All good street cops had the "hot chick" radio code words. Mine was to ask for the physical descriptors on their DL record.Originally Posted by nyeti
All good street cops had the "hot chick" radio code words. Mine was to ask for the physical descriptors on their DL record.
Regional Government Sales Manager for Aimpoint, Inc. USA
Co-owner Hardwired Tactical Shooting (HiTS)
Wadcutters are inaccurate at 100 yards, by real accuracy standards, like silhouette shooting. Roy is a very good shot, but when you look at what guys can really do at 100, say 2-3" groups with good guns and ammo, wadcutters are pretty much incapable of keeping up. Does that matter most of the time? Of course not, I'm just pointing out that when guys say they lose their accuracy past 50 yards, that is 100% true. Comes from the days when guys would shoot bullseye or ppc at 50 yards and keep them all in the X.
Also, with the J frames, though I'm not positive about the rifling twist, the bullets are going that much slower, and that really messes with them at long ranges.
Last edited by SLG; 02-25-2016 at 10:53 AM.
S&W's "standard" rifling twist in their .36 caliber revolvers was 1/18.75" for, like, forever. Dunno about the new shrouded barrel set-up.
Colt used 1/14", which tended to stabilize the double-ended wadcutters of the early days better; this is why you saw the "Smolts", which was a 6" Python barrel on a K-38 frame. All of that changed with the introduction of the hollow base wadcutter, which stabilized well in the slower S&W twist.
Once the trend of shooting single-action at the long line gave way to trigger-cocking the gun for the whole 1500 aggregrate course of fire, Colts began disappearing from competitor's kit. The Colt actions, even the Python, were difficult to get a good trigger-cocking stroke on, and then had to be re-tuned at regular intervals. The S&W short action, introduced in 1950, was much easier to work with and produced a much-superior trigger-cocking action.
The K-38 dominated shortly thereafter, and this continued once all restraints, rule-wise, were lifted and folks began building "bull guns" with heavy barrels, sight ribs, and no single action sear. Some of these barrels were amazingly accurate with good ammunition. The gun I used to get me as far as I did was a Davis Grade Three, with an Apex Micro-groove barrel. Its twist was 1/10", and would hold a Ransom Rest group, using a particularly good lot of Remington target .38s, at .75" all day long at 50 yards. This revolver was built on a garden-variety M-64, by Kerry Freeman. He was Bill Davis' best guy, and one the best bull gun builders in the business for a very long time.
This gun would stay on a six inch steel plate at 100 yards, using Federal or Remington target wadcutters, from a supported position.
My point to all of this is, a blanket statement that "wadcutters won't shoot past 50 yards" is incorrect. A standard revolver, using "regular" or reloaded ammunition... sure, no question there. But one of those precision barrels (Shilen and Douglas also made equally-good blanks) with a fast twist, shooting some of the "good" ammunition that Remington and Federal (and, to a lesser degree, Winchester) produced back in the hey-day of PPC... well, you wouldn't want a serious competitor shooting at you with it.
Just sayin'...
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I stand corrected.
Okie John
No worries...
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I think we lost something when that game declined. There is a lot to be said for the kind of marksmanship learned in those events.
One idea I've often flirted with is shooting the PPC course of fire as a skill test. I can't seem to find a definitive answer as to what the exact course of fire is though.
Who knows, maybe Mr_White will make it a DOTW.....
Then I must be living in some parallel reality.
The American Handgunner magazine that I remember - back in the day - was the best handgun reference I'd ever seen. Over time, it's followed the same downward spiral taken by Guns & Ammo. Huntington actually fired Ken Hackathorn and replaced that training column with (veiled) advertising. The magazine, in my opinion, has become a bunch of pretty pictures with very little content of value. Nowadays, every article - which tell us how great the product is and how we need to buy the product ASAP - also has corresponding paid advertising from the articles' product manufacturers (just check the index of advertisers). Seriously, have you been reading AH in the last few years? Have you been reading their holster recommendations?
Like Guns & Ammo, American Handgunner used to be beautiful; now they're just washed-out, sold-out, advertising vehicles; I no longer recommend them.
Last edited by Wendell; 02-25-2016 at 05:43 PM.
As per NRA rules, the PPC "course" is 150 rounds fired thusly, on a standard B-27 target (target changes after each Match):
Match One: 12 rounds @ 7 yards, 12 rounds @ 15 yards… 20 seconds per 12 round string, fired standing w/no support
Match Two: 18 rounds @ 25 yards; 6 rounds right hand standing barricade, 6 rounds right hand kneeling barricade, 6 rounds left hand standing barricade… 90 seconds
Match Three (which separates the shooters from the bullshitters): 24 rounds @ 50 yards; 6 rounds sitting no support, 6 rounds prone, 6 rounds right standing barricade, 6 rounds left hand standing barricade… two minute 45 seconds
Match Four (another bullshitter separator): two strings of 12 rounds, standing no support… 35 seconds per string
Match Five: a combination of One, Two, and Three, plus a final 6 rounds standing no support @ 25 yards in 12 seconds… except that the first stage is 12 rounds only @ 7 yards- no 15 yard stage.
Its all about concentration; sight alignment, trigger control, quick reloading. In the mid-80s, some genius in Kalifornia decided that the quickest way to do it was for each competitor relay to shoot the whole thing straight through, instead of the various relays shooting One, then repeating for Two, etc. I was introduced to this new twist at the first Four Queens Regional in Vegas, and man… what a bitch. Talk about stepping up the game; you were toast by the time you busted that last cap.
Fortunately, we more refined southerner and eastern bloc types stayed with the traditional NRA format; at least until I got out of the game in 1991. No idea how they're doing it now.
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No doubt. The -0 ball on an IDPA target is huge and you rarely have to hit it from very far away.
Okie John
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