Gun School: Tim Herron's Practical Performance Class

This weekend I was near Fort Wayne Indiana for Tim Herron's Practical Performance Class hosted by Condition Red Response.

To say the class is excellent in terms of the detailed instruction and absolute flood of information and analysis you receive to increase and improve your shooting performance is an understatement.

Tim is a USPSA Grand Master and it shows.   To say he is both fast and accurate in shooting is an understatement. 

He also has an excellent teaching demeanor and is able to convey a lot of complex information broken down into understandable parts, as well as a very sharp eye to detect issues with each student's shooting and point out immediate techniques for improvement.

He explained USPSA's often confusing concept of Hit Factor in the simplest way possible - it is simply the number of points you collect per second on a stage.  He also talked about how the classification system worked, and discussed stage planning.

Yes, there was indeed a stage in the class. First time we ran it cold and  I sucked.  We then worked on all the techniques to learn to shoot better and faster as well as identify how to better plan and read a stage, and improve our overall shooting technique with tailored instruction to each student based on what Tim observed as we ran the stage.

In short, I was definitely in the bottom quarter of the sixteen shooters there in terms of ability walking into class.  Wonderfully humbling. This was good as it gave me a lot of room for improvement, and some improvement did indeed occur, not to mention the desire to further improve. 

There were some really exceptionally good shooters attending - some A and B class and many other proficient shooters, all very friendly and willing to exchange information and everyone supported each other during the class.  So, I learned a lot from not just Tim but my fellow classmates as well.  I did improve quite a bit on subsequent stage runs becoming both faster and more accurate both.

Carry Optic Pistols dominated the firearms choices present with SIG 320s being the majority.  We had a few Glocks, some 2011s, one Walther PDP, a Canik, and an Open gun, and some iron sight-only pistols as well. The SIGs ran impressively well and I may just look into one moving forward as they offer some definite advantages over the Glock -- except in the area of magazine cost where Glock has pretty much everyone beat. The experienced USPSA shooters highly recommended the SIG 320 and had lots of good suggestions.

Among many other drills over the two days, we did the rectangle drill, Blake Drill, and a barrel drill.  This specific barrel drill was designed to teach shooting on the move as well as transition flow and it was quite challenging. 

Lots of movement on the second day and my hip was telling me it was getting annoyed.   It certainly didn't help my speed any.

Tim diagnosed an issue with my grip and my shooting improved remarkably from that one small observation and change.

I left the class with a ton of practical drills to use to improve my shooting, and  a much better understanding of how to do better, and of USPSA shooting itself which is really helpful.

I highly recommend Tim's class if you want to learn how to shoot faster and more accurately -- as well as on the move -- whether you participate in an action pistol game or not. There's measurable improvement after spending two days in class alone and he gives you the methodologies to improve further on your own  -- which is the hard part to keep the work up to have the improvements stick.

Practical Performance is a great class with a great teacher.

Range Report: Upgrades Were Successful

Met up with Tosh and took the Glock 19 Gen 5 out to the range that is close to my work.   

The Glock 19 worked as expected with no failures and is rather nice and smooth with the trigger upgrades.

I did discover that one of my much older Glock 19 magazine demonstrated an inability to properly feed the last round in both my and Tosh's Glocks.  Very weird and 100% repeatable failure to feed the last round.  Said magazine is no longer in service.

The 509T on the Glock 19 was dialed in and zeroed.  It was pretty darn close to being zeroed as as it came back from ATEI, and this session just got it perfectly zeroed for me.

I also purchased some stainless steel guide-rods for the Masada pistols and tried one out at the range today.

I bought them from Manticore Arms and was very happy with the service from them. They inadvertently only shipped one to me, and the packing slip said two which I had paid for. I contacted them, and they immediately sent the missing second one out immediately, no fuss, no muss which is indeed great customer service.

The guide rod with its 18 lb spring makes the firearm feel quite a bit more solid when shooting it, and it may even have tightened up the grouping just a tad. I will need to shoot it more to see for sure, but it ran perfectly. 

After some B8 shooting for zeros and groups, we then turned to A-Zones at 7 yards. I shot the A Zones with the new Glock 19.

After three months of not shooting, the rust and lack of practice really shows.  

My average time from the beep to drawing form concealment to hitting the A-Zone was in the 2.20 second range with some lower than that, but some higher.  None were what I would call an acceptable time. Really lost some ground there.  On the upside, of the 15 rounds shot, 14 were hits with one just, just, outside the A Zone. 

Well, the cure for bad performance due to a lack of practice is to do more practice, and to recommence dry-fire practice too.

A good, if short, range trip.  Then back to the office.

LTT's SCD And Glock 19 Upgrades

The SCD arrived from Langdon Tactical and it is as expected - excellent fit and finish as good or perhaps even a touch better finish than the original.

Great service, quick shipping, and it works.  If you carry a Glock, it's a useful addition to you firearm for an added level of awareness while re-holstering your firearm.

I then installed it in my new Gen5 Glock 19, along with an Overwatch Precision TAC Trigger along with an Overwatch Precision NP3 coated Glock Factory Safety Plunger.

Those changes impressively improved the feel from the factory trigger. Still about the same weight it is now a lot smoother, and the flat trigger subjectively feels a lot better.

Note that the Gen 5 Glock is internally rather different from previous Glock generations.

The safety plunger and trigger/trigger housing are the most notable changes from prior generations when you start looking at the internals. The ambidextrous slide release is also a notable change, as is the use of a standard rather than a leaf spring for the slide lock, but I wasn't messing with either of those.

The trigger no longer has an attachment point for the spring at the rear of the trigger bar. Instead, the spring is in the housing and you have to fit one of the legs of the trigger into a lever inside the housing properly to connect it and then swing it into the notch in the housing.  It is actually much easier and quicker than installing a prior generation trigger once you get the hang of it.

But the safety plunger is decidedly more difficult.

No longer a happy round shape that goes in with a simple push, the Gen 5 plunger is now rectangular-ish at the top, and has notches on its post. Most importantly, it now only fits back in one way.  You may think you have it in that one way, but you often find out that you're wrong.

The best way to get it back in is to first sacrifice a chicken, throw some salt over your shoulder, and then while you install it mutter various curses in multiple languages.  At least that worked for me, you may need to step it up and sacrifice a turkey.

Once all that was done, it was all reassembled and then it function tested correctly.

The Glock is now all ready to be taken out to the range.