1st Shooting Match - "Tuesday Night Steel"

I went to Tuesday Night Steel at the Usery Pass shooting range.  Wow, was that awesome.  There are some amazingly talented shooters there.  I'm going to learn a LOT from these guys.

I'm having gear-drama in regards to my 3 "best" guns for pistol competitions, though.

First up, a CZ-75.  This 9mm handgun is great and I shoot well with it, but I only have 3 magazines and 2 separate single magazine pouches.  I need a couple more mags and more mag carriers.  So I couldn't run it for my first time out.  That's okay... I wasn't planning to anyways.  Fully equipping this gun can wait until next spring.

I intended to run my custom 4" .44 Redhawk, cut for moonclips.  Only problem was the moonclips that came in the mail this week were cut incorrectly for a Ruger extractor star.  TK Custom is sending me the right clips... but it wasn't in time for this week.  I also didn't have a holster really suitable to this type of competition.  I don't go for "race" holsters as a rule, but my leather holster for this gun is too high and tight and the nylon one I have has a retention strap that would slow me down quite a bit.  I'm waiting for a custom kydex one to be finished, which I should be able to pick up tomorrow.

My other gun I was considering running is a Colt 1991 full sized .45.  But, it has a standard right handed safety and I'm one of those gawd-awful southpaws.  I've been trying to get an ambidextrous safety from Midway with no success.  They've sent me two Colt 1911 ambidextrous extended thumb safeties so far...at least the wrapper says so.  The part in the bag is a right side only safety.  So, no full sized Colt.  Finally changed the order to an Ed Brown safety and we'll see if that gets me the right type of part.  I think Midway has an inventory bug in regards to the Colt ambi safety.

That really only left my lightweight Colt Commander to run.  It's a nice and accurate gun, but competitions are easier to be competitive if your gun is heavier and comes down from recoil quickly.  I sorted through my magazines and found I had six that I considered reliable enough:  2 factory Colt 8rd, 2 ACT 8rd, and 2 ACT 7rd magazines.

The course of fire required 96 hits over 4 different bays.  The fastest guys were in the 46 second range!  I don't know what their hit rate was, but you can never miss fast enough to win... so I guess it's pretty high.  I ran the course and had malfunction drama from my Colt magazines (but the ACT's all ran fine).  Failure to lock the slide back mostly, but also one stovepipe and one failure to strip a round from the mag at all.  I don't know exactly what my round count was that I shot... somewhere around 125.

So:  I geared up with a Fobus paddle holster for my Commander, a Fobus 2-mag carrier, and pockets full of extra mags.  Ran each of the four courses and ended up with a total time of 208.46.  I'm pretty happy with that, considering everything.

I have more gear on the way to better-equip myself for this type of competition without going overboard.... the proper ambi safety for the full sized 1911, extra mag carriers, things like that.  Some replacement springs for the Colt malfunctioning magazines.  Probably next year I'll replace all my magazines in one batch for matching ACT's with bumper pads.