GunAim Powerpoint Dryfire Deck

I’ve been asked by many people, through my blog and YouTube, about how I train for USPSA or IDPA. I don’t use 2/3 sized targets that most people do, I’m blessed with having a large screen HP Touchsmart PC in my room that I use as a target surface. In order to make the scenarios more dynamic, I cobbled together a Powerpoint deck that was originally created by T.Ron, a local influential NWPPA Safety Officer and Stats meister. I modified it mainly to use as a USPSA dry-fire program (changed targets to USPSA Metric style) and added swingers, plates, texas stars and others.

If you’re interested in doing the same, I’ve made the Powerpoint deck available for download here : https://gunbot.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/gunaim_v2-4.ppt

Hope you find it useful, and if you do, let me know, send me a mail or something. I’d love to know how you’ve used it. Better yet, record a video!

Enjoy!

Multiple Static Target Array Shot Cadence

This is a somewhat advanced technique that I’ve been practicing recently. The idea is when you have multiple targets stacked or aligned very closely together, the transition is so minimal that your split times should be consistent across all shots, even during transitions.

You’ll find that most Master or Grandmaster shooters do this often and sometimes with targets that are placed further apart. The benefit is minimal compared to efficiency in movement and stage breakdown but at the higher levels where these shooters participate at, can make the difference between 1st and 2nd place.

I cobbled a video of a successful run I had this past weekend to demonstrate the effect.

Dot Tracking an Open gun with a High-speed camera

I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, as many people have been talking about dot tracking in open guns and how to tune a flat shooting gun. I thought I’d try to take high-speed video of the dot in my open gun while shooting various loads of .38 Super Comp that i’ve pre-loaded. To see how the dot jumps and settles back into view. The dream pattern, is for the dot to jump straight up without leaving the lens, and settling back down in the middle. As you can see from the video, that’s definitely not what I see. My dot goes up to 12 o’clock, drives all the way down to 6 o’clock, then back to 12 and settling in the middle.

I tested the following loads :

1. 115gr Montana Gold CMJ, 11.0gr N105
2. 115gr Montana Gold CMJ, 11.2gr N105
3. 115gr Montana Gold CMJ, 11.3gr N105
4. 115gr Montana Gold CMJ, 11.5gr N105
5. 124gr Montana Gold CMJ, 10.0gr N105

 

I don’t see any noticeable difference in the dot movement between all the loads except feeling a "softer" recoil in the 124gr CMJ loads.

Caveat: I had to shoot in a slightly weird stance because I had to position the scope in front of my Casio Exlim FH100 camera to align it properly. That definitely affected my recoil management capabilities.

I’ve also tried shooting at a man-sized target at 200yards and was amazed at how accurate this gun was. That’s in the bonus section at the end of the video.

Whoa! Talk about unsafe.

Look at what the photographer is doing and more importantly, where he is. I wouldn’t EVER go to a training where the company and trainers would allow something like this.

One Handed Shooting

After my recent match at West Coast Armory where I failed miserably at shooting one handed (both strong and weak), I decided to put more work into my dry-fire routine. I’ve been practicing my weak hand mostly. The trick is to remember that you’re not firing live rounds but dry-firing, even on the range shooting live rounds so that you’ll avoid flinching.

I found this video of Taran Butler shooting steel one handed from retention position in 2:53 seconds. amazing. I definitely need more practice shooting one handed. Can’t wait for the match this Sunday.

Captains of Crush –Gold Standard in Grip Training

Getting serious with this competitive shooting thing, so I might as well start working on my grip strength. I’ve never been really strong with my wrists and hands, working with computers all day. My idea of muscular training is getting up from my seat to get a drink and walking back to sit down. Although I never done any specific strength training for my hands/wrists, it’s good enough to handle the recoil of my .45ACP. I know I don’t really need it but it doesn’t hurt to work on my grip and wrist strength, it might end up helping me shoot better. Time will tell.

This is what I bought, the Captains of Crush Hand Gripper #1 :

Dummy Practice Rounds for .45 ACP

I’ve been using the A-ZOOM brand of Aluminum Snap Caps for most of my dry-fire training this past few months. It has worked well for my single stack practice with my Kimber 1911s. They serve to protect my magazine feed lips if I miss a quick reload and hit the bottom of the magwell.

When I switched to shooting revolvers 2 months ago, I bought extra Snap Caps, loaded them on moon clips and went through several drills. Everything worked well except for two minor problems.

1. They’re light.

Much lighter than standard loaded ammo, and thus has affected my reload and gun handling a little. When I shot my past two matches, I was surprised to find out (too late in fact) that the real rounds are much heavier, thus requiring me to adjust my reloads a little bit. Not too big a problem.

2. They’re too smooth.

This one was a bigger issue for me. The aluminum rounds were very smooth and will drop out of the cylinder without needing to use the ejector rod. What happened after a couple of hundred reloads is that I forget to push on the ejector rod and expect the moonclip to drop out of the cylinder. Not too big a problem in practice, but in my last match, if you watch this video, you’ll see me fumble my reloads because real ammo expands a little after ignition and stays in the cylinder, requiring me to push on the ejector rod to drop out.

That pissed me off because now I have to work on PROPER reloading technique to undo all that bad practice I’ve accumulated. UGH!

In order for me to have more realistic dummy rounds, I had to make my own, out of the actual components that I use in my match ammo. But how do I make them inert?

Well, use fired brass, leave the spent primers on the brass, because I need to fill the brass case with used Corn Cob media. Why? so that the bullets won’t drop into the empty case when I drop the moon clip on the ground. Having corn cob media in the brass case prevents the bullet from being hammered back into the case.

some fired cases have a dark line to show where the previous bullet sat in, that’s is where I’ll fill the corn cob media to.

After that, just run the cases through the reloading press bullet seating die, and taper crimp die.

Just make sure that you mark the rounds clearly to differentiate between live and inert ones. The fired primer and red Sharpie ring tells me that these are dummy rounds.

They work very well, is very heavy and sticks to the cylinder, forcing me to actually press on the ejector rod to reload. Just like in live-fire.

Sweet!