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AaronShoots

Getting Started in Competitive Shooting – Part 1

Part 1 – Skill and Experience

Getting started in competitive shooting can be an intimidating proposition, especially if you don’t have a friend that is already doing it to show you the ropes.  In this multi part blog we’ll walk you through the reasons commonly given when people are reluctant to try out the shooting sports as well as some advice on how to overcome these concerns.

Many people express interest in competitive shooting only to back away when offered a chance to try it out.  We will start by addressing some of the common reasons given by people who want to try out competitive shooting yet don’t take that first step.  There are a variety of reasons given but they typically boil down to two things:

  1. I’m not good enough to compete
  2. I don’t have the equipment necessary to compete

The first one is the most common we hear.  People are worried that they will go out and make a fool of themselves.  They aren’t used to having other people watch them shoot.  It is like stage fright, they don’t want to be embarrassed by a poor performance on the range.

It doesn’t help that they watch videos, like those we post on our Facebook page, of seasoned competitive shooters running through a course at high speed.  A good run by a seasoned competitor is impressive to watch.  To a new shooter, or even a seasoned shooter new to the realm of competition, it looks very intimidating.  One look at a video like that and the thought, “I can’t compete with that!” leads to them looking no further into the idea.  To the uninitiated going to a match with no experience seems like climbing into a race car and going out on track without any experience or training.

While I completely understand that concern I can genuinely tell you that it is unfounded.  Nowhere have I found a less judgmental group of people than in the shooting sports.  They want to see new shooters.  In fact, new shooters are present at nearly every local match so you won’t be alone your first time out.  The veteran guys go out of their way to make new shooters feel welcome.  None of them care if you score well or how you place at the end of the day.  Of far greater importance are a set of concerns for every new shooter that don’t revolve around performance.  When my daughter began shooting competitively at age 10 I told her to concern herself with the following things, in order of importance:

First, shoot safely.  This trumps everything else.  Being unsafe or violating the very strict safety rules that revolve around competitive shooting will get you disqualified from a match, and for good reason.  Accidents are remarkably rare and it is due to the strict adherence to these safety protocols.  It is in everyone’s best interest to keep accidents rare.  The first rule is to shoot safely, if you do that you will be welcome back.  As a new shooter you will be walked through exactly what these rules are and you will shoot last so that you can see everyone else do it first and know exactly what is expected of you before you fire a single shot.

Second, have fun.  This is a distant second to safety, but what’s the point if you don’t have a good time?  Don’t expect to win your first time out, you won’t.  Simply go out with a good attitude and an eye on safety, have fun, and learn.  I was one of the better shooters on my police department the first time I shot competitively.  I assumed I would do well, and I was wrong.  I got my butt kicked, by an accountant!  One of the things I learned that day was how much I still had to learn.  Shooting among seasoned competitors will humble you but it will also help you learn what it is you have to learn and improve on.  Getting into competitive shooting sports has improved my shooting more than anything else, and it has been fun getting there!

Third, shoot accurately.  This is a distant third, but starting out I always recommend an emphasis on accuracy rather than speed.  Competitive shooting, at least the types Team Applied Ballistics is involved with, are always about balancing speed and accuracy.  Speed comes with time, time spent shooting accurately.  Spraying rounds and missing doesn’t win matches or gunfights but it can be reckless to the point of being dangerous, and safety is rule number one.  Shoot accurately first, let speed come with time and practice as you get more comfortable with the mechanics of the shooting sport you choose.

Fourth, forget time.  When you first start shooting competitively your stage plan (how you picture yourself shooting the stage) has a tendency to go right out the window when the buzzer goes off.  Ignore time starting out, focus on learning how to shoot accurately and within the rules of the sport you are engaged in.  Only after you have some practice under your belt should you start worrying about the timer.

I give this advice to any shooter trying competitive shooting sports for the first time.  Nobody cares how well you shoot, they only care that you conduct yourself in a safe manner.

In part 2 of this post we will look at equipment, and how to get started on a budget.

Aaron

Part 2 – Equipment

Throat Erosion

A worn out AR and Throat Erosion

We have a rental AR that was rebuilt in 2014.  After that rebuild it was practically a new gun.  The only parts it retained were the bolt carrier, the lower receiver, and the small parts typically included with a lower parts kit (trigger, hammer, detents, springs, etc).  Since this gun had been at the store long before I got here I don’t know exactly what brand those parts were but the lower receiver was an Essential Arms and it was a 20” A2 fixed carry handle rifle.  It seemed nobody wanted to shoot a fixed carry handle, 20″, fixed stock rifle so we converted it to a 16″ with an adjustable stock.

We replaced the upper with an Anderson Manufacturing Sport upper.  The barrel used was a 16” used DPMS chrome lined 1:9 twist M4 profile barrel I took off one of my personal rifles several years before.  We swapped the fixed stock for an Anderson M4 adjustable stock and the handguard was a custom one made for us with our logo by Unique ARs.  We topped it off with a set of Magpul MBUS sights and we put it back into service.

For the last three years this rifle has been our primary rental rifle chambered in .223/5.56 and it is rented and shot every single week multiple times.  Based on the number of times it is rented, and the average number of rounds fired through it, the round count on this rifle is estimated to be between 100,000 and 120,000 rounds.  That is a substantial amount of ammunition through a rifle by anyone’s standards.

At around 80,000 to 90,000 rounds we had a bolt break.  It broke at the cam pin, a common point of failure for these guns.  We decided to swap the entire bolt carrier group with one from Ballistics Advantage (made by Aero Precision) and it has been running with that bolt carrier group since.

Aside from needing to be cleaned regularly, and needing new gas rings periodically, the gun requires very little maintenance.  Over the last few weeks, however, we have noticed that the rifle regularly gets taken down for service.  It was experiencing failures to extract, to eject, and to feed.  We would clean it thoroughly and find that it would run again, only to go down after a few rental sessions.

I took the gun out and shot it and it ran fine for me, but I noticed that it was cycling hard.  The recoil impulse was off and it was ejecting brass at a short forward angle hard enough that it was actually chewing into the upper receiver a bit at the forward edge of the ejection port.

Once apart we found that the gas block, and gas tube, were both in very good condition.  This was surprising given that the gas block was an aluminum block from Anderson Manufacturing.  We have seen aluminum gas blocks erode terribly and with the round count on this particular gun we expected it to be in rough condition.  It turns out, that concern was unfounded.  We did find that the gas port itself was eroding.  Not horribly, but it was over spec for a carbine length gas system.  This was likely a contributing factor for many of our cycling issues and made sense given what we noticed while shooting it.

The most interesting thing we found was the throat erosion on the barrel itself.  If you aren’t familiar with the term, throat erosion is just the throat of the chamber eroding down the barrel.  This increases the distance the bullet must travel after leaving the brass case before it contacts the lands of the rifling.  When measured next to a new barrel, the throat on this barrel had eroded nearly .500 inches (see pics).  Since this jump to the lands of the rifling should start at around 0.100” (it can vary somewhat due to chamber spec) the throat was approximately 6 times longer than it should have been.

Unfortunately we didn’t test the accuracy of this barrel before taking the gun apart.  It would have been interesting to see how poor it had become.  None of our customers complained about accuracy but since our indoor range is only 25 yards and this particular rifle only had iron sights it isn’t surprising that it went unnoticed.

Needless to say we are replacing the barrel and will be replacing the gas block and gas tube as well (they are cheap and owe us nothing).  We’ll be stripping and re-coating the upper, lower, and handguard as they are getting well worn.  We plan to coat it in the new Cerakote Elite series coating to see how it holds up to hard use.  Once this is done the gun should look and shoot like new and we expect many more years of service.  You gotta love how versatile and robust the AR platform is, and how easy it is to breathe new life into a worn out old rifle.

– Aaron

Welcome to the Applied Ballistics Blog!

For those that don’t know Applied Ballistics, we are an indoor shooting range in Lafayette Indiana.  We are also a gun store, gunsmith, certified Cerakote applicator, a firearms training facility, and a USPSA affiliated range.

This blog was created for a place to share information about the things we learn from putting lots of rounds down range, working on guns, teaching a broad variety of students, and spending an inordinate amount of time around firearms and shooters.  You will see things here related to guns, equipment, training, competition, and just about anything involving firearms or shooting.  I will be writing most of our posts but we may have guest posts from time to time as well.

For a little information about me, I began my professional career as a police officer.  I specialized in firearms, becoming a handgun instructor first and later receiving certifications for rifle and shotgun as well.  I was also certified as an armorer for Sig Sauer, Remington, and Rock River Arms while working as an officer.  I was used as an expert firearms witness in court and developed the recruit firearms training program for my department.  I am also a competitive shooter in the United States Practical Shooters Association, Indiana Multi-Gun, the International Defensive Pistol Association, and the Steel Challenge Shooting Association.  Outside of the police department I also received an NRA Basic Pistol instructor certification as well as a Smith & Wesson armorer certification.

I purchased Applied Ballistics in late 2014 while still working as an officer.  After about 18 months of working what amounted to two full time jobs it became clear that I needed to make a decision between my two career paths.  I’m a gun lover at heart and was getting burnt out with police work so I made my decision, and here I am.

I hope you find these posts interesting and informative.  Feel free to leave comments or to share them on social media.

– Aaron

 

PPQ x 2

Walther PPQ Review

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Those of you that know me know I’m not generally inclined toward polymer framed striker fired guns.  I’m not knocking these guns.  In fact, I recommend them often.  I feel they meet most peoples needs very well in an affordable and convenient package.  They are reliable, they hold ample rounds, they are simple to operate, easy to clean, and they are at a price point nearly anyone can afford.  For these reasons I often steer new shooters to try out a couple and find what fits them before a first gun purchase.

Having said that, I prefer 1911s and 2011s, particularly for competitive shooting.  This is primarily due to my love of a fine trigger and my old fashioned love of the feel (and recoil mitigation) of a heavier gun.  Of course, I love the look of these pistols as well.

My biggest complaint about most striker fired guns is the trigger.  After years of trigger time with 1911s most polymer guns are really disappointing in this area.  So when we received our first Walther PPQ M2 at the store for a rental (pictured above left) I was expecting it to be more of the same.  I was, however, pleasantly surprised with what I found.  The trigger on the Walther still had more take up than I prefer, but once you get past that takeup (it isn’t long by striker fired gun standards) the trigger itself was rather impressive.  It broke cleanly and without much overtravel at 5.5 lbs.  The reset was fantastic for a striker fired gun.  It was short, audible, and tactile.  Exactly what I like in a trigger.

After dry handling it and finding I liked the trigger it piqued my interest so I started looking at it more seriously.  I found that the small grip insert (the Walther has replaceable grip inserts like most polymer framed guns do these days) fit my hand the best.  The slide release on the PPQ is long, meaning this is one of the few guns I can actually manipulate the slide release on using my firing hand thumb.  I don’t have large hands and on a 1911 I can’t even come close.  This actually posed a bit of a problem for me with the Walther, as I’m used to using my support hand thumb to release the slide.  The Walther release was mounted further back, making it hard to use in this way.  This isn’t a criticism of the Walther, it is just a work around I’ve had to develop using another platform that creates an issue for me with this pistol.  The one down side for many shooters, however, is that with an appropriate high grip this long slide release may be prone to causing the slide to go forward on an empty magazine.  Longer thumbs tend to ride on the slide release, holding it down and causing the slide to fail to lock open.  Since my thumbs are short, this is not a problem for me, but it is worth mentioning.

I shot the rental gun early on and was happy with the results.  It shot to point of aim out of the box and shot nice groups.  I shot a few different types of ammo through it, mostly 115gr reman ammo we sell cheap at the store, and it never had any function issues.  I did find that it was harder to shoot quickly than my competition guns, but that is to be expected.  My STI DVC Limited is over a pound heaver, weighing in at 41.8 ozs compared to the PPQ’s 25.2ozs.  The trigger is also 3lbs heavier (5.5lbs for the PPQ vs 2.5lbs for the DVC).

Ultimately I was impressed enough that I decided to pick one up for myself to try in USPSA Production division.  I had never shot production before, as none of the guns I previously competed seriously with fit into the restrictions of that division.  I had considered it in the past but never found a gun I liked enough to give it a try.

I ordered a PPQ M2 with a 5″ barrel (pictured above right).  This wasn’t going to be a carry gun so I had no need to conceal it and the extra sight radius and weight would help with competition.  I wanted the Q5 match but it was impossible to acquire at the time.  Perhaps I will get one later for Carry Optics, but for now I’m using the PPQ.

When the gun arrived I found it to have the same trigger and feel as the 4″ we had as a rental gun.  It also shot well right out of the box and has had zero issues with a variety of ammunition.  I have approximately 2000 rounds through the gun as I write this, but we have well over 10,000 through the rental gun now and so far we haven’t had anything break or any malfunctions that we’ve been made aware of by those renting the gun. While it is still early, I have no negative reports related to durability or function.

On June 3rd at Wildcat Valley Rifle and Pistol Club I shot my first USPSA match with the PPQ.  I used a Double Alpha Academy belt and Racer magazine pouches similar to what I use for other divisions.  I used a Comp-Tac International holster with the drop offset attachment permitted in Production.  Overall I found the gun and rig to handle very well.  I was used to the Comp-Tac holster as I use it for IDPA and had used it in USPSA before upgrading to a DAA holster so it felt familiar and comfortable.

The gun had performed well for me in practice and I had dry handled it enough that the draw and reloads were smooth.  I felt ready when I stepped up for my first stage.  The timer went off, and away I went.  I missed 4 times and my score was terrible…

Through the course of that match I learned quickly that in an actual competition environment I could not run the Walther like I run my STIs.  Double the trigger weight (my STIs are 2.5lb triggers) and more muzzle flip under recoil simply meant I could not run the gun as fast.  By the end of the day I was settling in with the Walther and my scores were competitive.  By the end of the match I finished 4th out of 9 in Production.  Not a bad showing, especially given my difficulty with that first stage.

After that first match I went back to the practice range and worked on my trigger speed with the Walther.  I found a shooting cadence that, while marginally slower than with my STIs, was controllable and accurate.  With more practice and a match under my belt I went out for my second USPSA match on June 25th at Atlanta Conservation Club.  I went into this match with the goal of slowing down and making good hits rather than trying to make a production gun run like a limited or open gun.

It worked.

My first stage the gun performed well.  I posted a solid score and it felt good.  I proceeded to shoot six stages and every one of them felt good, I made good hits, and my time was competitive.  By the end of the day I had gained a great deal of confidence with the PPQ and once the scores were tallied I finished 3rd in Production Division out of 22 shooters.  I was very happy with that.

In conclusion, I’m happy with the PPQ and plan to continue to use it for Production Division.  I will also give it a try in IDPA Stock Service Pistol soon.  The PPQ has been reliable, accurate, and fast for me compared to other striker fired polymer framed guns and I like it.

But it won’t be replacing my 1911s or 2011s any time soon…

– Aaron