Merry Christmas!
I took the Oracle Arms 2311 to an IDPA match locally yesterday.
I am shaking a respiratory thing that we've been passing around the house and took some Mucinex D yesterday morning. Sleep was good the night before - but was the first night in a few nights where I wasn't awake coughing - so probably a sleep deficit for the week. On monday/tuesday last week I had lost my voice and felt like I was turning the corner.
So I was first shooter on the first stage - basically as per always - no big deal - IDPA stages usually aren't that tricky - start in the far right of the bay - engage three mini poppers in the open from 15-20 yards (which is pretty stout shot difficulty for an IDPA match), retreat to the first position where there are four total targets to shoot in two arrays - for you non IDPA athletes - that means if you're 1 for 1 on steel you get a moving reload to P2 - which should have been about 5 yards slightly up range and to the left for a pair of targets , before you go down a hallway slightly to the right where you ran down about 7-10 yards and finished up on two more targets.
That's the easy plan. Did a good bit of shooting at starting position - 1 for 1. Pretty sporty engagement at P1. Then I run to P3 and immediately say "what am I doing" - shoot one target - run back up range to P2. Start to think about unloading a gun when I get hit with the "IF you're finished". Realizing what had happened I stroll casually back to P3 - shifting the gun to my weak hand and shoot the final target. It was over.
The next stage we shot I was last shooter - it was a similarly tricky stage with a lot of up range movement. Despite being last shooter I couldn't get my round dumping down correctly, over ran a position, then in the final two positions with a target apiece you were going from a position with a right, then a left, finishing on a right. I started to instinctively do how I'd do it in USPSA - go back right then advance on the back left position - this scared the RO and he stopped me out of fear of a 180 break. I didn't break the 180 I wasn't even close - the SO was Paul /the Gentleman Gunner. He had the most confused look on his face.
"I didn't break the 180"
"No, you're right - you just scared me"
"So I get a reshoot?"
"Yes you get a reshoot"
Our areas Safety Officer Instructor was backed up to us on that stage waiting for us to finish (I was the last shooter) and he agreed that I should get a reshoot but also agreed with Paul stopping me.
I load up mags - execute the stage brilliantly and was on path for the rest of the day - but my programming was DIFFICULT all day - I had to apply WAY more focus than normal to visualize and execute. From that point forward - other than a clipped no shoot on the standards stage - I either won or was competitive on each stage. Kevin Harding - the current IDPA world Champion was at the match and left the door open for me to beat him as he hadn't trained really since the match and was RUSTY in a serious way. I ended up 5th in the match - 5 seconds off Kevin - the damage was done from that first stage.
Kevin is doing something interesting - next year he's going to try to win it all with a CCP gun he's developing - since they lowered the power factor to 105 for CCP or whatever and it has a 10+1 load out now - he had this Canik with a bunch of brass parts on it with a load he developed at like 112 power factor using 147s - it was absurdly soft shooting. I shot it with regular 115s and it wasn't nearly as nice - but with his load - I understood how he was able to split like he was. Kevin's a beast - and I'm going to get him a patch for his vest that says "Hollywood" because twice he stopped with a "not ready" as he remembered his phone to record his stage runs. So I'm attempting to make Hollywood Harding stick.
So there's it happening - it was a good stage up until that point . You can actually see the issue starting as the gun hangs out of batter entering the position which forced me to rack a round out to get it back into battery - which I handled well. This sequence was paper, mini popper, mini popper activator, distant open target, bobber (didn't engage), partial (didn't engage) - so I ate 4 mikes and 2 procedurals right there. And it still was a 3.44 hit factor.
The good news so now the guns working I look forward to two days of mayhem!
Below - you can see a shock buff - it's a washer, basically that threads onto the guide rod. The theory of what a shock buff does is it alleviates some of the impact when the slide opens all the way - they're usually made out of Delrin or rubber or whatever but this one is aluminum and was supposed to be maintenance free. It kind of compresses the spring a bit more since you don't trim the spring so it makes lighter springs work more like a higher poundage ...
I got this pretty epic slow motion in the range of the Deagle going off. that gun is silly fun to shoot. The fireball is massive - I started to chrono the ammo I have for it - it's not as impressive as the fireball would suggest. It's about 1200 FPS with a 300 grain projectile. For comparison - the 6" 10mm with a 180 grain Blazer Brass was doing 180 grains at 1200 FPS.
The 10mm 1911 is pretty tame to shoot - not wildly different form a 45.
I was going to do a video on 10mm ammo and then shoot water jugs and slow motion of them popping - but then the sky opened up on me.
Just wanted to share this with you guys as an option you might not have heard of. Good quality, good execution, good designs. I don't have any sort of business relationship with them nor have interacted with them beyond giving them my credit card information. Pretty legit.
So sorry for this being posted so last minute - I had this edited like 2-3 weeks ago - conversations were with OAD that it would go live for SHOT - but then they announced it way earlier and I never connected the fact it wasn't attempting to be embargo'd. So I never uploaded it - like an idiot. I finished that drill this morning and never got you guys a preview of it when I DID realize that there wasn't any sort of embargo violation. So yeah. Sorry about that. That all said - I don't know what is about this gun. They - kind of like the Daniel Defense H9 - failed to kind of build on the momentum they started at SHOT 2023 and the conversation seems to have moved past this gun. The early 2311s were not as impressive as this is now - side by side - this is a MUCH better gun than what they were making last year. It's much better fit and the resultant accuracy is improved despite having the ports. My 2311 is production gun - like $600 service pistol accurate - but not 2011 accurate. ...
So in making the 2011 evolving video I was trying to get Todd Jarrett to come on. For those unfamiliar - he's been shooting USPSA since nearly the beginning - he was at the forefront of the sport in the 90's while open was coming into it's own and even has his own specialized cartridge - 38 TJ - for Todd Jarret - it's 38 super brass with a modified extractor groove that allows for full size resizing. So I'm really excited about this - it will take place at some point after SHOT but I wanted to put it out there to you guys - what do you want to know about TJ and the history of 2011 development?
