Glock 17 gen4 Endurance Test: Week 12

The test gun saw only 707 rounds this week. It was a very interesting 707 rounds, though.

This past weekend I attended the Shivworks Armed Movement in Structures class (read my AAR at the link). The whole class was force-on-force so obviously the test G17 wasn’t used. I did get a chance to use my G17/T Simunition-firing gun, however. You see it in the picture at the top of this entry, it’s the gun with the blue frame. Also pictured are my spare G17 gen4 (slide open), my SIRT  training pistol (red slide), and the test gun.

During the final training exercise in AMIS, I took a head shot on a hostage taker at about ten yards distance from a position of cover at a doorway. I literally saw the Simunition FX projectile bounce off the side of the role player’s helmet from a glancing blow. Because of that, I decided to spend my Monday at the range working on low probability targets with specific effort to coming back hard on the front sight to break tough shots. Two long days of high stress force on force clearly reset my mental/visual clock because I was seeing much faster.

First, I shot the F.A.S.T. cold and turned in five sub-5 second clean runs in a row, the best I’ve ever done with the G17.

• 4.76 (clean): 1.68,.47/1.98/.21,.21,.21
• 4.70 (clean): 1.56,.38/2.12/.23,.21,.20
• 4.38 (clean): 1.48,.44/1.87/.20,.19,.20
• 4.40 (clean):1.52,.39/1.89/.21,.20,.19
• 4.44 (clean): 1.55,.45/1.81/.22,.20,.21
• 6.48 (-1H): 1.69,.42/1.74/.22,.21,.20

Next I shot JodyH’s 99 Drill and scored a 92 (-2, -1, -2, -2) on 3×5 targets, a personal best with any gun.

Visually, I felt like I had forever to verify my sight picture, especially on the press out. My arms and trigger finger were moving at last week’s speed by my eyes and brain were moving at post-AMIS speed. It just made everything easy.

On Wednesday night I decided to try pushing myself to see if I could get the physical part — presenting the gun, manipulating the trigger, etc. — to match my newfound visual speed. Answer: no. I was essentially rushing shots. On the F.A.S.T. I found myself having to reset my sights for the head shots to avoid misses because I was moving the gun too much during the trigger press. I got three clean runs in a row but the first was a 5.22, followed by a 4.72 and a 4.79.

When I shot the 99 Drill, I scored a 87 (-3, -2, -5, -2) with almost all of my misses very low… like 2-3″ low. Basically, I was anticipating because I was trying to break the shot the instant I saw a good enough sight picture and my trigger finger just hasn’t been trained to work properly that fast yet. I was finishing with a lot of time left over on the 99 Drill strings, but I was missing (by a wide mark) for no good reason.

It was time to reset the trigger finger so I used it as an excuse to shoot a group with my carry ammo, Federal 124gr +p HST. Using a 2″ dot from a pistol-training.com Q target I scored this pretty respectable 1.35″ at 15yd. The shot outside the circle was the first round. I called the anticipation as soon as I broke the shot. The target is actually upside down, the round impacted low left.

Also, I was finally able to shoot the backup G17. It came out of the box, got a quick dose of Militec-1 on the rails and barrel, and fired 100 rounds without any problems. So it is already ahead of the test gun in terms of reliability. It came from the factory with stock Glock sights, a standard connector, and NY1 trigger spring. The trigger pull really is not that much heavier than the test gun (which has a “-” connector). The backup also feels like it has a cleaner break and shorter reset… two things often reported about the standard connector compared to the “-” version. It’s tempting to switch the test gun to a standard connector/standard trigger spring configuration.

This weekend I’m in Wilmington, OH teaching an Aim Fast, Hit Fast class. Then hopefully there will be a chance to get in one or two practices next week. See you on Friday…

Train hard & stay safe! ToddG

Previous Glock 17 gen4 Endurance Test posts at pistol-training.com:

• Week 11
• Week 10
• Week 9
• Week 8
• Week 6
• Week 5
• Week 4
• Week 3
• Week 2
• Week 1
• 99.8%
• It Lives
• Week Zero
• When Will It Stop?
• Announcement