BeerBaron Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 nimitz, great progress. I wonder, have you given much thought to why you can shoot the rimfire gun so much faster than the centre fire? In steel challenge where recoil is not as big an issue (single shot per target) but transitions are king why do you think there's such a difference? from memory both your rimfire and your centrefire are have the same optic sight (cmore)? the centrefire is a steelmater shooting 9mm minor if I recall correctly? 9mm minor in a short, fairly light 2011 should transition pretty well. Do you think perhaps you subconsciously feel like you need to slow down when shooting the big bad centrefire? Is it perhaps some in built flinch or something from knowing you're now shooting a more powerful gun? To be running the same stage in 2 sec flat in rimfire with a 2.8 average but 4.61 in centrefire seems like a bigger difference than I'd expect. I'm assuming you're drawing the centrefire from a holster but rimfire is low ready. Low ready to first shot I'm guessing 0.5 sec? Draw from holster I think I remember you saying is around 1 second? so there's obviously always going to be half a second per run. That still leaves 1.3 sec or so in the average in the shooting time. I think you need to transfer your 'nimitz rimfire mode' over to your centrefire. It's like in the simpsons when homer get a life coach. he sucks at everything but is a god at the bowling alley. So he takes bowling alley homer and makes him everyday homer. You need to make rimfire nimitz centrefire nimitz! or it could be I'm talking out my arse and that kind of difference is normal between a rimfire optic and a centrefire open gun. Either way, best of luck for the nationals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ben Stoeger Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 My goal for November is for you to again not be able to recognize me after the first stage run of the class .... Switch to a different color. Blue will give you away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted February 5, 2015 Author Share Posted February 5, 2015 hmmmm .... if that's the only reason you don't recognize me in Nov I'm in a lot of trouble ... besides, I LIKE blue .... BeerBaron: I've been trying to understand that for a while .... I've been looking at my transitions in open and like you mention, they are actually pretty close to rimfire. 9mm minor in a Steelmaster basically has no recoil to speak of. What I believe is going on (it was certainly true yesterday) is that my draw to the first target is horrible. It was in the 1.85+ sec range for Pendulum yesterday and around .8 sec for rimfire. So that's where 1 sec comes from. the question is where is the other .78 secs being lost? I don't think I'm .2/transition slower but thart could be it ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted February 5, 2015 Author Share Posted February 5, 2015 (edited) Ok, so Beerbaron got me thinking so I checked the differences on every stage for my last match which is representative since I only have 3 matches under my belt in open and here's what I found: pendulum 5.3 sec 1.3 sec/run roundabout 6 sec 1.5 sec/run showdown 5.87 sec 1.47 sec/run smoke & hope 4.74 sec 1.19 sec/run accelerator 6.08 sec 1.52 sec/run speed option 2.91 sec .73 sec/run 5 to go 6.57 secs 1.64 sec/run (only 1 data point) So assuming my open draw is a full sec slower than my rimfire low ready first shot it looks like my transitions are running about .1 sec slower on the open side which isn't too much of a surprise given the large difference in training time between the 2 guns. Of course the clear data point is that unless I improve my draw my open times are not ever going to get dramatically better ..... the good news is that's easily addressed in dry fire so I already know what my #1 Steel Challenge dry fire training goal for this next year will be .... I've known all along that my draw what holding me back but I haven't been too concerned since I'm still early in my open development but this little exercise puts it into stark perspective ... Edited February 5, 2015 by Nimitz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted February 8, 2015 Author Share Posted February 8, 2015 Shot our Club's monthly SC match on Saturday. Fixed a nagging issue with my STI but another cropped up with my Buckmark. When everything was running correctly I shot ok, nothing spectacular but ok. On the open side I think I've finally got my ejection issues fixed. Decided to change my load drastically to see if that was the issue. Went to 4.4g N320 under a 115 plated Extreme bullet. Gun ran flawlessly without a singe ejection issue. I plan to run this same load at this weekend's upcoming match and if runs well again we'll call this one good. I also had 2 more personal bests, one on Roundabout & one on Accelerator. Nothing too amazing, just my continued steep learning curve with the open gun and only my 4th match with limited dryfire. Now that I'll be training exclusively for Steel Challenge until the Nationals I expect my open times to continue to drop ... On the rimfire side I haven't shot the gun in a while and for some reason my C-more drifted out of zero. Didn't notice anything really unusual until the last 2 stages which were Speed Option & Showdown. We started off with Pendulum and although I only shot it with a 3.18 sec string average it seemed to be on target .... roll forward to Speed Option & on the first string my 1st 4 shots missed plate #5. Also, since this plate is in the middle of the bay I was getting no feedback as to where the misses were. Finally on shot #5 I ticked the bottom of the plate. I thought I had developed a serious trigger jerk but the dot was in the center of the plate every time. Well I took a 27 sec stage time and still didn't know what the issue was. We then get to the last stage (Showdown) and all my shots on the 35 yd plates are low again but the target was big enough & I started to hold high to compensate. By the time it was over I had started to suspect my C-more had lost it's zero so after the match I setup at 20 yds & could not hit the plate rack. I moved in to 15 and still no hits so I started aiming at some clay bird frags on the berm & discovered how low my sight was hitting. Almost 7" at 20 yds ... At least it wasn't a shooting mechanics issue .... Since I need to zero the gun tomorrow anyway I decided that I should take it apart for a through cleaning which I was planning to do before the Nationals anyway. The gun has held it's zero for basically the last 1 1/2 years so I'm not sure what happened but I've added this check to the Monday before Nationals since I can't afford to get surprised like that again ... Tomorrow I'll also be shooting Outer Limits in live fire as well as dry fire tonight. Last time I shot this stage was at last year's Nationals so I need to get some serious training time in on this over the next 5 weeks. Won't do any good to be shooting most of the stages in 10 secs or under and then have a 21 sec run when everyone else is around 15 secs .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeerBaron Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 well I'm glad my post got you thinking about the open times vs rimfire. That was my only intention. it sounds to me like it's mostly down to: you've had many more matches with the RF gun vs the CF gun. need more draw practice with the CF gun as that's eating into you getting the kind of times you know you can shoot possibly a bit of work on transitions with the CF gun (but that probably comes under #1 - more time with that particular gun). best of luck for nationals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted February 9, 2015 Author Share Posted February 9, 2015 (edited) Had very good training session this morning .... last night I figured out what was really going on with my Buckmark ... went to take off the C-more to start cleaning it and noticed the front screww was very loose ... so it didn't lose it's zero after all ... good to know starting out this morning rezeroing the gun, first 3 shots were 4" low and 2" left at 20 yds, a few adjustments later and i put 3 in the center of a 1" bullseye so we were good to go. As planned i set up Outer Limits which I have not shot in 11 months (since the Nationals last year). My cold match run was 15.15 secs with 5/5 on all 4 strings. I proceeded to shoot an additional 22 runs with an average time of 4.66 secs/run. Also had only 2 runs with a miss. Maybe I should only shoot this stage once a year ... I know I was being very focused on not letting my eyes get ahead of my shooting and it was paying off. I was also shooting with a lot less tension then I tend to and with my shoulders being very relaxed the gun was stopping on every target without any effort. I need to continue to focus on this in training as the results when done correctly are impressive ... Edited February 9, 2015 by Nimitz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted February 9, 2015 Author Share Posted February 9, 2015 beerbaron: no worries ..... i had always suspected that was the case but your post made me realize i needed to confirm that or else risk focusing on the wrong things ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
promtcy Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 Hi Nimitz, I was just wondering how you practice Steel Challenge stages? Meaning what do you use to set them up. I'm a member at PMRPC and have shot the monthly match twice. I've only actually tried to setup a stage and practice it once before I shot my first match. Since everything is locked up I just used single 1x2's and taped 8 inch paper plates at the appropriate height. That works but I end up hitting the sticks. I was reading in another thread that you have made your own target stands and was wondering if you use those to practice Steel Challenge as well as USPSA. I was thinking of making some target stands and using cardboard cut to the correct sizes. I just wanted to keep anything Steel Challenge related to having one single center post as it is in the actual match. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted February 10, 2015 Author Share Posted February 10, 2015 funny you should ask that ... i'm actually writing a story for Front Sight (currently planned for the issue after next) where I'm going to outline how to practice for Steel Challenge when you don't have any steel and combine that with a dry fire regime ... I'll be including a set of diagrams you can download for setup as well. Ralph, our MD actually gave me the idea for how to do this .... should be a big help to those who don't have access to steel but want to get better ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smitty79 Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 I would think practicing on paper for Steel Challenge might be a good thing. You are forced to call your shots because you can't wait for the "ping". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted February 10, 2015 Author Share Posted February 10, 2015 that is certainly one benefit of using paper ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trgt Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 (edited) funny you should ask that ... i'm actually writing a story for Front Sight (currently planned for the issue after next) where I'm going to outline how to practice for Steel Challenge when you don't have any steel and combine that with a dry fire regime ... I'll be including a set of diagrams you can download for setup as well. Ralph, our MD actually gave me the idea for how to do this .... should be a big help to those who don't have access to steel but want to get better ... Another option you may or may not be aware of is something like this airsoft steel challenge set ( http://www.tactrainers.com/products/the-steel-challenge-set). Your could certainly figure this out yourself (as you/your MD did), but besides scaled steel for practicing airsoft in your garage he gives you template of where to place the scaled steel on a long shelf so you can simulate each steel challenge stage. Edited February 11, 2015 by trgt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted February 11, 2015 Author Share Posted February 11, 2015 (edited) there is another, easy (I dare say better) way to do Steel Challenge dry fire at home .... PM Zack Jones for the details ... Edited February 11, 2015 by Nimitz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted February 14, 2015 Author Share Posted February 14, 2015 (edited) well I just couldn't do it ....... I had every intention of going to the SC match today, I had found a wool hat, gloves, artic parka, ice fishing tent, heater and a portable generator to run it ... but when I woke up this morning and saw the thermometer I just couldn't bring myself to go ... so we'll just do more dryfire today ... training continues to go well, this week I shot 5 to Go & Speed Option. I didn't have enough ammo made for Wed so I just shot my rimfire gun on Wed. My 5 To Go cold match stage run was a 13.08. My average for the remaining 26 runs was 2.97 secs. Had 6 runs with 1 miss. First shot ave was .81 secs. This is a little slower overall then the last time I shot this, probably due to the fact that I don't have a lot of time with this stage as we never shoot it through out the year. Shot Speed option yesterday. Cold match run was 15.75. Ave over all 15 runs was 3.84 secs. Ave draw was 1.9 secs. On the rimfire side my cold match run was 11.95 secs. Ave time for all 12 runs was 2.97 secs. Only had 1 run where I did not go 5/5. Next week I plan to focus on Outer Limits & 5 To Go to get as much time on these stages as possible Edited February 14, 2015 by Nimitz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted February 16, 2015 Author Share Posted February 16, 2015 Today was a day off for me so I shot Outer Limits so I could spend as much time as needed since this would be the first time shooting my open gun on this stage. As a quick warm-up I decided to shoot at the plate rack which had a couple of plates up from the Outer Limits box which put it 37 yards away ... 2 shots - 2 plates knocked down ... nice to know my STI is still zeroed ... Cold match run with my STI was: 17.74 secs. Shot an additional 21 strings with an average time of: 5.94 secs. Slowest was a 7.58 (3 misses) & fastest was a 5.15. had only 3 strings with 1 miss & no M/U shot. Also ran 2 strings in speed mode with an ave time of 4.25 secs (3 hits each time) Switching to rimfire I ran 28 runs. Cold match run was: 15.42 secs. Ave time for all runs was 4.84 secs. Only 2 runs had misses. Ran 3 strings in speed mode with an average time of 3.75 secs w/3 hits each time. At my comfortable match pace I could crank out 4.75 sec runs all day long. When I pushed to exit as I was shooting #2 and start shooting #4 after my first foot entered the box but before my 2nd foot hit the ground I was able to do 4.45 & 4.34 sec runs. Can't do that consistently yet but it's coming along. I initiate movement with a left foot crossover step which allows my 2nd step with my right foot to land just outside the left edge of the center box. Then, as my left foot crosses and plants in the box I'm able to start shooting as my right foot is coming down. Training for this stage is coming along quite well - better than I had expected since I don't get to shoot this all year. I think a big part of this is because I know the plates are at long distances & there is movement involved I'm not trying to rush but instead make sure I see what is necessary before breaking each shot. I need to translate this to my other stages as well. I think for Wed I'm going to shoot Smoke & Hope since I don't typically spend much time training on that but I need to work on my new shooting order. Last week I shot my new order for Speed Option and it worked extremely well and felt comfortable so I plan to stick with that as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted February 21, 2015 Author Share Posted February 21, 2015 (edited) On Wed I managed to get out during lunch for a short session as it was cold & raining in the morning .... decided I needed to shoot Smoke & Hope in training at least once to confirm my new shooting order was good. My cold stage time with my open gun was 12.12 secs. This is 1.4 secs faster then my current best match score. I shot 10 more reps with a total average time of 2.95 secs. Ave draw to the 1st target was in the 1.25 sec range so at least I'm starting to see some improvement in draw times ... On the rimfire side my cold stage run was 8.64 secs. This equals my current match personal best time. Ave run time for the 20 runs I did was 2.14 secs. I had 5 sub 2.05 sec runs but none under 2.0 secs. Time to 1st shot was averaging in the .52 sec range. Although I said I didn't have any sub 2 sec runs I actually had one during the speed mode work .... it was my last run and it was a 5/5 1.71 sec run. What's cool about that is it shows where the limit of my current skill set is. Although I had a couple of misses on plate #5 when my eyes got ahead of the shot trying to get to the stop plate, overall, the new order of 1, 2, 4, 5, S is working well and I plan to stick with it. Today I got out for Five To Go. Cold match run with my open gun was 15.11 secs which is 5.4 secs faster then the one time I've shot this is a match. I've been putting in a a lot of dryfire on this stage since I have not been able to shoot it throughout the year and am looking forward to seeing this stage in my next match next weekend. Ave time for all runs was 3.76 secs. Ave draw time was 1.5 secs. On the rimfire side my cold stage run was 10.32 secs. This is 2.3 secs faster then my personal best which I shot at last year's Nationals. Ave for all 20 runs was 2.47 secs. Ran the 1st 15 runs 5/5 which means I should be able to put down 2.5 sec runs all day at my match pace for this stage. Overall training is going well and I'm right where I want to be. There are 3 more local matches I can shoot before the Nationals. One thing I plan to do differently is the week before I will stop using a timer and just shoot focusing on seeing everything possible while shooting and just forget about the time. At this point I know what times I can lay down for each stage so I just want to really get my subconscious working during training like in a match ... Edited February 21, 2015 by Nimitz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted February 23, 2015 Author Share Posted February 23, 2015 (edited) I managed to forget my C-More adjustment tools at home this morning -- my C-More came loose again so I went to the Loctite .... was planning to zero it first thing this morning. I checked the initial zero and since it was "only" 2 1/2" left & 2 1/2" low at 18 yds I decided to shoot pendulum with it anyway to at least get some training in. Started off with my open gun as usual and my cold match run was 16.66 secs. This was slower than the last time I did this in training but still 3 secs faster then my best match score to date. Overall ave for the 16 runs was 4.42 secs which is .3 secs faster than the last time I trained this. I only had 2 runs with misses as well. On the rimfire side my cold stage run was 12.21 secs which is also a little slower then the last time I trained this but a full 2 secs faster then the overall average for all my 2014 match runs. Ave for the 15 runs was 3.13 secs. Time was slower than in the past but for this session I took M/Us when ever needed ( 3 runs) which obviously added to my average but is more representative of an average match score. Our local SC Match Director is going into the hospital for some surgery and I volunteered to run the March match. I plan to use the opportunity to run a sanctioned match so anyone who wants to can get classified. Since it will be our last local match before the Nationals I'm going to try and run all 8 stages as well. Our largest bay in our AA is 35 yds to the berm and should be wide enough to be able to set Outer Limits & Speed Option up side by side. I'll just have one squad on that bay at a time & they can shoot both stages. I'll also leave the stage in front of it open at the start so that there should be no bogging down. Should be fun. It will also be my first time using EZ Steel so if anyone has any practical advice about that s/w they want to impart to me I'm all ears ... Edited February 23, 2015 by Nimitz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted February 28, 2015 Author Share Posted February 28, 2015 Well I just got back from shooting a SC match at a range I normally don't go to ... and while I'm glad I shot the match, I won't be going back ... there were just to many issues to make the 170 mile round trip worth it on a regular basis. First off was the cost, there was no discount for shooting a 2nd gun and the match fee was a little pricey for only 5 stages. Then there were the stages themselves. Only one stage was setup accurately. For Smoke & Hope the targets were several feet closer together than they should have been. On Pendulum the stage was set at 14 yds not 18 yds rendering it basically useless. On Roundabout, plate one was a good 4' farther left then it should be and on 5 To Go every target was 4 yds short except the stop plate. Also, on every stage where there was a plate next to a side berm they were only 3 1/2' - 4' tall making it impossible to index correctly. There must be some range policy because they refused to have any target longer than 14 yds even though the bays could easily accommodate them. I talked with someone who shoots there regularly;y and he said they never change the stages. Not surprising I guess since the stages they don't shoot all have long targets -- Speed Option, Outer Limits &Showdown. Needless gto say I won't be talking about my times from this match since no of them really have much bearing on anything. I actually shot my open gun fairly well and I on rimfire side I identified a couple of things I need to address in the next 2 weeks I'll post some results from my last 2 training sessions this week tonight instead ... right now I need to put in some dryfire on the correct stage layouts & distances and just put this one behind me ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted March 2, 2015 Author Share Posted March 2, 2015 shot Showdown on Wed. Ave for 15 open runs was 3.56 secs. cold stage run was 13.85 secs. on the rimfire side my cold stage run was 9.35 secs. ave for all 22 runs was 2.25 secs. during speed mode training my runs averaged 1.87 secs with 4 hits. I also did a 1.68 sec 5/5 sec run which represents an alltime best for me ... On Fri I decided to train Roundabout since I had completly changed the way I shoot this and needed to verify I was comfortable shooting it in a match. Cold stage run with my open gun was 13.18 secs. Ave time for all runs was 3.19 secs with 2 sub 3 sec runs. draw time averaged 1.47 secs. on the rimfire side my cold stage run was 8.74 secs. ave for all runs was 2.27 sec. first shot averaged .66 secs even though it doesn't mean much I did check out my scores from Sat's match ... I ended up winning the centerfire match and finishing 3rd overall with my rimfire gun. i was 1.5 secs behind the winner but had 9 secs in penalties .... looking back on my last several matches I've noticed a trend in rimfire where I am having one or more stages every match with relatively serious issues. I think I've traced the issue to the dreaded 'trying to hard' becuase I know I should be fast with my rimfire gun. On the open side I'm shooting very consistent with my times coming down each match. This is because I currently don't have any expectations since I haven't been shooting open very long and don't 'expect' to be very fast. in order to combat this between now and the Nationals I'm going to stop using the timer during training and just shoot, working on seeing what I need to see and just calling every shot. this is something Brian says he used to do just before SC matches so hopefully this will help me as well. we'll see how it goes tomorrow morning ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToddKS Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 I am interested to hear how working without the timer goes for you. I am trying the same with my dry fire right now as I think I was doing some rushing as well and not being fully honest with my sight pictures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted March 4, 2015 Author Share Posted March 4, 2015 (edited) for dryfire i've backed off the partime by .2-.3 secs which enables me to not worry about beating the timer .... yeaterday was my first 'no timer session' (shooting Accelerator) and the results were startling ... on the open side I went 60/60 on 12 runs. On the rimfire side I shot the 1st 3 runs clean, missed plate #4 on the next run & missed plate 4 again on the next run. At that point I stopped, and took a quick break to get refocused and then proceeded to go 100/100 on the next 20 runs. I was not slowing down either but rather only pulling the trigger when my sights told me it was good - a very different approach. the most important thing was how I felt during the runs ... there was this sureal feeling of calmness when I was shooting ... I KNEW I was going to hit every plate during the run. There was no concern and no trying. Since I didn't care what the timer said I was just shooting ... I think this was the 1st time I've ever felt this way since I started action shooting in Jan 2012. I think this is called an epiphany .... Even though my times are probably slightly slower on a 'per run' basis, overall my stage time is lower since I'm not having to do any M/U shots or the dreaded match ending penalty. Every M/U shot in in a match where the run counts is easily an additional .3 secs. If I have an average of 3 misses per stage that's over 7 secs slower for the match! Need to remember my own advice: SC is only about 3 things: fast draw, fast transitions & NEVER MISS .... Tomorrow I'll be shooting Pendulum and I'm pretty excited to continue with this method of training ... Edited March 4, 2015 by Nimitz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZackJones Posted March 4, 2015 Share Posted March 4, 2015 Forget EzSteel use an iPhone or IPad and do everything on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted March 5, 2015 Author Share Posted March 5, 2015 what application do i use for my Ipad? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted March 5, 2015 Author Share Posted March 5, 2015 shot Pendulum this morning again without using a timer except for a start signal ... went 60/60 with my open gun, had 1 miss, then went 20/20 to finish. On the rimfire side after the first 2 clean runs I started missing targets low even though I was sure I called a good shot. Stopped, got out my bench rest & sure enough by c-more was shooting dead on in windage and over 5" low at 18 yds. A few quick adjustments and back to shooting .... did 15 more runs going 75/75 ... just amazing. Can't wait to apply this 2 my last 2 matches before the Nationals ... just shoot and stop caring about results .... i've just modified my pre shoot mental program so that the last thing I say before getting into the ready position is: " 5 for 5" that's the only thing I want my conscious mind to think about while shooting ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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