P-10S at 200 yards today. This went well, finally

[Joe L]

Struggled on Friday, did much better on Sunday, and the accumulated experience paid off on Monday at 200 yards.  With the right grip and wrist rest, and little wind till the last 10 shots, perfect conditions and nearly stable vision, I had a good day with the little plastic 3.5" barrel carry gun. 

I've shot this pistol at 200 yards before, but I think today's results were a little better.  I struggled some with the P-10F after testing for hold over, so no video of it, as I was anxious to see how it would go with the smaller pistol.  And all the cameras and sound gear worked, too! 

Here is a 3 minute video.  Would have been 5 minutes but edited out some of the dead time between shots.  And I stopped the video right after the wind came up and I couldn't handle it.   



Joe

[Tok36]

Nicely done, you are shooting farther than the distance that i have to travel when i go to the market to buy food. 

[Europe]

This is amazing. Most people have problem hitting black while shooting P10S at 25 m. 200 yards is above and beyond.

[Joe L]

Thanks, gentlemen.  I think there are two critical things to learn in order to shoot a pistol well at long distances:  How to move the trigger without moving the gun is the hardest.  For me, this takes fitting my hand to the gun using Sugru and JBWeld to get the trigger reach right for my fingers and to get enough contact area on my one good hand that the other hand isn't so critical.  Single hand bullseye practice and competition is where I learned to move the trigger without moving the gun. 

The second is eyesight and coordination with the release.  A 2 moa dot on a 12" square aim point at 200 yards is tiny.  Release the shot when the dot isn't centered and the group is ruined.  There is no room for error here.  Of the four "bad" shots in the video, I can guarantee you I lost focus a few milliseconds before the gun went off.  To me, this is the hardest skill to learn--holding in the right spot long enough to get the shot off.  It's a mental battle and it becomes more difficult as I get older. 

Every CZ pistol I have is capable of similar performance, but to get this kind of accuracy out of a subcompact is still amazing to me.  I remain in awe of modern designs and manufacturing techniques.  All it takes is a CZ pistol and a few years practice burning up thousands of rounds of always perfect never changing Atlanta Arms ammo at what is normally a rifle range.   

Joe

[M1A4ME]

Many years ago, when I was poor, we used to make our own targets.  We used paper/pages from old Shotgun News catalogs.  We used a Planter's Peanut can with the bottom cut out for the size and a can of bright orange spray paint to put a shot of paint the same size on every piece of paper.

Worked well for us (scoped rifles) out to a couple hundred yards.

I've found with one scope I have that has an illuminated red dot in the center, if I adjust the scope/power setting it will make the red dot appear larger on the target.  It seems to work well for me when I adjust the scope to make the red dot just slightly smaller than the black target circle.  Seems to make it easy to place the red dot on a black circle with just a tiny bit of black border around the red dot.

Not sure any of that helps, but making some targets just the right size might be a help.  Just have to find the right paint and diameter frame to make the right diameter circles.

[Joe L]

Thanks for the ideas, M1A4ME.  Here is why I stick with the B-16C 50 yard bullseye pistol target at 200 yards--wind holds.  Once I got some experience with the wind using the B-8C at 100, I just starting holding for wind, as in 1/2 bullseye right, 1 bullseye right, for the .45 at 100 yards in 20-30 mph winds.  I did a video about that a few months ago .  I don't really want to change the size of the hold point.  Also, black works well for a red pistol sight dot.  With the rifles and black cross hairs, red works well for the aim point.  For me.  But I'm not much of a rifle shooter yet. 

Joe

[Joe L]

I just finished cleaning the P-10F and P-10C pistols.  What I found confirmed my suspicions regarding the P-10F. 

I have been pretty good about cleaning the barrels after shooting them even if I only fired a few rounds.  I have not been very good about cleaning the lock up area in the slide or the breech face.  The P-10S breach face and lock up area was pretty clean since the last time I thoroughly cleaned those areas was just a 100 rounds or so ago.  Not so on the P-10F.  It was gummed up pretty good and required a dental pick to get the crud out of the breech face area, followed by solvent and a brush.  It cleaned up quickly but I had let it go too long. 

In the video above, you notice that I shot 5 rounds in the P-10F to check the holdover point and then went to the P-10S, which performed very well, especially in the vertical spread.  The reason for that was that, when I shot 10 rounds through the P-10F after the sighters, I still had over a foot of vertical and I didn't think it was me.  The barrel lockup wasn't very consistent is my assumption here, due to the crud in the contact areas.  When I saw the vertical spread with the P-10F, I didn't just pull the S out of the bag and blast away at the range.  I added some very thin Hoppe's Black oil to the little bit of crud I could see in the P-10S, hoping to soften it up so that the lock up would be consistent from shot to shot.  I was more concerned over the wind picking up before I got some good results than I was with thoroughly removing what little crud was there.  And it worked, the P-10S had very good vertical spread results the entire time, and I knew that when I released a shot a little high or a little low, that the hole in the paper would match. 

And yes, I might have gotten some acceptable results with the P-10F, too, but, by the time I finished with the P-10S, the wind had come up, so I packed up and went home.  Hindsight is always a little frustrating, sure, but I did the right thing by forging on with the P-10S and bagging the P-10F rather than troubleshooting it at the range and missing the calm conditions.  The crud I saw today was pretty packed and dry, so the oil may not have helped much.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

Joe 

[Tok36]

I had never considered the influence of the cleanliness of a pistol on mechanical accuracy. Interesting stuff.

[M1A4ME]

Joe, don't know about a little oil but I've probably used oil to wash crud out before.

Two things I got from the US Army.  The first we were taught, the second I came up with on my own.

These days, with M1As the internet wisdom that is repeated constantly is to never oil or put anything on the gas piston.  It should be kept dry.

We all know the gas residue sticks to stuff and the gas piston/gas cylinder walls is no different.  Well, we were taught to wipe the gas piston down with the same oily rag we wiped the exterior metal surfaces with.  We were taught to run an oily patch through the gas cylinder, just like we did the barrels after cleaning.  We were taught (never had to do it) that in the even the rifle began to short stroke/fail to chamber the next round we should flip it over upside down and put a two or three drops of RBC into the gas bleed hole in the bottom of the gas cylinder.  That RBC was supposed to loosen up the built up gas residue inside.

A thing I did on my own that worked very well was to grab a qt. can of PLS (a light weapon/lubricating oil) from the arms room when I grabbed an M60 for a week of field training.  Prior to loading it (mostly with those nasty/dirty blanks) I'd open up the feed tray and pour some oil into the action.  Put the rounds on the tray and close the cover.  Much smoother/easier break in.  A bit smoky, some oil would spray out/leak out.  I carried that qt. can in my buttpack/rucksack and every so often when the M60 would begin to sound sluggish (you develop and ear for things that don't sound right) I'd open up that cover and pour more oil in it, load it up and keep going.

The gun ran all week without cleaning and cleaned up so fast and easy at the end of the training week that the armorers would accuse me of not shooting it all week - till I reminded them of firing it when they were there.

Oil will soften up some residue.  It might be light cleaners, sometimes it takes more than one application and some scrubbing, but it will help. 

I'm a compulsive over oiler.  I never find my guns hard to clean up (unless I leaded the barrel).  I seldom require a brush to break stuff loose.  Just wipe it with a cleaning rag and most of it comes off.  Sometimes a small bladed screw driver inside a patch is required to get back in a tight corner/crevice the cleaning rag and my finger tip won't wipe clean.

Any possibility the crud on the big P10 was altering lock up position sometimes?

[Joe L]

Any possibility the crud on the big P10 was altering lock up position sometimes?

Yes, the crud was definitely causing inconsistencies in the P-10F lock up, and adding a little of the light oil would probably have made it possible to lock up more consistently.  That is why I added the oil to the P-10S before shooting it. 

I am guilty of adding some oil to the chamber of the Kadet when it became a little sticky at the range also.  The Hoppe's Black is thinner than any oil I've used before, so I am thinking it is "penetrating" the crud effectively.  Works great on the Kadet rails also. 

Joe

[armoredman]

Nobody else would do the long range testing to find that type of detail, thank you! I agree on lubrication, and the M-14s we had on board ship were also well lubed.

[Joe L]

Nobody else would do the long range testing to find that type of detail, thank you! I agree on lubrication, and the M-14s we had on board ship were also well lubed.

If I get poor results with the centerfire pistols, I know something has changed.  I have almost too much experience with them at long distances now.  I know exactly what to expect when everything, including me, is working correctly.  It bugs me when I can't shoot less than 6" at 100 yards with any of my red dot equipped CZ pistols, for example. 

The .22 rifle is so dependent on ammo quality that I am never totally sure what is going on on any given range day.  "Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn't"  is tough for me to accept some times! 

Which reminds me.  I need to shoot a few rounds through the 97B"E" this week from the new wrist rest.   Just to make sure it all works together.  At 100 yards.  That's the ticket.

Joe       

[Whereisit]

That is insane man.. Some good shooting! I just got me a p10c optics ready a few days ago and shot it for the first time today.. I was happy to hit the target at 10yards! Lol.. Definitely a good shooter. Put almost 500 rounds through it today. 300 of them were back to back magazines. No cooling off. Took it all in.. Not one hiccup. It will be replacing my 43x here soon.