shred

My OL strategy is to try and come in to the box on my left leg, and use it as a shock absorber when getting the dot settled on the round plate. Of course I'm a lefty and thus going R-to-L, so swap that if you're a righty. While working with a somewhat shorter friend, I've noticed that the movement on OL is very dependant on your leg length- tall people can do it in two steps, others take three-- thus you may need to find what works for you.

Another thing I'd watch for when comparing against the "big dogs" is that they all probably are slightly different where they make up the time.. Todd said Max shoots faster splits than he does, but has slower transitions. I'm guessing the rest also have strengths and weaknesses, so if you're going to compare it should be against one shooter in particular and not the whole lot, because any given stage may favor one shooter's strengths over anothers.

Or top lady? There's quite a batch of good-shooting women coming out of Area 4 this year.. (I should know, Athena Lee's beat me out for A-open twice now) (Edited by shred at 3:10 pm on July 30, 2002)

I believe somebody official at USPSA stated that putting a .40 barrel into a 10mm was OK, caliber-wise. After all, that's what we score-- the caliber of the hole in the target. Given that several of the "Super" variants will all fire from the same chamber, that would also save them a lot of headaches when the ol' replacement gun issue comes around.

As I reread that thread a couple more thoughts came up.. It sounds like you can stand-and-shoot well enough, so where you'll save time probably won't be in shooting faster. (That's a paraphrase from Todd-- "where you save time is in what you do when you're not shooting") You found some of that out when you were playing with keeping the gun up between arrays-- there's tons of time to be saved getting into and out of shooting positions smoothly and effeciently-- right now I'm working on visualizing hidden targets so the sights are right there as soon as I get to where I can shoot them. (and as for the open gunners getting away with lots of C's and D's, watch some of the true GM's if you get a chance-- it's amazing how fast they shoot A's) (Edited by shred at 2:45 pm on July 29, 2002)

From what I've heard (never been there either), the range is in the high desert, at about 4000 feet altitude. (btw, if anybody's into rock climbing, I'm thinking of taking a side-trip or two to Smith Rock if we get free time.)

I think that's a classification issue. I was 15th OA, 3rd A and barely beat all the B shooters. Top B (79% for the match) was a guy I know-- he shot open for years in Austria (no classifications there), then moved here and started shooting limited. He's an A-lim and B-open only because he never shoots open anymore. I think that's true of lots of the B shooters there-- they mostly shoot A-Limited, and switched over for the match. I didn't see much wholesale sandbagging, mostly people that have been left behind by the classification system. Same goes for 3rd-B-- A-Lim, B-Open, 74% for the match (FYI, according to the results at http://www.texassouthsection.com, there were 7 B's in the top 30 and only one in the top 20 overall) (Edited by shred at 2:16 pm on July 29, 2002)

I used to use my Pro-Ears exclusively, but I always felt like I was 'hearing too much' and would switch them off to shoot. As the earcups hardened I switched back to my old NRR 29 passive muffs temporarily.. 6 months later and I still haven't got new foams for the Pro Ears. I like it quiet. (Edited by shred at 1:56 pm on July 29, 2002)

It's not too bad to swap out with any other pin-in sight, but the usual installation instructions for pinned sights which tend to come without a pin-hole (stick the undrilled sight in the gun, run drill through pin-hole, then sight, then other pin-hole) aren't good for the aluminium frame. Better to mark and drill the new sight elsewhere.

Yeah, one of my supers has a weak reset and I trigger-freeze it all the time when I get tense. I need to get in there and fix it. The other works great.

Those are internet mail-order prices (all we can get around here anyway). Also if you're going to look at Airsofts, stay away from the cheap gunshow spring-operated ones and get a nice gas operated blow-back model. There's a whole world of difference. It's like night (a cheap gun shooting slow plastic balls) and day.

It's like there's two kinds of noticing.. one where you're studying something (the draw for example), and you'll notice in slo-mo that you're twisting the gun on the way up. The second is where you're doing something and notice something almost totally different from what you were thinking about.-- it just pops out at you. (Edited by shred at 9:19 pm on July 28, 2002)

One thing I notice for myself is that I can no longer tell time during a stage. I can feel butt-slow and shoot an excellent stage. For me, that came from experience and lots-o-rounds downrange. I compare it to learning to drive a car (remember that?). When you first start out, there's all this stuff going on, you've got all these controls, and you have a hard time just keeping it all together and paying attention to everything... and you haven't left the driveway yet. Flash forwards 5 years and you're calmly doing 80 down the highway, at night, drinking coffee and fiddling with the radio, all because you've done the basic driving tasks so many times that you no longer think about them. It's the same way for me shooting IPSC-- there's a whole lot of stuff going on, and you need to work through and internalize each step so you can park it in the back of your brain and not have to think about it when you need to do it. The bad news is getting that stuff internalized takes time. And if you don't do it right the first time, it's difficult to fix later because it just happens and you aren't noticing it. It's also difficult to try and learn a piece that 'fits in' after something else you haven't internalized yet. I have this problem occasionally when friends ask me how to shoot a stage-- The answer I give them is sometimes very different than what they really need to be thinking about because they're at a different place in the learning process. (Edited by shred at 9:15 pm on July 28, 2002)

Yeah, you've gotta be paying attention to that trust-- I did a little too much 'trusting' (aka: hoping it'll all work out) and ended up missing a ton of little plates this weekend.. Other than that, the confidence to walk up to a stage, scope it out and say "Yeah, I can do that" is tremendous.

So why not do a combined prize table, by match points in division? You get one big table with all the prizes on it (no whining there), and also the shooters don't get hosed just because they were shooting Revolver or Production or Lim-10 or whatever that's "different" (ie: slower) So the 100% shooters (match winners) in each division go first, then the 99%-ers, whatever their division, and so on. If the 2nd revolver was 75% of the top revolver score, they'd go with the 75% open and 75% lim, 75% prod, shooters. You get whining from the "I beat my buddy Joe over in Production, but he went to the table sooner" people. Tell them to shut their traps because combined scoring doesn't exist anymore. You also get whining from 2nd revolver when they get a firing-pin spring since they were at 39% of Jerry.. Any thoughts?

My opinion's a tad different.. I have the Glock 18 version and think it's great. The Glock weighs about the same as the real model, and recoils like a weak .22. I've played with the STI race-gun versions and if I had spare cash and nowhere convenient to live-fire, I'd get one pronto. it's about $10/1000 rounds if you use the made-for-airsoft gas. Duster gas cuts it to around $6/1K.

I'm sure it's finely blended combination of luxurious cotton, low-glare-yet-heat-shedding tan color and axle-wrapping quote were wholly responsible for my match performance today. Unfortunately, the powers of the shirt do not quite extend to recovering from yesterday... Ok, well.. I at least got to meet Shooter40 at the Texas Open Championships (alright.. and get 3rd A) (Edited by shred at 6:40 pm on July 28, 2002)

I'm nowhere near an expert on this topic, but in my experience, newer shooters complaining of "Lack of speed" tend to be a) doing too much and not making best use of their time. Lack of running speed is way down the list. When I say "doing too much" and "not making best use of their time", I mean things like getting into a shooting box, then bringing the gun up, then looking for a target, then looking for the next one, then moving the gun over to it, etc, when a "faster" shooter will have the gun up an on target when he gets there, and will transition between the targets much faster. Matt Burkett's tapes have lots of good stuff about movement and how placing your foot like so when entering a box can save you 1/4 second or more. It's efficient, not fast movement that's key. Shooting on the move is a good example. Todd does a demo with two boxes about 7 yards apart and 3 or 4 targets. The first string he draws, shoots one target from box A, then hauls butt to the second box and hoses the rest of the targets. The second string he shoots on the move from A to B, moving much, much slower, and shooting much slower, but cracking off the last shot as he gets into box B. His time is much better on the second string because it's more efficient to do two things at once; moving slowly and shooting slowly is much faster than moving fast, then shooting fast (Edited by shred at 1:24 pm on July 24, 2002)

There was a thread about this not long ago, and the consensus was it probably doesn't hurt to tumble, but if you use One Shot, you don't need to bother. This thread has the info in it: http://www.brianenos.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard...93&start=20 (Edited by shred at 1:01 pm on July 24, 2002)

Seems like lots of my 'noticing' moments are related to something that I'm not concentrating on at the time. for example, I'm practicing moving from one side of a barricade to another yesterday.. I wasn't real happy with how the transitions were going, but as I was scrolling back the timer I noticed something I wasn't looking for.. a .16 split on a 10 yard target w/2A's. Last year, same everything, the best I'd ever done was .18 at nothing in particular. So I walked over to the berm, and now I can suddenly pop .12's and .14's. I haven't practiced splits, they're just there. wow. (Edited by shred at 10:15 am on July 24, 2002)

Now the question is.. do the BE shirts come in infant sizes?

Here's a funny one.. I was practicing some port-to-port movement yesterday.. One of the ports had me leaving on an 8" plate at about 10 yards. On my first run, I shot the paper, then shot what I thought was a solid hit on the steel and moved out.. halfway along the barricade I hadn't heard the steel so I stopped and went back and looked. Sure enough, a hit dead-center on the plate. Somehow this particular plate makes about zero noise. I didn't hear it all afternoon. (Edited by shred at 9:56 am on July 24, 2002)

I traded my 97 Tahoe in on a 2002 back in Feb when the deals were running rampant in my area. I also preferred the old body style, but the new one is better in every other way (well, except for the riccochet I picked up in the windshield at Area 4). About 16 MPG is as good as it gets.

wow.. all hail the lefty! maybe I should go shoot IDPA.. (one finger for mags, slide & trigger)

Holy Cow! If my math is correct, the (open) HHF on this thing is only 125 points. We shot it today and my 80%-self got all the shots but one off in plenty of time (icky draw), and 110 points. I was expecting a bunch of people could probably clean it, with a HHF around 150. Maybe nobody ever shoots it because it's 4 strings with different time limits on each string, as well as strong-hand / weak-hand, but it's gotta be a grandbagger's delight. (Edited by shred at 1:30 pm on July 22, 2002)