First, the malfunctions. For a little history I have had a particular malfunction occur in competition twice. What would happen is on the last round the slide stop would pop out of the disassembly notch and jam the slide to the rear just forward of slide lock. The proper fix was to rack the slide while pushing up and in on the slide lock lever. You don't know this under the clock so my fix was to feed the front of the gun to the nearest barricade to cycle the slide as it was too locked to do it by hand. At the time I attributed it to my left handedness, thinking that my weak thumb was riding the end of the pin and pushing it out under recoil.
The past two range visits have revealed the true cause, it's the Wilson 10rd mags. The plastic follower must be pushing out as well as up, I don't think it sticks out quite as far as a split lip metal follower. This was a different gun than the one I competed with, same exact malfunction. I verified it by shooting with a borrowed junk mag from a Norinco clone as well as the stock Colt mag, no malfunction. Two Wilson 10 rders. did it every time. I guess I hadn't seen it before because I try hard not to shoot to slidelock in matches. I still love my Wilsons, just going to have to puzzle on this one a little, maybe make some metal followers.
The other malfunction was that I'd get about 1 in 10 rounds and have a stovepipe. This was only with the Colt mag and the cause is about 3 years ago I dropped it while loaded and cracked one of the top rear corners so the feed lips are flexible and out of spec. I keep it because it is original and one of these days I'll weld it up. If you have a lot of failures to eject in an otherwise reliable gun, check your mag.
The point shooting? Well lately I've caught myself a lot not remembering seeing the front sight at all, in up close IDPA stuff. Usually I have very clean hits and a pretty spiffy time. I've also seen myself with the gun at about solar plexus level focusing on the targets and getting good hits(sometimes seeing the bullet and the hit). Shooting a steel challenge I was doing very poorly seeing the sights and jerking the trigger so while Po'd about that I got up and shot some really clean runs using a Cirillo sight picture.
The possibility still existed that I was seeing the sights but not recording it. Not so, tonight the stock GI front sight departed my Colt under recoil. I found it, sheared off, lasted 30 years though. I decided to shoot my remaining 80 rounds anyway. In rapid as I could aquire the target fire I shot these at a 25yd bull placed at 7 yds. 70% of the hits were in the bull, nothing worse than a 7. Not pretty looking as compared to sighted fire at those ranges, but very acceptable accuracy and a darn sight better than many folks do with sights. I think that's the key, acceptable accuracy and the confidence you will get the hit. I really don't care much for my sights on a humanoid target until past ten yards.
The past two range visits have revealed the true cause, it's the Wilson 10rd mags. The plastic follower must be pushing out as well as up, I don't think it sticks out quite as far as a split lip metal follower. This was a different gun than the one I competed with, same exact malfunction. I verified it by shooting with a borrowed junk mag from a Norinco clone as well as the stock Colt mag, no malfunction. Two Wilson 10 rders. did it every time. I guess I hadn't seen it before because I try hard not to shoot to slidelock in matches. I still love my Wilsons, just going to have to puzzle on this one a little, maybe make some metal followers.
The other malfunction was that I'd get about 1 in 10 rounds and have a stovepipe. This was only with the Colt mag and the cause is about 3 years ago I dropped it while loaded and cracked one of the top rear corners so the feed lips are flexible and out of spec. I keep it because it is original and one of these days I'll weld it up. If you have a lot of failures to eject in an otherwise reliable gun, check your mag.
The point shooting? Well lately I've caught myself a lot not remembering seeing the front sight at all, in up close IDPA stuff. Usually I have very clean hits and a pretty spiffy time. I've also seen myself with the gun at about solar plexus level focusing on the targets and getting good hits(sometimes seeing the bullet and the hit). Shooting a steel challenge I was doing very poorly seeing the sights and jerking the trigger so while Po'd about that I got up and shot some really clean runs using a Cirillo sight picture.
The possibility still existed that I was seeing the sights but not recording it. Not so, tonight the stock GI front sight departed my Colt under recoil. I found it, sheared off, lasted 30 years though. I decided to shoot my remaining 80 rounds anyway. In rapid as I could aquire the target fire I shot these at a 25yd bull placed at 7 yds. 70% of the hits were in the bull, nothing worse than a 7. Not pretty looking as compared to sighted fire at those ranges, but very acceptable accuracy and a darn sight better than many folks do with sights. I think that's the key, acceptable accuracy and the confidence you will get the hit. I really don't care much for my sights on a humanoid target until past ten yards.