February 2011 Archives

The weather conditions were overcast and gray so I used my yellow tinted glasses, and damned if the fiber optic rod in my front sight didn't show up a lot better. It was actually glowing and very visible. Now I have to figure out if it's due to the tint, or due to the fact that my shooting glasses for bright days are polarized. I'm thinking it's the polarized lenses. They are great for cutting down glare, but I bet that is making the fiber optic rod appear dimmer.

Saw my first stoppage for a squib round. It actually wasn't a squib, and I saw the hole appear on the target, but it was definitely a weak charge and the shooter was stopped in the interest of safety.

I had a couple of Grand Masters in my squad and it's definitely worth the $20 match fee just to watch them shoot and see what they do. I overheard them talking about how much money they spent to get their GM card, and I have to say it's way out of my budget for the foreseeable future. One was saying he spent about $10,000 per year for three years in guns, ammo, travel, transportation, and lodging.

Anyway, on to the match.

First stage I shot pretty well. Which is to say that I shot about where I should have and didn't under perform, and not that I was close to winning it. It was interesting in that your gun and all ammo had to be placed on a table. Directly in front of the table was a portal with one target behind it, then there was a total of 9 shots each to the far left and the far right. Because I'm shooting production and limited to 10 rounds, I loaded up the gun and shot 2 rounds through the portal, then loaded up 2 magazine carriers on my belt, and then reloaded the gun so I would have a fresh mag for one of the sides. I noticed most of the other shooters were leaving all ammo on the table and just grabbing it as they went by. I'm still not very comfortable running and gunning, so I like to keep it simple. I didn't want to miss a mag as I was running by, or end up tripping or something, so I loaded up my belt. I came in 11th out of 26 shooters.

The second stage was more of a run and gun stage. It was really windy so the poppers were set kind of hard and I had one popper that just refused to fall until the third shot, but I didn't have any misses on the steel, so I felt good about that stage. I came in 9th out of 26 shooters.

Third stage was this weird thing with lots of obscured targets, and lots of shooting around obstacles. I had to take multiple shots at some of the steel and it pointed out to me that I need to practice that kind of shooting more. 11th out of 26.

Forth stage was a true run and gun type stage. There was a little over 20 yards to cover, and all the paper targets were under 3 yards. Pretty much everyone got all A's there. My problem was that when I got to the last part that was all steel and partially obscured by barrels I had a lot of misses on the steel. I know what the problem is though. I have this tendency to relax my grip when forced to take very accurate shots, and when I let my grip get too relaxed I tend to get a lot sight disruption when the trigger breaks. When I shoot a 1911 I don't have this problem, but I do on my M&P. For some reason the results don't include my score.

Fifth stage was the classifier and it was a weird one. You had to draw and go prone at 20 yards, and fire 1 shot on each target. Then draw and kneel at 15, then draw and strong hand at 10, and then draw and weak hand at 5. I don't think I've ever shot a pistol while prone, and certainly never from a draw to prone. I mostly just wanted to finish and not shoot myself, so I did manage to come home without any extra holes. It didn't seem like anyone had great shooting on this classifier, the big difference was the time. The results didn't have my time for this stage either.

Update

Turns out they left out my scores for stages 4 & 5 so I moved up a couple of spots in my division and overall after those were added back in. Looks like the classifier hit factor was just a hair under the C class cutoff. Kinda confirms what I have been thinking, I'm not quite as good in Production as I was Single Stack, yet.

This is probably my favorite sci-fi book. In some ways the book is similar to Starship Troopers by Heinlein. You've got warriors decked out in powered armor that make our current soldiers' kits look like spears and clubs. These warriors are fighting insect like aliens that are much stronger than a puny human on those alien's homeworlds. The squads are also integrated in both books. Women and men in extreme combat situations. The book is technically in 3 parts, but is really more like 2. We have the first part dealing with Felix, a fatalistic noble who is running away from tragedy. Somehow he ends up on Banshee, the "ant" homeworld and is a pawn in a chess game on the side played by an idiot. The "Fleet" is clueless about ants, their tactics, and is vastly outnumbered.

Felix is basically sent off to die by an uncaring incompetent bureaucracy, and when he doesn't die he keeps getting recycled to the front by said bureaucracy despite its policies. But Felix is exceptional. He just refuses to die and is able to tap into a part of himself he calls "The Engine". In battle, his conscious splits leave the engine in control and he is able to survive what he could not otherwise. It turns out that Felix is actually the Guardian Archon of the planet Golden, and in his last combat mission the Masao, the ruler of another planet I can't recall now comes to take him back to his life. Things don't go right, and the Masao is killed, but Felix is helped to escape Fleet by Nathan Kent, a great Fleet hero who is subsequently killed by fleet (but we don't learn that part until later).

The rest of the book deals with Jack Crow, a "shadowy" hustler womanizer type with an earned reputation for being one tough SOB who just happens to be a good guy underneath it all. Jack gets himself into some trouble resulting in his betrayal of his friend, Hollis Ware, and leader of a Fleet project of something or other. By the way, he brings Felix's armored suit to Holly who discovers a way to immerse themselves into Felix's experiences while in the suit.

It all culminates (in the third part) with Jack's troubles catching up to him. There's a battle, and lo and behold the local drunk, Lewis, turns out to be Felix and he once again dons the armor and saves the day, but Lewis/Felix just doesn't settle for driving the enemy off. He's seen to be clinging to the exterior of the enemy's ship as it tries to escape, with has armored hand about to sabotage it.

That's a horrible summary of the book, but at least you have the gist of it.

The book is violent, graphic, gratuitous, explicit, etc. Yet, it does feel ahead of it's time (1984) and could be something of a precursor to that modern genre of sci-fi. It's not "hard" sci-fi laced with physics theory and the applications thereof, and you won't need a dictionary to read it.

I don't know how many times I've read this book now, but it's at least 4, probably more. It has been a while since I read it last (sometime in college). I couldn't sleep the other night and grabbed it off the shelf, and after all this time it's still resonates with me. I think more than anything, I liked Felix, and the chapters dealing with Felix's fight in the antwar are just riveting, and make it hard to put the book down.

I really don't like the Jack Crow character, but that may have been the point. He's an "anti-hero". That's not to say his part isn't important to the book, or the writing isn't as good. I just don't like him.

It turns out the author has died recently, and has a small following of folks with their own forum. Kind of interesting. I did see they had a short intro to Armor 2 for download. It was Jack Crow, which I was a little sad to see. I want to know what happened to Felix.

So, I got dinged for jury duty. I don't have a problem with that, although I hope I don't get picked to serve on anything that takes longer than a day, if I'm picked at all. I'm probably a lawyer's worse nightmare as a juror. I think criminals should be punished, I don't trust the government, and I believe in jury nullification if a law is bad.

What bugs me is that because I'm barred by law from carrying a concealed handgun into a courthouse, I have to leave it in my car. It gets worse though, there is no parking provided for prospective jurors so I have to park somewhere downtown, leave my gun in the car and walk some unknown distance to court.

The court's website highly encourages me to take the bus due to the parking issue. If I did that I would end up arriving with no legal way to enter the courthouse, and yet be legally required to enter the courthouse, or I'd have to leave the house unarmed.

I can somewhat understand why licensees are barred from carrying in court, there could be some highly emotional stuff going on, but as a juror I don't see what that has to do with me.

I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it if they provided a locker or something where I could store my piece in private.

If you hold views opposite of mine regarding a citizen's right to own guns, you might think I'm some kind of frightened suburbanite afraid of the big city. I'm not. I'm reasonably certain no one is going to attack me, and I can handle myself, that's not the issue here.

The issue here is the laws when combined make for some bad outcomes. If I leave it in the car, it could get stolen. If I forget to leave it in the car, I could be in some deep legal trouble. If I leave it at home and need it, I could be dead.

You know, if you think about a law where something is perfectly legal at one place, and then 50 feet away it becomes a felony, that's a good sign the law is dumb. Either we trust people or we don't.

So, got an email today that the night matches at Best of the West have been cancelled until further notice. That sucks. Apparently there were some noise complaints, which I can understand. Hopefully something can be worked out where we can still hold night matches out there. Perhaps smaller squads or only allow a fixed number of shooters so we finish earlier, or maybe hold less matches per month, or move them from Tuesday nights to a weekend night, etc. I hope that a compromise can be reached.

I'm foo.c, and I'm an ...

I'm always unsure if I should post these things. I don't want to give the impression that I'm paranoid or overreact.

So my neighbor emails today asking if I want to go fishing at the neighborhood pond. Sure, why not.

The pond is in the middle of a big field that will eventually be another section of the development here, but right now doesn't see a whole lot of traffic, just the occasional jogger on the sidewalk. 

We drive around to the far side where the pond drains when it gets too full because there's a good place to park and sit, and joggers and what not don't go over there, not that it really matters, but we occasionally have an adult beverage while we fish and we don't want to look like drunk rednecks. Nothing will get suburban HOA-nazis fired up like drunk rednecks in public. (We're not drunk, but you can't fish without at least a couple of beers, it's a man law.)

We just get there and start unloading and we weren't there 2 minutes before I hear a bike and look over and see this kid, probably early teens, on a bike. He "appeared out of nowhere." He's maybe 10 feet from me, and hops off his bike. I say "Howdy!" and my buddy looks up then and notices him for the first time. The kid acts like we're not even there, and starts looking into the drainage pipes (I'll call them pipes for lack of a better word). He didn't even look at me and return the salutation though he may have mumbled something, I couldn't really tell.

Pretty weird, and weird things put me into Condition Orange.

He literally jumps back and forth from one pipe to another about 3 times looking into each, and then gets back on his bike and goes. He hangs back a little farther away riding around on his bike, and then he goes down the jogging path, pretty much acting like a normal kid at that point.

Anyway, this isn't really about the kid. Best we can figure is that he had maybe hid something down there he didn't want us to find, or maybe he was looking for frogs to take to science class. Only he knows I guess.

What this really is about is situational awareness and how I completely blew it. People don't appear out of nowhere. I was in Condition White. I was unloading the truck, setting out chairs, etc. completely task oriented. I know better, and I'm a little disappointed in myself.

When I took the Rangemaster/Southnarc Combined Skills class, I remember Mr. Givens saying something like in all his years of being a cop, all victims say the same thing. " He/she/they appeared out of nowhere." He went on to say that of course that was absurd, and I was probably sitting there nodding my head and acting like that couldn't happen to me. I don't know if he was hiding out in the trees, riding his bike through the tall grass in the field, hauled ass down the little alley there after we had pulled in, or Scotty beamed him down to earth, but there was no one there, and then there he was. If you're not paying attention, it doesn't really matter.

I will say that at least some training kicked in. As soon as I saw him, I said "Howdy!" not angrily or anything thing like that, but still firm. Kind of a, hey, I'm more than a sheep. I also looked for pre-fight cues. I never felt threatened due to the fact that there were no cues and he acted like wanted nothing to do with either of us.

Here's a pretty good illustration of a variety of gun and flashlight techniques.

When I took my first night shooting class, I really loved the Harries technique at first. Shooting at stationary targets it was by far the quickest and most accurate technique for me. I found that if I held the light right, not only was the target lit, but my front sight was shining like a beacon. That combination was really good. It was a little awkward to get into, and I had a little fear of crossing my left hand in front of the muzzle so I was going slow, but it was working well for me overall in that static situation. The instructor was encouraging the neck-indexed method throughout this training, but I couldn't figure out why anyone would choose to shoot one handed if they didn't have to and doggedly stuck to the Harries because I was getting such good hits.

The real problem I had with the Harries technique showed up when we ran the scenario the instructor had set up. In a nutshell, it feels wrong. You can't move naturally, or quickly. (At least I couldn't, as always you should try this stuff for yourself to see what works for you.) I just found it really cumbersome to run through that scenario, walking downrange, turning this way and that, shooting around obstacles.

I quickly switched to the neck index method on that scenario and have used it ever since. It's not perfect but it allows a lot more freedom of movement and use of your light. It felt very natural after a very short time (it's so ingrained in me now that I can not use a flashlight without indexing it to the side of my head). With the light in one hand and the gun in the other, you can work them independently. What's that over there? Turn your head and light simultaneously, if it's a threat you bring the gun up and handle it. With Harries I likely would have had to turn my whole body, and if it's not a threat, I just pointed a gun at it.

My neck-index method is slightly modified, for me the flashlight is held at eye-level. It's a temple-index rather than neck index. That keeps your light, your eye, and the sights all on the same plane and makes using your sights easier. I can't remember if that's what we were taught in the class, or if I just started doing it that way, but that's what I do.

Like anything, the neck-index has its pros and cons. One handed shooting is slower to get the sights lined up and harder to get them back on target after the recoil than using two hands to shoot, but anyone carrying a gun needs to be trained in one handed shooting (strong and weak hands both) and practice it. Realistically, for self-defense purposes the shooting would be closer than you would like and wouldn't require a perfect sight picture. In that context the cons of the neck-index method are less pronounced.

It occurred to me as I noticed that I needed to load up some more .40S&W, that I have now passed the 1000 round mark with the M&P. (Well past if I count the 9mm I shot through it via the conversion barrel.)

The first 150 rounds were some PRVI factory 180 grain stuff, the other 900 rounds were my gamer loads.

I am really liking the gun a lot, and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it for competition or self-defense. The only issue I have had with it was due to the infamous "slide drop" issue. During a slide-lock reload when I inserted the mag, the slide dropped without enough force to strip the next round cleanly so the round was flopping around in the ejection port. That was roughly 700 rounds ago, and it's run perfect since then.

So, 1000+ rounds and 1 failure. I almost don't want to call it a failure because it barely cost any more time than a normal reload, but in the issue of unbiased reporting I will mark it so.

Speaking of the "slide drop" issue, I have learned to love it for competition purposes. I do make myself observe the condition of the slide before moving my left hand back back to its normal position, just in case I need to rack it. Since that first time it happened, it has been extremely consistent. The mag goes in and the slide drops.

I am on my second barrel. The first barrel had some weird tooling marks in it like something spun around in there during the cutting of the rifling, but S&W kindly sent me another one at no charge.

The Apex competition kit is a nice improvement over the stock parts. I would like to reduce the pre-travel in the trigger some though.

I'm not liking the fiber optic front sight as much as I thought I would. During daylight there's something about it that makes me a little sloppier on my sight picture, and at night it's just plain hard to pick up. Hopefully I'll find the right combination of color and brand that suits me, but I think I'm getting close to changing the sights out.

At the rate I'm going, I should hit 2000 rounds in April so expect a follow up.

Death By GPS

Apparently people are doing the equivalent of driving off cliffs because the GPS says that's the way to get from A to B.

I bought a TomTom GPS a few years ago before a trip from Texas to New Mexico. If you stay on the Interstate, it's a pretty mundane trip, but if you opt for a more direct route it can be desolate in places. I liked the idea of not accidentally missing a turn or exit and driving 100 miles in the wrong direction.

I never read the manual for anything so the first thing I did was fire it up and tell it to take me the shortest route. I browsed the route and it looked ok until I noticed it wanted to go through some unpaved forest roads. Personally, I would have liked to try that route because it sounded like fun, but I'm also the kind of person that brings along extra food, water, tools, belts and hoses, tire repair kits, blankets, a shovel, first aid kits, flare guns (kidding), actual guns (of course), etc. just for a trip to the corner store (kidding), but with small kids in the car I decided it would be dumb.

What's really killing these people is themselves. They don't plan ahead, they don't think critically about the directions, they don't recognize hazardous conditions, and they're unable to evaluate options. In short, they're dumb. I don't like saying that, but we have to call them what they are.

Notice the headline is not "Dumb people killing themselves", it blames the GPS device. A GPS device is not capable of killing anyone on its own. The closest the author allows to the truth is that there were "other denominators" such as "poor planning, faulty judgment, bad luck and the lemming-like rush of visitors to Death Valley in the summer." I don't believe the author has any kind of "Anti-GPS" agenda, but the reporting is typical of old media. Twist some facts, throw in a dead child, and blame inanimate objects.

Another night match @ Best of the West.

Temps were in the low 50's to high 40's but the wind was gusting at least 20 mph. Glad I brought a cap and some gloves.

Speaking of gloves, I shot the entire match with my gloves on. It's not something I usually do, but I felt like being a wuss and theoretically I could be out in the cold sometime and have to be able to use my gun while wearing gloves. Seemed to not be much of an issue.

I have tried green and red fiber optic rod at night now, and neither are as good as just a white dot would be. I may just dab some paint on there before the next night match. I'm tempted to try one of my 1911's with tritium night sights some time too.

First stage went ok.

Second stage I got the bright idea to try and make 1 A zone shot per target so that I could avoid changing magazines. (I had a nice warm coat on and really didn't want to take it off or open it. Wussy, I know.) Well, it was slow and I had just enough make up shots so that I ran out before neutralizing the last target, so I had to reload anyway. Big waste of time.

Third stage I shot was an all steel stage that was really kind of interesting. First, half the targets were black and were a real pain to see at night when focusing on the front sight. Second, when you hit the target, it set off some strobes that were fairly bright and disorienting. So it kind of made picking up the next target difficult, not impossible, but it added some realism, IMO. I've done some force on force training with airsoft guns at night and it reminded me of that.

Fourth stage went ok. I was kind of upset because I had a feeling I missed a target, but for some reason I didn't trust my shot calling to call a miss. I think that was my only miss in the match. I don't feel too bad about it because the carbine guys were missing a couple of targets on this stage.

Fifth stage went ok.

I don't really try to run these stages too fast. Mostly I shoot them for the practice because there's not too many places you can shoot at night on the move. I may run the next one left-handed to get some practice with my weak hand shooting.

Back in USPSA this time. It was kind of neat to have snow on the berms at the Austin Rifle Club.

The first stage I shot went badly. I had problems with the Texas Star. For some reason I was blinking before pulling the trigger on the star. It was really frustrating. Probably dumped 15 rounds on it before I finally got all the plates to drop. I didn't dry fire at all this week, and it really hurt me on that stage.

The next three stages went pretty well. I was mostly focusing on trying to run the gun, when I could remember to focus on something. Someone told me I ran a stage smooth, which I thought was a nice complement. Don't think that's ever happened before.

The 5th stage was a nightmare brought from the recent Nationals. Didn't do great, at least I didn't shoot any no-shoots. There's only 40 points total on the stage and I had 2 misses, ouch.

The last stage was the classifier. I ran it slow, just trying to get some points and I still had a no-shoot and a miss. Grrrr. It sucks to slow down and still shoot bad.

I switched from green fiber optic rod to red fiber optic red before this match. I don't like it at all. Might be the rod itself, or my installation technique, I don't know, but it didn't have that nice glow to it, and I couldn't get myself to focus on it as well as I was doing with the green rod. I'm going to try a few more colors and brands and see what I do best with.

One thing that reminded me of how much more I like USPSA matches was on one stage I came up with a slightly different plan of attack vs. what the rest of my squad did. You had to move from one box to another. In the box you moved to, there were 3 targets, 2 of which were hidden behind barrels and the one standing out in the open. There were also targets out of the box you had to engage. Everyone else (or at least everyone I watched) would immediately take out the lone target in the box upon entering, then take out one set of the targets outside the box, then the two hiding behind the barrels, and then the rest. What I did was I left the lone target there, and took out one set of outside targets. Then I reloaded, took out everything in the box, reloaded and took out the rest outside the box. Because I had to run up close to the targets behind the barrels anyway, I was able to take that lone target out on the move from 1 yard away instead of from a stop 7 yards away. So that was 6 easy alphas shot on the move, and it seemed to make the stage flow better and a little quicker. (Not that I'm a threat to be quick or win the stage or anything.) You could argue that it was bad tactics, but in reality the thing was wide open and there's no cover anyway, so you'd be dead well before you got to that box. So who cares?

I don't know why I haven't done this review before, I guess because I bought it long before I began blogging.

The EMP is an "ultra compact" version of the 1911, but with one important difference. It was designed for shorter calibers than it's .45ACP cousins. Because of this the grip length is shorter and narrower which makes it easier to carry and conceal. I won't include a bunch of specs, because you can get that off Springfield's site, but I will say that it's small, easily concealable, and light. Despite that, you get 9 rounds in a magazine which is +2 over GI 1911 magazines, or +1 over the typical 8 rounders.

I've owned my EMP for almost 3 years now, and it has been my number one carry gun for most of that time. I wear shorts for most of the year, and the size and weight of the EMP makes for a very comfortable and concealed carry even in light shorts. I fell for the "hi cap" craze for a while and was carrying a Browning Hi-Power for a number of months, but I never could find a holster that really made it comfortable. I went back to the EMP. I like to carry a full size 1911 from time to time, but I always come back to the EMP after a while.

The gun shoots very accurately. I'm not the kind of guy to set up a rest and shoot groups all day, but I have done a lot of shooting at 25 yards because usually when I get up to the range, the pistol range is full and the next available range is for 25 and 50 yard shots only. So I'm sitting there with a couple hundred rounds or more of ammo at the 25 yard range, I'm going to shoot normally. Doing this, I can easily keep most of my rounds on the paper plates I am shooting at. I believe it shoots so well due to the excellent Novak style night sights, crisp trigger, and light recoil of the gun.

Despite early teething issues, the gun is very reliable. I've taken training classes with it, I've shot it at USPSA matches, and for the most part it has been very durable. I did have a problem once at a training class where the gun had one misfeed out of 800 rounds in 2 days. The range was muddy and I couldn't keep the mags free from mud. I also had an out of spec reload once that caused the empty case to jam in the chamber requiring a squib rod and a mallet to extract (that sucker was really in there).

As good as the gun is now, it had early problems requiring a trip back to Springfield Armory to correct. To their credit, I had the gun back in 8 days and it's been great since. It was a little bit of a let down at first, and I didn't trust it for carry purposes until I had put another 1000 trouble free rounds through it. Those days are long past, and it has become #1.

The pics! I know you all want pics.

Some time ago when it was newish ...


Comparison to an XD 9mm Sub-Compact which I no longer own