Pat Harrison

Well now that summer is officially over, and so is the main shooting season for me, I should finally post an update. The good news is I'm winning again! I had a pretty long dry spell that stretches back to April of last year, the longest period I think I've ever had without wins at some level. I spent a lot of that time training and working on every aspect of my shooting. I have to thank a lot of people for their help during this period including the fine folks at Brianenos.com forums, especially Brian himself who always seemed to be able to cut through the BS anytime I posed a stupid question and got me back on track, Rob and Kippi Leatham for the drills at the Drillmaster Shooting Club (which is unfortunately done this year but his awesome drills will be available online from his store in the new year), Doubletap Sports for putting together a fine gun for me to shoot and Derek from Millenium Custom who has helped me in so many ways over the years.

I managed to post wins at four straight local Level II matches including two at my home club (somehow after designing, setting up and helping to run both matches), and I scored a top 5 finish at the Western Pennsylvania Sectional including a stage win. Topping off the year was a much better result at the USPSA Open National Championship. While I would have liked to place a little higher, my first stage disaster dropped me out of a potential top 30 finish, overall my performance was lightyears ahead of how I shot last year. I have some more work to do but it's mostly tweaking now instead of a complete overhaul.

Going forward I am making a couple of equipment changes. I ran a fairly heavy gun this year, the Doubletap .38SC Open gun was running a full 5" slide with a Schuemann hybrid barrel and Millenium three chamber steel comp. This is a much heavier setup than I'm used to. My older Millenium Custom .38SC blaster ran a standard skinny 5.25" barrel with a shortened slide, this combination is lighter and ends up with a much more briskly cycling gun that I seem to be able to drive better. This is what I shot at the US Nationals this year after my slide cracked on my main gun. This past weekend I dusted off the Infinity IMM top end and put it back on the SVI frame. I forgot how great this combo shoots. It consists of a short 4.5" slide, Schuemann barrel with three hybrid holes, three tribrid chambers, AET technology (gain twist rifling and fluted chamber) and a three chamber titanium comp, a very light setup. I ran this gun at the WNYPPL Monthly match as I was trying out a GoGun GasPedal and it was the easier gun to mount it on (more on this later). So now that I am looking at building up a new gun for next year I have a better idea of what I'm going to put together. I have a couple of new titanium comps from Millenium custom, one will go on the old Millenium gun and the other on my new top end. I'm going to build it with a standard bull barrel, Schuemann or BarSto  with the Millenium Ti Comp, but I'll cut the barrel back to 5" and slide to a 4.5" configuration (standard 5" slide guns use a 5.5" barrel with the extra half inch from the threading to mount a comp) I was tempted to go with a skinny barrel with this build but with the shortened slide and Ti comp it might end up too light. Basically I want to build a gun with the same weight as the IMM but without all the holes in the top. In fact the only reason I don't use that top end anymore is with all the porting it is just too hard to make major with it. I can get away with a couple of holes in the barrel and not have issues, but the 6 big holes on the IMM just bleed too much gas.

So next year I should be driving a new gun with an improved attitude and that should lead to even better results!

Pat