Hey! More parts to test at the range today!

Since I can't afford 5.56 ammo anymore, I apparently just buy parts for the gun instead of shooting the heck out of it. ;) I just can't shoot that carbine as much as I'd like, given the price of ammo, but I'd rather shoot 20 or 40 rounds at the range than none at all. I shot through almost all the ammo I had on hand, though. Luckily I still have about 400 rounds of the case of 9mm I picked up a while back. I can get a hook up on PMC, which seems to work pretty good...but it still ain't free.

I had a few new parts to verify: a Magpul MIAD, Buffer Tech extractor upgrade kit, sand paper grip tape for my G-Lock 19, and a VTAC sling. Short answer: they all worked, and a couple were exemplary.

The decision for the MIAD was because the Battle Grip I was running was just too thin for my big hands. Problem solved. I just wish the "trigger guard" front strap piece didn't have the finger rest. I would have used it if it didn't have it. I'm not sure I can shave it off, but I might try that later. If there's one thing I'd change about the MIAD, its that I would have the front strap modified to cover "the gap" between the grip and the trigger guard, which the Battle Grip does by design. If that proves to be a big deal, I'll pick up a Gapper for it, but I kinda doubt it'll be an issue.


The extractor upgrade kit seems to work as advertised; all the cases extracted and appeared to be going about 400% further than they had been. I dunno if that's the truth or not, but that's what the description at Brownell's said. At any rate, they were going a bit further, although the extractor was never a problem before. I just didn't like having the stock buffer insert being blue when it should have been black. I don't think it really mattered, but I have piece of mind, and new parts. Its the journey, not the destination, I guess. :)

The sand paper grips made a huge, huge difference. As both the readers of my blog probably already know, my hands are large. Glock 19's aren't large. I needed something to be able to hang onto that thing without constantly readjusting my grip, and that was the ticket. The kit comes with a couple pieces for the slide; one for the front of the slide, and one for behind the grasping grooves. I took the smaller one and put it on the frame as a leverage point for my support thumb, now that I have adopted (or am adopting; I'm still not 100% there) the "even more modern than modern technique" of thumbs forward isoceles. I'm sold; its faster and steadier.



The VTAC really needs no introduction; not having heard of it at least in passing means that black rifles aren't your thing. Besides, this sling will probably be getting swapped off tomorrow. My bro Jon told me he's got a padded one to give me. I need to weasel some rail panels out of him, too, because I found out one more thing today: I shoot better without the vertical grip. This was not a revelation that I wanted to come to; I like the vert grip. I had to give a solid shot (so to speak) to working without it, and found that I can control the carbine better, meaning its more steady and my groups are smaller. We were doing some non standard response drills (any number of rounds between, say, 3 and 7, or some other numbers) and I was just ragging a hole in the target. I can get a grip on more gun and really get behind it. Like I said, I didn't want to come to that conclusion, but the proof is in the...something other than pudding. The proof is in the peanut butter and chocolate ice cream, which I'm going to get right after I finish this.

Overall, I'm very pleased with my progress. I think I'll go into some particulars of the drills we did at a later date; they were excellent for a couple of reasons. First, we weren't just shooting bullseye targets, which I find a good way to "break the tunnel vision" of just shooting ten rings. It changes your mindset, and gets you to thinking about shooting something other than paper...i.e., critters, humans, and zombies. Second, any time you can move around and shoot, that's a huge plus. There's limited value in standing in front of your target from a known distance and doing the same thing over and over. I heard an interesting comment at the range, too-what can I say? Comtacs rule! The range is split into a pistol range and a rifle range. The rifle shooter was talking about distance combat shooting, saying something along the lines of "when are you going to have a long range shot (I think he was talking about a hundred yards) in a tactical situation?" I looked over after he said that to see him shooting his AR off the bench. I just chuckled and continued on my way.

So, to finish up this post-I didn't mean for it to get so long, but it did-I'm gonna show some more current pics of Schwaggie. I'm gonna have to shoot some more in a day or two, since the Ace sling mount will likely be further out, probably at the end of the rail, and it should have some new KAC rail panels and a padded VTAC sling. In the end, its all about supplying more fodder to post about. Here's some more pics! I hadda add the one of Top because its such a great shot of the "more modern than modern technique".lol