[Written aboard a jet airliner in flight...]  In about an hour I should be back at Washington Dulles International Airport after a four day weekend at Front Sight.  Rob was there to help empty the trash out of the car, supervise the loading and unloading of the storage shed (including writing up a concise list of missing items), and to attend a "shotgun" class of some sort on one of the smaller ranges.

    I, on the other hand, almost made history in two separate categories.  First, I did not shoot the hostage in the steel plate competition and stayed in the running until the last round on our range.  Second, I missed getting the DG thing by ONE [deleted] point, but that's ok, because in both cases these feats were attempted with a REVOLVER.

    After getting the right holster,  I was able to shoot the Performance Center gun and the trigger got better with each passing day.  Putting a Performance Center revolver in a Kydex holster is a good news bad news deal.  The good news is that it comes out like RIGHT NOW, which is important with a revolver, because you need that extra time for the trigger PULL.  If you "press" a revolver trigger, you'll be standing there until you pass out from heat stroke before the gun goes off.  The bad news is that the Kydex rubs off some of the Expensive finish from the Performance Center gun, but that's ok, because after four days that's a good indicator that some learning may have taken place.

    A quick technical note.  You can press the trigger on our friend Rudi Waldinger's revolvers, and those guns do go off before you pass out, but only with his ammunition...so it's not the same thing, I guess.  Rob and I agreed that we would like to have Rudi attend a Front Sight class with a stock revolver and beat the pistol shooters and then beat the shotgun winner.  By the way, for the first time this year the pistol guy beat the shotgun guy.  The shotgun LOSER was a Marine, so one of the instructors held his shotgun while he did push ups.  Marines do push ups on gravel.

    Back to the class report.  As you might expect, the malfunction clearance drills were easy with the revolver, but I took the time, and the wear and tear on my shooting hand, to do the revolver reload each time the pistol shooters did anything (Type 1-3, tactical reload, emergency reload, and whatever else they do).  You can do this without dumping all the rounds on the ground each time.  You start with an empty revolver, "point in," then go through the motions of dumping the empties, and then use the speed loader to put the new rounds in the gun.  After that, you just unload and put the rounds in your pocket.  At the end of the exercise you have a bunch of cartridges in your pocket and just have to pick up a smaller number of empty speedloaders from the ground.

    The actual shooting exercises were more difficult with the revolver than with a Glock.  Every trigger pull has to be perfect.  It is harder to shoot a revolver in that setting, but it forces you to concentrate.  I'll bet I can shoot the Glock better now, because the "slack out, press" on the Glock trigger may be even more controlled.  It's a theory at this point, but worth exploring.
   
    When it came time for the malfunction drills part of the skills test, I think I was given some extra time since I was using the revolver.  The maximum time was 7 seconds.  Because these guys don't screw around, one of the instructors had to time me with his watch after the beep had gone off.  I saw him at the Ace Hardware store Monday night and he said I made every reload in less than 5 seconds.  Go get your revolver if you have one and see if you can reload it in 5 seconds.  That's 5 seconds from pointed downrange to reloaded and pointed back at the target.  Thank you, Rudi Waldinger and thanks to the Jet-Loader company.

    I learned some tricks about tactical reloads with the revolver.  Carry a few Bianchi "Speed Strips" tucked away here and there so you can top of two or three rounds each time you fire.  The only time I didn't do this was on the five sequential head shots.  You know what's coming then, and there's no need to reload.

    Other useful info - be careful what kind of open speedloader holder you use on the firing side.  The vest can knock the speedloader out of the holder, even a Blade-Tech holder that was tightened up.  Losing some weight might help, now that I think of it.  Just when you need the speedloader out on the range you reach and it's not there.  It doesn't take too many of those before you come up with another method.  Improvise and adapt.

    Thanks again to Rudi, I knew always to look at the speedloader and the cylinder when loading.  The instructors said to keep looking around.  That's right, but also wrong.  Just as you do when you close your non-dominant eye, you can glance down long enough to see what you're doing with the revolver.

    Attention NRA Instructors in the group - scanning does not "break tunnel vision," but instead forces you to move the tunnel vision in other directions.  I had never heard that before, but it makes sense.

    Now I know there is a certain amount of personal attention parsed out to the individual students at Front Sight.  That's good teaching and good marketing.  With experience, you can almost tell when it's a little beyond what they are expected to do.  I believe, and Rob may back this up, that there was some genuine interest in the revolver during and after the weekend.  I may not take the handgun class again with a revolver, but I would encourage those of you reading this to try it once.  The big benefit is not only having the women students pay more attention to you, although I did enjoy that a lot.  The real benefit is that you'll concentrate on doing things right every time.  I know you should do this all the time, but the revolver forces you to do it...all the time.

    And, as you might expect, it was great fun to have those first two shots go off before anyone else's and be moving and scanning while they were still shooting.  A revolver can beat a pistol on the first two shots every day if you work at it.

    Comments will now be made on the night exercises.  My "new" Performance Center revolver was manufactured in 1996.  I thought the front night sight was a bit dim, but that was not the case when I got to the range Sunday night.  You can see the front sight just fine.  The muzzle flash from the cylinder to forcing cone gap is bright, and the flash from the compensator is bright, but you see the green dot again right away, much sooner than I expected.

    So, what to conclude from all this?

    Conclusion #1.  Taking the defensive handgun with a revolver was different enough that it was like taking the course for the first time.

    Conclusion #2.  You can "game" the class at Front Sight by tricking up a Glock in much the same way an IPSC shooter builds a race gun.  It's good for that class setting, but not good for the street.  If you take a stock gun like a revolver and do your best with that, it's a transferable skill.

    Conclusion #3.  I thought about taking a class with a 1911 next time, because that would be different, but now I'm thinking about going back with the Performance Center revolver and using different ammunition.  It is, after all, a .357 Magnum.  Hey, it's only 800 rounds in four days, right?  Decisions.  Decisions.

    Conclusion #4.  There should be a maximum of only three conclusions.

    Now, for some final comments.  There is a new official hangout in Pahrump, the Last Chance Saloon.  This place is on Loop Road past the Starboard mobile home sales lot and near the Ace Hardware.  The Last Chance Saloon has some pretty good steaks on the menu, including something called a "Montana Cut."  All I can about that is 1) Yee Hah, and 2) it's a year's worth of the Askins diet if you ask me.

    Askins, not Atkins.  That was intentional.

    We also have a new mascot whose image will appear soon on the www.randymays.com Web site.

Regards,

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