OK.
I must chime in here. Don't worry about your equipment as much as the shooter. Everyone gets carried with "what do I have to have to be competitive".
Follow this link
http://idpa.50megs.com
Then find the match results for April Clear Creek. You will see that in SSP, I was 3rd. I don't know the whole story as I was a new shooter, but I saw XDs there, I saw fiber optic sights. No-one was in ESP for scoring.
I have shot IDPA twice and taken an IPSC safety coarse. Most of the people there seemed to do this quite often.
The lady running the match in CDP, who told me what I was doing wrong, etc, etc, etc, actually scored WORSE than I did. A lot of my poor score was "technical" penalties (i.e. dropping a partial mag on the ground, shooting a target out of order, not moving). Imagine what I would have done without the technical penalties.
Why do I say equipment doesn't matter? Just compare raw scores of everything, including CDP. I was holding my own and have only competed for two matches (one in January which included a short safety coarse, the match was the live fire portion of the safety coarse, and this one).
I was shooting the "cheapest" POS pistol on the range. I was shooting my Ruger P89 that has somewhere between 15000 and 20000 round through it. No trigger work. No custom sights. Just a P89. I used my standard range ammo of WWB. I did have a Fobus Kydex holster. I had a mag holder with flaps, not Kydex ones. As you can see, even with a POS and poor equipment, you can be competitive.
One thing to note, go see your local IDPA BEFORE purchasing equipment. From what I have seen, the local chapters seem to "bend" rules to suite their shooters. Both the the IDPA clubs here do not follow the holster rule. Many people have their holsters from last year, and that what the clubs intend to allow to continually be used.
Also, the having to "conceal" the weapon for IPDA is ignored here. In fact, if someone here with a CCW would conceal a weapon, it would be against the law. And a shooting match where a good chunk of the shooters are cops, is not a place to encourage breaking the law.
As I tell people when shooting, racing, or wheelin (some of my hobbies), work on the person performing the sport, not on the equipment. You will find spending $400 on ammo and trigger time will gain you more than spending $400 on a new gun to compete with.
-Dana