4,700 rounds
0 stoppages, 0 malfunctions, 0 parts breakages
Another busy albeit low round count week. Gun is still running like a champ under every possible environmental condition.
Friday and Saturday I taught an Aim Fast, Hit Fast class in Glasgow, Montana for a number of federal, state, and local law enforcement officers. We had weather of low 30’s to low 40’s on Friday and then upper 70’s on Saturday. The class went great, and the officers in Montana definitely know how to shoot!
This week I’ve been at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick, GA. Today I spent a little time at the range. In the rain. A few hundred rounds of 25 & 50yd practice showed me that I haven’t quite mastered the P30’s LEM trigger as well as I thought. Of course, the fact that my shooting partner for the day recently won his Division title at a USPSA Area Championship may have caused me to go a little faster than I should have … just maybe.
I also had the opportunity to participate in two in-depth dry fire training cycles being held for a federal agency’s new recruits. The first session was Wednesday night and lasted four hours. There is nothing like having to do push-ups, sit-ups, squats, leg extensions, and more push-ups, and more sit-ups, and so on and so on when you miss that little 2″ circle on the Beamhit to motivate you towards more precise sight alignment and trigger manipulation skills. Brutal PT punishment aside, we received some really outstanding training on marksmanship, the draw, and reloads. Tonight we worked some more on reloads and also malfunction clearances. And thanks to overall improved shooting on everyone’s part, the number of PT punishments was greatly reduced. Which is why I still have enough strength to type.
More details on the dry fire program will be forthcoming as I have time to write.
Next week I’ll be teaching at the Midwest Tactical Officers Association Conference as well as taking a class on “team room clearing with a pistol,” which should be extremely interesting. While most current tactical doctrine pooh-poohs the idea of using a pistol for room clearing, the simple reality is that many police officers and certainly most private citizens will not be walking around with long guns on a regular basis. While entering a hostile area with nothing more than a pistol might not be anyone’s idea of ideal, it might just be necessary.
I’ve been playing around with the grip panel options the past couple of weeks and I’ve come to the conclusion that using the largest panel on the left (support side, for me) not only helps me get more contact patch with the grip for recoil control but also prevents me from riding the slide release lever. With the medium sized panel on the gun, once in a while the slide will fail to lock back because I’m keeping the slide release lever down. That’s one great thing about being able to change each panel (left, right, and rear) independently. I think I’ve settled on either left-large, right-small, back-medium or left-large, right-small, back-small.
Train hard & stay safe! ToddG
Previous P30 Endurance Test posts at pistol-training.com:
- Week Two
- Week One
- Initial Report
Awesome review, I never considered swapping out just the left side panel to alleviate my problem with riding the slide lock. Might have to check it out. Excellent right up, as always!
Todd – have you considered taking the P30 to Rogers? I’d like to see how the LEM trigger works up there…w/ you behind the grips, rather than me.
John — I’d be more than happy to, but I don’t think I can ask Rogers to give me a free slot every year just for the benefit of the test. 8)