Dirtypool40

[dirtypool40]

MONSTER 92 shooter local at Titusville today.

I still can't move, but shot conservative points instead, and I think only dropped 2 D's all day. Still my times were slow for the bum leg and the four malfunctions I had from weak mag springs. Yup, it's been 20k+, it's time to change them.

All in all I won limited by 10% and missed beating the open guys by like 16 points.

Congrats to Matt / Blackbird on his match win, he was sssssssssmokin. And yes, PaulW is coming for ALL OF US next match, with his own mags.... be ready.

Edited March 2, 2008 by dirtypool40

[dirtypool40]

Short, indoor local tonight at EOSS. I was down 7 points for three stages total and had the time every stage. Not quite practice, or a real match, but it's shootin' and I need that.

In other news my postcards arrived today, they go out next week, keep your fingers crossed for me.

Reliant_PostCard_Front.pdf

Edited March 6, 2008 by dirtypool40

[dirtypool40]

Nice relaxed practice with Clif and Tami today.

We started off kinda rough shooting crazy plates cold, and I just wasn't feeling it, dropped lots of first shots to slide in with 5 misses total.

Then we set up some paper and did some moving. I still can't blast out, but I had some good runs here and there, and it felt good to work on it; shooting backing out, moving and entering positions.

We ended with the old draw test. I shot an 8.90 total time and dropped two C's. 5.39hf. Slowest draw of .96, fast of .81. Last six draws were .89 or better, and in contrast to the post above, I felt very in control, and was printing a pretty respectable pattern of A's at around .85.

I'm not one to spend all day dry firing for an extra .05 sec (at least not right now) but I might see if I can tighten up the first few and hit that .85 / A average I set as a goal.

[AA-Wolf]

In other news my postcards arrived today, they go out next week, keep your fingers crossed for me.

Nice card, was that the day Matt was showing you how to use a rifle!!!

See you soon...

[dirtypool40]

Nice card, was that the day Matt was showing you how to use a rifle!!!

um.... yes. (smartass)

Short practice on the partials today, nothing great to report, but a good workout.

Total par times for all three strings, 18 rounds total, run roughly

15y 11 seconds (had a nice clean one around 10.50 -6 points)

20y 12.5 seconds (ROUGH today)

25y 14 seconds

[dirtypool40]

Lackluster local today at Malabar. I had fun but didn't shoot very well. Good stages though, one was kinda dangerous, but the rest had challenges and options.

That being said, I moved about 80% speed and the leg seemed fine.

Back to practice tomorrow.

[blkbrd]

Nice card, was that the day Matt was showing you how to use a rifle!!!

I think they look awesome

Lackluster local today at Malabar.

Lackluster? You beat a Master class Open shooter by 5%, and Match HOA over allot of talent.

Of course Mike deserved the beating after that comment about your rifle skills.

[dirtypool40]

Of course Mike deserved the beating after that comment about your rifle skills.

I thought so too. LOL

It was an.... interesting day. Three malfunctions, started the day with a no-shoot, ended the day with 3 D's and a Mike all on one stage.

All in all I had fun, and hey, a win's a win, so I'll shut up.

[dirtypool40]

Nice little work out with Rick Arnold today. Mostly horsing around @ 10y, working gun handling for speed, which I haven't done in forever.

We shot a draw test, and then some VP work, comparing draw, reload, split and transitions.

I got some decent draws in the low .80's and a couple times in the .70's. Best reload of the day were 2@.77 which is freakin' smokin for me, especially since I haven't dry fired in a while. They felt sloppy, but I was making sexy numbers. I need to get back to dry fire so things are boringly smooth and like a xerox machine.

Working with Ric, I saw HUGE gains. When we started his draw was around 1.5 and his reloads near 2.00. By the time we were done I had him breaking 1.00 on the draw and his best loads was a 1.02. Now THAT'S improvement!!!! We ran out of light so he didn't get that .99 reload, but it's coming.

Edited March 13, 2008 by dirtypool40

[dirtypool40]

Practice with Rick and Brandon, worked 25y draws and 2 A's, and then movement.

I got a good workout on my leg, starting slowly and working up to it. We have some boxes buried in front of our plate racks, so it makes for a consistent test. Start in box A, shoot a plate, haul yo ass to box B and shoot another plate. Today's times won't mean anything to readers here, but my times across were within .05 sec L to R or R to L, and good runs were right around 2.90 just timing the movement from shot to shot.

Rick's son Brandon is 19 and about 6% bodyfat, pure athelete. He has this drill down pat. He's taken a couple classes from me, and while he is still coming up in the ranks classification wise, he moves like a 19 year old Jerry Barnhart!!! Normally in class I see times from a smokin', listened to me and got it quick 3.50 - over 5.00. But Brandon listened, took coaching well and was RIGHT ON MY TIMES his first day in class!!!!

I like this, cuz either I get to take credit for being a great teacher and getting an unclassified guy to shoot GM movement drills times, or I get to point out how a fat 38 year old GM can move as fast as an athelete half his age, by using proper technique!! Either way I win!!!

[dirtypool40]

Practice with Rick, Brandon, and Cliff. working across the partials with a long and short open target thrown in. 10 round array, run it once from the left, once from the right, twenty rounds total. We did it from 10 to 25 jumping to different distances.

Good fun and quite a workout. I started off really rough, but finished up ok.

More to come...

[dirtypool40]

slow relaxed practice with Rick and Cliff today.

We did 4-5 rounds of step backs, with varying results, and then worked draw and loads. I will admnit I haven't done as much dry fire as I should, and things didn't go as smoothly as I would have liked at first, but I got to a nice stedy .95 draw and .95 load pretty quickly. Still it took long enough I am on notice it's time to get back to dry fire.

Cliff and Rick found a couple tenths on their loads and we are closing in on getting them under 1.00. Cliff got down to 1.18 and Rick popped a 1.05. Hang in there guys, it's coming.

[dirtypool40]

88 Shooter local today.

For the first time I can remember, I ZEROED the first stage I shot. OK, I'm not normally a "first stage" kinda guy, but a ZERO??? Weak, dude, weak. Yup, I didn't pay attention to the walkthrough and double Virginia count targets that only needed singles, so I ate 80 penalty points on an 80 point stage.

Not the best start.

Having said that, I shot "OK" the rest of the day, without really catching fire, and won Limited by 9%. With a normal run on the zeroes stage, I'd sit at around 95% of Dave Pruitt who won Open. Good to see him and Drew back out.

Work on gun handling this week must've helped, on the only "normal" draw I hit a .85, and I didn't bobble a load all day.

[dirtypool40]

Light practice with Rick Arnold. He's a C shooter and shot a "2" on the Bianchi plates today COLD!!!

I did several step backs, a couple runs on the bianchi plartes and a little work on the partials.

Mostly just horsing around but good trigger time none the less.

[dirtypool40]

light practice today, maybe 100 rounds on the partials.

[dirtypool40]

Rough day today at the FL State. By far the worst I've shot in the three years since I came home from overseas.

The worst part is, I really tried to be ready. I practiced a few times, I cleaned the gun and prepped my gear, dry fired, went to bed early, got up early, stretched, ran, test fired the gun, got good plans for the stages and .....................sucked.

I am not exaggerating, I am stuck over 100 penalty points on 6 stages. It was one of those days that makes you want to quit the sport, and I was embarrassed to have my G-card and a shirt or hat with anyone's name on it.

I'm going to bed early. I have had enough of this day.

[Thomas Moore]

maybe slow down just a smidge, you know two slow alpha's are better than a fast alpha, mike, noshoot.

[dirtypool40]

maybe slow down just a smidge, you know two slow alpha's are better than a fast alpha, mike, noshoot.

good point.

I was ready to quit the sport yesterday, so almost anything was an improvement.

Of the four we shot today, I dumped a silly mike to start and one to finish, but slowed down to shoot decent if bring runs on the middle two. Rough part was, it didn't seem to be the patience you talk about; on our last stage, I had the fastest run in Limited by almost a second. On the long 35y partial behind a barrel, I PLACED two alpha about 2" apart. Then moving to the last position I tossed "alpha-mike" at a 12 yarder rushing to swing the gun.

On another stage, I had the time by about a second but every time I pulled the gun to the next array the last shot was either a lazy C or a D. It cost me the stage win there too.

Gotta re-tool and get things together. I need to work in another .10 on the last target in the array. I can even hear myself speeding up on video.

Bad weekend but a learning experience. Movin' on

[Al Capizzo]

I'm not one to be giving advise, but this might help - http://www.bjnorris.blogspot.com/ .

[dirtypool40]

Thanks Al.

Congrats to Manny and Shannon for hanging in there and smoking the rest of us.

I ended up 4th at around 85%, but as a barometer, only 3% ahead of a guy I see every weekend and cover by 15-18%, so I was not off in my appraisal of my shooting.

Still there were some positive things to come out of it, I finally caught something on video I need to change and there are pieces I was happy with.

Back to work. poco a poco

Edited April 1, 2008 by dirtypool40

[dirtypool40]

couple of light practices this week. Worked on partials with Rick and entries to a tough shot.

Rough, ugly local at Titusville this past weekend. I won limited but was about 20% off a normal pace, including jams brain fades, no shoots, re-shoots, mikes, deltas.... YUK!!! One stage required strong hand only, holding a prop in your weak hand, and I had to rakc my gun on the barricade 6-10 times to get through the stage. Entertaining, but not the way to win.

I did have one decent run on our second stage. Draw to 30y target 1.40. I shot 4 Alpha and a small popper in five smooth shots. I dropped one delta, and only three other points the whole 29 round stage and beat the field.

Hey, you gotta dwell on the positive.

[dirtypool40]

Decent, if light practice today. I don't want to jinx things, but I think PaulW figured out my gun problems. Two years of boring reliability vanished about 6 weeks ago. It got so bad as to be once per mag, which will trash your match scores.

Anyhoo, practice.

I shot a cold, sloppy 4 on the crazy plates then worked the partials with Amoebas.

Par times of 3.5 @ 15y, 4.0 @ 20y and 4.5 @ 25y are pretty solid. When I am shooting those times clean, consistently I'll be back up to full speed.

I also shot a 2.80 run demo-ing my movement drill "plate to plate", which is pretty sporty for me.

Just found out I am in Area 6 so I will see you all there. I'm shooting all day Friday with Manny.

Edited April 12, 2008 by dirtypool40

[dirtypool40]

Late updating.

Saturday April 12. Local at Malabar. On a scale of 1 - 10 ten being a "perfect" smokin' stage I couldn't nit pick any details to improve and 1 being a complete meltdown where I end up zeroing the stage; I started off with a clean, but shaky 6, decent, but lot of extra shots.

The next stage was probably an 8+. Pretty solid points, long steel first shot, but a still a couple of deltas. Stilll any time I beat the open guys on a wide open field course with shots ranging out past 25y, and I have to load where they don't, it's a solid run. Cliff said it really looked like I was bearing down.

The next one was three looong targets behind a barriade, popping into view as you moved down a "crambo" set up to your left, very similar set up to the long one last month, but it's always a challenge to go quick then slow. I dropped only one point on the three and the last one, after shooting the last contact target with a .13 split (FAST for me) I shot 2 A's with a .46 split. (Cliff had all these details). I felt a little slow, but figure another 8.

The next one the wheels fell off. Bad grip, bad focus, and MAYBE a "3". Yuk.

I recovered alright on the last stage, but the "pull away mike" showed up again, dropping this one to about a 6. I was fast enough, about 2 seconds ahead of the field, that I still won the stage, but overall not a very impressive day. The good news is, the gun ran 100%.

So far we've changed; mag springs, recoil spring, AFTEC springs, mag relese, reverse plug, and load length.

April 13

I made Frostproof the next day and it was the same disaster as the State match, pull off mikes every stage, and a meltdown on the same stage that killed me before. I only had one decent stage, maybe a 7, and STILL had 3 pull off Deltas on that one!!!! YUK! I gotta figure out what's up with my timing. It's like having the shanks in golf. Some little details is off and my scores are in the toilet.

I also had one failure to feed with a new mag. Out of stubborness I ran the same mag the other five stages and it never happened again, I also practiced with it 4/15 with no malfs, so maybe it was a fluke.

April 15

Light solo practice on the partials. No great improvements, but I have to keep trying. I shoot Area 6 Friday and this is my last practice. I worked the partials for about 250 rounds, including one or two runs SHO WHO. I did have one hammer follow, but no feed issues.

Off I go to Area 6. I'm going to try to "lag" on every leaving target, whether into a reload, movement, or just another array for an extra .10. I know, the beep goes off and plans go to hell, but I'm gonna try.

clearly I need a montage

more to come....

Edited April 16, 2008 by dirtypool40

[Slabbie Shooter]

Good luck at Areas.

I'm hoping for good news from all the THWE guys.

[dirtypool40]

Roller coaster Area match today, but still, after the last month, an improvement.

Sarted ok, on a little 7 round speed shoot, and then a conservative run about a second off Manny, and then I went good, bad, good bad, the rest of the day. More details to come.

Looooooooooooooong day. I'm tired and headed to bed.

Edited April 21, 2008 by dirtypool40