Second live fire practice (April 29)
Second trip to Elite Shooting Sports in Manassas, VA. Fired about 350 rounds total -- 150 9mm and 100 .22 LR with my Kadet kit. Did not use my holster, although the range allows it, but I did use my mag pouch so I could practice reloads. For most of the drills, I loaded the mags with only 5, 6, or 9 rounds, depending on the drill, to allow for more reload work.
Started with the triggerstripe drill that I had to abort last time out due to loose overtravel screw. Working left to right, started with five slow shots (1/second), then 2 shots/second, then did five-shot string of 3 shots/second. Did OK, all of the shots were on the paper, most were in the stripe, but not very good grouping at just 5 yards.
04282016_vert_triggerstripe by
baldrage, on Flickr
Repeated with a horizontal triggerstripe drill, pretty much same results:
04282016_Horiz_trifferstripe by
baldrage, on Flickr
Ran the 5X5 drill again, learned my lesson from last time and spread the shots around two targets, so I could better judge my performance. Did OK, missed cleaning the target by one flyer, with two rounds just touching the outside edge of the target circles. Think I will keep this at 5 yards, but work on increasing my shot tempo the next time out.
04282016_5X5_1 by
baldrage, on Flickr
04282016_5X5_2 by
baldrage, on Flickr
Next I moved on to a drill I made up that I call "around the clock." Target at 7 yards. Starting from upper left, fired one shot at each target, working my way around clockwise, then ended by double-tapping the target in the center. Thought this would be a good way to practice transitioning from target to target. Firing at about one round/second, including transition time. Did OK for my first attempt at this drill, most shots were within the squares, with only a few flyers.
04282016_aroundtheclock_2 by
baldrage, on Flickr
At this point, I had burned through all of my 9mm ammo, so put on the Kadet and switched over to .22. I know this is not a good way to practice recoil management, but it allows me to work on sight, grip, weapon handling, etc, while saving some cash on ammo.
I stayed with the "around the clock drill" at 7 yds. Since it was only .22 with no recoil from the Shadow, I picked up the pace, 2 shots/second, and all targets were double taps. Pretty good accuracy and grouping. Interesting that lower left target showed the most spread, guessing that since I am a righty, it threw off my site alignment when I transitioned to a target on the lower left.
04282016_aroundtheclock_1 by
baldrage, on Flickr
Last drill, and most fun, was a failure or "mozambique" drill at 7 yards with the Kadet. I read a lot of Todd Green's advice on the pistol-training.com forums, and following his advice to "aim small, miss small," I thought I would make this a bit harder by putting a 3x5 sticky on the chest, and a 2X2 sticky on the head. The pink and yellow really stood out on the black silhouette and made it very easy to focus on the sights, not the target. All shots taken from a low ready. After a couple of mags, this was getting too easy, so I thought I would test out the range's automated target functions, and did my first ever edge/face drill. Kept the target at 7 yards, had a 5 second delay, then target facing for 3 seconds, while I tried to hit the 2 body/1 head trifecta from low ready position. This was a lot of fun! Did pretty well too, even starting from low ready, although I have to keep my ego in check so this was .22 and no recoil.
04282016_mozambique by
baldrage, on Flickr
Closing thoughts:
1) Edge/facing mozambique drill was fun -- I definitely plan to incorporate the edge/face timing into some other drills. Will try it with 9mm next time out.
2) Going to the range by yourself and focusing intently on drills really eats through the ammo quickly! On most of my previous "plinking" trips, I would split the range lane with a buddy, and 100 rounds was more than adequate for an hour. I just bought 1,000 rounds of Blazer Brass from SG Ammo, but at this rate, that's not going to last me long. I will have to get some cheap russian steel-cased ammo and see how it runs through my Shadow so I can save some money on ammo.
3) Did a good job focusing on having a consistent grip, but I did not "squeeze the oil out of the gun" the way I should in order to shoot faster than 2 rounds/second. Have to really work on this during my next couple of dry-fire drills.
4) Have to invest in getting one of the uplula .22 mag loaders modified for the Kadet. After going through 100 rounds of .22 in about 15 minutes, my thumbs are aching! Could also use an additional magazine for the Kadet.
5) Now that I've tried out various drills, need to settle into a detailed plan for the next trip to the range, with number of shots for each drill planned out and written down in advance, so I can benchmark and track progress.
