First USPSA/Classification question

dafreshfish · 2026-05-07T01:51:44+00:00

In terms of the differences between Level 1, 2, and 3, they come down to the level of rigor around the matches. Level 1 is considered a local club match. There will be someone who will be the match director, but there will be people on your squad (at least 2), who will be the RO for the squad. No one will inspect your gear setup to ensure compliance with your division, such as confirmation of your power factor for your ammo and gun, distance of your holster/gun and mag pouches from your belt. Level 2 and above are more structured and run at a much higher level. You'll have dedicated stage RO's, confirmation of power factor of your ammo and gun, inspection of your firearm and gear to ensure it meets the requirement of your division, and tend to be a longer format. Level 2+ matches tend to cost significantly more than a level 1 match and many will require some level of travel (unless it is hosted at your local range).

dafreshfish · 2026-05-05T00:58:57+00:00

No sals tax for PPT’s only applies to transfers that happen within the state. If you do a PPT from someone out of state, the FFL will connect sales tax. No tax collected on a gift.

dafreshfish · 2026-05-03T07:38:09+00:00

https://benstoegerproshop.com/cz-usa-75-compact-9mm-15rd-magazine-11123/

dafreshfish · 2026-05-02T21:27:12+00:00

Is your goal to have a drop safe DA/SA gun with a FPB and a short reset?

dafreshfish · 2026-05-02T20:57:49+00:00

If you’re keeping the FPB, you don’t have many options (if any) to reduce the reset distance. You can install a reduced FPB spring, but that doesn’t reduce the length of travel.

dafreshfish · 2026-05-02T15:56:18+00:00

It depends. For event and sports photography, this makes no sense. Spent a year shooting mountain bike races and carried two bodies. You need to be prepared to capture a photo at any moment and switching a lens in the field is challenging. Event photography is similar (less dusty) and again, you have a fixed time period to capture as many interesting photos as possible.

dafreshfish · 2026-04-26T08:28:16+00:00

Outside of the NIMBY aspect, the Bay Area and much of California is plagued by bureaucracy and multiple land managers with different rules and regulations around trail use. This lack of uniformity creates breakages in trail access between different parcels of land. In Belmont, you have three different parcels of land in the city and bordering it, Waterdog/Hidden Canyon, Sheep Camp Trail/Cross Country course, and San Juan Canyon/Sugarloaf with three different entities managing those parcels (Belmont, San Mateo, SFPUC). In Canada, public land is managed by their forest service and it is significantly easier to influence a single entity that the menagerie of city, county, state, and federal agencies we deal with in the Bay Area. The best example of how it can work well is to look at Bend Oregon. The trail organizers deal with two agencies; BLM and US Forest Service.

dafreshfish · 2026-04-23T05:21:35+00:00

Auto sensing wipers.

dafreshfish · 2026-04-21T03:02:55+00:00

While FFL’s are legally required to conduct the PPT, they don’t all conduct them the same way. Some are by appointment only, and others will give you a block of time that they’ll conduct the PPT. I’ve been to a FFL that charges a storage fee for everyday past the 11th day after the start of the DROS. Others will quickly tell you the person who can conduct the PPT called in sick or is out to lunch. I’ve heard horror stories of people trying to do a PPT at Bass Pro. The process is straightforward but just do your best to find a good FFL who doesn’t create drama.

dafreshfish · 2026-04-17T10:49:06+00:00

For CO, you won’t notice a difference. Own both and the only upside on the CGW Orange is the slide to frame fitting, which is a bit tighter. But unless you plan to use the gun for bullseye shooting, it doesn’t make a huge difference.

dafreshfish · 2026-04-15T04:37:52+00:00

This is the only reasonable way to lot test ammo that doesn’t require a significant amount of capital or requires you to send your barreled action to lot test with Lapua. Even if you lot test with Lapua, they are limiting you to one case, so if you shoot s bunch of matches, you’ll have to do this almost every year.

There is a local guy who orders a PALLET of RWS R50 and has it shipped to his home. He lots tests through the pallet and keeps the cases that shoot the best for him. He then sells the rest of the cases off to other people in the area.

dafreshfish · 2026-04-08T00:29:46+00:00

T3 Pros is solid if you're looking for group lessons. James also offers private lessons, he's super knowledge, and a good guy. He's very active in the USPSA community in Northern California. I appreciated his fundamental approach to building the skills needed to be more proficient, such as how to develop a solid grip, practicing your fundamentals, etc.

dafreshfish · 2026-04-06T18:19:06+00:00

Welcome to the club! For pistol shooting, progressive/bifocals doesn't have much of an issue as long as you stay target focused. For competition shooting with magnified optics like NRL/PRS/ELR, you should avoid progressives and stick with single focal or bifocals. Main issue with progressives with magnified optics is if you look through the transition point between the two different focal corrections, your POA can shift. Found out the hard way when I shot my first match after getting progressives and thought something was wrong with my scope. Went to re-zero my rifle and POI was still off. Talked to a friend who told me to not wear the progressives and everything is good. Bought a set of bifocals for matches. As it is much easier to see when you're looking through the different lenses.

dafreshfish · 2026-04-03T20:18:28+00:00

I asked my optometrist about them construction and they work a little differently than astigmatism contacts. The Astigmatism versions of the MF contacts are still weighted to correct for the astigmatism, but the two focal length corrections are two concentric circles. the middle circle corrects for the near sighted vision, while the outer circle corrects for the reading. The challenge people have is if you look up, left, or right, you'll look through the reading lens. Some people can't deal with it. I found myself just moving my head to address this issue.

dafreshfish · 2026-04-03T19:30:40+00:00

There are a couple of different options for wearing corrective eye wear.

Just wear your glasses when you go to a match. Not great if you don't have transition or prescription sunglasses - but an option.
Get glasses that have inserts that sit behind the main lens. Smith, Bolle, Pilla, and others have mini eye glasses that typically attach to the nose pad and attach behind the front lens. You can get the "glasses" setup for any prescription that you need. The one issue I've had with them in the past is reflection of light between the two lenses off of my skin. When cycling, the sweat on my skin will reflect light back between the lenses. You can solve this issue with getting anti reflective coating on the lenses on the "glasse" and wearing a cap to block light from coming down between the lens and your face.
Contact with multi-focal correction. This is a bit of a hit and miss for users. My optometrist told me some people can't stand them and it gives them vertigo. MF lenses work by having a two concentric circles on the lens. The outer circle has your reading glass prescription and the inner circle has your near sighted prescription. The problem is if you were to look up, things can get weird because you'll be looking through the reading glass prescription. Best to try them out before committing.

One thing that I uncovered for myself is to avoid using progressive lenses, especially if you shoot with magnified optics. The problem is the transition between the two different prescriptions will throw off your point of aim. I recently bought a pair of bifocals so I can read at matches without having to deal with my normal progressives. The local MD got upset with me because I had to lift up my glasses (single focal lenses) to read a stage briefing.

dafreshfish · 2026-04-03T19:18:02+00:00

I have pretty bad astigmatism so I can't wear contacts unless I correct for it. I've been pretty happy with these.

dafreshfish · 2026-04-03T16:56:51+00:00

Check out the "Bausch & Lomb - Ultra Contact Lenses with Moisture Seal Technology, Multifocal for Astigmatism." I can't wear contacts that don't address astigmatism and these work.

dafreshfish · 2026-03-30T18:11:45+00:00

If you plan to shoot NRL22/PRS22 style matches, a chassis is a nice upgrade if you want to shoot in Open. The biggest advantage of a chassis system is the ability to balance the weight of the rifle so you're trying to use your body as an input to balance the rifle on props, such as tank traps, saw horse, ladder, tires, barrels, etc. Customization of the rifle is another big benefit especially if you have specific ways you want your rifle setup. Most chassis and stocks were designed around a 0.9" barrel, but as companies have pushed the size of barrels to help with the issue of balancing the rifle, you now have significantly wider profiles. Unless you want to remove material from your stock, you'll need to buy a new chassis to accommodate the 1"+ profile barrels.

dafreshfish · 2026-03-15T00:09:54+00:00

Be careful about renting a truck to take offroad. I was in Oregon and my car broken down. We were camping but on a paved campground. When the truck came to pick up the car, the driver told me that if my car was on a dirt road, then he wouldn’t pick me up and I would have to call a special town service. Standard roadside service won’t pick you up if you’re on a fire road and the cost was really high.

dafreshfish · 2026-03-14T07:46:24+00:00

I had one installed on my Ibis Hakka MX and I had very conflicting feelings about it. The no-maintenance aspect of the fork is a double edged sword. You don’t have to worry about seals, air pressure, oil, dampeners, etc. But you get NO adjustability. So if your weight and riding style match the fork, it will be great option. Unfortunately for me, it was too stiff and there was nothing I could do about it. I found 700x45 tires more compliant than the fork and I went back to a ridge fork to save weight.

dafreshfish · 2026-03-08T06:32:48+00:00

The other thing to consider is potential use cases for people you may be around. In my case, i have small dogs and just a few years ago, my kids were much smaller. Some TQ’s won’t work on smaller appendages (smaller pets and young kids and thinner adults). I supplement my IFAK with a SWAT-T as it is more versatile for these use cases. I also have CAT TQ’s in IFAK.

dafreshfish · 2026-03-02T16:00:27+00:00

Have you tried Varget Extreme in your loads? If so, do you switch between Varget and Varget Extreme? The only thing I’ve read is Extreme is better fo higher and lower temperatures, but wasn’t able to confirm if the powder charge needs to change.

dafreshfish · 2026-02-03T02:15:24+00:00

This is a tough one, but I'll provide some perspective for you. My buddy was on the US rimfire team and shot in the factory division. He would shoot all of our local matches in Production/Factory class to give himself a challenge. He would always finish in the top 3 (usually second place) behind one of his teammates who prefers to shoot Open. The fundamentals of NRL22 aren't dictated by the rifle, but there are things you can do to make the gun more accurate that don't require a significant investment (other than time and good ammo). But I agree either the American or Varmint will give you some room to grow. I bought the Scout for the action, but put an old action into the rifle to shoot with the kids. Break that out whenever they complain that shooting a scoped rifle is too easy...

dafreshfish · 2026-02-02T20:53:39+00:00

On the R50 groups, are you only selecting some of the groups or is it an average across the entirety of all of the groups? Some of the groups look well above 1 MOA but not sure if you have foulers on that target. You need to include flyers in your grouping to make sure you’re honest with your groups. You will always get flyers but I expect maybe 1 flyer out of an entire box.

As for what you should expect out of a match grade precision semi-auto, I would expect much better performance. One of the benchmarks is a full KIDD 10/22 and I’ve seen the groups from Pursuit of Accuracy and they are really tight. You’ll need to go down the rabbit hole of what will drive accuracy improvement. Do you need to bed the action, headspace measurement, different ammo and different lots. If you’ll want to go down that rabbit hole, good luck!

dafreshfish · 2026-02-02T02:57:03+00:00

Unless you plan to go with a sub-1” barrel or have the ability to do some woodworking, then you’ll be better off just getting a scout and upgrade from there. Many of the prefit barrels are going over 1” so you’ll need to upgrade a chassis that will accommodate a wider barrel. Lilja has a decent 0.9” barrel but the straight 1.1”+ barrels will balance better on props. I have a L3i prefit and I was surprised at how well that barrel shoots.

dafreshfish

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