Alaska State Championship Three Gun Match

[Alaskapopo]

I know this is small potatos for you guys down south but I thought I would share my review of the match anyway.

This last weekend I shot the Alaska State Championship three gun match in Kenai and of the two piston guns in my squad both went down. One was a LWRC that belonged to a friend of mine. The metal part surrounding the spring broke and was in little pieces. I loaned him my back up rifle(which is my patrol rifle) a Noveske N4 carbine to finish the match. The other piston gun was a POF or should I say POS. Not sure what the problem was but it would not run. Two shooters were sharing it. They tried various brands of factory ammo and reloads. They also ended up using my ammo and my Noveske. My Noveske N4 was being used by 3 shooters at the end of the match with no issues. I ended up donating about 300 rounds of ammo with it to those shooters. Count me solidly out of the piston camp. This range was full of sand or rather Glacial silt and the DI guns in my squad ran and ran. I never had a malfunction with either my Noveske Rogue Hunter (my three gun rifle) and my N4 never let my friends down. I would say the piston concept on the AR needs a lot of work.

I got 3rd in Open class by the way and 4th overall. I won a JP lower with a trigger off the prize table.

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 4

Stage 5

Stage 6

Stage 7

Stage 8

Stage 9

Stage 10

Stage 11

Stage 12

This was a team shoot side match.

This was a team event. It starts with the pistol shooter holding my rifle mag. He runs to his stage and clears the big poppers from the far table (magazines had to be loaded with only 10 rounds to make it fair for all divisions as much as possible) and then he had to run up to the smaller table and clear the small poppers. He then grounds the pistol on safe and runs the rifle mag to my other team mate who is using my Saiga. He takes the mag and clears the shotgun targets. He was only allowed to load with 9 in the gun. He did not miss one shot and the fast reload with the coupled magazine helped us a lot. He then grounded the shotgun and took the rifle mag to me who finished the stage with my rifle. shooting steel targets at 200 yards. Some colt speed plates and some pesky poppers (1/5 sized pepper poppers) We finished it in 97 seconds next fastest team as 104.

Before this match I thought LWRC was good to go. Now I don't feel that way.

Rifles

My patrol rifle and back up set up.

My R&R Saiga

The Saiga gave me two hiccups. One failure to go into battery that did not cost me much time and the screw on the right side of the safety came loose not allowing me to un safe it until I used the ambi safety on the other side of the receiver this cost me about 4 seconds. However the rest of the match it ran great for me. My friend who borrowed it did have 3 or 4 failures with his ammo. Even with the malfunctions he still beat me. The Saiga made the difference on 2 or 3 stages that made it easy to win over tube fed open guns. One was on stage 3 where we had to shoot 6 shot targets and then reload and shoot 6 slug targets. With my magazine coupler it only took a few seconds to reload and rack the shot round out of the chamber. On that stage I still won even though I face planted and had to pick myself up off the ground. (prior to grabbing the shotgun.) For me the Saiga is a game changer in open class. The Saiga made the difference on the team relay event and gave us the win. Even when forced to download to 9 in the gun it was still way ahead of the tube guns because the reload was instant with 9 more in the gun due to the Arredondo magazine coupler. The main reason I like the Saiga is it is very close to my AR 15 and I don’t really have to learn another weapon system.

Benelli M2 I loaned a friend it did not malfunction at all during the match.

[Alaskapopo]

My Pistol a Caspain in 38 super comp. It ran fine during the match with no malfunctions.

I did have to loan out my back up pistol an STI Edge to a shooters whose Para went down for the count due to the sand.

My stage finishes were all over the board. I blew one stage by trying to use the bi pod on a rickety table and I ended up folding it up and just laying the forearm across it for better results. But the damage was done and my time sucked.

My stage finishes. Out of 26 shooters overall

1. 13th Rifle only hoser stage (50 yards and less)

2. 8th Shotgun and piston stage where I got my Saiga malfunction and a miss with the pistol.

3. 1st Pistol shotgun stage. This was my face plant stage.

4. 6th This was a Shotgun only stage where I had to load slugs into the mag individually out of a box and it’s the stage my Safety malfunctioned on.

5. 4th This was a Shotgun and a rifle hoser stage (targets less than 7 yards) I did not even use the scope just indexed off the barrel and hosed. The Geisselle three gun trigger was great here.

6. 13th This was a pistol only classifier stage Vickers count.

7. 8th This was another pistol only Vickers count stage called Raw Deal.

8. 12th This was a standards stage for the pistol Vickers count with prone, kneeling, left and right handed shooting.

9. 3rd This was a Rifle Shotgun hoser stage with short range rifle targets.

10. 4th This was a shotgun rifle stage with targets to 50 yards.

11. 15th This is where I screwed up with my bi pod and it cost me big. It was a pistol, shotgun rifle stage. Did fine on the pistol and shotgun but blew the rifle.

12. 1st This was a longer range pistol and rifle stage. Started with pistol on paper targets with partial cover and hostages out to 20 yards or so . 12 pistol targets. Then on to the rifle where there was 3 1/5 sized poppers at 100 yards 2 flashers at 200 yards and 3 flashers at 3 hundred yards. My handgun shooting was a bit slow with too many insurance shots but my rifle performance was good and that gave me the win on this stage.

I had a blast. I did find my first P mag malfunction. Well it did not malfunction but it was broken. I carry a 30 round mag on my belt as an oh crap mag. Meaning I only us it if my big 48 round mag fails or if my coupled mags fail for some reason. I have only had to use it in a match ones. I checked it before the match and saw this crack down the spine of the mag.

My trophy says second place only because the match director deviated from the rules a bit on how he did the trophies. He awarded an overall 1st place for the match which went to him. That allowed second place in open to be 1st place and 3rd place to be 2nd and 4th to be 3rd. I only earned 3rd place. This was one of the few things I did not care for in the match. There should be no overall shooter award with different divisions. The reason being open will always win if the shooters skill is equal. I benefited from it but thought it was unfair for the Tactical and Limited shooters. That being said it was a great match and was a lot of fun and I will go again.

[dmshozer1]

Nice job!

Fun watching the video!

Good recovery on the face plant. been there.

Take care

[Bullseye45]

Good job, it's great to see 3 Gun competition happening up there, especially in my old stompin grounds (Kenai, Soldotna).