Continue reading »]]> This is the fifth post in the “flat” series. You might find it useful to check out the previous articles before you dig into this one!

Open division guns add one more rather obvious factor into this whole “flat” equation – the ability to redirect gas from the combustion of the gunpowder to help the gun stay flatter during recoil.

You probably recall from the last article that the movement of the gun in the early phase of recoil directly affects our ability to call shots. Since shot calling is perhaps the most important thing we do as shooters, anything that we can do to make it easier is probably a good thing, as long as we don’t have to make an undesirable tradeoff to get there.

If you watch slow motion video of an open gun in recoil, you’ll notice that they still flip. As compared to a non-Open gun, though, they tend to stay much more stable during the early phase of recoil due to that brief pulse of gas that exits from the compensator and ports just behind the bullet leaving the gun. In some cases, the forces created by the gas are enough to briefly move the gun downward, even.

There’s another effect, too. The use of a compensator also reduces the energy in the slide and barrel combination as they begin to move rearward. Depending on how effective the load and compensator combination are, this effect allows the slide to be lightened, and an even lighter recoil spring to be used. Both of these things reduce overall flip – the spring in the early part, and the lighter slide in the 2nd phase when the slide smacks into the frame.

Check out these two slo-mo videos of two different Open guns, and notice the differences in their movement. Not every Open gun is the same

This would probably be a good time to relate to you how I decided to investigate all this stuff related to biology, as it serves as a good lesson into what I talked about in the last post, about how the red dot sights we use are really pretty marginal, and that we really don’t see significant parts of the gun’s movement.

From time to time, I head up to Brazos Custom to do some shooting. Bob Londrigan prefers to shoot regular semi-rimmed .38 Super in his gun, so when I’m there, I shoot his ammo so that we don’t get Supercomp brass mixed into his Super brass. At one point, when I was there, I’d been struggling with issues calling my shots. I’d put two rounds on a target, call two As, and end up with A/C, or 2 Cs. I figured this was a shooter problem, and I’d been doing a lot of work to improve my shot calling. When I got to Brazos Custom on that particular day, I found out that Bob had changed his load. We’d both been running 4756 in our guns, but Bob had switched over to N105 – a slightly slower, and much more expensive powder. I’d been resisting trying it due to it’s price, in fact, as it’s almost 3 times more expensive than 4756. Well, an interesting thing happened that day. My shots went *exactly* where I’d called them. In fact, it was just that I was calling two As – I was calling them right next to each other on the target, and that’s exactly where they showed up when I went down to paste the targets.

I figured this was just a “trick of the day” – an effect that manifested because I was having to pay more active attention to the gun due to the different timing induced by the change in load. That just further cemented my resolve to work on my shot calling. Time passed, and I went back up to Brazos Custom again to do some work and some shooting. Here’s where it got fun. See, I hadn’t really improved much in the time in between – I was still struggling with shot calling in the same old way. But, Bob was still running the N105 load, and as soon as I put that load back in the gun… BAM. Shot calling dramatically improved. I’m the kind of guy that this led me to question “why?”. Why would changing the load like that improve shot calling? And that kicked all this fun stuff off….

See, the improved gas volume *and* muzzle pressure of N105 allowed the gun to remain more stable during that early, oh-so-important phase of recoil, allowing me to actually see where the gun was as it began to lift, and slowing down the upward motion of the gun during that time. The thing is – the movement of the gun basically looked exactly the same as it did with 4756. What you see behind the open gun, and what appears – to you – to be flat and stable…. may not really be so.

There are a couple of other factors that play into it, too, not just load choice and compensator effectiveness. The size of the dot you pick, and the brightness of that dot both determine how easy it is for the dot to be picked up by the eye. If you’re shooting a C-More scope, you need to also understand that, regardless of what steps you take to try to keep the dot module clean, it will collect dirt, grime, and funk, and will eventually need to be changed. Usually, you’ll see them develop a donut-like shape, or notches in the edge of the dot. At the time time, the dot grows dimmer due to the accumulation of stuff on it’s surface. Lots of folks have tried various different methods to clean dot modules, without much success. Just plan on replacing the module. I do it about once a year.

If you’re having problems following the gun or calling shots with an open gun, try a new dot module and a fresh battery. If that doesn’t work, perhaps try a larger dot size (of course, you trade off precision, but being able to call your shots reliably is most important).

We’ve talked a lot about shot calling, and how a gun that shoots “flat” makes it easier to call shots, but what about the other things that “flat” guns are purportedly capable of providing? That’s up next!

Continue reading »]]> This is the fourth article in a series of posts talking about “flat”. If you haven’t read the others, you might want to do that first. Where we left off last time, we learned what properties about the sighting systems on the gun can affect your ability to call shots, and what we can’t do about it – speed up how fast our eyes actually see. If we can’t speed up our eyes, perhaps can we slow down the gun? Or, more properly – slow down the movement of the sights? Ah… now we’re on to something.

The question is, what are the factors that affect how quickly the gun (and thus the sights) move away from the spot they’re pointed. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to assume we’re talking about a 1911 pattern handgun, but the discussion applies to others, as well, to a greater or lesser degree.

Remember why the gun actually flips? The barrel and the other moving bits sit above the hand, and so the forces pushing toward the shooting also tend to have leverage to rotate the hand upward, thus causing what we see as flip. But, the thing is, that motion doesn’t really occur until after the bullet has left the barrel. While the bullet is in the barrel, it’s actually pulling the barrel forward – this is what keeps the gun locked up until the bullet has left and the pressure has dropped enough in the barrel to make it safe to unlock the barrel. The whole system is effectively static while the bullet travels down the barrel, though the slide actually does start to move just a very small amount rearward.

What happens right after the bullet leaves the barrel and the slide starts to move rearward is that the firing pin stop contacts the hammer, and here we find our first resistance to the rearward travel of the slide, and therefore the first point that the gun really starts to move upward. There’s an interaction here between the geometry of the lower rear corner of the firing pin stop and the hammer, which is being pressed against the firing pin stop by the tension of the mainspring. The sharper the corner on the firing pin stop, the less leverage the slide has against the force of the mainspring, and therefore, the more the gun tends to move upward in this phase. If we can both increase the leverage the slide has against the hammer and mainspring, and decrease the force the mainspring is providing to press the hammer against the slide, we can keep the gun a bitter flatter in this earliest phase of recoil. The trade off is twofold. Decreasing the weight of the mainspring can risk inducing light strikes as the hammer doesn’t strike the firing pin hard enough to consistently ignite primers. Changing either property also decreases the amount of energy required to cock the gun, and therefore leaves the slide with more velocity. This could potentially lead to accelerated wear, and can lead to more flip later in the recoil cycle. There’s a balance – and it depends somewhat on the weight of the slide, the weight of the recoil spring, whether or not it’s a compensated gun, etc. You probably don’t want to monkey around too much with these things without understanding the potential side effects. But, the end result is, the gun will appear to stay flatter very early in the recoil cycle if the slide can unlock relatively easily.

The next thing that starts providing resistance to the slide’s rearward movement is the recoil spring. Essentially, what the spring is doing is robbing energy from the slide as it moves rearward and storing it up so that it can be returned to the slide to move it back forward. In the process, though, the spring couples the slide to the frame to some degree, and also causes the gun to flip. The heavier the recoil spring weight, the larger the degree of push into the frame and the larger the degree of flip in this part of the cycle. Reduce the weight of the spring, and the gun will appear to flip less during the early part of the recoil cycle. There are tradeoffs here, too, though. The spring needs to store enough energy to close the gun fully every time, even if the gun gets dirty. Go too light, and you’ll have failures to feed or failures to go into battery. Also, the lighter spring leaves more energy with the slide, too, much like the changed firing pin geometry and lighter mainspring, and it has the same net effect – that energy has to go somewhere, and it will… later in the recoil cycle.

The final place flip shows up can’t be helped much. This happens when the slide smacks into the frame (or, more correctly, the guide rod head). Any energy remaining in the slide is firmly applied to the frame, and results in a sudden, sharp flip and a smack in the palm. So, you can see the effects of the tradeoff we made earlier – with regards to flip, what we’re really doing is just moving where it occurs in the recoil cycle. It can be a relatively smooth lift with a bump up at the end, or it can be a relatively flat travel with a sharp bump up at the end, or various degrees in between. It’s easier to see with an Open gun, but you can actually see two different phases to recoil in the sight movement – all the stuff leading up to the bump at the end, and then the bump itself.

As you can see, changing the firing pin stop geometry and lowering the weight of the recoil spring both reduce the amount the gun rises from the point of aim. The slower the gun moves away from point of aim, the more clearly your eyes can pick up where the sights are as they start to move. Guns that lift more slowly in the that first phase of recoil are what we perceive as shooting “flat”. So, here – finally – we arrive at an important conclusion. Flatter shooting guns make it easier to call shots more accurately.

Next up – some Open gun specifics!

Continue reading »]]> In the last article in the series, I told you about how the eye picks up images and sees. We’ve been talking about what “flat” really means in terms of shooting – how we perceive “flat” when we shoot a handgun, what we’re actually seeing, and what shooting a gun that we perceive as “flat” really does for us. So far, we’ve defined flat, and we’ve talked about how the eyes see. If you haven’t read those articles, you might want to start there before getting into the stuff in this one. So, then, one of sthe important questions we’ve been driving at: can we accurately see the sights lift from exactly the point where the gun went off? That is, can we really call shots accurately?

The answer is…. Yes…. but…. How the gun moves can affect exactly how accurately you can call your shots – or, with an Open division gun, whether you can call them at all.

With an iron sight gun, what you’re actually seeing is the silhouette of the sights interposed on top of the image of the target (and, to some extent, the image of the front sight’s serrations, depending on how sharply you’re focused on the front sight). This happens pretty quickly, though. While the gun may fully cycle in .05 seconds, the portion we’re really concerned about – the part where the sights lift off the target – happens in maybe .01-.02 seconds. Check out the slow motion videos and see how short a period of time that really is relative to the full cycle. Actually, the most important timeframe is way shorter than that – that’s the time it actually takes for the bullet to leave the barrel. Depending on the gun in question, that time frame is 2.5-6 microseconds (that’s .00025 to .00060 seconds – or 1667-4000 fps type timeframe)! But, what we’re really looking for is the time in that first phase of recoil where the the bullet leaves the barrel and the sights start to lift off the target. If there’s not enough contrast between the brightness of the target, and the darkness of the sights in that exact period of time, the sights can move faster than your eye can keep up, and they appear to be a blur once all that information is decoded by the brain. Depending on how clearly you were focused on that front sight as the gun went off, you may not actually be aware of precisely where the sights were, just a sort of generalized area on the target. On close targets, no big deal. On distant targets, you may not notice if the gun has wandered slightly off your intended aiming point.

With an open division gun and it’s attendant optical sight, things get slightly more complex. Check out this slow motion video, courtesy of Roy Steadman. Really look at how the dots moves , and watch the movements of the gun itself.

Unlike iron sights, where the contrast between the sights and the target are created by the sights being darker than the target, we’re trying to create contrast by making the dot significantly brighter than the target. When the dot starts to move, it makes a streak across the retina, much like how car lights will leave a streak in a photograph taken at night with a long exposure. When there’s a lot of contrast between the target and the dot, you see a pretty emphatic streak. To see this fully, shoot your gun at dusk or in the dark, and see just how much movement there really is in the path of the dot as your gun cycles. So much for “cycles straight up and down”, right? When I do this with my gun (a gun that does appear to cycle straight up and down under normal lighting conditions), I can see all kinds of extra movement – wiggle induced by the scope mount and scope, lateral instability in the gun and in my grip, etc. There’s truly a lot going on. We don’t see that extra movement during the day because the dot simply isn’t bright enough for our eyes to register that much movement against the rest of the scene we’re seeing. We see the slowest parts of the movement – the parts where the image of the dot is able to “impress” upon the cones that are sensitive to it’s color enough to be picked up in the time that the dot passes them, and our brain assembles those discrete signals (mostly from the cones) into a moving dot that appears to move smoothly up and back to point of aim.

What about fiber optic inserts in iron sights? Consider them a hybrid of the two scenarios above. The fiber adds a bright spot to the sights that make them easier to pick up (especially in dimmer lighting conditions), but doesn’t really add enough brightness to fully track the movement of the sights any better than a moderately bright dot sight.

The short of it is, yes, you can see the gun begin to move, but you don’t necessarily see what you think you see. Your eyes aren’t fast enough and, if you’re shooting an Open gun, the sight is inadequate to be seen perfectly. However, we can take some steps to improve our ability to accurately pick up the motion of the gun in the early parts of recoil and thus improve our ability to call shots. First, you have to recognize that there’s really no way to improve the speed at which your eyes see things. You can improve your focal speed, eye movement speeds, target recognition speeds, and all of that, but you can’t change how fast the chemistry works or how your brain is wired to put the signals together. Under some circumstances, we can see at a faster rate. For instance, under extreme duress, it seems that the brain speeds up its processing of the visual signals, upping the rate at which we perceive motion. In fact, the brain uses visual information in part to perceive the passing of time. It may be that this phenomenon of vision speeding up under duress may explain the time dilation effect that people report in life or death situations – they’re suddenly seeing more information, and the part of the brain that’s attune to time interprets that as time passing more slowly (or that things are happening in slow motion – since the reference for time is now moving more quickly, things appear to take more time to happen…). So, you can’t hack your eyes to speed up, unfortunately. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?

Next up – what can we do to improve our ability to follow the movement of the gun?

Continue reading »]]> Any discussion of “flat” is incomplete and uninformed without an understanding of how the eyes actually see. I’m not talking about “we see at 30 frames per second” or anything quite as simple as that. I’m talking about understanding how shot calling really works, and how that affects not only what we perceive as “flat” (both from behind the gun, and while observing someone shoot) as well as understanding how best to leverage those effects in our gun setup choices.

You may have read or been told various different things about how we see. The internet is full of various descriptions and analogies about how we see. The most common one is that we see at 30 fps (that’s “frames per second”). In terms of an oversimplification that’s easy to understand, it’s not a bad analogy. It’s just that, though – an oversimplification. The truth is, we see constantly in our field of vision, within limits. What we actually process into what our brain perceives as vision is perhaps another story…

The notion of a 30 fps limit comes from the world of motion pictures, television, and video games. If you take smooth movement and chop it up into a number of steps, you can view those individual steps back and see simulated motion. Show enough discrete steps fast enough, and our eyes get fooled into thinking they’re seeing constant motion. 24 frames per second seems to be pretty effective – every time you see a movie in a theater, you’re seeing 24 discrete steps a second. Well, not quite – you’re actually seeing 24 steps, each shown twice at a total rate of 48 frames per second (more on that in just a second). But, still, 24 discrete steps a second seems to be enough to allow us to perceive smooth, constant motion.

The thing is, it’s not quite that simple. In the case of the movie, what shows up on the screen in between frames is … nothing. Black. The theater is dark, too, which also helps us not really perceive the sudden drop down to the dark. Remember that the movie is really going at 48 fps, though? That’s because you actually can perceive that black frame at 24 frames per second. You can see what appears to be a “flicker” on the screen. So, they double each frame – you still see 24 discrete frames per second, but the flicker rate is double that, and your brain doesn’t process the faster dark frame.

But, what if what appeared on screen between frames what *white* instead of black? Imagine that for a second – you’re sitting in a dark room, and suddenly a bright light flashes on for .02 seconds (48 fps flicker rate). Do you think you’ll see it? Various lab tests show that you can see white frame flicker rates above 200 frames per second! And you can see a photographer’s flash, right? The duration of the light from a photographic strobe is frequently .001 seconds long or shorter. Not only can you see it, but if you’re looking at it, it will frequently stay imprinted on your retina for quite a while. This is actually why video game hardware and software developers are constantly pushing the frame rate envelope – the eyes are still able to see flicker in games running at 200 frames per second.

So, depending on the relative intensity of the image, you can see things that happen a lot faster than 30 frames per second. In fact, the main limitation on how fast you can see is actually the speed of chemical reaction in the rods and cones that are on the surface of your retina. The rods and cones are the actual cells that detect light striking the retina and and convert that signal into an electrical impulse that gets sent up the optic nerves to the brain. The cone cells are primarily what we’re using for shooting. The center of your vision is primarily cone cells. Cones are the reason we can see color, and in fact are quite a bit like the pixels on a monitor. There are 3 different varieties that are sensitive to red, green, and blue light, respectively. We have about two times the number of green cones as we do red or blue cones, making our vision more sensitive to green hues than any other color.

Rod cells are more concentrated around the periphery of our vision. They only see luminance – that is, black and white. They’re smaller than cones, too, which effectively allows them to see more sharply. This is one way that birds see much more crisply than humans do – that eagle with disgustingly sharp vision has retinas that are comprised solely of rods. They trade that clarity for color vision. Rods are also much more sensitive than cones, taking only a single photon to stimulate them (cones take 4-5 photons). This is why you tend to lose color vision in dim lighting – the cones aren’t getting stimulated enough to generate a signal.

Rods and cones are constantly being stimulated, signaling, and then resetting through a series of chemical reactions. Each of those rods and cones are working independently of the others and sending signals to the brain individually. Unlike your TV or computer monitor, where the whole screen updates at effectively the same time over 60 times per second (usually, more than 75 even), your eyes update each discrete pixel constantly and independently. This means that you don’t see discrete frames. So, you can see that any notion of “the eyes see at 30 frames per second” is simplistic at best.

This brings us back to the question – can we actually see the gun cycle? Yes… and no. Most handguns will cycle on their own at a rate of about 1200 rounds per minute, or 20 rounds per second. That’s about .05 seconds for the slide to unlock, move to the rear of it’s travel and stop, then start moving forward again, strip the next round out of the magazine, and return to battery. The thing is, we tend to see that movement as a blur, especially if we’re looking at it with the center of our vision (those relatively slow cones, remember?). Remember that those individual cells/pixels in our vision update constantly and independently, right? As the image of the of the gun in motion projects across the cells of the retina, they all fire and reset on their own schedule, giving us a scrambled look at the gun. The brain reassembles all of those signals as blur. We don’t see things clearly when they move that quickly.

Next up, we’ll talk about how this new found understanding interacts with our perception of the gun… complete with slow motion videos!

Continue reading »]]> Most factory pistols come with the cheapest, most horrible sights you could possible imagine. The M&P is better, in this regard, including a set of steel, 3-dot style sights. But, we can do better than that!

I was very happy to see the M&P arrive with serviceable sights. They’re somewhat similar to (I think?) a Novak rear sight with a plain, smooth front sight post. The front sight measures .130″ wide, which the notch in the rear is .140″. This really doesn’t give you much in the way of “light bars” (i.e. the light that you see on each side of the front sight between it and the rear sight). Light bars are important the aiming process. You want them to be roughly 50% of the width of the front sight – your brain will tend to line them right up for your that way, regardless of the width of the front post and rear notch, if you get the light bars right, you can shoot the sights.

They arrive in a 3 dot configuration. I’m not really a fan of 3 dot sights, personally (to some extent, this is a personal taste thing, but I shoot better with plain irons…), so some sight black can fix that situation pretty well.You can see in the picture to the right roughly what they look like, but in practice, you have less light bar on each side than the picture implies (it’s tough to take a good picture of sights with an iPhone camera – sorry about the quality, there). In fact, there’s almost none. It would be more difficult than necessary to shoot the factory sights quickly and accurately.

I shot the factory sights for a couple hundred rounds, and they’re OK – just OK. I didn’t feel the immediate need to replace them before firing a shot, like I do with Glock factory sights, but I still felt the need for something more precise and intuitive, and with a little more versatility for carry purposes.

Enter the Dawson Precision Charger series of sights.

Dawson makes a wide variety of replacement sights for quite a number of pistols on the market. I’d had a chance to handle these sights installed on a Glock in the past, so I knew roughly what to expect in terms of quality and the sight picture. I also knew that they’d have the features I wanted in a set of sights for carry and for competition.

In order to get the right mix between light bars and front sight width, I went with a .115″ wide target front sight, and a .145″ wide rear notch Charger sight. This gives you the sight picture you see at the top of the post (I did a better job with that one – that’s pretty much what the sight picture looks like behind the gun). The front sight is a middling width – wide enough to pick up quickly and easily, but narrow enough to retain precision on smaller targets. The rear sight is sized to then create the right light bar width, and also to have plenty of room to see the front sight, even if the gun is lined up just a bit off. This turns out to be a very intuitive arrangement. They point easily and line up without effort on the target.

The Charger rear sight was engineered to be a carry/duty sight and has a couple of interesting features that help in that role. The first is the 90 shelf on the front edge of the sight. This is useful if you have to manipulate the gun one handed – you can use that edge to catch on your belt or a pocket to rack the slide for purposes of reloading the gun, or to help clear a jam. Dawson’s also serrated that front edge, which helps give it a little more bite against whatever surface you use it on. Compared the factory sight, the Charger is easier to employ in this fashion. In addition, the Charger is a beefy sight. It’s built tough to help it survive use as a charging handle, and should be capable of taking a lot of abuse.

The rear edge of the sight is smooth. Normally, I prefer a serrated rear sight – at least for competition purposes. The serrations reduce glare on the sight blade, especially when coupled with some sight black. I wasn’t sure how a smooth rear was going to work out. In practice, though, I didn’t have any problems with it and, if anything, it seems to help provide some contrast with the serrated target front sight. Instead of having fine detail on the rear sight blade that my eye can focus on, it just skips past the rear sight entirely and locks onto the front sight.

In terms of visibility in low light, I carry light with me anyway, so I’m not too worried about finding my sights in most situations. However, you can get these sights with tritium inserts. You have to bump up to a .125″ front sight width, though. If Dawson made a .155″ rear, that would also give you a similar set of light bars.

I had Dawson install these sights, but they’re pretty easy to do yourself, too. Dawson includes a front sight pusher punch with the front sight, and a nylon tipped punch to drift the rear.

All in all, the Dawson Charger sight set beats out the factory sights pretty nicely. They’re a simple, low maintenance option for carry or for competition.

Continue reading »]]> Just exactly how to carry small tools and parts in my shooting bag has challenged me for quite a while – especially since I started using a general purpose backpack, rather than a shooting specific bag. When my original solution broke, I had to dig up a new one. Here’s what I ended up with…

When I carried a shooting specific bag, I normally carried a couple of Dillon utility boxes in the side pouches. In one of those two boxes, I carried small tools (allen wrenches, punches, things like that) and the like. In the other, I carried spare parts for the gun I was shooting. That solution worked pretty well, but I always had issues digging through the box to find what I needed.

When I switched to a backpack, I decided to try to find a way to organize things a little bit better, and to not have to carry multiple boxes around. I settled on a Plano tackle box. After a couple of years, though, the box had a hole get punched in it after a flight home from a match. I went out to try to find a better option. I searched through a bunch of different utility boxes, tackle boxes, and a variety of other solutions. Most of them are cheap and flimsy and wouldn’t have survived for long under hard use.

What I finally settled on was another tackle box – the Plano 3740 Waterproof Tackle Box. It’s a medium-large-ish size box, measuring 14″ x 9 1/8″ x 1 7/8″, so it may or may not fit in your bag, depending on size.

This series of waterproof boxes seems to be made thicker/tougher than the other tackle boxes available on the market. That was one of the key features I was looking for – for whatever reason, I seem to be able to shake out the weak points in gear, so I tend to go after the toughest stuff I can find for a given purpose. It’s nice to be able to just throw this box in checked luggage and not have to worry about whether my tools will arrive on the other end, or what shape they’ll be in when I get there.

The second feature I wanted was a large enough compartment to store a spare C-More scope. My first tackle box had this ability, and it was nice to not have to carry a second hard sided container solely for a spare scope. In the picture above, you can see where the bubble wrap and spare dot modules are? That space will hold a C-More without a problem – in fact, the bubble wrap is to put around the scope to protect it a bit.

This box also has a pretty good set of dividers, and (in the lid) ribs that seal off each compartment from the other. After some vigorous shaking, it seems to be pretty good at keeping the wrenches and punches in their appropriate places.

I also carry some JP Trigger Prep (an old school, moly based trigger job compound, similar to Brownell’s Action Lube Plus. Should this container leak, the waterproof nature of the box will help keep it isolated within the toolbox, and not let it get out all over my bag.

A simple addition of a desiccant pack would also help keep the humidity in the box down, which should help protect all the tools from rust.

Here’s a rundown of what I’ve got in the new box, now (you can see everything but the scope and a couple of new additions in the picture):

• Top Row
  • Spare Recoil Master and springs, spare recoil spring plug, takedown tools, small screwdriver (for mag release), spare firing pin spring, sight drifting punch
  • Four CR1/3N C-More scope batteries, four AAA batteries
  • JP trigger prep, blue locktite, Aimpoint micro tools
• Second Row
  • A variety of punches
  • Dillon .38 Super Case Gauge, several spare followers, spare ball arm for the Race Master holster
  • allen and torx wrenches of various sizes
• Third Row
  • Larger tools, like a miniature file set, a bushing wrench, and a pair of channel locks that have been modified to bend magazine lips
  • currently holds a small collection of parts, but eventually this compartment may be freed up for another purpose
• Bottom Row
  • Spare parts, such as a firing pin and spring, C-More screws and virgin wrenches, scope mount screws, mag button and screws, frame screws, and a spare hammer and sear pin set
  • C-More, spare dot modules for the C-More, and a stereo audio cable to hook my iPod to my hearing protection

The only downside with this box is that the latches are quite loud – they really have some snap to them when you close them up. That’s not a huge issue, though. We’ll see how the box wears over time and how it lasts.

Continue reading »]]> It’s been a looooooong time since I’ve had any formal training in first aid. Probably 25 years? Think: Boy Scout First Aid merit badge. Knowing that a lot has changed in the medical community, and in my personal needs, I knew that it was time for some skill updates. When KR Training scheduled Lone Star Medic’s Dynamic First Aid course, I jumped on it!

Consider this to be a two part post – part class review, part soapbox for first aid training.

The Class

Dynamic First Aid is a one day crash course into emergency first aid. My friend (and developer of the Practice Deck iPhone App) John Daub attended the class on Saturday, January 28. He did an excellent write up on his experience at the class, and I had much the same experience (I recommend you read John’s write up – he did a much more thorough job on the particulars of the class than I’m going to squeeze out here). I missed the cutoff for the Saturday class, and attended the second class on January 29th. The class was popular enough that a second day had to be added, and there was a waiting list for both days!

LSM’s lead instructor, Caleb Causey flew solo on the class, and did a solid job keeping everyone moving and participating in the class. Caleb has a great sense of humor, and leverages that to keep his students paying attention. That’s important as a student, because he’s going to test you on skills, techniques, and thinking throughout the class.

The idea behind emergency first aid has always been to keep an injured person alive until more advanced/skilled care can take over. Depending on the situation, this might be 30 seconds, or… a lot longer. If you’re in the back woods, it could be days. Much more likely for most of us, though, is whatever the response time of EMS is to the local scene. That could be 4-6 minutes, or as long as 45 minutes, depending on where you’re at. The average response time across the US is 9-12 minutes, which could be catastrophically long in an emergency situation. In some ways, it’s parallel to why you need to be prepared to defend your own life vis a vis police response times.

The thing is, a lot has changed in the past 25 years in the thinking and theory around how and when to apply different first aid techniques. Technology has come to the rescue in a couple of cases, too.

The biggest change, for me, came in the form of triage and treatment order. Remember ABC? (Airway, Breathing, Circulation) That’s now CAB. Check circulation and bleeding first. If there’s no blood in the pipes, it really doesn’t matter if they’re breathing or not, cause they won’t be for long.

Another big change came in the form of the tourniquet. Remember when we used to be told to avoid them, as they could cause the victim to lose a limb later if improperly used? When we’re talking about severe bleeding, the choice is going to be “life or limb”, not “limb or a little more blood”. The modern tourniquet is a very slick and useful device, as well. The improvised tourniquets we were shown how to make in the Scouts quite likely will not work under pressure. You need to know how to correctly use one, though, as you definitely can cause harm if you don’t. As long as you can get your patient to advanced medical care within 6-8 hours, everything should be fine as long as you’ve taken care to use the tool properly. And, you might want to have two. Frequently, when you encounter an accident, or something, there’ll be more than one severe injury (we have four limbs, right?).

While a good portion of the class was spent on control of bleeding, Caleb also discussed a wide variety of other issues, spending a good amount of time on Airway and Breathing issues, a short nutshell version of the latest thinking on CPR, treatment of shock (thankfully, not much changed there!), thermal burns, managing broken bones, and seizures. All things that you might run into, and need to know how to handle appropriately, so as to avoid doing further injury to the already injured person.

Toward the end of the day, Caleb got on his soapbox about one of my own pet issues: dehydration, and the associated heat exhaustion and heat stroke. I have an article scheduled to discuss how dehydration affects performance, but that’s minor compared to how lethal dehydration can be in the field. The simple fact is, you need to be drinking water. All the time. A lot of it. Even if you’re just sitting around. If you’re out in the elements, you also need to be taking in some form of electrolyte along with that water (one suggested method is 2:1 water/gatorade, which I’ve used successfully in the past myself). A guy my size needs an absolute minimum of 115 ounces of water PER DAY just sitting on the couch. That’s a lot of water. The forumula is 1 oz per 2 pounds of body weight. Drink water, people. Not Red Bull. Not iced tea. Taurine and caffeine only serve to dehydrate you further and do other bad things to your system. Water. Water. Water. Water. Lots of it.

I also walked away with a much sharper idea of what I need to have in an Individual First Aid Kit (IFAK – aka, the “blow out bag”) and a larger car type kit. A large part of the reason I haven’t had one put together, at this point, was paralysis by analysis – there are so many options out there, and no easy way for me to determine which ones are better/best. It can be quite confusing and daunting. None of the pre-made kits on the market have exactly the right combo in them, yet. Caleb gave us the chance to play with a large number of different pieces of gear, and made it clear what we really need to have in both types of kits. I feel like I can now shop with confidence.

In the end, I’m extremely happy that I took the course, and I feel like it was a day very well spent. It’s sparked a desire to take further training down this path, actually (the Medicine X class is highly intting on the couch. That’s a lot of water. The forumula is 1 oz per 2 pounds of body weight. Drink water, people. Not Red Bull. Not iced tea. Taurine and caffeine only serve to dehydrate you further and do other bad things to your system. Water. Water. Water. Water. Lots of it.

I also walked away with a much sharper idea of what I need to have in an Individual First Aid Kit (IFAK – aka, the “blow out bag”) and a larger car type kit. A large part of the reason I haven’t had one put together, at this point, was paralysis by analysis – there are so many options out there, and no easy way for me to determine which ones are better/best. It can be quite confusing and daunting. None of the pre-made kits on the market have exactly the right combo in them, yet. Caleb gave us the chance to play with a large number of different pieces of gear, and made it clear what we really need to have in both types of kits. I feel like I can now shop with confidence.

In the end, I’m extremely happy that I took the course, and I feel like it was a day very well spent. It’s sparked a desire to take further training down this path, actually (the Medicine X class is highly interesting, for instance). I would definitely recommend this class from Lone Star Medics to anyone (literally, anyone).

Soapbox

As shooters, we spend a lot of time around small objects moving at extremely high rates of speed, and lots and lots of highly flammable (read: potentially explosive) materials. Much like any other activity that involves things moving quickly, there’s a possibility that things will go wrong, regardless of how good your gun handling and safety skills are, and whether or not you or someone around you makes a mistake or oversight. Like it or not, there’s always the possibility that “stuff happens”. Your ability to deal with “stuff” when it happens may likely be the difference between a bad experience and a tragedy.

Anyone reading this blog should strongly consider taking a course similar to the one described here (or, described better in John’s post linked above) if you haven’t already. You should also put together a simple kit of things for your range bag (tourniquet, pressure dressings, Kerlix, trauma shears, etc) and keep it in an easy to access location while you’re on the range (say, on the outside of the bag, clearly marked with a red cross). You want something small-ish (don’t bring the kitchen sink) so that it can be near you on the range, not 1/2 a mile away in the car.

The life ybjects moving at extremely high rates of speed, and lots and lots of highly flammable (read: potentially explosive) materials. Much like any other activity that involves things moving quickly, there’s a possibility that things will go wrong, regardless of how good your gun handling and safety skills are, and whether or not you or someone around you makes a mistake or oversight. Like it or not, there’s always the possibility that “stuff happens”. Your ability to deal with “stuff” when it happens may likely be the difference between a bad experience and a tragedy.

Anyone reading this blog should strongly consider taking a course similar to the one described here (or, described better in John’s post linked above) if you haven’t already. You should also put together a simple kit of things for your range bag (tourniquet, pressure dressings, Kerlix, trauma shears, etc) and keep it in an easy to access location while you’re on the range (say, on the outside of the bag, clearly marked with a red cross). You want something small-ish (don’t bring the kitchen

Continue reading »]]> Ok, maybe not. But in competition circles, we talk a lot about guns shooting “flat”. What do we mean by that?

For pretty much all of the handguns on the market today (and for all of the handguns currently being used in competition), the barrel is mounted to the gun in such a way that it sits higher than the shooter’s hand when the gun is gripped in any sort of reasonable firing platform. When the gun is fired, this position gives the gun leverage against the shooter’s hand, and causes the barrel to lift in recoil (if you want a detailed discussion of the physics, let me know – otherwise, just trust me!). This phenomenon, as experienced from the viewpoint of the shooter, is referred to as “flip”.

“Flat” is basically the opposite of “flip”. From the viewpoint of the shooter, the gun appears to lift a relatively small amount. A gun that’s referred to as “flippy” appears to lift a larger amount.

Interestingly, many times, bystanders will think a gun that appears to be flippy from the shooter’s perspective will appear to shoot very flat. This is really an illusion – and actually, the notion of “flat” in the shooter’s mind is also somewhat illusory. The human eye really can’t really accurately follow the full recoil cycle of the gun – the gun cycles in about .05 to .06 seconds (some claim even faster), and the eye only catches a small portion of that (the human eye has the potential to see at approximately 60 frames per second, but in most normal circumstances, we see at about 30 fps – so we catch very little of the actual recoil cycle). Slow motion video actually demonstrates that guns that appear to be flat actually flip quite a bit – but their motion is different from a gun that appears to be flippy. It’s this difference in motion that we’re picking up on as the shooter.

The bystander is frequently reacting to the shooter’s recoil control abilities – for instance, many folks comment on how flat Dave Sevigny’s Glock appears to be, yet photos of him shooting clearly demonstrate the gun is flipping quite a bit. Dave has exceptional recoil control abilities, and the gun returns to point of aim more quickly than the bystander’s eye can follow.

In the end, the gun is almost certainly lifting more than the shooter or the bystander perceive it to be.

Hopefully, that gives you a better idea of what is meant by “flip”… The next time we talk about flip, we’ll talk about whether it’s actually important or not…

Many, many thanks to Dave Sevigny, and Sevigny Performance, LLC, for the two images of Dave shooting FNH’s new duty gun, the US-made FNS.