November 2009 Archives

Tried out my new 9mm practice load.

Bullet: Precision Delta 9mm 115 grain FMJ
Powder: 6.8 grains HS6
Primer: Winchester Small Pistol
Brass: Mixed
COL: 1.140"

The goal was to get something that runs a little closer to my self-defense load: Speer 9mm +P 124 grain Gold Dot.

I mostly use the Hornady 7th Edition reloading manual, but I didn't like the load they had for 9mm/115gr/HS6. So I began digging and found a much hotter load in Speer #11 (the powder charge was so much higher that I thought it might be a misprint).

I ended up arriving at a number just under Hodgdon's max load of 7.0 grains as a starting point.

Anyway, on to the data analysis ...

My load (feet per second)

Avg	1141.142857
Std Dev	40.03583051

Speer 9mm +P 124 grain Gold Dot

Avg	1203.2
Std Dev	31.22819239

S&B 9mm 115 grain FMJ

Avg	1130
Std Dev	38.0985564

The interesting thing to me is how much snappier the Gold Dots feel despite only being 60 fps faster on average. I guess that extra 9 grains of bullet and faster powder really makes a difference.

I didn't recover much brass due to shooting in the weeds, but it looks fine. I'm going to keep working up until I can get closer to that 1200 average.

Update

Since I wrote this, I have worked up to 7.1 grains of HS6, and it feels about right. I have not had a chance to chrono it yet, but I think it will be somewhere just shy of the 1200 fps average. This is a load over Hodgdon's listed maximum of 7.0 grains with a 115 grain Gold Dot hollow-point bullet, but their load is still 5,600 CUP under the SAAMI max of 35,000 CUP, so I feel comfortable with that.

7.1 grains is a great load for 9mm, and it burns so much cleaner than Hornady's loads. It seems like HS6 is a really dirty powder until you get the pressure where it needs to be. I wanted the recoil to be a fairly close approximation of a carry load, but it's still not too bad. It's firm, but not snappy.

I think next year I'm going to have to request a Turducken.

I've got a nice collection of welts from KR Training's AT-5: Force on Force Clinic.

The class uses Airsoft replica guns which fire a small plastic pellet at fairly low velocity compared to an actual pistol, but they have enough "oomp" to hurt. They leave a nice bloody blister and welt where you get hit. (I should have worn something heavier like most of the class did.)

The first scenario I did involved a simulated gas station. I got out to pay, walked up to the register and a guy comes in and yells "EVERYBODY DOWN" with a gun drawn. I drew and got some marginal hits to his gut, but only took one shot to the upper arm in return before he went back out the door. I'd give it a "C" grade.

There was another scenario where you're walking through an area with a lot of simulated cover and have to get to the "exit". Everyone had a different scenario, some harder than others. I managed to use the cover and avoid the confrontation, which involved two guys arguing over something. I'd give it a "B+" because I couldn't find the exit, but didn't get killed.

The third scenario was done at night. You're leaving a simulated store, and some guy comes up to you and starts engaging you in conversation. I kept walking and trying to keep my distance, and he finally left. In the situation you already have a flashlight out so I scanned up ahead and found another guy with a gun. Once I lit him up he used his flashlight as well. I dropped the stuff I was carrying, took a big step, drew and shot. I managed to get two good hits to the vitals and not get shot in the process, so I'd give that an "A".

Besides that there were a number of drills against other class members. They were very informative, but painful at times. I think I got hit on the hands at least a dozen times, on the chest about as much, arms, legs, neck, and even took two to the top of my head which really frickin' hurt.

Some of what I learned:

It's a lot easier to hit moving people than you might think. In one drill I was shooting "gangsta" style with gun held horizontally in my right hand and just nailing my opponent in the face repeatedly. (Which is actually the least painful place to get hit thanks to the mask.)

Cover is your friend.

When shots are coming your way it's very hard to focus on getting a sight picture, but also at the distances in the class, I still did ok without using the sights for every shot.

It's hard to get good shots with a light shined in your eyes.

Getting of the X is important, but you're still going to get hit. Hopefully if it ever happens in real life you won't be getting attacked by some of the marksman in our class, as everyone was pretty good. Related to that, don't stop if you get hit. Keep fighting, going for cover, etc. You ain't dead till you're dead.

Roughly 80% of the shots I took probably weren't immediately life threatening. It's hard to say for sure of course, but only 3 of the chest shots were in the heart/lung area. The head shots that I took were mostly during some drills where the bad guy pretty much just has to stand there and shoot 1 shot per second. It's easier being the bad guy in that situation. When things got heated I don't think I got shot in the head again.

Wear more clothing next time. Leather jackets seemed to work pretty well.

Mas Ayoob brings us the tail of Andy Brown, who stopped an "active shooter" at an Air Force base in 1994. I had never even heard of this case before, and Andy's account of the shooting and particularly the aftermath is both helpful and sad.

The podcast is long, but well worth listening to, even for civilian concealed carry holders.

Thank you, veterans.

(Completely superfluous factoid, as I was writing this "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" by Johnny Cash came up on iTunes.)

I opened a support request over a month ago with a very large software company about a problem I was having getting one of their features to work.

The support rep was unable to get the feature to work on our server.

After weeks of really ineffectual support (I can google things by myself), I pressed for a workaround from them and was given one, but when I asked if a bug had been opened against the feature I was told no because "it works, it just fails in some cases."

Me: "You're kidding, right?"

Him: "No, it works unless you have some custom objects."

Me: "Well, shouldn't it at least identify these problem cases and handle them gracefully?"

Him: "I'll talk to the dev team and see what they say."

I hope they smack him upside the head.

I had been wanting to try out some of the "practical" shooting sports. It just so happens that ALSPPC shoots out at the range near my house now, so I decided to shoot their match this weekend.

I was really in full bore adrenalin dump mode right before the start of the first stage. I could feel my heart pounding. Fun stuff.

IPSC scoring is kind of foreign to me. You can shoot everything perfectly and still lose to someone who shoots less accurately but faster. This kind of goes against my self-defense training and I decided to just concentrate on making good hits and forget the scoring.

My actual shooting was good on some stuff, bad on others. The steel gave me the most challenges, and I love shooting steel. So I'm not sure what was up with that.

My gun, my favorite gun, my Wilson Combat CQB gave me all kinds of fits. Very frustrating, since it has run like a clock for about 2,000 rounds or more. I made the mistake of using some ammo that I had never ran in it before. The ammo was Winchester White Box 230 grain FMJ, which is not in Wilson's recommended list, but it's also not in their NOT recommended list.

I kind of expected it because it failed my home ammo test. (My home ammo test consists of loading up a full magazine and hand cycling every round.) The last round would be flopping around in the chamber and the slide would lock back. So why did I shoot it anyway? I'm not sure, I guess I just wanted to shoot it up, but sure enough I had the 8th round flopping scenario happen 4-5 times at the match.

It also is undercharged, in my opinion, and my CQB really doesn't like undercharged ammo. The brass comes out blacked on the outside (usually just one side) because the brass hasn't expanded enough to seal the chamber, and all that crap ends up making the chamber sticky.



Once that happens the cases get hard to extract and the occasional failure to return to battery happens. The chamber was so sticky that I damned near couldn't get out the round I chambered before leaving the range when I cleaned the gun this morning. That sucker was stuck in there.

I had something weird happen the other day.

I went to unholster my Hi-Power to put it up for the night, and I could not get the damned thing out!

After checking to make sure the safety was still on, I repeatedly yanked on it pretty damned hard before finally pulling the gun, holster and all off. All that took at least a minute.

Had I needed it, I'd have been dead for sure!

Part of the kydex shell which rests against the trigger guard and keeps the guns from moving around had actually gotten inside the trigger guard.

The leather has softened up a lot since carrying it pretty much every day for a month, and then we went out for a big dinner that night and I loosened up my belt when we got home. Without the belt pressure the holster was too loose.

So, lesson learned. IWB holsters need more frequent monitoring and adjustment, and don't eat so much.