Baselines

I finally have a long enough stretch of schedule, at least the rest of 2022 if not longer, so now’s the time to dedicate to exploring the Red Dot Pistol (RDS). It’s a bit of work to switch from iron sights to the RDS, but with my 100 Day Challenge going on, I have the means to work on it. I don’t expect proficiency  overnight; in fact, accepting it may take me a year is a load off because now I can just focus on the work, the process, and knowing the result will come (thank you, Jim Wendler).

Since TacCon22 ended, I’ve been doing dry work. It’s mostly been focused around simply looking at the sight picture. The dot-circle red reticle is a different sight picture for my brain to process – it’s novel, and I need to remove that novelty. I also need to change where my eyes focus: from front sight to target; as well, I don’t need to close one eye any more. Consequently, most of the dry work hasn’t been any sort of skills or movement, merely acclimation. I’m still not acclimated to it, but it’s no longer truly novel. And so, it’s time to do some exploration in life fire.

April 15, 2022 I went to the A-Zone Range (KR Training’s home). I took my gun, which is Sig P365-based. I’ve been carrying, working, and shot the TacCon22 match with a P365-based gun: P365 slide and factory irons, curved trigger, Wilson Combat XL grip module. Why this? I prefer the XL length, and it was the only solution I had with irons; buying an XL slide JUST for irons didn’t make financial sense. I do have an XL with a Holosun 507K X2 and a Boresights grip module. I used that for dry work, now I’m swapping the slide/dot onto the WC-grip-curved-trigger 365 assembly. 

For live work, I did the following:

• Warmed up with my irons setup (since it’s what I’m familiar with)
  • Minimum Competency Assessment (v3)
  • The Wizard
  • Three Seconds or Less
  • Rangemaster Core Skills (hit factor scoring)
• Swap to XL slide and dot
• Zero at 10 yards
• Just shoot a bunch
  • Fiddle with sight picture, grip, presentation, trigger, etc you name it. Change reticle.
• Shoot the 4 drills again

Shoot on a shootsteel.com target, which Karl’s been using a lot more lately – it’s a good, target, well-designed, tougher than IPDA/IPSC/Q if you restrict to A & B zones (which I did; Core Skills opened to C zone). Shot about 400 rounds in 2 hours. I will say, my hands felt a little shredded from the WC grip. As expected, performance degraded. Not horrible, but let’s be real. If I shot 119 on Core Skills with the P365-irons and 78 with the dot, I need to be able to consistently pull 120 if the dot hype is to be believed. So, I’ve got work ahead of me.

From how it went down, first thing I need to work on is grip acquisition. I need to do some holster adjusting, and while I love the Enigma I am thinking about going back to a belt holster, at least for a cross-check. But I need to ensure I get the best grip on the gun, because I’m not doing it. And I have to balance this with how the gun needs to conceal since the Holosun adds more things that jut out. So, it’s holster fiddling, to ultimately ensure best grip acquisition. I need to get on the gun and get it out of the holster quickly.

Then I need to work on getting it out of the holster and onto target efficiently, acquiring the dot while doing so.

Then, on pressing the trigger and not messing up the sight picture. Keeping mind of consistently applied grip pressure throughout the firing cycle.

Repeat until I suck less. Improving the above will do wonders.

In related news… as I think about my first “season” of #ItsColdDrillTimeAgain (a small video series I did about cold drills), I thought about fiddling with a little more production. We’ll see where this goes.

Thank you for journeying with me.

Be strong. 🤘