Though it is a fairly common “mod”, I had not taken the time to paint fill the imprinted lettering on my magazines and the slide of the pistol.

Pretty happy with the added contrast. It doesn’t help it shoot any better, but it was a nice project that I could do in a couple of hours with a bonus of spending time with my Love in the craftroom.

As an aside, I noticed while doing this work that the screw holding the front sight is loose. It will be an easy enough fix, removing the screw and sight, cleaning with acetone and reassembling with Locktite.

There are many descriptions on the web as to the lettering procedure. In my case, I first cleaned the slide and magazines with acetone. Next, I used plain ol’ Testors model white enamel and a size 0 detail round brush. Technically, I was globbing it on to fill all the lines, but I tried to keep the glob in the lines and the part outside the lines as thin as reasonably possible. I filled all the lettering except for #10, which I went back and did in red. I wish I’d had a brighter red, maybe a fluorescent red or orange, even green. The point is that #10 is also filled but in another color. In IDPA shooting, magazines in my divisions are typically loaded to 10 rounds and since I am corrected to slightly farsighted with my contact lenses, it is hard to make out even the higher contrast lettering to read the actual number. Making the 10 another color makes it easier to check the magazine capacity.

Once all the paint was well dried came the somewhat tedious bit. I used the Testors thinner on bits of paper towel. It took a couple of magazines to refine the technique, but what seemed to work well was to put a drop of thinner on a small piece of paper towel and quickly rub it over a small area of lettering, checking between each stroke. When only the desired coloring is left, buff the area with a dry paper towel. This was the fastest way and required the least retouching cleanup. The thinner needs to be really light on the towel. Too much on the towel and it wets the paint too much and too much is removed from the lettering. I did all the white then came back to the red with fresh towels to keep the white from becoming kind of pink.

I pretty pleased with how they turned out.

In a previous post, I noted that I had a magazine that did not easily drop clear at reload time. Since I had numbered the magazines, I knew which one it was. While I was preparing the magazines, I had them all in one place and wanted to compare this troublemaker with it’s stablemates. I found a couple of differences that I am sure are documented online somewhere else, but here goes….

Since the empty magazine wasn’t dropping well when released, I first wanted to compare the latching notch. It turns out that there was a pretty big difference immediately visible. The magazine on the right is the one that doesn’t drop well.

In further digging, I noticed a difference in the followers as well. The one marked with a 2 is the one that doesn’t drop well. Due to the shadow, it’s hare to see, but the top magazine follower has a simple ’10’ on it while the bottom one has ’10 mm’ completely obscured by the shadow.

Referring back to the pic above of all the magazines, note that the two on the left are slightly different in the placement of the Glock logo. Yes, I have two magazines of this different model. In the original numbering order, these were magazines 0 and 2. The first was easy to remove from the magazine order. I did all other shooting with magazines 1, 2 and 3. However, I have so rarely had to drop mag #2 on the clock that I haven’t noticed if it also had trouble dropping clear.

Partly to address this issue and partly because I just have them, I decided to install the six magazine extension floor plates that I got in the box of goodies that included, among other things, most of these magazines. The previous owner found that, with all other equipment on his pistol, these extension floor plates in stock condition made the overall weight of the pistol perilously close to overweight for IDPA. He drilled out some material from the inside of the plates to reduce the weight. I hope my combination of parts fits under the wire because the added weight to the magazine makes all six thus equipped drop out of the pistol nicely. I have put them on both of the ‘odd’ magazines for the acid test.

The pistol is a close but passing fit in the IDPA box with the extensions.

Well, I didn’t get to attend the SO class. I will try harder to make the next one!

A few of my coworkers and I have begun a lunchtime range trip. Three Thursdays in a row have had us going to three different local ranges. For the last two, I have also attended IDPA matches that evening and I think it has helped. Last night’s match was particularly gratifying. I like all those 0’s and 1’s. In fact, there was a single 3 and all other targets were 0’s and 1’s. Oh, and one procedural for taking a step when I was supposed to be flat footed for those targets. I didn’t even know I did it. 🙂

At yesterday’s shooty lunch, I was was shooting hot ammo. Power Pistol handloaded 40’s and some bulk 10mm I bought some time ago that are pretty peppery. I need to chrono those someday. Then for the match, I was back to my usual semi-mild 155/165 grain TiteGroup loads. While I didn’t specifically train with big ammo and shoot with lighter, that’s how it worked out. It was quite a confidence booster.

At the match, I had one magazine that didn’t drop free very well. Because I only yesterday numbered my magazines with some skate tape stickers from Dawson Precision and I kept track of which ones I was using last night, I know which one it was. I will see what I can figure out, but I suspect it will be a slight burr on the notch where the magazine engages the release.

Having loaded up a good inventory of IDPA ammo, I took time to inventory my reloading components and find that I am in pretty decent shape there. Since I am consuming more 40S&W than anything else, it makes sense to have some extra for components needed for 40. I was gifted with a big heavy bag of 40S&W brass. I haven’t weighed it, but I imagine its in the 10 pound range, which puts it at about 1000 rounds. Add that to the stock I already had and I should be able to practice enough to help. 🙂

Speaking of practice and chronographing… Begining at about 2:40 into this Jerry Miculek video about a cool shotgun speedloader (interesting in its own right), I noticed a piece of equipment in the background. It seems obvious to me *now* but it had simply not occurred to me that a bullet trap could be sized to be mounted on a trailer. In my mind, a bullet trap small enough to be portable was just a safe area tool and all others were part of a permanent structure, typically an indoor shooting range. Now I want one.

I see a small unit with a 24″ square opening as adequate to my most common need, a safe place to chrono handloads and otherwise test firearms. Other than a lotto win purchase, I think I’ll have to just keep my eyes open for something for sale or make one.

I haven’t updated the ol’ blog in a while, but I have still been shooting!

The intervening time included one major match, a bunch of local matches and a couple of months fighting off a return of my childhood nemesis, asthma.

Asthmatically speaking, it’s now well controlled. I’m essentially symptom free once we found the right combination of treatments, which turned out to be Singulair, Breo Ellipta, albuterol and occasional Allegra for good measure. Once I was able to get it under control with medication, I have been able to wean completely off the medication once more.

I haven’t stopped tracking all my matches, but I have stopped deeply analyzing bad stages. A tip from With Winning In Mind is to make note of bad stages and their general causes, but to not exhaustively analyze them as I have been. That actually reinforces bad behaviors by dedicating a lot of mind-space to them.

As I have begun looking at stages that way, I have also realized that, while the actual details may vary, the root cause of…. I’m going to go out on a limb and say probably all…. of my bad stages is….  prepare yourself for this nugget of wisdom…. not doing everything right.

What looks like a quote from Captain Obvious is more subtle than it seems. Obviously, I didn’t do everything right or I would not have scored badly on the stage in question. But the subtle bit is that rather than agonize over what I did *wrong*, I need to add to what I did right.

I have cranked out a lot of ammo lately, about 2000 rounds of 40 S&W, split between 155 and 165 grain bullets. 155/165 grain bullets on 4.5 grains of TiteGroup has become my routine ammo. It makes about 140 power factor from the Glock, so it should make better than 125 even in the Kahr.

My press issues have all been addressed, as have the quality assurance issues. I have not had a single ammo issue since before June of 2014. I like having a sizable inventory because I can just go shoot without being overly concerned with whether I have suitable ammo.

I *have* had troubles with misfeeds that seem clearly to be caused by a limp wrist when shooting weak hand. At least two matches in the last couple of months featured a course of fire requiring shots fired weak hand only and on both occasions, I had ammo feed problems with the weak hand only element and full reliability with all other shooting. Reliability, not necessarily decent scoring 🙂

This weekend, I am taking the IDPA SO course. I’ve been with IDPA for over a year, shooting almost every week, so no excuses not to take on a little more responsibility.

A local club member sold his Glock 21 some time back, but he still had quite a few accessories for it. Long story short, we cut a deal…

Since the Glock 20 and Glock 21 use the same polymer frame, the top ends and magazines are interchangeable. Consequently, one can have a 45 or a 10mm just by changing out the top end and magazines. By extension, they could also shoot whatever conversion barrels are available for either upper.

My friend had a stock Glock 20 slide and barrel with a nice Burris Fast Fire III sight installed, and a Lone Wolf stainless steel long slide 45 Auto with a compensator and ghost ring sights. There were also five 10mm magazines, aluminum magazine baseplates, two holsters and two mag pouches.

I have used enough of these CCI shotshells lately that I needed to get some more.

I checked Cabela’s and Academy, no luck. The last ones I got from MidwayUSA online, but they were out of stock, too.

Found a place, Alamo Ammo, in San Antonio. They had them in stock and they are in the state, next best thing to buying local. I ordered two boxes in 40S&W and for the sake of completeness, two in 45 Auto.

In the order process, I discovered that, without some paperwork hoop-jumping, they will only ship to the same address as the billing address of the credit card used. Mildly inconvenient, as this usually results in an extra day as a delivery attempt is made at home, a door tag left, signed and delivery made the next day.

The FedEx guy calls me Thursday night, during the match. I call him back when I’m free and in short, discover that the shipper requires an adult signature and he has to witness the signature. We discuss that it’s unlikely that I can be home at any time in his delivery schedule without taking time off work, so he suggests I request that it be held at the depot in Fort Worth so I can pick it up in person there.

I do that, arranged via the tracking website and found that it can be held for pickup not only at some depot but at other FedEx facilities. I have it sent to the nearby FedEx Office store on Camp Bowie.

After work yesterday, I go down there and after great effort on the part of the girl at the counter, the difficulty comes clear. The original driver needed an adult signature because the package is marked ORM-D. They can’t accept ORM-D shipments at a FedEx Office store, so it was probably refused and went back to that driver’s depot. The ugly bit is that the computer said only that it was held at a FedEx Worldship facility, but not which FedEx Worldship facility.

It was decided that customer service had likely sent her call to a facility that probably closed at 5PM, so for the best results, I should call during regular business hours. I just did that. I have an address and it closes at 5. Hopefully, I can sneak out a bit early and get it today, for tomorrow is the last day before it gets returned to the original shipper.

So….

If I plan to order anything else from Alamo Ammo, maybe I need to fill out that paperwork so they can ship to where I am during the day.

Forgive me, internet. It has been 21 days since my last post….

Actually, things have been a little bit pokey on the shooting front since State.

During this time, I have attended only one match, but I scored pretty well. I really only had one stage that gave me any grief, a stage where all shots were weak hand only. It was a 6 round stage that took 11 rounds to score 8 down. All other shots on all stages were 0’s and 1’s, which is starting to be the case more and more often.

I have loaded a lot of ammo and the spring mod on my press has worked perfectly through about 500 rounds with no signs of failing.

Powder is beginning to stay on store shelves for more than the length of a Two Stupid Dogs cartoon. Selection is still not impressive, but it’s way better than none.

Only peripherally related, I have dispatched a few particularly aggressive snakes. I really try to chase them off first. A rock tossed directly at them or bit of fishing rod whipping is usually enough to make them flee, but if they keep coming back directly at us without keeping a respectful distance, like sands though their hourglass, their days run out. Abruptly. CCI shot shells in my Kahr CW40 work really well. More shot and more power behind it than the 22LR shot loads and a non-heirloom pistol that is easier to carry to the lake. It’s a bit loud, though.

The thing that has consumed most of my free time for the last couple of weeks is not shooting related at all. ARRL Field Day is an annual amateur radio contest that I enjoy participating in. The object is essentially to practice extended emergency operations, to make as many contacts in a 24 hour period as possible, but with your station operating in varying degrees of emergency configuration. There are various classes of station ranging from large but completely portable and self-sufficient operations set up no more than 3 hours before the contest begins to folks just operating from their regular setup in their den, with many scoring weights and multipliers in between.

In 2012, I set up a nice permanent vertical antenna and had some friends out. We set up a second temporary antenna and operated a 2E station, two transmitters in a permanent station location, but with power provided by emergency means, in this case a generator. In 2013, I had a scheduling conflict and could not participate.

Then last winter, in an escaped horse recovery incident, I ran over my antenna with my truck. I mowed that thing down. The damage was actually fairly minor, considering. I got two replacement parts and over the last couple of weeks, I have erected the antenna once more!

One bit of the design of the Lee Pro1000 press that is both clever and a little cheap is the use of a length of ball chain to return the powder measure at the bottom of each stroke. The ball chain works very well in this role., but it is not particularly durable. Mine has broken enough times that it is now too short to use.

Some time ago, I predicted that the chain would eventually be too short and purchased some hardware to replace it with a length of 1/16″ steel cable. Due to one of my other hobbies, I generally have a supply such cable laying around.

Last night, the chain broke and, as expected, it was too short to use again. Unexpectedly, however, I could not locate my stash of cable. I was able to work around it to good effect, though it was by using the ball chain again.

The Lee design uses a compression spring to give the return mechanism a positive return, yet some mechanical compliance. Personally, I think this spring is too strong and leads to the failure of the chain. I have contemplated replacing it with a lighter spring, but I think the use of an extension spring instead might prove better still.

My workaround was to mix the leftover ball chain with a new extension spring. The length of the assembly just extends the spring, but it appeared to always retract the powder measure as needed.

It still works basically the same way, but the new spring should put substantially less load on the chain. The spring is rated at just under one pound working load.

I loaded 100 rounds this morning without incident. At least without a powder measuring incident. 🙂

1. I had a great time!
2. I shot ok, but scored poorly (and yes, that is possible)
3. I had a great time!

I was up early and on the road a tiny bit later than hoped, but still in plenty of time. Signed in, got my score sheets and promptly stuck the barcode labels in the wrong spot. Oh, well. I had fun with it and it doesn’t appear to have actually hurt me 🙂

The match started pretty much on time and my squad started at Stage 8. Between “first stage” jitters and the general weirdness of the stage itself, comprised of three arrays of targets at different tactical sequence ranges, many with partial hard cover and a swinger directly in front of the seated shooter, it was not my best score ever. The SO warned us that it had generated a lot of FTNs and sure enough I had one on that stage; not the last of the day, I might add. At least I got the pressure of achieving a zero down match out of the way early.

After a bit of a lukewarm start, the rest of my shooting was not bad. Lots of 0’s and 1’s, a few 3’s, and occasional honest misses. By the term “honest miss”, I mean a miss when engaging a target. The pain point of my performance was a couple of stages where I failed even to engage some targets.

The worst of these was Stage 5. As the first shooter on this stage, I did not have the benefit of seeing others’ plans and my own relative inexperience lead me to skip two targets. For the steel, that’s 5 down plus an FTN plus a procedural for not shooting in sequence, and for the paper, 10 down plus FTN plus procedural. The rest of the stage was 0’s and 1’s.

Stage 10 was one where poor planning resulted in running out of ammo at a critical point. There were two disappearing targets triggered by falling steel. The first went well. Drop the steel, it triggers the paper target, which turns to expose then turns back to hide. The shooter has about one second to place two rounds on it. Proceeding to the second one, I dropped the steel, fired one at the paper and… slide lock. My one shot missed, so 10 down. At least there is no FTN on a disappearing target. In my defense, at least one shooter slide locked dropping the steel and had no shots for the target itself. The better plan for me would have been to drop the first steel then shoot to slide lock at the first target, which would have been four rounds. Reload, drop steel then take at least three shots at the second paper. Next time.

Stage 2 was a fairly average score, but due to some taping logistics, I got a free 0 out of a disappearing target. When triggered by a falling steel target, it raises straight up, which causes it to drop it’s counterweight, which makes it again fall out of sight. John S and I were the main people resetting and taping this target, but it turned out we were adjacent in the shooting order. I taped and reset the target when John was on deck, but when I was on deck, John was following the SO counting his own scores. Someone reset the target but nobody tapee it. When we counted my scores, there were three 0’s and a 1. The SO elected to give me a 0 on it. I checked with John and he gotten a 0 on it, which means the single 1 was actually mine. So, tiny bonus!

The painful bit was my overall score. My total raw time was 433.79, which itself would be just below the center of the pack in my class & division. However, 162 points down, 2 Non-Threats, 4 Procedural Errors and 3 Fail to Neutralize tacked on another 118 seconds, for a total of 551.79, placing me third…. from the bottom. Really, next to the bottom. The very bottom shooter did not finish.

The other bad stat, which also doesn’t account for the fact that I got 0 or 1 down on 78 of the 106 targets is “Least Accurate”. Understandably, however, 162 points down is still 162 points down. I was number 228 of 234 shooters on that list. Ouch.

I was slightly rushed when editing, so the video is pretty basic. I started at Stage 8, and the stages were shot in an offset sequence, but they are presented in stage order here. Stages 2 and 3 are missing because I didn’t start the camera correctly (if at all) before those two stages. The memory card on the camera filled up while we were scoring Stage 7, my last for the day.

I just barely broke into my 6th box of ammo, using just over 250. That would include about a dozen unrecovered live rounds cleared at the end of the stages, so I shot a pretty solid 230+ rounds. I thought I had no ammo troubles, but in putting the video together, I found a failure to go into battery in Stage 7 that I had cleared quickly and forgotten. The first magazine was downloaded to 6 rounds. I emptied that one, changed magazines, fired one shot and that second round did not go into battery. I probably should have bumped it in, but I racked it out instead. That was the only one for the whole match.

In the chronograph stage (also not on video because it wasn’t me shooting), my ammo performed well, too. I used load data from various sources to arrive at my particular load, 4.5 grains of Titegroup pushing a 165 grain RNFP plated bullet from Rainier Ballistics. I had not clocked them myself, but I predicted about 950 FPS. The official chrono rounds were 968, 933 & 986, for an average of 962, power factor 158.

Titegroup is reputed for burning pretty clean, especially at higher pressure loads. After the match on Saturday, the muzzle of the pistol had a tan colored deposit. It reminds me of the color deposited on the spark plug of a well tuned engine. Maybe there is a correlation; maybe a 165 grain bullet sitting on 4.5 grains of Titegroup approaches stoichometric.

Speaking of ammo, I have just started using some Tula small primers that I acquired in a group buy back in December. I have found that they seem to feed better than the Winchester WSPs that I have been using for a while. After a little analysis, I think there are two reasons. First, they appear to be smoother or maybe plated. While it’s not a lot of friction, less is usually better. Also, the Tula primers are heavier by about 0.5 grains each. Since there is a column of primers in the chute, a half grain times about 20 primers in the chute is about a half a gram more gravity at work. That doesn’t sound like much, but for the smooth flow of primers down a plastic chute, it may be enough to make a difference.

The cup is slightly thicker on the Tula, which probably accounts for some of the weight difference and may also explain the occasional complaint of light strike misfires on Tula primers. The anvil is of a slightly different design and is likely made from the same gauge of brass.

I don’t care for the plastic tray that the Tula primers come in. It appears to be designed to flip the primers anvil side up while in the trays. However, I need them to be anvil side up once transferred to the primer tray on the press. So far, I have not found a reliable way to turn them. I have gotten close by placing a plate over them, flipping the whole assembly, pushing them into a small bundle, then covering the bundle with the primer tray and flipping that back. Because of the dimension of the plate and tray, the primers either drop a couple of millimeters and bounce or turn maybe even fall out. I will figure out something.

Counting down the hours to my first really big match, the CompTac Republic of Texas State IDPA Championship. There will be 250 shooters on twelve stages and a quick glance through the match booklet shows most are 17-18 round stages totaling over 200 rounds. Lotsa bang-bang.

To that end, I seem to have (most likely) solved the occasional failure to go into battery that I had at the last local match. Those rounds were a little short in OAL, 1.118 to 1.122 from a sample of 5 kinda random cartridges from each of three boxes. I experimented with the gauge block and to some degree with the chamber on my Lone Wolf barrel and round that 1.130 – 1.135 was about the maximum OAL that would drop freely into and out of the gauge block. The chamber in the barrel is even a little more forgiving. I have not had the opportunity to fire any of them (and probably wont get a chance before the match) but I hand cycled 45 rounds through the pistol without a single failure to go into battery or jam. We’ll see, but I am cautiously optimistic.

In loading up for this match, I wanted to ensure I had the least opportunity for ammo related failure, so I would load up my output box full, gauge them all and set aside any rounds that didn’t gauge the first time through. Most of the time, out of the 70 or so cases that the press can hold at one sitting, 40 or so would gauge the first time. Of the remaining 30, almost all stuck on a case bulge and could be fixed by running through the Bulge Buster. The remaining few turned out to be a little long, 1.140 to 1.150. Running singly through the seating and crimping died fixed most of these. Seems like there would usually be one or two that none of the above would address, but those cartridges are noticeably… lumpy. Not really deformed, but not smooth either. Maybe the wall of the brass is too thick or maybe not cleaned well enough. Maybe they were over length and the crimping step buckled them. Maybe those particular bullets are oversize. In any case, I have a special box for plinking rounds. They should not be dangerous, but they might have feeding problems, so I don’t want them to land in a box of ammo for a match.

There was one trend that was hard to ignore. A noticeable percentage of cartridges that fell through all the correction procedure and ended up in the plinker box are headstamped Geco. I didn’t really analyze whether there were also a lot of Geco cases that passed, but I did notice a lot in the fails.

When I am less rushed, I will dig through the brass and compare these to others to see if I can find a common issue.

Using this QA procedure, I loaded up 300 rounds of what should be reliable ammo. They are Rainier 165 grain Round Nose Flat Point bullets over 4.5 grains of Titegroup in mixed previously fired brass. I have not chrono’d this, but I expect it to be around 950 FPS and 155 power factor. This is the same load I shot at the last local match and except for the couple of issues with rounds not going fully into battery, they performed well. The pistol is pretty clean, with only an inch or so of light smudging at the muzzle and a remarkably clean chamber and ejection port.

I finally bought a proper concealment vest, a Rothco Plainclothes, in basic black. These types of vest conceal your weapon well, but they are not called “shoot me first” vests for no reason. They hide the weapon but they also scream “I’m hiding a weapon”. Or maybe it screams “I’m hiding 19 rolls of film, 3 cameras, two tripods and a portable darkroom”. In any case, I don’t think it will see much street use for me. With 7 pockets inside and 16 (!) outside, I can picture the last few seconds of my life looking like I’m picking fire ants off me while searching for the particular pocket I put whatever that thing was into. In any case, it’s comfortable and it hangs and swings well for drawing and holstering, and that is why I needed one. Maybe it will help the SOs be less nervous when I reholster at the end of a stage because my Dickies shirt cover can be flimsy.

On the airsoft front, WalMart supplied a couple of useful trinkets.

First, I got a cute yet useful target. It’s a gel coated target that does a good job of capturing the BBs. It’s has an artists rendering of an armed zombie-like creature, done in realistic nuclear green, but otherwise, it’s a good way to keep those BBs from going everywhere when I am doing various drills. One drill I like to do is draw, fire once, drop and reinsert the mag and fire again. This target gives me something less general to shoot at *and* lets me easily recover the BBs to shoot again. Plus, you don’t step on them later.

The other thing, and I’ve actually had this for a couple of months but have been doing dryfire drills and didn’t need projectiles, is this speed loader from Crossman. You fill this plastic injector thing with 6mm BBs, depress the magazine follower and inject BBs into the magazine a few (6-8) at a time. Three or four depressions of the plunger and the mag is filled. Reloading a magazine takes 5 seconds instead of a minute or two. Construction is kinda flimsy, but adequate if you get the angle just right and don’t force the plunger.

Caffeine.

I have enough bad habits and few enough rounds downrange that I don’t need to pile on The Folger’s Thumps.

Even with my difficulties in printing a good score, the stages were fun. There was a mix of moving and staying aware of your cover with challenging standard stages, made all the more challenging by the shakes. Lunch was light and coffee seemed yummy in the afternoon, but by match time, it was in full effect.

There was a consistency in the score sheet. Points down and penalties added 8.5 to 10 seconds to every stage.

I must admit, I don’t remember what my procedural error was on Stage 1. I definitely remember that Stage 2 was the only stage without one…

In stage 3, I had one procedural and one bad idea. You start seated in cover behind a barrel. Three targets, two each in tactical sequence. Move way back to P2, behind cover at a long hallway, two rounds on one target. Most shooters (the good ones, I might quip) continued down the hall to take a target to the left, then two more to the right. *My* plan was to avoid the easier breach of cover and take those last targets from the farther hallway. It was doable and had the potential of not harming my raw time. Where it was bad was that I took the first long target from cover, moved to the other hall and took one target, reloaded, then went down the hall. The first target to come into view was the one I had already engaged, but I stopped and gave it two more anyway. To add that extra little something, I had one miss each on the last two targets. My PE was failure to take the first three targets in tactical sequence. Moments before the timer started, I verified with the safety officer that they were to be taken in tactical sequence. Timer goes off, two rounds in the first target.

Stage 4 suffered a similar fate. The description was from P1, two shots each target, tactical sequence, freestyle. Reload, advance to P2, two shots each target, tactical sequence, strong hand. Reload, advance to P3, two shots each target, tactical sequence, weak hand. Limited Vickers count. First rattle out of the box, I had a round fail to go into battery. I cleared that round and continued, but in that confusion, broke tactical sequence. Due to the lost round, I had to reload early for the last shot from P1. That obviously meant I needed to reload early from P2 as well. Somewhere in that reloading fiasco, I took an extra shot at one of the targets. Since I also had a miss on that target and the penalty for exceeding round count is to have the best scoring round dropped, I lost a zero and gained a miss.

I had the GoPro but operating it apparently suffered similarly from my mental compromises and I only captured stages two and three, presented here in reverse order. I guess I still have some chemicals in my system.

I failed to mention that the ammo issue above was not the only one, but it was the only one to interfere with the match. I had trouble a couple times at load and make ready. The SO suggested they might be seated short. It occurs to me that must exactly be it. The seating and crimping die on my press was set the 165g RNFP bullets that I had originally gotten from Xtreme Bullets. When I loaded a batch of BBI’s, they were pretty much identical in profile, so very little adjustment was needed. However, what I was shooting last night are plated bullets from Rainier Ballistics. Their RNFP profile is slightly different, closer to RN than the other two.

This is a catalog picture of the Xtreme bullet:

… and this is the Rainier:

Compare the ogive of the two. Though they are of the same nominal weight, the Ranier is slightly longer and has a slightly more acute ogive. The longer bullet means that it gets seated deeper in the case and the sharper angle presents differently to the ramp.

This picture, borrowed from another blog about the affect of bullet profile on rifling engagement, also shows the effect of the ogive and seating depth on the overall shape of the cartridge and THAT can cause chambering problems.

So, this morning I measured and compared a few rounds of both types and I discovered that the cartridges with the Ranier bullets were seated even deeper than just the bullet profile would explain. You may recall that I was having troubles getting cartridges with BBI bullets to gauge well. Some of them, due most likely to a thicker coating of polymer on the bullet, needed to be pushed a little deeper because they were engaging the rifling and jamming into battery. This was not as often a problem for actually shooting, but it frequently meant a jam clear at the end of a stage.

So, let me reiterate this again…. 🙂

Don’t load a bunch of bullets until you have verified all the dimensions and that they will function smoothly and correctly in your pistol…

…especially with your first major match a week away…