Saturday, July 30, 2016

Good and Bad Day at the Range

Good for my Sweetie…she'd had some trouble on 200 yard plates at her last 3-Gun match, so I asked her is the rifle was holding zero…that's why we were at the range. Just a note…the more you bang your rifle around, the less likely it is to be dead on when you need it.. A few clicks later, she was doing super on 200 yard targets.

I brought out a Glock I just finished building for a SHOOTING GALLERY episode in a couple of weeks. It looks cool, mostly Suarez parts on an FDE frame, with an RMR. I put a target out at 10 yards and shot a group…looked really good. Next group was not a group. I would have SWORN I Lock-tited the RMR! Clearly, I didn't.

Before the chorus of "I told you so" on those evil red dot sights, I'd like to mention I shot the rear sight off a 1911 at the SINGLE STACK CLASSIC some years back and launched at front sight at a big IDPA match. Stupid is as stupid does!

I shifted to my soon-to-be new carry gun G19 rebuild by Freddie Blish and  ROBAR. The G19 gripframe has been cut to G26 dimensions, and it conceals great. Right now it's fitted with an old Leupold DeltaPoint that was my test sight on how long a red dot battery will last. I left it on for more than a year (MUCH more than a year), and when I pulled it out there was the dot. I replaced the battery and have been using it ever since. I'd like to replace it with a DeltaPoint Pro if it fits the same mount holes. Leupold says it does, but we'll see. The ROBAR gun features their signature grip texturing, internals NP-3'ed and a superb trigger. Here's an example of their work from their website:


That gun is right there and a breeze to shoot. I was using a mixture of Wilson Combat match ammo loaded with the Hornady 125-gr HAPs and ARMSCOR ball. Small print issues...Hornady and ARMSCOR are sponsors, BTW and Glock advertises with OUTDOOR CHANNEL but does not sponsor SHOOTING GALLERY.

I put some rounds through my Glock Open gun, which I love but which I still have trouble manipulating with my still-healing wrist working around the frame mounted Aimpoint — it's out of the cast but still in a brace. No issue with the G19 and G26!

One more note…on a previous post I mentioned that I wasn't crazy about Ruger rings, which indeed offer a great solution on attaching a scope directly to the rifle receiver. I had to explain that my dislike was based on availability…30mm Ruger rings can be hard to find, and most of the scopes I'm using are at least 30mm. To wit, I need 1 high 30mm ring and 1 medium 30mm ring to mount my Swaro 3.5-18X 50mm on the 6.5 Creedmore FTW Hawkeye for an SG episode on September. I have 2 mediums and 2 lows. After searching for a bit, I finally ended up calling Ruger and going through their store. Somehow, I NEVER seem to have the right combination of the rings on hand!!!

8 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:41 PM

    It's great to hear that the healin' is commencin'.

    Thanks for the follow-up on the Ruger-ring discussion. If Ruger could just solve the availability issue... Sounds like their store is the place to shop.

    All this talk about 'em has caused me to pull my "77RS" out and go for the 400 yard gong. The "RS" is for rifle sights. For the new guys among us, that's what guns used to come with. I will never buy a gun without a set on it, but that's a pet peeve for arguing on another day.

    Life Member

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  2. Major Matches always cause good guns to go bad.

    2003, at the Shirley Skinner Charity Match in Waco, squadded with Dave Skinner; my 10mm STI EDGE started going south on me toward the end of the match. I reached down and the front sight wobbled when I touched it and the rear sight was hanging by a thread. Literally.

    I walked over to the owner of STI and said: "Dave, is this suppose to do this?" and wobbled the rear sight.

    He snorted, looked disgusted, and said: "No".

    After the match was over, he took my EDGE to the factory in Georgetown and told them 'fix it'. They did, and I got the gun (which had been test-fired with the balance of my Match ammo and zeroed properly) before out plane left at the end of the day.

    I never had to touch the sights again. Gun still runs like a top after all these years and thousands of rounds of 10mm ammo.

    That was the best alibi I ever used. Now I have to invent a new alibi when some teen-ager cleans my clock at an IPSC match.

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  3. Jerry my brother, competition shows us that everything made by man can and will fail. What HAVEN'T we managed to break? Still, breaking a gun in front of the owner and CEO of the company works extremely well!


    Anon…my big issue with the Ruger Frontier Scout I'm building is that it needs BUIS if I'm going to ship it around the world.

    mb

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  4. I shot off the rear site at a match in OKC on Friday. I never thought I'd do that. I should have stayed with my normal M&P and not the CZ SP-01....which is true enough. Especially since I hadn't shot the CZ with any regularity in 3 years... but I shot it because I thought it was lonesome and I wanted too. And I learned something about tritium sights.

    What I did find out is that the indoor low light absolutely ruined my ability to focus (3 years older eyes). After the first round I blacked out the two rear sights and discernment improved but I still had problems picking up the front site.

    So, whoa, I noted something else here. Those sights are tritium...the front sight was hard to pick up in low light despite being internally "lit up". Somewhat like twilight and using your car lights. The lighting was subdued....just about like being in a dimly lit parking lot.

    I'm really pushing these old eyes and methinks the rear laser is going to be my new birthday gift (on the M&P of course).

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  5. Could it be that the tritium in your sight is old? Tritium brightness diminishes with age and if memory serves me you need to replace them after about 10 years (from the date the sight was made).

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  6. Michael,

    It is not always "hard use" that causes sights to fail. I have a Colt 1911 Gov't Model that had the rear sight fall out of the groove in the slide after the gun had been in storage for about 3 years--I was in the military and assigned overseas so I left the gun with my dad while I was in Germany. When I got back to the US my dad and I went out shooting and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't hit anything with the Colt--until I notice the rear sight was sliding back and forth in its groove in the slide. Just as I noticed it, the rear sight came completely out. The Colt went back into its box and remained there for almost 30 years before I bothered to get it fixed. Now it sports new high visibility sights that are a pleasure to use with these old eyes.

    Gary

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  7. Anonymous1:21 PM

    Loctite for an RMR is old school, use Vibra-Tite VC-3.

    It cures rubbery, not brittle.

    https://www.amazon.com/Vibra-TITE-VC-3-Threadmate/dp/B008D6GHY6

    RSR

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