Abso's Lament

[Absocold]

I grew up out in the woods of central Florida in cattle country. At the age of six I was given a ten pump BB rifle and told not to shoot anything that belonged to someone. At eight years old I was given a .22 rifle. No kids near my age for miles to play with. What's a boy to do all day? Shoot. I went shooting. For hours every day. Then I joined the Navy as a Gunners Mate. Yep, more guns. During my eight years I was an armorer, depot level gunsmith, rangemaster, marksmanship instructor and designated marksman.

After the Navy I worked for a while as a gunsmith and rangemaster for a local shop, but the pay for that sort of thing just about anywhere is terrible so I found more lucrative work. While not "in the biz" anymore, I still did gun work for people, handloaded my own ammo and went to the range for fun.

Well, I got bored. Needed some competition. Tried trap shooting, got bored. Tried local bullseye matches, boring. Wait, I tried a little IPSC in the early 90's, that was fun. Why not do that again? And that's how I ended up here, doing research on how to get started in action pistol shooting.

Oh boy, which class? I have guns that would work for Single Stack and Production, a few mods to another would work for Limited, but I want to jump straight into the deep end of the pool so I don't get bored again. OPEN!

I attended the Nationals in Frostproof, FL to see what I'm up against. Wow, that pool is full of sharks! I'm going to need a good gun for this. What does a good one cost? OUCH. Ok, how much to build one myself? Geez, at the price for all the pieces parts to make my own I could just buy a Trubor instead. Ask around on the forums. Everyone says, "Just buy a good used gun to start". Almost immediately someone offers to sell me a gently used STI Grandmaster at a fantastic price. Done. Spend a few days researching gear, buy a rig. Work up a major load. Pay my dues to join USPSA. Read the rulebook. Twice. Read the "Match Screwups" forum here to learn from others on what not to do. Practice for a week with the new gun. Whelp, better go to a match to see what I need to be working on.

Which brings me to today. A little club near St. Augustine, Florida called SAPSA hosts a monthly USPSA match. I tell them I'm a virgin and they say the first time is free. I like these guys already. They have a quick safety brief for everyone, then the RSO pulls me aside for a new shooter in-depth safety brief and quick overview of match rules. Nice, easy and laid back but still very safety concious, I like it.

Small but nice facility, interesting stages, staff's on the ball. My only gripe (a minor one to be sure) was that two of the stages had shots that were particularly awkward for a lefty with no comparatively hard shots for the righties. On one I had to decide whether to touch a barricade with my arm and risk a bracing call or lean so far out I risked falling over a drum. I almost decided to shoot that one weak-handed but in the end I risked the fall. Gotta risk it for the biscuit!

They tell me to pick any squad I want so I pick the smallest one figuring we'd have more time on each stage without being rushed, which turned out to be true. However, it turns out that my squad's first stage is the classifier. So. The first time I pull the trigger at my first action pistol match in over 20 years is on the classifier. CRAP.

Ok, no pressure. I'll just do what I always do, take my time and get a perfect score. It's hard to beat a guy who shoots bullseyes all day, right? Right?!

So the good news is that it's a pretty easy classifier. Paper Poppers: https://www.uspsa.org/classifiers/03-05.pdf. The really good news is that I got a clean run and all A's. The bad news is that even though I thought I was decently fast, I was actually so colossally slow that I scored as a C shooter. 10.67 seconds = 4.68 hit factor = 44.99% = C.

And the rest of the match went the same. Shooting all A's but taking twice as long to run the stage as the master level shooters means I scored really poorly. I didn't realize just how much the speed mattered until the match results were posted. If it were a bullseye match I would have beaten everyone there or darn near it. Well, guess what? This wasn't a bullseye match. Shooting A's helps, but speed matters more. A lot more. No one told me. Everyone said, "Just take your time and get good hits". I think they were just worried about a virgin who showed up with an Open gun doing something unsafe. I came in dead last for Open division. After a couple stages someone should have told me, "You're doing great but you need to speed it up. A bunch."

Oh well, there weren't any prizes on the line so I guess it's no big deal. I got a match under my belt and learned what I need to work on to get better, so mission accomplished. Even better, I had a blast. The people were all friendly and having fun, the staff was excellent and not one harsh word from anyone all day.

A good day at the range.

[Hi-Power Jack]

The ONLY thing you have to remember your first match is:

SAFETY ...

Of course, 2nd and 3rd is:

SAFETY, and

SAFETY.

Fourth most important thing, of course, is:

ACCURACY.

So, you nailed it. :bow:

Now when you go to practice again, you'll realize that you want to speed

it up just a little at a time.

You'll come in last in OPEN for a while (don't ask how I know).

Good luck - nice shoot up there - hope you continue to enjoy it.

If you get the chance, come on down to Central Florida R&P near the

Orlando airport - lots of good shooting go on around here.

[Absocold]

Second match today. The fellas at my first match invited me out to a new club starting up, Ancient City Practical Shoots Association near St. Augustine, FL.

Another nice setup. A lot of the same folks from last week. More fun times and good people. Stages were very interesting and entertaining. And no weird "screw the southpaws" shots, even on a stage named Watch It Lefties.

I feel like I did better this time. I went a lot faster and tried not to worry about shooting all A's. But yet again, over thirty years of training spent on getting perfect shots is making me take too long engaging targets. I need to work on making tracks and gunsmoke, not bullseyes.

And I screwed the pooch on the classifier again. Clipped a no-shoot and got a procedural for it. That's two C classifications in a row. Pretty sure that if I keep this up I'll be getting dirty looks for sandbagging. My scores should improve dramatically once I get over looking for ten rings on targets close enough to spit on.

[Hi-Power Jack]

How did you do, overall? Last in OPEN again?

[Absocold]

Out of seven Open shooters, I came in fifth. The two guys I came ahead of were both unclassified Super Seniors shooting minor, so no great accomplishment there - except I can say I didn't come in completely last this time.

One of those guys was on my squad. He was using a single stack .45acp with no mag funnel, a single port compensator and iron sights. Reminded me of IPSC guns from the 80's. I couldn't figure his shooting style out at all. He didn't lock either of his arms out, had the gun very close to his face, but was shooting exceptionally well anyway. Dude was just churning out A's all day long. Lucky for me he wasn't in the least hurry and had to reload a lot because our point scores were almost identical.

Side note, it was stupidly fun shooting a stage and hearing people behind me wondering if I was ever going to reload. 9mm big stick = hilarious.

[RPatton]

Buy a timer to practice with and speed up enough to shoot some 'C's' and 'D's. That way you will know that you are going just a little too fast.

As an old GM you should have enough gun handling skills so all you need is some speed.

I found that one way to help fix the "screw the lefties" setup is to volunteer to set up a stage.

Most of the stages I set up had movement from right to left.

If there were barricades that you had to shoot around then you could bet that 'righties' would have an equally hard shot from the left as I would have from the right.

The downside is that people bitched about it.

The upside is that I got to tell them that the easy way to fix their problem with my stages was to come and set up their own stage. Help is always appreciated and I never was turned down when offering to set up a stage. The setup may not have been to their liking but you can bet that it was equally difficult for everyone.

[Absocold]

Just competed at my third match, SEPSA in Fernandina Beach, FL. Checking the scores it seems stage 5 got thrown in the trash, scores only listed for stages 1-4. There were 49 shooters with 7 of them (including me) in Open division. Interesting range, it's located in the back of someone's private junkyard but it's a decent setup and the people were great.

So I came in dead last in Open again. Checking results it looks like I have sped up my game by a good bit but it hurt my accuracy quite a lot. Instead of outshooting everyone spectacularly but at a turtle's pace, I was shooting a little below average at a medium-ish pace. The top shooters were 25-30% faster than me and shooting a bit more accurately. No problems with safety, gun handling, reloading, procedures or process. I just need to practice doing what I'm doing but doing it all faster. Once I get more comfortable shooting at a run, my accuracy should come back.

Shot a solid C on the classifier. That makes a C at my first match, a D at my second for clipping a No-Shoot and now another C. Not sure how I feel about that. I'm quite used to being the best shot everywhere I go, trying this action shooting thing has been very humbling so far. Overall, I think I like the challenge. I finally have motivation to go practice.

On the way home I stopped at my local range and tried out my brand shiny new Pocket Pro II timer. Firing at a 6" plate 15 yards away to make sure I wasn't just flinging rounds downrange but making decently accurate shots, I was able to time a few critical areas.

Draw and fire one shot from "hands up" position: 1.64-1.75 seconds. Wow, that's just terrible. I see a lot of drawing practice in my future.

Fire two shots on same target: .20-.22 split times. Pretty sure this needs to be .15 or better to be competitive.

Fire two shots on different targets side by side: .40-.44 split times. Not sure where this needs to be but I want to note it so I can track my progress.

I know that part of my problem with the splits is that my gun isn't shooting as flat as it could be. The T1 comp on my Grandmaster doesn't seem to be working as well as bigger/longer comps do. I've spent a LOT of time and effort getting it as flat as possible. The gun recovers well but the dot is leaving the glass. Trying to decide if I should go ahead and sort that out immediately so I'm not practicing with the wrong setup. Thundercomp on a Trubore blank has been recommended highly for my gun.

Edited April 11, 2016 by Absocold