Today’s Daily Challenge looks practical and interesting. I’ll be working on this tonight and post the results.
Stay safe out there.
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Going to have to secure the dogs before trying this one. Otherwise, they’re going to think we’re playing a game of hide & seek.
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Daylight was fading by the time I got going on this, so I left the lights off and shot over tritium dots.
The next run was a bit quicker at 8.5sec avg, more consistent in times and scores — but not particularly good, all 91-94 points.
If this were a real scenario, I would want to work to a quicker shot. An odd artifact of the Daily Challenge setup is that they are rated by score only — no par or ranking based on time. So if you are steadier in slow fire, don’t rush. I guess that’s ok if you work on speed in the drills which are available every day.
Nice shooting.
I always think about that when I’m running their timed drills. If they added a time pressure, and deducted points for exceeding a limit, it would make for a better drill.
Anyway, today’s scores, P226 first, then P365:
P226
P365
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You’re much too kind. When I shoot at your times, my score falls into 80s.
You’ll cover my six, right? 
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You bet.
Not a fan of today’s drill. I just couldn’t make myself slow down enough for consistent shots.
What’s interesting are the movement bars. A lot more hold movement (blue) on the heavier gun, and yet better scores. And… look at shot number 3 on the left. It has the largest trigger movement (yellow) of all 10 shots, but also the highest score. That doesn’t seem right.
P226 left, P365 right:
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Looks pretty good to me. I didn’t get a chance with this one today, but I remember a pickup drill from the floor that I couldn’t get seem to get working correctly.
I haven’t found a lot of insight from the “jiggle bars” — but no idea why there would be much trace of anything showing with a 99 score. A hypothesis about the longer blue bars on your heavy gun — 0.3sec isn’t a lot, but you are shooting faster on average. That gun may still be moving during the lookback period when you shoot quicker.
It’s hard to plan a simultaneous range exercise, but I got out today. I like Frank’s favorite drill, and it can provide some “truthing” against dry fire performance — so I ran a couple rounds of that. The first run failed to detect a shot somewhere, so my surprise 6th shot was kind of a clunker. Second round was a little smoother.
My real motivation for MantisX live fire is to compare the device numbers with holes in paper. That worked ok. I aimed at a B-8 center taped on top of my main target. I think three of the fliers were from my first run.
The other exercise is KR Training Three Seconds or Less — a version from ca.2018 which I run with a couple modifications. Time today is a little slow on some 7yd strings. I always seem to mess up something, so the target is about as good as I get.
Good morning. Despite my best intentions, I didn’t complete the Doorway as Cover exercise that I posted. I’ll try again with today’s exercise “Tactical Blind Reloads”. No blindfold, just a darkened room later in the day.
Stay safe out there.
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I usually just close my eyes for the blindfold exercises. Sometimes I need to see to reset for the next shot; mostly my dark room isn’t the best place to drop something or chase dummies.
First run. Time includes returning magazine to carrier before the shot.
Second run was quicker, but scores were about the same. Something felt really funny — it felt like I couldn’t really reestablish my grip correctly, but no idea why.
Until I had an idea. I usually train with a magazine full of brass and plastic dummies to the weight of a loaded gun, but was running this test just swapping a pair of empties back and forth. Got out my weighted dry fire magazine, and that was the answer. Third run did not score or time any better, but my hands were getting tired and clumsy — definitely the gun and grip formation felt correct again. I don’t practice blind shots much, but maybe next time.
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I completed the Daily Challenge with both eyes closed in a darkened room. I was actually very surprised at how much I struggled with manipulating the magazines but still able to score well.
MantisX is paying off for me in my opinion.
Stay safe out there.
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No one’s taking you down in a dark alley! Nicely done.
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You’re really pounding them in there!
I was surprised at how (relatively) little I struggled exchanging magazines, for a manipulation I’ve hardly ever done. Nice to know that regular reloading in the daylight seems to teach my hands where they need to be. Sure tired out my achy knuckles to work multiple quick swaps and be set again for each timer.
In my past life, I worked quite a lot on magazine manipulation during practice of emergency as well as tactical reloads. I personally feel like I struggled, I could be faster and smoother. I need to get back to work on that.
Any client of mine who signs up for any of my courses on the range will find themselves loading magazines with odd numbers and smaller amounts of ammunition. They will have sore thumbs and they will be performing copious amounts of magazine dumps and swaps.
Learning how to “fight the gun” is extremely crucial in my opinion. And the more frustrated that we can make ourselves with these administrative handling fundamentals during dry fire in a safe environment, the more proficient we will become on the range and in the field.
Stay safe out there.
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Today’s Daily Challenge looks like one that makes a lot of sense to me. You could replace keys with a shopping bag for a good reminder to free up your hands while armed in public. This has real world practical application in that we should remind ourselves never to overburden both hands and arms while going about in public.
If you are carrying something (a bag, etc.) it should be in your support hand and it should be dropped immediately (or even thrown) to clear yourself to engage a threat. I would personally retain my keys in my off hand or have them stowed in a pocket. Throwing or dropping keys wouldn’t really be a wise decision.
Stay safe out there. Keep practicing.
You bet. All the juggling puts building blocks of skill proficiency in the bank. I guess I do actually practice the basics of “tactical reload” in routine practice, checking and adjusting loads between strings of fire.
I try to do all gun handling at the range in “hot” mode, not taking everything apart and setting up as if from the kitchen counter. And I try to make every defensive test from a “cold” physical and mental state (as much as I can simulate during a time when shooting is what I’m there to be doing).
I haven’t carried a reload since I switched from single stack to a greater capacity onboard in 9mm. I still do slide lock reloads in practice to maintain general facility in weapon manipulation (and in case I ever end up in one of your classes 
), but not with the aspiration to operational excellence as I do with other skills.
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Well, I can’t “never”, because sometimes that’s what I am in public to do — carry a bulky object, load the car, assist someone, etc. What I can do is be conscious of my vulnerability, and try to mitigate —
- intentionally plan how I will jettison an encumbering load;
- select parking and positioning for tactical advantage;
- set a mental timer on “heads down” activity to reevaluate the threat environment;
- don’t dilly-dally — plan, execute, shift, evaluate, repeat as needed.
Here’s how I did on today’s challenge:
First five shots, my “shopping bag” was in my left hand; second five in my right hand. One run is too small a sample to prove any tactical advantage — especially when half my elapsed time is just making the Mantis happy — but a half-second on time and two points on trigger is worth examining.
My thought: weak hand is involved in clearing the cover garment, and dropping the bag takes an instant while my strong hand just waits to get at the gun; the other way, strong hand has a moment to jettison cargo while support is coming into position — and everybody joins up with little or no delay. Maybe I’ll try a few runs at full speed in one of the timed exercises without worrying about device judgement — see whether there really is an advantage.
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Today’s challenge was interesting. One handed reload out of battery.
I didn’t fair well after probably 8 strings, this was my best. All dry fire with the P365.
Stay safe.
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Looks like decent shooting to me. I was unable to put my shooting in to push the curve down, so you drew only good shooters to compare with. 
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Re: “drop your load” challenge.
I took some passes at Holster Draw Analysis dropping a shopping bag from my left hand:
average time 1.40sec …and then dropping from my right hand:
average time 1.42sec.
Either MantisX or I was putting up more irregular incremental segments than when I have been running HDA regularly, but the total/avg individual shot times are about my par to make 20 hits in a 4.5" circle at 2yd (that’s a bit close, but other side of the counter puts me out to 4yd where I’m not sure I can make all hits at that speed). That is no difference in time at all.
Maybe which hand will make no difference — as long as you’re ready to discard any handful without hesitation, and don’t get fingers tangled up in bag handles, key rings, etc.
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