I am going to have to read that again to digest it all. There may be some nuggets there.Had to scratch an itch and ran a friends m&p today. It's a 5" pc with ports. I don't get the same noticeable performance with the ports as I do with say a pmm comp. Just lots of extra noise. But I do enjoy m&p's. Regardless, anymore when I venture away from glock (or variants) I generally just find myself wanting to return. I guess you need to see what's out there to appreciate what you have sometimes.
I was recently reminded elsewhere of a drill I made up several years ago and hadn't ran in some time. The 10 in 10 all hands drill is pretty much a variation on The Test. Shot on a b8, you pick the yardage you are most comfortable with and draw to shoot 10 rounds. The twist is that you do four freestyle, three sho, then three who in 10 seconds. While I've done all kinds of variations of scoring (just for points, time, hitfactor, steel) the variant that I ran today was all in the black under 10 then you move back and do it again (Gabe W helped come up with that variant when we ran it as a dotw on the home forum). The furthest distance you go all black under 10 is your score.
Cold I cleaned it but went over time. I had a dimmer than preferred dot that I could see but wasn't easy to track. I lost it completely when I transferred to who and during who recoil. Yikes!
10.76 clean at 510in10 all hands 10.76 cold 5 yards
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I gave it another run and knocked off 2.5 seconds, nearly, but dropped two outside the black.
8.3 down 210in10 all hands 8.3 5 yards fail
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Seeing this wasn't bearing fruit, I decided to move on to the main course. My 20 hits battery is simply taking the standard 20 hits drill designed by Gary Roberts and adding on additional strings. The classic version is shot on a 3x5 card. You draw and place two shots on a 3x5 at 7 yards and record your time and hits. Repeat until you have 20 hits. Your score is your total time it took to get 20 hits (adding all strings together). If you only get 1 hit per run you'll have 20 runs. If you miss 1 over the course of fire you'll shoot an extra run (11) to make up for the missed hit. Miss three and you'll have 2 makeups and so on, as you only can and must shoot two shots per string. For my battery I also add a high percentage target for 20 hits and a high percentage target SHO for 20 hits making a nice 60 round practice that you actually get to drill and get repetition.
I started with the standard 3x5 string. My total time was 25.62 and it took 12 runs to get 20 hits (3 misses) with an average run of 2.13. My fastest run was 1.98 and my slowest was 2.36. I've been at this pace for years but I still enjoy the drill.
Next was the high percentage string using a b8 with 8 ring for the 8" circle. My total time was 19.18 and was clean in 10 runs. Average run was 1.91 with a single fouled draw that was 2.49. Excluding that run then I had a 1.85 avg. A touch slower than my logged avg by a tenth or two but that could be due to cover garment that wasn't as fast(still cold!) or simply not my gun. I use the too little practice excuse too often so I'll use the former
Finally the SHO on an 8". With one miss on the very first string it took 11 runs to make 20 hits. I absolutely got hung up bad with my shirt getting stuck on a clip and had to pretty much re draw on one run which ended up being a nasty 5.08. On the other end of the spectrum my fastest run was 2.56. My average was 3.06 but 2.85 without the screwup. I'm pretty consistenly 2.5x here so it's on the high side for sure. My total time was 33.69.
I really dig running this and it makes great for comparing different guns. If you run it for hitfactor you would really see the minor differences. You can also adapt it to various tasks that matter to you - distance, who, reloads, varied target sizes. I like the idea of the upper A or 2" as a hyper accuracy at speed dynamic and may start doing that as well.
Since I had just a few rounds left at this point I ran one last 10 in 10 all hands, being hopeful since i was warmed up and actually drilled 2/3's of the core skills in that test over this session. I was rewarded with a clean 5 yard run in 7.63 so I get to actually claim a score other than zero for the day! 5 yard pin unlocked The gulf between that and my cold performance is substantial. That should be a clue.
10in10 all hands 7.63 5 yards
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I finished with 4 rounds sitting in the box and decided to do two runs of sho draw at 7 to a 3x5, as if I were doing 20 hits to a low percentage target. First run was a stellar 2.87 clean (right along with my average for the high percentage) immediately followed with two mikes in 3.03, just to knock me down a peg or to so as to not get a big head.
Next week I may be busy but should be good to go the following week. That's the NRA show weekend but I don't think I am going despite urging from friends. I don't need that kind of temptation right now.