Not much has been happening this week. Just some more dry fire and a little more live fire, focused primarily on reloads. Last week’s live fire practice with reloads has be re-evaluating my reloads a little. My goal is to get down to around 3 seconds in live fire, and I am not even close. I am noticing a pretty significant disconnect from dry fire to live fire. I am fairly certain it is attributable to the to the nose profile of the dummy rounds used in live fire and the nose profile of the LSWCHP ammo I am carrying. The round nose profile of the dummy rounds is very forgiving of slight misalignments, the LSWCHP is not. On my live fire reloads I am getting hung up trying to insert the rounds into the chambers. The combination of the sharp edges on the bullet profile and the soft lead Causes the bullets to sort of “stick” if they are not lined up perfectly.
This has caused me to reconsider a few things. Changing the ammo I carry to Hornady Critical Defense or Critical Duty. This is mostly based on the observations of Caleb Giddings who noted not only the superb accuracy of the Hornady loads, but that they also load incredibly easy because of how pointed the nose of the bullet is. There is also the question of my choice in speedloader. I like the Comp III loaders because they stay properly oriented in the pocket, are easy to index in the hand, and add a little push to the rounds to get them in the gun. I am curious though if a loader that could release the rounds sooner because it is not dependent on the center post being depressed to release the rounds would work better, or perhaps one that holds the rounds a little looser. I have a few different speedloader variants I can play with.
I am also giving thought to changing how I reload. With a semi auto, I place a lot of value on maintaining my down range awareness. With a semi auto, this is pretty easy to do with a little practice. I carried that over to my revolver reloads, trying to stay eyes up throughout the reload. I noted last week that I was dropping my eyes anyway because the reloads weren’t working out right. This week, I managed to keep my eyes up, but my reloads were pretty horrible. I did a single reload where I looked the rounds into the cylinder and the time difference was significant. So I now have to decide if the time difference is worth loosing some visual awareness for a second or two, or if I need to adjust how I reload to help keep my eyes up by holding the revolver higher. Clint Smith mentions this method in a couple videos. There may be some additional downsides to that reload method, so I will have to experiment with it.
I also made a slight tweak to the rear sight. I had noted the gun shooting a little left on the first range trip. I had a few other people shoot it that I knew were good shooters and they had similar results whether shooting DA or SA. So I felt an adjustment was needed. It now shoots closer to POA at 25yd with my carry load.
There is still quite a bit of work that needs to be done, but I feel as though I am making progress in the right direction. From a pure shooting standpoint, I like how the K-framed Model 66 handles. Perhaps not as a svelte as a .38 Special only K-frame, like a Model 10, but still handles pretty well. It is easy to get the accuracy that I want, and while my splits are slower than with something like a Glock or other striker fired handgun, I am okay with that for now. I have some training scheduled later this year and plan to run this revolver for the class. We will see how that goes. I have not run a revolver in a class before.
Priority: Performance 