Davin's blog Occassional posts on user experience design, faith, and family.

15Aug/090

Pistol practice, Aug 15, 2009 and notes on iron sights for Ruger Mk II

I went to the Saginaw Field & Stream pistol range this morning and fired a practice 900 bullseye course with my Ruker Mk II .22.

A couple months ago I upgraded the iron sights on the gun. Up till this point I've shot with the original Ruger sights, except for a couple years in the 90s when I shot a dot scope. I ordered Bo-Mar style rear sights for the Ruger from a company called Champion. The sights are very high quality and the sight picture is great—a big improvement over the stock sights. I brought the gun to Dick Williams Gun Shop near Saginaw, MI and he installed the rear sight for me.

Unfortunately, when I brought the gun out to the range to zero it in, it turned out that the front sight wasn't the right height: I maxed out the elevation adjustment and it was still shooting about 5 inches too high at 25 yards.

So, after emailing and calling Ruger's customer support with no great luck, I called Clark Custom Guns and they suggested I try a different size front sight from Ruger. Clark had an extra in their shop, and I purchased it from them. It did the trick, and the gun is zeroed in beautifully.

This is one of those upgrades that I should have done years ago. The little improvement in the sight picture makes a world of difference.

While my slow fire scores this morning weren't outstanding, I do feel like I'm on the cusp of really getting the 50 yard line figured out. Slow fire has been the bane of my scorecards for as long as I've shot bullseye pistol. Now that I have a really clean sight picture, I've been able to trust my minimum arc of movement. Sure, it's probably all in my head, but it makes a difference. That phrase has almost become my mantra for each slow fire shot: "Trust your minimum arc of movement."

Here are the scores for this morning's practice.

Slow Fire National Match Course Timed Fire Rapid Fire Total
SF1 SF2 SF TF RF TF1 TF2 RF1 RF2
87-2X 93-1X 90-1X 100-5X 95-2X 98-4X 99-5X 93-1X 97-2X 852-23X

RF2 I shot as a 14 shot alibi. I had a stovepipe and was looking for a reason to fire off an odd set of 5 rounds.

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8Aug/090

Vacation in the Keewenaw

For the past week I've had Lila and Eva with me up in Keewenaw in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I grew up here, and we've been staying at my parents' house.

We've spent the last few days at our family's cottage (we call it a "camp") on Portage Lake. The photos of the ducks and the chipmunk are from there.

The girls swam at the camp, and we took two short trips to the beach at White City where they swam and played in the sand. The lighthouse photo is from there.

Click on the photos to view them larger.

We celebrated Eva's birthday and the girls got snorkels and masks. Lila swam a lot in Lake Superior and Portage Lake, despite the cool lake temperatures. "It's warm!" she declared. Lake Superior was 44 degrees, though we swam in more protected bays so they were probably a bit warmer.

Eva preferred to splash in the waves near the shore and play in the sand.

Oh, and on Friday at the camp I took the girls for a real sauna. The temperature was a soothing 145 degrees, and when I tossed a little water on the hot rocks, they gasped "I can't breathe!" Funny. I showed them how to breathe through a moist washcloth, and they sighed in relief under their washcloth-masks. We took some more steam to draw out the sweat, scrubbed up and got all sudsy, and then went to rinse the soap off in the lake.

Now, back at my parents' house, the girls are sitting here playing with legos. Tonight we'll wash clothes and pack up the car. Tomorrow we drive back down to Saint Charles near Saginaw.

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