Navy Joe

Thanks Bill. Afraid of plastic? God I hope not, trying this round gun thing to get away from Glock shooting for awhile.

Help! I need to get a Lefty holster and a crapload of moonclip carriers for a 625 by next weekend so I can go show my ass at a 4 classifier match. Where to look? I can order the carriers and de-mooner from Dillon via Brian, how about the holster?

Black Hole, last stage, hated it. Well that and Stage 6. They were the two highest Hf hoser stages and my go slow and get the points approach really killed me on those two. By and large I got my points, 1 miss, 8 or 9 Ds. I survived Restricted Area with one D on a stationary target. The world's fastest swinger was 2A, of course I unloaded into that thing. Bio-Lab was a lot of fun. One of the few people to walk off of Stage 4 with 24A. My goals were top 10 Production (19th) High Military Prod. Missed by less than 1% and to win B production (4th) Arrgh! Amazing how the class grew, 50 shooters and tough competition. Lots of IPSC M/USPSA U shooters in the class coming in from around the world to whip up on me. Great experience, look forward to next year. Really neat to see all the IPSC shooters from elsewhere come in.

Well Ron, hope you feel better. If you are getting the MRI hopefully they are looking at the spine right? My dad has some old injuries where bone mass builds up and puts pressure on the spinal cord just before the nerves split off to the arms. I guess if it comes up in a match you should transition to weak hand and shoot it all. If anyone snickers remind them that freestyle means just that and you were just trying to give them a sporting chance. As for results, nobody cares how you finish except you.

I can't figure out if the racing is helping my shooting or the shooting is helping my racing. I do know in racing I achieve a level of total awareness and sensitivity to visual and other inputs that I have never come close to in shooting. Since good shooting is like good anything there are a lot of parallels to ponder such as the meaning of fast, smoothness, time compression, etc.

Right now I love "easy" stages. Probably because I didn't blow the last one up. Shot one last week that was pure simplicity. 7 yds., 3 paper. T1 had T2's edge laid to the right edge of the A zone. T2 and T3 were A to A covered by one lonely no shoot. Start with fingers interlaced under either leg. Draw and put two on each weak hand only. I heard the stage described as "cheesy" several times. Well, when it was all done eight shooters zeroed the thing and 11 more had Hfs of less than 1. I shot it clean which was the only highlight of an abysmal match. Don't let easy fool your brain into not engaging. 1 Deel, Paul 3 A Limited 27 0 4.31 6.2645 2 Gaskill, Kert 49 GM Limited 23 0 4.64 4.9569 3 McDonald, David 36 B Limited 10 26 0 6.20 4.1935 4 Thompson, Chad 4 A Limited 10 27 0 6.55 4.1221 5 Jarrett, Todd 14 GM Limited 28 10 4.42 4.0724 6 Swartout, Henry 40 A Limited 10 27 0 7.07 3.8190 7 Rudder, Bill 10 A Limited 29 0 8.14 3.5627 8 Grimes, French 37 B Production 30 0 9.01 3.3296 9 Bradshaw, Council 12 GM Open 29 10 5.97 3.1826 10 Hughes, Mike 32 C Open 28 0 9.41 2.9756 11 Burns, John 2 B Limited 22 0 7.47 2.9451 12 Cecil, Randy 8 C Production 22 0 7.63 2.8834 13 Hopping, Dan 21 C Limited 23 0 8.00 2.8750 14 Craig, Jack 48 C Open 28 0 9.83 2.8484 15 Low, Byron 7 C Revolver 28 0 10.35 2.7053 16 Giambattista, Pete 29 B Open 30 0 11.22 2.6738 17 Tilley, Chris 46 GM Open 29 10 7.57 2.5099 18 Link, John 17 C Production 20 0 8.00 2.5000 19 Webb, Jimmy 15 B Limited 27 10 6.98 2.4355 20 Cates, Kevin 11 U Production 26 10 6.69 2.3916 21 Crowell, Mike 9 B Limited 26 10 6.96 2.2989 22 Roupe, Tom 50 B Limited 10 29 10 8.62 2.2042 23 Chemelli, Ben 51 U Open 27 0 13.00 2.0769 24 Schwartz, Jason 23 D Limited 10 18 0 9.70 1.8557 25 DiMattina, Valentino 31 M Open 27 10 10.09 1.6848 26 Barfield, Travis 30 M Limited 20 10 6.28 1.5924 27 Jones, Dean 44 U Limited 20 10 6.95 1.4388 28 Sadler, Bill 35 C Limited 23 10 9.19 1.4146 29 Scarlata, Paul 42 C Limited 10 24 10 10.27 1.3632 30 Gammons, Eddie 47 M Limited 17 10 5.82 1.2027 31 Fritz, Peter 19 D Revolver 22 0 18.67 1.1784 32 DenBleyker, Bob 18 C Revolver 30 0 26.90 1.1152 33 Burke, Tim 53 U Limited 10 29 10 17.28 1.0995 34 Denney, Lee 38 B Limited 19 10 11.12 0.8094 35 Little, Martin 45 B Open 28 20 11.07 0.7227 36 Hendrix, Paul 6 M Production 15 10 7.11 0.7032 37 Ramsey, David 52 U Limited 25 20 8.18 0.6112 38 Rosenfeld, Jarred 27 U Production 15 10 10.94 0.4570 39 Fritz, Matthew 20 U Production 12 0 29.08 0.4127 40 Earles, Irvin 28 B Limited 23 20 12.31 0.2437 41 Hughes, Mary 33 D Open 18 0 100.40 0.1793 42 Guseman, Jason 5 U Limited 10 22 20 18.62 0.1074 43 Hopping, Albert 22 C Limited 10 21 20 11.20 0.0893 44 Pulley, Paul 24 U Limited 10 21 20 20.04 0.0499 45 Silva, Mark 16 A Limited 17 20 6.65 0.0000 Tie Benton, John 13 M Limited 24 30 6.55 0.0000 Tie Kanas, Tom 25 D Limited 19 30 12.74 0.0000 Tie Pawlak, Steve 26 C Production 17 30 9.39 0.0000 Tie Stivers, Ben 34 D Limited 18 30 8.19 0.0000 Tie Crafton, Don 39 A Limited 18 40 8.70 0.0000 Tie Webb, Lin 41 U Revolver 14 30 7.60 0.0000 Tie Jones, Lew 43 U Production 7 50 8.79 0.0000

Hmm, good job. I've won IDPA stages with Masters present, more commonly I have the fastest raw time and lose on hoser points. Don't think I've ever won an USPSA stage. Counted 4 GMs and 5 Ms at my last club match, I think I see the problem.

9.23 56 points(10A 2C) Production B class. 6.067Hf, ought to be in the 65% area I'm guessing. Stood up.

B class production loser. I have shot 6500 9mm in match and practice since I started loading 9 on 9/21 of this year. Once I get my private range membership straight I'd like to put in a min. of 500 practice rounds a week and see where that gets me, maybe crank it to 1K per week for a couple weeks, then taper off and go to a big match. We'll see.

I think it is well agreed upon here that money spent on a quality gun and allied equipment is money well spent. My personal preference to help keep new shooters from buying "starter equipment" is to loan them a gun, mags, and pouches for a few matches. After that they can decide if the interest is sufficient to buy long term gear or not. Now, what of other "gear"? I think you can buy skill, it's just a question of when to invest the cash for max. skill gain. For instance, reloading. At a certain point factory ammo holds you back. Not because it is crappy, hard recoiling, inconsistent stuff(it is), but because you can never buy enough to get good. For me I feel like I made a 10% or more performance jump by reloading. Why? because in 3 months I've been able to shoot 6K+ rounds, have 2K more components sitting on the bench and still have more money than when I was shooting maybe 600 rounds a month. Reloading money makes sense now, maybe it did not for the first year of my game. Timers, chronos and training aids? Soon I will have access to a 24hr indoor private club to practice. At this point I need these things. This is gear to help skill, as it is right now i am only under a timer at matches. Can you really make M or better without all these trinkets? What's more, there's books, DVDs, classes, and such. I entered the 90's yesterday and finally bought a DVD player so I can buy PS vol 1-5. Soon I need to buy the book, maybe take a course. Is this buying skill? I think the key is not buying a bunch of stuff, but to have enough experience so you can accurately and honestly declare when you gear is not good enough.

Congrats Ron, certainly would warrant a FS write-up. To follow that up, I made B Production which is an accomplishment for me. i've been shooting for almost two years now, maybe it's time to buy the book, watch the DVDs and actually start practicing more than once a week. This small accomplishment does however blow my shot at being the first five division C card.

I heard someone on here say to shoot like the NS wasn't there. Anybody try this? I haven't worked up the nerve to do this yet, last match in a couple of situations my "conservative solution" was to just take head shots. It worked okay there, but elsewhere I'm scared of the white guy. Actually last match was kinda conservative. More As, first match in a long while with no Mikes or NS. Strange.

Yep, I hate 'em for puting the best pic on the cover, it's been on my wall for 3 months and I really don't want to have to flip to January. I hate their stupid machine too, it hasn't broke so I can call them and be forced to buy another claender.

The one kendo scene was great. Algren's guard gave him a bitching for getting beat, something to the effect of: "You have too many minds. Mind the opponent, mind the next move, mind the people watching. No Mind!" Something I personally need to work on at times.

I'd say the Wilsons are worth a shot, I have had several and still like them very much, but they are not trouble free. Had one 8 round that liked to lock the gun open while flipping the last round backwards in the chamber. 10 rounders I have had more of a problem with, had several weird malfunctions with two different 1911s that I just couldn't figure out. The slide stop would come partially out and lock the gun up on the disassembly notch. Very amusing for the peanut gallery as I beat my gun open on the edge of a prop, but annoying nonetheless. I was plinking along at the range one day with a different gun when it started happening, realized it only happened last round with a Wilson 10 rd. Swapped out with the shop's el cheapo Norinco mag and the gun went to slidelock normally. My guess is the follower is a little rounded where it engages the slide stop and was pushing out as well as up. So now my two plans are to put some split lip metal followers in Wilson mags or weld real overtravel stops onto some Chip mags. Seeing someone over-insert a CMC with a worn plastic base is just too painful. Edit: If you do buy Wilsons, lose the cheesy basepad and put a steel one on. They survive much better and drop free much nicer. I had one plastic one break, it was enough for me.