Last night was the first Cross Timbers Action Shooting Association IDPA match held at Defender Outdoors in Fort Worth.
Defender Outdoors is a new and impressive facility a short drive north of downtown Fort Worth. They also have a nice web store. Unfortunately, I was running a little late from work, so I did not get to wander the retail store, but I will make a trip over there soon for that specifically.
There are several indoor ranges in the facility, but the match was held in the large, clean and well lighted 12 lane 25 yard pistol range.
Acoustics were interesting. The bullet traps are horizontal funnels with a very low angle of incidence, with no rubber chunks covering them. The ceiling is angled plates with a covering of acoustic tiles. Even with the acoustic tile, it is a fairly hard room, sound-wise. Modest 9mm loads boomed and my soft shooting but flashy 10mm sounded like the shotgun in Doom.
My shooting wasn’t terrible. All the tips I picked up from the class are not completely habit yet, but as long as I remembered them, I did pretty well. My only procedural error was a Fail To Neutralize for getting two 3’s on a target. Overall, I was number 18 out of 27.
One thing I certainly need to practice is reloading. It was tactically advantageous to perform a tactical reload with retention on Stage 4 and it felt like it took me 3-1/2 minutes. Then on Stage 3 (shot in that order due to squading), I managed to pinch my left pinky when I did a mag change. Not a major injury by any means, but bleeding is an option best avoided.
The pistol and ammo performed flawlessly, which made me really happy since I had not gotten to test fire this particular load beforehand. I loaded about 250 rounds of Xtreme 180 grain RNFP copper plated bullets propelled by 5.5 grains of Power Pistol and Winchester WLP primers. It was flashy and boomy, but it was not particularly loud, or at least not like a full power load might have been. I will chronograph these soon, but imagine it will clock in the high 800 to low 900 fps range. In the fairly unlikely event that the Power Pistol load failed to operate the pistol, I had 100 rounds of 155 grain BlueDot loads, which have been tested and are also actually pretty light.
Speaking of Winchester WLP primers, I had what I presume was a factory packaging defect. One tray of primers from the middle of a brick of 1000 was only half full, exactly 50 primers. That is the first time I’ve that happen with any primers, including the several thousand Winchesters that I have loaded.
I chose this time to load a soft shooting 10mm because there is a classifier match this Friday and I would like to post a score for SSP and ESP, which requires a more stock pistol than my G20 running a 40S&W conversion barrel. I typically use the G20C slide and a stainless steel Lone Wolf conversion barrel. It has a nice sporty look.
It is especially dressy now that I have filled the lettering on the slide.
In any case, pesky rule 8.1.7.1 says no compensators of any type including hybrid or ported barrels and while 8.2.2.1.5 says that firearms originally sold as compensated/ported models may be used in ESP with noncompensated/nonported barrels installed, 8.2.1.4.8 says ported firearms with non-ported barrels installed cannot be used in SSP.
As luck would have it, I have a stock G20 slide and barrel and the G20C uses the same frame, so other than the serial numbers not matching, the combination builds a stock Glock 20.
There is, however, one departure from stock that I will need to address. I put the “extended” magazine release on the pistol. 
An argument could be made as to whether or not it makes much difference, but per rule 8.2.1.4.2, it does count as an excluded modification for SSP pistols. I will see if I can find the original and reinstall it before the classifier, which really means reinstall it tonight. If not, I will just have to shoot ESP and get my SSP next time.
Maybe it will be with the missing stock magazine floor plates. I have some aftermarket units, which are allowed in SSP but their added weight is pretty close to marginal. Since I found the reason my magazines weren’t dropping free, I don’t need the weights on there anyway.
