Step 1 achieved

I should note that while I used my Colt 1911 Rail Gun to shoot the FAST Drill at the end of day 2 of the class, I used the Sig 1911 Tac Ops for the duration of class, firing over 1,000 rounds through the gun over the course of 2 days.  Now, here’s why I switched to the Colt for the FAST Drill.

On day 1, we shot FAST twice – my first run was a 5.44 (IIRC) but I dropped a head shot.  This was shooting from concealment with the Sig 1911 Tac Ops.  On the second run, I shot it in 7.00 exactly, because I bobbled the reload to an extreme degree.  During day 1 of the class, Todd pointed out that I was wasting a ton of motion on my draw from concealment, which is really something that I need to spend a ton of range time correcting.  Instead of trying to change my draw in midstream, when we shot the FAST on day 2 I decided to switch to the Galco M4X Matrix retention holster, which we’ll have a review of up this week.  The problem is that the M4x doesn’t fit the Sig 1911, so for 12 rounds of the class I switched to the Colt to shoot FAST on day 2.  Shooting an open top retention holster with no concealment adds a 0.50 second penalty to your run, but I’m confident in my open draw and reloads.  That confidence proved correct, turning in a 5.96 time that with the penalty put me at 6.46.  I have shot the drill MUCH faster in the past, but because I knew I needed a good run to get the pin (which was my goal for this class) I made the decision to shoot good hits and not worry about trying to rock the speed.

I’ll put up some more thoughts on the excellent Pistol-Training.Com class later this week, but for a full AAR you’ll have to check out an upcoming issue of Combat Handguns!