Stupid, but interesting blog thing:

Bit By The Reloading Bug

To start with, I want to begin with the sad news of the loss of my extended magazine release on the mail. I got the letter on Saturday with the big red, "We're sorry, your letter was damaged during delivery." sticker on it and the lower right hand corner chewed to bits -- probably in their auto-sorter. I emailed Scott from Springer Precision and he said he'd get me another out today; this time, I hope he uses a small box for shipping. Hoping it gets here before Saturday's competition!

So! I went over a guys house on Saturday evening -- I'd met him at the range a few weeks earlier... he's a regular over a Ommelanden here in Delaware and very much into reloading. Once we got to chatting, he told me he'd drop me a line once he switched his dies over to 9mm. He had the Hornaday Lock-N-Load progressive turret uncovered (and about 3 other presses setup with dust covers). A quarter of his basement area was filled to the brim with powder, casings, bullets and equipment for reloading -- it was like a dream.

So, he sat me down, showed me the basics and let me have at while we talked guns and ammo. Over the course of 45-minutes, I probably rattled off 150 rounds or so total. The spring loaded ejector for the cartridges that were finished was rather strong and I found that, with my first completed round, I needed to manually remove the round otherwise it would shoot across the room... In addition to that, placing the empty case in the first position and inserting the bullet into the last station cut down on my time, I'm sure.

While I like the Hornady press, I think I'll still be going with the Dillon Square Deal B pictured here. Since I'll pretty much only be loading 9mm, this progressive press comes right out of the box.

I've budgeted about $800 for the press, a work table and the initial batch of power, primers and bullets as well as a tumbler. I probably have close to 2000 casings saved up, so I'm not too concerned there.

With any luck, I should be able to start getting set up by about Christmas time, depending on when I'll be getting some paid for some outside contract work...

I think, for me, the biggest appeal about getting into reloading is being able to make custom loads for competition shooting. In the Production class, Minor Scoring for USPSA/IPSC, I need to have a minimum power factor of 125,000 -- to get that number you take the bullet weight multiplied by the speed in feet per second. So, if you're using a 125gr bullet, it needs to travel at least 1000 feet per second. If it's a 115gr bullet, that would be.... about 1087 feet per second. So, with the lower power rounds, I'm hoping for less recoil. We shall see!

Got My Sights Done

So, in getting into this USPSA/IPSC shooting, I've decided to pimp out my firearm as best I can for the production class which, basically for me, means the sights and gun internals.

Since I don't have an over-abundance of cash, I started by sending my Springfield XD 9mm off to Springer Precision to have a set of Dawson Precision Fiber-Optic sights installed. The rear is .100" in green (fixed) and the front is .125" in red.

I also have an order into him for a stainless steel extended magazine release which I'll wind up installing myself when it gets here.

The next competition is on the 17th of November, and I'm hoping I'll do a bit better than last time -- I've been able to get out to the range a couple of times since then and I'll probably be able to hit it this weekend as well. I've decided my biggest problem is grip consistency and keeping an even trigger pull, so I've been slowing down my practice... Firing five rounds at a time and taking my time to make sure my technique is spot on.

I need to also start moving the targets back -- I've been working at 7 yards and I need to start working at 10 yards to get my accuracy down; I think as I start moving things back and working on consistency, those two goals will compliment each other.

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November...

If you've ever seen the movie 'V' with Hugo Weaving voicing the masked patriot and Natalie Portman as the bald 'willing' hostage, you've heard this utterance before. However, it's actually related to 'Guy Fawkes Night' which is an annual celebration of this very day. It celebrates the Gunpower Plot on this day in 1605 in which a number of Roman Catholics attempted to blow up the Palace of Westminster, which is more commonly known as the Houses of Parlament in London. The movie also brought back into mind the following quote:


"The people should not be afraid if its government. The goverment should be afraid of its people."


And its with that quote that supporters of the constitutionalist candidate Ron Paul have taken up the day in an attempt to raise 5 million dollars for Dr. Paul. A man who believes that our government today is fraught with too much legislation, who believes that the Second Amendment is absolute, that we need a harder stance on illegal immigration, that we need to tend to our own affairs and leave others to theirs and the man who wants to dissolve the IRS...


As of the time of writing, just over 1 million dollars has been raised... 1.8 million in less than 24 hours is the record for any campaign in US Election history. While I'm more of a neocon myself, Ron Pauls views on getting back to living according to the Constitution has truely piqued my interest in supporting him, so I figure, as long as I can, I'll see what I can do to get him in a position to be considered for the presidency.


Maybe you could donate a bit?


Here are a couple of graphs from the donation tracker website...

Yeah... I'm a competitive shooter.

I can say this now!

I had my first USPSA/IPSC Compeition today at the Southern Chester County range in Kennet Square, PA and it was a blast!

I arrived around 8:15am and was just in time to help setup a course -- we finished with a bit of extra time for me to gear up and run through the safety check for new shooters. I was shooting my Springfield XD 9mm... we went over the rules of the competition in short and some basic safety information. After that, he had me load up a few rounds in a couple of my magazines for a quick gun handling observation. The above picture shows how my handling went -- not too shabby. He had me do two rounds, two rounds and a reload followed by two more rounds. Finally, a draw and engage the target with two rounds on the weak hand. The Charlie hit was one of the weak hand shots.

Being there to setup, I got to walk the ranges in advance and see what all was going on with the five different courses of fire. However, when I registered, being new, they put me in with 'The Setup Crew,' basically the 'A' Class shooters and 'Master' Class shooters; let me say, it made it very difficult for me to focus on keeping my speed down to focus on my accuracy, heh! While my volunteer photographer (one of the A shooters) had some issues with the first three courses and figuring out how my digital camera worked, he got it down for the fourth and fifth courses.

Here are some videos...

Here's part one of the fourth course of fire -- it's basically two rounds in each of three targets facing uprange to begin with.

The second part of this course was to do the same facing downrange in the surrender position. Notice how I fumble with the L II Retention on my Blackhawk SERPA. Meh.

For the final course, we were, fore the most part, stationary, but it was a really odd course with a lot of obstructions... I almost received a procedural penalty here with my jump on the buzzer -- if the RO had been able to stop me, it would've been 10 points of. Gotta focus more next time.

Here's me doing the course:

And here's how it's SUPPOSED to be done -- notice how his time is more than half of my time.

I apologize for the switching between Blogspot and YouTube videos -- Blogspot is misbehaving.

My First Competition Tomorrow...

So, Saturday at the Southern Chester County range, the last USPSA Competition in my area is being held and I've made arrangements to attend. Should be interesting to say the least -- I've read and watched as much research material as I've been able to over the past couple of weeks. I picked up my fourth magazine yesterday so I don't have to worry about running out of ammo with my shooting. As always, any advice is welcome -- I'm going to try to get there a bit early to help with setup and learn whatever else I can from the folks who'll be there.

Any tips?

USPSA Fun

So, I've been a gun owner, what? All of about three months now -- I've tried to make it out to the range as much as possible and I've watched and read as much as I can about everything from technique to Second Amendment law... even to the point where I'm currently taking a Constitutional Law course (in addition to my 9-5 job and teaching two computer science courses myself).

I've started saving my casings, as I'm looking to start reloading my own cartridges at some point soon and I've found that a nearby range is having their last USPSA shoot on October 20th, which I'll most likely be attending... well, competing.


I've recently changed my grip up to a type used by competition shooters -- it allows for better stabilization during recoil by basically having more skin on the weapon.

From Springer Precision, here's the first video on the grip.

Here is the second video.

In addition, I've also found a series of videos from Todd Jarret on competition shooting on the move, magazine changing and other related topics. That series can be found here.

All in all, I'm looking forward to it, I need to get out to the range at some point soon in order to practice the new grip and drawing/reloading. If anyone has shot in competition before and has any suggestions, let me know -- I think I'll be in the Production division.