Carmoney

And to think all this time I thought people call him "Mr. Clean" because he can go six for six on the Texas Star.......

reminds me of this old advertisement:

I've only been shooting USPSA matches regularly since June of '04, but even during those 13 months, I think I've detected more acceptance and interest in wheelgunning from the group as a whole. The comments I overhear from shooters in other divisions seem to have gone from "why would anybody want to shoot one of them things" to "hey, it's pretty cool to watch those revolver guys do their thing." I really think we are experiencing something of a revolver renaissance.

Thanks Keith--you too. I keep thinking about those misses you and I both had on that dang clamshell on Stage 2, and the mercenary side of me wishes it would have kept on raining so they would have had to toss the stage! I knew John would be tough. Sam and I ran into him at the Rocky Mountain ICORE match out at Bud Bond's club back in May. Good guy and good shooter, and he proved that consistency pays off. We look forward to shooting with you at Nat'ls! Only 11 more days! Mike

I'd be pretty interested in shooting A2, especially if we could generate a good turn-out in Revo division. Time and cost may be limiting factors... John, out of curiosity, what's your source on the Nationals slot thing? I thought there had to be 20 shooters signed up for a particular division (or hypothetically, a class within a division) in order for Nat'ls slots to be awarded. I'm not up-to-speed on the policies, so I'd be happy to be corrected on that..... So who else is thinking about going to shoot Revo at the Rio? Mike

Sam, I'd really like to see the 6-shot limited match be a legit, sanctioned USPSA match. (The "open" match can be the renegade part.) That way USPSA has to recognize us, somebody can write it up for Front Sight, etc., etc., etc. Can't it be set up as a "restricted" match where people can technically sign up and shoot other divisions, but match recognition is only given to the revolvers? (I'm not real familiar with the rules on this, I guess...)

Sam, keep in mind the situation this year where you had to jump on the waiting list within a few minutes after midnight to get a slot (if you hadn't been fortunate enough to earn one during the '04 season)!! I can think of several who I'm fairly certain intended to shoot Nat'ls but didn't get in quickly enough. Too bad, we might have had 30 or 35 revos, particularly if we had time to get everybody fired up on it, like we did Ohio. Mike

Jerry, I took all three reloads (along with all the other wheelgunners). I did T3, T4, reload, T2, T1 over the barrel. Then same thing through the barrel. My hits were sorta poor, 70 points in 13.70, for 5.1095. Keith won the stage, with 77 points in 13.88, for 5.5476, proving it's smart to just slow down a whisker and get the hits. Not a good classifier, though, in my opinion. HQ needs to remember there is a Revo division when they approve these things. Mike

I like option 1, and I love the idea of being able to shoot both guns on back-to-back days. Might not be consistent with the rulebook, but who cares. Maybe Saturday is the official USPSA match, Sunday is the renegade thing.

Why does everybody but me seem to want their rounds so dang tight in their moonclips? I want it sloppy enough it'll still go in easy even if something's not lined up quite right...... (Is that a perfect set-up for a punch line, or what? El Conquistador?)

OK, OK....I didn't mean I'd ask the ROs for strategy tips for chrissakes. With the varying interpretations from reputable sources, though, I think the wheelgunners had a right to clarification. (By the way, the ROs on the stage handled the appropriately, professionally, and in my opinion, completely correctly.) Mike

Before too many people print off the form, you guys might want to adjust it to reflect the new 2005 Point Series policies. No separate $10 fee necessary this year for those enrolled. Mike

Thanks to everyone involved for making our very first area match a great experience! Sam and I had a great time with all of our revolver buddies, as well as old friends and new acquaintances from all divisions. Two thumbs up from the Carmoney boys! Mike

Cool, I like it!! (Steel is my favorite thing for making guns outta!) Mike

We're hearing through the grapevine it's pretty muddy at Millcreek from the rain this past week, and so a couple of the stages have changed. I'm hoping we get some updates from any of the Friday shooters who post here on the forum...... Anybody??

Jerry, Ahh, it'll work out OK, I'm not gonna get too uptight about it. I'm shooting Sunday, so I'll just ask the RO what the other wheelmen are doing on the stage and do likewise. Sam and I are sure looking forward to a fun weekend and our very first bona fide area championship!! Mike

Patrick, hearing about your pump gun makes me think of all the great LGMBs at Second Chance....lots of good memories. I often ran a pump gun on 3-man-team (sometimes successfully, sometimes not!) and always enjoyed that sort of shucking around.... You might have heard the sad news that Terry O'Hara passed away this past year. Mike

My last several years up at Second Chance, I used .38 Special loads with the 230-gr. bullets at about 1050 fps. That year the pins seemed so heavy (supposedly they left the lids off the bins and they got rained on for months), I was REALLY glad to have those 240+ p.f. loads! Shot them out of a S&W 27 (with a stock 8-3/8" barrel) I bought from Brian Enos.

Dave: If that is actually true, then it doesn't really matter. BUT, if you check out the discussion on 03-06 "Barrel of Fun" over on the classifier forum, you'll see that a bunch of guys from one club sent in results from a special classifier match where they very clearly shot this stage contrary to the stage instructions. They clearly did not "engage T1-T4 with two rounds each" before doing the mandatory reload and switching arrays. Furthermore, the RM reportedly got advice from HQ that this was okay, so it's not the shooters' fault they did it wrong. But the classifiers are definitely not being consistently administered on stages like this, and the integrity of the classification system thus suffers. OK--no real big deal, right? EXCEPT that 03-06 just happens to be one of the stages at the Area 3 Championships this weekend, and the revolver shooters are all uncertain of which interpretation we'll be using! I just hope the ROs figure out something and keep it consistent for everyone, because it will probably be a tight race in Revo. Mike

I'll bet Guy Neill would know the exact answer.

If it would take you 20 hours to get from Colorado Springs to this year's Area 3 outside of Kansas City, you might want to think about tuning up your vehicle!

Dividing it out into yet another class sounds an awful lot like something IDPA would do. Let's just shoot.

Yes he is. And Patrick too, for lending Jerry the shotgun. Unlike one particular well-known owner of a large gunsmithing operation (just the sight of his name annoys me, so I won't mention it here), who many years ago established a "rule" that if you borrowed a gun from him, or asked him to fix something for you at a match, you had to agree that you would split any prize winnings with him 50-50. Real nice guy, huh?

Did you notice the guy who won Revo at Area 8 is over on the revolver forum trying to figure out what to do with his match prize, a brand new S&W 625?

I actually built a blackpowder pistol from a CVA kit as a shop class project in 10th Grade (that would have been around 1980-81). The gun is laying right here on the shelf next to my computer, in fact! Back in sixth grade, the whole school held an assembly to watch Mr. Fischer give a demonstration of firing several blackpowder firearms into the big tree out by the ballfield. Another sixth grade teacher (it was a middle school), Mr. Crumrine, took several of us out to his farm to check out his guns, one of which I remember was a .22-250 rifle. When my dad was in grade school in the '50s, he carried his Winchester M-75 .22 target rifle in its case to school once a week, where it leaned in the corner of the cloak closet until school was out, then he walked half a mile through town to the YMCA to shoot NRA 50-ft. junior league on the basement range, then he walked home afterward. All of this happened in Ashland County, Ohio (just an hour south of Cleveland). In a time that now seems all too far away..... Mike