CHA-LEE's Tale

[CHA-LEE]

Thanks for the honest feedback on the surgeries. My doctor did say that the posterior surgery has a far more extensive recovery process due to the amount of digging that is needed. That pretty much rules out that option for me.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I was only able to shoot a club match on Saturday then a little bit of practice after a range work party day on Sunday. My wife wanted me to attend an event with her on Saturday starting at 2PM so I had to shoot through the match on Saturday morning so I could get out early enough to attend the event. I hate being a shoot trough mooch so I volunteered to get to the match early and setup a stage. I got my stage setup in record time then focused on figuring out the rest of the stages. By the time the match started I had solid stage plans for all of the stages and was able to shoot through all of them in about an hour. Showing up to a stage, then immediately shooting it without the normal walk though time never results in a good performance on my part and it was no different that day. I ended up with 2 misses total and an unplanned mag drop on the classifier after a reload. So I donated at least 50 match points in these mistakes which were mainly due to trying to hurry through the match. Oh well, I got to shoot and can’t really ask for much more than that.

On Sunday I headed out to the BLGC range to attend a Work Party day for the HPPS club. A bunch of us showed up which was awesome because that allowed us to get EVERYTHING done. We reworked all of the props and got the score shack all tuned up. It took us about 4 hours to get it all done which was a lot shorter than I thought it would be. The only thing that sucked is that the wind was howling all day and we had to contend with dirt and sand getting blown into our faces all day long.

After the work party I setup a little drill type of stage with three paper targets and six steel plates. I had three shooting positions where I would engage 1 paper and 2 steel from each position. I decided to shoot it where I would engage the paper first then one steel then the same paper again then the second steel. Doing this in each of the three positions. This was a good mixture of fast blasting, transitioning, and aiming hard for the steel. I was only able to shoot thig drill one for one on a couple of times as I would continually get too hurried for the steel shooting and end up with a miss. With the drill being 18 rounds and only having 20 in a mag it was a good risk vs reward shooting test for me. I only ran out of rounds a couple of times before finishing the drill. This drill once again reaffirmed the fact that being patient to allow the sights to fully settle on the steel and picking a specific aiming point yields a much faster stage time than trying to shoot faster and needing make ups. The really hard part is the sight settling time feels like forever so its hard to not feel like I am wasting time in over aiming. But the timer doesn’t lie. Being patient to aim and hitting the steel one for one is faster than missing.

At the end of the training I was starting to shoot the Rainier round nose 180 grain bullets that I have recently switched over to and was having a hell of a time hitting the steel. When I was shooting the flat point bullets I could hit the steel without much trouble but the round nose bullets were making it really hard to hit the steel. I also noticed that some of the paper hits were having key hole type of hits every once in a while which was really abnormal. I shot a group with the round nose bullets at 15 yards and the best I could do was a 6+ inch group in a random shotgun blast pattern. Not good. I need to do some troubleshooting on these round nose loads to see if something changed. If there is too much crimp or the plating on the side of the bullet is getting scraped off, that would cause some pretty bad accuracy issues. I didn’t have time to dig into it on Sunday so I am planning on doing some ammo troubleshooting this week to see what is going on. I have to get this figured out before the end of the week as I am heading out to the Utah state match on Friday.

The cool thing is that Rick was able to get the bushing barrel installed in the #1 blaster. It is 1.5oz lighter than the bull barrel setup, so it will be interesting to see how it feels shooting compared to the bull barrel setup. I am planning on testing it out this week along with the ammo situation.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I headed out to Salt Lake City for the Utah State Champs. I drove out there Friday morning with my buddy Nick and we got to the range at around 3PM to check out the stages. We were able to walk all of the stages and it was looking like most of the stages were going to be a lot of up close and personal blasting mixed in with some tricky sections and movers. We were on Squad 1 which pretty much ended up being the Limited Super Squad for the match with myself, Bob Krogh, Ron Avery, and Donovan Montross. It was a lot of fun shooting with those guys over the weekend and it was packed with really close competition on each stage.

Nick and I set a performance goal of simply getting our hits so we could have a clean match. With all of the up close and personal super fast blasting this usually sucks you into going a little too crazy and ending up with misses on really easy targets. So I forced myself to simply shoot only as fast as I could see the sights and not try to burn anything down. The only thing I allowed myself to “push” was my transition aggressiveness and that actually worked out really well. On Saturday I shot really consistent with only a few minor mistakes here or there. My consistency put me in a slight 11 point lead over Ron Avery after day 1 with Bob and Donovan not too far behind. Bob and Donovan were both having some difficulty mixed with really good runs so it was pretty difficult to know who would end up winning. The four of us were all contending for the win and in striking distance for the win. Since the stages were very biased to close blasting there really wasn’t much to segregate performances between us.

On Sunday, the dog fight continued until Bob racked up two misses on one stage which took him out of contention for the win. Then Donovan ended up getting bumped to Open due to having a mag that was slightly too long and didn’t fit in the 140mm gauge. That was a bummer for him but he took it in stride. On the second stage to shoot on Sunday (Stage 10) I nicked a mini popper but it didn’t go down so I ended up with a miss. This took away all of my cushion and left Ron and I to duke it out on the final three stages of the match. One was a speed shoot that we both finished within 0.1 HF on then the classifier and stage 13 which was a large field course stage. I proceeded to tank the classifier by missing the small steel 4 times before taking them down when Ron shot the stage one for one. This left Stage 13 as the final opportunity to make it happen. Ron shot the stage in an opposite direction than me so we had opposite stage plans but the shooting was pretty much the same going either way. So it came down to execution. I forced myself to NOT PUSH on the final stage as I knew that would not yield a better performance than simply letting it happen at whatever pace it wants to go. The buzzer went off and I let the shooting happen and it ended up being a very solid stage run winning overall out of even the Open guys (Take that you dot gun cheaters).

At this point I really didn’t know if my final stage performance would be enough to make up for the steel miss I had or not. I figured that he would be about 10 – 15 match points ahead of me and I would end up Second in Limited. We would have to wait for the match results to come out to see how it all panned out. When the results were posted, very much to my surprise, I ended up winning over Ron by just 1 match point!!!! One match point defined the winner out of over 1,450 match points. That is insane!!!

It was a fun and close battle the whole match. Our squad was great and we all worked hard to keep the squad churning through the stages in an efficient manner. The stages were challenging and fun, and the weather cooperated. I also got most of my stage runs on video and uploaded to my YouTube channel if you want to check them out.

When I attended this match last year it was right after my neck blew out and my left arm was pretty much useless. I struggled through that match trying to force my left arm and neck to cooperate but came up way short. It was nice to come back this year and get the job done.

[PatJones]

Congrats Charlie. I'm glad to see you back to form after all of the trouble you've gone thru.

[frunkenstein]

i would hate to see if you were at full strength that pistol barely moves. Great job Panda. See you sunday

[lawmangr]

Well done! Your description of the match read like an action novel. Amazing that it came down to 1 point!

[WJM]

It was awesome seeing you shoot a stage or two and awesome to meet you.

Wyatt McNeill

[thermobollocks]

Damn dude, well done.

[Stician]

Congrats Charlie!!

[CHA-LEE]

Thanks for all of the compliments guys!!!

Hopefully I didn't use up all of my practical shooting luck on the Utah State match since I still have several major matches to attend including the Nationals over the next couple of months.

The keep it simple match performance plan of simply "Get your hits" seemed to work pretty good. I will keep using that over the next couple of matches to see how it turns out. Its really easy to get sucked into looking at others stage times, points, or hit factors then letting that get you distracted from what really matters which is simply to get your hits after the buzzer goes off.

[Stician]

You're right and had I employed this strategy I would have placed better than 4th in A class at Area 8 last weekend.

Edited September 2, 2015 by Stician

[DonovanM]

Great shooting with you. Looking forward to seeing the Crack Panda in action again in the future!

[BR]

Hey Charlie-

Actually, it looks like a 17 year old "dot gun cheater" won the Utah Championship, beating the closest Limited GM by well over 100 match points.

[CHA-LEE]

Brian> you are correct. I was talking about beating those dot gun cheaters on stage 13. Sorry if I caused any confusion.

[CHA-LEE]

This weekend I didn’t get any shooting done as I was in Steamboat Springs with the wife celebrating our 6 year wedding anniversary. We have been together for 10 years and she is awesome for putting up with me and my crazy practical shooting obsession. There is no way I could have achieved my practical shooting goals without her full support. She is a super star and I am eternally grateful for her being a part of my life. Our weekend trip up to the mountains was nice and relaxing. It was actually nice to totally get away from everything “normal” and spend some quality one on one time with my lady.

On Monday I attended a Training class presented by Manny Bragg. I use to pull this class together in the past but passed the baton to my buddy Nick who pulled together the class this year. The class went from Saturday – Tuesday with several different individual classes through the days. I signed up for the one day Advanced class on Monday and was happy to attend as a “Customer” for the first time in a long while. Manny is a great trainer and I enjoy spending time with him on the range. We talked about shooting skills more than me actually shooting. Through the whole day I only shot about 200 rounds with almost half of that playing around with a double swinger stage trying different engagement orders to minimize the delay in waiting for each swinger to expose. I was able to pick up on a couple good “Nuggets” of information from the class and am looking forward to vetting them in my own practice sessions in the future. Manny said that he seen a marked improvement in my transitions from last years class and this year so that is a good confirmation of hard work being put into that skill. I still have a long ways to go in my shooting and movement skills but it will be fun to test out some new skills and ideas from the class. At the end of the class I was able to shoot one of the students Open guns through a short stage and that was fun and a lot easier than I expected. Put the dot on the target and pull the trigger. On the close blasting stuff I don’t think it was any “Faster” than my limited gun, but it was dramatically faster in engaging the further or more difficult shots. It will be fun to put some real shooting time behind an Open gun once mine is done and ready to rumble.

This coming weekend is the Colorado State Match. I am shooting the whole match on Friday then serving as a Stage CRO for the weekend shooters. I still have a bunch of ammo to reload this week and get my blasters cleaned up and ready to rumble for the match. It’s going to be a busy week getting everything ready.

From a Limited gun perspective, we put a bushing barrel in the #1 blaster and that thing is super accurate with that barrel setup. I was able to shoot a couple of all rounds touching groups off hand at 10 yards with that thing which is significantly better than my other blasters. I need to put a taller front sight on the bushing gun now due to the POI being about 1 inch high at 10 yards. But I will get that taller front sight installed this week. Hopefully I will have some down time while ROing this weekend to get it sighted in. Since the POI is off I really haven’t shot it much, but the little I have shot it the felt recoil seems a little more harsh due to the 2oz less in barrel weight. It’s not horrible, just feels a little different. Once I get the sights figured out I am looking forward to doing some back to back testing between the Bushing and Bull barrel guns to see if the reduced bushing barrel weight makes any difference while shooting and transitioning aggressively.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I attended and ROed the Colorado State Champs in Byers. My buddy Price was the MD for the match and when he asked me many months ago to help out with ROing I couldn’t turn him down. Since I was ROing the match I had to shoot all 12 stages on Friday. I headed out to the range on Thursday after work to check out the stages and was really glad I did. Several of the stages didn’t have the targets stapled up but the target stands were in place so you could get a basic understanding of how they would be positioned. There was a pretty evil memory stage that did have the targets up on it and I spent most of my time on it to figure out a solid plan. That was time well spent. I went home with as good of plans as I could iron out and was ready to rumble for Friday.

Friday morning greeted us with heavy overcast skies and somewhat brisk temps. For the first time this year I had to wear a coat on the range to stay warm. With the heavy overcast skies I knew that I was going to have trouble seeing my sights. Through the first 6 stages of the match I battled seeing my sights and was forced to point shoot a lot of targets while shooting slower than normal to basically “Hope” hits into the targets. For the most part it worked out but I still racked up way too many C’s and D’s even when shooting slow. I also had one uncalled miss on a speed shoot stage which sunk a pretty solid run. After lunch the cloudy skies started to clear and I could see my sights again but then ran into other issues. I wasted about 2 seconds on one stage with a fumbled reload then racked up another miss on the memory stage with one of my shots going into a wall instead of a target. I wrapped up the match fairly solid but was pretty beat by the end. Shooting 12 stages on a small squad and having to RO ourselves as well was a long and tiring day at the range. I didn’t get any video footage of my stage runs as we were too short handed in simply trying to get each other through the stage much less video one another. I wasn’t happy with my performance overall as I knew I left at least 10% - 15% on the table due to not being able to see my sights or just stupid mistakes due to the hurried pace of churning through the stages and working all the way up to my turn to shoot. It was fun shooting with buddies, but it wasn’t the best environment for having a good match performance. Oh well, it happens that way some times.

Over the weekend I ROed the two speed shoot stages with my buddy Sterling. We worked well together on the stage and got all of the squads churned through efficiently with very little drama. When there was down time between squads Sterling and I had fun reshooting our stages for fun and test firing our guns. I was able to do some accuracy testing on all three of my blasters at 7, 15, and 30 yards. The #1 blaster with the bushing barrel is hitting about 4 inches high at 15 yards so that thing needs some different sights or a different barrel bushing. The #2 and #3 blasters each needed a little sight tweaking to get them dead nuts on at 30 yards. It was surprising to me how much a “little” off at 7 or 15 translated into being a “Lot” off at 30 yards. But the good news is that now I have both #2 & #3 dialed in and ready to rumble for my final three major matches of the season.

When reshooting our stages I was able to shoot stage 5 in 6.5 seconds which would have stomped the best run by over a second. It’s amazing what can happen when I can actually see my sights and call my shots. I hate being crippled by my poor vision in less than optimal lighting. The next major gun project being an Open gun is probably a really good plan. I am tired of getting beat by my eyes with iron sights.

On Saturday and Sunday Ron Avery and Donovan Montros were my main competition in Limited and they both ended up beating me. Ron won Limited by a significant amount of match points (80+) then Donovan beat me by only 9 match points. I ended up 3^rd in Limited at 94% of Ron. I wanted to give those guys a better run for their money, but I couldn’t get it done this time.

This coming weekend I am heading down to Texas for the Oil Field Classic match and will enjoy the opportunity to shoot the match as a competitor so I can focus on what is needed. Hopefully the lighting works out in my favor as well.

[MarkCO]

Thanks for working the match Big Panda. I know it is a 10% hit on scores to shoot with ROs, and work and shoot it all in one day. I found myself running a stage plan from my 7th stage when I was shooting the 9th stage. Good thing it looked different.

You are a great example of giving back to the sport AND being a top level competitor. I for one am very thankful for friends (and the few GMs) like you!

[DonovanM]

Thanks for working the match Charlie. That was a tough one even just shooting as a competitor!

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I flew down to Texas for the 2015 Oilfield Classic match not far from Houston. I flew in on Friday and then headed out to the range to check out the stages. There were 12 fun and challenging stages to check out and figure out plans for. While checking out the stages I was sweating like crazy because it was 95 degrees with 90% humidity. With that same weather forecast for the weekend I was in for some hot and swampy range conditions.

Even though it wasn’t “Fun” to shoot in hot/humid weather like that, I did learn a valuable lesson about sweaty sticky fingers vs shooting speed. Through the other hot and humid matches I have attended this summer I continually battled not being able to shoot super fast like I normally do in dry conditions for some unknown reason. I figured out the issue at this match. The pad of my trigger finger is literally sticking to the front of the trigger shoe keeping it from sliding around on the front of the trigger during recoil. One of the stages had some loose fine dirt next to the start position so I tried putting some dirt on the pad of my trigger finger for one of the fast blasting stages to see if it would allow my finger to slip around on the trigger shoe and it worked!!! Ultra fast Big Panda blasting mode was enabled again. It’s cool to finally figure out that issue but now I need to figure out a portable solution as I can’t rely on fine, dry, dirt to be available at every swampy match I attend. I am going to try some graphite powder as well as some baby powder to see if either can effectively resolve this sticky trigger finger issue. With the Nationals coming up in a couple of weeks, and the weather probably going to be the same hot and humid conditions, I am really excited about finding this potential solution.

Back to the Oilfield Classic match. On Saturday morning I was greeted by HEAVY fog while driving to the range. I couldn’t see more than 10 yards in front of the car the fog was so thick. I had to drive a lot slower than normal to the range which put me behind schedule a little bit in getting to the range. The fog was still pretty heavy on the range when we started shooting and you could literally see the water vapor in the air as the sun started shining through the clouds. I started the match on Stage 1 which was the classifier stage and was worried about the less than optimal lighting conditions so I told myself to make up ANY shot that were called marginal at all. This lead to several extra shots during the stage run, but I got all of my hits and was only down a few points. The second stage of the match was the rope wall stage which forced you to engage targets one handed while hanging on the rope. Shooting one handed and hanging on a rope didn’t bother me much, but the super slippery wood platform had me pretty nervous. With all of the grass being wet and dew coating the wood platform it made for some really slippery conditions. During the walk through I ended up slipping every time I tried to move around aggressively so I knew that during my stage run I would have to move around really easy to avoid slipping. This combined with the sun just coming over the top of the berm made for a really challenging stage. I shot the stage as well as I could given the lighting and slippery conditions but it was still a pretty poor performance. I had a slow stage time and a miss on a target that I shot three shots at because I couldn’t even see my sights and hoped that at least two would connect. Bummer, but it is what it is.

On the third and forth stages of the match I had pretty solid stage runs. Nothing awesome, but I didn’t leave much on the table for others to take. Later I would find out that Stage 4 would end up being tossed out of the match due to some competitors being started in the wrong facing direction. We broke lunch after stage 4 then shot stage 5 which was a fast shooting back and forth layout with some accuracy stuff at the end. This is the stage where I first tested out the “Dirt on the trigger finger” and I noticed a dramatic increase in my shooting splits. Then the waiting game started. Stage 6 was a long field course that had four activated targets at the end which kept messing up and caused a boat load of reshoots. The front left side had a large popper that activated a drop out no shoot which exposed a target through a port then a steel plate dropped down to block the port so you could only see 25% of the lower A-zone. The large popper also activated a drop turning disappearing target . Then front right side had the same type of no shoot drop out but the steel plate fully blocked the port after it closed and next to it was a swinger. Getting all of these contraptions reset properly proved to be a significant challenge as most of the reshoots were due to a resetting issue. We waited for 2 hours as there was still two other squads backed up in front of us on that stage. We asked the RM if we could jump over and shoot stage 7 then come back to stage 6 to finish the day. The RM allowed us to jump over so we shot stage 7 which was where I made a critical mistake at the end of the stage by looking for holes in the final target I engaged but didn’t immediately see any and reengaged it with two more shots to waste at least 2.5 seconds. Once I got to the target to validate the hits, I actually had my first two hits on it but they were obscured by the wall blocking the target from my shooting position. That was an expensive donation of at least 20 match points in wasted time by looking for holes instead of trusting my called shots.

After stage 7 we headed back to stage 6 were we still have to wait for a squad to finish shooting but it was at least the final stage of the day for us. We finally got on Stage 6 and luckily we only had 1 reshoot. I shot the stage fairly solid but ended up with a miss on the left activated no shoot port target. I called it a miss when it happened but I knew I didn’t have time to make it up because of the dropping hard cover steel and also needing to get to the drop turner right after the port. It sucked to eat a called miss, but it is what it is. I was just happy that all of the contraptions functioned properly on my stage run so I wouldn’t have to reshoot it a bunch of times. I didn’t bring enough ammo to reshoot a 32 round stage a bunch of times.

After day 1 I wasn’t too happy with my overall match performance knowing that I donated 30 points in misses and another 20 points in wasted time looking for holes on stage 7. But I was really happy to figure out the dirt on the trigger finger thing. I went back to the hotel, then got some dinner and tried to rehydrate as much as possible because I knew Sunday would be yet another day of sweating like crazy in the hot and humid conditions.

Sunday the morning fog was significantly less so getting to the range was a lot faster. This gave me time to check out all of the remaining stages before the start of the match. There were a couple of stages with wood platform to navigate on Sunday so I was hoping that the wetness would be burned off by the time we got to them. Lucky for us that is exactly what happened and we didn’t have to deal with the slippery footing conditions. We started the day on stage 8 and I was the first shooter up. This bay had its right front corner facing the sun and it was BRUTAL shooting conditions. I had to use the “Force” and hope my hits into the targets that had me facing the front right corner because there was no way I could see my sights or the target clearly in the glaring sun daggering into my eyes. Lucky for me my point shooting skills came through and I ended up with hits on those targets. Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don’t. I was lucky this time.

Stage 9 had three different shooting areas with a bunch of targets to engage through ports from two different wooden platforms. This stage run felt really clunky to me and didn’t seem to flow. Not to mention I don’t like hunching over to shoot through funky ports. I had a strange failure to go into battery jam on this stage on the first platform and I am not sure what the root cause was. Maybe my thumb got into the slide causing it to slow the slide down? I do remember feeling the palm of my weak hand pressing into the mag release more than normal so I do know that I had an abnormal grip on the gun while trying to shoot through the ports in a hunched over position. Either way, the jam cost me at least 2.5 seconds of stage time to assess and clear so there went another donation of at least 20 match points.

I did my best to shake it off as we headed over to stage 10 which was a tricky hose down stage where all of the shooting had to be done from two different wooden planks. I was terrified of shooting this stage in the wet morning conditions as this unpainted raw wood was SUPER SLIPPERY when it was wet. I feel sorry for any shooters that had to shoot on those slippery wood planks in the morning. By the time my squad got to the stage the wood and grass was dry so we didn’t have to worry about the slippery conditions. This stage was pretty simple in its target layout, but there was a bunch of different ways it could be shot. Most shooters chose a plan that had them shooting from the extreme left and right of both planks and then hauled ass between positions. The best plan was to shoot on the move but this required a lot of confidence in doing so while navigating a wooden plank only 1 foot wide and about a foot off the ground. I picked a shoot on the move stage plan that had me shooting the whole time. I didn’t have to shoot fast if I simply kept moving along the planks. I executed this stage plan very well and it yielded a stage win for the whole match.

Stage 11 was the toilet seat / port stage which basically forced you to shoot strong hand through all of the ports. Some shooters tried putting the toilet lid on their head and shoot with two hands, but this took too much time and also forced you to shoot in a weird bent arms position. I sucked it up and shot all of the ports strong hand. My primary worry was sweeping my weak hand while going from port to port and opening the lids so I favored getting the gun way out of the way while opening the lids. I know I donated some time on this stage by over favoring the potential for sweeping and shooting it all strong hand, but I would rather safely survive the stage verses pushing the limits and have a train wreck in trying to balance a lid on my head or sweep myself and be DQed.

The final stage of the match for us was stage 12 which was an interesting back and forth while shooting on the move stage. Most of the back and forth targets had either hard cover or no shoots blocking them so you really had to reign in the sights while swinging back and forth. Some shooters chose to transition back and forth for each target as they advanced down range but every time I did this I found myself wanting to stop my down range movement to settle the gun on the partial targets. I decided to instead combine the targets in pairs on each side to minimize the left/right transitions while maintaining down range movement. This plan worked out and I was able to execute my plan as it should have been.

Going into this match I wasn’t sure who would be the biggest competition as I only seen Ace Boles on the squading matrix as the other Limited GM. On Saturday I seen Manny Bragg at the range and as it turns out he showed up as a last minute entry and was shooting Limited. I knew that Manny always brings his A Game so pulling off a win would be difficult against him. Once all of the results were tallied Manny took the win with me in second at 97%. Manny beat me by 34 match points, which I could have eliminated by simply hitting all of the targets, or not donating 5+ seconds in stage time by looking for holes or dealing with a gun jam. Hard lessons for sure and not the first time I am learning them. But I am glad to finally figure out the “Sticky Trigger Finger” issue and hopefully I can deploy this in Florida at the Nationals to help me achieve my goal.

I also want to thank Russ Gould for taking video of all my stage runs and doing a great job with it. He has gotten a lot better with his shooting over the past year and I look forward to seeing him do even better in the future.

[Glock26Toter]

Dude. Why do you think I use ProGrip all the time? I usually put a small amount on both hands at the beginning of the match and then just in my finger tips before each stage. Just a tiny drop for the finger tips. I see people using a lot of it and then, when you get moisture on your hands it can get sticky, but used sparingly I never have any issues. If you only put on your trigger finger a bottle will probably last you the rest of your life.

I've never felt like I have a specific issue without it, but I just feel like I can feel the trigger and mag release a bit better.

[Glock26Toter]

Also, I just watched that Stage 10 run. Panda smash!

[CHA-LEE]

I do use Pro Grip and refresh as often as needed. For me it does not create the trigger finger slipperiness I am looking for when it gets humid and sticky.

I found some graphite powder to try out this weekend.

[drewbeck]

Graphite is probably gonna get everything really dirty and messy, I think you'd like climbing chalk, talc, gold bond, etc a lot better and it would be cleaner.

If you want the cheapest and best moisture mitigator pick up a bag of portland cement or plaster powder, they'll suck the moisture out of anything.

[thermobollocks]

Whoever designed stage 11 is a genius. I never thought of using toilet seats for that.

[Bunchies95]

Really bummed I had to miss this match. Always fun shooting with you. But life has a tendency to get in the way sometimes.

As to the sticky finger issue, pool chalk would be a good solution. Just buy a cube of that and rub it on your finger when needed. I have also seen people fill up a spice container with their favorite dirt as it is free and easily portable.