Rob's Shooting Log

[Racer377]

6.8.12

I've been telling myself to start one of these range diary things for some time now, and today's the day.

Today's practice session was (almost) all about the draw. I did some transition drills and a few reloads, some SHO/WHO shooting, but the majority of my time was spent on the draw. At some point last season, I'd resolved that I would be able to draw to an alpha at 7yds in under a second, that was my goal. I think I can say I hit that today. PR was a .90. At that speed, I'm barely seeing the sights. I'm generally aware that they're in front of my face, and that they're in the ballpark of being lined up, but I can't say I'm REALLY seeing them.

Crappy angles, I know. (oh, and ETA, there's an f-bomb in there at about the :57 mark, for those that prefer not hear such language)

I did a few runs left to right/right to left to work on transitions, 3 targets (8" round-A zone-8" round) at 7tds, maybe 8ft apart. Best run was a 2.18. Practicing snapping the eyes in dry fire seems to have helped.

Did a couple reload drill. Low spot for the day, I think the best was a 1.30-something. I had been practicing these in dry fire pretty consistently, but have let it get rusty. It appears that not doing these for a awhile is worth a few tenths.

Edited June 9, 2012 by Racer377

[Racer377]

Looking at the results from the match at Warsaw, turns out I did OK. 87.95% of the points, but a pair of mike/noshoots bring me down to 82%. It was good enough for a Production win though. 12/56 in the combined results.

Stage 1 went well. Probably could have been a bit quicker on the standing reload at the beginning. Time was solid, only 2 sec or so behind the limited guys on a 32 rd course, so I'm not sure how much more time I could have shaved off. Points were ok, 88%.

Stage 2 was the standards stage and was a bit of a mess. Flubbed the reload HORRIBLY in the 2nd string - dropped the mag. I haven't practiced transitioning from freestyle to SHO/WHO and it showed here. Dropped a delta.

Stage 3 - 10 round stage with an unloaded start. The plan here was to shoot the 2 mini-poppers clean and save a reload. The draw n' load felt awful and put my brain in "rush" mode on the first one, so I had a make up on the first one. The neat thing was, unlike I've done in the past, I didn't let the break in plan get into my head. Calmly worked in the reload and still came out 3rd in prd. Best part was, I had a magical split, the perfect reset ride 2nd shot. Guesstimated to be .10-.11. I know full-auto speed splits aren't important, but it was cool nonetheless.

Stage 4 - On the Move 03-09. I decided to not do the "big step" on this, and actually shoot it moving across. The time was good, but I just barely dropped one into M/NS. More practice shooting on the move and I'll have this one in the 80%+ range.

Stage 5 - BIG 32 rd field course. I saw my sights on almost every shot. The 1 D on the far target did catch me by surprise, but I called almost all the rest. 90% of the points. It felt slow, my time wasn't horrible (~5 sec off the fastest limited guy) but it could've been faster. Still won the stage.

Stage 6 - Probably the worst stage of the day mentally. After a few hours in the 90+ heat, I was getting a bit tired and it showed here. There were two poppers on the far right of the course, one of which activated a drop turner to the left. I engaged the steel, got the activator, called a hit on the 2nd, and snapped my eyes left to the turner and the rest of the course. It was not a good call.

later in the course, a fast clamshell really highlighted a problem with my strategery on prop targets. Typically, I just unleash burst fire on them. I know I shouldn't, but I get away with it a majority of the time. Shot #3 on it went right through the neck of the no shoot. Part of the problem I think was that I hit the activator, then hit another piece of steel, then went back to the clamshell, so I was behind the curve a bit. I hate waiting on activators.

I think a better approach would've been to double the activator to drive it down quickly, hit the clamshell using the extra time to put 2 better aimed shots in it, then hit the 2nd popper.

Edited June 11, 2012 by Racer377

[Racer377]

6.12.12

A bit of dry-fire, reloads mostly. No timer, just getting some reps in

6.13.12

300+ round of steel practice with Chuck. Did a bunch of draws from surrender to a 8" round at about 7yds. Got a handful under 1 sec. We had 5 plate setup in the general pattern of accelerator and roundabout. The eye-snapping is coming along nicely on the transitions, and I'm finding I needed fewer make-ups than I would have in the past.

[Racer377]

6.16.12

Steel match at Atlanta, I shot production and limited (with my production rig)

Takeaways:

+

draw was fast and consistently on target. Dry fire and live fire draw practice is paying off.

the one stage with some movement was my best, being able to take 2 targets while moving was a huge plus factor. I was able to make up serious time on that stage relative to the field.

-

not snapping eyes as consistently as I could/should

pick 5 was a stage with the HUGE 18x24 plates at close range - I should have cleaned up here and I knew it, so I pushed for super-speed and floated the sights across each without snapping. Result- makeups and about 4-5 extra seconds on the stage time.

Pendulum kicked my butt, I need to respect those longer shots.

Had a pair of mag bloopers. I'm not used to loading the shadow all the way up to 19, and twice failed to seat the mag fully. Drew and the mag just flew out. D'oh!

Ended up at the top of the box for Prod and Limited.

http://www.eteamz.com/AtlantaConservationClub/files/STEELMATCHRESULTS-ACC-2012JUNE16.pdf

[Racer377]

I hadn't touched the gun for a week. With Shadow #2 off getting refinished, Shadow #1 needs to pull double duty, and it just sat on the nightstand for awhile.

Went out today with the intention of helping setup for tomorrow's match, but they were done by the time I got out there. A good thing, because I ended up doing a bit of a marathon practice session. 3 hours and somewhere between 5-600 rounds. 70-80% of which were SHO/WHO only drills. I really, really suck at WHO. Fortunately, by the end of the session, I felt like I sucked less badly, so that's movement in the right direction.

I started out with some untimed transition drills. I had 3 piece of steel out at 8 yds or so. 2 8"rounds and and the IPSC Azone. Draw, 12321, to practice snapping the eyes from target to target. It went well. When I do it right, the instant feedback of ding-ding-ding-ding-ding reminds me why I love shooting steel so much.

The primary drill for WHO had 2 targets at 25ft. Draw, transition to weak hand, engage t1-t2-t1-t2-t1, head box only. My best clean runs were in the very high 6 to mid 7 range. This was a tough drill both technically and mentally, as I have a hard time shooting at the pace I need to shoot to get my hits. I want to go faster. Tomorrow's classifier has a WHO string, and I think this practice will be hugely helpful in that I have a much better idea of what my pace should be to get my hits. Had I gone out cold, I don't know I would have the patience to do it right.

The SHO stuff went pretty well. Time on the 1-2-1-2-1 drill was right around 4 seconds, with a few coming in in the high 3 range. Hitting the upper A didn't seem horribly difficult.

Did a few bill drills on an IPSC A zone piece of steel. Had a few good clean runs, the best being a 1.84, which would be a PR. Hit the first shot at 1 flat and the sights just came right back to the notch each shot thereafter. Just a perfect run. Had another good 1.99 run on steel. I went to do a few more bill drills on paper toward the end of the session, for some reason I kept dropping one stupid shot just barely into the C zone. The interesting thing about these runs is that the splits felt really, really slow. Turns out, they really weren't that bad, .16-.19 range, but I was aware of more stuff in between shots so time seemed slower or something. I watched the sight go up and come back down at what felt like a leisurely pace, and even thought a few times in the middle of the drill "why is my trigger finger working so slow? " Really a weird feeling.

At the very end, I did a few draw, hit 8" round plate at 21ft, reload, hit it again. almost all runs were 2.40 +/- .05. PR was 2.28. The really neat thing that I picked up here was that the sights don't really add time. I ran a few runs in which the goal was to just go as fast as possible. The best of these runs was 2.26, with neither shot hitting the plate because instead of seeing the front sight, I was just throwing the shot somewhere in the general area of the plate. Pure point shooting, really. A whopping .02 faster than seeing my sights and getting the hits.

Big takeaways from the session:

1. Practice WHO, and make a mental note to be patient with WHO strings and get the hits.

2. The feeling of fast or slow means absolutely jack shit. In many cases, the feeling is flat out wrong. Don't pay any attention to it.

[Racer377]

6.24.12

Match at ACC.

I was pretty disappointed with my performance at this match. 6 mikes, only 2 of which were called. 4 Deltas. My times weren't all that fast, either. For whatever reason, I wasn't as amped up as normally get for matches. The first stage was a short 10rd speed shoot. I stepped up to the line very relaxed. Too relaxed, as it turns out. I shot it like I didn't care. Not in the good way, but in the lackadaisical way. Dropped a mike just barely into hardcover, and then leisurely threw a make up mike at it. Maybe being relaxed isn't good for me.

The WHO portion of the classifier is where I picked up the 2 called mikes. Despite the long practice session, my WHO skills still need much more work.

The one single stage I shot clean was particularly slow, because of a brain fart that had me doing an extra standing reload. Fortunately because it was 30A/2C, it ended up being my only stage win of the match. I think the takeaway I should be getting from this stage is that I really ought to focus a bit more on killing the A zone.

Ended up 2nd overall(of 24) in Production, and 20/80 in the combined results. Missed out on the PROD win by 3.1%.

http://www.uspsa.org/uspsa-display-match-results-detail.php?indx=5206

[Racer377]

6.27.12

Great steel practice session today. 300rds or so. We did pendulum with the 8" rounds and the IPSC A as the stop plate at ~12yds for a few runs. Steady in the 5s, best run was a 4.56.

We then took it back to 25yds to really force the fundamentals. I didn't have the best consistency here, most runs were mid 6 with one makeup, 2 makeups had me in the low 7s.

Did a few draw drills, nothing super impressive here. 1.2 was about average to the 8" round from 7-10yds.

Went back to 25yds to shoot some 12ga. shells we found laying around, which was challenging and fun. My fiber popped out, and I actually saw it come out. The dot went from green to white before my eyes and I watched the rod go flying. Kinda neat.

I wanted to do a few more runs at pendulum at 25yds, and hopefully break 5sec. I put a new green fiber in, and made the dot bigger than I normally do, purely on accident. On the 3rd try this go round, I got a perfect run - decent draw at 1.79 and ran it clean, 5 for 5 in 4.99. Decided that I was going to end on that note. The bigger dot seemed to help. I was putting the dot in the center of the plate and that worked quite well.

I'm wondering if maybe I ought to try a plain black iron and run this drill a bit, and see if there are any significant differences.

[Chris iliff]

Hey, good journal. I see we shoot the same matches! I, too, had a rough time at Atlanta. 17 in a squad and ROing doesn't help. Plus the heat was killer.

Keep it up!! Don't let anyone tell you practice isn't good!!! In the end we will be the guys on top!!!!!!

Check me out, Fourtrax's Range Report.

Edited to say: I am dense! Hi Rob how's it going? Nice shooting with you at Atlanta! Thanks for working hard on the clip board.

Edited June 28, 2012 by Chris iliff

[Racer377]

Hey, good journal. I see we shoot the same matches! I, too, had a rough time at Atlanta. 17 in a squad and ROing doesn't help. Plus the heat was killer.

Keep it up!! Don't let anyone tell you practice isn't good!!! In the end we will be the guys on top!!!!!!

Check me out, Fourtrax's Range Report.

Yep, I was on your squad. (Guy with the goofy CZ boonie hat) Going dead last in the shooting order every time had to wear on you a bit.

6.28.12

Not exactly a practice session, but I stopped by the range on the way home from picking up a new toy this morning, I just had to test it out. Did about 50rds just goofing off.

1. Suppressors are really cool.

2. Handguns with red dots are cool.

3. Combine the 2 and it's pure awesome.

Everytime I shoot that Buckmark, I start fantasizing about a Czech-Mate open gun.

[Chris iliff]

I edited my above post and you beat me with a post of your own. Anyways, nice shooting with you at Atlanta!!!!

[Racer377]

I edited my above post and you beat me with a post of your own. Anyways, nice shooting with you at Atlanta!!!!

Likewise!

6.30.12

Dryfire practice, draws and reloads. That's it. This'll be the last practice for about a week, heading off to Vegas w/ the wife.

Draw to .75" paster on closet door 7 ft away (small office at home, reload. Pretty simple, right?

par time

3.0 - 5 for 5, seemed easy.

2.8 - 5 for 5

2.5 - 4 for 5

I then decided to crank it up and push my hand speed, par 2.0. Hilarity ensued. Maybe 10 out of 100? It's tough to say on some of these if the click was before the beep. For your viewing enjoyment (if you're a masochist that likes to watch 75 seconds of the same boring dry fire drill), here are the highlights. The last 4 were actually all in row.

[Racer377]

7.7.12

Little bit of dry fire before the match at Warsaw tomorrow.

6 pasters on the wall at 11ft or so. Facing away hands above shoulders, Draw, one each, reload, one each.

Par time 8 secs - 3 for 3

7 secs - maybe 15 out of 20? Some of the sight pictures weren't as solid as I'd have liked.

7.5 secs - 12 of 15, concentrating on good eye snapping and solid sight pictures.

Reloads seemed to be just spot on tonight. Only a few flubs where the mag lip catches slightly on the well. 90% were about as perfect as I can make them. It seems like I'm not pushing as hard on these macro drills on the reload, which pays off with a higher hit rate. Even with less push, they still seemed pretty quick, 1-1.2 sec range, if I had to guesstimate.

[Racer377]

It's been a month since I started this and only 7 practice sessions...yikes. There's a big plus to doing a diary already - I'm not practicing nearly as much as I think I am.

[Racer377]

7.8.12

Match at Warsaw went relatively well. Shot my first clean match in quite some time. Just a hair under 92% of the points. Times were a bit off, and the effort was only good for 3rd in Production behind 2 M guys. Looks like I was giving up 2-3 seconds to them, so I need to find a way to keep shooting good points, just faster. Kinda the name of the game isn't it? 14 of 48 in the combined results. Not too bad, I guess.

The classifier was a generous one, so I was able to put up decent % there, and was my only stage win, and should put me within one semi-decent run of A. Even so, based on dryfire, I really thought I should do this one about a full second faster. Lost .3 or so on the turn and draw, and being especially careful on each shot cost me another .05-.08 x the remaining 11 shots.

[Racer377]

7.11.12

200rds of steel live fire practice w/ Chuck and chad. Was supposed to be mainly focused on outer limits. My draws were pretty terrible. Coming off a bit of a head cold is my excuse, it had me feeling pretty sluggish.

The one interesting thing is that I was able to hit a 8"round at 7yds in 1.3 pretty easily from surrender when only practicing the draw, but when running the whole stage, it always lost a tick, and was in the 1.4-1.5 range. I think that's a result of wanting to be sure of getting the hit vs. wanting to get the hit as fast as possible. This appears to be the same phenomenon I noticed with the classifier dry-fire vs. the real thing at Warsaw.

The State match is coming up quickly, so there's motivation to be more consistent w/ dry fire. I'm going to dig out the dry fire drills book and try some of those for variety.

Edited July 12, 2012 by Racer377

[Racer377]

7.12.12

Dry fire.

Some draw 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1 transition drills, no timer. Felt good.

Draw-2-reload-2-reload-2-reload-2-reload-2

par 8sec 5 for 5

7 sec 4 for 5

6 sec 4 for 20.

I like this drill. It's a challenge to string together 4 good reloads and watching the sights while trying to pull 2 DA shots as quick as I can should help with trigger control and speed.

[Racer377]

7.13.12

Dry fire.

Untimed reloads and transitions. Reloads were a bit rough.

Draw to 3x5 light switch 22ft away. I made it a point to call the hits and keep myself accountable on that.

Par times of 1.3 (not recorded), 1.1, 1.0 and .9

I don't think I made but a handful of the 1.0s and maybe 1 or 2 .9s. Kinda tough to tell for sure. Had 2 "almost threw the gun across the room" bloopers. They're in there.

[Racer377]

7.14.12

More dry fire!

surrender draw to 3 pasters on wall 10ft away, 2-2-2-reload 2-2-2, with focus on precise placement. The paster is only about as wide as the front sight at this distance. No idea how many reps total, but it was alot. Maybe 30-45 minutes worth? I like the drill because it hits the the main fundamental skills: draw, reload and transitions.

Started at 7.5 - plenty of time.

7.0 easy enough, time to really get a solid picture both times.

6.5 as long as I hit the reload, I can do this OK

6 pushing pretty hard, much tougher to be super confident in the hits

5.5 - draw has to be good, reload has to be good, eye snapping has to be good. Maybe 1-2 out of 5 at this speed, if that.

[Racer377]

7.15.12

Feeling pretty sore today. I decided on Friday that I really need to get back in the gym, lifted Fri-sat and am feeling it today. Nevertheless, it was on with some live fire practice.

I did the same drill as yesterday, targets at 7, 10 and 12 yds, with no-shoots on the inner A border at 7 and 10, hard cover to either side of A at 12. I wanted to work on forcing my accuracy a bit more, and thought that ought to do the trick.

It sucked. Only 8 clean runs. Average draw to the 7 was 1.49, and average reload was a turd slow 1.81. Not doing much of anything smoothly, I think in part because I feel like a truck hit me. I KNOW I can knock .2 of the draw and .5 off the reload. Average time for all runs was 7.6, and only had one breaking into the 6s.Average clean run was 7.63, so it's not a matter of "slowing down" to get the hits.

Wasn't snapping eyes very well, need to keep drilling that.

Good points of the day, shot calling was good. I was letting vision control the pace for the most part. Split on the close target averaged .16, while the far target was more like .27-.30. the misses were just barely type misses on the close ones, just knicking the perf on the no shoot. Only 2-3 real clear ones, about an inch from the edge. On the far target, I can get all my alphas if I don't rush. .30 splits feel like forever, though.

Edited July 15, 2012 by Racer377

[Racer377]

7.16.12

Since the surrender draw and reload was so damn weak3 yesterday, I decided to work on those a bit more today in dry fire.

started off with the drill from 7.14 and found I was indeed a few ticks slower due to soreness. I should have had tons of extra time at 7.5, but didn't.

Went to do some more focused work on the draw and reload

surrender draw to paster, 2, reload 2.

Par time was 3 seconds. Hit maybe 16 of 20.

Observations - reloads were a bit low at the start, made an effort to get them up more. It helped.

Also, keeping a "tight" surrender with elbow in and low was killing my draw because my hand kept catching on the beavertail. I tried getting my elbows up and out a bit more, and the grip inconsistencies went away.

Between these two adjustments, hitting the 3 par got alot easier.

[Racer377]

7.17.12

Dry fire

Bill drills

Par 2.0

8 /10. I don't understand the point of dryfiring these. The only reason I dropped 2 is my hands are toast after my first DL workout in months, and I had trigger freeze. It seems like there's really nothing to be gained from this drill dry, other than a draw rep.

el pres

Par 6.0

3 /6. My turn and draw needs work. Trigger freeze wasn't helping.

surrender draw 2-2-2-reload 2-2-2

Par 8

3 /3

Par 7

7 /8

Par 6

3/8

[Racer377]

7.18.12

short dryfire practice

surrender draw 2-2-2-reload 2-2-2

7 sec 5/5

6.5 sec 4/5

6 sec 8/10

surrender draw 2-reload-2

3.5 sec 4/5

3 sec 4/5

2.8 sec 3/6

[Racer377]

7.20.12

light dry fire, but don't remember what I did. I probably should have updated this post then.

7.21.12

Steel match at ACC. I feel like I shot relatively well. I didn't set any records, but I was consistent, which is a net improvement over the half good runs/half disaster runs mix that I've made a habit in the past. Ended up winning Prod., and was fastest of all the holstered divisions. This'll make 6 prod wins in a row, and I'm hoping to get a perfect season.

7.22.12

USPSA at ACC. 84 shooters showed up for a club match....WOW. Scores aren't up yet, so I have no idea how I did relative to the field. I'm guessing 3rd, maybe 2nd.

Good spots:

Shot clean, only 3 Deltas and took home ~94% of the available points.

Bad spots:

Extra shots, extra shots, and extra shots. Adding up the time for the extra shots, that were unneeded in the majority of cases, and the extra time for the slide lock reloads that the extra shots caused, I bet that is what will have cost me a win.

I wasted probably 3-4 seconds on 4 steel plates that should have taken 2 at most. They were little 6 and 8 rounds at maybe 12-15 yds, and I got sloppy trying to rush that array.

reloads. I need to work on slide lock reloads a bit more (and use them less) I had one particularly bad flubbed speed reload as well. I've been practicing these like a madman, so not sure what to make of this.

I meant to get video so I can better critique myself, but of course I only got 1 stage, my worst of the day no less. Looking at it now, I can see that I gave away probably 4 seconds in dumb mistakes and less than efficient stage planning.

[Riverman67]

You should keep my big fat butt out of your videos

[Racer377]

You should keep my big fat butt out of your videos

no one that hasn't already seen your big fat butt knew it was you until you just self-identified!

And tell the cameraman, I didn't choose that angle.