The Cornered Cat
Vindicated

Sunday, we shot the FBI PQC-09 qualifier for keepsies. I’m happy because my practice sessions earlier in the week paid off with a 100% score today. The target looked a little rougher than I would prefer, so I’m going to keep working on my distant shots.

It’s a little rough, but that’s a 100% score on the FBI PQC-09 qual. The two shots in the upper right happened at 15 yards, and both were the result of me looking up and over the top of my gun rather than following through with my eye on the front sight. I should learn not to do that. As you can tell from the picture, it was pouring down rain.

By the way, despite my creative excuses after one practice session last week, I did find one honestly not-me problem that made a difference at 25 yards: the rear sight on my gun had drifted a little. I was surprised when I realized what was going on, because I truly thought the entire problem was … me. (Turned out I was only about 75% of the problem!) Having a trusted friend shoot my gun at the same distance helped me figure out that there was an equipment problem we could fix.

The rest of my problems somehow fixed themselves when I concentrated on the front sight and pressed the trigger smoothly. Funny how that works.

Here’s the course of fire, with all shots fired from concealment.

3 yards: Draw and fire 3 rounds dominant hand only, switch hands, and fire 3 rounds non-dominant hand only. 8 seconds.

5 yards: Draw and fire 3 rounds in 3 seconds. Repeat 3 times.

7 yards: Draw and fire 4 rounds in 4 seconds. Repeat 2 times.

7 yards: Start with 1 round in chamber, empty magazine in place. Draw and fire 1 round, emergency reload, and fire 5 additional rounds, all in 8 seconds.

15 yards: Start at the ready. On signal, fire 3 rounds in 5 seconds. Repeat 3 times.

25 yards: Draw and fire 4 rounds standing barricade, fire 4 rounds kneeling barricade, and fire 4 rounds prone. Regardless of capacity, you must reload once during this string of fire. 50 seconds.

50 rounds total, with 2 points per hit for 100 possible points.

It’s a good qual — deceptively simple, with snug but achievable par times.

7 Responses to Vindicated

  1. wkeller says:

    NICE!! I love qual rounds like this. I’ve been shooting the ILEA qual for a bit now, good to have a fixed standard to shoot against!

    • Kathy Jackson says:

      One reason I love to shoot quals like this is that it keeps me honest. It’s soooooo easy to go to the range and just work on the stuff I’m already good at. A qual forces me to work on everything, including the stuff I’d otherwise be lazy about. This one in particular forces distant work with a reasonably tight time frame — something many standards don’t do. They either have no distant work at all, or have such long time frames at distance that it’s unrealistic for defensive work.

  2. keads says:

    Well done!

  3. Old NFO says:

    It’s minute of bad guy, and I’ve NEVER shot a perfect score on that one, so you’re one up on me!

    • Kathy Jackson says:

      I’ve had prettier targets on it in the past, but am plenty happy that I cleaned it this time — especially considering the excellent lineup of excuses I had ready to go, and didn’t need. 😉

      Forgot to put this in the post, but the FBI Agent standard is at least 80% (max of 5 shots out). It’s really a deceptive test, because it reads easy and shoots hard.

      • Old NFO says:

        That it does, and I usually throw one on the head shots… sigh… If that target had ears, I’d have been okay a time or two. What it usually boils down to is time management, people rush shots, rush mag changes (and don’t seat them well), etc. You really ARE your own worst enemy on this one!

  4. larryarnold says:

    “Shoot like a girl, if you’re good enough.”

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