Thursday, January 27, 2011

The Nutnfancy Project (TNP)

I've stumbled across this fella who goes by "Nutnfancy" and has a long-running series of videos on YouTube.

I found his stuff while doing research for a .22 "tactical" rifle.

Gotta say, I like a lot of his reviews.  He doesn't seem afraid of saying "this thing right here sucks!"  In particular, his candid disavowal of the FNP-45 and the FNX series of pistols due to magazine design caught me as thorough and honest.

In particular, I like his methodology of weapons testing.  Take the thing out and run-n-gun it!  See if you can make it malfunction.  Don't just jerk around with Caldwell bench rests, shooting for sub MOA groups.  Tell me about the ergonomic fumbles and foibles as you're engaging a mix of steel and paper targets.  Put 50-100 rounds through it in a minute or two and warm it up properly.

And, those of you who read my blog who already have your firearms situation squared away, you might like his ideas on techniques and gear to carry magazines, and holsters, and slings... as well as knife reviews, outdoors gear reviews and just philosophy videos.

Check him out on YouTube:  http://youtube.com/user/nutnfancy.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Rimfire steel pistol match

I had very mixed feelings about the rimfire steel pistol match I was looking forward to in earlier posts.  I went and participated in it yesterday.

A lot of new shooters were there.  I love new shooters.  I am constantly looking for new shooters to mentor.  I teach them proper technique for best accuracy, and then I teach them how to sacrifice technique for speed (to the best of my own limited skills) if it's necessary to do so.

However, in my opinion a timed steel match is not the place to go if you don't know the manual of arms of your gun or don't have the strength to run the bolt on a .22 pistol.

I was particularly irked by the notion that a person can show up with an absolutely filthy gun where the bolt on a Ruger MkIII acts like it's been lubed with a 50/50 mix of peanut butter and elephant snot.  They shoot and get malfunctions.  They can restart the stage for a failure to feed, failure to eject or failure to fire.  You do the math and find out how many times that particular type of gun can manage to get 10 shots off with 0 failures.

Other irksome discoveries were new shooters who didn't know how to turn on their red dot sight on their ninja-ized Ruger MkIII, new shooters who came with 1 magazine and had a 50 round course of fire until their turn was done, and new shooters who need to be told a dozen times inside of 3 minutes to keep their finger off the trigger while loading.

I love new shooters.  But new shooters belong with a coach, in a low pressure environment, where they can learn proper fundamentals and gun handling skills.  Not at novice-to-intermediate events where people are looking to move to another stage of marksmanship.

A lot of what I saw would have people kicked off the range at other events.  Too many muzzle sweeps, too many fingers on triggers.

I left after two stages.  I left because the pace was so accursedly slow and there were too many of the new shooters in line in front of me, and because I was cold and didn't wear appropriate clothing, and because I was moderately worried for my safety.

That being said, I did learn a little bit in my short stint there.  I started to REALLY get a feel for that fine window that comes after recoil but before conscious recovery, where you can settle the front sight on the target and squeeze again, getting 5-6-7 shots off a second.  I experienced just a hint of that feeling, and I think the shot timer over my shoulder helped me to focus on it, along with the steel giving auditory feedback of acceptable accuracy.

I need to run more, but I think I'm going to build my own steel setup for rimfire rather than going back to this rimfire match.  I want to experience more of that link between the front sight and the trigger.  It was enlightening and I think the Buckmark is going to end up being a great tool to explore it in greater detail.

Friday, January 14, 2011

That's it. Militarize the Border. Marines, RFN!

http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_17087113?source=most_viewed

That's 1 of 2 possible things:
1.  An act of War.
2.  An act of International Terrorism.


I don't care which you call it.

I want some bloodthirsty, rampaging Devil Dogs down there YESTERDAY.

Monday, January 10, 2011

New Brass

One of the points of frustration I've been dealing with for rifle shooting has been quality of reloads.  In particular for .308 Winchester.  I've been fighting some extreme velocity variation that manifested itself in a very embarrassing way at a match, with one round falling about 6-8 feet short of the target at 500 yards and slamming into the concrete berm that shields the pit crew.

That particular problem was due to my case trimmer having an oversized case mouth pilot.  I've learned that I have to resize after trimming in order to get ideal case neck tension.

Last match, I shot a 176-3x from slow prone, and once I got dialed in to my zero I was ringing 9, 10 and X hits with only the rare 8.  I lost out with about 8 or so rounds while I tried to "dial in" from the 7 ring.  Lowest score I got on any one shot was a 7, but I walked almost all the way around the bull before finally finding the center.  I could have had 10 more points if I started zeroed or at least closer to it.

However, my brass is all part of this batch of Federal once-fired stuff that gets soft easily.  Then there's 100 rounds each of various other headstamps.  I've got brass in so many varied stages of firing (once fired, three times fired, four times fired, Winchester, Remington, Federal, MagTech, Lake City, etc) that I can't predict how the lot will shoot.

I've been in need of some new brass for awhile, so today I ordered 500ct of Remington nickel-plated brass.  The nickel will make my brass easier to distinguish from other competitors, and the lot of 500 will allow me to shoot new virgin brass at the next 8 or 9 competitions before I have to start shooting once-fired brass.  It's my hope that the nickel coating will better protect brass from dings during extraction and give me extended brass life.  It's about a $20 premium over standard brass in lots of 500 so it wasn't too painful as an experiment.  If I get one more loading out of them than standard brass then they'll be worth it.

And the lot of 500 will make it easy to work with:
-the same headstamp
-the same firing
-in lots of cases in the same weight

Sunday, January 9, 2011

January: 2 down, 1 to go

OK, I'm already 2 for 3 for January shooting events.

I did Steel last week with a time of 119.24 seconds.  There's a 10 second penalty for doing 3 hits on one target rather than a 2+1 combo (5 seconds per miss).

I learned:  Don't go with multiple batches of reloads.  I have two different types of 124gr LRN bullets.  I know that one batch hits lower than the other.  I suspect it's because one bullet is significantly shorter than the other despite being the same weight.  This results in more case capacity and lower pressures on ignition.  Probably lower velocity is causing the lower impact.  Or less recoil somehow due to the lower pressure causing less muzzle rise, or something.  But one set does hit lower than the other.  Part of why I had that 10 second penalty was due to this.  The 2+1 was in a vertical arrangement.  I put 3 on the "1" target that was below the "2" target.

So, I've spent the last week loading up about 1000 rounds of pistol ammo, all 100% identical.

I imagine that some of my other misses can be attributed to my mixed loads too.  At this point I'm good for 6 or 7 sessions.  Maybe as many as 9 if my accuracy is high enough... each night requires 96 hits, typically.  I tend to shoot about 125 rounds a night.

And, I did High Power today.  This was a 50 round match with 20 slow prone, 10 rapid prone, 10 rapid seated and 10 slow standing.  I did a 176-3x, 80, 80 and 66 for a total of 402-3x.

No misses, so that's good.  I've had bad results with standing the last few times out, flubbing up 1 or 2 shots with misses.  My rapid prone was well centered, but low.  2 minutes higher and it could easily have been a 92 or higher, with a couple more X's.  I muscled the seated too much.  I tried cross legged and couldn't find a good NPOA from there, and I went open legged instead.  Even then, I was muscling my support hand upwards.  Need to rediscover how to control seated elevation.  I was all over with it.  2 10's, 2 9's, 2 8's, 2 7's, 2 6's.

Standing, I'm lucky if I can hold 12MOA.  More dryfire practice.  A must.

All in all, I'm pleased with the 402-3x score.  And the slow prone score.  And that I've concretely identified places to improve.  with 3-4 months off of shooting rifle in a disciplined manner, it's better than I had anticipated.  I also think it's a personal best for this format of match.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Shooting Resolutions

I've made some New Year's resolutions related to shooting:

1.  Shoot centerfire pistol with a purpose at least once a month.  Steel match, a class or some sort of competition.
2.  Shoot centerfire rifle with a purpose at least once a month.  High Power, a class, or perhaps a 3-gun match.
3.  Shoot rimfire pistol at Rio Salado's rimfire steel matches once a month until there is nothing  more for me to learn from the experience.  I bought a Browning Buckmark pistol, a decent holster and 5 magazines to facilitate this.
4.  Shoot rimfire rifle at Rio Salado's Tuesday Tactical Rifle matches once a month.  Start off with my Marlin 795 with Williams peep/fiber optic sights, but consider the purchase of a more "tactical" .22 rifle once I learn more.

This is a LOT of shooting.  That's about a brick of .22 a month, 150 rounds of pistol and 50-100 rounds of rifle ammo.  1800 rounds of pistol ammo a year (~$150 or so if 9mm reloads), $240 worth of rimfire ammo, and $400 worth of .308 ammo.

I've added all these events to my Outlook calendar on my computer.  Fortunately, the rimfire rifle and centerfire steel matches happen on the same nights.  This is still a 3-day per month commitment at a minimum.

Putting it to print right now, to help keep myself honest in regards to it.