The "World Shoot" gun raffle went very well. The winning ticket was #946 from Aruba. The winner’s name is on our website. We hope to get a picture posted after delivery.

While you’re reading about the "happy Aruban" on the site, check out the story about the "Happy Serbian". This happens all the time, normally when someone’s gun breaks at a big match and they have to borrow one off our table. At the previous World Shoot (2002 in So. Africa), it was Ron Avery. He picked up an "Executive" off the table and came in third (3rd) in Standard Division.

Our man, John Kestel, got a pretty good variety of very good pictures at the World Shoot. We’ll try to get some of those up on the site, along with a few more of the factory.

We, the STI Sales and Marketing group, have had it for the year. We’re pooped, burned out, and ain’t goin’ no place else this year.

Samples of the new "Legacy" are at the plating shops (plural). As I indicated before, we’re going to have a couple samples done by different processes. Since we don’t know which process that we’ll select for the finished model, I can’t yet price it for you. Regardless of the process selected, this is one "kick butt" gun that will shame the best of the semi-custom makers (you know who they are) as well as the Custom Shops in the big factories. And be priced competitively. One change in direction that we’ve taken on this gun; we’ve abandoned the interchangeable sight that was planned. The sight that we’ve settled on is a really neat adjustable unit that fits in the standard Novak style cut. It’s even shaped very much like a Novak fixed sight, which makes it pretty "snag free". We hope to be able to offer it with tritium inserts by mid first quarter, 2006.

We have also decided that the sights mentioned above will become an option (charged) on the "Tactical" series of guns. For you IPSC guys, "it’ll fit in the box".

While we had backed off from submitting guns to writers for the last couple of years, we will be getting back into that habit for 2006. The additional machines, people, space, and computer scheduling power are all combining to give us the additional capacity necessary to handle the increase in business that we always see after an article. With the additional capacity, we may be able to reopen the Custom Shop or expand the option list to include some of the most requested custom operations sometime in 2006. No promises, but we might.

With the IPSC decision that the "TruSight" gun is "legal" for Standard Division, the influx of orders has started with a "bang". USPSA has inferred that it will meet the definition for "Limited" in it’s original configuration. We are still mulling over the "expansion chamber". We find no Rule in the current Rule Book that would prohibit it. We’ll keep you posted.

Some of you "Preferred Dealers" got shorted on your "benefit package". If your initial order was six guns or more, you were supposed to have received a "Preferred Dealer Banner" to hang on your wall. If you didn’t, please let us know. We’ll make it right.

Here’s a question for you Dealers and Preferred Dealers alike. If you weren’t already a member of the STI Team, what kind of "SHOT Show Special" would entice you to join? Or, since you are already a Team member, what kind of "SS Special" would induce you to step up your participation level, if any?

Since the fourth quarter is almost upon us, some of you Distributors may want to check your books (or ours) to see if you’ll be keeping your current discount levels or to see what it takes to move up another level. Some of you are really "blowing the doors off" of your last years purchases, but some of you are lagging significantly. John, Lori, Pauletta, and Don will be glad to help you determine where you are in comparison.

We are contemplating a minor change to the "Contingency Program" for 2007. Not 2006, but 2007. If we do decide to do this, we want to give everyone plenty of time to adjust without undue financial hardship. If implemented, the only change to the program would be this: All shirts worn by Program participants/beneficiaries would need to be either a regular STI shirt or one of you folks’ shirt in some combination of STI colors, i.e. red, white, and black. Equal logo size rules would still apply. We’ve seen some other attractive shirts in that color combination out there and they would all probably be acceptable. If you didn’t want to retool with your uniform maker, we could probably make our Team Shirt (with or without logo) available to you at our cost. Again, equal logo size rules would still apply. I know that many of you prefer your own "unique" look, but since we’ve distributed about a quarter of a million dollars ($250,000.00USD) in this program so far, to our mutual customers and friends, we don’t feel it to be an unreasonable step.

Still on the subject of the Contingency Program: IPSC’s classification system is beginning to come on line well now and we’d like to find a way to include our International shooting kin in this program in some manner. We are very much open to suggestion at this point. The largest problems that we currently see are how to best police the system and how best to distribute the rewards.

I believe that I previously mentioned that we were discontinuing "drilled & tapped" mag releases for the "1911". If I didn’t, please consider it mentioned. The "2011" remains in production.

As an additional aside, we seem to be having an unprecedented call for "2011" grips recently. It’s caught us by surprise and caused us to come up somewhat short. We’re now in a position, due to the lead-time on insert blanks, where we must ration our usage to complete guns for a period just to satisfy those orders. We’re sorry for any inconvenience.

Have fun. Do good. Sell a bunch. Not necessarily in that order!