As I mentioned previously, I got my XD-9 back so of course I had to go to the range to try it out. Took Oldest Child with me.

The range was rather busy today (one reason I prefer to go on mid-week mornings), so consequently I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do to really try things out. Brought the 10/22 for Oldest, set him up at 25 yards and let him go to town. You can see his results (no, the picture isn’t upside down, I stapled the target upside down since I was in a hurry). Overall, not bad. He’s certainly improving.

One issue we were up against is the scope was loose; actually, the base is loose. So, I’m going to have to fix that. I was having him work on fundamentals: body position, focusing on the crosshairs (since there’s no front sight), good trigger press, and good follow-through. That’s the toughest thing, getting him to follow-through and not go “bangdidihitit?”. As you can see from the grouping, he’s off to the left. This could be a bit of trigger slap (I did work with him a bit on a better trigger press, looking for the “surprise break”), but given how very consistent he was on this and other targets, I’m presently going to chalk it up to the scope being loose and thus off zero. I know it was frustrating for him to not “aim middle of red dot, hit middle of red dot”, but it was a good lesson in learning that it’s more about the grouping than always hitting the middle of the dot (tho yes, that’s important). The wiggly scope gave a good and digestible excuse for today, and this allows to lead into a greater discussion of things like trajectory, zeroing sights, height-over-bore, and so on. Stuff for later. Right now, my main focus is for him to work on the fundamentals, see success, see himself improving, and enjoy what he’s doing. So far, so good. I’m happy with his progress.

As for me, again because the range was rather busy I just set up 2 target stands and put 5 6″ paper plates on each stand. No defensive or other “real” shooting, this was to be nothing more than a basic running of the gun to see how she now is. I set them up at 15 yards, which was good because I need to work on 15-25 yard (i.e. greater than 7 yards) shooting, and with these new sights I knew I could get the accuracy I couldn’t get with the XS Sights (the paper plates would disappear completely behind the big front dot). Plus given the way the range was set up, for Oldest to shoot at 25 yards and for me to be next to him, I had to then shoot at 15 yards… so really, it all worked out.

How did the gun do? Better than me. 🙂 The trigger is really tight, in the good way. I will have to do a lot of dry-fire practice to get used to the trigger. My “muscle memory” wanted to have a normal XD trigger, travelling and feeling like a stock XD trigger does, so things felt odd and I wasn’t shooting as well as I normally do, but that’s to expected. I couldn’t help but be impressed with the trigger; again, it’s so tight, and yes I’d like to try it side-by-side with a good 1911 trigger to compare. Bottom line? I just need a lot of dry-fire with it and get used to it before I expend any more ammo at the range.

The Dawson Sights. You have to realize, while it’s February, the temperature today is in the high-80’s. It’s bright, sunny, I put on sunscreen before going to the range. This is an abnormal day weather-wise, but still a great one. And with all that sunlight, the fiber optic front sight just shined like a beacon. You couldn’t help but see it. Thinking back on it, the fact I couldn’t “see” the rear sight is testimony to a cleaner sight picture. As well, the wider notch (well at least the combination of the front and rear made the rear notch wide) well… everything just lines up. Your eye gets pulled to that front sight, which is what you want to focus on, and there’s nothing else to clutter the sight picture. But the other parts that must be in the sight picture are there and are there only enough for you to do what you need to do with them. The greater “whitespace” on either side of the front post might just be thousandths of an inch wider than stock, but it makes such a difference to my eyes in terms of picking up the sight picture and knowing what it is and thus what may need to be corrected to have an ideal sight picture. It’s hard to explain, but this sight picture feels like the sight picture I want. There’s nothing to distract me, my eyes go where they should go and not where they shouldn’t. And my accuracy is far far better than they were with the XS Sights. Again, I’ll need more dry-fire practice with them, but so far I really like them. 

One thing I want to do is head to the local indoor range to get a better feel for the sights. The indoor range has the targets on a track so it’s very easy to adjust distance from 0 to 100 yards, and to do so without having to get the entire firing line to stop while you dance around with targets. This way I can get a better idea how the sights are zeroed and how they perform at various distances.

All in all, I’m pleased with how the custom work turned out. The gun itself seems good, it’s now just me that needs some work.

In related news, I ordered a SmartCarry and it came in the mail today. Can’t wait to try it out.

Updated: Talking about the day over supper with the family, I remembered a few things:

1. Oldest got to learn about malfunctions! He had at least one stovepipe, 3 duds. 
2. I kept working on that Todd Jarrett “grip 20% harder” technique. Man, that works. But I still have problems with my grip: one I know what to do about, one I don’t. The one I know what to do about is to just get a stronger grip… building those muscles up. The one I don’t know what to do about… it’s getting my left (non-shooting) hand to really hang on. Eventually my right (shooting) hand just works its way out of the left. I have felt that I need to thicken the grip up a bit so my big hands can better fit, leaves a little more “empty space” on the grip so the heel of my left hand can rest more “meat” on the grip (shooting an M&P with the big backstrap was great in this regard). Or maybe it’s just a matter of grip strength. 🙂