Johnsons1480's USPSA Range Diary

[wmetzler01]

Although it sucks you don't have a CZ backup, using the glock is better than nothing. Alignment, trigger control, shot calling can all be practiced on the glock.

Hope your gun is fixed soon!

[johnsons1480]

Got the new sight on the gun and got it zeroed and lock tighted after my session. Thanks to Dave at CGW for standing behind his products, and getting me a new sight out so quickly. Had a good day at the range yesterday. Did the dot drill to start, got 2/6 of the dots. I know what the problem is. I draw my focus from the front sight to visually verify my shots every time. I really need to work on maintaining that hard front sight focus with this drill.

Ran the Blake Drill at 10 yards. My best run was 2.07 seconds, 28 points, 13.53 HF. I had some really good runs, and really focused on transitioning with my eyes instead of following the gun. My averages times, points, and hit factors were better than when I ran this at 7 yards the last time I ran it. That feels really good to see marked progress.

Singles at 10 went well too until my rear sight drifted clean over to the right. I wanted to verify zero after the session and lock tight it then, but not locking it down first was a mistake. It didn't cut me too short though. My best run was 1.73 seconds, 15 points, 8.67 HF. It's a little slow, but I felt good about it.

All in all, training is going very well. Dry fire has been happening every day but Sundays. I just did reloads all week last week until I got my sight back and installed. I'm going to be changing things up a little. I emailed Ben Stoeger with some questions and he got back with me. Based on his suggestions, I'll be doing live fire monthly as follows.

Session 1, one marksmanship drill, one to two core USPSA skills drills

Session 2, two field course drills

Session 3, one marksmanship drill, one to two core USPSA skills drills+

Session 4, two short course drills

I'll pick them out a month at a time, here is what I'm running this month

[johnsons1480]

Haven't posted in here in a while. I have been dry fining and doing live fire practice once a week according to my chart I put out in my last post. I did Easy entry and Easy exit instead of hard, because I felt like it. Fixed time standards B was a complete failure. Shot my best El Prez to date, 4.58 seconds, 52 points, 11.35 HF. It's not a perfect 5 second, 60 point, 12 HF El Prez, but I felt pretty good about it at the time. During four aces that same day, my rear sight started drifting around in the notch. Contacted the manufacturer, and he said it's not the sight, it was my installation job. I don't agree, but he offered to replace it again and I sent him the slide for him to do it this time. I changed out my gear to accommodate my Glock 34 for the last week of practice. Did 4 days of dry fire before doing tight leans and port to port. Man do I suck with that gun. I was actually considering dumping my CZ because I've had so many problems with it, but I can't shoot that Glock to save my life. Hopefully this new rear sight is the last rear sight, and I can put that mess behind me. Didn't get to shoot a match this month. The match got rained out on the 20, and school work got in the way of me shooting the match yesterday. Here's what's up for this month.

That's Drill, Reps, Rounds per Rep. I forgot to include the title bar, but you get the idea.

[johnsons1480]

Practice Update

Shot session 5 and 6 the past 2 weeks. Session 5 was with the Glock. I want to apologize for ever having said anything bad about my CZ. I HATE shooting my Glock now. I dry fired with it, had it on the BOSS hanger, changed over my CR Speed pouches to Glock. Nothing changed except the gun, and I couldn't make it work for me. Got the CZ back for session 6 and I had the best practice I've had in a while. I built a lot of confidence and learned a lot while doing hard shooting on the move. It was painfully hot, so I was dragging ass bad when I got to barricade/wall setup. I stuck it out and pushed through, and I ended up feeling very good about the practice session as a whole. That last practice was 7/10/2015

[johnsons1480]

Match Analysis 7/11/2015

I shot a match and I did not feel good about it at all. I got second place out of 26, but no one of import showed up so that's nothing to be proud of. The guy that beat me was for some reason listed as a D class shooter, but he signed up for the oilfield classic as a B. He shot a 84.64% on the classifier. I got two stage wins. I felt really great while shooting those stages. I felt very good about how I shot one of the other stages I didn't win. The other three were a crap shoot.

Let's start with the classifier, which was my first stage. They changed hammer down to 8:30 instead of 9, so I was 15 minutes late and was rushing. It was The Roscoe Rattle. I shot the first string in under 3 seconds, 2 Cs. Off to a good start. On the second string, I either didn't fully seat my mag or I hit the mag release on my draw and the mag partially dropped out. So, I shot the first shot, then click. I racked the slide (because I had previously been plagued with the light strikes), and I click again. So I smack the mag and rack the slide. Pull the trigger and it goes off, so I put 5 more shots on the left target, mag change, 6 on the right. Ended up with over 13 seconds on the second string. 82 points, 16.47 seconds total, 4.9787 HF, 42.73% on https://azshooters.org/. If that malfunction hadn't happened, I would have smoked that classifier. I'm pissed, but whatever, let's shake it before the next stage.

The second stage was an unloaded holstered start shoot house stage. I felt pretty slow while moving, and got beat by 6 seconds. I had 8 more points than the stage winner. 4th place, 81.68% of winner.

The third stage was interesting. I finally felt like I warmed up a little here. Two texas stars, 8 paper, and two circle steel. Unloaded and holstered with start mag on the barrel, and the rest on your belt. I shot very deliberately and only had one makeup shot on the popper. I chose to eat the reload without moving at the beginning instead of advancing to a position, and I think that's where the 3 people ahead of me beat me. They chose to move, which created another position. It didn't look more efficient to me, but apparently it was. Also, I didn't fully seat the mag on the start and had to tap, rack, bang. I got beat by 3.71 seconds, but I had 2 points on the winner. 90.86% of the winner.

The fourth stage was where I started to feel really good about my shooting. It was a quick stage with a lot of steel, a mover, and some no shoots behind the mini poppers. Really fun stage. The fastest time was 0.84 seconds faster than me, but he had 14 less points and 20 points in penalties. One guy had 99 points and a penalty, I had 97 with no penalties so I had the most points as well.

The fifth stage surprised me when I saw I won it. I shot a piece of square tubing that was part of a wall section and didn't notice, so that bullet never made it to the target resulting in a mike. The highest points were 119, so 15 points better than me but 5.71 seconds slower. The fastest time was 3.09 seconds better than me but with only 88 points.

I was burnt out by the time we got to the 6th stage. I started running again last week outside in the heat, which is going to be crucial to my success for the rest of the summer, so this issue is being addressed. I couldn't get my head into the stage plan or visualization, so I picked the simplest plan I could come up with. For some reason, I decided to change that plan right when I stepped up to the line. I completely skipped a target, racking up 30 penalty points. I shot all As on every other target. I could tell while I was shooting it, I was entirely too deliberate. My transitions were abysmal, and my splits were bad too. I got beat by 4.74 seconds, 70.61% of the winner. If I had engaged the target, add a full second, and two D hits, I would have been 90% of the stage winner in 4th place. I know that's worthless analysis, I'm just doing the math for my edification.

Please understand what I'm about to say isn't me saying, "If I had just done this, I would have won." This is me breaking down what went wrong, and how I can correct it for next time. This match is in the past, and I shot how I shot.

I got second place, but got beat by 79 points for the match. That's a lot of ground to make up, but I can see where I lost a lot of points. On the classifier, I lost 45 points to the winner with that malfunction. I believe I would have beat him on that stage without the malfunction. I feel like my mag wasn't fully seated. I dry fire and live fire too much to have never had a mag drop out before. In the future, I need to be diligent about seating my mags. It hurt me on two stages, and that's an easy fix. I lost 30 points on the last stage by skipping a very easy target. It was 3 yards away. That's 75 point right there. If I didn't do that wrong, the match was up for grabs.

Action Items

I need to tune up my unloaded starts (since they're so popular at this match)

Be diligent about mag seating for loaded holstered starts

I need to get my conditioning to a point where it's easy to endure an 8 stage match in July

[johnsons1480]

Since my shooting year is starting to ramp up for the big match in September, I wanted to do a quick goals update

• Shoot 10,000 rounds in 2015
  • I'm at 6,392 currently. I should eclipse this some time in September
• Shoot 43 sessions of live fire
  • I'm at 20 right now. I have 14 slated between now and the Oilfield Classic match. I will continue to practice after Oilfield Classic until mid November, but I'm not sure if I will hit this goal.
• Dry fire 5 days per week for at least 15 minutes, time away from home excluded
  • I'm going to say I've failed miserably at this as a goal, but I'm happy with my current level of dry fire. I plan to ramp it up the month before Oilfield Classic. I don't think this was a realistic goal for me.
• Shoot 8 or more club matches in 2015
  • I have shot 4 so far. I really need to step up and shoot some more matches this summer
• Shoot one local Level II match
  • Registered for Oilfield Classic September 19-20
• Shoot at an A class level on a classifier by the end of 2015
  • The closest I've been is 70.2701% so far. I'm working on it though.