the range.

 

[cedartop]

Today was the rare chance to practice alone. I used the opportunity to play with my frankenstein gun that I use to test silly ideas and whatnot (a p80 with centurion slide and 509t). I had fitted a gen 5 trigger group to this gun and wanted to test if it worked. It worked great.

I had 5 loose rounds left from the last time out and decided to use those for a cold drill. I used an extrapolation of the No Fail shot drill that I got the blessing of Pressburg as far as approving the standard. On the original you get 3.5 for a 25 yard draw 1 to the black of a b8. Broken down I look at it as 1 second to get the gun out of the holster and oriented on target and 2.5 to work sights and trigger to get the hit. That works out to .1 per yard. So I have taken that and used the same formula to work other distances and use it as a standard that I like to maintain. For this drill I used a random number generator on my phone and did five 1 shot draws to the black of a b8 at five different distances using the above formula as a standard.

First draw was 6 yards so the par was set at 1.6 (1 second to get the gun out and .1 per 6 yards is .6 1+.6=1.6 for par). I got a solid hit in the 10 ring but fouled the draw. Shirt cleared fine but my hand placement was off (different gun with no practice leading up to this session) and I ended with a 1.89 and missed the par.

Second draw was 23 yards with a 3.3 par (1 second plus 2.3 at .1 per yard =3.3). My time cut just under the wire with a 3.23 but I placed the round an 1" high for a second no go.

Third draw was 21 yards (3.1 par). I got a hit in the black in 2.02. That's more like it. I didn't over think the press and simply pressed the trigger when the dot was on the black. 1/3 so far.

Fourth draw was 11 yards (2.1 par). Highish hit in 1.65. 2/4 now.

Final random number draw was 25 yards, naturally...I have yet to pass the original no fail shot with 10/10 under par so this would be interesting. I managed a hit in the black in 2.77. Good recovery from a rocky cold start. 3/5 and a fail but I know where i am today at my current lack of practice. at least...



Next up was my standard battery (advanced supertest, Gabe White skills test, and modified lapd swat qual). One of my favorite uses of 100 rounds.

Ast was average for me, coming in at a meager 288 (15 yards - 93 in 8.19, 10 yards - 96 in 6.29, 5 yards - 99 in 3.96). I did not give the trigger prep propper attention and pressed through while anticipating, pulling several throughout.



I was using one of the excellent ltt targets and so my Gabe White test was slightly modified from usual. Rather than a 3x5 and lower A zone on a uspsa target I used the 8 ring of the b8 and the 4" circle instead. It was a decent performance but not stellar with only 3 turbo times. My bills were both slow 2.78 clean and 2.45 with 1 c (2.53/2.45 after concealment bonus). The f2s's were 2.45 and 2.17 clean (2.2 and 1.92 after concealment bonus). My strong suit has always been the immediate incapacition and today was stellar. 1.9 and 1.88 clean (1.65 and 1.63 respectively, well within turbo time). One split bill was solid at 2.83 clean (2.58 after concealment bonus and a turbo run) and the other was a awful coming in at 3.05 with 2 close outside for a added .25 after concealment bonus. I track both single runs and aggregate on this and the aggregate was 18.26, 2nd best agg of the year for me.






On the lapd qual I also subbed the 4" for the 3x5 so I could use the ltt target. I put up a 331/360 with 1 mike ouside of scoring zones (a 4" miss @ 10). 2nd best run of the year and within the 90% threshold that Dobbs said was a very squared away shooter if they could hit that. My best ever was a 340 witht the same gun earlier this year.

I finished with some runs on garcia dots and they were pretty horrid with only 60% ish hits. Just not precise at that speed today. I did my final 10 rounds with my carry 19 and was 60% as well. I had trouble counting throughout this drill but I just rolled with it. Some runs were 7 some 6. The 19 was a 6 round and 4 round run. All pretty close to pace but the precision was lacking.






I've only got 3-4 sessions left before I pack it in and take the winter off. I'm ready as I'm starting to feel the burn out. Ready for knife season

Funny you should mention the Gabe White standards. I saw recently that fellow Rangemaster Instructor Alumnus Memphis Beech just got his turbo pin. This has inspired me to possibly break down and discipline myself to pick one set of standards, or test and work on it over the winter. That would be pretty much all I do live fire, with dry work being all encompassing but with a emphasis on the skills to help the standard. The Gabe White Standards are in the running as are the Tier 1 Elite Performance Pistol Standards. I think though that I may go with the Wilson 5X5/IDPA classifier trying to shoot to Wilsons 15 second "GM" level. The reason for this test? It does some SHO work which the others don't do and I think that is important. As a bonus, being able to reach 15 seconds on this, would help the other ones I spoke of considerably. Of course I wouldn't just run the test over and over but break it down into drills that would build towards the cause and be more (ammo) efficient. I am pretty close to making a pact with myself.

 

[cedartop]

For Fridays drill (10/21/2022) I only had 50 rounds of ammo available. I ran the skip loading drill at 10 yards for three mags worth one each FS, SHO, WHO. That was a total of 7 live rounds. Four of those rounds were in 1 hole with 1 being about a quarter inch away and the other 2 about an inch out. The bad news is there were a number of flinches on the dummy rounds. I could tell it has been a while since I did this.

After that I just used the rest of my ammo shooting the Baer solutions transitions drill.

Saturday was an IDPA match. I was fifth overall and felt a little better about my performance than last week, but still not back to my "normal".

Today with no 9mm left and waiting on a new case, I took out my Glock 44 and M&P 15 and a 525 round bulk pack and just had fun. With the pistol I worked mostly on accuracy. With the carbine I refined my 15 yard "chipmunk" zero on then ran the plate rack and did some other speed stuff.

 

[cedartop]

I keep forgetting to mention I have been using the Range Tech timer lately. I really like some features of it like that you can run multiple strings and review them all then save or clear. It has a lot of features I haven't tried yet as well. One thing I don't like is it isn't loud enough. There is a volume adjustment but either it is all of the way up or I am using it wrong.

 

[backtrail540]

My shooting partner has had a recent interest in common tests and standards. This week he wanted to improve his FAST score. He has no interest in carrying a gun and runs everything from competition gear. I explained that the standard was set for iron sighted concealment gear but that there is still value in improving your score on the drill regardless of what type of gear you are using, it just won't be the same achievement as running as designed. I think the same applies to current optic wearing carry guns as well, if tlg were alive I imagine the 5 second standard for irons would be a .5-1 second faster to earn a coin if a dot were used. There is still value in doing a sub 5 FAST with a dot gun of course. It's just easier than with irons.

We started with a cold FAST to get a baseline. He ran a 7.3 from a carry optics setup. I ran a dot gun from aiwb concealed and managed a clean 5.33 with an ugly 2.40 reload. His goal was to simply score advanced, which he wasn't far off from. I told him he should be able to get a coin level time from his gear without too much effort and gave him the breakdown. I go for a 1.5 draw and .5 split to the 3x5, a 2 second reload, and three .33 splits for a total of 4.99 as a rule of thumb when working the FAST. You can get away with a sloppier reload if your get faster spits etc...so there is room for shifting the numbers but the above is a good goal/starting point.

We then broke the drill down to what I view as the three core sections. The pair to the 3x5, the reload, and finally the splits. We started with the reload. There are several ways to work this but I prefer to work it, specific to this drill, as aimed in on the 3x5 with trigger prepped. Upon the signal fire a shot at the 3x5 and perform the slide lock reload and fire 1 shot to the 8". This has you focus on a tight shot and react to that shot to initiate the reload as opposed to simply reacting to the auditory sound to initiate the reload. Both can be valuable but since he specifically wanted FAST performance we worked the exact reload he would be doing. We did this for 10 reps.

Next we worked the splits. He was having trouble getting splits under .4. Part of the issue was him waiting for a perfect dot every shot. I explained that with a high percentage target such as the 8" circle that he could use the dot as a paintbrush and never let it settle. As long as the streak was in the circle he could press the trigger and get hits while it was moving. The other problem was that i was out of 8" circle targets and thus used a b8. The 8 ring is 8" but it's common for people to focus on the black as it stands out and he wasn't using all of his target area. I had him do some blind splits into the berm to show that he could move his finger at a faster pace and also to see what the dot did at that speed. He had low .20ish splits with a few high teens mixed in. Then I had him do that same thing but over the target. Some were wide but 2/3 fell into the circle. Then I had him back off the gas just a bit each run until he had them landing in the circle. This for him was high .3s. There is obvious room for grip improvement etc...but we didn't have time to work on everything.

Finally we did the pair to the 3x5. We have done several versions of pairs to a 3x5 in the last few sessions so he was familiar and it was probably his strongest area in the drill. I discussed attacking the beep (drawing on the b vs after it was finished) but otherwise he was fairly close to the necessary times needed for his goal. We did 10 reps before putting it all together for 3 runs of the whole test . All three of his runs were 5.4-5.75 with two of them being clean. He was shocked that it made any difference, but especially that it was such a noticeable improvement. I explained that part of it was from being warmed up but that there was tremendous value in breaking any test down into it's core components and drilling those specifically vs just running the test over and over. I also explained that these were macro drills and that each could be broken down into several micro drills (the reload for example, I used to do 4 or 5 micro drills just for that specific part in dry practice) and some of them don't require a gun let alone ammo.

He was pretty happy at the end of the day and we talked about various other drills and standards and that the way to improve was in drilling components but the drills and standards themselves can be a driving force to get you to do the repetition.

I only did a few reps of each and had a catastrophic malfunction on my single attempt at a final FAST that resulted in failure to finsish the drill (a round caught on the edge of the grip during the reload and when inserting it actually shot out of the ejection port landing in the grass and thus leaving me with not enough rounds to finish) so no news for me. I had several issues while reloading and the gun I was using was simply a test bed for random stuff I decide to try out so no big deal as far as problems. It doesn't get carried ever but is annoying when it's not running correctly. Overall a productive day (for him) and I enjoyed helping him improve. I'm getting burnt out again as far as my shooting goes but still enjoy helping the shooting partners improve.


My cold FAST.

 

[cedartop]

My shooting partner has had a recent interest in common tests and standards. This week he wanted to improve his FAST score. He has no interest in carrying a gun and runs everything from competition gear. I explained that the standard was set for iron sighted concealment gear but that there is still value in improving your score on the drill regardless of what type of gear you are using, it just won't be the same achievement as running as designed. I think the same applies to current optic wearing carry guns as well, if tlg were alive I imagine the 5 second standard for irons would be a .5-1 second faster to earn a coin if a dot were used. There is still value in doing a sub 5 FAST with a dot gun of course. It's just easier than with irons.

We started with a cold FAST to get a baseline. He ran a 7.3 from a carry optics setup. I ran a dot gun from aiwb concealed and managed a clean 5.33 with an ugly 2.40 reload. His goal was to simply score advanced, which he wasn't far off from. I told him he should be able to get a coin level time from his gear without too much effort and gave him the breakdown. I go for a 1.5 draw and .5 split to the 3x5, a 2 second reload, and three .33 splits for a total of 4.99 as a rule of thumb when working the FAST. You can get away with a sloppier reload if your get faster spits etc...so there is room for shifting the numbers but the above is a good goal/starting point.

We then broke the drill down to what I view as the three core sections. The pair to the 3x5, the reload, and finally the splits. We started with the reload. There are several ways to work this but I prefer to work it, specific to this drill, as aimed in on the 3x5 with trigger prepped. Upon the signal fire a shot at the 3x5 and perform the slide lock reload and fire 1 shot to the 8". This has you focus on a tight shot and react to that shot to initiate the reload as opposed to simply reacting to the auditory sound to initiate the reload. Both can be valuable but since he specifically wanted FAST performance we worked the exact reload he would be doing. We did this for 10 reps.

Next we worked the splits. He was having trouble getting splits under .4. Part of the issue was him waiting for a perfect dot every shot. I explained that with a high percentage target such as the 8" circle that he could use the dot as a paintbrush and never let it settle. As long as the streak was in the circle he could press the trigger and get hits while it was moving. The other problem was that i was out of 8" circle targets and thus used a b8. The 8 ring is 8" but it's common for people to focus on the black as it stands out and he wasn't using all of his target area. I had him do some blind splits into the berm to show that he could move his finger at a faster pace and also to see what the dot did at that speed. He had low .20ish splits with a few high teens mixed in. Then I had him do that same thing but over the target. Some were wide but 2/3 fell into the circle. Then I had him back off the gas just a bit each run until he had them landing in the circle. This for him was high .3s. There is obvious room for grip improvement etc...but we didn't have time to work on everything.

Finally we did the pair to the 3x5. We have done several versions of pairs to a 3x5 in the last few sessions so he was familiar and it was probably his strongest area in the drill. I discussed attacking the beep (drawing on the b vs after it was finished) but otherwise he was fairly close to the necessary times needed for his goal. We did 10 reps before putting it all together for 3 runs of the whole test . All three of his runs were 5.4-5.75 with two of them being clean. He was shocked that it made any difference, but especially that it was such a noticeable improvement. I explained that part of it was from being warmed up but that there was tremendous value in breaking any test down into it's core components and drilling those specifically vs just running the test over and over. I also explained that these were macro drills and that each could be broken down into several micro drills (the reload for example, I used to do 4 or 5 micro drills just for that specific part in dry practice) and some of them don't require a gun let alone ammo.

He was pretty happy at the end of the day and we talked about various other drills and standards and that the way to improve was in drilling components but the drills and standards themselves can be a driving force to get you to do the repetition.

I only did a few reps of each and had a catastrophic malfunction on my single attempt at a final FAST that resulted in failure to finsish the drill (a round caught on the edge of the grip during the reload and when inserting it actually shot out of the ejection port landing in the grass and thus leaving me with not enough rounds to finish) so no news for me. I had several issues while reloading and the gun I was using was simply a test bed for random stuff I decide to try out so no big deal as far as problems. It doesn't get carried ever but is annoying when it's not running correctly. Overall a productive day (for him) and I enjoyed helping him improve. I'm getting burnt out again as far as my shooting goes but still enjoy helping the shooting partners improve.


My cold FAST.

That is a great cold FAST. I can't remember, was TLG still with us when Jedi got his FAST coin? I remember there was a lot of whining about him getting it running a Roland special type gun. I shot my attempts even back in 2013 with a dot gun and heard nothing about it but that could be because I failed.

I appreciate your write up on the breakdown. That and a lot of dry work is how I plan on attacking the 5X5 for the 15 second time.

 

[backtrail540]

If my memory is correct, TLG had passed and SLG was upset about the coin being given to what he had deemed unacceptable gear. But fast forward to now and that's a commonly accepted setup. Hence my hypothesis that the standard would change to meet the gear, like the recent Defoor hat Qual change as an example.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

That is a great cold FAST. I can't remember, was TLG still with us when Jedi got his FAST coin? I remember there was a lot of whining about him getting it running a Roland special type gun.

If my memory is correct, TLG had passed and SLG was upset about the coin being given to what he had deemed unacceptable gear.

TLG had passed and there's more to the story than the type of gun being the issue. If people want to tell that story publicly is up to them, it's not mine to tell.

 

[backtrail540]

TLG had passed and there's more to the story than the type of gun being the issue. If people want to tell that story publicly is up to them, it's not mine to tell.

TLG had passed and there's more to the story than the type of gun being the issue. If people want to tell that story publicly is up to them, it's not mine to tell.

10 minutes of revisiting old threads and a few dots connected made a recent ig post make sense and I got a laugh. Makes more sense with fresh eyes.

 

[cedartop]

Well I finally got back out to the range yesterday evening. Don't order Super Vel ammo if you are in a hurry. (fortunately I wasn't). I started off by zeroing the new DPP on my Carry Legion. I plan on putting a Greyguns competition trigger in it also and if after that I still can't shoot it worth a hoot I will give up on it. Because of the near tornado force winds I did more 10 yard zeroing than normal. It didn't seem too bad from there. I went back to 25 and 5 rounds were more like a pattern than a group. Thinking maybe it was the ammo I shot the Staccato C2 and those 4 of those rounds went into a group about a quarter of the size with one called flyer. Back to the Legion I shot the Bob Vogel King Drill and like so many drills for me, it was much harder IRL than it was imagining how I would do.

Next up it was time to begin my winter quest for a 15 second 5X5. I loaded up the C2 and from concealed AIWB shot a baseline of 20.66. This is slower than I shoot it using my Walther in IDPA gear and the biggest difference seems to be in the area of draw and reloads. Fortunately those can be worked extensively in dry practice.

Breaking this down I shot FS strings of Draw and shoot 3, 4, and 5 rounds. Weirdly enough on some of my runs, I was faster on my strings of 5 than of 3. Part of this could just be getting into the groove as I was shooting faster splits. I pulled out a fastest clean string of 2.75 on this one. That is from 10 yards. That is not too far off from my cold goal time of 2.5.

SHO the same format was next. Showing that feel can be deceiving, while these felt fast my best clean run was a 4.37. That is over .75 away from goal time.

In place of the 5R5 in an attempt to save ammo and kill a few birds with one stone, I am running Draw 2 head, reload 2 body. This should help with my goal, plus FAST and immediate incapacitation. These were running pretty slow with a 5.17 fastest clean. Again, draw and reload were slow here, which is bad because that is most of the drill! One thing I am torn on, until I got this Staccato for the last few years I had set up the controls for my gun to run lefty, can't do this here so I have to go back to the old way. Going back and forth between the two methods is not going to be the answer.

To work the final stage, again to save some ammo instead of the 4 body 1 head, I am just doing 10 yard failure drills. These were coming in from 2.25-2.5. Again, a lot of room for improvement.

Finishing up I did something I have been doing a lot of in dry fire. Not sure of the correct name for it, but it is sometimes called compressed surprise break. Basically you are aimed in finger near the trigger and on the beep you fire the shot as soon and fast as you can. I ran this at five yards. Three strings of 5 produced one large hole with time running from .16 to .25. It is really something that using the proper grip you can crash that rigger as fast and hard as you can and still shoot accurately.

With the time change and colder weather I will only be getting to the range once a week for the most part through the winter. This makes it imperative I stick with my daily dry fire schedule. Wish me luck, and I can mostly take constructive criticism.

 

[backtrail540]

I hadn't ran irons in a while and so I ran a glock 45 with an old hd front and warren rear with straight 8 setup. I haven't shot an iron sight gun at all other than a single run when the dicken thing happended but not at any sort of thing I would call fast.

Cold drill was the dotm in the Rangemaster newsletter. Draw 3 fs, 3 sho, 3 who @ 5 and then @ 10 yards all to an 8" circle. I ran the first string in 6.64 but pulled a who shot. The transfer was fumbly which is something that I actually included in my dry practice yesterday but have never been particularly consistent on. From the 10 yard line I ran a 9 flat but missed a sho and all three who. All of my shots were high. Initially I thought it was because I was driving the dot rather than using a top edge hold but later in the session I realized that I was using a target focus and when I finally got a solid front sight focus going again my front sight was proud of the notch and I was simply not getting the alignment that I needed. Some people can go back and fourth from irons to dots without a hitch but I, for one, have to come to rely on that built in trainer in the dot. Needless to say, the math came out to a below the par run that was an abysmal failure.

After coaching the shooting partner a bit, and doing a few reps of shorter strings to build up to it, I ran a final Test from the holster and had a solid 96 point run in 8.49. That's about a second slower for the same score than when I was at my peak iron sight shooting level before the dot switch. I have to try so much harder with irons than with a dot.


glock 45 iron sights run on the Test

After this I put the iron sight gun away and switched to my carry 19. I usually change out my carry ammo completely a few times a year (with single rounds being exchanged as needed with the dry practice schedule) and I wanted to get new ammo in before winter. I ran a Test with the 147 hst and it was a 110 in 8.76 because I forgot that the mags were full and didn't count my rounds and fired 11 before realizing i had full mags (i usually stage my mags with 10 rounds when running something like a test so I don't have to focus on counting and just stop at slidelock). I was happy with that and I did a few slidelock reloads to finish out the mags.


19 mos run on the Test (11 rounds doh!!)

Next up with my reload magazine I put 10 out at 25 on the same b8 that the 100 was on, knowing anything outside of the 10 ring was from the 25. Again I shot 11 rounds. When I got down to the target and saw that 9/11 were 10's I became bitter because the other two were 7's (meaning that the hundo i've chased was really 1 round away from becoming reality). I had to stop and make myself appreciate that the 104/110 was a very solid score to put down with a stock 19 mos carry gun and give myself some credit instead of being upset that I didn't meet a goal. I have a problem with this, as I often set expectation higher than current skill level. It can help with skill building to alwasy be reaching but you also have to give yourself appropriate kudos when you do good work despite it not meeting goal, as otherwise you just grind your self confidence to shreds and it can make it feel like quite the chore to do something you love.


11 more from 25 over the 11 from the Test with the 19 mos


We played around with wheelguns for a few rounds before packing it in. Decent little practice with no set goal and I hope that I get at least one more in before the year closes.

 

[gregkl]

Got a new 22 pistol since it's looking like next year will be mostly 22 shooting for me. I bought a red dot and swapped it with my red dot on my m&p so I had two pistols to zero today. And since I lost 30 minutes or so due to a club entrance gate issue that was all I got done.

Next week I'll be back to drills, this time with a new pistol.

 

[gregkl]

Finishing up I did something I have been doing a lot of in dry fire. Not sure of the correct name for it, but it is sometimes called compressed surprise break. Basically you are aimed in finger near the trigger and on the beep you fire the shot as soon and fast as you can. I ran this at five yards. Three strings of 5 produced one large hole with time running from .16 to .25. It is really something that using the proper grip you can crash that rigger as fast and hard as you can and still shoot accurately.

I read about this or at least a similar drill that I plan on trying. Supposed to get you used to taking the shot as soon as the dot shows, right? To increase speed.

 

[cedartop]

I read about this or at least a similar drill that I plan on trying. Supposed to get you used to taking the shot as soon as the dot shows, right? To increase speed.

No. Since you are already aimed in it has little to do with your sighting system. It is really to show that you can hit the trigger hard and get hits if you don't get in your own way. A good next step to this would probably be Ben Stoeger doubles.

 

[cedartop]

I hadn't ran irons in a while and so I ran a glock 45 with an old hd front and warren rear with straight 8 setup. I haven't shot an iron sight gun at all other than a single run when the dicken thing happended but not at any sort of thing I would call fast.

Cold drill was the dotm in the Rangemaster newsletter. Draw 3 fs, 3 sho, 3 who @ 5 and then @ 10 yards all to an 8" circle. I ran the first string in 6.64 but pulled a who shot. The transfer was fumbly which is something that I actually included in my dry practice yesterday but have never been particularly consistent on. From the 10 yard line I ran a 9 flat but missed a sho and all three who. All of my shots were high. Initially I thought it was because I was driving the dot rather than using a top edge hold but later in the session I realized that I was using a target focus and when I finally got a solid front sight focus going again my front sight was proud of the notch and I was simply not getting the alignment that I needed. Some people can go back and fourth from irons to dots without a hitch but I, for one, have to come to rely on that built in trainer in the dot. Needless to say, the math came out to a below the par run that was an abysmal failure.

After coaching the shooting partner a bit, and doing a few reps of shorter strings to build up to it, I ran a final Test from the holster and had a solid 96 point run in 8.49. That's about a second slower for the same score than when I was at my peak iron sight shooting level before the dot switch. I have to try so much harder with irons than with a dot.


glock 45 iron sights run on the Test

After this I put the iron sight gun away and switched to my carry 19. I usually change out my carry ammo completely a few times a year (with single rounds being exchanged as needed with the dry practice schedule) and I wanted to get new ammo in before winter. I ran a Test with the 147 hst and it was a 110 in 8.76 because I forgot that the mags were full and didn't count my rounds and fired 11 before realizing i had full mags (i usually stage my mags with 10 rounds when running something like a test so I don't have to focus on counting and just stop at slidelock). I was happy with that and I did a few slidelock reloads to finish out the mags.


19 mos run on the Test (11 rounds doh!!)

Next up with my reload magazine I put 10 out at 25 on the same b8 that the 100 was on, knowing anything outside of the 10 ring was from the 25. Again I shot 11 rounds. When I got down to the target and saw that 9/11 were 10's I became bitter because the other two were 7's (meaning that the hundo i've chased was really 1 round away from becoming reality). I had to stop and make myself appreciate that the 104/110 was a very solid score to put down with a stock 19 mos carry gun and give myself some credit instead of being upset that I didn't meet a goal. I have a problem with this, as I often set expectation higher than current skill level. It can help with skill building to alwasy be reaching but you also have to give yourself appropriate kudos when you do good work despite it not meeting goal, as otherwise you just grind your self confidence to shreds and it can make it feel like quite the chore to do something you love.


11 more from 25 over the 11 from the Test with the 19 mos


We played around with wheelguns for a few rounds before packing it in. Decent little practice with no set goal and I hope that I get at least one more in before the year closes.

Some people run irons target focus as well. I proved this wasn't good for me when I ran iron sights on the Appleseed pistol qual recently. I shot it through the first time with target focus and not great results. Of course that is an accuracy based test.

 

[cedartop]

35 degrees, rain and snow, windy as heck. Not the ideal conditions for a weather wimp like me. Shot the Carry Legion today since I am still trying hard to like it. It is super reliable, the controls work well for me, and it handles well. The problem is it is so inaccurate. Even when I work hard, it doesn't shoot as well as the Q5 or Staccato. Of course at 10 yards and in it doesn't really matter but this bothers me.


Started with compressed surprise break 5 each FS, SHO, WHO. FS and SHO went ok. All of my WHO shots went high right. My hand was shaking more than usual, possibly a combo of the weather and the yard work I had been doing in the morning.

The 5X5 breakdown drill came next and we're very similar to how I shot it last time with the C2. I did push hard on some and get a little sloppy. One of the big problems I seem to be having is translating my dry fire first shot times to live fire. This is not uncommon with dot guns especially but you would think with all of the years I have been shooting them, it wouldn't still be a thing.

It was after this I shot the above target trying to see what I could squeeze out of this crummy Sig. That was FS slow fire at 25.

The work continues.

 

[gregkl]

Tomorrow is my normal range day. Got it cut short last week due to a stuck entry gate.

This Sunday may be a touch too cold. I do shoot in 25 degree weather but that is usually after I acclimated to the 50's, 40's, 30's and then the 20's.

Not sure if I'm ready to go from the 70's to the 20's inside of 48 hours!

We will see...

 

[cedartop]

Tomorrow is my normal range day. Got it cut short last week due to a stuck entry gate.

This Sunday may be a touch too cold. I do shoot in 25 degree weather but that is usually after I acclimated to the 50's, 40's, 30's and then the 20's.

Not sure if I'm ready to go from the 70's to the 20's inside of 48 hours!

We will see...

Yes, that was part of my problem today, no acclimation.