CHA-LEE's Tale

[CHA-LEE]

No local club matches for me this past weekend. I instead went over to Grand Junction to do some live fire practice with Bob Krogh at his local range. We setup a large field course stage with a bunch of steel and partial targets and shot it a bunch of different ways. This stage was very biased towards aiming hard to get solid hits on all of the targets. We also mandated that all of the steel in the stage must be engaged through ports in the walls which made it even more difficult. I was shooting “OK” on Saturday but I wasn’t able to pull together a whole stage run that was totally solid. On Sunday I was shooting better but this stage was still kicking my butt in one manner or another. This was kind of expected as I was testing some different things in pushing the boundaries of shooting these difficult targets either faster or sooner while not fully settled in the shooting positions.

 

One thing that was unique challenge at this range is the surface of the berm itself. The ground of the berm was covered in loose crushed rock which makes it difficult to accelerate hard without losing traction. It’s kind of like trying to run on hard packed snow. If you move around smoothly with no aggression, it’s not a problem. But if you try to haul ass by accelerating or braking hard you will slip around on the loose rocks. The loose rock would also get piled up in the shooting positions easily creating uneven footing conditions while standing in the shooting position. This made it even more difficult to execute these difficult shots through the ports or keep from shuffling round within the positions because you felt unbalanced.  To me, the range surface was less than ideal for practicing how to move aggressively, but it was good practice for dealing with that kind of range surface. There was a very fine line between hauling ass effectively and losing traction and slipping all over the place.

 

Over the weekend I shot about 800 rounds which was a solid amount of shooting given the stages we were practicing on. For most of Saturday I used my #1 Limited blaster then I switched over to the #3 Limited blaster. Both blasters were running well but I preferred the #3 this weekend because the rear notch is a little narrower at .090 versus the .100 wide notch on the #1 blaster. The narrower rear notch made executing the difficult shots a little easier so that is why I stuck with the #3 blaster most of the time.

 

Overall it was a great weekend of Live fire practice. I am glad that I was able to make it over the mountains and do some practice with Bob. He is always fun to shoot with and we do a good job of pushing one another to perform our best or try different stuff. I am looking forward to shooting some majors against him in the next month or so.

 

Now I need to get back behind the reloading press and get my ammo stocked back up so I can hit the ground running in September and not worry about reloading ammo. September is going to be super busy with major matches and other travel that I am doing so the more I can get squared away before then the better.  

[CHA-LEE]

I didn’t get to do much shooting this weekend. I was only able to attend one local match on Saturday which was the USPSA match that I run. Shooting this match is always an interesting challenge because I am the MD and running around with my head cut off trying to make it happen. I am always more focused on setting up the stages and making sure that the match is running smoothly verses actually shooting the match. This month’s match was a little more hectic during setup and I didn’t have time to look at the stages from a shooting perspective before the start of the match. I had to figure out the stages on the fly as my squad got to each stage and this worked out ok for most of the stages.

 

There was only one stage where I didn’t have enough time to figure out the best stage plan and just ran with one that was easy to remember. This less than optimal stage plan cost me a few seconds in lost stage time in extra and awkward movement, but I was able to hit all of the targets. I also had a miss on a standards type of stage. It was on a diagonal hard cover target at about 10 yards and my miss was less than a quarter inch in the black right in the middle of the A-zone. I called the shot good and I can’t really beat myself up too much over it as it was dead center in the A-zone and only slightly low into the black. I shot this stage again for fun and had the exact same miss on the same target. That was frustrating, but part of the risk in aiming at the A-zone when there isn’t much of that part of the target to aim at.

 

For the whole match I gave away too many points as I was only able to capture 92.8% of the available points. This included 4 Delta zone hits for the whole match which is way too many. Other than that I felt like my shooting aggression and movement through the stages was pretty solid. Overall it was a “ho hum” performance simply because I was worn out from running the match and also didn’t have enough time to program each stage solidly. I felt like I was in “Wing It” mode the whole day from a stage plan execution perspective. This is pretty normal though when I am running this match so it’s not a surprise.

 

After the match my fellow club board members got together for a meeting to discuss the current state of the club as well as planning for the future. We are doing very well financially and that will allow us to replace all of our wood walls and target stands with steel ones. We are also planning on investing in some more activated targets like drop turners, max traps and things like that. There is still a lot of work to do in order to get our club to where we want it but there is at least light at the end of the tunnel now. The endless job of the MD/Club President continues.

 

I won’t be able to get any shooting done until two weeks from now. This coming weekend I am going up to the mountains to attend a Knife class. That will burn up all of my shooting time this coming weekend. So I will have to settle with doing some practice and a local match two weeks from now. That will be my last weekend to get some blasting done before I head to the Area 4 match in Oklahoma. September and October are going to be crazy busy with attending major matches. Those two months will contain 5 major matches. The Schedule is Area 4, Colorado State, Limited Nationals, High Desert Classic, then the Icarus Invitational. Hopefully my equipment stays together through this final push of majors in 2017. We will see how it goes.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I went up to the mountains to attend a Martial Blade Concepts (MBC)class. This was a class focused on effective self-defense techniques while getting attacked with a knife. This was their annual training event that was focused on the whole system as well as testing the MBC instructors. To say that I was in way over my head would be an understatement. With no prior martial arts background or knife defense training I was totally out of my element. If I had to correlate it to a practical shooting match scenario, it would be like a brand new shooter going to the Nationals as their first match. I wasn’t able to effectively learn many techniques during the training event because they were cycling through the different techniques too quickly. But I was able to pick up enough to know that MBC system is something I really want to become proficient at. The really good take away from the class was being able to see “GM” level MBC instructors deploy the system effectively at full speed when being attacked by others using no holds barred effort. These examples were not staged in a manner of promoting the success of the technique either. The attacking examples were real world scenarios with the attacker going after it with very aggressive violent intent on stabbing the victim. Amazingly the attacker was never successful in stabbing the victim no matter what combination of instructors were deploying the scenario. So it’s not like there was only one bad ass that could deploy the system effectively.

 

Once I am through this next month and a half of major matches I will be looking into doing some more MBC training. I am not looking to be a “GM” in the MBC system, but if I can get a proficient level of skill in the system it will absolutely benefit my ability to protect myself in a self-defense situation. I am also looking forward to learning something new and being “D” Class at something again.

 

Sunday night I attended the CGC Indoor match and shot my Open gun. Earlier that day I came from the MBC class and my arms were terrorized with bruises from the class. This made it more difficult to use aggressive hand/arm speed during the CGC match. The first stage of the match I was moving around in a lethargic manner and gripping the gun like a wimp because my arms hurt. This lead to a slow stage time and a miss just into the hardcover. I sucked up the arm pain and blocked it out the best I could for the rest of the stages and it worked out fairly well. I ended up shooting the match without any D zone hits and only 1 miss on the first stage. It was nice to get some shooting done this weekend but I wasn’t really into it that much. Being physically hurt and mentally distracted by attending the MBC class did circumvent my match performance. But I guess that is the “practical” part of the sport we all have to deal with.

 

Next weekend I am heading to Portland with my lady to attend a wedding. I won’t be able to get any shooting done on the weekend due to us traveling. I will be able to get some live fire practice in on Monday though as I have the day off. This will be my last opportunity to do some live fire practice before heading out to the Area 4 match the following weekend. Until then I need to put some more time behind the reloading press so I can get my ammo stash restocked to handle the crazy shooting schedule in September.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I wasn’t able to attend any matches. The wife and I went up to Portland to attend a cousin’s wedding. Luckily I had Monday off work for Labor Day so I went out to do some Live Fire practice. We setup a large field course that was full of difficult partial targets and required choppy movement to get through the stage. It’s not very common that we setup practice field course stages without at least some sections that can be blended together while shooting on the move. But this time we forced it to happen. This type of stage really reminded me of stages from prior Nationals where there is a bunch of “Run, Stop, Shoot” with no chance to blend positions together while shooting on the move. This is good practice given that the nationals are less than a month away. It’s good to embrace the suck now so I can get used to it before attending the Nationals. Hopefully the nationals doesn’t end up being another “Run, Stop, Shoot” fest but I am not counting on it to not be.

 

I shot the majority of the practice with my #1 Limited blaster then finished up the last couple of runs with my #3 blaster. Both guns were running great the whole day. Since I have been shooting the #3 mostly for matches lately it feels a little more comfortable than the #1 blaster. This is a good thing as I want the #3 to feel like a normal extension of my body during matches.

 

This week I have to get my guns and gear cleaned and packed up for the Area 4 match. I am heading out on Friday and shooting the weekend schedule. I have been avoiding all Hot/Humid matches this year on purpose because it usually isn’t fun to be outdoors in those horrible conditions all day. Hopefully Tulsa Oklahoma won’t be super bad this coming weekend. The primary reason I am going to this match is that I have never shot at the USSA range facility before and this is my opportunity to check it all out. I always pick at least one match a year to attend at a range I have never been to before and this is it for 2017. Hopefully all goes well for this match. I am as prepared as I can be for it so there are no excuses to pulling together a solid performance. My only expectation for this match is to shoot all of the stages and hit the targets. It shouldn’t be hard to achieve that goal so I can focus on having fun the rest of the time.

Edited September 5, 2017 by CHA-LEE

[CHA-LEE]

The Area 4 match is in the books. The USSA range is an awesome facility and the stages were great. All of the stages were well thought out and good tests of practical shooting skills. I like it when majors have stages that focus on testing practical shooting skills instead of creating circus stages with a bunch of stupid props. The weather was pretty decent as well. It was a little hot and humid but not horrible. I shot the AM/PM schedule on the weekend and had a great squad of hard workers. We all had fun and worked hard to churn through the stages fast on both days.

 

Starting in the AM on Saturday was interesting as the cool humid air made my ammo shoot a lot more smoky than it normally is. There were a few targets that were in the shadows as well and when that was mixed with the smoky situation made it pretty difficult to see the targets. I shot a little slower than normal on these targets and was able to get my hits, so I can’t complain too much. On Saturday I shot pretty solid overall. I only had 1 D zone hit through the 6 stages we shot and only had one issue during the standards stage where I totally botched the reload. Other than that I was feeling really good about my performance. I wish we could have kept shooing as we got done with our 6 stages by about 10:30AM. But the schedule is the schedule.

 

On Sunday we shot the PM schedule and this days performance was the polar opposite of the day before. I racked up 3 D’s and 3 misses on the final 6 stages. I also felt really sluggish while shooting in the afternoon heat. Two of my misses were on the fast over the top swinger on Stage 1. When shooting the stage I called both shots good. But when I looked at the video frame by frame both of my shots were trailing the moving target. This was one of those rare instances where the swinger was moving fast enough that you had to lead the swinger to get hits and I was aiming at the center. By the time my bullet got to the target it had already moved out of the way. This issue was also exasperated by the sluggish movement. During the stage run I felt like I was shooting and transitioning aggressively, but watching the video shows otherwise. If my reaction time was even slightly off in engaging this swinger then that would also promote shooting behind it.  

 

To top off the Sunday train wreck my Manny Mini dot front sight broke in half again right at the start of Stage 12 which was an all steel stage. Normally this isn’t too much of a problem because the front half flies off and I am left with the back half of the post to use to aim with. But this time the fiber rod kept the loose broken off front half of the sight attached to the rear half. So I had to shoot the whole stage with a loose front sight post flopping around randomly every shot. Since using the sights to aim was impossible I had to use the FORCE to will my hits onto the steel, which is never a good situation. I finally got all of the steel down but it took an extra 3 – 4 seconds to get it done. This happened with two more stages to go so I switched to my backup gun and finished the match with it.

 

This is the 8th Brazos Manny Mini Dot front sight that I have broken in the exact same way an all three of my Limited guns. Needless to say, this exact same sight failure is getting old. I will need to come up with an alternative front sight situation as this Manny Mini Dot is obviously not up to the task. The bummer is that I don’t have training time to switch to a completely different sight setup between now and the end of the major match season. I will have to keep feeding these sights to my Limited blasters until I am done with the majors in 2017. Hopefully they will last through the remainder of my major match season.

 

This was a strange match for me from a performance perspective. If I would have been able to maintain my performance level on Saturday I would have been able to finish a lot higher in the overall. But you can’t shoot good on one day and crappy on the next and expect to finish well overall. The interesting thing I noticed is that I seem to always shoot worse on PM schedules verses AM ones. This is an ongoing trend that has continually kicked my butt. If I am shooting all day, I can usually pull together a solid performance. But if I start the day in the PM then I tend to perform a lot worse. I know a big factor of it is that I rarely “Start” my practice sessions after lunch time and none of our outdoor local matches start late either. The next time I face a PM shooting schedule I think I am going to try and sleep in later and try to replicate my normal “Morning” routine. We will see if that makes any different. One thing for sure is that I don’t have time to “Fix” this issue before shooting the next few major matches. I have to embrace the suck and just deal with it.

 

My buddy nick was able to get all of my stage runs on video which was awesome. I have uploaded it to my YouTube channel and the video is listed below. I put the stages in numerical order in the video, but I shot the stages starting with number 3 on Saturday and finishing on number 2 on Sunday.

 

 

When all of the scores were tallied, I ended up 7th overall in Limited at 90% of the winner Shane Coley. This isn’t where I wanted to finish overall, but it is what it is when you shoot like crap for half of the match. Its water under the bridge now and I can check the USSA range off my list of places I have shot at.

 

Now I need to get my shooting gear fixed and cleaned up for the Colorado State match this coming weekend. I am shooting it all on Friday then ROing on the weekend. Hopefully I can produce a better result this time verses the Area 4 match. We will see how it goes.

[chaserracer]

This is awesome stuff here!

Just found your YT channel and subbed. Lots to learn from you - thanks for sharing/uploading I'm looking forward to going through your library of videos and picking up whatever i can to apply to my shooting. Good luck at the state match coming up sir!

[Prov1x]

23 hours ago, CHA-LEE said:

The Area 4 match is in the books. The USSA range is an awesome facility and the stages were great. All of the stages were well thought out and good tests of practical shooting skills. I like it when majors have stages that focus on testing practical shooting skills instead of creating circus stages with a bunch of stupid props. The weather was pretty decent as well. It was a little hot and humid but not horrible. I shot the AM/PM schedule on the weekend and had a great squad of hard workers. We all had fun and worked hard to churn through the stages fast on both days.

 

Starting in the AM on Saturday was interesting as the cool humid air made my ammo shoot a lot more smoky than it normally is. There were a few targets that were in the shadows as well and when that was mixed with the smoky situation made it pretty difficult to see the targets. I shot a little slower than normal on these targets and was able to get my hits, so I can’t complain too much. On Saturday I shot pretty solid overall. I only had 1 D zone hit through the 6 stages we shot and only had one issue during the standards stage where I totally botched the reload. Other than that I was feeling really good about my performance. I wish we could have kept shooing as we got done with our 6 stages by about 10:30AM. But the schedule is the schedule.

 

On Sunday we shot the PM schedule and this days performance was the polar opposite of the day before. I racked up 3 D’s and 3 misses on the final 6 stages. I also felt really sluggish while shooting in the afternoon heat. Two of my misses were on the fast over the top swinger on Stage 1. When shooting the stage I called both shots good. But when I looked at the video frame by frame both of my shots were trailing the moving target. This was one of those rare instances where the swinger was moving fast enough that you had to lead the swinger to get hits and I was aiming at the center. By the time my bullet got to the target it had already moved out of the way. This issue was also exasperated by the sluggish movement. During the stage run I felt like I was shooting and transitioning aggressively, but watching the video shows otherwise. If my reaction time was even slightly off in engaging this swinger then that would also promote shooting behind it.  

 

To top off the Sunday train wreck my Manny Mini dot front sight broke in half again right at the start of Stage 12 which was an all steel stage. Normally this isn’t too much of a problem because the front half flies off and I am left with the back half of the post to use to aim with. But this time the fiber rod kept the loose broken off front half of the sight attached to the rear half. So I had to shoot the whole stage with a loose front sight post flopping around randomly every shot. Since using the sights to aim was impossible I had to use the FORCE to will my hits onto the steel, which is never a good situation. I finally got all of the steel down but it took an extra 3 – 4 seconds to get it done. This happened with two more stages to go so I switched to my backup gun and finished the match with it.

 

This is the 8th Brazos Manny Mini Dot front sight that I have broken in the exact same way an all three of my Limited guns. Needless to say, this exact same sight failure is getting old. I will need to come up with an alternative front sight situation as this Manny Mini Dot is obviously not up to the task. The bummer is that I don’t have training time to switch to a completely different sight setup between now and the end of the major match season. I will have to keep feeding these sights to my Limited blasters until I am done with the majors in 2017. Hopefully they will last through the remainder of my major match season.

 

This was a strange match for me from a performance perspective. If I would have been able to maintain my performance level on Saturday I would have been able to finish a lot higher in the overall. But you can’t shoot good on one day and crappy on the next and expect to finish well overall. The interesting thing I noticed is that I seem to always shoot worse on PM schedules verses AM ones. This is an ongoing trend that has continually kicked my butt. If I am shooting all day, I can usually pull together a solid performance. But if I start the day in the PM then I tend to perform a lot worse. I know a big factor of it is that I rarely “Start” my practice sessions after lunch time and none of our outdoor local matches start late either. The next time I face a PM shooting schedule I think I am going to try and sleep in later and try to replicate my normal “Morning” routine. We will see if that makes any different. One thing for sure is that I don’t have time to “Fix” this issue before shooting the next few major matches. I have to embrace the suck and just deal with it.

 

My buddy nick was able to get all of my stage runs on video which was awesome. I have uploaded it to my YouTube channel and the video is listed below. I put the stages in numerical order in the video, but I shot the stages starting with number 3 on Saturday and finishing on number 2 on Sunday.

 

 

When all of the scores were tallied, I ended up 7th overall in Limited at 90% of the winner Shane Coley. This isn’t where I wanted to finish overall, but it is what it is when you shoot like crap for half of the match. Its water under the bridge now and I can check the USSA range off my list of places I have shot at.

 

Now I need to get my shooting gear fixed and cleaned up for the Colorado State match this coming weekend. I am shooting it all on Friday then ROing on the weekend. Hopefully I can produce a better result this time verses the Area 4 match. We will see how it goes.

Glad you enjoyed the match Charlie, sorry I didn't get to meet you but I was pretty busy with the match. I was the Assistant Match Director (Chad Stanton) along with Mike, I designed all the stages etc so it's good to get some feedback on how people either liked or disliked them. 

 

Just FYI the Oklahoma Sectional is in October at USSA and I am the MD for the that match if you are interested in shooting it all day on Friday October 20th. 

 

 

Edited September 12, 2017 by Prov1x

[CHA-LEE]

Thanks for putting in all of the hard work to make the match happen successfully!!! All of the stages were great tests of practical shooting skills with no bullshit. I really like that and we need more of it happening at majors like this.

 

I won't be able to make it to the Oklahoma Sectional as I am already committed to 4 more major matches between now and the end of October. I only have so many vacation days to burn on matches and I am already committed to attending other matches for this year. Maybe I can make it happen next year?

[CHA-LEE]

I was able to get the front sight replaced on the #3 blaster on Monday. I swung by the indoor range at lunch time today to get it sighted in. It was almost dead on and only needed two clicks to the right to get it perfect at 10 yards. Since I had the range time already paid for I did some group shooting at 15 and 25 yards. This resulted in some crappy groups since the poor lighting kept me from holding the sights on a specific place on the target. This once again reinforced that shooting precision shots indoors with iron sights is a lost cause for me. Since shooting precision groups wasn’t going to happen I did some unloaded table start drills to keep it interesting. After about 10 of those I was board and packed up my gear.

 

The #3 Limited blaster is sighted in and ready to rumble again. I will use it for the Colorado State match this coming weekend. Hopefully the front sight will stay together for the remainder of my major matches in 2017. I have four more majors to shoot between now and the end of October so it’s still got a decent amount of “Work” to do before I can switch to a different front sight configuration.

 

After I am through these major matches I am going to swap the Manny Mini Dot front sight with a Dawson .090 wide front sight. The slightly wider Dawson front sight will probably need a wider rear notch to balance the light bars properly. This is going to be another several month long trial and error sight testing effort followed by relearning how to process the sight picture properly at all distances. It’s probably going to be a good 6 – 9 month project to relearn a new sight configuration so that is why I am delaying the change until I am through the rest of my 2017 major matches.

 

I wish that the Manny Mini Dot front sight was more reliable but it simply isn’t up to the task with the Big Panda behind the gun. When I talked to Brazos about these frequent sight failures they claim that nobody else is having this type of failure. I guess I have a “Special Gift” in being able to break front sights as I can magically recreate the failure on all three of my Limited guns. I really like the smaller sight picture, but if it’s not reliable then it needs to be replaced with something that is reliable.     

[Vanniek71]

Do you have 3-4 front sights in stock just in case? lol that's crappy luck :/

[BritinUSA]

Is it possible that the sight is hitting the holster somewhere?

[ChuckB]

Rick has cut down a Dawson sight for me before to .070 and I LOVE it.  He also does his magic of leaving a larger base with the thinner sight so it may last a little longer for you.... At least another option.  I like the balance between the thin sight and the slightly larger dot over the Brazos.

[CHA-LEE]

12 minutes ago, Vanniek71 said:

Do you have 3-4 front sights in stock just in case? lol that's crappy luck :/

 

I have 1 more new one on hand plus fresh ones mounted on my two other Limited blasters. Hopefully that is enough to get me through these four majors.

[CHA-LEE]

12 minutes ago, BritinUSA said:

Is it possible that the sight is hitting the holster somewhere?

 

Nope. I checked clearance of the front sight in the holster and during the draw. There is no way for the front sight to touch anything during the draw or reholstering process. I also make absolutely sure that I am not putting the tip of the gun inside ports where the front sight would get hit on the top of the port. The funky thing about how these fail is that there is ZERO evidence of wear marks or impact on the top or sides of the sight piece that breaks off. If I was hitting the front sight on things during gun handling or shooting there would be evidence of that as marks scratches, worn parts, or bash marks on the sight. None of that is present on any of the sights that I have broken. The only time the sight is even touched is when the gun is bagged in a padded pouch. If being placed gently into a padded case is "too hard" on these front sights that is a complete joke.

 

I think the problem is that there is simply too much mass hanging in front of the dove tail and its vibrating like a tuning fork.  After enough "Vibration" during violent recoil it simply snaps off. I can tell the front portion of the sight is flexing up and down because the Fiber optic rod usually breaks an end off quite often. The only way the ends of the fiber rod can break off is if the whole sight blade is flexing up and down which would change the overall length of the fiber rod channel. 

 

This is what I get for gripping the gun like a man and not allowing the gun to muzzle flip. All of the violent shock of the slide smashing back and forth gets absorbed by the slide and frame which is a lot harder on parts than allowing the gun to muzzle flip like most others do.

[CHA-LEE]

18 minutes ago, ChuckB said:

Rick has cut down a Dawson sight for me before to .070 and I LOVE it.  He also does his magic of leaving a larger base with the thinner sight so it may last a little longer for you.... At least another option.  I like the balance between the thin sight and the slightly larger dot over the Brazos.

 

I might have to try that as a first step before reinventing the wheel on using a totally different sight width setup.

[CrashDodson]

Ive been using the manny dot and havent broken one in about 10k rounds on my new gun. I likley dont grip as hard as you though. 

 

[d_striker]

Quit gripping the gun so hard and let that thing flop around. I guarantee you'll quit breaking those things. 

[CHA-LEE]

11 minutes ago, d_striker said:

Quit gripping the gun so hard and let that thing flop around. I guarantee you'll quit breaking those things. 

 

There is no way I am going to grip the gun like a wimp to make a crappy sight last longer.

[drewbeck]

I'm guessing they machine those from bar stock without any type of heat treating process. Due to the size of the part, it may be work hardening in their machining process and if the internal stresses in the steel aren't relieved through tempering or annealing after its machined the part would be much more susceptible to fatigue cracking and embrittlement which could be part of the problem. You could check with them on whether they are tempering the part or easily do it yourself in the oven depending on steel properties. Either way it shouldn't hurt and may fix the issue. Just an idea


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[drewbeck]

I'm guessing they machine those from bar stock without any type of heat treating process. Due to the size of the part, it may be work hardening in their machining process and if the internal stresses in the steel aren't relieved through tempering or annealing after its machined the part would be much more susceptible to fatigue cracking and embrittlement which could be part of the problem. You could check with them on whether they are tempering the part or easily do it yourself in the oven depending on steel properties. Either way it shouldn't hurt and may fix the issue. Just an idea


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[CHA-LEE]

The 2017 Colorado State Championships is in the books. The stages were really fun and the match ran really smooth. Since I was working the match over the weekend as an RO I shot the whole match on Friday which was a little grueling. It’s always more difficult to shoot 12+ stages in one day but its exponentially harder when you have to RO the whole day as well. We had a small squad while shooting the match so it was a super busy process of ROing until it was your turn, then shoot the stage, rework your stuff quickly then jump back into ROing right away. This hectic pace of ROing and Shooting wasn’t the best recipe for success but I pushed through the suck the best I could.

 

I was shooting “ok” through the first 6 stages then we took a break for lunch. After lunch we started on the most difficult shooting stage of the match with 6 mini poppers at about 35 yards shot from a platform. There were alternating  Shoot/No Shoot steel to engage from the platform, then you ran down the stairs and engaged some hoser targets to finish. The whole stage performance depended on how well you shot the steel from the platform. I started the stage and couldn’t hit the steel to save my life. I was aiming hard and kept missing to the left. I broke a couple of shots where I was aiming at one popper and the bullet hit the popper to the left of the one I was aiming at. During this train wreck I also managed to hit two of the no shot plates to the left of the poppers I was aiming at. I shot the gun dry using all 20 rounds at these poppers and still left one standing before abandoning the effort and heading down range to finish the stage. This was a massive train wreck of a stage run. 10 seconds off pace and racking up a steel miss and two steel no shoots.

 

I thought that maybe I just sucked at pulling the trigger after lunch. We headed to the next stage which was a standards stage with some difficult shooting but it wasn’t horrible. I racked up another miss on this stage shooting the weak hand portion by mashing the crap out of the trigger on the second to last shot and pulling it off target.

 

The next stage was another aim your ass off stage with 5 zebra targets at about 10 – 12 yards. I shot this stage fairly aggressive and took some extra shots on the zebra targets for insurance. The run felt good and I called good shots on all of the zebra targets. Much to my surprise I had 2 misses on two different zebra targets, both of which I shot at three times because I called one of the shots marginal. All of my misses on these zebra targets were well to the left into the hard cover. At this point in the match I was pretty worn out and thought that I was simply mashing the trigger and pulling the shots left so I once again blew it off as a failure on my part.

 

The next stage had some fairly easy shots for the most part, but also had two no shoot partials at about 10 yards. I engaged these two partials with patience to ensure I would get my hits but once again I ended up with a miss on one of them. I also noticed that my hits on both targets were on the very left edge of the head or shoulder. At this point I knew something really wrong was going on. After my squad finished this stage I asked to shoot a group on the head of one of the no shoot partial targets. I was aiming my ass off during this group shooting and pressing the trigger very cleanly. Low and behold there were NO hits on the head. I have a WTF moment and look at the windage screw on my rear sight and the screw head was completely gone. On closer inspection the rear blade was biased totally to the left by the spring built into the sight. This leftward blade bias wasn’t enough to be obvious while I was shooting but it was enough to be completely off the A zone at 10+ yards.

 

This rear sight failure had cost me 4 misses, 2 no shoots and at least 10 seconds of lost stage time on the 35 yard steel stage. To say that I wasn’t happy about this situation would be an understatement. I can accept getting beat by other shooters but getting beat by your gun due to sight malfunctions is very frustrating. I switched to my backup gun and finished the match as solidly as I could winning two of the three stags remaining. But at that point the damage was already done due to the rear sight failure on my #3 blaster. The rear sight failure cost me at least 115 match points in shooting penalties and lost stage time. You can’t give away 115 match points and expect to finish well. Not surprisingly I ended up 4th overall in Limited at 90% of Bob Krogh who won. Without this rear sight failure, I doubt that I would have been able to beat Bob, but I would have been a solid second place.

 

My buddy Trung was able to get most of my stage runs on video and I have listed the video below.

 

 

Since I was ROing on the weekend I figured that I would use the range time between squads to get my sight issues fixed and sighted back in. On Friday Night I replaced the Wilson adjustable rear sight with a new one on the #3 blaster. Since I have zero confidence in the Manny Mini Dot sights I also took it off of the #1 and replaced it with a .090 side Dawson sight. I was able to get both guns sighted in on Saturday and also do some live fire practice on a few stages with the #1 Blaster since it has a totally different sight setup now. It now has a .090 front and .100 rear sight width and the light bars are very tight compared to what I am used to. I thought that this much tighter light bar setup might be too tight while shooting but it seemed to work out fine. I was able to shoot about 100 rounds through the new sight setup on the #1 over the weekend on a few different stages and it worked out really good. One thing that I really liked about this sight setup is being able to see the top and corners of the front post with the fiber dot just below. Being able to see the top and corners of the front sight made it easier for me to process the sight alignment even though the light bars were a lot smaller.

 

I am not sure if this sight change is just a “Trick of the day” situation where it being different is making me think I can see it better or if it really is better than the Manny Mini Dot setup. I don’t have the time to fully test it out in live fire between now and heading out to the nationals so I am just going to have to Wing It. I do know that the Dawson front sights are MUCH more robust than the Manny Mini Dot sights and the fixed rear sight I have on the #1 Blaster is impossible to break. Given that I have ZERO confidence in the reliability of the Manny Mini Dot or the Wilson Adjustable rear sights I am going to switch over to the #1 Blaster for the nationals as the Primary. The #2 Blaster has a fixed rear sight and a custom made Dawson front sight that I cut down to a .070 width. I know the #2 is sighted in but I don’t have much live fire time on that hacked down front sight. I am going to bring the #2 as the backup to the nationals since it’s at least in a somewhat similar “reliable” sight configuration. I am going to order a .090 wide by .160 tall front sight for the #2 this week and hopefully it will come in before the weekend. If it does I will swap out the front sight so I can have two guns with the exact same sight configuration to take to the nationals.

 

I hate making last minute changes like this right before major matches, but I feel like I can’t afford to risk throwing away yet another major match due to sight reliability issues. It’s time to man up and make it happen with what I know will be reliable.

[nunez]

Thank you for going through the whole process of trying the Manny Dot. Helped me decide on the Dawson. Thank you sir. 

[CHA-LEE]

Last night I got the #1 Blaster cleaned up for the Saturday club match. I found an issue with the Dawson tool less guide rod. The spring loaded leaver in the guide rod was slightly bent in an outward banana shape. I am not sure how this lever could get bent like that without causing a catastrophic lockup on the reverse plug or recoil spring. It’s strange to see this part fail like that but to be fair this guide rod is one of the original ones I purchased when I first started shooting 2011’s. So it’s got a metric shit ton of rounds on it and I understand that nothing lasts forever. I had a new Dawson tool less guide rod on hand so I put that in the #1 blaster. I will contact Dawson to see if I can get a replacement lever for the failed one. The Dawson tool less guide rods are a god send in making it super easy to break down the gun for cleaning or inspection so I am not planning on moving away from using them in all my guns.

 

I also got the #2 blaster prepped for the replacement Dawson front sight. The replacement front sight should be in my mail box today so I should be able to get it installed this evening. This is good because I will have the opportunity to sight the #2 in this Saturday and also give it some run time in practice after the match. It will be nice to do some back to back testing between the #1 and #2 blasters to see which one performs the best overall. I know that the #1 blaster has the worst accuracy out of all three of my blasters, but it’s not horrible. I also know that I can run the trigger on the #1 like a mad man, so I am not sure if I want to give up that either. A bunch of testing is going to be needed this coming Saturday before I settle on which blaster I am going to run as the primary at the Nationals.

[CHA-LEE]

I was able to stop by the indoor range at Lunch today to get the #2 sighted in after the front sight swap. Amazingly it didn't need any windage adjustment so I left it as is. Once again, I was really challenged with holding a specific aiming spot on the target at 10 yards while shooting indoors. I am fairly confident that its sighted in properly, but I still want to double check it outdoors with better lighting. The bummer about that is a cold front is moving in and the forecast is looking like it will rain quite a bit on Saturday and Sunday. This rain threat will probably cancel the match on Saturday. If it does I will head out to the BLGC range to do some live fire practice regardless of it raining or not. I need some trigger time on this new sight setup and Saturday is the only day I have left to get that done before heading to the nationals. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the weather forecast is wrong and it will be dry.

[CHA-LEE]

This past Saturday I was able to shoot the AGC club match. We got super lucky with the weather as it had predicted to rain but never did while the match was going. It was super cloudy and the lighting wasn’t the best. This was actually a good test of the Dawson front sight setup in less than optimal lighting. It worked out “ok” for the most part but the fiber was dimmer than the Manny Mini dot setup since the fiber rod length is shorter. I was able to call my shots pretty good even though the lighting wasn’t the best which is a good thing. We started the match with temps in the low 50’s and that bit me in the ass on the first stage due to using grease in my gun instead of oil. The grease was too thick in the cool morning temp and it caused a failure to feed jam right after my first shot. I had to rack it to force it to feed and it ran fine after that, but I already donated a couple of seconds in clearing the malfunction which sucked. After that stage run I headed over to the safe area and put some oil on the gun to loosen up the thick grease. Adding a few drops of oil to the rails and barrel hood was enough to cut the sluggish grease.

 

I had one miss for the match that I didn’t call but seen after I was already leaving the shooting position. This miss was during a really awkward lean on a target that was layered over another and the hit was just outside of the B zone. Beyond that I was able to shoot aggressively and call my shots decently with the wider front sight. I thought that I was going to have more trouble adjusting to the different sight picture but it doesn’t seem to be affecting my shot calling or aggressive shooting at all. If anything it seems like I can call the shots easier because I can see a defined outline of the top and sides of the front sight. The smaller light bars don’t bother me at all which to me is the biggest surprise. I thought for sure that I would have problems calling my shots with the minimized light bars on this setup but it seems to be a non-issue.

 

I was planning on doing some live fire practice after the match with the #2 blaster but the rainy weather was really threatening to dump on us. I was able to verify my sight in and also chrono ammo through both guns. The #1 gun is hitting dead on at 10 yards but the #2 is hitting about 2 – 3 inches high at the same distance. The high POI on the #2 was surprising because I know this gun needed a .160 tall front sight in the past so the Dawson .090 wide .160 tall should have been dead on. The windage is dead on for the #2 so I am going to have to live with it for now. After I left the range the skies opened up and it started raining pretty good so no further testing was possible. I don’t have any more time to swap front sights on the #2 before heading to the nationals so it will have to serve as the Backup gun until I can get the front sight height figured out.

 

When I got home after the match I completely tore down the #1 blaster to do a detailed inspection and clean. I found that the pin for the grip safety was loose in the mainspring housing. This pin is silver soldered into the mainspring housing so I had to bust out the torch to fix it. Soldering in a new grip safety pin isn’t a difficult task but it’s a little unsettling to need to fix this kind of stuff right before the nationals. I went thought everything else on the blaster and didn’t see anything else wrong. Hopefully this blaster will just work drama free for the nationals so I can focus on the shooting instead of dealing with gun problems.

 

I drove to Saint George Sunday morning and it was an uneventful 9 hour drive. We got to the range on Monday to check out the stages. Thankfully the stages are pretty straight forward with no gimmicks. All of the stages are straight up practical shooting skill tests, which is exactly what they should be for the Nationals. There is a metric crap ton of steel in this match with the majority of it being mini poppers. Aiming hard at steel is going to be the primary challenge for this match. Whoever shoots the steel the best will probably be the winner. I am shooting the “Early” schedule and working the “Late” schedule. My shooting days are Tues/Wed/Thur which all start in the morning. This is going to be very much like shooting three club matches so hopefully that works in my favor. There will be plenty of time to decompress after the shooting each day so hopefully I will have time to post some updates as well. We will see how it goes. It’s time to make it happen!!!