Dry Fire: Chasing The Beep

Since I was able to draw and hit the target at 7 yards in 1.17 seconds -- once, just once -- that means it is possible for me to do it.

So, I have decided that that is my current shooting skills challenge: A consistent hit on a 7-yard A zone in 1.17 seconds or less from concealment. 

This will not be easy, at least not for me, hence a proper challenge.

So today, I set the timer for a part time of 1.5 seconds in an effort to start getting my draw time more consistently lower.

After clearing the room of ammo, which is easy as ammo is never stored in that room, I then triple checked the pistol was clear, holstered up and began to practice.

Spent 25 minutes doing draws on an A-Zone at 7 yards away, trying to make sure I had a good sight picture onn the target and touching the trigger before the second beep.

Sometimes it worked, sometimes I rushed and did not have a good sight picture.

Stopped after getting it down to a consistent draw under 1.5 ending with a the dot right on the target and finger touching the trigger.

Next, I'm going to start chasing the 1.4. 

A decent bit of practice, and a step on the way towards the 1.17. 

Deterring Dry-Fire Disasters

Had a call from a client this morning.

A good, solid, experienced shooter.  Lots of trigger time and dry-fire time.

He had been dry-firing at home in his basement and had put his pistol down on his table.

He picked up the pistol to shoot it again, aimed at his target, squeezed the trigger and .  .  .

                                     BANG!!!!!!

The incident was described to me as time standing still, he could hear the 'tink' of the brass that ejected hitting his table, he saw the dust fall from the ceiling and only then had a nice ringing in his ears.

His immediate reaction was WTF!?!?!

He had picked up his carry gun he had taken off and put on the table and which was identical to the gun he had been dry firing, rather than the gun he was dry-firing. 

Ooops.

Luckily, he still had the gun pointed in a safe direction at a wall when the shot went off.  It went through the drywall and then stuck behind it and did not exit anywhere.  Some ringing in the ears and that was the extent of the damage. Apparently no one outside the house heard the shot go off in his basement either.  No physical harm nor legal repercussions for the negligent discharge.

"That'll never happen to me",  you say.

Hopefully not, but you're human, and at some point in the future you are likely to make a mistake.  Whether through complacency, carelessness, or clumsiness, you may very well put a hole where it was neither intended nor desired.

The idea is to mitigate the damage from that future moment of negligence that may hopefully never take place but is just waiting for you to slip up and for the opportunity to happen.

When dry-firing, make sure there is no live ammunition in the room where you are practicing. Unload and clear the gun you are going to dry-fire in another room before you even go to the room you are dry firing in.

Make sure there are no live firearms or ammunition in the room you are dry firing in, as in none.

Before you begin to dry-fire, check again that the firearm is unloaded in chamber and magazine, really look, and check again, and then check one more time.  

Make sure any practice magazines for reloads are similarly completely empty of live rounds, which should all have been left behind in the other room, right?

Make sure when you dry-fire that you still do not point the firearm at anything you do not want to destroy, and you have a solid backstop at all times. This will save you from complete disaster when you've managed to still manage to get a round chambered even after you swore up and down that the gun and magazines were empty.  My client's incident is now having me rethink my habit of aiming toward the TV with targets arrayed in front of it while dry-firing.

If the gun leaves your immediate possession or you've put it down, and it is not in your hand or holster, stop and start your safety checks all over - check it again to make sure it is unloaded and you didn't just pick up its twin, or Murphy came by and did a swap of pistols  - or more likely you did it in a fit of absent-mindedness.

If you practice under the impression that you will have an incident someday and you need to do everything possible to prevent it from happening and causing irreparable damage, you'll be a lot safer than saying "That'll never happen to me."

Home & Personal Improvement: I'll Feel That In The Morning

Today provided plenty of exercise.

A friend has a landscape supply company and we've want to do some landscape improvements, and it's always good to buy from your friends, especially when they're pros.

He even came out to our house to check my estimates of material needed and gave some great advice. Since the grass area is marshy as heck it would take more crushed granite as its going to sink a lot.

Project #1 - extend the parking pad so it actually touches the driveway instead of a 11x9 feet of wasted space, turning it into a 2 car pad at the base of the Driveway of Doom™. This makes it easier for Abby to park. Also then to spread a layer of the crushed granite and cover up the crappy crushed concrete the driveway company used to make it the pad last year.

Project #2 - a lining of rocks along the side of the house to make it look better.

So I got a call today that the crushed granite would be arriving this afternoon, all 4.5 cubic yards of it.

Good thing I was working from home. I hurriedly laid down the weed should over the marshy grass between the existing parking pad and the driveway, and prepared for the arrival of the truck bearing the crushed gravel.

4.5 cubic yards turns out to be a lot of rocks. A lot of rocks. Did I mention a lot of rocks?

Just finished hauling a ton of rocks to the side of the house and spreading the rocks over the existing parking pad and creating the parking pad extension, and now I'm beat. Complete with a wicked blister on the palm of my hand, which is just great.

On the upside,the parking pad looks darn good if I say so myself.

The parking pad used to only extend to the large rock to the left level with the driver's side door in the picture, with a large strip of always wet grass before the driveway edge. Now it meets and looks good. I expect it to still settle some.

The remaining part of the pad is now covered in the crushed granite over the half-assed crushed concrete that had been put there before and looks much more appealing.

Between that and hauling rocks to the side of the house, I'm beat. Unfortunately, I still have a pile of crushed gravel left over and someone has a cunning plan to do something with it starting tomorrow.

Oh yeah, a truckload of mulch arrives this weekend.

On the upside, I've been making a habit of doing dry-fire practice drawing from concealment each night for at least 20 minutes a night. I can feel the improvement already and assuming I keep this up as a regular habit I should see better times at the range. Yes, after walking the dog tonight its down to downstairs to do some dry fire and then pass out.

Good Dry Fire Training Product - Ring's Blue Magazines

Just got an excellent product for more dry fire practice.

They're Rings Blue Gun Training Magazine for the HK P30.

Fit and finish of the blue magazines is quite good. They fit the P30 perfectly and match real magazines in fit and feel, and they insert and drop free just like the functional magazines.

The rear of the blue mag even has the molding of the round count markings in the right spot as well as the zipper weld seen on the actual HK magazines, which is a nice touch.

They're good as using blue mags for dry fire practice reloads reduces wear on the rather expensive HK P30 magazines from hitting the floor.

They're also good as they're yet another safety tool in preventing the risk of a live magazine being inadvertently inserted during dry fire practice. Any steps that reduce the chance of unwanted holes in things is always a good thing. Rings also makes blue magazines for quite a few other pistols and they're well worth looking into.

A Sure(Dry)Fire Course Of Improvement

So I've decided to work on improving my shooting skills.

Since time constraints prevent me from going to the range daily or even weekly, the solution is a dedicated course of dry-firing in addition to range trips whenever I can fit them in.

Two tools are going to help me with this.

The first is this:

Yes, it's the Pocket Pro II timer. It's been great on the range but it's really shining as a dry fire aid. You may think you're fast and smooth, the timer will tell you differently.

With the help a random start setting (or the world's cutest RO pressing the button) and the par time option, you can use it for dry-firing by setting the interval to perform whatever drill you're doing and try to accomplish it within the par time, before the second beep sounds. The timer does the job very well indeed, and it doesn't lie.

Now you shouldn't just dry fire aimlessly, though there's nothing wrong with some un-structured dry-firing from time to time, but you should have a plan for improvement and use it to work on your skills. Dry firing needn't be boring, and it should be challenging.

That's where tool #2 comes in:

It's a book: Champion Shooting: Guaranteed Results in 15 Minutes A Day by Jay Hirshberg and Ben Stoeger, both champion shooters.

This book is awesome - a comprehensive dry firing course that when done for 15 minutes a day will help you improve.

Each page has a different dry-firing routine, and each routine has variations to work on specific skills like drawing, sight-picture, reloads etc. Each variation has suggested beginner, intermediate and advanced times, and they're not easy. On most I can do the task in the intermediate time, but a few I'm stuck at beginner and for a very, very few so far, I can make it in the advanced times.

For example, a dry fire El-Presidente (3 targets, facing up-range on beep turn and two shots each target, reload, two shots each target) has the following suggested times: Beginner 5 seconds, Intermediate 4 seconds, and Advanced 3.5 seconds. That's pretty darn fast.

In four days I've gone through 6 of the exercises, and I'm going through the book in order. While you can pick and choose the drills as you wish, I figure I need improvement in everything so I might as well start from the beginning and make my way through to the end.

We'll see how well a dedicated course of dry firing helps out at the next match.