CHA-LEE's Tale

[CHA-LEE]

The primary challenge with indoor lighting is that it’s not consistent. The location of the lights, their angle and brightness can vary dramatically. Especially when running around within the range and shooting from different positions and angles. This usually isn’t an issue when shooting outdoors. I can call my shots much better outdoors because the lighting is way more consistent.

[CHA-LEE]

This weekend was a funky one from a match perspective. On Saturday I attended a practical rifle match and got a chance to shoot my AR. I have been doing a bunch of comp testing on this AR and also swapped my sight from an MRO to a Holosun 510C. This match uses Hit Factor scoring and everyone is scored minor so hitting the A zone is important. The stage we stared on was a standards type of stage which was relatively easy. I shot this stage with the big circle and little dot reticle and it didn’t turn out very well. My intent was to use the bottom of the circle to shoot the close targets and the middle dot for the further ones. But this resulted in mixing up which part of the reticle to use for any given target. I racked up 2 misses and a no shoot on this stage because I was using the wrong part of the reticle. For the rest of the match I turned off the big circle reticle and only used the 2 MOA dot.

 

The rest of the match went ok after switching up the reticle but I was dropping way too many points on non-A hits. I really can’t bitch about not performing well with this AR as this match is what consists of my practice with it. The cool thing is that I got a chance to shoot prone with it on one stage where I had never done that before. My AR ran like a champ through the whole match with zero issues so that is a win in itself. I watched many others have gun malfunctions through the match so it was good to not have to deal with that.

 

After the match we left one of the field courses up and practiced on it with our pistols. This stage was a good mix of moving between positions, close shots and some 35 yard shots as well. My primary goal for this practice was to get some more run time on the #4 Limited blaster and it ran like a champ. We didn’t shoot too much on this practice stage as it was getting late and the day was already a long one with shooting the match before. But it was a good practice session.

 

On Sunday I attended the PSAC match which had 99 shooters. This is pretty big for a local club match and with only 4 squads made for 25 shooter squads. When the squads get that big it turns into a long day waiting for your turn to shoot. We did our best to churn shooters through the stages efficiently, but it was still a long day. For some strange reason I wasn’t able to produce any solid stage runs. I had some kind of issue on every single stage. Some failures were small like bobbling a reload or draw. But I also had some major failures like dropping a mag in the dirt on the start and then having to pick it back up and use it. I also had another stage where I edge hit a popper but it didn’t go down and I had already started my reload and leaving the position. I went back to make it up and kept missing it which cost me at least 5 seconds in monkeying around. There was also another stage where I performed a 180 transition and the gun stopped right on a no shoot but I still pulled the trigger. Overall this was probably my worst local match performance in a very long time. I didn’t get much sleep the night before so maybe that was the root of the problem? Or maybe I just sucked that day? It was a long and frustrating day but I powered through it. Hopefully I have used up all my 2018 bad luck on this club match. The good thing is that I used my #4 Limited blaster and it rand without issue.

 

Tonight I am going to shoot the Whistling Pines indoor match and use my #4 Limited gun once more. If all goes well with this blaster tonight I am going to consider it good to go for prime time. We will see how it goes tonight.

[CHA-LEE]

I had fun at the Whistling Pines indoor match last night. I shot the #4 Limited gun and it once again ran like a champ without any issues. I am going to consider this blaster good to go for match duty as it’s been running flawlessly since getting coated. I shot the match fairly well even though I was struggling to see my sights. I missed shooting my Open gun at this match as it would have been much easier with a red dot. I ended up with 1 uncalled miss and 1 called no shoot that I made up. It always sucks to eat penalties like that, but I really can’t ask for much more given my inability to see the sights clearly indoors and maintaining a competitive shooting pace.

 

Now it’s time to get my guns and gear cleaned up and ready for the next two major matches. Doing the Area 1 and NAZC back to back is going to be crazy. I have an opportunity to get one more practice session in this weekend but the current weather forecast is calling for rain. Hopefully the rain isn’t bad so I can get one more practice session in before leaving for the Area 1 match.

[tanks]

On 5/8/2018 at 9:11 AM, CHA-LEE said:

...Doing the Area 1 and NAZC back to back is going to be crazy. ...

 

It seems I am on your squad for NAZC, looking forward to watching you shoot live.

[CHA-LEE]

18 hours ago, tanks said:

 

It seems I am on your squad for NAZC, looking forward to watching you shoot live.

 

Awesome!!! I look forward to shooting the NAZC with you.

[CHA-LEE]

A little over a month ago I caught a bullet frag to my left leg while attending a match. When I got home I dug a piece of bullet jacket out of my leg and thought that I got it all. I left it alone for a month and the cut wasn’t healing right so I poked on it and it opened right back up like it had just happened. I did some “digging” in the cut and could feel another piece of metal in there but it was too deep for me to dig out.

 

I went to the doctors office today for an X-Ray and consult. The X-Ray showed a piece of metal about 3mm in size wedged into the top layer of Quad muscle. The good news is that it doesn’t hurt and the wound isn’t infected. The bad news is that its deep enough that the doctor wants to remove it in via surgery. Since it’s a sharp piece of metal there is no telling what it will do. It might stay where it is or cut deeper into the muscle. Time to go under the knife to get this bad boy removed.

 

I took some pictures of the X-Rays and listed one below. It sucks to have this happen, but I am actually surprised that it took this long to catch a frag like this. I shoot a TON and attend a TON of matches so its expected to happen at some point. I am thankful that this frag hit my leg and not my face. I guess this means that I am not bullet proof. Bummer.

[Sdlrodeo]

Several years ago I was shooting an indoor match with steel. I felt a scratch on my knuckle. A few weeks went by and it healed over but more like a pimple and there was sort of a lump. I picked at it with a pocket knife a little and the top of the lump came off like a scab and there was this neat round hole in my skin. No blood. (I guess this is like one of those dermal piercings?) anyway, I gave it a little squeeze and here I had a small copper jacket frag about 1/8x1/8 in my knuckle this whole time. Crazy as it didn’t feel like anything when it happened. 

[RaylanGivens]

Sorry to heart that...  Get it out of there!

[CHA-LEE]

No matches this weekend for me. I was able to get out to do some live fire practice with friends on Saturday though. We setup a huge field course stage with 49 rounds worth of shooting. We started off by shooting the front half of the stage with only 28 rounds worth of targets. This had a good mixture of distance steel, hosing, shooting on the move and shooting position foot work to deal with. After running that several times then we shot the second half of the stage with 27 rounds of targets. This had more of a focus on shooting aggressively while moving through the stage. At the end we combined both sections and shot the whole huge stage. This was good practice for the up coming Rocky Mountain 300 where every stage is 60+ rounds. This stage wasn’t 60 rounds but it was big enough to test those kind of skills.

 

I shot pretty good that day and did it all with the old #1 Limited blaster. I decided to shoot that blaster because the #2 & #4 were already cleaned and prepped for the Area 1 / NAZC trip. On Sunday I got all of my stuff packed up for the trip and I am ready to head out tonight. I am looking forward to attending both of these matches. The Stages look good on paper, we will see how they compare in real life. It’s time to make it happen!!!

[CHA-LEE]

The crazy week of major matches is over and I have finally recovered. The Area 1 match was primarily an aiming and scampering between positions contest with very little hosing. The vast majority of the targets were hard cover or no shoot partials and the few open targets in the match were pushed out past 20 yards. Aiming hard the whole match was required or you would be punished appropriately. The hard aiming and excessive running around pushed the high hit factors of the stages down in to the 5 – 6 range. This range is setup at the base of a mountain so the mountain itself is the back stop for all the bays. We had overcast skies most of the time with sprinkling rain here or there through the whole match. Seeing my sights effectively was a serious challenge and it made me shoot really slow most of the time. I racked up 3 mikes for the match. The first was on the over the top half hard cover swinger on stage 11. That was a very difficult shot and it was a 50/50 chance of getting a miss which I wasn’t too bummed about. The other two mikes were on the same target about 2 inches into the hard cover on an easy target that was less than 3 yards away. I am not sure how that happened as I called the shots “Good” and they were right next to one another and I wasn’t shooting crazy fast. It was really overcast during that stage run so I can only attribute it to not being able to see my sights properly. The biggest mistake of the match was on stage 6 which was setup like a space ship with a bunch of doorways, walls and other obstacles.  The doorways had raised wood thresholds and I caught my foot on it while trying to run hard and perform a reload at the same time. I went down like a ton of bricks dropping the mag I was trying to reload with as well. I was able to keep the gun pointed down range and didn’t sweep myself during the fall and recovery which was great. But the fall wasted at least 6 seconds of stage time. I had a pretty good gouge in the palm of my support hand from the fall which sucked. I had to super glue it closed to keep from bleeding all over the place the rest of the match. I heard that several other shooters fell down on that stage as well during the match. I don’t understand why they would put such a significant trip hazard in a stage like that which has no bearing on testing “Practical Shooting” skills. I understand that stage designers want to make stages look cool for major matches, but a cool looking stage shouldn’t circumvent safety.  

 

Since I was shooting the Staff Match on the Wed/Thur schedule my squad was full of RO’s and also Team Glock. Since there were no standing RO’s for the stages during this schedule we had to RO ourselves. I stepped up and helped run the Clock or the Tablet on most of the stages. It felt like more of a Club match doing it that way but I didn’t want to screw over the match staff and no RO when it wasn’t needed. It was cool to shoot the match with Shane Coley. Shane had a phenomenal match and laid the smack down appropriately. From what I observed that performance would have been solid enough to win the nationals if this match would have been the nationals. It’s always cool to see the top shooters perform their craft.

 

When we were done shooting on Thursday I was second in Limited behind Shane at an embarrassing 85%. The three mikes and the fall compounded to about 7% in overall score. Without those mistakes I would have been at about 92% of Shane which funny enough is the same difference as the Limited Nationals last year. Given how poorly I performed I figured that there would be a handful of Limited shooters that would fill the gap between Shane and I as the weekend shooters did their thing. Much to my surprise, when the match was finished my second place held up through the match. My buddy Kenny Terry finished a very close third only 9 match points behind me. This match was far from my best performance but I stuck with it and kept grinding through the suck and it paid off with a second place finish.

 

Fellow squad mate and local shooter Scott Giesick was able to get most of my stage runs on video. Huge thanks to Scott for the video work!!!

 

 

[CHA-LEE]

On Friday I flew from Spokane WA to Phoenix AZ. My buddy Brad was waiting at the airport in Phoenix so we jumped in the rental and headed to the Northern AZ Classic in Prescott. We got to the range late in the day but had a chance to walk all of the stages. The NAZC stages had a really good mixture of aggressive and patient shooting along with several strategy options for shooting each stage. No “Follow the leader” with only one way to shoot the stages, which was awesome. The interesting challenge with most of the field course stages is that they usually required 2 reloads in Limited. The weather was awesome as well with clear skies and a light breeze.

 

I was on a squad with Nils Jonasson and his crew and that was a lot of fun. Nils was initially signed up for Limited division but he showed up with an Open gun instead. I was looking forward to competing against Nils directly in Limited but it was still fun watching him issue a beat down in Open. Since the sun was out I could see my sights and was shooting really good for most of the match. I had 2 uncalled misses for the match and both of them were first thing in the morning on Shadow Targets. The frustrating thing with these misses is that I knew I couldn’t see my sights so I shot slower than normal to help ensure my hits but it still resulted in misses. I hate having these uncalled mikes due to not being able to see my sights. I had one more miss on a Virginia Count standards stage which I called a miss but couldn’t make it up. The only other issue I had during the match was on stage 3 which we finished on. It was a speed shoot stage where I botched my grip on the draw and had to realign the sights to center on every shot. This resulted in a bunch of makeup shots on paper and misses on steel. It was a train wreck of a stage run but I at least got all of my hits. I was able to reshoot the stage for fun and did it almost 3 seconds faster with a proper grip.

 

Overall I was happy with my performance in the match. I could have lived without the stupid misses but it is what it is. When the results were tallied I ended up winning Limited 14% ahead of second place. Bobby Mcgee from Safariland was able to get all of my stage runs on video so huge thanks to him for doing that for me.

 

After the awards ceremony was done we drove back to the Phoenix airport and flew home. This was a crazy busy week of travel and shooting that was a lot of fun. Now I need to get my shooting gear cleaned up and ready to rumble for the weekend club matches. The Rocky Mountain 300 is only two weeks away so I won’t have to wait long for the next major match.

 

 

[CrashDodson]

Nice shooting Charlie.  Love those GM make up shots on the Arizona video. 

[Furrly]

Nice, One day!!

[CHA-LEE]

I had the doctors visit this week for the bullet frag in my leg. They used an ultra sound to locate it and found that its lodged in the fatty tissue just above the muscle. The Doctor was eager to dig it out but recommended to leave it alone and see what happens. He said that given how small the frag is and the amount of cutting needed to get to it, there is a larger chance of causing more damage by digging it out verses leaving it in there. He recommended to leave it in there and if it starts to cause problems down the road then we can dig it out. I am fine with this as its not causing me any trouble currently. We will see what happens down the road.

 

I got all of my shooting gear unpacked, cleaned up and ready to go for this coming weekends club matches and practice sessions. This is going to be a long weekend with Monday off so I am going to take advantage of the day off by getting some live fire practice in. I am going to run the #4 Limited blaster exclusively this weekend to get some more run time on it. I need at least a few thousand more rounds on it with flawless functionality before I am going to consider it 100% ready to rumble for major match duty. I have taken it as a backup gun to the three major matches I have attended this year so far. I have yet to need to use it at those matches. But I did get a chance to double check its velocity at the Chrono stages. The interesting thing I have observed is that the #4 blaster is producing 15 - 20 fps faster velocity than the #2 blaster. This increase in velocity seems to have happened after I got the gun Black Nitride coated and the barrel inside and out was coated as well. I am not totally sure why the black nitride increased the velocity but it did. Either way I would much rather have it produce faster velocity than slower verses my other blasters.

 

The next major match for me is the Rocky Mountain 300 which is happening not this weekend but the next. This is a 5 stage match where every stage is 60+ rounds. Its a blast to shoot and the extended round count stages really push the limits of your stage planning and programming skills. Not to mention giving all of your mag pouches a workout with all of the reloads needed. Hopefully the recent rainy weather avoids us that weekend and we can shoot in nice conditions. This match has been plagued by crappy weather over the years so hopefully we can break that trend. We will see how it goes.

[Furrly]

11 hours ago, CHA-LEE said:

I had the doctors visit this week for the bullet frag in my leg. They used an ultra sound to locate it and found that its lodged in the fatty tissue just above the muscle. The Doctor was eager to dig it out but recommended to leave it alone and see what happens. He said that given how small the frag is and the amount of cutting needed to get to it, there is a larger chance of causing more damage by digging it out verses leaving it in there. He recommended to leave it in there and if it starts to cause problems down the road then we can dig it out. I am fine with this as its not causing me any trouble currently. We will see what happens down the road.

 

I got all of my shooting gear unpacked, cleaned up and ready to go for this coming weekends club matches and practice sessions. This is going to be a long weekend with Monday off so I am going to take advantage of the day off by getting some live fire practice in. I am going to run the #4 Limited blaster exclusively this weekend to get some more run time on it. I need at least a few thousand more rounds on it with flawless functionality before I am going to consider it 100% ready to rumble for major match duty. I have taken it as a backup gun to the three major matches I have attended this year so far. I have yet to need to use it at those matches. But I did get a chance to double check its velocity at the Chrono stages. The interesting thing I have observed is that the #4 blaster is producing 15 - 20 fps faster velocity than the #2 blaster. This increase in velocity seems to have happened after I got the gun Black Nitride coated and the barrel inside and out was coated as well. I am not totally sure why the black nitride increased the velocity but it did. Either way I would much rather have it produce faster velocity than slower verses my other blasters.

 

The next major match for me is the Rocky Mountain 300 which is happening not this weekend but the next. This is a 5 stage match where every stage is 60+ rounds. Its a blast to shoot and the extended round count stages really push the limits of your stage planning and programming skills. Not to mention giving all of your mag pouches a workout with all of the reloads needed. Hopefully the recent rainy weather avoids us that weekend and we can shoot in nice conditions. This match has been plagued by crappy weather over the years so hopefully we can break that trend. We will see how it goes.

Cha-lee how many rounds do you run through your blasters before you deem them ready for matches as your primary blaster. 

[CHA-LEE]

I like to get at least 5K of error free functionality before I will consider them reliable enough to serve in a Primary blaster roll for major matches. This is why I have a fleet of Limited blasters. There seems to always be one with an issue that needs to be resolved, or the issue is resolved but I need to run enough ammo through it to prove that the issue is resolved. This may seem excessive to some, but that is what I need to make sure I have a blaster ready to rumble at any time that I KNOW is going to function properly. This game is hard enough as it is without battling gun problems at matches as well.

Edited May 25, 2018 by CHA-LEE

[CHA-LEE]

The long memorial weekend was chocked full of shooting entertainment. I used my #4 Limited blaster the whole weekend and it ran like a champ. The only time it had a hiccup was during the practice session where I was trying to use some practice ammo that wouldn’t pass my case gauge testing. This isn’t too much of a surprise as the chamber on the #4 blaster is tighter than my other guns. This junky practice ammo runs in my other blasters so I am not too worried about it not running in the #4. After the long weekend of shooting the #4 blaster I broke it down for a detailed clean and inspection. Everything looked good with no funky wear or issues observed. I think this bad boy has enough proven reliability for me to trust it in major match duty if needed.

 

On Saturday I shot the Aurora USPSA match and it was pretty hot. I think it topped out in the mid 90’s and the hot weather was getting to many shooters because they were not prepared. The hot weather didn’t negatively impact my performance as I was prepared for it with my Rehydrate and maintained a solid hydration schedule through the match. In fact, I was feeling so good after the match that I went on a 5 hour Motorcycle ride after the match to take advantage of the great weather.

 

The match had a good mixture of shooting challenges and some difficult shots that punished many people who didn’t respect them. I shot solid that day with no major issue. I didn’t have any Misses or No Shoots but I did rack up 4 delta hits. Three of these D’s were on the same speed shoot stage that had a bunch of partial targets that required some really aggressive shooting. I should have been more patient with the shooting on that stage to capture better hits. Many people were shooting the stage slowly due to the partial targets and I wanted to take advantage of that by being more aggressive. Sometimes you get a little too aggressive and rack up sever D zone hits.

 

On Sunday I headed up into the mountains to attend the Clear Creek match. The weather was awesome up there in the mid 75’s. All of the stages were fun and challenging. I shot solidly with no shooting penalties and no D zone hits. Two of the field course stages were setup in a way that favored Open shooters from a round count perspective. I had to do two reloads where they only had to do one. Both of these stages also forced reloads in very short distances where the Open guys could keep shooting the whole time. More practice on doing multiple reloads within field course stages isn’t a bad thing though.

 

On Monday I pulled together a live fire practice session with some friends. With the Rocky Mountain 300 coming up next weekend the guys wanted to focus on a large field course with a crap ton of steel. We pulled out every popper we had and also 14 plates then threw in 6 paper targets to keep us honest. All together this mega stage had 37 pieces of steel. We setup the front half of the stage with the steel plates then the back half with the poppers. The back half was setup in a lateral shooting area with a bunch of walls and barrels serving as visual blockers. It was  pretty mean memory stage as figuring out where to engage the sea of poppers without leaving any up was a challenge. We shot the front half by itself several times, then shot the back half several times. Then we finished by shooting the whole mega stage all together. This practice session was awesome for reinforcing the requirement of aiming hard on steel the whole stage run. Humble pie was had by all as we tried pushing the limits of “Aiming Hard” through the runs. It was a very productive practice session for me and I am glad that I got a chance to do so much shooting over the long weekend.

 

Now it’s time to get the guns and gear ready for the Rocky Mountain 300 coming up this weekend. I am shooting on the Saturday schedule, so I will be able to check out the stages and watch some of the shooting on Friday. I will use the #2 as the Primary blaster for this match and bring along the #4 as the backup.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I shot the Rocky Mountain 300. This is the one crazy match of the year with only 5 stages but every stage has 60+ rounds of blasting entertainment. This match started off with a bummer announcement at the shooters meeting. Our long time Colorado MD, Section Coordinator and Area Director Jerry Westcott is moving out of state to Idaho. This is a huge loss for the Colorado Practical Shooting sports as Jerry works tirelessly to host many practical shooting matches all across the state. We hate to see him go but also understand that life happens and the next adventure is always around the next corner. He will leave some HUGE shoes to fill here in Colorado which I am not sure if anyone is up for the task. We will see how that goes through the rest of the year.

 

My RM300 match performance wasn’t all that good. I started out the match on Stage 5 which was a pretty straight forward field course with a lot of scrambling around. I shot at a really conservative pace which netted me only 2 C’s but I left too much time on the table shooting slower than needed. We moved over to Stage 1 which was the “Hoser” stage and I knocked that out pretty solidly with no issues.

 

When we got to Stage 2 I had my first major blunder of the match. I was first to shoot the stage and I felt confident in my stage plan. I shot the stage per my plan effectively and I thought that I had a solid run. That was until we started scoring the targets and I had engaged the same 4 paper target array from two different shooting positions. I wasted about 4 seconds of stage time reengaging the same array of targets twice. It’s been a long time since I have had such a major stage strategy blunder. This is one of the challenges with huge stages like this and it got me.  

 

Next was the infamous all steel stage which I struggled with. I had a solid stage plan but the mixture of White and Blue steel really ate my lunch. The white steel was fine, but the blue steel really hurt me as my sights blended in with the steel and I couldn’t pick a solid aiming spot. Especially when the steel was stacked up in front of one another. I needed way too many make up shots and it resulted in running the gun dry and needing to do a standing reload. I eventually got all of the steel down but it wasn’t pretty.

 

We finished on Stage 4 which was a long run and gun setup. I shot this stage really aggressive but gave it all away at the final position by having a miss on the second to last target. It was stupid as I called the shot a miss but just kept on going to the next target and didn’t make it up. I put more of a priority on transitioning aggressively and paid the price.

 

Even though I didn’t feel like I performed my best I still had a lot of fun. I was really proud of all of my reloads and didn’t screw any of them up. I don’t reload off of my 3rd and 4th mag pouch very often but the dry fire I put into that before the match paid off. Other than the all steel stage my shooting was pretty solid. I only shot a handful of C’s and zero D’s. The shots weren’t really that difficult in this match so it wasn’t too hard to shoot really good points. I think a lot of people got sucked into blasting at brown instead of aiming at the A zone though. Usually when the shots are “easy” people don’t respect the targets and rack up a bunch of non-A zone hits which is exactly what happened to a lot of people.

 

My primary competition for the match was Bob Krogh and he took full advantage of my blunders. Bob ended up winning Limited and I was second at 94%. It’s good to see Bob shooting again as he has been really busy with work lately and not able to shoot many matches. Hopefully we can shoot against one another later in the year at the Colorado or Utah state matches.  

 

 

[CHA-LEE]

On Sunday I decided to shoot the local club match at the Aurora Gun Club instead of heading back up to Weld to attend the steel shoot off. It was really overcast in the morning and that made seeing my sights more difficult than normal. On my second stage of the match this really bit me in the ass because I racked up 3 uncalled misses on a field course stage. This is frustrating as s#!t as I wasn’t point shooting. I was trying hard to see my sights but all I could see was blurry sights and a dim fiber. It’s been a long time since I racked up three uncalled misses on a stage due to lighting issues.  

 

I used the #4 Limited blaster at this match and I am glad I did. On the third stage of the match I had a fail to fire issue on the very last shot of the stage. The slide didn’t close all the way due to the tip of the bullet getting jammed up on the throat of the barrel. This is the “Tight” chamber issue I was running into during practice while trying to shoot the ammo that won’t pass my case gauge testing. This failure forced me to eat another miss which brought the miss count to 4 total for the match. It was a bummer to wreck my match performance with so many misses but I am glad that I had the failure to fire issue.

 

After the match I took the barrel out of my #4 blaster and did some plunk testing with some practice ammo that doesn’t pass the case gauge. I found 5 rounds that wouldn’t seat at all due to concentric issues in the brass. Then I took the barrel and ammo over to Rick’s to have him open up the barrel throat more. After he worked his magic on the barrel all of the practice ammo would fully seat in the chamber. When I got home I loaded up a full mag with practice ammo and it all cycled through the gun by hand. The next time I go out for live fire practice I am going to see if all of the practice ammo will shoot through it and if it does the “Tight Chamber” issue should be resolved.

 

This week I have to get back behind the reloading press and make some more ammo. Hopefully I can pound out a bunch of ammo this week so I can get stocked back up.    

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I presented a local 2 Day competition pistol class. The weather was hot but clear skies on both days so that was good. This was two long days of hard work for me but it was nice to see people learn new stuff and succeed while trying new things. I didn’t get to do much shooting over the weekend other than demo’s here or there and one large field course stage run. But I made it a point to shoot the #4 Limited blaster during this live fire and it ate up all of the “Practice” ammo without any issues. This was a great test as none of that ammo would chamber reliably before the recent barrel throat work.

 

I am pretty worn out from the long weekend of hardcore training presentation so I will likely take it easy this evening. Later this week I need to get back behind the reloading press to get my ammo stash restocked. This coming Saturday I have the HPPS match which I run then another club match on Sunday. This should be a fun weekend of club match shooting with nice weather.

 

The following week I head out to the Area 7 match. I am scheduled to shoot the whole match on Friday then head back home on Saturday. I have never attended any matches in the North East so it will be cool to see how they get it done up there.  

[CHA-LEE]

This past Saturday I hosted the HPPS match. We setup 6 fun stages to shoot and we actually got done with setup soon enough that I had time to walk all of the stages. This was an uncommon treat as I am usually running around with my head cutoff all the way up until the start of the match getting stuff taken care of.

 

The weather was awesome for the first few stages then it got increasingly windy as the day went along. By the time we got to the last two stages of the match the wind was insane. We had 50-60mph gusts which created a crazy sand storm and it was ripping up stages. I spent most of the time at the end of the match rebuilding stages after the wind was ripping them up. I had to rebuild one stage 5 different times because the wind gusts kept ripping it apart. It was actually amazing to see cardboard targets get ripped off the lath when it had 10 – 12 staples in each side. The crazy wind lasted for about 45 minutes then died down to a “normal” level of wind so we could finish the match. I am proud of everyone attending for grinding through that craziness to finish the match. This was a true test of “Practical” range conditions that are not the best.

 

I used the #4 Limited blaster at this match to give it some more runtime. It ran great the whole match which was phenomenal given the crazy windy conditions. I put a gun cover on it when the wind started but there was so much stand blowing around that it still got coated in sand even though it was covered. When I made ready for the final stage and racked the slide it was crunchy due to all the sand in it. I really wasn’t sure if it was going to function reliably but it ran like a champ without any issues. After the match I had to do a full detailed strip, clean and relube to get all of the sand out of it. I didn’t see any abnormal wear due to sand being inside everywhere. Maybe that is one benefit to the Black Nitride coating as its tuff enough to keep sand from scratching everything up?

 

From a shooting perspective I had a pretty solid match. I only had two D zone hits for the whole match and zero penalties. The one thing that I was really happy with was not letting the windy conditions negatively impact my performance. I was able to effectively block it out when it was my turn to perform which was great. The wind was a significant distraction for many others though and their performance did suffer. No matter what it was some good experience in dealing with difficult range conditions.

 

On Sunday I decided to do some live fire practice instead of attending the Weld match. The Weld match was a Super Classifier event with all classifier stages so there is no need to attend that. It was heavily overcast that day which was a good test for shooting in less than optimal lighting conditions. I shot my #4 Limited gun to start off with just to get some rounds through it after cleaning it up the night before. Then I switched over to my #2 Limited blaster to finish out the practice session. The stage we setup was focused on blending shooting positions together with a good mixture of shot difficulty on paper and 12 steel. It was good to get a good amount of steel practice in as well. We used a mixture of colt speed poppers and a plate rack to produce two different shooting aggression levels on the steel.

 

I only shot about 150 rounds but mixed that with dry fire of the stage as well. For the most part I was shooting pretty solid even though seeing my sights was harder than normal. We wrapped up the practice session by doing some hands at sides “Rocket Draws” on a close target. I was able to pound out a bunch of .65 - .75 draws with my best being a .63. This was with 100% focus on aggression to shooting at “Brown” so it wasn’t something I would do reliably in a match. But after going crazy for a while producing a solid .80  - .90 draw felt like child’s play. It was fun to wrap up the practice on Rocket Draws to see what happens when I pushed the gun handling mechanics to my limit.

 

Now it’s time to get my guns and hear prepped for the Area 7 match this coming weekend. I am shooting this match on the “All Day Friday” schedule. I am flying out Wednesday night so I can check out all of the stages on Thursday. Then I will fly back on Saturday morning. I have never attended the Area 7 match before or this range its hosted at so it will be a new experience all together.   

[Climbhard]

Charlie, noticed your new blaster #4 appears to be a heavier slide than your other guns with no lightening cuts.  How would you describe the difference and why did you go this direction.  

[CHA-LEE]

1 hour ago, Climbhard said:

Charlie, noticed your new blaster #4 appears to be a heavier slide than your other guns with no lightening cuts.  How would you describe the difference and why did you go this direction.  

 

Even though the #4 Limited blaster slide doesn't have cuts its the exact same weight as my other guns (12oz). When I was building this blaster I was surprised by this as well. The #4 Limited gun is using a Caspian slide which is Forged and the slides on my other guns are milled from bar stock. Forged slides have less "Dense" steel so they are lighter than the Bar Stock milled slides. This is why the #4 doesn't have slide cuts. 

[Wisemenofgotham]

Great shooting!  

[nunez]

I want to give a shout-out to Charlie for being a great guy. While I was walking the first couple stages on Thursday at Area 7, the man himself walked up to look at the stages as well. I introduced myself and thanked him for his great book and all the information he provides on this forum. As we walked the stages (I was stalking him) he freely gave out his stage plans and answered any questions. Thank you sir for being awesome!