CHA-LEE's Tale

[CHA-LEE]

I really wanted to shoot on Christmas Eve so I worked with the MD for the Aurora match and agreed to setup a stage for the match in exchange for being able to shoot through in the morning. I think this is a totally fair trade to be able to shoot through. That and I don’t want to be “That Guy” who requests a special requirement without pitching in extra effort to offset my request. I setup a fun field course stage for the match then strapped on my shooting gear and shot through all of the stages before the match officially started. Shooting through stages back to back quickly usually does not lead to an optimal performance and this was no exception. I had a miss on the first stage but shot it in a decent time. I shot the second stage pretty solid. Then on the classifier it turned out to be a total disaster. The classifier was a two string setup with one shot on each freestyle then one shot on each one handed. On the first string I had a case head separation that left half of the brass case stuck in the chamber. I had to dig the case out of the chamber with my pocket knife then load it back up and finish the string of fire. I was so flustered that on the second string I threw two misses on the weak hand portion because I was “Over It”. Giving away at least 100 match points in misses and the case head separation jam time was a bitter pill to swallow. It’s been years since I have had a case head separation and this is only the second one ever with the WST powder. I use mixed range brass to reload with so who knows what the real condition of the brass is. It was probably a case that got really beat up by Clays or some other super fast powder and it decided to let go in my gun.

I finished the last stage without any issues and got all of the stages shot in about 20 minutes. This got me on the road just in time to do the family visits needed on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day I was able to spend some time in my gun room to check out the #1 blaster to see if the case head separation caused any damage. I gave it a detailed strip and clean to inspect everything and lucky for me everything was fine. The 2011 platform seems to be more robust against these case head separations verses the EAA/Tanfo guns I was shooting. If I had a case head separation in my EAA/Tanfo guns it would at least wipe out the extractor if not other things as well.

My work also had Monday and Tuesday off so that gave me some extra time to fiddle on my shooting stuff and get some practice done. The weather on Monday was too cold to do any shooting outdoors so I reserved that day for wrenching on guns. The Weather on Tuesday was better as the temp topped out at 50 degrees. I went out to the BLGC range and got some live fire testing and training in. I started out by testing the American Select and Nobel Sport Prima SV powder to see if the velocity would change in extreme Cold and Hot conditions. The American Select powder was slightly slower when super Cold but the Prima SV powder didn’t change at all. Both of these powders are very resistant to extreme temperature changes. The Prima SV produced a more consistent standard deviation in velocity verses the American Select. The American Select has the exact same felt recoil as my WST loads. The Prima SV powder has a softer felt recoil that reminds me of how Clays feels and that makes sense because its burn rate is very close to Clays. All of the powders don’t show excessive pressure issues on the primers so that is also good. I brought 400 rounds of the American Select rounds to practice with to see how the dirtiness compared to WST and after the practice session it was about half as dirty as it would have been when shooting WST. So the American Select is looking like a good alternative for WST from a felt recoil and temp resistance perspective. I am going to load up 1000 rounds of the Prima SV powder to give that an extended test but its got me a little spooked with its burn rate speed. Even if it feels softer while shooting if it causes case head separations then it’s not worth it.

After the ammo testing we setup a large field course stage and shot it a bunch of times. I started off the practice with my #3 Limited blaster as it just got a new barrel installed. I sighted it in and used it for three stage runs but I kept having strange failures with it. I dropped the mag our once by hitting the mag release with my support hand mid array. Then it had a failure to feed jam where the tip of the bullet got stuck on the side of the chamber. Since that thing was giving me trouble I switched to the #1 blaster and finished the live fire practice with it. I was having a hard time shooting steel during the practice as I kept getting sucked into hard focusing on the steel instead of the sights. Out of all of the stage runs I had I only had two that were decent. I am not sure why I was struggling so much for this practice session but it was a grind. I think that a big part of it was trying to use the #3 blaster when it wasn’t working right and losing confidence in it actually functioning properly. Worrying about a gun working or not while shooting a stage isn’t a good place to be in mentally. Oh well, some times it’s not your day to shine and this was one of those days. Hopefully I can make up for this the next time I get to do some live fire practice.    

[warpcorps]

I know you said you started to evaluate American Select because of the effect of temperature variances on WST, and you wanted to eliminate the risk of that when traveling to major matches. What kinds if variances were you seeing in WST in relation to the American Select? As for cleanliness - WST burns really clean in my CZ TS, to the point you can almost clean the gun with a rem wipe after a local match.  Were you seeing the same in your 2011 guns? 

[CHA-LEE]

Warpcorps> I have seen WST ammo velocity swing 40 - 50fps from cold to hot. I have been loading WST hot to make sure that it still makes major with a decent amount of margin when traveling. But that is yet another variable that I don't want to deal with. The American Select powder has the same felt recoil as WST and only a 10 - 15fps variation in velocity when going from freezing temp to 45 degrees. Above 45 degrees the velocity is consistent all the way up to 100+ degrees.

As for cleanliness WST is what I would consider a powder that creates a normal level of dirtiness. I usually go 1500 - 2000 rounds between cleans and even then its not horrible. The American Select powder seems to be much cleaner than WST. I have only shot about 400 rounds of it so far but I plan on shooting at least 1000 of it before I clean the gun. That will be a more realistic comparison to how much cleaner it is than WST. 

[hwansikcjswo]

I have been using over 10 lbs of Prima V now. I still have 30lbs left.

I had really great results using them past shooting season. Very constant performance wherever I go.

Find it clean, accurate, meters well and smokes less than TG. 

[Ssanders224]

Just to jump in real quick...

I shot a LOT of American Select when I first started shooting Limited.  I had a lot of it left over from my Shotgun days.  It works well in .40.  Burns clean.  However, I never got the large flakes to meter real well in a Dillon bar.

I like Ramshot Competition much better.  I started using it for most of my practice ammo about 6 months ago.  It's clean, cheap, and meters well.

I'm still on 320 for my match stuff though.

[CHA-LEE]

Ssanders224> Thanks for the info. I did notice that the American Select does meter a little inconsistently but that honestly does not bother me too much. I always strive for a 171 average Power Factor so if the powder drop varies a little bit that won't bite me in the ass when I hit the chrono. What I want to get away from is having to load WST artificially hot to compensate for potentially really hot range temps at major matches. It obviously works fine for majors doing the hot range conditions but it also turns into hand cannon ammo when its cold. The last time I chronoed my major match WST ammo in sub 40 degree temps it averaged 182 PF which is way spicier than it needs to be. I don't like loading two different powder drop weights for different range temps either as that gets too confusing for me to keep straight. 

Thanks for the recommendation on the Ramshot Competition powder. I will pick up a pound of it and give it a try. I have used 8lbs of N320 in the past. Its a clean burning powder that does not get affected by temp changes. But I didn't like the recoil impulse that it produces. To me it feels like it thumps quite a bit harder than other powders. When I was playing with N320 I also tried N310 and that felt very similar to Clays in recoil, but it had really bad over pressure signs on the primers when just barely making 165 PF so that was a no go. 

Of all the powders I have shot over the years I still like the way Clays felt in recoil and clean burning nature. But dealing with the random KABOOM events got old so that is when I switched to WST. Maybe I am chasing my tail in trying to find a replacement for WST. Sure WST has its setbacks from a temp sensitivity perspective, but its been a really reliable powder. I don't know how many thousands of rounds I have shot with WST but I know it is a LOT. I also have a crap ton of WST stocked up so its not like I am going to use it all up any time soon. I still plan on leveraging WST for my practice and local match ammo so I can use up what I have. If I can find another powder that performs better for varied range temps so I don't have to worry about it at majors that would be great. Currently American Select is at the top of the list, but I still have quite a bit more testing to do with other powders before I make a final decision.

With this being the off season for major matches its a perfect time to play around with this kind of stuff so I can have a solid solution figured out before the major match season starts. My goal is to have it figured out during the winter months so I don't have to worry about in the middle of the major match season. its hard enough keeping my blasters running and practicing in the middle of the major match season much less screwing around with different powders. 

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend was a busy one. My primary goal this weekend was to shoot up the American Select ammo that I loaded up to see how it would perform. On Saturday I was able to get some live fire practice in at an indoor range. We setup a large field course and shot it a bunch of times. This was a good test of the Manny Mini Dot sight setup while used in less than optimal lighting conditions. I had a few stage runs where I was pointing the front sight high trying to find it and it resulted in higher than desired hits on target. But overall it worked out well. Even though I couldn’t make out the iron of the front sight or rear notch very well I could still see the fiber dot and use that to shoot from.

I started out the practice with my #3 blaster and then switched back to the #1 blaster. The #3 blaster has a slightly more harsh felt recoil due to the slide being tri topped verses my other two only being flat topped. This felt recoil difference is enough to be distracting. It’s not bad, it’s just different which makes it distracting. The good thing is that I believe the feeding issue resolved with the last round of chamber smoothing and rounding that I did. I still need to shoot the #3 blaster some more to ensure that the feeding issue is resolved but I am pretty confident that it is resolved.

On Sunday I attended a local USPSA match at the Aurora Gun Club. This match had an interesting collection of stages that heavily favored Open guns due to accuracy or mag round count. There were several large field course stages that had sections of target arrays that went well beyond 20 rounds of aggressive blasting. That or long distance shots that favor the dot guns being able to engage them more aggressively. Overall I had an average match performance. I screwed up two stages which cost me a decent chunk of match points. The first screw up was on a speed shoot stage that had three shooting positions. The center port position had some Christmas tinsel hanging around the port and when I shot through the port the tinsel was flying everywhere making it super distracting. I was so distracted by the flying tinsel that I cranked off two rounds at the last target without even looking at my sights. I ended up with a miss on that target because of my distraction. The second issue was on the last stage of the day. This stage had 2 poppers and 5 targets down range paper target at 25 yards including 1 swinger. To make it even more entertaining all paper targets required 3 hits. I tried to use a stage plan that had me shooting 17 rounds before the reload so I loaded up with 21+1 at the start. I started on the two steel and needed one make up on steel then another  2 make ups on paper. I shot the paper too aggressively and knew that I had some marginal hits but didn’t have enough ammo to make up the shots. When the stage was done I had 5 D zone hits on the down range targets which is horrible. I knew I called several of them marginal, but I didn’t expect them to be D’s. Much less 5 D’s all together. Giving away 15 points in D zone hits on one stage is pretty crappy. Sometimes you screw the pooch and this was one of those times. This match was one of those events where you are trying to do your best but not able to hit on all cylinders for whatever reason. It happens sometimes so I am not too worried about it.

The weather was half way decent on Monday so I decided to head out to the range to do some more live fire training with some friends. There were 6 of us all together so we setup a large field course stage and then shot different sections of it. I purposefully setup some 25 yard shots to see if I was simply off my game on Sunday or if I in fact couldn’t hit 25 yard targets any more. I was able to hit the 25 yard targets successfully without any issues and maintain solid good hits. This was also with a no shoot blocked partial that only showed about 2 inches of the lower A zone. We also did some decent shooting on the move training with open and partial targets. Then we worked on a lateral movement field course that had several positions and a bunch of steel plates. We used the Texas star and used barrels to block one side of it so you had to shoot the plates off only from one side. I was able to shoot the steel pretty good that day especially on the star. I only needed a few makeup shots on the star over my many attempts at running the stage. I felt like this practice was a good one for me as I was able to perform to my expectations without needing to push too much.

What I did find yet again is that if I consciously gripped the gun HARD I can shoot more accurately, aggressively, and transition more aggressively. I keep relearning this same lesson on gripping the gun hard. I am not sure why I keep reverting back to using only a firm grip but it keeps happening. For the next month I am going to consciously command using a HARD grip on the gun any time I am handling it in dry or live fire. Hopefully this will burn in the proper deployment of gripping HARD all the time without even needing to think about it. I feel like a retard for having to relearn this same basic lesson over and over.  I thought that switching to bushing barrels to make the felt recoil a little more harsh would force me into gripping harder all the time, but it’s looking like my laziness in gripping hard is still sneaking into my game.

This week I am going to work on loading ammo. I am going to load up 1K of the Prima SV so I can do an extended test with this powder to see how it goes. I am also going to setup some test ammo with the Prima V to see how it does over the Chrono. After testing these two Nobel Sport powders I am going to try Ramshot Competition and Aliant E3 as they were also recommended. All of this powder testing may be an effort in futility, but it will at least give me something to do over the winter months

[CHA-LEE]

We got some snow late last week along with some 0 degree temps and that successfully canceled the local weekend USPSA Matches. Saturday was too cold to do any outdoor shooting so I focused on loading ammo. I got about 1000 rounds of the Prima SV loaded up to do an extended test with. Then I made a few Prima V chrono rounds in 4.5 and 4.6gr drops to test. Hopefully they will be close to what is needed to make major. Other than that I ventured out into the cold to check out the new 5.11 Tactical store in Denver. I have been looking for some replacement shooting pants as the Columbia ones I have been using have been discontinued for a long time now and are no longer available. I found three different pants at the 5.11 Tactical store that I figured I would give a try. They were the Stryke, Traverse 2.0, and Fast-Tac. The Stryke pants fit really well and have pockets everywhere. But the pockets everywhere turned into a real issue. The top of the cargo pocket on the right leg would get caught on the bottom of my holster so it would jam up my leg. Shooting on the move with the Stryke pants was impossible due to the pocket jamming. This is a bummer because I liked those pants the best, but if they don’t work for shooting then there is no point in having them. The Traverse 2.0 pants are made of a stretchy material that is super breathable. They fit good and their stretchiness allows them to conform to whatever is needed when crouching or moving around. The Traverse 2.0 pants will work awesome in the summer time when the weather is hot and lots of sweating is going on. But they are too breathable for winter use. I wore them outside in freezing temps for about 10 minutes and the wind would whip right through them like I wasn’t wearing any pants at all. The Fast-Tac pants are a cheaper alternative to the other two I tested and they don’t have a cargo pocket. These pants are made of a light weight material that seems to be wind resistant and fit really good. I didn’t have any issues with these pants while dry firing and moving around with them. The only thing that is a little annoying is that they attract static pretty bad and the material gets a static cling to your legs. This probably won’t be much of an issue in the summer months when the static potential is a lot less. The cool thing about the Fast-Tac pants is that they look fairly normal and I can use them for work if I want to. I decided to use the Fast-Tac pants for my live fire practice on Sunday and they worked out great. I think I have found some viable replacement pants for the Columbia pants I have been using.

On Sunday the weather forecast was calling for a high of 50 degrees so I wrangled up some buddies and we went out and got some live fire practice done. The range only got about 1 inch of snow so it wasn’t much of an issue to deal with while practicing. I used a shovel to clear the snow off of the shooting area of our stage and that worked out great as it didn’t even get muddy. I was able to chrono the Prima V test ammo and the 4.6gr was averaging about 930pfs so it would need at least another tenth to be safe in making major. But that powder had a way more harsh felt recoil than the American Select powder. The recoil felt like TightGroup in is excessive recoil thump. The Prima V powder is out for me since the felt recoil is so much more than WST or American Select.  This practice had me shooting up the last few hundred rounds of the American Select ammo and a little bit of the Prima SV. After shooting through about 1000 rounds of American Select and having zero drama with it that is the current leader for an alternative for WST. The American Select powder is also super clean burning as the gun is about a quarter as dirty as it would be after shooting WST the same amount. The Prima SV will be the next 1000 round test to see how that powder performs. But that will take a few weeks to burn through that much ammo given the winter weather we have to deal with this time of year.

The live fire practice session went fairly well. One of the guys forgot his holster so we setup barrels within the stage to draw and reload off of for the stage runs. This was good practice for doing gun handling off of barrels. We had six plates setup in the stage that also made us earn it from an aiming perspective. I tried to keep a focus on gripping the gun hard through the stage runs and it worked out well most of the time. The extra grip tension lead to several bump fire situations when really trying to get after it. I need to tune the trigger on my #1 blaster to have a little less trigger return spring tension to minimize the bump fire scenario. One thing that really affected me during this practice session was using my Fraxion boots instead of my Salomon SpeedTrak shoes. The heavier Fraxion boots make good traction just like the other shoes but their heaviness makes me clomp around the stage like Frankenstein. It was warm enough so I switched out my shoes for the SpeedTrak’s and all was better after that. I could scamper around the stage smoothly without feeling like my feet were heavy. I am not sure if this shoe difference is really that big or if I am simply making it a big deal mentally. I shot through all of the ammo I had which was good but before my last run I noticed that the front portion of my front sight had broken off. I thought that I seen something strange in the sight picture during the last shooting position of the prior stage run. But I didn’t figure that out until I was making ready for the next run and seen that the sight was clearly broken in half. It was a good live fire practice and the weather was great for early January.

When I got home I replaced the broken front sight on the #1 blaster. When I installed the broken sight the front of it was touching the top of the slide so I probably had some upward pressure on it. This could have easily caused enough stress to break it. When I installed the replacement sight I made sure to have a slight gap between the underside of the sight and top of the slide so hopefully that keeps this from happening again. I have proven to be really good at breaking stuff and this front sight letting go is just another part in a long list of stuff I am good at breaking. After that I did a detailed clean on the gun and it wasn’t bad at all with the American Select ammo I shot through it. I also reworked the trigger to reduce the trigger return tension and cleaned up the sear and hammer surfaces. I need to verify the POI after the front sight swap, but other than that it should be good to go.

Since its looking like the Manny Mini Dot sight setup is going to work out I ordered another sight setup for or the #2 Limited blaster. That should come in this week or next and I will have all three blasters with the same sight setup. I can’t foresee any other major Limited blaster changes happening this winter so I will focus on getting use to the new sight setup. I also need to make some time for playing with the Open gun as well. So many toys, so little time…….

Edited January 9, 2017 by CHA-LEE

[CHA-LEE]

The matches this past weekend got canceled once again due to poor weather. I decided to wrangle up some friends and go out to practice on Saturday. Surprising to all of us the weather was awesome at about 50 degrees and zero wind. We setup a large field course that pushed the limits of shooting on the move as you zig zag through the stage. The targets were put out to a distance that was just outside your comfort zone for shooting on the move so it was a cool test of pushing your limits. I shot the stage 10 times and only had three decent runs. I was able to maintain a 15 – 16 second stage time so that was good, but how many points down I was on each run was all over the place. Some runs I was down 16 – 20 points and others I was down 8 – 10 points. This is all with the majority of the points down being B’s or C’s with a rare D zone hit thrown in there for good measure. This stage did have quite a few partial shots that pushed your hits into the B or C zones, so I can see that biasing the points down into the 6 – 8 range, but to shoot it with 20 points down was horrible. I can attribute these poor hits to shooting on the move at a more aggressive pace than I am use to. Even though it was a frustrating practice it was a really good for figuring our exactly where the limits are. If I setup this stage in a match it wouldn’t surprise me if the average stage time was in the mid 30 second range so shooting it in 15 seconds was pretty spicy.

I shot about 400 rounds that day using the Prima SV powder and it worked without any drama. A quick inspection after the practice showed that the powder burns really clean just like the American Select so that is good too. When we were done shooting and picking up the brass one of the other shooters found the portion of my front sight that broke off the week before. That was funny to find and gave everyone a good chuckle while we picked up all the brass. The new front sight worked great and didn’t move at all so I think it should be good to go. All in all it was a great day for practice and we all enjoyed the temporary break from the winter weather to get some shooting done.

With no matches on Sunday I decided to go to the indoor range and do some more ammo testing from an accuracy perspective. I tried some Eggleston coated, Extreme plated and Zero jacketed bullets all with the same powder drop. The Extreme plated bullets produced about a 2 inch group at 10 yards with a flier every once in a while. The Zero jacketed bullets produced their normal 1 inch group at 10 yards out of both my #1 and #3 blasters. Then the very surprising thing to me was the accuracy of the Eggleston coated bullets. I could produce all rounds touching groups with the coated bullets out of both of my limited guns. I am not sure why the coated bullets would be so much more accurate than the Zero’s which I know are accurate, but they were mega accurate. I need to do some more testing with these Eggleston coated bullets to see what the negative effects might be such as smokiness or barrel leading.

This bullet testing is the result of my Rainier Ballistics Bullet sponsorship ending in 2017. Now that I am a free agent when it comes to a bullet sponsor I can check out the performance of other bullet vendors products. I am in the market for a new bullet sponsor, but I want to make sure that if I do go down that rout again that the performance of the bullet meets or exceeds my performance requirements. I need the bullets to go where I am aiming every time. Hopefully I will find a viable replacement for the 2017 shooting season.

[CHA-LEE]

This past Saturday I served my duty as MD and ran the local HPPS match. The weather was pretty cold in the morning at 19 degrees but there was zero wind which made it bearable for setup. The temp topped out in the high 30’s and the wind stayed away so it actually turned out to be pretty decent shooting conditions for winter time. All together we had 6 fun stages to shoot and 35 shooters to take them on. I kind of expected more shooters to attend since we have had many matches canceled in the past few weeks. I guess the masses are not “Hungry” enough to shoot when it’s cold yet.

I worked my tail off setting up the match and once again didn’t have much time to look at the stages from a competitive perspective before the match started. I had to figure out the stages on the fly during the match. That wasn’t too much of an issue as most of the stages had pretty straight forward layouts. I shot the match pretty decent. I had one miss for the match and it was on a hard cover partial that I was shooting at really fast. I didn’t call it a miss but it ended up being one so that was a little disturbing. Other than that I shot a fairly solid match. It’s a lot of work hosting these club matches but it’s worth it when I see the competitors having so much fun shooting the match.

On Saturday evening I put the Manny Mini Dot sight setup on my #2 Limited blaster so now all of my blasters have the same sight setup. I also loaded up some more of the Eggleston 180gr .40 bullets with a 4.6gr WST drop to chrono.

Since there were no matches on Sunday and the weather was half way decent I decided to go back out to the range for some testing and live fire practice with friends. The temp was in the high 30’s but today the wind was blowing pretty good in the morning making it feel a lot colder than it really was. The wind was blowing right into the back of the bay making it pretty brutal. We tried parking our cars sideways in the bay to block some of the wind and that really didn’t help much but it at least gave us some hope. The wind eventually started to die down to a reasonable amount so we could at least get the stage setup. I started off with sighting in the #2 Limited blaster. With the .180 tall front sight its hitting about an inch low at 10 yards which is the same as it was doing with the normal width site. I had to put a .160 tall front sight on it before to bring the POI up but the Manny Mini dot only comes in a .180 tall size. I chronoed the Eggleston ammo at the same time and the 4.6gr WST drop produced a 950 – 960 average velocity. I am going to drop that down another tenth and retest it.

Since I got the Manny sights on the #2 Blaster I decided to shoot it on the practice stage for several runs. It functioned without any issues but its felt recoil is slightly different than the #1 so it was throwing off my timing a little bit. I then switched over to the #1 blaster and was back on my normal pace of shooting and timing. I have shot the #1 blaster so much lately that I am evidently getting really dialed into how it shoots and feels to shoot. I will continue to use it for both practice and matches until something breaks on it which will force me to switch to one of my other blasters.

The stage that we setup was a pretty complex target order engagement while shooting on the move type of stage. There was a good mixture of open and partial targets as well to require a lot of changeup in shooting speed. I was pushing the limits more than usual and racked up more misses that I cared to have, but it was good to push the boundaries of shooting speed with the new sight setup. When I would reign it in and shoot the stage at a normal match pace I would be able perform solid stage runs. It’s fun to let it all go and shoot a stage with reckless abandon just to see how it will turn out. Even though it was cold and windy it turned out to be a very productive practice day. Hopefully the weather keeps working in our favor on the weekends so I can continue to practice hard. I want to be hitting on all cylinders by the time I head down to the Area 2 match.   

[Richc2048]

It was a fun match and practice session. It's always fun to read these and figure out the reasoning of some of your practice runs.

Always a blast. (Pun intended) Thanks mang!

[CHA-LEE]

Last week I was able to secure a new Bullet Sponsorship deal with Eggleston Munitions. They produce Coated bullets and are based in Colorado Springs. Their bullets are super accurate and I am looking forward to working with them during the 2017 shooting season. I am getting my shooting jerseys redone to reflect this sponsorship change and hopefully I well get them in the next week or so. Eggleston Munitions gave me a 10% discount code for my fellow shooters to use. The discount code is EM-PEREZ if you want to take advantage of the savings and I have listed their website below. Once I get some loads finalized with the new bullets I will post them up.

 

http://www.egglestonmunitions.com/

 

This weekend was packed with shooting due to the abnormally warm weather. On Saturday I attended the Aurora Gun Club USPSA match. I shot fairly solid for this match but did manage to rack up 1 miss on the first stage we shot. This miss was completely due to trying to rush the last shot on the stage to get the stage over with. I have always battled this habit of rushing the last shots on the stage and this time it cost me a miss. I hate it when I have to relearn the same lesson 928498234 times but never really learn it. The Retarded is strong in me with that issue.

 

The one strange thing with this match is that there were two field course stages that forced Limited shooters to perform 2 reloads.  We run into this once in a while but having two of them on a four stage match was pretty strange. The Open guys were able to plow through those stages with only needing 1 reload so that ended up being about a 1 second advantage for them.

 

The good from the match is that I am starting to get more glimmers of aggressive shooting and shot calling with the Manny sights that feels “Normal”. I still have a ways to go before this “Normal” feeling happens all the time, but it’s nice to see progression in the right direction.

 

On Sunday I went out with some friends to do some live fire practice at the BLGC range. The weather was warm but the wind was a little high. We setup a large field course and shot it a bunch of times. I was able to shoot really solid for most of the practice and really liked how I was processing the sights. The stage had a middle section that required a sub 1 second reload to keep it from impacting your stage time and I was able to smash those reloads home every single time. I broke out the fiber insert out of the front sight and had to replace it at the range. These Manny front sights have a nagging issue of the fiber breaking out on a regular basis. I think I might have to resort to super gluing the center of the fiber to the middle of the front sight to see if that resolves the issue.

 

On Sunday evening I attended the CGC indoor match. It was a train wreck from start to finish. I hoped that using the Manny sight setup for the past two months would help me see them better at this indoor match but that wasn’t the case. The lighting is really crappy at this range and not being able to see the fiber dot in the front sight is not an option because the post and notch are way too small to make out in these lighting conditions. I spend the whole match trying to point shoot at the targets which lead to pretty crappy hits and some misses. To make it even more painful, I had two different stages where my support hand hit the mag release in the middle of an array of targets. Wasting 3+ seconds on each stage to recover from the dropped mag by reloading and rack the gun isn’t the best way to get the job done. Its been a while since I have pushed the mag release with my support hand like that in the middle of an array but I understand why each happened. On the first one I got a really crappy support hand grip on the draw and it happened about 4 rounds into the first mag. The second time I started the stage by engaging the first target weak hand then as I transitioned the gun from weak to strong hand I pushed the button with my weak hand. When it rains it pours.

I really like the new Manny sight setup in 95% of the shooting conditions I am exposed to. They don’t work for this CGC match but so far this is the only match that they are ineffective at so I am not too worried. I think I need to simply resort to the fact that I need to shoot my Open gun at this match. That is exactly what I am going to do the next time I attend.    

 

[js1130146]

What led you to seek the Eggleston sponsorship? I never hear of too many others using them. Because they are localish? Or purely based on performance? Did you test other coated bullets? Any plans to use them in your open gun?

 

I've been using Eggleston bullets in .45 for a year or so now and really like them but never tested other coated bullets. I've got some SNS coated samples to try because they are significantly cheaper per case but dang do the Eggleston perform well. 

[CHA-LEE]

js1130146> Here is some Q&A....

 

Q: What led you to seek the Eggleston sponsorship?

A: There are several different factors for seeking sponsorship with Eggleston Munitions. They are a smaller bullet manufacture that does not have a huge presence in the practical shooting sports. My partnership with them can help market their products in the practical shooting sports. Their bullets are very very accurate. Accuracy of the bullets is a performance requirement that I demand from the bullets I use in competition. Lastly, Since EM is here in Colorado it helps build an in person relationship with them.

 

Q: I never hear of too many others using them. Because they are localish?

A: As I said, they are a smaller bullet manufacture and have primarily focused on the 3 Gun market from a competition shooting perspective. My job is to help bring awareness to their products in the other practical shooting sports.

 

Q: Or purely based on performance?

A: Bullet performance is is very high on my requirements list. There is no getting around the fact that the bullets must go exactly where you intend them to go during competition. I spend many thousands of dollars a year traveling to major matches and don't want to throw away that investment by not shooting the best performance bullet possible.

 

Q: Did you test other coated bullets?

A: I did. Some worked better than others from an accuracy perspective. I don't want to put down any other manufactures products. But I will say that the Eggleston bullets produced the most consistent accuracy out of all of the bullets I tested. This testing also included jacketed, plated, and coated bullets.

 

Q: Any plans to use them in your open gun?

A: Yes. I plan on doing some 9mm major PF load testing in the near future with the EM bullets. The coating on the EM bullets is supposed to function safely up to 2000fps. That is well above the 1500 fps I need out of my 115gr 9mm Major loads.

[js1130146]

Thank you for the response! I'm very interested in what you find out with the major loading for open. If it's successful I might give them a try as well. I wouldn't mind getting all my bullets from one manufacturer. 

 

PS your discount code doesn't appear to be working (or maybe I'm just not doing it right)

[CHA-LEE]

I will let the EM people know about the discount code. I will let you know when they get it fixed.

[CHA-LEE]

I just got confirmation that the EM-PEREZ 10% Eggleston Munitions discount code is now enabled.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend we got lucky yet again with the weather and I was able to shoot on both Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday there wasn’t a match so I went out to the BLGC and got some live fire practice done with friends. It was really windy that day but the temp was in the mid 50’s so it wasn’t too bad. We setup a stage with a good mixture of aiming, hosing and swinger timing. The swinger was activated by a popper shot in the first position then engaged in the third position so you couldn’t plan the timing of it. Sometimes the timing was just right and other times you had to wait on it to present again. We set it up as an over the top presentation so you couldn’t engage it in the lull of movement. This seemed to be the biggest time variable on the stage as it took about 1 second to wait for it to present again. As expected, the stage runs where I got lucky and could engage the swinger with two shots in one pass without delay were about 1 second faster runs. This stage also allowed you to engage a set of targets from the start position in a stationary stance or on the move while moving from the 2nd to 3rd shooting positions. Engaging these targets on the move was way more risky but did produce about a half of a second time advantage. I shot the stage several times using both strategies and the best on the move run was a 10.6 HF and the best stationary HF was 10.3. If this stage was in a major match I would shoot it using the stationary position plan since I could execute that plan way more consistently than the on the move plan. It was interesting to test it out though.

 

On Sunday I attended the local club match at AGC. This match had 85 shooters in attendance which made for 20+ shooters on each squad. It was a looooong day of shooting as there was a significant log jam on one of the berms. As for my performance it was a little lack luster due to not getting solid sleep the night before. I only got about 4 hours of sleep so I was dragging ass and my mental focus was not fully up to par. I screwed up the stage plan on the first stage that I shot which cost me at least 1 – 2 seconds because I forgot which direction I was suppose to run within the stage. Then I had an uncalled miss on a swinger on the following stage. The miss was an enigma to me because I fired both shots on the swinger patently and I called them both good, but ended up with a miss. I am not totally sure what happened with that failure but I was obviously not paying attention well enough. Shooting when you are tired isn’t the best recipe for success. Tonight I am attending the indoor Whistling Pines match. Hopefully I can perform better tonight.

 

My new shooting shirts have been made and I should get them tomorrow. I wish that they were going to show up today, but it isn’t going to happen. Tonight’s match will be the last one sporting the Rainier Ballistics logo. I wish that things had worked out between Rainier and I but nothing lasts forever. I am really looking forward to representing Eggleston Munitions this season and will have the proper attire to do just that tomorrow.

It’s my birthday today and am turning 41 years old. Time flies when you are having fun!!!

 

[CHA-LEE]

I attended the indoor Whistling Pines match last night. It was a shit show of a performance for me as I was having a really hard time seeing the sights. I had to resort to point shooting a lot of the targets because I couldn’t see the smaller Manny sight setup in the less than optimal indoor lighting. This resulted in two misses on the same stage where I engaged the targets with three rounds but two of the hits were just into the black hardcover. All I could do was “Hope” that I had hits but didn’t have them after the shooting was done. I think that I have performed enough testing indoors to prove that the Manny sight setup isn’t effective in those conditions. The physical post and notch are too small to use as an outline on the targets and if the lighting does not illuminate the fiber its game over. I need to stop trying to force using this smaller sight setup indoors and simply shoot my open gun as it’s obviously required.

 

For some strange reason I was also struggling with my grab of the next magazine during reloads. For both reloads during the match I slapped down to grab the magazine off of the belt and the magazine shifted and almost fell. This put the magazine in a strange position within my hand and I had to slowly insert it in the gun with a strange grip on the mag. I am not sure what was going on with that other than sometimes I just suck.

 

Even though I performed crappy I had fun shooting with friends. It’s hard to complain about shooting crappy when I could have not been shooting at all. That and we all need a swift kick in the teeth every once in a while to remind us that we are human and things simply don’t go in our favor all the time. The skills of dealing with failure are just as important as the skills of dealing with success.

Edited February 7, 2017 by CHA-LEE

[CHA-LEE]

No matches for me this weekend. On Friday I was able to do some chrono testing with the Eggleston Munitions 180gr .401 bullets. I was testing the Nobel Sport Prima SV powder at 4.0 and 4.1gr. The 4.0gr was averaging about 925 – 935fps and the 4.1gr was averaging 940 – 950fps. The bullet weights are in the 181 – 182gr range so this makes a 168 – 169 power factor with the 4.0gr load. Since this  measurement was only done on my chrono, and other chrono’s can vary 2 – 3%, I am going to use the 4.1gr load as that should be very safely making major no matter where I go.

 

On Saturday I went out for some live fire practice and more ammo testing. I started off the practice session by testing the accuracy of the Eggleston .401 bullets. I was able to produce an all rounds touching 5 shot group off hand at 10 yards. This is amazing accuracy and exactly what I have been looking for in a new competition bullet to use. While loading these coated bullets if the brass isn’t belled enough it will scrape the coating off of the side of the bullet. I tested the accuracy of these “scraped” bullets to see if the accuracy was affected and it did slightly reduce the accuracy. This is good to know from a reloading quality control perspective so I can disposition the “scraped” bullets for practice only.

 

 

Since this ammo is very accurate I experimented with some different recoil spring weights to see if I could drop down to a lighter recoil spring and still maintain accuracy. I started with a 10lb recoil spring which was very accurate then tried a 9lb and 8lb recoil springs. I really like how the 8lb and 9lb recoil springs feel while shooting, but their reduced weight still impacts the accuracy in a negative fashion. As much as I like how the lighter recoil springs feel while shooting it’s not worth the reduced accuracy. The 10lb recoil spring went back into the gun as it’s the lowest weight recoil spring I can use and still maintain accuracy.

 

For practice we setup a difficult stage using hard cover partial targets, steel and a swinger at about 25 yards. This stage was a butt kicker as everyone was racking up misses myself included. The overcast lighting was just enough to keep me from seeing the iron within the sight picture. Trying to shoot these difficult shots using only the fiber produced marginal results. The swinger was setup to present out of the left side from a double stacked barrel. The double stacked barrels were placed right in front of the swinger so the swinger wasn’t visible at rest technically making it a disappearing target. The A zone of the swinger was only visible from the 9 O Clock to 11 O Clock position while exposed so there wasn’t much opportunity to track the swinger before engaging it. It basically forced you into a trapping scenario given the distance and exposure. I was having a hell of a time getting two hits on this swinger in a single pass. I would have 1 solid hit on the first shot then I was chasing the swinger back into the barrels for the second shot. The strange thing is that if I too two patient shots at it I would have one good hit and a miss. But if I shot three hurried shots at it I would usually end up with at least two hits on it. I worked out the ballistics math verses the swinger movement and the swinger was moving a little over 5 inches during the travel time of the bullet from the barrel to the target. The A zone is only about 6 inches wide so if you are aiming at the middle of the A zone while firing the shot its guaranteed to at least be a C zone hit by the time the bullet hits the target. Throw in some trigger mashing to displace the sights or not aiming at the center of the A zone and it can easily end up being a miss. It’s not very common to see swingers at 25 yards but it was good to push the limits and get it figured out.  

 

To further test the accuracy of the Eggleston ammo I shot a group off hand at 25 yards at the head of a target and all three rounds were in the A zone within the head. I wanted to test the accuracy at a distance further than 10 yards and it was nice to confirm that the accuracy is still there at 25 yards.

 

I shot about 600 rounds that day and it was a good practice. I had more failures in hitting the targets than I would have liked, but I as learning more about what I need to see in the sight picture for those difficult shots. I will take failing while learning any day over succeeding and not learning anything.

 

The only bummer is that at the end of the practice I noticed that my front sight was starting to crack right at the top of the dove tail cut. This sight is breaking exactly where the last one broke off. This type of failure also explains why the fiber rod keeps breaking the end off. If the front sight is flexing during recoil and changing the dimension of the posts retaining the fiber, then it’s going to break the fiber ends off. I am going to send this sight back to Brazos for warranty replacement. If there is one thing I am good at, its breaking stuff. I need to get this front sight situation ironed out before the Area 2 match in a few weeks. I guess I am happy that it failed in practice instead of in the middle of a major match. But either way, it sucks that it keeps failing at all.  

Edited February 13, 2017 by CHA-LEE

[CHA-LEE]

Last night I attended the Bristol Cone indoor match. I finally got smart and broke out my Open gun for this match. It’s been a while since shooting my open gun so it was a learning curve. The Delta Point Pro’s 2.5 MOA dot is small but also very bright. I had to do some fiddling with the brightness to keep it from being overwhelming during this indoor match. The good news is that every time I pointed the gun at a target the dot was in the glass and I didn’t have to hunt for it. There was even some one handed shooting and I didn’t have to hunt for the dot during that. The one issue I was having is where the dot ended up on target due to the offset of the dot verses iron sights. Every time I pointed at a target the dot was a lot higher up on the target than I wanted it to be. This is to be expected since my pointing vs aiming index is based on shooting iron sights. This aiming offset delayed my shooting on arrays because I had to reposition the dot on my intended aiming spot. But once I got the dot where it should be it was easy to track.

 

Overall I shot at a really conservative pace for most of the match as I was simply trying to get use to shooting the dot. On one stage where I tried hammering shots at an array I ended up with a miss, but that wasn’t too much of a surprise because the dot was streaking all over the target when I broke both shots. I haven’t shot the Open gun enough to fully understand how much “Streak” I can get away with for any given target distance or size. I am also getting slightly distracted by looking at the dot instead of the targets. These are two issues that would be easily resolved if I simply shot Open exclusively for a few months. Shooting Open exclusively is not going to happen at this time.

 

Right now I am perfectly happy with “dabbling” in Open while attending the indoor matches. Being able to see a red dot indoors makes shooting in dim lighting a lot more fun verses iron sights. Shooting Open at these indoor matches should also give me a chance to burn in this Open gun and shake out any equipment issues that may still be lingering. Right now it’s running solidly but it needs a lot more rounds down the pipe before I would consider it fully ready to go.

Edited February 17, 2017 by CHA-LEE

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend was a long one for me since I had Monday off from work. My replacement front sight came in on Friday so I got that installed on the #1 blaster. I got some specific installation instructions from Brazos for installing the sight without affecting the small radius between the dove tail and bottom of the blade post. I was able to get the sight installed without touching the radius so hopefully that will keep it from breaking like the two others have.

 

On Saturday it was the HPPS match that I run so it was a long busy day of working. I didn’t get a chance to look at any of the stages from a competitive stage plan perspective before the start of the match. This proved to be a significant disadvantage this time around because most of the stages had several different valid ways to shoot them. This match ended up with some of the most technically challenging stages I have seen in a club match in a long while. I was able to figure out the best plan on most of the stages but didn’t have enough time to fully program them so my performances were more choppy than they should have been. One stage was a one shot per target large field course that had a lot of different options to tackle it. There was one obvious plan that had you doing a lot of running around and I could have used that plan but I wanted to try to deploy something more efficient. The challenge is that my more efficient plan was far more complex and precise shooting position dependent. At the start of the stage I screwed up the target engagement order in the third position and it was a train wreck after that since I ran the gun dry. I ended up wasting 2 – 3 seconds on that stage along with racking up a miss. Had my stage plan worked it might have been slightly faster than the basic run around plan but my plan was far more complex to deploy so it wasn’t worth the risk. On the classifier I ended having an extra shot on the Virginia Count stage so I had to eat a procedural penalty. The one good thing that came from the match is that I shot the Classifier with my Open gun and was able to produce a 100% result.

 

On Sunday I headed up north to the Weld match. We started out the match on the classifier and I shot a 100% in Limited and did a second gun run with my Open gun and had a 94.9%. I am glad to finally get two GM level classifiers in Open. I only need two more to seal the deal and earn that GM classification in Open. After that my match went consistently downhill from there. I was shooting paper “OK” but the steel was kicking my butt. The match had two different stages with plate racks and on each plate rack I had at LEAST 4 – 5 misses on the plates before clearing it. One of those times it lead to me running out of ammo before I could finish the stage and had to eat a miss on a paper target. This steel train wreck was partially due to me looking at the steel instead of the sights and also engaging them through a lower port where I am pointing above my head. There is no getting around the need to be patient and aim hard for these steel plates. Why I keep thinking I don’t have to do that is beyond my understanding. This is one of those lessons that I keep NOT learning. Then to finish off the match we shot a stage that had two options of shooting it. You could shoot it all from the back with more difficult shots or shoot half from the back and half from the front with some awkward positions. The run up to the front was 7 full strides of running and the awkward positions up front kept you from blending the positions together. Before the match I paced off the distance and assessed the awkward positions then wrote off the run up front plan. This turned out to be a significant strategy mistake as I didn’t give the more difficult shooting from the back enough time value. I shot the whole stage from the back in 15.8 seconds and had to eat 3 D zone hits on two of the targets because that is all that I could aim at. Then others on the squad were running up front and doing it in 12 – 13 seconds and I knew I had made the wrong plan. I reshot the stage for fun using the run up front plan and was able to do it in 12.2 seconds. My initial poor stage plan cost me 40 match points. This was a good lesson to not get lazy in confirming which stage plan is best by timing it in dry fire.

 

On Monday I went out to do some Live Fire practice with some friends. We decided to use all Turtle targets for this practice since half of the stages at the Area 2 match will have them. This ended up being a really good idea as it’s been quite a while since I shot any turtle targets. I decided to do some fiber rod color testing that day as well. I started out the day with Neon Green and that seemed brighter than the Orange I had been using. Maybe it really wasn’t brighter and it was simply different and that made it more distracting. I also tried Neon Yellow and Violet. All of these different fiber colors changed how prominent the iron of the front sight was but in the end it was primarily just distracting. I put the Neon Orange fiber back in and I was back to subconscious processing of the sight picture without it being distracting. I may play with the Neon Green again sometime in the future, as it did allow me to see more of the iron in the front post. But I don’t want to switch it up right before the two Area matches in march. Beyond that I was able to perform “OK” for most of the practice. I am able to aim at the proper location on the turtle targets to capture mostly A zone hits but I was still struggling with the steel. I can’t seem to break out of the process of trying to shoot at the steel while I am not focused on my sights. The few times where I hard focused on my sights it went a lot better. If I get another live fire practice day next weekend I am going to setup some specific paper/steel switch ups that are giving me trouble.

 

Its only two weeks until I head out for the Area 2 match so I need to get this stuff ironed out before then. I think with all of this live fire practice lately I am setting a performance expectation that is higher than it needs to be. I need to stop “Trying” to shoot better and instead just let it happen at whatever pace it needs to happen. I am going to focus on that this coming weekend and see what the results end up like. All I know is that it shouldn’t be hard to do better than I did this past weekend.  

[CHA-LEE]

This was a funky weekend from a weather perspective. On Thursday and Friday we had some snow and it was really cold. It didn’t warm up enough to melt the snow by Saturday and the high temp for the day was in the mid 30’s so the local Aurora match was canceled. Since the match was canceled I decided to brave the cold weather and go out for some Live Fire practice. It was cold and windy at the range but it was a good practice session for me.

 

I started off the practice session by doing some Chrono and Accuracy testing of the Eggleston 9 Major ammo through my open gun. I have been using the 115gr Zero JHP’s so I started with that to get a baseline of velocity and accuracy. Then I tried the Eggleston 115gr load with 10% less powder at 7.5gr of HS-6. The velocity was at 1475fps and the accuracy was better than the Zero bullets. I only had about 15 rounds of the Eggleston ammo to test so I didn’t get to test it out extensively. But I didn’t notice an increase in smokiness between the Zero and Eggleston ammo. Granted it was windy that day and it’s hard to assess smokiness when you are in a super accuracy biased mindset. The next time I test this ammo I am going to get some 3rd person video of shooting both ammo’s so I can see if there is in fact a smoke difference. The good news is that my initial testing is looking like the Eggleston bullets will work effectively in Open as well.

 

After that I setup a medium size stage with a bunch of steel plates and mini poppers with a few paper targets thrown in there to force me to switch up between shooting paper and steel. Steel plates have been kicking my butt lately so this plate practice was exactly what I needed. I started out the practice with the only requirement of aiming at the center of each plate and the center of the circle in the poppers. I painted the steel between each run so I could see where my hits were going. Giving myself the visual patience to aim at the center of the plate resulted in 1 for 1 hits 95% of the time and when I had a rare miss it was because I was rushing the aiming process and not aiming at the center. My splits from one plate to the next were a little longer than I liked so I tried speeding up the shooting a little bit and I ended right back where I was failing before in matches. This proved yet again that blasting at “White” isn’t getting the job done. I instead started to experiment with overall grip pressure and found that if I consciously gripped the gun “HARD” it dramatically improved my target to target splits without sacrificing the ability to aim at the center of the plate. Gripping the gun “HARD” and aiming at the center of the steel allowed me to produce solid stage runs in both time and accuracy.

 

My third goal for this practice was not trying to shoot fast at all. My goal was simply to let the aiming process dictate the rate of fire and not mind how long it seemed to take. This worked out really well as it allowed me to be as patient as needed to make 1 for 1 shots on the steel without feeling like I was in a hurry. I was also able to call my shots a lot better because I was hyper focused on the aiming process verses being distracted by trying to go fast. This is exactly where I need to be mentally for the Area 2 match and if I can deploy it for all of the stages it will result in a really solid overall performance.

 

Overall it was a very productive practice session and exactly what I needed. I could have done without the cold and windy range conditions, but it is what it is. The weather can’t be perfect all the time and shooting when the weather sucks is part of the game. Being mentally and physically tuff enough to keep the crummy weather from ruining my performance is exactly where I need to be.

 

On Sunday I attended the evening Indoor match at the Centennial Gun Club. For this match I shot my Open gun and was really happy that I did given the poor lighting. The Limited guys on my squad were struggling to see their sights all night and I was happy to be using a Red Dot.  I shot ok on the first two stages. Had an 88% on the classifier because of the slow unloaded start. I am not use to reaching over the right side of the gun to grab for the racker so that wasted too much time. I shot the classifier well but gave up at least half a second on the initial loading of the gun due to the awkward racking process. I screwed up the third stage with the wrong stage plan, a miss due to mashing the trigger, and 4 extra shots on the plate rack. The plate rack was painted bright orange so the dot literally disappeared when it was on the plates. I tried making the dot brighter for this stage to be able to see the dot better on the plate rack but that ended up screwing me on the rest of the stage because it was way too bright for the paper. All I could see the whole stage was a super bright dot and got really distracted by it while engaging the paper targets. I reshot the 3rd stage for fun with a dimmer dot and the correct stage plan and shaved 2 seconds off of my stage run. I still struggled with the orange plates because I couldn’t see the dot on them which wasted another 2 seconds. This proved to me that I need the dot brightness low enough to keep it from being distracting and I guess I just have to take it in the shorts on steel that is painted the same color as the dot.

 

On the last stage of the match I had a good stage run going but mashed the trigger once again pulling the hit into a no shoot. I knew as soon as I mashed the trigger that it got pulled into a no shoot and made up the shot instantly. It just sucks to have such poor trigger control that evening. The only good thing in the final stage is that I shot the final double swinger section as efficiently as possible. I gave away the match on the third stage due to the slow shooting, miss on paper and missing like crazy on the plates. So I was pretty much over it by the time I got to the final stage. Sometimes it goes in your favor and other times it does not. This is one of those evenings where it wasn’t going my way. I need a lot more trigger time with the Open gun to get used to it. The only good thing is that I could see the Dot on everything except for the orange plates.

 

Now it’s time to get my guns and gear ready for the Area 2 match. I head out for the match on Thursday morning so I have plenty of time this week to get everything ready to rumble. My goals for this match are to let the shooting happen at whatever pace the sights dictate and to grip the gun HARD. We will see how that strategy goes.  

 

 

[CHA-LEE]

I attended the 2017 Area 2 match this past weekend and it was once again a great match overall. The weather was awesome, the stages were challenging as well as realistic, and the match ran like a well oiled machine. The only thing that I wish they had more of was shooting on the move. The stages were heavily biased toward a "Run Stop Shoot" style with a bunch of shooting through ports and gaps between walls. Each match has its own flavor though so it is what it is.

 

I squadded with a bunch of my fellow Colorado shooters and we had a great time. We did our best to help each other out and worked hard at resetting the stage in a timely fashion. It's nice to shoot on a squad where you know everyone is there to have a good time. We were on the PM/AM/PM shooting schedule which was opposite of the "Super Squad". We were also shooting a different set of stages each day so it was hard to gauge how I was doing against the big dogs during the match. I didn't worry about it much as my top priority was to stick to my game plan of letting the shooting happen at whatever pace it wants to go.

 

The first day was going fairly well until we got to stage 14. This was our second to last stage of the day and being on the PM schedule created some funky lighting conditions. When I shot the stage I could only see the fiber dot in the front sight and not the rear notch. To make it worse the brown targets were in a shadow and were blending in with the back berm making it hard to see a specific place to aim at. I knew I was in trouble as soon as I pointed at the first target and didn't see a normal sight picture. I attempted to shoot the stage with only the fiber dot in the front sight but it was not good enough for the 5 mini poppers as I was missing them like crazy. When I left the second shooting position I noticed out of the corner of my eye that I had a hit in the hard cover on the paper target and full retard mode kicked in. For reasons unknown to me I decided to back track to the second position to make up the miss which wasted 4 seconds of stage time. I got through the rest of the stage and some how had all of my hits on paper, but it was an ugly mess of a stage run. I figured that I donated about 40 match points on that train wreck of a run in missing steel and revisiting a shooting position a second time. I got through day 1 without any shooting penalties but donated 40 match points to the competition on stage 14 alone.

 

Day 2 had us starting in the morning and the first stage went well. On Stage 2 I thought that I had a solid stage run but ended up having a miss on the top paper target in the 3rd position. This was an enigma to me because I shot two deliberate shots and called both good but the target only had one A zone hit. The hit only looked like one hole as well so I couldn't even justify calling for the RO to card it. I watched the video of the run and my shooting on the target didn't look funky either. So the second shot either went through the same hole or Darth Vader used the dark side of the force to bat one of my bullets away. The bummer is that this miss would end up being my only shooting penalty for the whole match. Other than this the rest of the stage runs were fairly solid. With 55 match points donated to the competition I knew that day 3 needed some very solid shooting to be able to contend with Nils J and Bob K who were in the lead by the end of the second day.

 

Day 3 had us starting at about 10am which is "normal" club match action for me. We had 4 stages to shoot and I forced myself to NOT go crazy trying to manufacturer a result. I stuck to my primary goal of simply letting the shooting go at whatever pace it wanted to and let the chips fall where they may. Out of the last 4 stages I had two stage wins, a second and a third overall in Limited. It was nice to finish the match strong and do it without "trying".

 

When the results were tallied I ended up 3rd overall in Limited at 95% of Nils J and only 16 match points behind Bob K. It's sucks to know that I gave away a second place finish with my stage 14 retardedness, but it feels good to be able to finish at 95% of the current World/National Champ. I guess that letting the shooting happen at whatever pace it wants to go is an effective strategy. At least it was for this match. It probably doesn't hurt that I have been practicing my butt off through the winter months so I didn't feel rusty going into this match.

 

Its now time to start focusing on the Area 1 match coming up at the end of the Month.

 

 

[Glock26Toter]

That was sweet shooting buddy!  Congrats on the placement.