CHA-LEE's Tale

[CHA-LEE]

Winter is upon us here in Colorado. A pretty decent snow storm canceled the normal club matches on the front range. The only alternative for doing some USPSA match shooting was to go over the mountains for a club match in Grand Junction. The weather forecast called for a high of 50 degrees over there on Saturday so I decided to pack up my gear and head over there on Friday night. By Friday night the snow storm was already hitting the mountains and it created some hectic traffic and highway closures. In normal conditions the drive over to Grand Junction is about 3.5 hours, but this time it ended up being 7 hours.

I drove out there with my buddy John and we were both thinking that we needed a sanity check for making the long drive over to GJ just for a club match. But faced with the choice of shooting or not shooting we decided to grind through the crappy drive and shoot. Saturday morning we showed up early to the range and helped setup some stages then shot the match with Bob Krough. They had 5 fun and challenging stages to shoot and as always Bob was fun to shoot with as well. For some unknown reason I was simply “off” that day. My movement and shooting through the stages felt really clunky and I wasn’t into it. On the first two stages of the match I had a miss on each stage and this took me out of contention for a win so I pretty much gave up after that. The third stage was a classifier with freestyle, strong, and weak hand shooting. On the first string I broke a shoot too soon during the transition due to cold fingers and knew I had to eat yet another miss. Then on the weak hand string I couldn’t control the gun at all during recoil due to my weaked left arm and racked up two more misses. Three stages in and racking up 5 misses was pretty much setting the tone of how my match day was going to go. On the fourth stage, I got a bad grip on the draw then proceeded to miss the first popper in the stage three times before hitting it. Then in the next section there was a tricky popper & drop turner activator sequence that got jacked up because the wind held the drop turner up. I had to wait a good second for it to open up just enough for me to shoot two shots at it from a sever sidewise angle. Some how my hits on it were two A’s but each hit was streaked across the target like two inches long. Then on the last stage of the day there was a tricky double swinger stage that had a lot of options in how to shoot it. I didn’t have enough time to observe the timing of the swingers verses the poppers and ended up picking a plan that had me shooting one popper then transitioning directly to the swinger and waiting a good second for it to come out. Every stage in the match was a train wreck for me. Its been a long time since I have trashed a WHOLE match so I guess it was due.

The only good that came out of the match from a shooting perspective is that I was able to shoot a lot of the steel one for one. There were a lot of poppers and plates in this match and I did a good job of being visually patient for the steel most of the time. The few times that I had issues with the steel, I stopped picking an aiming spot or I had a jacked up grip on the gun and the sights were displaced when I formed my grip. It was fun to shoot at a new range and with friends. That and my primary Limited gun ran without any issues.

We decided to drive back home after the match and it took another 7 hours to get back home with all of the snow in the mountains. Regardless of shooting poorly or not, it was not worth battling the crappy road conditions to drive over there and back. If the weather is nice it would be worth it, but not during the winter. The bummer in this is that their club match is on the same day as the HPPS club match that I run. So I highly doubt that I will get a chance to attend the GJ match again any time soon. Maybe I will take a weekend off as Match Director some time in the summer and give it a go again? We will see how it goes.

The crappy weather is suppose to stick around all this coming week and through next weekend so its looking like this GJ match is probably going to be my last chance for some live fire before heading down to the Area 2 match. It’s a little disheartening to have my last live fire session/match end up being such a crappy performance. But it is what it is. Hopefully I have used up all of my bad luck on this club match and the Area 2 will go smooth as silk. That is my hope at least.

[PatJones]

Boss, my best matches always follow a poor performance. You got all of your bad luck out, that will allow you to excel at area 2.

[Husker95]

Did your guns run 100% though? This seems like it would have been a great place to further battleproof your primary/backup guns after all the troubleshooting you have been doing.....

[CHA-LEE]

I only shot my Primary gun on Saturday and ran about 200 rounds through it during the match. It ran without any issues and I still can't produce the hammer follow issue in dry fire. So I am thinking that I have the hammer follow issue fixed. I have only been able to shoot 100 rounds through my backup gun to see if the nose dive issues are fixed or not and it ran those 100 rounds without any issues. But I need more rounds though that gun to make sure that the issue is fixed. Especially once its really dirty after about 500 rounds or so.

At this point, the weather is going to dash most of the live fire practice/matches between now and the Area 2 match so I am going to have to just keep an eye on the blasters to see if the failure modes start to surface again. Right now its looking like my one and only live fire opportunity before the Area 2 match will be the Whistling Pines club match next Monday. Hopefully if there are continued problems they will show up during that match so I can dig into it further before I head off to the Area 2 match. Right now I am just hoping that I have the issues resolved and I can not worry about it any more.

[thermobollocks]

All I can say is your car seats have to be more comfortable than mine to pull that off. Krogh's a good brain to pick.

[CHA-LEE]

We are currently in a winter wonderland here in Colorado with it scheduled to continue through the weekend. With high temps in the low 20’s through the weekend there will not be any shooting happening outdoors. Since I have some down time I have been focusing on reloading ammo to get stocked back up for when I can shoot again. I have also been cleaning my guns and gear to get them ready for the next time they will see action, which is currently looking like Monday night at the Whistling Pines indoor match.

While rummaging through my gear I stumbled across my old battle axe EAA Limited gun. For fun I pulled it out of the safe and handled it. Very much to my surprise it felt totally awkward in my hands and even more awkward when I did some simply dry fire drills and transitions with it. I then picked up my 2011 Limited gun and did the same drills with it and it felt totally “Normal”. I guess the migration from the EAA to the 2011 is now complete. I stuffed the EAA back into its sleepy corner of the safe it has been resting in since I switched over to the 2011 platform. I figure that blaster isn’t going to see much action any more.

While messing around my reloading room I figured I would see how my grip strength was doing since I haven’t tested it in a couple of months. Much to my surprise my left hand grip strength is up to 155lbs. That is 10lbs stronger than 2 months ago. Not much progress but it’s at least some progress. I am still doing the daily grip exercises and don’t seem to see much of an improvement in my weak hand/arm while working it out. It still seems to give up the ghost at about the same point in the work out. But the good thing is that it IS slowly getting better. I still have a long ways to go before its back to what it was before the neck injury. I am still very skeptical about it getting back to full strength. Only time will tell.

Lastly I was able to get some new shooting shirts made showing off my 2015 sponsors. For the 2015 shooting season I will be representing Rick Hebert Firearms (RHF), Rainier Ballistics, and Power Factor Shooting. The new shirts were made by TechWear and they turned out great. The basic shirt design is based on the RHF team shirts but I had the primary color changed from Yellow to Red. I am really looking forward to wearing my new shooting shirt at the matches this year. I will get some pictures taken eventually and post them up.

Not too much time left until I have to pack up my gear and head down to Phoenix for the Area 2 match. The weather forecast is looking good for down there so that will be a welcomed change verses what has been going on here in Colorado lately. I just hope that my inability to shoot due to the crummy weather will not impact my performance down there. We will see how it goes.

[cbrconst]

18 degrees in OK right now. Also looking forward to AZ temps.

[CHA-LEE]

I was able to attend the Whistling Pines Indoor USPSA match last night. I shot my Primary Limited gun and it ran flawlessly the whole match. After the match I tested it for hammer follow and it’s still rock solid. I think I have the hammer follow issue fixed on this blaster. I shot a fairly solid match with no shooting penalties. I did rack up 3 D zone hits over the four stages but every one of them was called marginal and I either couldn’t make it up due to being a Virginia Count stage or I was already leaving the position and couldn’t make it up because I was already gone. Other than that it was nice to be 100% mentally “THERE” at this match. Unlike the Grand Junction match were I wasn’t mentally into it. I was happy with just letting the shooting happen at its own pace and it resulted in solid runs on every single stage. Hopefully this mental alertness and confidence in my shooting skills will continue into next weekend during the Area 2 match. If it does I should be able to earn a solid overall match performance.

Now it’s time to get my gear all cleaned and packed up for the trip to Arizona. I am looking forward to the 70 – 80 degree temperatures down there as the mid 20’s here in Colorado is getting old. Shooting in “Summer” range conditions in the middle of winter is always fun.

[MarkCO]

Good luck down there. Looking forward to some time in AZ myself!

[CHA-LEE]

The 2015 Area 2 Desert Classic is over and in the books. The weather was awesome for the match and I was on a great squad of Colorado shooters. The stages had fairly “Simple” layouts but pushed the limits of your abilities in many ways. If you were not using your sights at this match you were DONE as aiming hard was a requirement on pretty much every stage. That mixed with ultra fast swingers and max traps resulted in pretty much everyone racking up a bunch of shooting penalties. I ended up on the PM,AM,AM shooting schedule and once again got bitten by the “I CAN’T SEE MY SIGHTS” issue in the mornings. I should have known better from prior years, but this was where my Colorado buddies squadded so I jumped on their squad not thinking about this issue. Next year I am going to pick an AM, PM, PM squad for sure to avoid the crappy lighting portion of the match in the mornings.

Day 1 was a solid day of shooting for me, but starting on the PM schedule only had us shooting 4 stages. I knew that if I kept up that pace for the remaining 10 stages I would be in solid contention for a top 3 finish in Limited.

Day 2 was the long day with 7 stages to shoot and starting in the morning. This day was a complete disaster for me. I either couldn’t see my sights in the morning or had targets in heavy shadows keeping me from calling my shots properly. I racked up 1 Procedural, 4 No Shoots, and 5 misses that day. Most of the misses were on the super fast moving targets but I still had a couple stupid misses from trying to shoot too fast or leaving the position before I was done shooting. 3 of the no shoots were on the same stage where I missed the timing of a max trap and then proceeded nick the top of the no shoot three times trying to shoot the head A Zone once it was closed. Knowing that I had given away 125 match points in shooting penalties alone was a bitter pill to swallow. I knew that my solid run for the podium was over with and making the top 5 was probably in jeopardy as well. Sometimes it does not go your way and this was one of those situations.

Day 3 was a short day of shooting with only 3 stages and finishing on the Chrono. We started on stage 14 which was all head shots and mini poppers tucked away in a bay with high walls. I literally couldn’t see my sights at all while shooting that stage and tried by best to point shoot at the tight shots as good as I could sending a crap ton of extra shots down range to help hedge by bets. I still ended up with 2 misses and 2 no shoots on that stage. Being forced to shoot an ultra accuracy stage when you can’t see your sights at all is not very fun to say the least. By the time we got to the next stage the sun was up more and I was in Angry Panda shooting mode which resulted in a good stage run. By the third stage the sun was all the way up and I had yet another good stage run. So I finished the match with some solid stage runs, but by then the damage was already done.

At the end of the match I had a tally of 1 Procedural, 6 No Shoots, and 7 Mikes which was a generous donation of 175 match points to the competition. Knowing that I gave away that mountain of match points I was probably going to have a hard time making it into the top 10. When the results were tallied I ended up 5^th overall at 83% of the match winner Nils. I was shocked to see myself in 5^th overall, but I will take it. If I hadn’t of had such a crappy Day 2 I would have been in a solid 3^rd place finish for the match, but it wasn’t meant to be.

There were several good things about this match….

First, I was able to shoot with my buddies from Colorado and the first major match for several of them. It was fun seeing them experience their first major match and I did my best to help them as needed during the match. They all loved it and now have the itch for attending more major matches. Attending this match with friend made it a lot of FUN, which is exactly what it should be.

Second, my primary Limited ran like it should with zero issues. I kept testing it through the match to see if the hammer follow was coming back but it didn’t happen. I also got a chance to test out an MBX 21+1 magazine after the match to see how it would run in my gun and it worked flawlessly over 75 rounds. That magazine will be a nice addition to the range bag for the times when you need 21+1 capacity to avoid a reload.

Third, I shot steel way better in this match than I had ever done before. If I did my part and picked an aiming spot on the steel to aim at the steel went down one for one. The times I had misses on steel was when I was aiming at “White” instead of an aiming spot or I simply couldn’t see my sights because the lighting was crappy. I know I still have a long ways to go in shooting steel better but this was a nice validation of the process during this match.

Forth, I was able to use my new shooting shirts and they worked out great. Everyone that commented on them liked the new shirt design and thought they looked better than my old ones so that was cool. They are comfortable as well so that is always a plus.

[CHA-LEE]

I have been battling a minor issue with my 2011 pistols where I will end up with slightly low hits when shooting aggressively and I think I found the root cause. When I built up my first 2011 I had to use an SV trigger bow because of the Phoenix Trinity steel grip, so I chose the Enos Bottom Curve insert. I chose the Enos Bottom Curve insert because it felt very similar to my EAA trigger when my finger laid on the trigger. I have noticed in dry fire and live fire that when I row my finger back aggressively to pull the trigger the front sight dips down just a little bit. I figured this was just poor trigger pull mechanics on my part so I kept the trigger configured as it is. Well the issue still remained and I would basically have to aim at the top of a plate to hit it dead center while shooting a stage, even though in slow fire my POA/POI is dead nuts on. I wondered if the bottom curve trigger shoe was causing me to displace the front sight low so I got a Short Straight trigger shoe. This is the same length as the Enos curve trigger so that part didn’t change. After installing the Short Straight trigger shoe the dipping low issue is now gone in dry fire. I can mash the cap out of the trigger to break the shot and the front sight will wobble left/right slightly but does not dip down. I am yet to try it in live fire to see if it actually makes a difference, but over the past several evenings of Dry fire its looking like the issue is resolved. I left the Enos Bottom Curve insert in my Backup gun and it’s interesting to dry fire the two guns back to back and watch the front sight dip low on the Backup gun but not on the Primary. We will see how it goes this weekend during matches and practice. Either way, I am excited about finding a solution for this strange issue.

[CHA-LEE]

This weekend we got super lucky with the weather and it was in the mid 70’s on both Sat and Sun. I took advantage of both days by attending a match on Saturday then doing some training/practice on Sunday. The Match on Saturday was at the Colorado Rifle Club and they setup 6 challenging stages to shoot. I was eager to see how the flat trigger setup worked out and was really happy with the results. I had a lot less hits that ended up lower than intended on the paper targets and I was able to shoot the steel pretty good. One stage had a plate rack at about 20 yards and I tried aiming at the middle of the plates instead of the tops and this didn’t work out so well. Once I started aiming at the upper portion of the plate I could hit them one for one. I evidently still have some trigger mashing going on that is pulling the shots low, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it was with the bottom curve trigger. I could have also been a little more patient in my shooting speed for those plates as a 20 yard plate rack isn’t an “Easy” target and demands a lot of respect. Either way I was able to shoot the match clean with only a few make up shots on steel, which I was really happy with. I also got a chance to use the 21+1 MBX magazine on several stages to get some real match based testing with it and the magazine worked flawlessly. I can cram 21 rounds in it with no problems and it seats just as easily as my STI 20 round magazines during reloads. From an equipment testing perspective this match was a double win. I will be switching the trigger shoe in my backup gun to the short flat version.

On Sunday I did some training with a couple of friends in the morning and that was a lot of fun. It’s fun to see the lightbulb go on when people discover a new concept or skill. After the training I was able to do some practice myself with a couple of other friends. They had setup a large field course stage with paper and steel and were using it for 3Gun practice. They let me jump in with them to do some blasting and I shot the stage with only my pistol. It was a fun stage that tested fast and slow shooting along with some movement and steel. The stage had 8 mini poppers that were set at alternating distances which were close enough that it tricked you into trying to point shoot them. I shot the stage many times and was able to shoot all of the paper solidly every run, but the poppers were kicking my butt. On my best runs I would have at least one make up shot on the steel. Towards the end of the practice I started to aim hard on the steel and allow the sights to completely settle on my aiming spot before breaking the shot and this worked out pretty good until I started to rush the shooting. It’s hard to aim hard and be patient for a bunch of steel shots that are back to back. The good thing is that when I did my part, my hits on steel were very close to the center of the circle in the poppers which is a good validator that if I do my part I am able to hit the steel exactly where I am aiming. I just need to do some more training with steel to get the visual patience burned in like I have done with the paper.

It was a great weekend of shooting and I am happy with how things are progressing. Tonight I am going to head down to Colorado Springs to attend their indoor USPSA match. I am thinking about trying some yellow safety glasses to see how that changes being able to see indoors. The fiddling never ends

[CHA-LEE]

I shot the WP indoor match last night and it was a lot of fun. I shot a solid match with no major issues or shooting penalties. Doing these box to box style stages really helps test my shooting position entry and exit skills. That and it’s always fun to do some blasting with friends.

I tested out the MBX magazine a couple more times that night and it continued to work great. It will be interesting to see how long the spring lasts before it starts having feeding issues due to slow round registration. It’s been about 1000 rounds since my last hammer follow issue so I have some confidence back in the Primary gun working properly. Its running like a champ right now and it would be nice to stay that way for a while. I brought my Yellow shooting glasses but chickened out on using them last night. The shots in the match were not very difficult anyway so I didn’t think it would be a good test of them anyway. I will give them a try at some point.

Overall I am happy with how my shooting is going right now. I feel like I have tuned my guns and gear to the best they can be so I can really buckle down and get use to this setup. I know I need to put some more effort into practicing steel, but that is going to be a skill that will take some time to perfect. I just need to stay observant to the issues I am facing and keep developing training processes to overcome them. I still have a really good feeling about my opportunity to perform well at the major matches this year. My performance at the first two major matches this year have been less than desired, but my goal of finishing in the top 3 is within reach. All I have to do is keep my guns functional and allow the shooting to happen at its own pace.

[thermobollocks]

Edit: Found it. Never mind

Edited March 18, 2015 by thermobollocks

[Richc2048]

This is the year of the Panda. I know it!

[CHA-LEE]

This weekend the weather was AWESOME with low 70’s and clear blue skies all day long. I guess Spring really is here. On Saturday I had to get to the range early to serve my Match Director duty in hosting the HPPS club match. I was up super late the night before and only got about 2 hours of sleep before heading to the range. I did my best to load up on coffee and Spark (kind of like 5 hour energy, but with a lot more vitamins) before heading out the door and this seemed to work for a couple of hours. But busting my hump setting up stages and wrangling everything to get the match going took the pep out of my step. By the time the match started at 10AM was in pretty bad shape mentally. Physically I was good, but I could feel the mental fog of tiredness starting to cloud my judgment. I knew that the only way I was going to be able to shoot well at all is if I kept my stage plans as simple as possible and kept a hard focus on my sights. Luckily the first two stages for me were short classifier type stages without much thinking needed. I shot both stages solidly but spent a little too much time over aiming on the steel. I shot all of the steel on the first two stages one for one so that was good, it just took a little too long to get it done.

On stage 3 I was a little rushed getting to the stage to check it out and finalize my stage plan. I knew that my stage plan wasn’t 100% burned in but I didn’t have the mental bandwidth or time to burn it in any better. The buzzer went off and I got sucked into looking hard at the targets instead of my sights because this was a partial memory stage and the sequence of target engagement was important. Well this hard target focus lead to a crap ton of extra shots on the 9 pieces of steel in the stage. I probably gave away 2 seconds in extra steel shots, and a couple of D’s for my lack of sight focus. With this reality check in being punished for not looking at my sights the remaining stages I forced myself to stay on my sights and take however long it takes to get my hits. This worked out pretty good for the remaining stages and I finished the match with a single miss on the last stage. The miss was on a partial target at about 25 yards blocked by a no shoot and I was just favoring the head portion of the target too much to avoid the no shoot. Oh well.

Overall the match was a success for the shooters and I survived it with only 2 hours of sleep. When I got home I was dead tired but still had to get scores posted, guns and gear squared away and a few other things done. I crawled into bed at 8pm and was out like a light and didn’t wake up until 7am the next morning. I felt refreshed that next morning, but I am too old to be doing that only 2 hours of sleep crap. I thought we were suppose to get smarter as we get older? I guess I am a slow learner.

[CHA-LEE]

On Sunday I headed out to the range with some friends and we did some stage based practice. I setup a mean 40 round large field course that tested a lot of different skills and of course it had some steel plates. This stage was eating people’s lunch run after run, myself included. The first two times I shot the stage I had a miss on the first run and clipped a no shoot on the second. We ran this evil stage about 5 times each and I didn’t have any more paper target misses or penalties but the steel plates were beating me senseless. I kept swinging between aiming too high or too low. If I aimed at my old “High” spot I would miss high. If I aimed “Low” I would miss low. I think I was trying to use a 6 O’Clock hold when shooting at it low. It wasn’t until I started aiming just above the middle of the plate that I started to hit them consistently. The new flat trigger is working as it should in keeping me from displacing the front sight low as I pull the trigger. I just have to relearn where to aim on the plates now.

I also had a chance to try out the Yellow safety glasses on one run. Holly cow those things sucked. It made the paper targets blend in with the berms and it made my orange fiber in the front sight glow like crazy. When I shot the stage with the Yellow glasses the ONLY thing I could see in my sights was the blinding orange fiber dot in my front sight. These Yellow glasses are NOT the ticket outdoors, at least not for me. I will try them again at one of the indoor matches to see if the brighter fiber helps. But I think they are destined for a quick trip into the trash can.

We changed up the mega stage to make it more reasonable and shot it a couple of different ways. I shot about 300 rounds during this practice session and it was a fun time shooting with friends. My primary gun continues to run like a champ and it even served double duty today as one of my buddies Limited gun broke at the start of the day. So we were swapping my gun back and forth shooting it all day long.

Its nice to get some more dedicated practice time under my belt. I still need a lot of work on steel, especially the little plates now that I am using the flat trigger. Hopefully the weather will continue to work in our favor and I can get some more practice in next weekend.

[CHA-LEE]

Yesterday I went in for my annual physical and eye exam. Overall I am doing pretty good. I could stand to lose some weight but all of my numbers are looking good. I had them draw some blood for a lead level test. It’s been a few years since I got that done so it’s time to see how that is doing. The Dr said I should get the results by the end of the week.

During my eye exam they confirmed that my “Eagle Eyes” at distance are still doing their thing. I am a solid 20/15 in both eyes and I can almost make out the 20/10 line. They double checked my up close vision and it turns out that I am starting to lose some ability to focus on the close stuff. They setup the eye testing machine to give me a +1 power in both eyes and reading the close print was a lot easier without needing to strain. I also experimented with seeing at hands length with the +1 power and I could see my hands a lot more crisply but the distance stuff was really blurry. I think I am going to get some +1 power glasses to see how those work out with seeing my sights while shooting. Not being able to focus on the targets clearly will be really strange for sure, but it will be cool to test it out.

After my Dr appointments Rick sent me a message letting me know that my new Limited blaster was done and ready to pick up. This is the third Limited blaster that I am setting up in an identical configuration to the others. The main difference with this one is that it’s not using any STI parts. The frame and grip are made by Phoenix Trinity, and the Slide is made by CK arms. Now it’s time to start the fine tuning and break in process for this new blaster. I am planning on doing a lot of the fine tuning this week after work, then do some test fire with it over the weekend. It will be fun getting this new blaster ready to rumble.

[Richc2048]

It's very fun practicing that way. I love being able to do a course over and over and seeing how the HF is effected. I wish I concentrated on practice more but the group of guys were just too great to isolate myself and focus on practice. Oh well. My hit factors weren't great but the fun factor was through the roof. Haha

[leath4m]

On the glasses issue, I'm 46 and have 20/20 but when the eye doctor tried .5 ocular lenses on me it was like HD TV. In my shooting I'm "seeing" stuff but some of it is wrong. Like last match I backed up a perfectly good A with a no shoot, calling the shot high. And on another target I had 3 As touching. I prefer clear lenses as well to anything else.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend was filled with awesome weather and a bunch of shooting. On Saturday I attended a club match at the Aurora Gun Club and got to shoot with my buddy Rob Cook. He was in town traveling back home from vacation and wanted to do some shooting while in town. We got to shoot the match together and get some lunch afterwards. It was a lot of fun shooting and visiting with him and his wife. He even videoed my stage runs during the match and uploaded it to YouTube at the link below. Cool Stuff!!!

My match was “Ok” but nothing special. I have been battling a cold that started late last week and I was still under the weather during this match so it wasn’t a surprise that I wasn’t able to perform 100% solidly. I ended up with one miss on a speed shoot stage that I called marginal but it ended up being a miss. When I was patient with the steel I was able to mow them down one for one. But being in a slight mental fog due to the cold had me doing some stupid stuff on a few of the stages. I had two different stages where I initiated a reload in a location that I didn’t intend to then had to figure it out on the fly. Being in a mental fog due to the sickness made it very hard for me to solidly program my stage plans like I normally can. Oh well, it is what it is. I still got to shoot, had fun, and the weather was awesome. So I really can’t bitch too much about it.

I was able to get a few rounds through the new Limited gun during the match while waiting for a squad to finish a stage. I wanted to sight it in but immediately noticed that the point of impact at about 10 yards was about 4 inches low. I didn’t want to keep shooting it with the sights that far off as that wouldn’t be very productive. I need to get a shorter front sight installed and try it out again to see if that brings the POI back up to where it should be. For the few rounds that I shot it, it was feeding smooth as silk and extracting as it should. A lot more testing will be needed to prove solid functionality but at least it’s working good so far.

On Sunday I went out to the BLGC with some friends to get some stage based live fire practice done. I invited Rob and his wife and they joined me for the practice session. We setup a large field course stage and shot it a bunch of times in different ways. My focus that day was to be patient on the steel and that worked out great. I was able to hit all of the steel one for one until the end of the day when I was totally worn out. By the end of the day I was pretty beat and simply couldn’t produce the mental focus needed to be patient with the steel and it lead to misses again. There were 7 of us practicing that day so there was a decent amount of down time between runs. All together we ran through the stages 9 times and I burned up 300 rounds which was basically like shooting a major match all in one day. The weather was nice and it was fun shooting with friends. Overall it was a very productive practice session for me.

This week I am going to get the sights on the new gun figured out so I can beat on it for real this coming weekend. I need to find some time to load up some more ammo as well. It’s going to be a busy week for sure.

[Glock26Toter]

Nice video. That guy made you look like a rock star thanks to some fancy editing. Well, I guess the shooting helped.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Glock26Toter

[Stician]

Nice. I'm squadding with Rob Cook and his wife in the upcoming MD/VA Section match. I've never met him but at least I can drop your name and go from there.

[CHA-LEE]

Nice. I'm squadding with Rob Cook and his wife in the upcoming MD/VA Section match. I've never met him but at least I can drop your name and go from there.

You will have a lot of fun shooting with Rob. He is a great guy and works his tail off the whole match.

[CHA-LEE]

This week I had some time to do some more fiddling on the new Limited blaster. The .200 tall front sight got replaced with a .180 tall and that seems to have brought the point of impact up a lot. I was only able to shoot it a few rounds at about 5 yards in Rick’s shop so I am not 100% sure that the point of impact will be high enough at 10 – 15 yards. But I could easily hit a brown paster dead center several times while shooting it in the shop.

After that I did some more fiddling on the sear & hammer to fine tune the trigger and it’s pretty close to perfect. I don’t want to go hog wild crazy on setting up the trigger on the edge until I get a decent amount of ammo through it in the current configuration which is setup on the side of reliability over feel. I am planning on getting at least a few hundred rounds through it over the weekend.

The cool thing is that I can pick up and dry fire this new blaster back to back with my others and it feels exactly the same as the first two. Being able to pick up any one of these guns and basically not be able to tell the difference between them while shooting is exactly what I wanted to achieve.

Now I have to get a couple thousand rounds through the new blaster to flush out any teething pains and get everything broken in. After that I will get it coated. I like the look of the Cerakote Black Slide with Burn Bronze Frame, but that finish is already getting beat up on the first two guns. It would be nice to have a more durable finish that wouldn’t get so beat up by the Kydex style holster that I use. I was thinking about getting this new blaster either IonBonded or Hard Chromed as I know those finishes would be a lot more scratch resistant than the Cerakote ones. It will come down to how much I want to spend on a coating. The IonBond would be significantly more expensive to get done and time consuming than the hard chrome. But it would also look a lot more badass than standard hard chrome. Decisions, Decisions……