USPSA action pistol match at the Southwest Shooting Center in Clovis, NM with the Southwest Performance Shooters club. I was shooting my new Staccato HD P4 2011 from concealment (AIWB) in the Limited Optics division. I was really excited to shoot this gun at a match, because it had really impressed me during my weekly practice sessions with how soft shooting it is. Other than tuning the trigger and adding some better texture to the grip module, I felt like nothing else was needed on this gun... until I shot it at a match. 😕 While I didn't experience the issue in my practice sessions prior to the match, I kept inadvertently flipping the safety back on while shooting the gun on 3 of the 5 stages. Each time it happened, it cost me quite a bit of time. Not sure why the issue started after I had already put more than 750 rounds through the gun, but I'll have to thin down the safety levers and refinish them as I've done with all of my 2011 guns due to how high I grip the gun with my large hands. It made for a very frustrating day for sure.
Stage 1: I was nervous, had low confidence with a new gun, AND I engaged the safety while shooting, which surprised me and was a definite time suck. 5th place with six C-zone hits.
Stage 2: A decent run for me, but I engaged the safety while shooting again. 3rd place with only one C-zone hit.
Stage 3: A really good run for me, but the reload took longer than planned as I had trouble retrieving the fresh magazine. 4th place with two C-zone hits. I was definitely starting to gain confidence with the gun by this stage.
Stage 4: A lot of close up targets to go really fast. This would've been an excellent run for me, but I fumbled the reload bad. 5th place with only one C-zone hit.
Stage 5: "The Roscoe Rattle" classifier. Engaged the safety AGAIN, and caused an out-of-battery malfunction. The HD does not return to zero as consistently as my other 2011s, so I dropped a lot of points on this stage. 9th place with six C-zone hits and one D-zone hit.
I ended up in 4th place Overall out of 14 total. Not too bad of a result considering all the issues I had with the HD P4. Thinning down the safety levers should resolve the inadvertent engagement issues I had today, and being able to get a better grip on the gun with the levers out of the way may actually help the gun to return to zero more consistently.
