Dennis Santiago's Highpower Notebook

Swan song for a Colt 1-7 H-BAR barrel

2009-11-29T14:02:00.000-08:00

Almost 20 years ago I bought a Colt Sporter H-BAR. This rifle hasn't been a closet queen. It's been my learning curve companion in the sport of high power rifle competition having been turned into a beautiful Frankenstein over the years with 1/4 x 1/4 sights, numerous better triggers, free float tubes and replacement barrels.

But the real heart of any gun is it's barrel. Everything else is just accessories hung around the tube. I took the original 5.56x45mm NATO chrome lined 1-7 barrel off several years ago dropping a DPMS 1-8 SST into the upper at the time. The original tube was at 4,500 rounds old at the time and it had been sitting in the spare parts box.

At the beginning of 2009, Daniel Defense came out with their Omega free floating forearms and I had a yen to build something approximating an Army SDM rifle so I took the old Colt 1-7 out and mounted it in an A3 upper. There was a good feeling taking the barrel that had accompanied me to the edge of NRA Expert classification and seeing it pushing pills downrange again. The assembly performed well with a 4X ACOG against tactical size targets. It still tries to shoot everything into the 10-ring which is about 2 MOA across.

And therein now is my woe. I decided to try shooting the next tactical match using this rifle. I'm learning more about it's quirks. The latest one is that one really probably should not clamp the optic base forward of the main action picatinny rail even though there are plenty of additional spots on the free floating forearm. But I'm still worried that the groups will stay opened up. While perfectly serviceable, if the barrel is worn out and no longer X-ring quality I'm going to have to retire the barrel again for good.

I'm up against my peers firing sub-MOA target rifles and I may need to swap to a new barrel that will print a pattern half the size of what this thing is doing now. Basically, all shots have to go into a Post-It note at 200 yards to be competitive. The issue is currently in doubt.

9 volt batteries: The chronograph is everyone's friend.

2009-11-29T13:43:00.000-08:00

This is the year I really started to use my chronograph for more detailed load development. They work really well as one tries to replicate the ballistics of one good load using different propellants and primes. The shortage of components for most of 2009 makes you have to work a little more.

So the thing about my chronograph is that it eats 9 volt batteries. I also discovered that 9 bolt batteries are like communal food on a firing line because everyone else's chronograph also eats 9 volt batteries. I have yet to run one of my batteries all the way down. They all seem to get fed to my friend's machines before that happens.

Tactical Matches

2009-09-14T15:32:00.000-07:00

For those of us that didn't go to Camp Perry for the Nationals, we held a tactical match. It was a fun change of pace.

Herman and I teamed up and had lots of fun. This is us firing simultaneously on targets at 300 yards. Herman is shooting a Remington 700 with a Leupold scope and I'm shooting an M1A installed in a Sage Mk14 EBR stock with a Bushnell 3200 10X mil-dot scope.

The targets are a collection of little colored shapes around 6 to 8 inches in size on a frame 300 yards away. They come up out of the target pits. The range officer gives you a color or shape. And the two of you have 10 seconds to get your act together and fire on exactly the same shape before it's wifthrawn.

It'd still been more fun to have gone to Camp Perry.

CMP Games 2009 Preparation Notes

2009-09-14T11:01:00.000-07:00

Gun Notes

Took the M-1 Garand, M1093A3 Springfield and Enfield No.4Mk1* to the range. Got them dialed in with good zeros at 200 yards.

The Springfield still makes the most amazingly small groups and my notes match the old notations about the tip of the front sight being slanted. Got a better picture for managing that in this pidgeon's little brain. LOL.

The Garand groups were bigger than I liked. It was making touching holes in the X for me when I tested it on the 100 yard range on Saturday but only 10 ring patterns on Sunday. Remembered on the way home that As-Issued Garands have aircraft carrier wide front sight blades. Need to line up on the center of the post. Found the old notes about making a pencil mark in my notes. Will do.

The Enfield rang around a 10 ring group. Was able to improve it by noticing that the rear aperture hole is bigger in the Enfield. Larger than the optically indifferent diameter of a target aperture. That means one has to put a little more attention to centering the front post in it to get it to shoot tighter. That should get me deeper into the 10 ring with this gun. It's pushing Sierra 174gr Match Kings over a moderate charge of H4895. Will have to run them over a chrono to make sure the SD's are happy.

More "to do's" with guns,

1. Need to take the M-1 Carbine out and shoot a refresher with it.

2. Need to decide if I want to work up a load for 80grs under either N540 or Varget instead of H4895 for the Creedmoor Cup.

Eyes notes (more precisely shooting eyeglass notes),

1. Move the glass frames so that the view is through the center vertical axis of the lens to take maximum advantage of the way the progressive lens is cut. Gets the best image clarity on the front sight.

2. It's critical to change the rotation of the lens slightly for CMP shooting. It's because of the shape of the stocks. Correct lens rotation is about 5-10 degrees further over in head position tilt versus where the lens should be for working with the AR-15. Plan to set it one way for the CMP phase AND MAKE SURE TO FIDDDLE WITH AND RESET IT AT 200 YARDS on Wednesday for the AR-15 before beginning the Creedmoor Cup phase.

3. When in doubt go for contrast. The yellow filter works best. No filter is very clear but more susceptible to light changes. The gray filter gets the eye more open but that seems to work against the objective of smallest apertures = sharpest views.

"If you can't see, you can't win."

CMP .22 Sporter Strategies

2009-09-13T21:52:00.000-07:00

The 2009 CMP Western Games are coming. This year they are again holding a .22 Sporter match. This is a really fun event involving six stages of fire. Prone, sitting, offhand. Slow and Rapid for each. One must use a sporter type .22 LR rifle, no target guns allowed.

Last year I shot this match with a Ruger 10/22 equipped with a Tech-Sights aperture and post sight emulating the sights of an AR-15. It had a sling which helped immensely. However I made the mistake of using cheap Remington plinker ammunition and had a couple of misfires.

So this year I started searching for other ways to do this. The weakest part of the 10/22 solution was the trigger. Ruger factory triggers run around 8+ pounds with hard and gritty feelings. Yuck! The rules say 3 lb minimum weigth.

The other thing I noticed is that the guys with scopes had an advantage over my shooting in the same T-class. Scopes and aperture sights count as the same to the CMP. The maximum scope power allowed is 6X.

Option #1 presented itself at last years CMP Games in the form of surplus Mossberg M44US trainer rifles they were selling for mere $175 apiece. Naturally practically everyone there picked one up and yes they are great rifles. You did have to scrounge around for a new plastic trigger guard and a couple of magazines. They are old WWII era rifles and the old plastic had become brittle but there are vendors out there that specialize in parts for these old guns. I enjoy shooting mine immensely. This is defintely an improvement over the Ruger 10/22 for an aperture sights solution.

Next came exploring a scope solution. First came a BSA Platinum 6-24X target scope. This one had 1/8th MOA turrets and a mildot reticle. I initially mounted it on a Ruger 10/22. The trigger was still too harsh though so I put a better trigger in it. Alas, the improved trigger runs 2.75 lbs and I have no idea what one does to manage trigger pull weight on a 10/22. They have double spring sears similar to the FN/FAL. The 10/22 is a really nice gun now but doesn't make the grade for CMP competition. So abandon ship on that thought. I did put an email question in to Timney regarding their new 10/22 trigger asking if it can be adjusted to a 3 lb weight easily. Theirs, like most sporting triggers these days, is also factory set to 2.5 lbs.

Ok so third times the charm. Took a Marlin 25N bolt gun. Replaced the factory trigger with a Rifle Basix unit set to 3 lbs. Took the BSA scope off the Ruger and, after putting some Weaver bases on top of the dovetail to raise the scope so it's objective bell clears the barrel, put the 6-24X on the Marlin. Got sling swivels on it and off to the range.

50 yards. Bricks of Federal High Velocity Target ammo and Wolf Match Target. Both good ammo. Tested at 50 yards on the CMP Sporter target. Once sighted in it's clearly the slower and steadier Wolf ammo for this gun. Makes nice 1/4" groups at 50 yards.

Offhand test. 6X scope makes patterns bigger than I'd like at 50 yards shooting from the standing position. Wobble all over the place. Is it too much optical power or is it technigue?

Back to town. Midweek trip to the local indoor range. Offhand again. This time it's better. 50 foot offhand 50 shot group running about 1 1/2". That'll do. Need to practice to hone the technique. Fortunately it's indoor work and I love chewing out the center of a piece of paper with a smallbore gun.

I'm feeling more comfortable about Phoenix next month.

Remington 788 Decision: Modernize

2009-09-13T21:26:00.000-07:00

Leatherwood A.R.T. scopes turn out to be pretty cool things. They are very fast to move for range adjustment and I do look forward to experimenting with the one I have more. But it does have some drawbacks.

Most important is that it's a single point solution. Setting the cam is specific to the rifle, cartridge, bullet, powder charge, optic, altitude combination. You can set it up well enough but you need to stay with that combination. Not so good if one wants to be able to switch more adeptly to say shoot different bullet weights.

Less important for hunting and tactical but critical for competition is that it's a 2-3 MOA rapid dialing solution. Just like tactical 1E/0.5W turrets, it's too gross for competing where precision and repeatability needs to be in the /18 to 1/4 MOA region.

So for my trusty Remington 788 the A.R.T. must come off. It'll be replaced by one of the best scopes I've found recently. A Bushnell 3200 Elite 10x40M. This is a 10 power mil-dot scope with 80 inches of elevation range and dead on repeatable 1/4 x 1/4 MOA turrets. They're rated for .375 H&H's and the image quality is excellent. The best part is they cost $200. They're an amazing deal.

Turns out modernizing Remington 788's is a quite popular. The guns been out of production for 0ver 20 years but there's a brisk business in Timney triggers for these guns and EGW makes 20 MOA Picatinny rails for them. How cool is that?

With a 20MOA mount and an 80MOA elevation range scope, reaching out to 1,000 yards will well within the dialing range of the system. Repeatable 1/4 MOA target knobs means one can change ammo, get a zero at any distance, and use the ballistics for that round to go back and forth from there. Optical range estimation is done the modern way using the mil-dot reticle. This will be much more very flexible. And so that's the direction this rifle will take next.

It does require more pencil pushing to stay ahead of the shot though and I still have to say the A.R.T. scope really is an elegant piece of firearms design.

A.R.T. Camputer Scopes

2009-09-05T23:14:00.000-07:00

Am pondering the pluses and minuses of the Leatherwood A.R.T. scope concept. Put one on a Remington 788 with a Timney 2lb trigger. That is one really good rifle. Shot it with a Leatherwood today going after small to medium targets at 200, 300, 600 and 650 yards. It's very fast to shift ranges and certainly well suited for it's original intended task of sniping against people sized targets. It's somewhat trickier against smaller targets.

Am learning that at least for now there is some offsetting involved. Zero at 200 and 300 is at 325 on the range ring but 600 is at 475 on the ring and 650 is at 550. Clearly I have got more to learn about correctly matching the eccentric cam to the round ballistics. I'll keep working with it.

This means that for smaller 1 to 2 MOA targets this type of scope is a compromise just like the 1E/0.5W fast turret scopes.

Right now I have a feeling the good old 10X fixed power Mildot scope with 1/4 MOA target turrets has the advantage for small target work.

Time for New Eyes

2009-01-10T10:16:00.000-08:00

2008 was one of those watershed years. I turned 50. You feel it most in your eyes. It gets harder to see that front sight well enough despite all the tricks you'd been using up to that point. I dropped an average of 15 points and really had to reevaluate things. Fortunately, one quickly finds out while bantering in the pits that a lot of other people have the same issue.

So on the the shooting eyes makeover. The contact lenses to correct astigmatism plus Bob Jones lens inserts weren't cutting it anymore. My shooting position and technique have actually been getting better. My wind calling is getting better too but I do need to find more ranges to shoot at on a regular basis that have real cross winds at 600 yards. My offhand technique in particular is on the up and I'm very pleased, holding and breaking 10's is coming a lot easier. Even my sling technique has improved.

But the blink-to-blink movement of the contact lenses was still making it so my shot groups orbited the X-ring instead of going into it. The guns and ammo were capable. The tiny movement as the soft lenses move was just making it so that it looks the same but the physical alignment is different. I didn't make my goals at the CMP Western and Creedmoor Cup in 2008. Got my share of medals? Yes. Shot to my competitive potential? No way. But I learned enough to know what had to come next.

So back to California and a phone call to my optometrist to set up an extended visit to talk about my eyes options. We talked all the options ranging from glasses to laser surgery. We talked about the need to have a system flexible enough to work with both As-Issued rifles like the M-1 Garand, Springfield and Carbine as well as the AR-15 Service Rifles, each gun has a different sight radius. Turned out that laser work would correct astigmatism but the optimization of focus would still require a lens. The decision was better to put off eye surgery and go with a solution that puts everthing into an eyeglass lens. And the technology for that was pretty neat. It's a progressive lens cut with an arc that allows for image quality retention with some tilting. The lens is mounted in a specialized Jaggi shooting glass frame which allows it to be repositioned at will on the firing line including locating the lens at the correct position in the progressive cut for the specific rifle's sight radius being used. And by tilting down a smidge still be able to clearly confirm the number board. (I do so hate cross firing.)

Experiments so far have been good. I got the glasses just in time to shot the regional matches at Twentynine Palms a month later and the 15 points lost in 2008 came back right off the bat. I'm back to shooting my averages. Continued experimentation practicing with a .22LR indoors shows I can focus even more on the front sight in offhand and that's good stuff. Have only had one chance to practice with an As-Issued M-1 using the lens in prone; but a significantly increased number of holes are definitely happening inside the X-ring.

So we'll see what the 2009 season brings. I'm looking forward to getting back on track woking on cleaning my rapid fire stages.

Natural Cants and Ceiners

2007-04-16T12:56:00.000-07:00

I'm now convinced about canting the rifle.

For offhand, a straighter position with the gun canted into your head really is better. It does require a slightly longer lengh of pull so I had to switch the A2 stock back onto the AR but it does feel better connected. Now comes the hard part. Breaking the old habit and turning the new one into an instinct. Shoot lots of practice with the laser and on the field to force that habit to change. Keep working on that 10-ring hold for offhand, the amount of black to grab is the space between the 10 and X rings. The White Oak shoots perfectly to point of call. It's all about consistency now. Next step is to write a new choreography with zen chants and work on it.

For sitting, I now realize where all those rapid strings that start off in the center and work their into the lower right quadrant have been coming from. As the gun recoils, one settles deeper and deeper into the true natural sitting position which is canted a little lower to the right of a horizontal hold. So while the sighter is dialed in dead on, after the first shot (which usually hits the X nearest I can tell) the trailing rounds work their way down as my right elbow settles in after each recoil. Ok. So by going ahead and settling into that canted pose from the get go the entire string should be more neutral. Additional mental note. Update the zero sheet for sitting using a 6 o'clock hold with the cant. Shoot lots of practice strings until it become second nature.

Ceiner to the economics rescue. And Ray-Vin too. 4/15/07, printed some Ray-Vin pdf files with 50-yard reduced targets then used a Ceiner converter to shot practice with .22LR. Much to our surprise, my 1-8 twist gun was pretty accurate at 50-yards using Remington High Velocity ammo. Easily good enough to use to practice rapids much more economically. It'll hold the reduced bull's X-ring at 50-yards. And that means 500 practice shots for about $12.00. Cool!

There are 50-yd Ray-Vin pdf's for 300-yd Rapids as well and that'll be on the practice menu soon enough.

California Service Rifle Championship - Apr 4-6, 2007

2007-04-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

Another shooting season begins and I sure am rusty.

Offhand Redux

My pet technique theories about Slow-Fire Offhand carefully nurtured over the winter met with rude reality last weekend in the CA Service Rifle matches at Coalinga. My 200-yard Offhand left me a good 10 points low of the mark that I can shoot. Too erratic. X's when it's on but at least 1/3rd of the time it's not on and that's not good enough to sustain Expert scores. Time for another overhaul. I'm going to try the USMC canted gun method with the AR-15. I experimented with this position using the Beamhit last yesterday and it's an improvement but only using it in a real match will tell. I also took the front weight out of the AR-15 handguard on the White Oak. The barrel and tube alone feel like a better balance with the USMC position. The gun hovers around the ideal weight of 14 pounds. On the plus side of the story, I really like the new method of strapping down the shooting coat with emphasis on tight hip and lower back support the way the CMP's USAMU video advised. It's good stuff.

Happy Rapid Fire

I did manage to win the Rapid Fire Aggregate on Saturday for the Sharpshooter class with a competitive score. Sitting and Prone Rapid are definitely my strongest stages right now. The no wind and elevation zeros for the gun are spot on. I'm getting pretty good at calling the final wind correction to center up the target at 300. And I'm remembering to loosen the BDU tabs to minimize the pulse in sitting. The real enemies now are the position coming loose and not remembering to settle and breathe. Got to remember to keep the sitting stage tight as a drum. Practice adding a tightness check to the string for shots 1, 3 and 5. Make resetting the sling after the first string a habit even for 50-shot matches. Print out a bunch of 50-yard targets, stick the .22LR converter in the gun and shot rapids over and over. I can and so should begin to clean these stages at least 1/4 of the time.

Dialing Disaster

In a fit of misguided brilliance last November, I reprinted my reference card for the AR-15 adopting the method of logging the come ups from the 200 yard HOME point instead of listing incremental come ups from the last stage. Naturally I completely misread the sheet for my first major match of the year and told the gun to put the hole in the upper quadrant of the 5 ring exactly 3 MOA up from the X because that's what was already on the gun from the 300 stage. It obliged me faithfully three days in a row.

On Friday I spent the first 10 shots getting back into the groove and did not begin to shoot into the sweet spot until around round 7. Failing to take the time to count down clicks for the notebook at the end of the day where I would have figured it out, on Saturday I did the same thing again and paid the price in points at the State Champs. I fooled myself into rationalizing it was the wind that I was learning to adapt to for the first half of the string; good story given that it was my first time shooting at Coalinga and I'd heard a lot of hype about the wind but now I know that was not the real deal. I was also hot, tired and hungry. I got sloppy when I should have taken the time to use the club match day as the training aid it was meant to be. Dough natt doo dat agyn. I was beginning to win the 600 yard stages last year and the prone practice I did over the winter says I should be improving on that. Bottom line is I sailed four shots into the dufus zone at the Leg match. Ah well, live and learn. There will be a next time.

Other Equipment Notes

I've started using a blinder to cover my left eye. It's very helpful. It's quite the effort to be left handed but shoot right handed and have a left dominant eye but a superior natural focus on the front sight in my right eye. The blinder does relieve strain.

I need a better shooting hat.

It's going to be a hot summer. I ordered one of those evaporation cooling vests and headbands to try out. They are supposed to be worth about 20-25 degrees of relief. It it works that will come in handy for places like Coalinga and Camp Perry.

Going to start reloading magazine length 77's in addition to the 80's to see if that Holliger gun will stop taunting me orbiting just outside the X-ring with the Black Hills 75 Moly's and push them into the inner ring. Besides, BH stopped shipping ammo to civilians because that military SDM ammo order really took them out of the market.

To Geissele or not, that is the question of 2007.

SMLE like a rose ...

2006-11-27T07:18:00.000-08:00

In keeping with my plan to keep tuning my sense of the fundamentals by shooting a variety of rifles, I took my trusty Enfield No.4 Mk1 SMLE to the range last Saturday and got in a few practice rounds with it. Fed it British 1936 Mk VII Cordite ammo. Love them eggs! Shot 2 sighters plus 20 shots slow fire prone at a 100-yard reduced target. That Big 5 Sporting Goods special turned in a 191-3X. I let the core group sit on the right side of the 10 ring so I could see what it looked like. Most of that ammo that was made the same year Jessie Owens won Olympic Gold can go into an inch and a half. The rest of the spread is a combination of my breathing and the age of the powder. Not bad. Those 70 year old cordite sticks hold up pretty well. I did note to add a minute left to the rear sight to center the pattern for the rifle's zero records. Would have done more shooting but was losing light, it started to get chilly, and I wanted to get my Foster's Freeze hot fudge sundae.

Note: Figured out that the trigger goes into the first finger joint with this gun. Good for slow prone anyway. Keep tinkering. One can feel the ball bearing slip as the trigger releases. Bit of a click. That's probably as good as it gets for now. Follow through.

Most of Saturday at the range was administrative. Showed some new BRRC members the ropes on setting up targets for formal practice on the main range. The safety official for the Dec 3rd 3-gun match also came by to do his site inspection and make notes for any final adjustments to the courses of fire for the tournament.

While I was doing my maintenance rounds I found a nice cache of brass to play with my M1A. I want to experiment with Sierra 175gr HPBT's for long range. For some reason I'd run out of boxer primed .308 brass. I'd actually planned to order some brass. Good fortune smiled upon me. Someone had shot about a case of new Federal ammo and left all the once fired brass at the range. When it rains it pours. I mentioned my good fortune to some of the other guys and one of them graciously said he will send me some harder brass once-fired Winchester cases to experiment with. Dunno if these are the commercial Winchester brass or the once fired military machine gun cases with the thicker bottoms. Federal and Remington cases tend to be on the softer side of brass and stretch in semo-autos. That means case separations sooner rather than later. Will see what happens when I test the M1A. If it looks good the right thing to do is buy a case lot of Lapua's and shoot those forever.

Perfection is only a breath away ...

2006-11-20T08:48:00.000-08:00

Took the re-stocked M-1 Garand to the range yesterday. The gun does indeed like being in it's new wood. Fired about 30 rounds and got four clusters of hits once the gun was sighted in. The best group was a sequence of four rounds that all went into the upper quadrant of the X ring at 100 yards fired from prone. This confirms that the gun has probably improved from the 10-ring cannon it was in it's old stock to one capable of producing higher X counts at matches. The X's don't really matter. The tighter group is what matters because that generates another 1/2 to 3/4 MOA of leeway for wind and elevation errors without going outside the 10 ring. That's the true reason for woking on tightening the gun up.

Now a note about four clusters. There should have been two clusters because I was only experimenting with two prone holding variations. When contact lenses dry you get a double vision effect when looking at small objects like bullseyes 100-yards away. For awhile I was alternately centering up on the two images and getting two clusters about 4 clicks apart vertically. Aside from making sure to re-wet the contacts before it's my turn to fire, there's a trick to remember to control this optical effect. The best thing to do seems to be to take advantage of breathing as the final elevation control. Take a deeper breath in. This drops the nose of the gun well below the bull so one can look at the bull image without interference from the front sight. Then by letting air out slowly it's possible to walk the sight back into the sight picture hold image for the same optical target each time. It works. Need to make it second nature instead of rediscovering it mid string every time.

I've been doing the breath walk with my match tuned AR-15 with good effect for 600-yard prone stages. The "as-issued" M-1 Garand seems to require about double the eye muscle concentration versus the AR-15 to produce the same aiming point consistency. Makes perfect sense. The AR has a Bob Jones helper lens in the rear aperture and the M-1 does not. That change is worth about double the eye strain energy to focus on the front sight.

And just for the record so I don't forget. The M-1 Garand liked a lower prone position than the one I had developed for AR-15. Something more akin to the being on one's side with the arm further outstrethed as in the classic photos of the genre. Part of this is because the 100-yard targets are higher off the ground at BRRC and the roll enables the gun to come up higher. Every gun, target, ground situation still needs to be built specific to the circumstances. The best indicator for optimizing seems to be to wiggle to locate the combination that gives you good head position. But the gun also seems to be more settled in these lower positions because they consume less muscle energy. I noticed the AR-15 seemed to like it lower for slow prone as well when I was at Pendleton shooting in dimming light. I feel a rethink of my slow prone position for this stage across the all the rifles I use for competing coming up for 2007.

I continue to be mesmerized by how tiny changes have such dramatic effects on the exercise.

Carefully Fitted Parts

2006-11-18T11:08:00.000-08:00

Tuning "As-Issued" M-1 Garands for competition is a process best compared to tuning a violin. The rules are basically that you must use mil-spec dimension parts, that for the most part none of the components can be National Match (NM) parts and you are limited to carefully fitting those parts. Ultimately that means managing the stack up tolerances of the pieces of the jig saw puzzle.

My 1980's issued DCM M-1 Garand is a good rifle. In 2005, I spent quite a bit of time tuning it. Subtle details. The rear sight aperture was not perfectly centered and it caused my rapid groups to meander as I chased the shadow of the peep hole. I swapped one that had a nice round hole in the middle of the nub and the groups responded accordingly. I also worked over the gas cylinder raceway, the lower band pin and adjusted the front handguard position so there's zero fore and aft movement. The result was a gun that reliably shoots into the 10-ring. That was enough for 2nd place at this year's CMP Western Games.

The pursuit continues. Another round of carefully fitted parts is in order. I got a CMP M-1 Garand stock kit to see if it would be a tighter fit for the gun. I also got some new metal parts for it. I put a new stock ferrule on the nose of the CMP stock and swapped it with the lower stock on the M-1. Looks like good things. The assembly is a close fit. I can feel the action touching the wood without undue pressure all the way around as it seats. The fit between the stock ferrule and the lower band is remarkably improved and the side-to-side play in the upper forearm is almost gone. Overall the swap looks to have eliminated up to 90% of the play that was in the old DCM lower stock. I've elected to stop here and not touch all the careful fitting work I did on the upper half of the gun so it will keep the upper wood furniture. This is about function not cosmetics and I do not fancy taking the gas cylinder off. That would put all the work I did to the upper half back to square one. No way unless there's a demonstrated compelling need.

Hopefully this change will tighten the groups and the tantalizing tease of my shots orbiting just outside the X-ring will come in enough to start increasing the X-count in my groups. We'll see. It takes a year of shooting and observing to really tell if this did any good or if I'm just having another jolly in the garage.

Designing Practical Training Courses

2006-11-17T08:21:00.000-08:00

This week I'm finishing up designing a rifle stage for a 3-gun action tournament. The course of fire itself is simple. My new found friends from U.S. Customs confirmed that my choice of 6-inch targets at 75 to 100 meters is an appropriate training scenario for use with rifles. It'll be fun and I've wanted to get this type of shooting going at BRRC for a couple of years now as a prelude to eventually trying some Infantry Trophy style matches.

What's actually taking more time is aligning the cultural habits of my formal target, police and military training perspective with the expectations of the recreational action pistol shooting community. Their procedures differ from the other parallel universes of shooting. They have not adopted the stringent use of empty chamber incicators (ECI's) yet, these are now ubiquitous in the highpower rifle community. They are still using the "safe container" case/holster approach to cold range management. I actually feel more comfortable with the CMP's "trunk-to-trunk" physical ECI in the chamber even for case rifles policy and am more and more attracted to the concept of weed whacker string "clear barrel" indicators.

Goal Setting

2006-11-13T08:01:00.000-08:00

November 13, 2006

Every once in awhile you need to write down your goals. The ones that make the top out of the myriad of nice to haves. Here are the ones I want to work on for my shooting in 2007.

1. Shooting Clean Rapids. These are my strongest stages that will form the foundation for beginning to move up and win matches. I want to get to the point that my rapid fire stages are consistently cleans. That means perfecting my positions. Sitting will need a more solid position less susceptible to heartbeat. It also means truly knowing my zeros and being totally comfortable with adjusting for light and wind at 200 and 300 yards. That Holliger AR upper is capable of quarter sized groups. That means a goal of shooting high X count cleans is doable. It's up to me to do the rest.

2. Getting Offhand Consistently Above 90%. I'm a reliable 85% to 90% offhand shooter now. It's time to gear shift up. I know I can do it because I've done it. Step one is to examine and rebalance managing the energy in the performance. I can shoot X's. I have good focus on the front sight, the breath control, good isometric geometry for my gun-body dimensions combinations. This is about clearing the way for it all to come together another 10-15% more often than it is now.

I need to practice a dance routine that places muscle rest between each shot. I need to record separate zeroes for Offhand and Sitting to acknowledge that I hold slightly different sight pictures and I need to become confident about those pre-sets. Now that I have 80's for 600, may need to experiment with using 69's instead of 75's at the short ranges. They will exit the gun quicker and every little bit counts for minimizing the error integral. And I need to stop goobering the first shot of the string. That took me out of the runnning for Leg Points on both EIC's last week. The goal is to get the first round deep into the 10-ring every time as if everything was an EIC match and then keep it there. From now on, there are no offhand sighters!

3. Garand/Springfield. I want to be able to translate 1 and 2 to other rifles. I want to shoot cleans with the M-1 Garand and M1903A3 Springfield in particular. The goal here is a little different. The objective is 10 ring cleans using as-issued rifles and CMP issued ammo. Both my guns have good barrels with almost no erosion. The 2007 goal is to earn CMP Gold Achievement Medals in both of these rifles.

4. Long Range. I need a long range rifle. Noodle, noodle, noodle. It'll probably be a heavy barreled M1A because I have promised myself not to take the plunge into Match Rifle until after I earn my NRA Master rating. Maybe I'll win that Palma Rifle. I have one raffle ticket. In the meantime, I need to finish working on my M1917 Enfield. It still needs the Timney trigger installed and I need to load 175gr ammo to get it ready for NRA Medium Range (MR) matches. Goal is to get it all ready and tested by the BRRC "Last Ever" 600-yard Long Range Match, the NRA rules change on Jan 1, 2007. If that fails, shoot it with the AR-15 and 80gr's.

5. Lee-Enfield And finally, I want to master my No.4 Mk1 also to the point that I can shoot consistently good scores with it. I've always had a deep affinity for the SMLE's and I'd like to be as good with it as any other boom stick I take past the Ready Line.

Maintenance Day

2006-11-13T07:35:00.000-08:00

Nov 12, 2006 - Hawthorne

There's something to be said for a day of puttering in the garage. Even more so if one is puttering with rifles. Sunday was maintenance day. Time to pay attention to the little details.

#1 - The AR-15's buttstock is cracked. It's dufus owner dropped it on the concrete floor. Replacement parts have been ordered and is on it's way. I ordered two so I'm ready for the next time I do something stupid.

#2 - I switched out the Turner AWS sling for a Turner leather one on the AR-15. While a good sling, the AWS's peculiarities have been as much thorn as boon this past year. I gave it a full season but like many other people I'm headed back to the familiarity of leather. I will keep the AWS in the ready gear bag just in case I get the silly notion of shooting a match in the pouring rain. You never know.

#3 - The rear sight on my M1903A3 Springfield was not as crisp as it should be at Pendleton. So I took it apart and did some cleaning up. The detents in the knob were not as clearly defined as the previous one on the gun. A few minutes of stoning made that right. The main axis screw was binding at the screw head. It now turns freely. Presto crisp clicks. Mo betta! I am still contemplating whether to drill the peens in the rear sight base and replace it with a new one. From conferring with others at Camp Pendleon it seems like all the Greek Sringfield sight bases are about 7 clicks too far to the right. I'd like to get my rear sight back to the center so there's equal windage adjustment range on both sides. That's a nice to have though. CMP matches are all at 200 yards and it would take a hurricane to blow the bullets more than an inch sideways.

#4 - Citrus cleaner sprays are a gift from heaven for getting the dirt out of wood stocks. All the sweat, dust and grime cleaned off nicely from the Garand and the Springfield. It cleaned up the BRRC club guns too.

"Teach Peace"

2006-11-13T00:31:00.000-08:00

The evening of Nov 10th was special. I got to have dinner with Cath. There aren't really many people in my life who's history with my reaches back 30 years. Cath is one of those special people who knows me from that playful time in college when we were all naive and invincible. Life got much more complex over three decades.

But the greatest reason for my annual trek to Camp Pendleton is stepping out of the grinder of life. And taking Cath out to giggle and be silly for a few hours like the kids we were so long ago is one of my purest pleasures. It's important to recharge your spirit.

Cath's car still has "teach peace" on the bumper. My car is still a post card example of a proper "NRA gun truck." Kate's dining room table is no longer our friendship circle's common ground barring a long detour to Missouri. A French restaurant in downtown Escondido makes for a pretty good substitute. We did confuse the waiter by taking much too long to order because we were giggling too much.

Pendleton - Nov 11, 2006 - Creedmoor Cup Match

2006-11-13T00:23:00.000-08:00

Making It Come Together
The Creedmoor Cup match is when all the hot shots come out. To be able to shoot in the company of the very best is a reward in itself. To be able to count among that crown the smiles, hellos and jokes of friendships is icing on the cake of life. The Creedmoor Cup did not dissapoint.

Nov 11 was the day to bring the week of shooting together. It's an NRA match which means you get two sighter shots at the beginning of each stage, not nearly as daunting as the EIC match. And you compete in divisions based on your NRA classification and the type of gun you are shooting. I'm in the Service Rifle Sharpshooter Class. My objective for the day is to win this division.

Me and my mouse gun enjoying the outdoors.

Offhand Stage - 20 shots for record plus 2 sighters in a time limit of 22 minutes at a range of 200 yards. I use an 80 degree stance with my AR-15. It puts the gun in front of me. The reason is because I have an A1 buttstock on it. My friends ask why don't use the 90 to 100 degree stance and the answer is because the A1 butt of the AR-15 is shorter than the butt of the A2. I made the mistake of not resting the gun on the stool between shots. I got tired towards the end of my string and dropped more 8's than I wanted to. I shall have to practice a change in my routine to lower the fatigue factor in my offhand stage.

Rapid Sitting - 2 sighter then two strings of 10 rounds with each string fired in a time limit of 60 seconds at a range of 200 yards. This is one of my stronger stages and I've learned a few things that will make this even stronger. I'm still getting too much heartbeat effect in my shot pattern. The reason is my feet in position. I need to change to a feet out sitting position to get the gun lower and less vulnerable to heartbeat vertical stringing. My 2007 goal is to improve this stage to the point that I can deliver cleans, that's all rounds scoring 10's or X's.

Note: I need to modify my dope sheets to list different sights pre-sets for Offhand and Sitting. The vertical hold difference is about 1 MOA. That's just the way my eyes perceive the most comfortable way to aim at the target. I lost points on the sitting stage because my sight picture favored the lower half of the bullseye for the first portion of my Offhand stage. Separate pre-sets should help bring the scores up.

Rapid Prone - Move back to 300 yards and shoot two strings of 10 rounds in 70 seconds each plus 2 sighters. Both wind and light begin to become factors at 300 yards. Not so much that it'll take you out of the bull but it will take you to the outside edge of the 10 ring and if you do that you'll leak out a lot more 9's. It works out to a judgement call of about 1/2 to 3/4 MOA. Get one wrong and the pattern is up/down/left/right. Get both wrong and the shots group in to the diagonal quadrants. Get everything right and you print holes dead center. At yeaterday's EIC I was too timid and caught the upper right quadrant. Today I was aggressive and nailed it dead center both strings. It felt good. I think my rapid prone can be improved further by adopting a lower front arm further out position. It's worth exploring. I want to clean the targets at this stage also.

Slow Fire Prone - Move back to 600 yards and shoot 20 rounds plus 2 sighters in 22 minutes. There's everything to be said for underdtanding the physics and theory of shooting when it's late in the day and the sun is going down. Wind becomes less challenging as it dies down but light becomes more challenging as it gets darker. It's important to do things like take advantage of yellow glasses to amplify the contract as the light turns to gray. Today's 600 stage went pretty well I was able to balance out good combinations a couple of times and get some runs of 10's and X's going between wind shifts. Adjusting elevation every 5 shots for the light is a must at dusk. Also it seems better to use a center hold at this time of day to minimize the light down sight down effects of the image bloom.

An the Winner Is ...
Yup it all came together and I won my division today. One more match and I'll probably get my Expert card. Then I can start climbing the ladder all over again.

Pendleton - Nov 10, 2006 - "Leg" Match

2006-11-10T17:24:00.000-08:00

My very first full fledged EIC match. How cool! And I did not do too badly with a 452-2X. That's middle of the pack. I can also see you need to shoot some stellar scores to earn EIC points. This is going to be a chase that will take some work. Onto the notes.

I need to set up two sets of zeros for 200 yards. One for rapid sitting which is a hold into the black sight picture and one for offhand which requires about a minute more of elevation for the sight picture I tend to balance on.

Three lessons today at 300 Rapid. One, light was brighter and I should have brought the elevation down by about 1/2 MOA. Two, I saw the wind and called it correct as 1/2 MOA left but wimped out on moving the know. I was too timid and it cost me. I need to be more aggressive with wind. If I feel it I need to do it! Three, that Holliger barrel can shoot! There was a quarter sized rathole where the core cluster of rounds hit the target. The gun is capable. Anything still wrong is me.

600 Slow Fire went well. Yesterday's zeros in the practice match put me on paper. From then on it was about driving the wend.

Pendleton - Nov 9, 2006 - Creedmoor Practice Match

2006-11-10T05:21:00.000-08:00

Know Your Zeros!
Today was the practice match for the Creedmoor Cup. Tomorrow is another EIC Match but this next one will be a full on AR-15 Service Rifle contest. So we all spent the day shooting a practice match, using our score books to plot shots and sight settings. I confirmed my zeros for 200 and 300 yards with the Black Hills 75gr ammo and got a baseline zero for my 80gr loads at 600 yards. Updated the dope sheet. Cleaned the AR-15. We are ready to have some fun.

Hawthorne - Nov 8, 2006 - Change Over Day

2006-11-09T01:54:00.000-08:00

Back home for the day. Took the car in to have a squeal in the brakes looked at then set to work changing over from M-1/1903's to AR-15's.

Inspected the BRRC M-1 that had gone blunderbuss on Herman. Sure enough the gas cylinder plug has loosened. That explains those big shotgun patters on his target. I cleaned that gun and did a parts tightening on it. It should shoot fine again.

I cleaned my Garand and Springfield and noticed that Greek HXP .30-06 puts a lot of copper fouling in the gun. So much that you can feel the drag in the bore. The normal cleaners were not enough. I had to use Sweets 7.62 to work on the fouling.

I also did some maintenance on the IRA webservers and best of all picked up Rachel from school and we went to get an afternoon snack together. Got the Tahoe back from the shop with the squeal diagnosed and repaired. Headed back to Oceanside.

Pendleton - Nov 7, 2006 - Garand EIC Match

2006-11-09T01:16:00.000-08:00

I finally got to shoot my first "Excellence In Competition" match. I missed last year's Western Games EIC and the one in Phoenix in the spring got rained out. I did not win any Leg points. That would have been very lucky indeed. What I did was learn many new things.

First, it takes shooting scores equivalent to "NRA Expert" or higher to win Leg points. Second, you can make up to one error and still get stand a chance to win Leg points. You won't be match winner but you can still make the cut. That's valuable information I did not have about EIC's.

I repeated my slow prone and rapid prone scores from yesterday and was positioned to try to score as high as 380. Then I made two errors and dealt with a wind conditions change in this match. All of the problems were related to shooting procedures I do not normally do.

Looking good. The day starts with good solid work in the slow and rapid prone stages. That downward slope is real. Some of the firing points at Wilcox are like foxholes.

Error one was in the rapid sitting stage. I built an excellent position for the M-1 Garand, stood up at the "stand" command, then dropped back down into my AR-15 sitting position. I realized it after sailing four shots well outside the black before my brain caught up and asked me why I had my feet in the wrong position. Eleven points evaporated. After correcting the error, the remaining shots went into the core of the bullseye. So the lessons here are (1) a proper position does work and he position differs depending on the gun, target and firing point. (2) when assuming any position you have to think it through instead of going into auto pilot when the targets appear. This is a very good argument to shoot different types of rifles at practice matches and prevent autp pilot myopia.

Caught in the act doing the half and half. Feet tucked in and arms stuck out beyond the knees. Nothing is connected. Notice the gun angling up at the sky and the unbalanced head position pushing down to get the gun up. Where's them ducks?

Error two was just plain silly. I do this every year at Wilcox with my M-1 when the wind starts to come up in the offhand stage. I start thinking about managing the wind and launch a round off prematurely before my sight picture has settled. It makes for a visible miss and this time was no exception. One shots. 10 points lost. The key is to learn to make the change from calm air to wind shooting better.

The conditions challenge was the wind picking at the end of Relay 4. The last two shots of offhand were in stiffening wind. I got one off well. The last one caught the gust oscillation wrong and I went out on the left side of the bull. The bottom line is I need to shoot at Wilcox more often. There's only one way to get better at wind shooting.

I can do something about these. And if I do I can win EIC's.

Pendleton - Nov 6, 2006 - M-1 Garand Match

2006-11-06T16:14:00.000-08:00

I surprised myself pleasantly today. I shot a good match. Used all five sighter shots to confirm how my M-1 Garand moves versus the SR's at 200-yards on Wilcox Range. It's a blessing to have five shots. You can do some deliberate over corrections to really gauge the movement of the elevation and windage knobs on the gun. The prone stage went very well and I was able to stick to the same dialed in sight picture, much better on my brain cells than the visual adjustment approach for yesterdays 1903A3 Springfield match. Rapid did well also. My M-1 is a good 10 ring gun. Not an X drill but for CMP matches using issued ammo this rifle's beaten zone is plenty good for the task. I made it to the Offhand stage with seven points to spare to earn a CMP Gold Achievement pin. I'd have to do my my job keeping most of the shots in the 9 ring or better. Ten one shot matches. No more sighters. Every round counts. Time to get aggressive.

I know my offhand sight picture shows more black than my prone picture I gave the Garand one click up and off we went. Today each of those shots worked out. My equipment was working, my wobble manageable and my shot calls were dead on. I managed a 281-2X. That's two points into the cut score for a Gold Achievement medal. Yippee! The score ultimately put me in second place overall for the 2006 CMP Western Games M-1 Garand Match. A very good day indeed.

I'm a happy camper. My Springfield Match score from yesterday held up pretty good too. It was enough to stay in the top ten. Gonna have to keep learning more about that gun.

Pendleton - Nov 5, 2006 - Springfield Match

2006-11-05T22:01:00.000-08:00

The M1903A3 Springfield rifle is a fascinating gun. Mine is a Greek return obtained from the CMP in 2005. It is an accurate bolt gun. The sights are aperture and post but the adjustments are cruder than the later M-1 Garands, M-14's and current M-16A2. M1903A3 elevation stops are in 4 MOA increments and windage about 1.5 minutes per click. The front sight blade is also about 1/2 the width of a typical current generation U.S. military rifle font sight, even thinner than a match front blade. This means you can only use the mechanism to get close and then you have to start playing with managing your sight picture to hold just the right spot to get 10's and X's. And that's what makes this gun so fascinating. The final element in the game is mental imaging.

I had a great time shooting the Springfield Match today. This was my second time using this rifle in competition and I remembered to move my head out of the way of the bolt. The first time I shot a rapid fire string with the M1903A3 I cut myself four times. The combined length of the bolt plus the cocking piece on the end means that a good disciplined stock weld you learn to do with a semi-automatic rifle gets you nice crescent shaped cuts.

See the CMP Western 2006 Springfield Match Results

As of Sunday evening I was 4th overall in the this year's Springfield competition. Another round of competitors will shoot the match on Monday and their scores will be mingled with the Sunday results. Not bad for the gun's second time competing.

Monday will be my turn to fire the M-1 Garand match and my score from that will co-mingle with Sundays Garand shooters. Final practice this evening.

***

Because I took the GSM Master Instructor Course, I got to shoot the First Relay this year. That means you get to stay on the line all day as a coach instead of going to the pits. It's considered a prestegious slot and you do get to shoot in the morning before the wind comes up at Wilcox Range at Camp Pendleton. But you also work all day coaching with no break until the end of the match. The reality is I think taking a turn in the target pits is better. You can relax, eat and exchange stories in the pits. No time to do that when coaching. But if you have a bunch of new shooters on your firing point and you enjoy teaching, which I do, it's a very rewarding way to spend the day. Bright smiles from fellow humans are the true treasures of life.

Pendleton - Nov 4, 2006 - Day Two

2006-11-04T17:45:00.000-08:00

We completed the CMP M-1 Garand Master Instructor Course today. We practiced how to teach what we had learned then used our training to use supporting the CMP Western Games clinic. And we all got an extra t-shirt. Pretty cool.

CMP Garand-Springfield-Military Rifle Master Instructor Course Class of November 3-4, 2006 gathers for a group photo in the 1st Marine Division compound at Camp Pendleton.

Pendleton - Nov 3, 2006 - Day One

2006-11-04T05:48:00.000-08:00

I spent nine hours in class on Mov 3, 2006 and enjoyed every minute of it. The day was spent at the U.S. Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton, CA for the classroom postion of the Civilian Marksmanship Programs's M-1 Garand Master Instructor Course. It was taught by Director Gary Anderson and I have to say I am filled with respect from watching him deliver the material. Many years a go the first book I read on Position Rifle Shooting and the the mental discipline of doing it well featured pictures of a much younger Gary Anderson, a man who won two Olympic Gold mdeals and seven World Championships, the most ever by any American in International competition. That book shaped the way I thought of target competition. And yesterday, I saw that book come to life.

There are some people who's experience and perspective about how to balance the teaching of a subject must be witnessed to be appreciated. People who have a reason for every choice they have made in selecting what to say when teaching a class are impressive enough. To witness someone who can also artciulate the tradeoffs and logic of why a choice is right for a situation and how to evaluate the broader range of possibilities that might be the right answer under other circumstances is to truly learn from a zen master.

I basked in good things and saw once again the importance of not being limited by the prejudgements and false comforts that once so easily creates for oneself not just in shooting technique. This was definitely a worthwhile day.

"You can ask because I love you."

2006-11-03T21:16:00.000-08:00

Today's Thought: I love the romance that life delivers just when you've convinced yourself it probably won't. And it never ceases to amaze me how Leslie can make my life feel so complete.

Raising the bar on SEC Filings coverage ...

2006-11-01T11:02:00.000-08:00

The servers at Institutional Risk Analytics take a boatload of traffic ever since we put up free searchable SEC filings catalogs. I wasn't satisfied with publicly traded company only EDGAR services so I just went ahead and cataloged all SEC Registrants and put them online. Sometimes you just have to start showing that it can be done.

CMP Western Games and Creedmoor Cup

2006-10-30T14:22:00.000-08:00

My friends from UCLA call them my Dick Cheney getaways. I started target shooting when I was 9 years old and have enjoyed the sport ever since. Next week is my big getaway of the year. A ten day tournament at Camp Pendleton shooting M-1 Garands, M1903A3 Springfields and the AR-15. Hundreds of the best shooters from the US Western States will be there and I look forward to basking in their good company.

Halloween

2006-10-27T11:38:00.000-07:00

Blood Thirsty Nun weds Tim the Enchanter. Chaos ensues.
My house has turned into Hogwarts. I have bats above my head and skeletons all around me. Black and orange delight the eye. I watched my darling wife cutting the tops off plastic roses to arrange them around a skull on a dish for the coffee table. My very own Morticia Addams with beautiful big green eyes. The kids will be bringing their friends this weekend. A sleepover with dementors hanging in the air for 10 year olds. Then a costume party for a house full of 17 year olds. I like Halloween.