NickBlasta

1/7/2016 Match Report 1st of 10 18.86s + 11.75s - 8s = 22.61 seconds My wife's parents are visiting so to keep myself from going totally crazy I went off to shoot a match. A lil' steel match that I haven't attended before. I think it's a fixed format where they always run the same 3 stages and then have a bonus round that changes up based on their mood. I saw some videos from last year where they race on 2 Texas stars. I wanna do that, but that wasn't on the list for this match. Match format is roughly: Shot with 8 round magazines. 1st stage is a mover. Any hit on the mover is -1 second to your total time. 1 magazine. 2nd stage is shooting each array of steel from one port. 3 magazines allowed. 3rd stage is shooting all the steel from one position. 3 magazines allowed. If additional runs are shot (as time allows) the lowest time is scored. Score is total time minus bonus hits on the mover. I had fun! The mover was easy-peasy, I understand that when it's properly greased it moves much faster. Still wouldn't be a problem for me I think. Second stage I had a minor mental malfunction or possibly lack of confidence in the moment and saved up my 2 extra rounds instead of reloading between ports, even though I was 1 for 1 on the steels. Third stage we did twice with your best time counting for score, first time was okay but I had some pickups, second time was pretty much perfect. Well, as close to perfect as I'll get at my current level of skill. If you wanna see the fun just skip to the last stage on the video. They told me that it was a club record time. I did have a negative experience at this match unrelated to the shooting. Leading up to the last stage (I think) one of the competitors turned and yelled at me for not resetting. When I responded that I was not resetting because I was the shooter on deck, he countered that I had not been resetting for the whole match. When I replied that I had, in fact, been resetting after every shooter except when I was up on deck (barely even to reload my mags since it was only 8 rounds each) he basically accused me of lying. Since I've never met this competitor before I was very surprised to have such a hostile encounter. I would say it definitely colors my opinion of this range as a venue. Unfortunate.

I have one on my G35, no issues.

Nice! Might it be worth considering looking to the long term and just buying a minor comp (5 port?) with the savings?

Cheaper? What does 3 grains of powder save you per cartridge?

He hadn't started the physical action of reloading, but only because his finger slipped off the mag button and he hit the trigger. I feel like you could try and DQ him for intent, but it would be something he could easily have overturned in arb, because he wasn't in one of the states you can DQ someone in.

1/3/2016 Match Report Open Div - 2nd of 7 - 97.774% Overall - 2nd of 44 - 98.395% Classifier 13-05 "Tick Tock" (13A 3C 8.18s) - 8.9848 HF - 74.67% Classifier 03-03 "Take Em Down" (9A 2C 8.70s) - 6.0920 HF - 70.74% Classifier 03-04 "3V" (8A 3B 1C 2M 8.08s) - 4.4554 HF - 43.20% Classifier 08-01 "4 Bill Drill" (13A 3B 6C 2D 20.38s) - 5.1521 HF - 76.62% Classifier 08-03 "Six" (5A 2C 3.40s) - 8.2353 HF - 74.87% Classifier 09-04 "Pucker Factor" (3A 3B 2C 3.88s) - 9.0206 HF - 75.21% 334 of 400 available points - 50A 9B 16C 2D 2M - 83.5% (91% without penalties) First match of the year was a classifier match. I had a feeling shooting in the cold would not result in great scores and I was right, I didn't even break 80 on any of them. It was fun to shoot, and the match was quick, but in terms of usefulness I probably should have either shot a different division or just stayed home. Lesson learned.

2.2.4 A shot that occurs while loading, reloading, transitioning off or back to the shoulder or during remedial action in the case of a malfunction or clearing a firearm. 2.8 Discharging or “Burning” the last round(s) to empty the chamber or unload a firearm is admissible, but it must be pointed in a safe direction. Long guns must be fired from the shoulder. Competitors’ failing to keep long guns shouldered while “burning” any round(s) is considered a Negligent Discharge and will result in a match DQ. (Rule 2.2.3, 2.2.6) He hadn't started reloading yet, the rifle was still shouldered, and he fired at the targets. It would be pretty hard to DQ him for that.

I am not sure what you mean by "WHO"...When I dry fire I dont see my sights dip or move...but it seems my dry fire doesnt equate exactly to the same performance in live fire. It is helping though, without a doubt. At my match in the morning I will try to focus on my trigger and try my best to see my sights. I am going to try to double plug if I can get away with it. I am ROing and I need to be able to hear. Might just double up when Im shooting. Weak hand only. Are you doing timed weak hand drills in your dryfire? You might be pulling the trigger more aggressively than you think when you're under match pressure.

The M1 carbine is a great match gun. They're even more fun if you put on a railed upper handguard with a dot, which is a non-destructive modification. 30 carbine is really hard on steel unless you have AR500 poppers though.

Doubt a flinch, lots of people tend to tug off the target with WHO because it's so easy to pull the sights down just with a trigger pull. It's easy to see in dryfire, do WHO and see how much the sights pull when you slap the trigger. Focusing on the press and maybe gripping down a little harder will help.

Mine too.

Welcome! Hope to see you at a match!

12/26/2015 Match Report Friends urged me to come shoot IDPA so I did. No USPSA this weekend might have influenced my decision. Shot my G35 in.. ESP? I dunno what the attraction of the sport is for people who regularly attend. Seems like the stages are super basic and there's no freestyle to it. I did shoot a non-threat in the face twice so that was exciting. White NS make a lot more sense, man. 12/27/2015 Dryfire Report More tablestarts. Mixing it up by adding running into it for those stages where you start toes on x's a few yards away. 12/28/2015 Dryfire Report Reload work. 12/30/2015 Match Report Shot bowling pins again. While I had good results with my .38 super the first time, the pins are that much more heavy this week that I had trouble moving the pins that fell over on their sides. So I didn't win. I'll have to put my .45 in my bag for weeks like these if I see really heavy pins. 3/2/2016 Dryfire Report New year! Yay! Back from a little vacation but we have a classifier match tomorrow so I practiced a few specific things I think I'll see. Tablestarts again (I think I'm a lot better now), "4 bills"- that is, 6, reload, 6 SH/WH, and some El Prez and extensive reload work. I didn't have any bobbling today, feels good. There, all caught up.

12/24/2015 Dryfire Report Using recent feedback on my shooting I practiced tablestarts pretty extensively today. I had to spend some time continuing to fit my new slide stop because I found that when really hitting the magazine in, the inside-portion of the slide stop lug(?) was too fat and it was rubbing on the slide, making the gun a lot harder to rack. When I smoothed that out just a bit the gun is back to normal. But the table starts were good. I think I took all the skin off my index finger with the slide serrations but practice was definitely productive.

12/23/2015 Match Report Rimfire - 1 win Centerfire - 5 wins, high overall I liked shooting pins the first time so when I got invited to someone's regular pin match, I thought it'd be great fun to go. Cool little match, I need more practice with my .22. I think everyone there was surprised when I showed up out of nowhere and won the match.

I grab the magwell or the bottom of the grip with my index and middle finger, bring the pistol up, and assume the proper grip with my weak hand. I find it to be easier to have the weak hand high on the gun this way, which might help you with depressing the grip safety.

USPSA doesn't even restrict you to a division capacity. You can load your production mags to 17 or 19 or whatever and enjoy your trip to open if you really wanted.

12/20/2015 Match Report Draw Division - 1st of 15 - 83.88s (26.43s faster than 2nd) Open Division - 2nd of 13 - 76.33s (0.11s slower than 1st) Carbine Optic Division - 2nd of 7 - 80.45s (7.58s slower than 1st) Overall - 3rd, 4th, and 5th of 59 I shot the steel challenge thingy. Fun steel. Outlaw steel. Whatever. I haven't done this in like 9 months so I did a lot better than I did back then and I felt like I had more fun. The divisions make no sense ('open' is all .22 handguns and all optic-sighted handguns for example) and I don't think a few of the stages were run very consistently but hey, it's fun steel. I liked that they had an unloaded start stage. I'd do it again next time I feel like shooting 600 rounds in a match or whatever it was.

Thanks! I should probably be more consistent with reporting my dryfire, but I usually bank them in my head and then forget what I did. My basic training routine is: Dryfire 3 days a week. 30 minutes to 1 hour. Live fire 2 days a week. Matches or practice. Day off 1 day per week. Flex day 1 day per week. This flex day can be used for any of the 3 activities. 12/19/2015 Livefire Report I'm finding it hard to practice meaningfully on the range with this terrible weather. Maybe it's the design of their action bays but the wind comes right down into them and knocks over all my stands or tears the targets off the backers. I wonder if I can build a wind-resistant target setup. Practiced anyway because I got invited to a fun steel the next day and I wanted to get some trigger time on my match gun and also some of my .22s. I practiced on paper for a time but the weather was not good, so I moved onto using the range's steel. Set up 5 plates and practiced a little steel challengey stage.

12/17/2015 Match Report Open Div - 1st Overall - 1st Typical Thursday match only with a lot more mud, rain, and wind. There was a pretty funny moment where I was standing in the ready condition for about ten minutes because the timer died and nobody could find a spare or batteries. So I got pretty soaked for only a 4 stage match. Otherwise it went okay, we basically removed all the paper after the first stage and ran only steel because even with bags the cardboard targets are useless. In other news, I cut down the follower tab on the slide stop and pretty much locked it in place with a little hole for the detent. My gun should never slide lock ever again. That's like 90% of the malfunctions I ever have, so this should be a measurable improvement.

Had some computer troubles so I've kind of been saving up my activity posts. In doing so I'm sure I forgot some of them. But I'm back on track. 12/13/2015 Match Report Open Div - 4th of 12 - 84.44% Overall - 5th of 53 - 84.44% 425 of 480 available points - 57A 7B 30C 1D 1M - 88.54% (91.66% without penalties) Yearly charity match at this particular club. It's an outlaw match so if you see weird stuff (like 10 in your magazines on the fixed time steel stage) it was probably mandated by the stage brief. I thought I shot like crap, argh 37 B/C and a mike, but I had some fun at least.

Just think of your hit factor as points per second. You were earning 5.3709 points per second by hitting all alphas and your opponent was earning 5.4623 points per second by moving a little faster and accepting some charlies. You'll get a feel for when it's okay to drop points in exchange for time the more you shoot USPSA over IDPA.

Never had the gun fall out of my racemaster while on a 3 gun stage. When latched, it's 100% rock solid.

12/12/2015 Livefire Report Ironically I planned to dryfire on Friday but couldn't get away from work, so I went on Saturday. Friday was perfect weather, if a bit cold, and Saturday was rain and gale-force winds. I planned to do a set of several drills to get an idea of what my 'current' times are but the weather was so bad my targets wouldn't even stay standing. They would fall over, so I went out and put a bunch of weight on the stands, and then there was so much wind the stickers bent and snapped. I did manage to shoot about 200 rounds but I did a lot of single target drills like bills and 4 aces on whichever of my 3 targets was actually still standing. Sigh!

Gun manipulation? In open? Do you mean 2:54? Yeah, that was mostly a combo of the weird angle and a bad grab on the mag, I'm not usually so bad at the unloaded starts. Actually I should practice that, running to the gun and loading. Most of my table start practice is like 'gun on table in front of you, load.' Haha! Yes sorry I got the time stamp wrong. Just something I noticed, not trying to be rude! I know Ben has an unloaded start drill in his Dry Fire book, and I believe Steve Anderson does also. (I am starting to use Andersons almost exclusively) but what I noticed is to practice loading off of belt, loading mags onto belt and loading gun, loading gun off of barrel when the gun is in the holster and mag is on table, and when both mag and gun are on table, and also when gun is on table and mag is on belt. Just my thoughts! Wyatt p.s. (you're a boss) Thank you for the tips! 12/7/2015 Dryfire Report Worked on drawing to small targets to kinda force my accuracy on the first shot. Started with 10 yard headboxes, was pleased, moved on to work 15 yard ones. Nice drill. Did a lot of transition work with just my 3 usual targets. Up and down transitions where I did the mozambique to each target, left to right, etc. 12/8/2015 Dryfire Report SHO/WHO is really perishable for me so I did a lot of that today. Mostly focusing on not being quite so deliberate, but seeing what I need to see and then breaking the shot and speeding up my transitions. 12/10/2015 Dryfire Report Didn't have a lot of time, but I scraped some together and did some bill drills with a focus on continuing to improve my trigger speed. I see some improvement in my par times which is good.