USTC Day Three

The morning brought Thunderstorms to the range. Arriving at 8:15 in the admin area was the armorer I spoke to the night before. He brought a STI brand slidestop. We install and I THINK I am back at it. After the TStorms leave but still raining we go at it. If you go, bring rain gear. They do indeed shoot in the rain here! 

The draw and malfunction drills again in the rain! Pulling a Pistol from a holster and reloading showed that rain gear is really not conducive to achieving great times, but well worth the effort. However, I am now encountering a failure to feed on the Colt. At lunch I go back to the room to troubleshoot. The new slidestop magazine piece is so long in the mag well it is pressing down on the actual bullet preventing a feed up to the ramp. So using Ninja gunsmithing skills with a permanent marker we can see where to file the slidestop.  

So now I ask the instructor if he has a file. Visions of Drill Sargent Hartman come to mind: "Private keads why are you doing this to me and my beloved Core, are you trying to be different?" etc. He says he does not. Time for plan "B". Sorta like "Robin if I can reach my Bat gunsmithing tool on my utility belt we can get out of this".

Behold gunsmithing tool retrieved from the car:

So during the next break to top off mags and "hydrate" (that used to mean drink some water), the class is watching me grind on the lever with the file. Some were freaked looking at a field stripped M1911 and I working over a part held on an ammo can. So much the better! 

We go back at it and shoot standing, kneeling, and prone. Distances increase here. So much the better! One student whips out an air mattress for this. You are kidding right ? My redneck gunsmithing has payed off. NO failure to feed or fire.

After lunch we get to a Rogers Range. USTC looks like this with eight bays of this:

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In motion it looks like this minus the soundtrack:




The instruction was great, the facility was fantastic. If you want to push yourself with a Firearm there are worse places to start! I took 1300 rounds and came back with less than 50. 

Armorer class and additional info later!