Range Trip: Focused Practice With The IWI Masada

Aside from the fun of shooting the Romanian Tokarev, I wanted to get some more practice in with the Masada.

First, I started with some 5x5 drills as I wanted to get my time down.

After a warm up of twenty rounds at the A box of a USPSA target, I started with a few 5x5 drills, setting the timer to random start with a par time of 5 seconds.

Drawing from concealment at the 5x5 targets 5 yards away, I managed to keep the hits in the circle with the following times:

First set of Five 5x5 Targets:
4.09
4.08
4.41
4.02
4.09

Second set of Five 5x5 Targets:
4.00
4.07
3.81
3.91
4.10

Much, much, better than the 4.71 when I first tried the drill, and I was deliberately trying to push it faster, not to mention less self-imposed stress as no one was watching to see if I messed up.

Now to see if I can keep it that low or better with friends watching. I'm getting better on the draw which is what is taking the most time - get the shirt out of the way, a good grip on the gun and getting the dot onto the target, the rest is easy(-ish). Still, with more practice I figure I can get faster while maintaining hits.

Then on to timed single shot draws from concealment.

I did 25 single round shots timed with the timer going off randomly onto a USPSA target, trying to keep it to A zone hits only. Times varied from a low of 1.23 with a C-zone hit and a qualifying low of 1.24 with an acceptable A-zone hit, up to 1.64 with an A zone hit for a high time on the drill. Average time for all 25 was 1.37. I'm going to do some regular dryfire practice to see if I can get better at this.

Then on to the 15 round Sentinel Concepts "Warm-Up Drill".

For a warm-up it's a tad challenging and a good drill to shoot.

No problem with getting good hits at 25, 15 and 10 yards on time as specified. Lots of problems at 7 yards in getting 3 rounds from the holster from concealment into the target box in 3 seconds. Typically just over the limit of 3 seconds and just couldn't seem to get the time down. I certainly need more practice. The three yard drills were fine typically, but I could tell I was getting tired and slowing down as the session wore on and started getting slower with the draw from concealment.

Overall, it was a good practice session and pointed out areas I need to work on. Mainly it's the draw and on occasionally finding the dot. I think a lot more dry fire and then repetitions of the drill is in store to fix that.

That's 200 more rounds through the Masada with zero failures.