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Just Call Me Charlie Mike


ArrDave

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A very brief bit of background - I am a 3 year veteran of IDPA. After my last sanctioned match I wasn't thrilled at the quantity of competition. I shot very poorly and still was 30/201 and 4/12 in my class. It caused me to look at the quantity of masters shooting the match - of which there were maybe 8 or 10 across all the divisions...it made me think "I need to wade into the deep end of the talent pool and get some honest feedback of where I'm at". So my buddies and I decided the next match we would shoot would be the 2016 GA State Section match in August, which means we all needed USPSA numbers and classifications, which we got very soon afterwards.... Fast forward to today.

6/05/16

Atlanta Practical Shooters - Monthly USPSA Match - South River Gun Club

Match video:

Overall - I really enjoyed myself. I had pretty good points, if a little slow. I didn't flub any reloads. Stage plans were followed, even if they weren't great. I had a re-shoot on stage 4 due to someone not pasting one of my targets. I pretty well "crushed" the stage in my first run, and had a huge shooter induced malfunction because I activated my safety as I rebuilt my grip. That cost a LOT of time and I nearly DQ'd myself on my slippery gun, but I finally figured out the issue. So after the reshoot and I was reeling, I roll up on the next stage and have to shoot first. Lame! I don't think I recovered from that until a few moments ago. Anywho, stage breakdown -

I'm too tired to do some big write up on a stage by stage break down - but my big take aways were being more aggressive moving and getting set up and spend less time reading my sights. I would study my sights for a tenth or more before accepting the sight picture when I knew it was acceptable much faster. Moving is self explanatory, I'm used to setting up form cover in IDPA, and this isn't IDPA.

This week I'll be doing some transition drills in "Speed Mode" and some position entry drills. Next match is tuesday evening where I shoot my final classifier, so far my average is right at about 59% according to classifier calculator. Part of me is sad that I won't start as a B class unless things go well, but the other part of me thinks it's probably more appropriate.

Either way I look forward to my continued journey into USPSA.

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Welcome! You have a good handle on self evaluation and your basic skills are great. Keep it up and your learning curve will be steep and fun. Don't sweat the classification system. Just run your pace and the system will move you along appropriately. I personally believe it's an excellent system and does a good job at putting you where you should be.

One bit of advice on the evaluation is always put in something you did well along with the things you need improvement on.

I've also been doing this journal for quite a while now and attribute much of my "success" to making myself do it. It really helps to take a step back and at least dump basic feelings about a match in as concise a manner as my writing skills will allow.

Welcome, and we'll see you at a match one day!

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Welcome! You have a good handle on self evaluation and your basic skills are great. Keep it up and your learning curve will be steep and fun. Don't sweat the classification system. Just run your pace and the system will move you along appropriately. I personally believe it's an excellent system and does a good job at putting you where you should be.

One bit of advice on the evaluation is always put in something you did well along with the things you need improvement on.

I've also been doing this journal for quite a while now and attribute much of my "success" to making myself do it. It really helps to take a step back and at least dump basic feelings about a match in as concise a manner as my writing skills will allow.

Welcome, and we'll see you at a match one day!

Thank you sir. I'm still reeling from the hit to the ego from being a big fish in a small pond to getting smoked. In IDPA terms being an expert and then transitioning back to effectively marksman/sharpshooter is humbling. I have full confidence I'll wrap my head around it and make it happen like I need to. The other dudes in B class I think I could be competitive with who were at the match yesterday, there were like 5 PRD M's in my squad who I've got some work to do to catch. I'm excited about the challenge and leaving the fishing vest at home.

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Crush the gun with your weak hand and relax your strong one so it can better manipulate the trigger.

(This is my greatest personal hurdle which became blindingly obvious after 3 days of classes with Ben Stoeger)

Grip as hard as your forearm will allow with the weak hand and give it the job of controlling recoil. Right now it's doing... nothing. Watch your gun in recoil. The weak hand's thumb is obviously not tracking with the frame.

Edited by MemphisMechanic
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Crush the gun with your weak hand and relax your strong one so it can better manipulate the trigger.

(This is my greatest personal hurdle which became blindingly obvious after 3 days of classes with Ben Stoeger)

Grip as hard as your forearm will allow with the weak hand and give it the job of controlling recoil. Right now it's doing... nothing. Watch your gun in recoil. The weak hand's thumb is obviously not tracking with the frame.

Interesting you'd say that, I don't see the issue you're referring to. I could always use more, but I think i do use a lot.

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Hey I know you! I'm Tyler from yesterday. Good shooting with you.

That reshoot made me feel terrible for you. You really did crush it the first go around.

Glad you're jumping into uspsa with both feet. We're lucky to live in one of the most vibrant and thriving areas for uspsa shooting in the whole country.

Sent from my MotoG3 using Tapatalk

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Hey I know you! I'm Tyler from yesterday. Good shooting with you.

That reshoot made me feel terrible for you. You really did crush it the first go around.

Glad you're jumping into uspsa with both feet. We're lucky to live in one of the most vibrant and thriving areas for uspsa shooting in the whole country.

Sent from my MotoG3 using Tapatalk

Good shooting with you Tyler. You crushed that 6 and 6. The only person to beat Tyler on a plate rack then 3 paper with a mandatory reload stage was Rob Romero with his PCC. That was the most impressive bit of shooting I've witnessed in person AND you double tapped the last plate costing you probably .18-.22. Unreal!

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nice form. good stance, grip looks good. nice extension of your arms. Your movement was actually pretty good. It does seem the general standard of competition in USPSA is higher than in IDPA so don't worry too much about the big fish small pond thing. The small hesitation between gaining a sight picture and shooting is pretty common. it can be trained out with the correct drills in both live and dry fire. in fact dry fire is particularly good for training that out.

I wouldn't worry at all about grading really. it's just a grade. as you shoot better so will your grade improve. you can be one of those guys who practices lots of classifiers and gets a 'paper grade' and then gets hosed in matches. I'd recommend don't be one of those guys! :)

enjoy THE practical shooting sport. feed that fishing vest to the shredder or give it to someone who goes fishing!

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6/7/16

Gwinnett Practical Shooting League

Things went pretty well. There was a large turnout (33 completed the night) so only 2 stages, 1 classifier and one field course (with indoor steel!) I was most accurate (surprise! Thanks IDPA...) but came in 7th due to slowness.

Stage 1 - Interesting presentations. 3 arrays, 3 shooter boxes distance is 12ish yards. Unloaded start, gun and mags on barrel. Left array must be engaged from right shooting box, vertical HC x 2, diagonal HC x2 center array is 4 open targets on two target stands, with a no shoot stapled up in the center of the 4 so all A zones are open, just tight. Right array, 3 paper partials with only A zones available and a bunch of HC, then 2 mini poppers. Start in left box or right box. I had 2 hiccups, I put my safety on again but I pretty quickly resolved it and didn't do an elaborate dance diagnosing the issue, and I had one shallow primer, since these are S&B primers we're talking about, that means that it didn't go, the subsequent double action sent it down range, I believe into hard cover... so that's the last bit of money I "save" on primers. I thought I had the priming game down for my press but I thought wrong. The faster dudes were doing this 23-26 seconds with maybe 2 more charlies. If I had no issues maybe I would have been 29.

Stage 2 Tick-Tock CM 13-05 - Virginia 16 rounds. Unloaded table start, magazines on table, start toes at rear of box. Engage each target twice, mandatory reload, engage each target twice. This went OK but I probably could have pushed speed more (I definitely could have). I definitely know I can shoot faster. About 2 months ago I was focusing more on slightly uncomfortable raw times for IDPA and would get narrowly beat on points due to the way that game is scored, I adjusted about a month ago on how I approach a stage and I can tell that super accurate is probably not strictly necessary for USPSA (mostly alphas). According to Classifier Calc this is just north of 60% run. Accuracy was great, one Charlie I could have debated, but I figured it wouldn't appreciably change things. Hit factor was 6.5517 (if I recall)

So take aways - I did pretty good Finished 7th on the night with 69.70%, 6th in production with exactly the same ranking, since match winner was a production dude. Moving around, speed was fine, although there wasn't much speed to really push. I bobbled reloads, from the table, on both stages, loading the gun. I need to practice this, I haven't practiced it before to speak of. Accuracy was pretty great. Pat on the back. Speed reading sights could stand to improve. I'll need to look at video to see if I stand up as I shoot, I need to stay low when I shoot because I'm 6'-5" so I'm not wasting a couple tenths in each position lowering my stance then moving. I feel like I did better than I did on Sunday. But that's the end of the push to get my initial classification and I'll back down the volume of matches to one a week (still doing the IDPA MD thing)+ a monthly. My focus on my IDPA match will to be to shoot it like a USPSA match with respect to the speed I try to run.

Oh, and I need to order some thin safeties. That's happening next pay period fo 'sho.

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You look pretty solid when it comes to stance to me. Now just speed up. More in the realm of sight acquisition - shot breaking than anything else. You are aiming, then shooting. When "Aimshoot" is a single function you'll kick ass.

Keep up the good work.

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You look pretty solid when it comes to stance to me. Now just speed up. More in the realm of sight acquisition - shot breaking than anything else. You are aiming, then shooting. When "Aimshoot" is a single function you'll kick ass.

Keep up the good work.

That's an interesting thing to think about, I am working on my ability to call shots but my ammo budget allows only one range trip a week

Sent from an iDevice. Please forgive any grammatical or spelling errors. If the post doesn't make sense or is not amusing then it is technology's fault and most certainly not operator error.

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6/9/16 - Live Fire - 150 rds.

I went up to my favorite indoor range and did some drills. I worked on calling shots at 25 yards (~50% right). Sight misalignment sure throws those shots further away than I would have thought. I could probably shoot up a bunch of ammo just working on that. I did some bench mark tests to see where I am on a 7 yard draw and speed load. So my draw ranged from 1.08 at my best to 1.35 at my worst, with the median being in the 1.15 range. I also practice some shot to shot. I had the gun on target, trigger prepped then woudl break a shot, reload break a shot. My shot to shot time was from about 1.64 to 2.07 on the speed load. I was kind of timid about doing it at the speed I know I can do it in.

I just started doing live fire training probably in March and up to this point it's been the dot drill. I've cleared 4 shots per dot at 5 yards, but I wouldn't call it mastered, I've been working at 5. The dot drill doesn't put the same kind of pressure as something like just a quick draw drill or now I'm going to be looking at Draw shot reload shot (2 aces?) and working on getting that speed down. I recognize it's really only going to help with classifiers, but I suspect getting used to that kind of self induced pressure can be nothing but positive. I really look forward to next week's practice to bring these times down.

And finally I burned up the rest of my ammo with 8 runs through the Accelerator. I made a target to print on 11x17 that would replicate an IDPA target at 7 15 and 25 yards. I'm going to update it to represent an A/C zone at the same distances. my best performance was about 8 seconds with all the hits in. I did 4 runs near to far and 4 runs far to near. I did MUCh better on accuracy going far to near. I think I was stressing too much starting on the near target, where getting a good sight picture on the little dot let me naturally speed up on the other 2 with great hits. I know 6 seconds is the goal time with a couple charlies so I need to trim about a second off my load and 3 tenths off my draw and the rest is going to have to come from splits and transitions.

I'm going to chill out on dots for the time being and work on performing gun handling stuff under clock pressure in isolation for a minute and really attempt to sync up my dry fire and live fire training to see if those gains are crystalized faster.

I've also started keeping a "Performance Journal" per Lanny Bassham's recommendation (about 3/4ths through "With Winning in Mind" 3rd edition), so I'll use this to kind of supplement that.

I won't bog down with DryFire stuff, other than I do it at least 25 mins a day at least 5 days a week. This morning working on draws and reloads, I started feeling what I can only describe as my fast twitch muscles really engaging to get the gun from the holster and mag from my belt. Once they're clear whatever it is that gets it out sort of shuts off and the gun/mag smoothly decelerate to where they're supposed to be. I do have to wonder what it'd be like to draw from a Boss holster or whatever. I guess I'll find out at some point this year once I re-up all my components prior to the election scare.

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Attached is a janky 11x17 of the A/C zone of USPSA scaled to present like a target at 7y 15y and 25y. You could use this at an indoor range that allows you to work from the holster. you'd need to tape it up over a larger target, but there you go.

Accelerator USPSA.pdf

Edited by ArrDave
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Snuck away for some live fire. Practiced some shot calling and saw just how bad a sight picture I can get away with at 7/10 yards. That was pretty cool. Then moved onto some live fire draws to see where I'm really at.

My holster is a belt ride OWB Bladetech, I'll get a DOS rig from the BSPS eventually, I just have thin safeties, a new projectile order, and primers to go in front of it. Cold, my draw is about 1.15 to a clean, sighted A hit at 7 yards (meaning "is the red dot inside the rear notch and roughly inside the A zone?"). Once warm, I can get that time to right at about 1. Second Much faster than that and I throw charlies as often as alphas.

Moved onto some reload drills, my speed load is currently about 1.4-1.6. it's a weak point for me and I'm working on it, a lot. I've already worked on it a lot. I got some tips from a GM on cleaning up my reload and I think they will help, but I need to drill it some more.

Went on to the Accelerator, hitting times about 7.75 - 8.00 with an average of 1 or two charlies. This is the first time I've tried to coincide my live fire with what I'm working on in dry fire. At the moment it's polishing the gunhandling chops. Lots of work left to do.

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So I’ve been pondering my likely classification. It appears my initial classification is going to be B class (very low B class, like right at 60%, potentially just underneath). At first, I was disappointed because I’ve been doing dry fire for about the past year. The issue was I was doing it with an IDPA mindset and an interest in “getting better”. I don’t think I paid as much attention to my technique as I am now, videoing myself from time to to time and verifying I don’t have wasted movement. Now that I “understand” the USPSA classifier layout and the WHY all of the dryfire drills basically are the way they are, I get it now. Now I’m aiming at “mastery” of the different manipulations whereas before I was aiming for “proficiency”. I have no doubt all of my practice over the past year has helped, but I’m now excited because I think my new focus and intensity is going to raise the bar further, faster. Since I’ve started USPSA I’ve noticed dramatic improvement in my reloads, as I identified that as a major area of a time waster. Also I’m targeting pauses and hesitations and attempting to smooth those away as I shoot (leaving shooting positions, getting my hand to my magazines after the last shot, staying lower while shooting to minimize time transferring weight, etc).

At first I was disappointed based on what I put in to get where I am so far as “just” a B class shooter. Then I started considering the “good” crowd I’ve been running with at my local IDPA match. I’m one of the higher end shooters there. I used to be able to crack top 5, now I routinely connect as top 3 unless something goes bad wrong, if not the winner. Last night I had a merely “OK” night and was 3rd. The people I am consistently beating list is getting longer. I am better than I was 6 months or more ago. Things going sideways for me now is usually ammo related, or if I flub a stage plan slightly it might cost 2-3 seconds whereas before it might be hits on non threats. That almost never happens now. My issue, is that I thought more of myself than I aught to. I probably just now have grown into what my self image was previously and have the chops to support it. Before I had to stretch to B class, I was realistically probably a self deluded C class guy. This USPSA classification system is pretty brilliant and brutally honest. IDPA, if you’re a classification, you’re that classification, there’s no “progress report” in terms of percentages to clue you in on how you are, so by virtue of spending time in a class you think you’re logically progressing toward the next milestone, but there’s really no objective measure on whether that’s true or not. With the hit factor scoring and percentages it’s very humbling and really gives me something to drive for and honest feedback along the way. I’m excited about the climb out of B class. I think the USPSA classification system provides perspective that is probably missing from IDPA. Every single person who’s shot IDPA for less than 2-3 years their skill aught to place them at least one classification higher than it is. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m as guilty of it as anybody.

I had a chat with the co-match directors and we’ve expanded the ranks of the MD’s to account for me taking less interest in IDPA. Because of my friends, I’ll probably still shoot the match once or twice a month, but my focus is USPSA. I’ll probably start using it as an occasion to shoot my carry gun.

The first major step of getting toward where you want to go is knowing where you’re starting.

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6/21 - Live Fire Practice.

15 reps of 1 + 1 (2 Aces?) recording my hits/times

4 reps of 25 yard bill drills

the rest on a 6+6 using a crappy target I made on 11x17 paper of 3 a zones at 7 yards (scaled to work at 15'). (2 + 2 + 2 RL repeat)

I mapped "goal" times based on conversations with GMs. Targeting a Draw to A zone hit at 1 second and a reload shot to shot at 1 second. Using .25 for splits and transitions at 7 yards. This may not be realistic, but it gives me something to strive for. I can use Comstock to get my % as I'm progressing, assuming those bench marks are good.

Long story short - my reload has improved, I've cut 2 tenths of my average reload time in live fire week to week (from about 1.65-1.75 to 1.45-1.55). That's also using my 75B with no beveled mag well and no stainless magazine break vs. my shadow.

Using those benchmarks my times were high B and several A's. So that's good. I still have more room to improve on my draw and reload.

On the 6 and 6 drill I worked on running the trigger as fast as I could for each acceptable sight picture. Low and behold at 7 yards I can hold them all in an A zone provided that first shot is basically centered. So that's how you guys do it eh. The "Shot calling" thing takes on a new level of importance with that strategy, for sure.

ANNNNDDDD I got thin safeties put on my shadow. No more of that "malfunction" any more.

Plus, i realized the weight in the book for the 75B basically precludes the use of magazine base pads, the factory plastic grips are so freaking light that the weight in the book puts it right over. The 16 rd Springer base pads are about 1 OZ heavier, and the grips I'm using are about 1 oz heavier. Add in the extra weight from the Dawson competition rear sight and that tips the scale just north of 2 oz over. With my OEM grips I'm about 1.55 oz over the weight in the book.

Coincidentally the Shadow comes in right at weight approximately. So that's neat, provided you're not using the rubber grips.

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Great thread. Thank you for including some videos. I have a LOT to learn. I'm brand new to USPSA (or any competitive pistol shooting for that matter). I was relieved to discover I'm a competitor (rather than merely participant), but reading this forum and this thread shows just how steep the learning curve is.

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Great thread. Thank you for including some videos. I have a LOT to learn. I'm brand new to USPSA (or any competitive pistol shooting for that matter). I was relieved to discover I'm a competitor (rather than merely participant), but reading this forum and this thread shows just how steep the learning curve is.

You starting in USPSA will make you better faster but you will likely be spoiled and unable to enjoy IDPA. You get out what you put in so get to work!

Sent from an iDevice. Please forgive any grammatical or spelling errors. If the post doesn't make sense or is not amusing then it is technology's fault and most certainly not operator error.

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6/25/16 Riverbend Gun CLub USPSA Monthly.

My second proper USPSA match. A million degrees (seriously 95-96 degrees).

A fair warning for the Lanny Bassham folks out there, this is the only time I'm going to speak negatively about this, and it's not even negatively really just honest in what I see in my video. All in all, the match went pretty well for me, I did shoot pretty close to my current level of skill. I was 28 / 69 shooters and 15/31 in production, that sounds unremarkable, but 31 of 69 were production shooters, of which there was 1 G, 5 M, and 8 As, I managed to beat 3 of the A's. Match winner was Jessie Duff, KC Eusebio was there and claimed 3rd with his carry optics rig.

So what I see is I need to focus a little more on stage breakdowns, predictably for my second proper USPSA match I'm not quite ready to know when I should be shooting out of positions, on the octagon stage there was a pretty good chance to do just that.

The long stage with the No shoot barricades near the beginning should have been shot the first array like I did, reload, then take the next two targets on the left on the move, then run up to the fault line and burn down the last array. It was slightly higher risk as that'd be 5 targets from one position and I'd be risking a standing reload given a malfunction, but shooting it how I shot it cost me a lot of points, predominantly because I've never shot at turtle targets before. So I'll be printing out some turtle targets to practice on in dryfire. The fact that about half the stages used turtle targets probably cost me charlies. By the time I got to the last stage with the turtle targets I started understanding how to aim at them.

I pulled 2 hard cover mikes on the day. Both targets I was debating sending 3 because they were longer shots and it would have run the gun to slide lock for leaving that position but watching the video of the guy who won Production, that's exactly what he did.

There's a couple fundamental things I caught myself doing which I cannot do if I want to really go fast, like Ricky Bobby.

- I caught myself reading my targets on close range targets rather than reading sights. Can't do that.

- I would transition the gun with my eyes, rather than bring my eyes to where I want to hit on the target and bring the fiber dot to that point. I dropped WAY too many charlies (The correct ratio appeared to be about 95-120 A's, I was on the lower end of that with 91, I could have easily not given up time if I had the correct focus when driving the gun.

- When I program stages, I need to burn in the reloads better, I would begin moving then begin the reload, rather than starting them at the same time. There were a couple times where I only needed to move 4-6 feet to the next position and I was still finishing my reload. I can practice this in dry fire, no problem.

- Ultimately, I need to get more comfortable shooting at USPSA targets, turtles and classics. The nature of the A zone on the metric targets really does lend itself to some quick splits and it's pretty easy to hit at almost any range.

Finishing with the stuff I did well

- My movement was a lot more decisive and aggressive. I stayed pretty low entering shooting positions and didn't catch myself standing up

- Around the same time I started focusing on aiming at a point on the target then bringing my gun to it, I started being able to see my front sight lift in recoil. Gotta do that all day.

- I kept a positive mindset and didn't get bent around the rim when things went sideways. Some further tweaking and I will be pretty happy with my mental game.

The list is short on that front because those are the two things I really wanted to do well, and I did them pretty well. I look forward to continuing to train in dry/live fire and hitting the next match.

Since I managed to BARELY wing the no-shoot on the classifier, that means I have 2 51% classifiers, 2 60% classifiers and 1 66% classifier. Next match is on 7/16, but I may shoot riverbend again prior to the section match since it's the same dude making stages. I still don't think that will be enough to get me into B class by the GA State section, but I don't really understand how the classification system works. I'm just going to shoot them and let the math take care of itself.

As a former MD, you can kind of pick up on what an MD's style is. The dude up at RBGC seems to be a fan of providing targets that can be shot in multiple positions and making you figure out how to play to your strengths. There was a good variety of targets, and the port hole prop is more than probably going to be at the match.

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6/29

Went to the range Monday, did a bunch of measuring my draw/first follow up at 5 / 8 / 10 / 17 / 25 yards. It was illuminating to see how long it took for me to get good hits on my splits. It takes longer than I would have guessed.

Went back to the range with my wife for ladies night and , compared my back up gun with my main gun (75B vs. SP01 shadow). I shoot the shadow noticeably more accurately, could just be that ammo, but groups were smaller and more consistent. At 25 yards I shot one of the better groups I've shot on a B2 style target, 3 rounds in the 10 ring nearly touching, 1 in the 9 ring, 2 in the 6 ring, 3 in the 5 ring and one flier on paper bu off the target. Pretty happy about that.

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  • 2 weeks later...

7/11

Shot our little weekly IDPA match, was 2/27 - lost by 6 seconds to a distinguished master on 4 stages. I was 1-2 seconds slower than him per stage but usually a point or two more accurate so typically about 1 second slower. There was a stage with 2 bill drills on 17 yard targets and I held low on both targets and as a result had huge points down, so it was 6 seconds and not 3-4 seconds. Went well just focused on seeing my sights on each target and whatever the speed was was what my speed is.

Just came back from live fire testing a new load. 4.1 grains of WSF makes about 975 avg out of a shadow at the muzzle loaded out to 1.065, using the power of math I need to goose the load to about 4.4 to get it to 1060 at the muzzle (via magnetospeed chrono). In other news, 4.5 grains of WSF makes 1066ish behind a Bayou 124 RN profile. I like the Acme profile better, it's easier to load with and not shave the coating accidentally. The price on the Acme's is a little better due to discount codes. I didn't do any serious group shooting, but just measuring the acmes they're very consistent diameter, the top to bottom varies about as much as the bayous (+/- .007). The acmes appear to smoke a little less, likely due to not shaving coating any.

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  • 2 weeks later...

7/21/16

Rather than just doing updates after matches, I'm going to do "progress reports" leading into matches, then recaps afterward.

Stages were posted for my monthly USPSA match. As I was entering my morning dry fire into my Lanny Bassham approved performance log, I figured I would pull down some stats leading up into the weekend match.

First, practice time in dry fire/live fire... since my last club match (my 2nd proper USPSA match, not counting the two indoor matches), I've put in just over 7 hours in dry fire. I've sent 922 rounds down range (yeah, I have a log to track part wear/replacement, deal with it), and of those 187 were in weekly IDPA matches I still run. At this pace, I've fallen short of my optimum dryfire schedule (about 10 hours a month), but exceeded my live fire practice regimen by about 25%. In fairness, work's been killing me and I managed to get 2 stitches in my dominant hand palm. I need to target one hour plus session on saturday mornings prior to the family getting up, that's a really great time to get some quality reps in.

I've centered my focus around dry fire in getting my eyes to the target where I want to hit and bringing the gun to that point. It's seemed to pay dividends so far. Also in practice I'm staying very aware of how tensed up my shoulders are and how much I'm punching the gun out. If I over extend the gun my transitions stop being smooth and start being jerky. This is more prone to happen in complex series of movements, like turn and draw or position entry drills. I'm also paying attention to the sensations in my hands, wrists and elbows as I grip the gun. When those are "just right" the trigger finger doesn't try to do any recoil management and I can let it fly accurately. Other issues I'm concentrating on is setting the angle of the mag well properly on reloads and the grasp of the magazine on my belt to index properly. If I index on the magazine properly there's an extremely high likelyhood the reload will be very fast and smooth, only missing when the mag well isn't presented to the magazine properly. If I miss the grip on my magazine on my belt, it's about a 50/50 shot of slowing the reload down by about 2 or 3 tenths. I'm on the cusp of having a breakthrough in reloads.

In live fire, I'm paying really keen attention to my sights lifting and attempting to call shots. I've dropped back on the Dot drill and doing 3 shots per dot at 15' until MASTERY where I can hammer out a sheet of dots clean on demand before progressing to 4 shots per. Previously I'd advance to another shot on a dot as soon as I cleared a sheet. Historically, I would delude myself with my level of ability so I'm trying to be honest with myself to the greatest extent possible. to that end....

My initial classification came back. 57.56%, high C class - that's two 51's, a 60, and a 66%. I have the chance to break into B class this weekend with a total hoser of a classifier CM06-03 Can You Count.

https://www.uspsa.org/classifiers/06-03.pdf

According to good old classifier calc I need to shoot 96 points in 8 seconds for a 72% (which is definitely within my ability). If I get that next database roll will get me into B class, which I guess is good thing for my progression as a shooter, but I'd be giving up a strong chance at a good finish in C.

So for the last month, I need to ratchet up the dryfire and hit that 10 hour mark, if not beat it and see if I can't put another few hundred rounds down range in prep. I've got one more USPSA after this weekend match prior to the GA State Section 8/28...

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7/24/16 - Post match summary

Well I had 1 stage go what I felt was appropriate yesterday.

Getting excuses out of the way - I picked this week to come back to the gym, so my whole body was sore and I was on Tylenol, but that kind of puts me in a fog and I couldn't get my head in the game. On the classifier my magazine didn't drop free - that's on me for not appropriately wiping down my mag bodies.

What went well - Accuracy went well and I would suggest that getting hits wasn't slowing me down so much as bad stage planning. The stages were pretty complex in nature and had a lot of hidden targets. I ended up running by 2 targets for 2 Mike FTE - that really puts a damper on your style lol. I couldn't get my speed turned on. Now I understand why folks get baseball cleats, and I'll have some before GA State.

The good news is I saw my sights on each shot, the only call I didn't make was an Alpha Mike No Shoot.

The good news - My squad was excellent, mostly production shooters. There was one Canadian guy running an SVI Infinity sight tracker limited gun, so that was awesome, and he was super fast - really fun to watch. I learned a lot on how to break down stages from them. The bad news is I never got convicted of my stage plans and that lead to running by 2 targets on the day. That was a really positive take away.

Breaking down a stage for production - you have to reload a lot. Alphas are REALLY important in minor scoring, so set yourself up for success and use shooting positions that optimize the chance for getting alphas quickly. Rarely is it to engage targets from the back of the bay. Stage 2 for instance - I ran my plan which involved a lot of longer range shooting than the guys who won the stage - who shot only what they had to to pick up all the targets and advance up the bay. By advancing they were giving themselves a lot easier target presentations and were able to run it 10 seconds faster than I could.

All day I was having issues on steel - my chest/arms were real sore from the gym and I caught myself pressing out too far and over transitioning and over pulling the trigger on steel. No more upper body on thursdays before a match. Figured that one out.

On the classifier the magazine didn't drop free on string 1 - I learned I need to do a better job of cleaning my mags after a stage, and maybe get a mag brush. Lesson Learned. According to Classifier Calc I'm at 62% due to my little magazine issue.

It was a really fun day, I wasn't happy with my performance but I learned a lot. I look forward to the next one.

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