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Gallow

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Everything posted by Gallow

  1. Two part answer....#1 is you should never do something "automatically" - that is a good illustration of why, #2 you adjust to the unexpected by being aware. Great advice, Jake. It's true, but it's like the artist said to his painting students: "To paint perfect paintings, first make yourself perfect, then paint naturally."
  2. OK. But I don't get this "your body will take care of it" routine. All of us, when we were kids, ran and stopped and looked at stuff more or less automatically. When we started shooting IPSC (if not before), these activities, and lots of other aspects (aspects here being only an heuristic device) had to be consciously re-evaluated. I may be holding my breath "automatically" when I shoot, using in effect a technique of breathing that's stood me in good stead in other situations. It may be that breathing in the shooting situation would allow me to attend better to my shooting. I can only find out by trying it, which I can only do by being conscious of it while I'm trying it. Sure, I know at some level "trying" is not something to do, and ultimately shooting consciously isn't either. Granted that when you shoot you "shouldn't" be thinking consciously. Still, concepts like "shouldn't" can be limiting too. I realize the "trying," "consciousness," and "awareness" are potential snarls. But this is "handgun techniques," and new techniques can only be tried consciously--or am I missing something?
  3. You guys have a sun out there? I've heard of it. We don't got no sun in Michigan that I can remember. But I'll be at Rio Salado this weekend. Thanks.
  4. Looks like we all shoot at the same time as there are the same amount of stages as squads. I assume we start on the stage that is the same as the squad number. Ah! I get it. Thanks. That would mean that all shooters have to be there both Saturday and Sunday, right?
  5. By chance, I'm going to be in Phoenix (from Michigan) over the weekend, and I'll be able to look in at the match for maybe two or three hours. I'd particularly like to see TGO, Nils, and Taran shoot. When are squads one and two shooting? The squads don't shoot in the order of their squad number, do they? Or do they?
  6. I never thought or cared about how long it would take me, or how long I should take, to shoot a stage. Instead I would visualize just what I needed to see to shoot every target in the stage. However long it took me to do what I'd visualized - I'd learn that when I finished the stage. be Isn't it a little more complicated than that? The whole techniqe of figuring stage factors involves estimating the time it will take you to shoot the stage. Then you can figure what the points are worth to you. This in turn allows you to decide what you need to see. Sure, you should never shoot faster than you can see, but what do you need to see? I don't think you can ignore that issue. You'd shoot Rapid fire Olimpic differently than IPSC, since you've got to hit as close to dead center as you can, rather than just a A zone. Granted, once you start shooting a stage, you must see whatever you've decided you need to see, however long it takes.
  7. Am I missing something, or is my arithmatic addled? As I figure it, if you shoot 300 rounds a weeek, you'll save over three thousand bucks if you shoot .22 instead of 9mm. 100 rounds a week, a thousand bucks saved. If you reload, of course, it's not as dramatic, but you'll still save plenty.
  8. Several people have recommended shooting a .22, or double-plugging, apparently under the assumption that lack of recoil or noise will mitigate the blink. In my case, when I started shooting I discovered that I blinked even when I was shooting a pellet gun—I was using a Beeman C-5 to practice for Second Chance. This was what I’d call and “intentional” blink, not in the sense that I did it on purpose, but that it happened when I decided to pull the trigger. So my blink wasn’t a wince at anticipated recoil or noise—just a decision blink, without the other components of a classic flinch. I know—you’re not supposed to “decide” to pull the trigger, and eventually I learned to shoot my .45 pretty much flinch-free, though I still have trouble with long shots that require too long (read “visual impatience”) to line up. Trying for dot-shooting accuracy using the Beeman at 25 feet, I still tend to blink, because the trigger is so light that a “surprise break” is impossible—for me, anyway. Even so, I don’t know what the hell I’m blinking about. It’s not the noise, or the recoil. How common this is, I don’t know. Shooting into the berm wouldn’t have helped my problem, since there’s no criterion for pulling the trigger, and thus no particular “decision” to be made. In subdued light, I’ve always been able to see the muzzle flash of my .45, as long as I wasn’t shooting at anything.
  9. Is anyone shooting candlepins--the light, symmetrical bowling pins used (by some) in the Northeast US? They's be harder to hit, but easier to knock off a table.
  10. Jamie-- Thanks for bringing that up. Now that you mention it, I recall reading about retraining eyes, but I'd forgotten. I'm inclined to take my vision (you know, just relax and see) for granted, unlike my hands, fingers, mind, etc., which need training. Of course it's the mind that sees....
  11. This seems to me to be just plain false, at least for most shooters, and especially for a new shooter. Admittedly, a very experienced shooter can transition from one target to the next by eye, and when the gun arrives there the sights will be aligned, and he breaks the shot. It takes a long time (for most of us) for this to happen. >>You can't go for a "85-90% of the time this works" in this game, you have to get all your hits.<< IPSC is a game of accuracy and speed. If you shoot all A's in practice, you don't know if you can shoot them faster. Only by scattering a few C's can you tell you're at your limit, and need to see more. In my opinion (and I can't shoot half as well as many others here) that's the area to learn in. In production, in a match, the C's will hurt you more than they will someone shooting major in another division, so you may have to see (shoot) more conservatively.
  12. Now that I have a chrono set up, I can answer the bald question: yes, a comp does hold down muzzle jump considerably, even for 165 pf. It's true, as has been pointed out, that it would be uncompetitive, not to say silly, to run a single-stack comped .45 in open division.
  13. So a sandbagging, gun-grabbing Marxist abortionist would pretty much take the biscuit. oops, thread drift...
  14. I just looked up the rules, and my Second Chance "stock" gun, a SA 1911 with the Ed Brown grip safety, Bo-Mars, and S&A magwell doesn’t look as if it will be accepted in Limited 10. It looks as though the multiple divisions that have cropped up since I quit, presumably to quell the equipment race and level the playing fields, have pretty much eliminated the 1988-1990 equipment. Only a few people were even shooting dots at my club in 1993. I've got an Aimpoint-mounted single-stack 1911, quite competitive locally in '93, which is not much use now either. So I guess I'll get some new glasses, get trampled shooting my single-stack iron-sighted comped .45 in open division, and find out if, as a super-senior, I can still use iron sights. If so, maybe I'll get out my 1990 Glock 22, take off the mag well, get some work done so it'll shoot into less that 5" at 15 yards, and load it soft for Production. Or, God forbid, buy a new gun! If not, I'll call it a day. It's not as if spendingg 3-5K on a dot-sighted wide-body open gun is gonna put me on a level playing field at my age anyway, let alone insulate me from the equipment race. But hell, I haven't been competitive at squash for decades. Too bad Modified hasn't picked up in the US. We geezers could use them red dots.
  15. From what little I know, the bow is always shot from an index, and there's no transitioning between targets--or is there? Certainly no strong/weak-hand-only.
  16. Forester-- Do your local matches have a lot of L-10 shooters, with several at your level and several better than you are? Since you're ambitious, I think it does make a difference what other people shoot if you find yourself shooting against just a few others in your division. If you've got the funds, and your eyes are good, I'd say go Limited.
  17. Neal-- I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure it was in the Nosler reloading book, the beige one with the animal skull on the cover. Naturally I can't lay hands on it at the moment. And yes, the theory seemed to be as you said. They recommended a collet puller be used instead. It sounded like a remote risk to me, but you never know.
  18. Sure. I personally was able to speed up my shooting by not rushing (I assume the rushing included a lot of dithering to get on target, which wasted time, and then a paniced feeling that I'd better get the shot off, which sent the shots awry), but I was an inconsistant B shooter at the time. Better shooters had presumably already smoothed the dithering out. When I start shooting again, I'll start slow and sure. I know that when TGO advises top shooters, the advice doesn't literally apply to me. But I gather that there are a lot of high-A, Master, and GM shooters discussing this, and I'm intrigued by the differing approaches, which are really not differences in substance but variations in nuance. These are good to store away, for possible later recognition in my own shooting.
  19. As I’ve mentioned here before, I have a few thousand 45 ACP cartridges that I made up during my first months of reloading years ago and deemed questionable for reasons I didn’t bother to record. I just tossed them in a 5-gallon pail, except for suspected overcharges, which I discarded altogether. I’ve been diligently pulling bullets lately, a hundred or two a day, with an inertial puller. Then I read that it’s dangerous to use an inertial puller on cartridges with high primers, which some of mine are. Is this true? I understand the logic of it, but in practice, is it a problem?
  20. On the other hand: Just by chance I happened on this entry on Rob's site: http://www.robleatham.com/answers040910.htm It's advice to a Rio Salado shooter who was shooting all A's and losing. Rob seems to be saying not to shoot all A's, though of course he's not saying to just hose brown. It's a lengthy breakdown of the issue of sacrificing points for better time. He says, for example, that shooting an El Prez, he'll shoot for A/C's as fast as possible. Interestingly, he says it'd take him seven to eight seconds to be dead certain to shoot it clean. I have trouble believeing that, but if he says so.... Also, drifting from the topic a bit, I believe that when Cooper et. al. were saying that a 10-second clean El Prez. was great, they were shooting at 10 meters (not much difference, but a bit), and shooting 185pf loads, not 175 and certainly not 165.
  21. Even for lower-level shooters the quest for speed is delusive. I remember I had just got my "B" classification and was eager for my "A". I shot some classifier--can't remember which one; not much movement, lots of targets within 7-15 yards, a few no-shoots. Others at my level were shooting it in about 10 seconds. I shot what I experienced as a blazing fast run, didn't blow the two reloads, but had had many C and D hits, plus a no-shoot, in about 12 seconds. I was disgusted. The RO took pity on me and told me to shoot it again, just as an excercise. Don't dawdle, but get all A hits. I calmed down, did the run again in what seemed like slow motion, got all my A hits, and the time was a little under 9 seconds. That experience really turned the light on for me. It wasn't that I didn't already "know" what I learned that day, but it hadn't indwelt in me until then. I knew I had my A hits, but looking at the timer was a revelation. I don't mean to say I never rushed again, but it was a real corner turned.
  22. spook-- Now that's really interesting. Maybe my problem is that I've been looking for something that's really just an idea, instead of seeing what's there and using it. Thanks.
  23. Yes, I discovered later that calling your shots was basic to all competition shooting. I just encountered the idea first in Brian's book. I got so I could see the front sight clearly for shots out to 15 yards, but seldom see it "lift." I could refine sight alignment for longer shots, but I can seldom remember the sight picture when the shot breaks, even using an airgun. I was mostly interested in shooting pins when I started, and bought myself a Beeman C-5 (a 5-shot target airgun, $1,200.00 as I recall) and shot at paper pins in an effort learn to call shots at speed. It helped a little, but didn't translate well to using a heavy-loaded .45 on reactive targets like pins. I recall that Brian said that we all know shooters who are stuck at the lower levels of Master class but can't seem to improve, and that this was because they hadn't learned the fundimentals of shooting, like reading the sights. So eventually I decided that I could live with being a low Master. Didn't make it, but that was for other reasons. As for rifles, I hardly ever shoot them, and when I do I can't hit anything. I could ring the 10" 100-yard gong at our club pretty regularly with a .45 auto, but can't put 5 shots in 10" at that distance with a rifle. I'll have to take a few lessons sometime.
  24. I bought Brian's book when it first came out, and became aware of the importance of calling my shots. I still can't do it, except off sandbags. I can often recognise when my sights are 'way out of whack in a match, but if it comes to seeing if I have an A or a C in rapid fire, I can't do it. In questioning fellow club-level shooters over the years, I find that not that many of them even claim to do it, and it looks as though some who claim to actually can't, or don't. Several A and Master class shooters I've talked to can't do it, except maybe in slow fire. I've never asked a GM, but I assume they can. How many of you people actually routinely call your shots--by which I mean, know where they'll hit within an inch or two? I realize that in super-fast shooting this really doesn't apply.
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