IronEqualizer

Eastern time. All times at EAGC for anything will always be EASTERN. Good question. This comes up all the time.

Thank you to all the shooters who came to shoot in our backyard. You guys are why we do it. Saturday was a 17 hr day for us and there are still things to complete. We hope to see you all again next year.

All received entries are being processed and you guys should start getting some info in the next week or so. I am pretty sure Mark said squadding would not open up until the first of December so be on the lookout for that. We look forward to having all of shoot with us.

EAGCs rimfire matches are always fast and furious stages. I can't wait. Besides, you get to shoot a match, be served lunch, and have a better than 1 in 100 chance at winning some guns and other cool stuff.

No I do not build individual stages as with USPSA. I have one generic stage with the appropriate IDPA penalties and 5 targets listed with penalties of .5 each. You don't need all the targets in a stage. If it is zero down you do nothing. Only if they drop points do you then put the points down on a target. This could theoretically be done with only one penalty target of .5 and put all the points down on that one space. Having roughly five targets listed is plenty for the points down to be entered as multiple target's individual points down can be added to the same penalty target space. I hope this makes some sense.

Practiscore has worked perfectly for me the past 2 months at our IDPA matches using the time plus scoring. I set the penalties, divisions, and such, and it works fine. I am happy with it as is. No problems.

5-13-12 Live fired 100 rnds. EAGC IDPA Match. 42 shooters. HOA for the match. I tanked one stage that was shot all from a bianchi barricade. Some hard leans. I set the damn thing up and I was slow on it and hit a no shoot in the process. Barricade shooting continues to be a weakness. I still have not started back practice yet. Still enjoying some time off from the commitment and getting some other things done.

I will be shooting a new SS .40 para at the match that is getting some love and affection from FGW.

4-28-12 Live fired 300 rnds. EAGC Steel Match. 150 rnds rimfire, 150 rnds centerfire. 55 guns, I finished HOA in rimfire, and HOA in centerfire. Headed out to this morning to get some work done on a few guns and just kind of re-grouping after all the past months practices. I have some ideas of some changes I am going work into my practice schedule but have not decided if I am going to start back this week or wait until my work schedule is day shift again. I know I needed a break before I hit a burnout. I just have to decide how I'm going to approach practice this time and how intense it will be.

4-21-12 Live fired 200 rnds. AL State IDPA Match. Had a very up and down performance day. I did well on some stages, average on some, and sucked on quite a few. I was definitely not prepared for some of the movers. Swingers, clam shells, up and down targets I can handle, but the long runners straight across the stage I struggled a bit with thinking I really had to rush those shots. There was time I just did not take it. That on top of a jam at the moment that two out and back targets exposed themselves. I didn't even get a shot on them. I racked up 1 procedural for cover also. One reason I do not like IDPA as those calls are always judgemental. I need to practice tight shots more also. It just took me too long to make them. I will be glad to get back to focusing on USPSA but need to hone quite a few IDPA skills. I finished 4th ESP Expert which was very disappointing to me.

4-20-12 Live fired 200 rnds. IDPA Gear. Session A. Things went pretty well today. I just need to stay in control and everything will be fine. I need to repeat my performance statement before each stage, shoot no faster than what the sights tell me. Go one for one on steel and have good clean trigger pulls and stopped sight pictures on the long hard shots. I took a drive to CAGC to look over tomorrow's stages. Lot of movers, some pretty fast but nothing impossible. Fair amount of hard cover but most is real hard cover so you know when you miss. I am looking forward to the match tomorrow.

4-19-12 Live fired 100 rnds. IDPA Gear. Did some experimenting with shooting through a barrel with the IDPA light ESP load. Just in case the opportunity were to arise I wanted to know what to expect. Went through fine at 15yds with the target directly behind the barrel and also with the target a few yards from the barrel. Finished the day with a multi distance drill and it felt like I was really getting timed to the gun. The close target at 3 yds my splits were from .11, at 10 yds .25, and at 18 yds .35. I was very happy with accuracy as well.

4-18-12 Dry fired 30 mins. IDPA Gear. Session B.

4-17-12 Dry fired 15 mins. IDPA Gear. Session B. Still working on reloads. If I miss or fumble a reload with this gear, 98% of the time it is caused by the grab on the fresh mag not being correct. Things are coming along but I think I should have been working with this gear a little farther out from the match.

4-16-12 Dry fired 15 mins. IDPA Gear. Dry fired session B. Dry fire went pretty well. Reloads were pretty good but I still had some missed ones in the match Saturday that really cost me. I need to make sure I do deliberate reloads in the state match and get a really good grab on the fresh mag. Results of Sunday's USPSA match. 1st Limited, 2nd overall for the match. 40 shooters. I was pleased with that especially knowing I had a few minor mistakes that I can correct.

4-15-12 Live fired 200 rnds. EAGC USPSA Match. I had a decent day of shooting today. I felt like I may have shot a little conservatively at times but am pretty happy overall with my performance. I had a few errors but nothing disastrous. I shot with some really good shooters today and I learned a few things on stage breakdown that I hope I do not forget. I shot conservatively on the classifier and it looks like it will come in around a 74%. I guess the only way I will get a higher classifier is just really push on it, but it would be outside of my control zone. I will have to wait to see what the outcome is.

4-14-12 Live fired 100rnds. EAGC IDPA Match. Finished 2nd overall. I am really not doing well with IDPA right now. I racked up a procedural today, missed a couple of reloads, had two malfunctions that I think was caused from me riding the slide, and generally felt like I just sucked. I don't think my head was in it today. I am gonna have to clean things up if I plan on doing well next week at the state match.

4-13-12 Live fired 100 rnds. IDPA Gun. Set up a multi distance drill to get a feel for the gun at various distances. I am so out of time for this gun. My 10 yd splits and my 3 yd splits are the F'n same. I could not get the timing down on how this thing was recoiling. With a 200gr bullet making minor PF it barely moves and it is really screwing with me. It was like I needed a heavier recoil impulse to shoot fast. I have about a week and minimal practice rounds to try and get timed to this thing or the state match may be ugly.

4-12-12 Dry fired 30 mins. IDPA Gear. Session B. Things are looking better with the IDPA gear. I do the clock drill first doing a regular reload, then doing a RWR. 1 more week until the AL state match.

4-11-12 Live fired 150 rnds. Live fired agressive entry drill and barricade x drill. On both of these drills today I had moments that seemed to tell me that shooting fast and accurately is more just a state of mind and awareness than anything else. I had a few wild shots on a couple of runs on the aggressive entry drill so I made myself slow down during the shot process or so I thought. The times were basically the same but I saw more and because of it had better hits. I just thought about slowing down but once the timer went off I did not actually slow down I just focused more. I think. On the last run of this I told myself to drive and move as aggressive as I could. I pushed as hard as I could but still slowed down mentally for the shots and cut a half second off of all the previous runs and had better points. I was moving really aggressively before I had the thought of moving as aggressive as possible. Again this leads me to believe thoughts, state of mind, and awareness are more of a major part of the shooting process than I know. I ran the barricade x drill again because I sucked so bad on it yesterday. My first run I really took my time and I had told myself to just get my hits no matter how long it took. State of mind. I got all my hits, had good points, and when I compared the time to the previous days runs it was faster than most of them. So I did not shoot any slower although it felt really slow, I was just focused more on where I needed to be. The rest of the runs were pretty much the same. I felt like the runs were taking forever waiting on the sights to really settle on the head shots but once the runs were over the times were still really good.

4-10-12 Dry fired 30 mins. IDPA Gear. Live fired 150 rnds. Session B. Still not as good as I would like to be with reloads but am getting there. Live fired session A. Finished session A. I still struggle with barricade drills. I have trouble with this in matches also and know it is a weak area of mine. I really should break my training routine and focus on this for an entire session. I need to film it and see if I can tell exactly what I am doing wrong. The other drill doing multi distance targets with a reload went well. I had no problems on the 18yd target and was hammering out 2 on the close 3 yd target with .13 splits. Not as fast as with my full length dust cover gun but not terrible. This gun just does not settle and shoot as flat as my other gun. No doubt I am faster with the other gun.

4-9-12 Live fired 250 rnds. Session A. Accuracy basically sucked ass today. I just could not make myself slow down to make the head shots on any consistent basis. I had edge hits coming into a head shot on a target like 4 times in a row. I am wondering if shooting my limited gun without the full length dust cover and aluminum grips has my timing off just a bit. It does feel like I have to fight recoil a bit more and like I can't really drive this gun as hard. My front sight broke on my other gun on the last stage at the SC sectional. I can't wait to get it back up and running.

4-7-12 Dry fired 30 mins. IDPA Gear. Session A and part of session B. Draws do not seem to be a problem even adding the extra movement of sweeping the concealement garment out of the way. I think it actually gives me time to prepare to get a better grip on the gun as the support hands waits in position longer. Reloads were a little better but not at the percentage of perfect ones that I want. It seems I have longer to prepare the gun for the magazine insertion as I am sweeping the garment out of the way. The grab on the mag is crucial and I still have to at least think a pause of the new mag right outside the magwell even if I don't actually slow it down before inserting it. Weird but it is working. Maybe it just allows me to be more aware and see all the things I need to see to complete the mag change.

Looking forward to it. Will be my first state match shooting ESP.

4-6-12 Dry fired 30 mins. IDPA Gear. Session B. Trying to get tuned up a little for the upcoming state IDPA match in a few weeks. Reloads went better than expected but not nearly as well as needed. I will continue to focus dry fire on IDPA skills for the next few weeks.