2001 LimNats

[ErikW]

Sunday morning

Registration: Lots of unclaimed name badges. USPSA is very accomodating with squad changing.

Shooters meeting: Voigt explains why USPSA chose to proceed with the match despite the events earlier in the week. I don't feel he needs to justify his decision to anybody, especially 250 shooters who went through a lot to get here. He has interesting thoughts on the real reasons why the professional stick-and-ball sports aren't proceeding.

Sunday afternoon

Squad 23 assembles. Several Masters, one foreign Unclassified, one newly-minted B, and the rest A. I feel sorry for the B shooter 'cause I think he's going to chase us and Miss a lot.

Chronograph: I make 168 with one slow shot. With just a tenth more of Clays, Steve makes 177. Dave Uchida (N320?) needs the extra shots to squeak by at 166.

Stage 1: A basic field course with a good amount of movement, but not much shooting on the move. Nolan flings a miss through a "hardcover" barrel. I drop 9 points a little off pace, but glad to get the first one over without drawing blood. #65 at 75.29%

Stage 2: An unremarkable course except for the start position, napping at a table. Nobody tells me that my sunglasses will fog up as I wait for the beep. I'm on my pace but I drop 5 points. #35 at 76.89%

Stage 3: A simple speed shoot around both sides of a barricade. I shoot left side, inside out, then right side, outside in. I take some extra time to acquire the right target after acquiring only berm. I clean it with all As and start to feel good that I'm shooting my pace, nobody else's, and that only took me three stages to get to my desired level of accuracy. #22 at 79.73%

Stage 4: Get off the bed, get the gun from the trunk, shoot an array with an activator, then try for two disappearing sliders overlapped by a no-shoot. Then run around and hose a few more targets. I shot the first two arrays well but dropped points on the close run-by targets then took a bunch of extra shots as I got excited on the last couple of close targets. #108 at 71.26%

Monday

Rain during the night. Steve and I buy ponchos and umbrellas. That keeps the rain from falling.

Open trunk at 7:30 AM and realize holster rig is in the motel room. Drive back to Quincy, retrieve rig, return to PASA at about 8:30 AM to catch up with the squad. I shoot 5 and 6 in reverse order.

Stage 6: It may be called Reload Standards but that's just a trick. For 9 rounds at 15 yards it's about getting the points, not speedy reloads. I shoot 8 beautiful Alphas and one amazing uncalled Miss (on the draw/reload target). Shit. #171 at 49.66%

Stage 5: Start changing a flat tire, then engage four targets. Two are close lay-downs through the car window and two are out beyond 20 yards and spread apart. I drop a C up close and a D out far. #95 at 68.76%

Stage 7: The first of the frustration stages, designed so it can't be shot efficiently. I get all Alphas but end up with a slow time because of extra shots on steel. #83 at 68.23%

Stage 8: Big frustration stage. Start in a recliner facing uprange, grab gun from table, and engage four steel, a static paper, and a drop-turner. There's too much to get, with too much indexing, between the activator and the drop-turner, but I'm greedy. I miss a steel and make it up before the drop-turner, which is gone when I finally get to it. Shit. #183 at 51.56%.

Stage 9: Another damn ports stage, with lots of discussion about the best way to shoot it. My way is pretty fast, with all Alphas. That feels good. #18 at 84.15%

Stage 10: Another ports stage, but at least we get to move downrange on this one. And we finally have to reload. I drop 6 C. #41 at 81.46%

What looked like rain turned out to be a warm and humid day. I regretted wearing pants instead of shorts.

Tuesday

I make sure I've got my holster today.

Stage 11: Start holding a garden rake, sidestep to the left for another frustrating array including a drop-turner. The best way to shoot it is steel, activating steel, two paper overlapped by a no-shoot, then drop turner. But do you want to risk the shots around the no-shoot? The middle array has a couple half-targets behind a steel wall which prevent me from shooting it on the move, but they don't stop BE forums member Even. I drop 10 points for 42 at 75.63%.

Stage 12: One of the big field courses requiring a reload. More ports, including frustrating narrow gaps. Two arrays of steel and clamshells (bear traps) with no-shoots. I shoot the first couple arrays great but fall apart in the first clamshell array for some unknown reason and go downhill from there. At the second clamshell array, I center-punch the no-shoot and take a slow make-up shot. Slow, 4 points down besides the penalty. Shit. #133 at 65.71%

Stage 13: Land mine stage. Kneel and pick up gun from in front of you, and engage three targets. The middle target had a no-shoot covering 4/5ths of its A zone. Just something to try to take points away from the unwary. I shoot all As with a slow time (gotta work on picking up the gun, it's killing me at this match). #54 at 78.60%

Stage 14: Another one of the few big field courses. It's got a frustrating array where a steel activates both a swinger and a drop-out, where you can't do anything but wait for them to appear or move to another port and hope the swinger is in a good position when you get there. It ends with an array including a drop-turner, activated by one of two partial poppers behind a steel car. I make a sweet shot on the move to take the first popper but miss the other popper. Kind of slow, down 8 points. Hey I got my hits on the swinger with iron sights! #57 at 67.17%

The rain began at about this point in the day.

Stage 15: Another frustratingly set up stage with a drop-turner. This one had steel and poppers from the first port, then the drop-turner was through a narrow gap you ran by as you moved to the right port. It was hard to acquire the drop turner and hard to time it right. I nailed the stage with a sweet time and good hits and I was feeling great until we found an Alpha-Mike target. A totally uncalled miss torpedoed a top 16 run. Shit! #62 at 66.13%

With stages 15 and 16 together in the same bay, they dragged on and the rain made it worse. The match staff halted all shooting at 10:30 for another moment of silence to honor the Americans killed on September 11. Some of us took part of that time to also think of non-Americans killed.

Stage 16: More sideways movement along a wall. A small little port made it hard to acquire targets in the final array, which was popper-paper-popper-paper-popper. Unlike most people I didn't zig-zag my gun up and down, I took the poppers in a row, then moved up and took the paper. Six points down. #70 at 76.27%

After showing clear on stage 16, I run back to cover from the rain and leap onto rain-slicked 2x4s with my new cleats. Bad idea. Almost ended my week prematurely.

Stage 17: The mother of all field courses, this is obviously going to end the dreams of a lot of shooters. No wonder the super squad ends here. Standing in a pool of water, under pouring rain, I place my weak hand on the wet surface of the bar and my strong hand on the wet beer mug handle. I pull the beer mug to activate a quickly-appearing swinger, which I manage to perforate twice despite my slow draw and wet hands. I swing over to one of the static paper and take the other as I back out of the position. I move and swing left over to Pepper poppers interspersed with non-falling hardcover poppers. On the move, I take the first popper head shot between the hardcover. I make short work of the rest, then as I wait for the slider (similar to stage 4) to appear, I pop a static on the move before it becomes concealed by the wall. The slider appears and I nail both targets on either side of the no-shoot, on the move. I reload and shout, "Woo-hoo!" 'cause I'm having fun with a can of whoop ass in the rain. On the left, I get a popper, activator popper, static paper overlapped by a no-shoot, and leave on the bobber target, which is bobbing below its steel wall. I plug it with a high A and an A/B hoper as I leave. At the final array, I mis-time it and the bobber disappears as I swing on to it. I have to wait for it to appear and burn precious time. Still, it's not a bad time, but it could have been a great time. Somehow I drop 13 points. But I got my hits on the last swinger of the match! #13 at 78.05%

Stage 18: More @#$%! ports and a grab-your-gun start, with a 180 trap for variety. Make that a grab-your-wet-gun start. A couple hardcovered partials and a couple no-shoot-covered partials. I go down 5 points. #44 at 77.85%

At this point I feel my fate is sealed for about a 75% match overall. I tell everybody I'm going to make up time on the standards.

Stage 19: A quick, close hoser with a frustrating ending array including a drop-turner. I screw the pooch again on the steel and don't get a chance at the appearing target. Shit. Only down 2 points otherwise. #124 at 69.08%

Stage 20: Ah, the Five Second Standards. Somehow, the targets seem to appear for more than five seconds. (I guess our brains react more quickly to the visual start signal than to the audible signal.) I don't get all the shots in on the reload strings. The first target has a shotgun pattern but the other targets have what one might call groups. 81 of 120 points for #53 at 72.32%

We get the hell out of the rain and mud and look forward to the Open match.

Wednesday

Results are up. I get 48th place at 79%, only 21% under my current classification. I snag a C-More from the prize table.

(Edited by Erik Warren at 4:15 pm on Sep. 25, 2001)