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…

I asked if this camera made my head look fat and my favorite reply was, “No, it’s those big orange things.”

The headstrap mount worked pretty well, even though it was not particularly comfy. I had trouble getting it to sit on my head with the strap above my ears, which really only mattered because I prefer my electronic muffs to earplugs.

I used the GoPro app to control the camera. That worked pretty well with the exception that my phone kept dropping that network and I’d have to reconnect in order to regain control. I ended up running the camera longer than I wanted to because I couldn’t necessarily trust that I could turn it on and start recording in a timely manner and I didn’t want any shooting to wait on me to be ready.

My previous use of the GoPro wireless remote on an ATV was very successful, but the remote display also mimics precisely the size of the screen on the camera. For everyday life, my contact lens prescription is split, one eye for distance and the other for close up, but for shooting sports, I like to put the distance lenses in both eyes. This makes the tiny screen of either the remote or the camera difficult to see, especially in the somewhat variable but subdued lighting of the Winchester Gallery range.

In any case, I got some fun video for the match last Thursday.

Due to a fluke of squad logistics, I shot the stages in their actual order. I was on the squad that started with Stage 1. Because of some shuffling to pair spouses and newcomers with their friends on the same squads, our squad was too big and the other squad had to wait for us to finish. I was one of the a couple of people shuffled to balance the squads while the stages were being reset, so instead of 1-2-4-3, I got 1-2-3-4. Not that it matters, but it made editing the video easier because each take was in order. 🙂

So, as you saw from Stage 1, I skipped a target. This cost me about 10 seconds in penalties, pushing me to 3rd of 4 in my division and class where it might have been 2nd. Other than that, I did ok. Always room to improve.

The biggest thing I immediately see in analyzing the video is that I have not broken the cup and saucer grip habit. That my hands are big and strong enough to shoot OK with this grip is NOT a reason to keep it. I have seen instant improvement in control with a thumbs forward grip, especially with my 1911, but it’s just not habit yet.

There was some extra fun with the video for Stage 3. I noticed several things. On the first target (1:19 on the video), the TruGlo TFO sights are REALLY bright. Then on the second target (1:21 on the video), the brass hits the camera. Finally, on the second shot at the third target (1:22 on the video), the brass clearly helicopters up. Here’s the post processed slow motion of the whole sequence:

The slow motion processing had me experimenting with the things the GoPro and Kdenlive can do. Here are a couple of examples.

I set the GoPro to WVGA resolution, which it can capture at 240 frames per second. Using Kdenlive to slow that to 5% works out to 12 frames per second:

Sorry for the inside baseball view of my desk clutter…

This speed works ok, but you can kind of detect some “stoppiness” in it because 12 FPS is below the flicker fusion rate for humans. The same raw video played at 24 frames per second is not as slow, but seems much smoother:

The GoPro Hero3 can run at a variety of resolutions and frame rates, so the experimentation will continue.

Last night’s regular Thursday match at Winchester was a holstered BUG match. This was posted on the Cross Timbers forum the night before, but I didn’t happen to read the forum until the morning of the match. However, I had the holster in my truck, the two magazines in my range bag (and one in the pistol) and I was able to adjust the tension on a CDP mag pouch to safely press it into service with the Kahr CW40 magazines, so I was able to compete as a BUG shooter!

I did ok overall, though I have definitely shot better scores with that pistol. I had a couple of misses and a procedural for which I am willing to say rushing was the root cause. In one stage, we were to take one shot at a target with the last round in the magazine (all pistols downloaded to 5 for all stages), proceed to cover, reload and place another shot on that target. Once I reloaded, I moved to the other targets in the stage. This earned me the procedural. I could have at least made up the missed shot and saved the additional 5 down, but by then I had forgotten about that target completely. 🙂 Other misses and poor scores were due to generally rushing and some of the rushing was likely due to recovering from ammo jams.

I had at least three occasions, twice in the same stage, where ammo failed to go all the way into battery and a couple of times where the last cartridge was jammed into the chamber at unload and show clear.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I have had much of the last batches of ammo, 40s and 45’s, have difficulties clearing through a case gauge. All of it has been BBI ammo. I do NOT fault the ammo. It simply takes a little extra care to ensure it is loaded correctly. The copper plated bullets I’ve used before were simply a little more forgiving.

I suspected that the slightly swollen heads of my used brass was most likely the only remaining issue. After having an ammo jam in the second stage I shot (Stage 1), I tried to purchase a box of factory ammo from the range, but they didn’t have any 40S&W at the range and the Gallery store had already closed. So, for the rest of the match, I manually sorted ammo based on the visible bulge. The differences between them to the naked eye, at least my naked eye, were subtle, but I must have sorted well enough because the selected ammo did not jam.

I verified at home last night that slightly bulgy ammo that would stick in the chamber of the Kahr barrel would not stick in the Lone Wolf barrel for the Glock, which is why all the ammo worked well enough in the Glock the last time I shot it.

Since the last post, I have discovered and purchased the Lee Bulge Buster. This is an adapter sleeve and punch that allows you to use a Lee Factory Crimp die to resize the actual full length of a case. So that I can set this sizing operation up separately, I also got an inexpensive single stage press for it. While waiting for the horses to finish their breakfast this morning, I mounted the press and tried out this bulge buster. Visually, the processed case is straight and beautiful. Dimensionally, they are definitely smaller.

This is the same case in before and after pictures. The camera angles were chosen to accentuate the presence and absence of the visible bulge in the case.

One of the cool things about the way the bulge buster works is that it can process finished ammunition, which it will be doing very soon. 🙂

It’s been a couple weeks since I updated the ol’ blog, but I’m still doin stuff.

My oldest friend from way back in 7th grade (and that was a while back) came to visit. He caught the last stage or so of the Friday IDPA match at Lone Star. Saturday morning, we set up three IDPA targets out back and shot almost every firearm on the premises, paying special attention to my Glock and my 1911.

Early in the afternoon, another old friend/coworker and his wife came out bearing rifles, pistols and even a bow. The rifles were sighted in and pistols and bows were shot by all. The weather gave us a start, but it let us be in the end.

Sunday, we cleaned and lubed all the very dirty pistols and after my friend headed for home, I set up my press to load 40S&W.

During the course of the following week or two, I loaded up about 150 rounds featuring 165gr RNFP polymer coated bullets on 4.2gr of Hodgdon Titegroup. The goal is a fairly inexpensive soft recoil load for use with IDPA.

4.X grains of TiteGroup is apparently the bottom limit for reliability with the Lee Adjustable Charge Bar. The published range is down to 0.28cc, but I could not get it to throw consistent charges with it turned down that small. I would have expected the extra fine grain size to have actually been less troublesome in small volumes, but that was not what I was seeing. I ended up using the 0.37cc orifice in the standard discs to get a rock solid 4.2gr charge.

The other problem I had was much trouble getting the finished rounds to case gauge well. They kept not quite dropping into the gauge block. I found that increasing the flare in the case mouth helped quite a bit. With the smaller flare, it was much more likely to shave a bit of polymer and lead off the seating bullet. This shaved material ends up on the case mouth and generally prevented the cases from fitting the case gauge.

A few of the rounds were actually a bit oversize at the head end of the case. 40S&W brass takes quite a beating in some pistols, most famously, but not necessarily deservedly, early generation Glocks. To help feed reliability, the chambers are a little oversize, which lets the brass stretch a little more. Marry that to some high pressure loads, and some 40S&W cases can be a little swollen at the head.

I had an earlier chambering issue which was incorrectly blamed on this phenomenon, so I ordered an undersize resizing die. The earlier issue turned out to be inadequate crimping, but I still had the die and some of this last batch of brass is indeed a bit large at the head, so I used the undersize die and addressed that.

Even with all that, they still didn’t often gauge right. I wanted to try the Titegroup loads, so I had 100 rounds of “close enough” ammo to take to the match on Thursday. It was during the day Thursday that it dawned on me what was causing the issue. Many of the rounds had scrapes up on the curve of the bullet. Bingo! They wouldn’t go into the gauge because the gauge was accurately reflecting the depth of the chamber and the engagement with the rifling. I simply wasn’t seating them deeply enough.

Sure enough, I did have two occasions (both caught on video) where my over long ammo jammed the pistol into almost-battery. One was at the end of a stage, so it didn’t cost me any time. The other, not so serendipitous.

The match was fun. I had my GoPro on a chest rig. I suspected that the chest view would be of limited value with pistol shooting, and I was right. Stage 1 had an interesting bit wherein for the last three targets, the shooter needed to shoot from very low. Most shooters laid on their side to take these three. Somehow, I had the camera in the wrong mode and thus did not capture that stage. The HD version is here.

Scores were not bad, with the exception of stage 3’s jam. In fact, stage three is really the only one much worth talking about.

The stage description was easier to do than to describe. There were two shooting positions and three targets. At the start, you have two magazines sitting on a barrel at P1 and one at P2. At the buzzer, load the pistol and place three shots on any two targets. Remove magazine (you could stow the mag or leave it on the barrel, but it wasn’t empty, so you couldn’t drop it) and move to P2. Load the pistol, place three shots on two other targets. Remove mag, move back to P1, load pistol with the unused mag and finish with three shots on the remaining two targets. The final goal is six rounds in each of three targets, limited to 18 rounds, and oh yeah, can’t shoot the same target twice in a row.

In this dance, my ammo jammed up on the first shot of the second target. I (eventually) cleared the jam and kept count, placing two more shots on the proper target. Moved to P2, did that, moved back to P1 and somehow only placed three shots, skipping the last target. Consequently, that cost me 3 misses and a procedural error for not fully engaging a target with the required number of rounds. I also managed to hit the Non-Threat on the left target. Twice. It was just the edge of the Non-Threat, not that it matters 🙂

I got home after the match and while the horsies were munching their late dinner, I adjusted the bullet seating die and loaded a handful of rounds that all gauged perfectly. I may consider putting the regular resizing die back since the last 1000 or so rounds didn’t actually have that problem.

Woah!

Maybe I am beginning to actually listen to my own mantra, sloooowww dooowwwwnnn. I did pretty good on this match and I think it’s largely due to pacing myself within my abilities 🙂

I think my TruGlo TFO sights helped, too. They are REALLY vivid in the nice bright lighting of the range at Lone Star and my old guy eyes like them.

The scoresheet is almost boring….

The scores submitted omitted the FTN on stage 3, making my total match score 124.22. This was later corrected. It changed my score, but not my position.

On stage 3, the raw time scratchout was due to a low charge round. When that one went pop instead of boom, the SO called a stop, fearing a squib. We checked the pistol and it turned out not to be a squib, and they let me reshoot the stage. Turns out that was good because I clearly recall failing to get the first two targets in the required tactical sequence first time through.

One stage at this match has caused much post-match discussion concerning a start while seated with a COF description requiring the engagement of 5 targets while seated then move to the next shooting position. In practical terms, I handled it by placing all the required shots, taking one extra shot at the last target, then reload while on the move to the next shooting position. However, fairly recent changes to the rules make the precise time at which on can or cannot move or begin a reload a matter of contention. I will see what comes out of the discussion and just understand that I may or may not get a procedural error which I may or may not deserve if reloading while moving or seated.

In any case, in my tiny corner of the match, 124.22 was enough to have been top ESP Marksman (of three) and while overall scores are NOT tracked or compared, my time was right in the center of that list.

I usually post a pic of my scoresheet and analyze each issue, but as this was my first low light match, a lot of that doesn’t really compare with other matches. It’s not that I feel any embarrassment over it. I will reveal plenty of what went wrong. I’m just not going to waste the bandwidth with a pic of it. Total score was 172.28, earning me the lowest place in ESP.

Much more important to me is that it was a LOT of fun! Many present had never shot a low light match and as pointed out before we even started, a lot of what we would be doing was experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t. In that, I learned that I do best if I shoot strong hand only and wield the light well away from the pistol, keeping light trained downrange and using my night sights in relative darkness.

Numerically, my performance had an interesting trend. Each stage scored kinda alike. The four stages were 19, 23, 23 & 20 down respectively, an average of 21 down on each. Each of the four stages had either one Fail to Neutralize or one Hit on Non Threat, each worth 5 seconds. Even raw stage times were remarkably consistent, 24.71, 29.58, 34.15 & 21.34 for an average of 27.45.

My worst was probably Stage 3 where, somehow, I completely missed three shots on the same target. There’s nothin’ that makes you feel good like 15 down and FTN on one target! There were two targets in a tarp tunnel with a Non-Threat between them. There was a ficus tree soft covering both targets, but mostly covering the one on the left. My miss, however, was the one on the right. I engaged it. I just didn’t get any on it. I didn’t get the Non-Threat, either. Shrug. The rest of the stage was 1’s and 2’s. One issue that many people had with that part of that stage is that the tarp was hanging so that the edges were likely to be fairly near the gun. Muzzle blast frequently sucked the tarp into the line of sight if you covered with the gun near the edge. Those who stepped more forward but still remained in cover had less trouble with the tarp.

I had trouble with low cover last week. I did ok this week, even fumbling with the light.

In Stage 4, I finally figured out what worked for me, light-wise. For this stage, start was with pistol and light on a pedestal, four targets to get three rounds each. At the buzzer, pick up light and pistol and proceed. I picked up the light, turned it on, placed it between my left pinkie and ring fingers, facing off the back of my hand. I kept it low and shot (at) the first two targets on the move to P2. This felt pretty good and as planned, left me with fingers and thumb for the reload without parking the flashlight anywhere. I flat nailed the Non Threat, then proceeded to place only two on the first target and only one shot of three on the other. Regardless of my mental checklist to the contrary, I was shooting faster than I should have been. Once at P2, there were two more targets to take 3 rounds each. On on the 11th shot, I expected the slide to have locked open. When it didn’t, I tried and it just clicked. I reloaded and slingshotted the slide and took the last shot. I returned to the previous cover position and tried a makeup shot that apparently still missed.

I am looking forward to the next one!

We also have match in Weatherford tonight and I’m late to leave!

Lee Precision continues to impress.

At the request of Stephanie, the Lee CSR I had been emailing with, I sent them the two broken toggles and the peripherals connected to them for inspection, along with a package of documentation about the circumstances for each break and (this is a hazard of any such correspondence with me) my theories as the the weaknesses of the design and what I would do to correct them.

Since they had already replaced my original toggle and had shown great interest in the problem, I was satisfied and considered the matter addressed, at least until such time that I might experience another breakage and I now have a spare toggle set on hand if that happens.

This morning, however, I received another email detailing an order for all the parts I had returned, zero cost, and under customer notes: “REPLACED AT NO CHARGE”. So now, I will have three sets of toggles for spares!

Tonight’s local IPDA match at Winchester is a milestone one for me. The first match I was there to see was a low light match. For safety reasons, new shooters are not allowed to participate in such matches, so I was limited to observing, but it was a very cool thing to see and I was hooked. Tonight, I get to shoot in one!

Always happy to have a good excuse to get a new toy, so I shopped a bit and got a StreamLight ProTac 2L. This thing is about the size of the old Mini Maglight, maybe smaller, but about a million times brighter. The specs list the high setting as 260 lumens. It has multiple modes accessible by pressing or double/triple tapping the switch. These modes are also programmable to a degree. I set it to menu 3, which has low (13 lumens) for first choice and high (260 lumens) for second choice. So, to count scores and navigate, I just turn the light on. To shoot, I double tap it.

I have practiced a bit with drawing the pistol and the light. I have not stumbled across a graceful way, especially if a concealment garment is required, but I can do it safely. The other juggle will be magazine changes. If the rules dont preclude it, I will try to retain the light as I swap magazines, but I may need to stow the light temporarily. I am prepared to work with either method.

For the Thursday night match, I shot the 40S&W out of the Glock with the new sights installed.

Generally, it felt like I could find and align the sights faster, when I slowed down enough to do so. 🙂 They weren’t as bright as I had hoped in the indoor range. I will check them out outdoors this weekend. All in all, I am not at all disappointed in them.

Other than the shockwaves and burnt retinas from the Power Pistol muzzle flash, I had no ammo trouble at all, not a single hiccup. They are a lot hotter than they really need to be, duh. The same 155 gr bullet over 7.0 grains of Power Pistol almost makes major power factor out of the 3″ barrel. I loaded these before I was really involved in IDPA. My next round of competition 40’s will be a bit softer.

Stages were kind of similar to each other tonight. The first two involved downloading to 6 rounds, either advancing or retreating on the first one or two targets then taking four other targets from covered positions. Stages 3 & 4 were essentially the same stage for minimal reset time, but instead stage three was all shots weak hand only and stage four was all shots strong hand only.

In analyzing the scoresheet, I see two things… Neither of the single hand stages had procedural errors. I think that is a directly result of SLOWING DOWN to shoot.

My TruGlo sights arrived!

I don’t have a sight pusher tool. Maybe someday, I will want one. For now, I just want these installed and I foresee leaving them there forever, so at lunch I took the pistol to a nearby gun shop where they were able to install the sights while I waited and for less than I was quoted on the phone. 🙂

Its hard to get a decent picture of the sights with the iPhone, but the dots are pretty bright. They were REALLY bright out in the sun. The real test will be at an indoor range.

I also got a stainless steel guide rod. IDPA rules ( 8.2.2.2.U ) allow replacing the guide rod with one made of a “material that is no heavier than stainless steel”. I’m not sure if the stainless guide rod will be any measurably better than the plastic one any more than I think a tungsten one would be better than stainless. It does cycle with slightly less spring noise and it looks really nice next to the stainless barrel.

That makes it pretty much official. The only thing left to change out is the trigger itself and I don’t really have any specific plans to do so. I might put on the Talon skate tape grip treatment. I have it already, but haven’t put it on. The Talon grip works pretty well on the Kahr. I also have an extended magazine release that I may or may not go to the trouble to install. Otherwise, I think I am done modifying this pistol.

It is a Generation 3 Glock 20C. I have the original barrel, a stock 10mm Auto non-compensated barrel and a Lone Wolf 40 S&W conversion barrel. I have three stock magazines. I have installed a 3.5 pound trigger connector and polished the trigger rub points. I have installed an “extended” slide release and extended slide lock. Today, I have added a stainless steel guide rod with a stock weight 17 pound spring and TruGlo TFO sights.