fastest way to catch a weapon swing in a script

[iamzip]

I'm trying to catch via script when the player swings their weapon.  I've tried OnActorAction (action 0, weapon swing), OnAnimationEvent (weaponSwing and PowerAttack_Start_End), and OnKeyDown (registering for the attack left and attack right keys), and so far each of these fires roughly when the swing would make contact with an enemy rather than at the beginning of the swing.  Is there a better way to go about catching a swing earlier in the animation without OnUpdate loops checking animbools?  I really would rather have this be event driven.

 

And as a secondary question, how do I collect the weapon speed of unarmed?  I've tried the usual methods and it returns 0 for speed since I'm assuming it's not seeing unarmed as a weapon.