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Zack's Match Summaries


ZackJones

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I think front sight post is what is keeping me from advancing. Most of my great classifieds are close targets and I am getting average - low on anything 30 yards or greater. It sucks being in Hawaii and not able to practice but hopefully I will pick it back up. Again we need to get out and practice.

As for steel challenge setup help you can make me get out there anytime I am in town. If you want to pick up my midget and take him with, please feel free too.

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Went to the range today for two reasons (1) I forgot some paperwork at the range yesterday that I have to have and (2) to get in some live fire practice. I decided to try the Four Aces drill from Ben Stoeger's Skills and Drills book. That Stoeger character is a devious one. He manged to create a single drill that proceeded to crush me :(. My draws were slow, reloads slower, and split times varied greatly. If you're not familiar with Four Aces the way it works is you setup a target (distance varies - I used 25 feet today). Your task is to draw, fire two alpha's, reload and then fire two more. Goal time is 2.3 seconds which I chose to ignore right off the bat because I knew I couldn't reach it. Instead I set the timer for regular mode and had my wife run it for me. I did 9 runs starting with hands relaxed at sides and 6 from surrender. My fastest run from relaxed was 4.23 seconds but I had 2 alpha and two charlie. My best run from surrender where I did have 4 alpha was a 5.12 run. From surrender my best run was 4.29 but again I had two alpha and two charlie. My best four alpha run was 4.95.

While doing the drill Donna said that I have a hitch in my draw so I had her film me while I did it a couple of times and she's right. I do. I don't have any idea when I started doing it but it's something I'll be working on in dry fire all week to try and get rid of. I guess I'll be either watching myself in the mirror or filming my dry fire sessions to try and figure out exactly what's going on. Clearly I have LOTS of work ahead of me.

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The next time you try the drill you might try using the par time mode and just set the time longer. Start with a setting that gives you plenty of time to be successful and then gradually dial it down and see how low you can go.

I have been using this approach on some drills using my phone ap (really need to buy a real timer some day...soon) with good results. It allows me to feel some success and then gradually push myself. Not original thought on my part. I picked this idea up from one of TGO's videos on youtube. I believe he was shooting Bill drills.

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I've seen that video. In dry fire I do use a par time but since this was my first time shooting this drill I wanted to see how fast I could do it without setting a par time I know I couldn't make. I'll probably set it for 4.5 seconds next time and see how things go. It was a eye opening experience that's for sure.

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Shot steel challenge match on Saturday and show video of me shooting all of the stages with my production and open gun. Boy do I have a lot of work to do but by recording it I can clearly see where I need the most work (1) Draws for some reason my left arm just flails around in the air like a broken chicken wing on the draw. I should be bringing it over towards the gun to get my grip established sooner. (2) I'm sitting on the sight picture way too long. I shoot open and then production guns back to back and noticed with both that I would get the sight picture and then eventually fire the shot. I'm losing a lot of time I need to start breaking the shots sooner. Steel isn't like USPSA - it's either hit or miss so I don't get any better score for hitting the center of the plate. (3) Indexing from target to target. I worked on this hard in practice yesterday and I think it's going to make a difference. I've heard you look at the next target and then bring your gun to where your eyes were looking. In the past I was indexing my eyes and gun at the same time but after practicing yesterday I'll be indexing with my eyes first and then gun. I'm certain this will help as I was dumping 16 rounds into 3 different targets at various distances and getting all alpha hits.

Okay enough about what I didn't do so well. I did manage to drop several seconds from my best times on 4 of the stages we shot Saturday.

For Smoke and Hope my time dropped from 16.00 to 15.91.

For Accelerator my time dropped from 26.10 to 24.20.

For Speed Option my time dropped from 35.79 to 29.18.

For Roundabout my time dropped from 23.46 to 20.29.

I'm slowly but surely making my way towards B class. I need to trim off another 26 seconds to make B class. I think that's going to be my goal for 2014. To make B class in steel challenge.

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Nice improvement.

Have you mapped out your goal times for the 6 classifier stages so you know what time you need on each stage to reach your aggregate goal?

Thanks I'm trying to catch up with you :).

I hadn't mapped out goal times but after reading your post and before replying I did a little checking. On average I need a 19.1 time for all stages to be at or below 115 seconds.

5 To Go - 23.64

Showdown - 24.00

Smoke and Hope - 15.91

Accelerator - 24.20

Pendulum - 32.96

Roundabout - 20.29

I'm below the goal time for Smoke and Hope and very close on Roundabout. Clearly Pendulum has given me fits so I'm going to have to figure out why I shoot that stage so poorly.

Thanks for the suggestion. I know where I can make some good improvement next month as long as I shoot Pendulum better than I have been.

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Pendulum has been a problem for me too. I feel your pain.

How many rounds fired do you average per run on Pendulum? I have been averaging 8-10 rounds per run (sometimes more :blush:).

No clue. It's been a couple of months since we've shot it but I'll film it next month so I'll know. I guess I need to go over to the steel challenge section and read how folks prefer to shoot Pendulum and see what kind of pointers I can pick up.

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I had a bit of a breakthrough in dry fire practice last night. If you listen to Ben Stoeger's podcast he recently answered a question regarding target focus versus front site focus (I asked the question). In his response he said to work on the dot drill to force yourself to do front sight focus. Last night I stapled the dot target to the white side of the target instead of the tan side. Doing so made me really have to concentrate on the front sight and not let my eyes get pulled into the target. I found myself still trying to do target focus instead of front sight focus. On a whim I put on my computer glasses which I knew would cause the target to be blurry but would give me a clear front sight. Presto. Problem solved. I started doing repetitions while wearing my glasses and I was getting a clear front sight picture every time. I started out with a 1.5 second par time and by the end of the session I was down to 1.2 and getting a nice sight picture. I don't know if I'll shoot the match with my computer glasses on but I'll probably try it in practice.

Production Optics!!!

As for you comparisons to Davin, it seems you really lose time on the field courses. Most likely hanging too long in a position and not being ready to shoot entering the next position. MFCEO's DVD and books are good for this stuff

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Production Optics!!!

As for you comparisons to Davin, it seems you really lose time on the field courses. Most likely hanging too long in a position and not being ready to shoot entering the next position. MFCEO's DVD and books are good for this stuff

Production Optics Rules! :)

I need to get Donna to come to the next match and film me. That way I can see where I'm messing up. BTW I tried the computer glasses at the range and didn't like them. They are okay for dry fire but not so much for live fire.

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  • 1 month later...

This past weekend was our monthly steel challenge match. It was a mixture of good and bad.

Goals prior to the match where (1) shoot one-for-one on all steel and (2) beat my son.

Goal 1 - Didn't happen. No were close but it was fun to try.

Goal 2 - Did happen but only because he royally screwed the pooch on Pendulum. For his first steel challenge match he shot extremely well. I am going to have a tough time keeping up/ahead of him. Of the 5 stages we shot (Accelerator, Pendulum, Smoke and Hope, 2-2-1 and Showdown) he won two placed second on one, third on two and 4th on one. For me shooting production I had 2 second places and 3 third places. Overall I finished 2nd in Production. Shooting Open I actually one a stage! I had 1 first place, and 4 second place and placed second overall.

The stage 2-2-1 was a made up stage that contained 3 targets. A 10-inch pate, a 12-inch plate and 18x24 rectangle. The course of fire was to shoot each round plate twice and the 18x24 rectangle served as the stop plate. The stage was a lot of fun so I'll probably setup something similar in the future.

I'm moving closer to making B class but I really wish Steel Challenge was classified by division like USPSA is. At the match I had a great run on The Pendulum - 21.64 (which is still slow compared to others). That was a huge drop in time for me. The only problem - I shot that time with my Open gun not my Production gun. With the exception of Pendulum my times were pretty close between the open and production guns. I'm not sure what to make of that other than I'm equally slow with each one? Below are the times for the stages. Open time is listed first followed by production time.

Accelerator - 27.42/28.95

The Pendulum - 21.64*/35.74

Smoke & Hope - 18.79/17.66

2-2-1 - 19.26/21.24

Showdown - 21.52*/24.30

* Personal Best Times

I don't know if it's hurting shooting open and production back to back like I do at the match. I'm shooting the Pro-Am in Georgia in November and I'll be shooting open and iron sights there so I plan to stick with shooting both at least through that match. After that I may just shoot Production so I can continue to compete with my son and start shooting rimfire iron sights instead of Open. That will help me prepare for NSSF matches that I hope to start hosting come January 2015.

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Congrats on the personal bests. Those are always nice.

As for switching back and forth between the irons and the dot, I do the same when shooting my rimfire rifle back to back with my production pistol. I don't see it as a problem for me, but I always shot the iron sights first on the stage, then the dot. Were I to try the other way I can see where that could present possible difficulty.

Edited by ToddKS
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Something I'm going to try is shooting all of the stages with one gun and then going back through and shooting them with the second and see if that makes any difference. That's one of the benefits of being the MD. I can pretty much do whatever I want :).

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USPSA match yesterday and it was a fun one. I managed to beat the two other C class production shooters on my squad and finished as 3rd C but I still got beat by a girl :).

Hit wise I did much better than last month. Speaking of last month I sucked so bad at that match I didn't even write up a summary of it. I guess I had an off day but that match really had me questioning if I wanted to continue shooting USPSA matches in the future. Although it's not an apples-to-apples comparison here's a breakdown of hits for the two matches:

Sep - A/B/C/D/M

65/3/29/15/7

Oct - A/B/C/D/M

71/2/28/2/3

Still too many C's but less D's and less mikes so I am improving. I still need to assess what I want to do in the future. Right now I'm leaning towards concentrating on steel challenge and cutting back on USPSA matches. With some of the national matches being in Atlanta though I may end up switching divisions and trying to go shoot the nations next year. I'm hoping to get to work the match especially if Ken Nelson runs it again. I'd like to learn more about PractiScore from him.

Speaking of PractiScore I brought my Android and iPad to the match and used them both for pulling scores as I have beta versions installed on them. I'm impressed with the improvements that have been made in the sync functionality on the Android version.

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Worked the local GSSF match over the weekend. It was my first time experiencing one. I didn't shoot it but after running a bunch of shooters Fri/Sat/Sun I'll be shooting it next year. Glock told us after the finished tearing down that we ran 583 guns through the match which was great turnout. We had 600 pre-registered.

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GSSF really got me started with "shooting a timer", which then in turn got me into USPSA.

I work a local match and I've traveled around to some of the others over the last couple of years. The local one is a great way to scrounge brass... I had almost a five gallon bucket full after the match this spring.

I'm also waiting on my prize gun from the last match. GSSF isn't an impatient man's game.

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GSSF really got me started with "shooting a timer", which then in turn got me into USPSA.

I work a local match and I've traveled around to some of the others over the last couple of years. The local one is a great way to scrounge brass... I had almost a five gallon bucket full after the match this spring.

I'm also waiting on my prize gun from the last match. GSSF isn't an impatient man's game.

We ended up with very little brass. They pooled it from all stages and it didn't get divided up very well. I made out like a bandit at Area 6 though so I'm good on brass.

You're right about GSSF being slow. I was surprised when they said final results in 5 to 6 weeks. Seriously? I guess I am really spoiled by PractiScore.

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Over the weekend I shot the Autism Charity match hosted at the Hawkeye Gun Club near Lake Lure, NC. Given that it was a fun match I decide to forgo the production gun (especially since I traded it on the way up there -- details to follow) and shot Open Minor with my Core. Even though production optics was voted down by the BoD I thought I'd give it a try for the hell of it. I did load mags to capacity instead of just 10/11 so that made stage planning a little different for me. It's actually kind of nice not having to plan a reload every time you move :). For my first match USPSA shooting Open I did so-so. I had too many mikes and times were slow because it was taking too long to find the dot. It funny that during steel challenge matches I don't have too much trouble finding and keeping it but when you throw in moving it adds another level of difficulty to shooting. I shot prone for the first time ever in a match so that was kind of fun. Jim McBurnett and the rest of the folks from Hawkeye put on a great match even though Jim is a devious bastard when it comes to stage design. I completely missed one target on one stage and ate the FTE and two mikes. I NEVER saw the target during the walk through or while watching other shooters shoot it. Now I know why others were posting up in a different position than I was :). The match raised over $5,000 for an Autism camp so it was well worth the time and expense to travel to it and shoot it. I did pick up 500 bullets from the prize table so that was a sweet bonus.

Regarding the production gun - after working the GSSF match I decided I wanted to try shooting some next year. While checking the Carolina Shooters Club forum I saw an ad for a guy with a Glock 35 that was looking to trade for an M&P 9mm. We worked out a deal and I gave him my M&P 9 with 6 mags and he gave me a Glock 35 with 6 mags. My son shoots a Glock 35 and my other two M&P's are .40 S&W so it only makes sense from a reloading perspective to switch back to .40 and shoot that one caliber for everything.

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Saturday we hosted our first annual Steel Challenge Monster Match. We shot all 8 stages during the match. We setup 4 stages, shot those, had lunch, and then shot the remaining for stages.

The good news - I placed 2nd place in production and beat my brother by 1.02 seconds and yes I have been stressing that I beat him by over a second.

The bad news - we both got beat by a girl :).

I didn't set any new PR's for any of the stages so that kind of sucks. I also made the mistake of shooting a rimfire pistol that wasn't properly sighted in. Originally I thought we would shoot our rimfire pistols in Open but when my brother had issues with is red dot we decided to just shoot irons. Oh well, live and learn. We had a good turn out, lunch, from Subway, was well received and everyone seemed to have a fun time and that's the most important thing.

Looking ahead I need to decide what I'm going to continue to shoot. I'm inclined to switch everything over to open and just shoot that going forward. We'll see but I'm pretty sure that's the direction I'm headed.

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If you decide to go Open are you going to stick with your Core or go a different direction. I have had similar thoughts (I have a Delta Point just sitting around, all I would need is the mount).

Core and save my pennies for a steel master.

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