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CHA-LEE

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On 6/23/2018 at 8:16 PM, nunez said:

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! 

 

No problem buddy, it was nice to meet you. I hope you had fun shooting the match as I know I did!!!

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This past week I attended the Area 7 match. I was able to squeak into the match on the “All Day Friday” Schedule to shoot the event with the match staff. I flew in late Wednesday night and had all day on Thursday to check out the stages. The only bummer with that plan is that the stages didn’t get fully setup until about 3PM on Thursday. The match staff was busting their hump getting the stages setup on Thursday so I decided to go watch a movie to kill a few hours. This is the first time attending this match or range so it was cool to check out a new place. The range is in the middle of a heavily forested area so everything was surrounded by trees. All of the bays consisted of loose sand making it much like a beach. The weather was nice topping out at about 80 degrees and there wasn’t much humidity which made it not too bad.

 

I forced myself to drink over a gallon of water that day to keep from getting dehydrated which was a good thing. I also did a good job of snacking through the whole match to keep properly nourished. I got to the range at 6:30AM and ended up leaving at 6PM so it was a FULL day at the range.  My eating and drinking schedule kept me in solid physical and mental condition through the long day which I am really proud of. There were a lot of people running out of gas towards the end of the match but I wasn’t one of them.

 

The stages in this match were not complex or difficult which was good because the lighting conditions and beach sand were hard enough to contend with. I shot the stages within the bounds of my skill set and didn’t allow myself to go crazy on any stages due to the funky lighting conditions on a couple of stages. Even though I tried my best I racked up a total of 6 misses and 1 no shoot. Three of the misses were crappy lighting anomalies. I shot deliberately during these misses and felt that I was aiming hard and called the shots “Good” but they ended up being misses over the top of the targets. I can only attribute this to biasing the front sight high because I was having a hard time seeing the front sight. Two of the misses were less than 2mm into the hard cover. And the final miss was due to the funky footing in the beach sand as I was engaging a target on the move at a rapid foot pace. The no shoot I can live with because it just barely broke the perforation on the no shoot on a high risk clam shell target. All of these shooting penalties sunk my overall result as you simply can’t give away 100 match points and expect to do good overall.

 

The good from this match is that my stage times were on par with the top 3 in Limited. IF I would have had all of my hits I would have been solidly in contention for a top 3 finish. Being able to shoot the stages in competitive times without trying to go bonkers doing so is a good thing in my book. With my performance as crappy as I felt it was landed me in 5th overall in Limited at 88% of winner Shane Coley. I hate getting beat by my eyes but I am not sure if I could have done any better in the conditions I was exposed to. Sometimes you do some ass whipping, sometimes you get your ass whipped. It sucks to have major issues in the first two Area matches I have attended so far this year but things don’t always go the way we intend them to.

 

 

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I flew back to Colorado Saturday morning and being a glutton for punishment I decided to shoot the local Aurora match that day as well. I had the wife pick me up from the airport and drop me off at the range to attend the match. I got to the match just in time to shoot the first stage my squad started on and I was the last shooter. I had to come up with a speedy stage plan then run it like a rental to see how it would turn out. Lucky for me the stage was pretty simple and I was able to shoot it pretty solid. Not having seen any of the other stages up to that point I had to figure them out on the fly as my squad got there. This worked our fine for all but one stage where I had the wrong plan but was up second to shoot and didn't have time to reprogram another plan. I was able to shoot the whole match penalty free with only 2 D zone hits. The sun was out and I could see my sights really good. This was a significant difference from what I was seeing the day before at the Area 7 match. Its crazy how I can go from being on the ropes to whipping ass over one day.

 

I wanted to go practice on Sunday but the weather was too rainy to do that so I rested instead. This was actually a good thing because I was pretty wiped out from all the shooting on Friday and travel with shooting on Saturday.

 

Now its time to get some more ammo loaded for the Todd Jarrett class I am attending this coming weekend!!!! Time to get some more learning done!!!

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This past Fri/Sat I attended a pistol class hosted by Todd Jarrett. This is the second class I have taken from TJ and it was good. I didn’t learn anything “New” but I did confirm a few things that I need to do differently. The main topic that peaked my interest was his comment about skill improvement expectations verses your inherent skills. He was basically saying that people will see a much larger skill improved for the skills they are inherently good at verses focusing on the skills they are not. This doesn’t mean that we need to ignore the skills we suck at, we still need to be proficient in those. But we should put more focus on bolstering the skills we are good at. I am going to give that a try for the next 6 months and see what that does from a performance perspective. I am going to specifically focus on more aggressive shooting as that is one skill I am inherently good at which I may be able to improve on. I also learned some more tricks of the trade in presenting training. It was nice to focus some time on my own training and get guidance from a top level shooter like TJ. If you have an opportunity to take a class with Todd I would highly recommend it.

 

On Sunday I was able to attend a local match at the Aurora Gun Club. This ended up being a four field course stage event which tested many different skills. I was worn out from the two days of training the day before so I was dragging ass a little bit. But I was able to pull it together and shoot fairly decent. I didn’t have any shooting penalties, but I did rack up 3 D zone hits along the way. I have been trying to push the boundaries of shooting aggressively so getting some D’s is expected. The #4 Limited blaster had another failure to go into battery jam on the first stage of the day. This was due to the side of the bullet jamming on the throat just past the chamber. Since I burned through a crap ton of ammo during the TJ class I was using some ammo I loaded about a year ago. All of this ammo has passed case gauge so it should have worked. Or it may have been some kind of funky contamination in the chamber issue. Either way I am going to get the throat of the chamber opened up some more. Beyond that, the #4 blaster ran well. I can’t “Feel” any difference in its function verses the #2 Limited blaster which is great.

 

After the match we had a section meeting with all of the local clubs to discuss section business. It’s always good to get all of the club presidents together to talk about stuff to help the matches run better.

Edited by CHA-LEE
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I have been getting some questions about the Grip Strength content in my book Path of Focused Effort. Primary associated with measuring grip strength and how specific pounds of grip effect recoil management. Hopefully the below video helps clarify the situation. Check it out and let me know what you think.

 

 

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1 hour ago, arkadi said:

Could you please add a strong hand shooting slow-motion of your natural grip strength - with Limited and Open guns?

 

I will add this to my list of things to do the next time I go out to Practice. Not sure when that will be though with my busy July schedule so it might be a while.

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This past weekend I went up to Michigan to present some training. The weather was nice and I had a great group of guys to train with. Much was learned by all over the two day class including myself. It’s fun to spend a weekend somewhere different and make some good friends in the process.

 

Before heading out to this training event I had a chance to do some experimental wrenching on my oldest #1 Limited blaster. This blaster has a lot of miles on it and the slide to frame fit has gotten really sloppy. I am planning on totally rebuilding this blaster this winter by replacing the Frame, Slide and Barrel. Since I am going to rebuild it I figured I would try to tighten up the frame to slide fit by peening the frame rails down. I don’t have frame rail peening plates to keep from bending the rails down too far so I went at it really slow with a brass hammer. In about an hour I was able to beat down the rails and refit the slide to eliminate at least 75% of the frame to slide slop. The vertical slop is almost totally eliminated but there is still some side to side slop that I would like to eliminate. I don’t think I can do that unless I have the peening plates which would allow me to peen the rails outwards while retaining the same height.

 

I also noticed that the slide lock pin was moving around slightly in the frame when racking the gun. The original slide pin was a .197 diameter which is smaller than the normal .200. I tried a .200 slide pin and it still moved around some so I then tried a .203 slide pin and that eliminated any visible movement. Since I increased the slide pin .006 I had to do some minor fitting on the lower barrel lugs and barrel link to get it to lock up properly. But after that the barrel seemed to be locking up much tighter than before without binding.

 

Given the significant changes made to the #1 blaster I wasn’t sure if it was going to make any difference or change its functionality. I rolled the dice and brought it with me to the Training event to give it a test. I was able to sight it in at 10 yards and the POI had moved a little high and to the left. After drifting the rear sight a little bit the Left/Right POI was dead on and I could produce an all rounds touching group about an inch high from my desired POI. Since I am using a fixed rear sight I couldn’t change the vertical offset to get the POA/POI dead on but it was close enough to get the job done. The gun functioned flawlessly through the whole class which was good. At the end of the class I was able to shoot a group at 50 yards off hand. I was able to produce an 8 inch group at 50 yards with the deviation being primarily in the vertical direction. This is dramatically better than it was before where I could barely keep the hits on a full size USPSA target at 50 yards before the tightening up job.

 

I still want to do some more frame rail peening to see if I can reduce the side to side slop, but I will need to get the peening plates for that. As it is now though I can trust it to be accurate enough for practice and match duty if need be. Before this rework I didn’t have any confidence in its accuracy to use it in practice. I wouldn’t even think of using it in a match. We will see how long this frame rail peening job will last in the long run. Ultimately, it really only needs to last until this winter when I will perform the major overhaul. We will see how that goes.

 

The other thing that I was able to test this past weekend is some new +0.75 diopter shooting glasses. I have been using some +0.50 shooting glasses for the past two years and the dreaded “Can’t see my sights good enough in poor lighting” issue has started to rear its head again. Stepping up to the next level of positive diopter seemed like a logical first step. I got some cheap Lens Crafters glasses made in the new +.075 diopter script and tested it out in dry fire at home where I could replicate some poor lighting conditions indoors. Testing the new glasses against the old in the same lighting conditions was interesting. With the +0.50 glasses I could only make out the fiber dot on blurry sights. With the +0.75 glasses I could see the front sight well enough to see crisp top corners just above the fiber. I didn’t get a chance to test out how much more blurry the targets would be at distance with the new +0.75 shooting glasses before heading out for the training class.

 

During the training class I was able to test the new shooting glasses out in pretty realistic conditions. They made the distance targets a little more blurry but it wasn’t too bad. Using them did improve my ability to focus on the sights in “Shadow Target” conditions which is usually where my issues start. I was also able to do the 50 yard group shooting using them without the target being too blurry to retain a consistent aiming spot. I think these are going to be a good step in the right direction for getting my vision back on track in less than optimal lighting. I will be using these cheap glasses for a while until I am sure they are going to work properly in most shooting conditions. I don’t want to waste money on getting new lenses made for my Rydon shooting glasses until I know this is going to be the best solution.

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This past weekend I headed down to Montrose Colorado for a mini motorcycle and blasting weekend  getaway with the wife and a few friends. I rode my KTM 1190 Adventure R motorcycle down there while following the wife in our 4Runner. I got rained on a three different times while riding down there but the wet stuff was separated by enough sun that I was able to get fully dried out between rain events.

 

On Friday we took the motorcycles up and over Engineer and Cinnamon Passes with a lunch break in between. Wrestling the big KTM 1190 up those trails was fun and a little sketchy at times. The KTM 1190 is totally capable of handling pretty gnarly trails but it also takes a lot of effort while wielding that 525lb beast. All told I rode almost 200 miles that day with much of that being 1st gear trail work. I was worn out by the end of that day and my hands were toast. The good news is that I didn’t crash or lay the bike down through that long day of riding. I didn’t see any one else with a big adventure bike on those trials and I was a little proud of that. All of the other Motorcycle riders had much smaller dirt bikes or smaller displacement dual sport bikes. I guess nobody else was either stupid or brave enough to take their big adventure bikes up and over those passes that day.

 

My grip strength was toast after that long day of riding and I didn’t trust it to ride again on Saturday. Instead of riding on Saturday I decided to shoot the local Montrose USPSA match. They setup 5 fun stages to shoot and they had about 20 shooters. This gave me a chance to test out the +0.75 shooting glasses and my #1 Limited blaster some more. The new shooting glasses worked great. The direction of the shooting berms put most of the targets in a shadow condition which was a great test for these new glasses. I was able to call my shots very well while still being able to see the targets good as well. The #1 Limited blaster ran without any issues which was good as well. The total bummer for the match was my ruined grip strength from the ride the day before. I had to use maximum effort grip pressure to barely produce enough strength to manage the recoil. Even with that the gun was muzzle flipping a lot more than I was used to which lead to a couple of D’s and a Miss while trying to shoot aggressively. Note to self, don’t do a crazy MC ride the day before a match. Either way, it was fun to shoot with some new people and test out a few things during the process.

 

On Sunday we headed back home after a great couple of days playing in the mountains. On the ride home I got caught in a solid rain storm for the last 100 miles of the trip. This was a soggy ride getting home but it wasn’t horrible.

 

This week I am going to do some more work on my #1 Limited blaster. I got the Brownells frame rail peening plates late last week so I am going to try using those to fully tighten up the slide to frame fit. We will see how that goes. Beyond that I am not going to be able to do much shooting related stuff this week. I am heading out for a European Cruise vacation with the wife on Thursday and wont be back until the 31st. This past weekend was my last chance to do any shooting until August. Hopefully this long break from shooting will be a good thing.

 

Engineer Pass.JPG

Edited by CHA-LEE
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I wish I could have met you when you came to Area 7.  My club designed stage 11, which affectionately became known as the 'bouncey bounce' stage.  That bouncing no shoot really seemed to mess with peoples heads.  Yes, it was a very long day!

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The quest in finding the optimal shooting glasses prescription continues. I ordered some cheap safety glasses in +0.50, +0.75, +1.0, and +1.50 diopters. These came in late last week and I was able to test them out in dry fire last night. I was testing these different power glasses out in less than optimal indoor lighting to see what the focal difference was. The best test of these glasses seemed to be a sight presentation scenario that didn’t allow my eyes to change focus quickly to the sights. I would start at a low ready position then punch the gun out aggressively then drop the hammer for a single shot then immediately lower the gun again. While doing this aggressive mount, dismount of the gun I would observe how clear the front sight looked during the temporary presentation. With the +0.50 glasses both the front and rear sights were slightly blurry with the front sight being slightly less blurry. The +0.75 glasses produced a pretty crisp front sight with a little less blurry rear notch. The +1.0 glasses flip flopped the focal clarity between the front sight and rear notch where the rear notch was crisp and the front sight was slightly blurry. Lastly the +1.50 glasses made the rear notch very clear and crisp and the front sight was very blurry.

 

This testing has proven that the optimal setup for me right now is the +0.75 diopter glasses. This is good because that is what I got made for the Lens Crafters glasses. These cheap safety glasses at different powers are an easy way to test the different powers cheaply. The one issue I seen with them is a much higher parallax effect as you look through different parts of the lens. The Lens Crafters glasses don’t have this parallax effect which makes sense because the prescription is centered on my eyes. If you want to check out these cheap safety glasses you can find them at the below website.

 

http://www.safetyglassesinc.com/Reader-Safety-Glasses/

 

After I was done playing with different glasses I busted out the #1 Limited blaster and went at beating on the frame rails while using the Brownells Peening plates. The frame rail peening plate kit that I got has plates in thicknesses starting at 0.110” and goes up to 0.120”. When I measured the slide rails they are currently at 0.108” so even the smallest plate is 0.002” too thick to completely eliminate the vertical slop. I went to work on the frame rails using the 0.110” plate and was able to get all four rails evenly beat down to that height. Using the plate also allowed the frame rails to get squished outwards slightly which took out some more side to side slop. When all of the frame rail beating was done the slide to frame fit was still a little sloppy in both directions but it was much better than before. Since all four rails were lowered to 0.110” evenly it should at least maintain that same level of “Sloppy” for a while. An extensive amount of live fire is needed to see if this slop reducing job will hold up or not.  

Edited by CHA-LEE
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On 7/10/2018 at 12:38 PM, CHA-LEE said:

This past weekend I went up to Michigan to present some training. The weather was nice and I had a great group of guys to train with. Much was learned by all over the two day class including myself. It’s fun to spend a weekend somewhere different and make some good friends in the process.

 

Before heading out to this training event I had a chance to do some experimental wrenching on my oldest #1 Limited blaster. This blaster has a lot of miles on it and the slide to frame fit has gotten really sloppy. I am planning on totally rebuilding this blaster this winter by replacing the Frame, Slide and Barrel. Since I am going to rebuild it I figured I would try to tighten up the frame to slide fit by peening the frame rails down. I don’t have frame rail peening plates to keep from bending the rails down too far so I went at it really slow with a brass hammer. In about an hour I was able to beat down the rails and refit the slide to eliminate at least 75% of the frame to slide slop. The vertical slop is almost totally eliminated but there is still some side to side slop that I would like to eliminate. I don’t think I can do that unless I have the peening plates which would allow me to peen the rails outwards while retaining the same height.

 

I also noticed that the slide lock pin was moving around slightly in the frame when racking the gun. The original slide pin was a .197 diameter which is smaller than the normal .200. I tried a .200 slide pin and it still moved around some so I then tried a .203 slide pin and that eliminated any visible movement. Since I increased the slide pin .006 I had to do some minor fitting on the lower barrel lugs and barrel link to get it to lock up properly. But after that the barrel seemed to be locking up much tighter than before without binding.

 

Given the significant changes made to the #1 blaster I wasn’t sure if it was going to make any difference or change its functionality. I rolled the dice and brought it with me to the Training event to give it a test. I was able to sight it in at 10 yards and the POI had moved a little high and to the left. After drifting the rear sight a little bit the Left/Right POI was dead on and I could produce an all rounds touching group about an inch high from my desired POI. Since I am using a fixed rear sight I couldn’t change the vertical offset to get the POA/POI dead on but it was close enough to get the job done. The gun functioned flawlessly through the whole class which was good. At the end of the class I was able to shoot a group at 50 yards off hand. I was able to produce an 8 inch group at 50 yards with the deviation being primarily in the vertical direction. This is dramatically better than it was before where I could barely keep the hits on a full size USPSA target at 50 yards before the tightening up job.

 

I still want to do some more frame rail peening to see if I can reduce the side to side slop, but I will need to get the peening plates for that. As it is now though I can trust it to be accurate enough for practice and match duty if need be. Before this rework I didn’t have any confidence in its accuracy to use it in practice. I wouldn’t even think of using it in a match. We will see how long this frame rail peening job will last in the long run. Ultimately, it really only needs to last until this winter when I will perform the major overhaul. We will see how that goes.

 

The other thing that I was able to test this past weekend is some new +0.75 diopter shooting glasses. I have been using some +0.50 shooting glasses for the past two years and the dreaded “Can’t see my sights good enough in poor lighting” issue has started to rear its head again. Stepping up to the next level of positive diopter seemed like a logical first step. I got some cheap Lens Crafters glasses made in the new +.075 diopter script and tested it out in dry fire at home where I could replicate some poor lighting conditions indoors. Testing the new glasses against the old in the same lighting conditions was interesting. With the +0.50 glasses I could only make out the fiber dot on blurry sights. With the +0.75 glasses I could see the front sight well enough to see crisp top corners just above the fiber. I didn’t get a chance to test out how much more blurry the targets would be at distance with the new +0.75 shooting glasses before heading out for the training class.

 

During the training class I was able to test the new shooting glasses out in pretty realistic conditions. They made the distance targets a little more blurry but it wasn’t too bad. Using them did improve my ability to focus on the sights in “Shadow Target” conditions which is usually where my issues start. I was also able to do the 50 yard group shooting using them without the target being too blurry to retain a consistent aiming spot. I think these are going to be a good step in the right direction for getting my vision back on track in less than optimal lighting. I will be using these cheap glasses for a while until I am sure they are going to work properly in most shooting conditions. I don’t want to waste money on getting new lenses made for my Rydon shooting glasses until I know this is going to be the best solution.

Have you ever considered  railing your guns?

I have two STI's that are as tight as when done with years of use.

They are the old style with the hooked end. I did break one years ago

Replaced it with a original spare. Slide to frame fit remained the same.

Joe Comininoli did the work in 1994.

 

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I have thought about sending it off to get an Acurail job done by Doug Jones, but the price of doing that is about the same as simply replacing the frame and slide once you account for all the shipping and what not. That and most of the gunsmiths I talked to about doing Acurails said to avoid it like the plague. Realistically the frame on my #1 Limited blaster is already starting to crack at the slide lock pin lever notch, so the frame is on borrowed time as it is. I will be replacing the frame, slide and barrel on this blaster in the winter. Until then I am more than happy to try alternative methods to tighten up the frame to slide fit slop using the peening method.

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3 hours ago, CHA-LEE said:

I have thought about sending it off to get an Acurail job done by Doug Jones, but the price of doing that is about the same as simply replacing the frame and slide once you account for all the shipping and what not. That and most of the gunsmiths I talked to about doing Acurails said to avoid it like the plague. Realistically the frame on my #1 Limited blaster is already starting to crack at the slide lock pin lever notch, so the frame is on borrowed time as it is. I will be replacing the frame, slide and barrel on this blaster in the winter. Until then I am more than happy to try alternative methods to tighten up the frame to slide fit slop using the peening method.

May I ask why they said to avoid it,

Back in my day the power factor was 175 so 180 or so is what shooters ran.

Many open shooters had to run more because of popple holes. Most of them ran acurailed guns with no problems.

Comininoli was local so we all had our guns done by him.

Don't remember any problems except a broken rail or two usually caused by the shooter taking the rail out for cleaning cracking the hook.

They changed the rail to be straight and that fixed the problem. Is it possible your cracking slides problem would go away because of the perfect slide to

frame fit? Don't know.

There is literally no felt movement between slide and frame on my 20 year.old guns.

Fit the barrel right, use the right load, unbelievable accuracy!

Not arguing, just saying.

 

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The primary gripe from gunsmiths is that its a pain in the ass to fit new slides to frames that have an Accurail job done. The secondary gripe is the reliability of the rails when shooting a lot. I personally don't have any evidence of either gripe being valid as I don't have any accurail guns. The way I see it, if the slide and frame are fit properly the normal way it should last the service life of the gun. "Service Life" means something different to everyone. For example, my #1 Limited gun frame has over 100K on it at this point. In my mind that frame has reached a reasonable service life. That gun has also had 3 different slides and barrels on it through that time as well. At some point you simply have to call it quits and start over with fresh parts. 

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1 hour ago, CHA-LEE said:

The primary gripe from gunsmiths is that its a pain in the ass to fit new slides to frames that have an Accurail job done. The secondary gripe is the reliability of the rails when shooting a lot. I personally don't have any evidence of either gripe being valid as I don't have any accurail guns. The way I see it, if the slide and frame are fit properly the normal way it should last the service life of the gun. "Service Life" means something different to everyone. For example, my #1 Limited gun frame has over 100K on it at this point. In my mind that frame has reached a reasonable service life. That gun has also had 3 different slides and barrels on it through that time as well. At some point you simply have to call it quits and start over with fresh parts. 

 I have a railed gun. I shoot quite a bit. When the gun was railed I ordered extra rails. The gun is super tight, the only time the rails really come into play is when you take the slide off. You have to make sure you don't lose them.

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  • 2 weeks later...

On Tuesday I got back from my 13 day trip to Europe. The Wife and I Flew into London and did the tourist thing for a couple of days. Then we took the train down to Southampton and jumped on a cruise ship for a 7 night voyage. Our first stop was in France where we took a tourist trip to Paris and checked out a bunch of stuff and even took a river boat lunch cruise. When we booked this trip I thought it was kind of odd taking another “cruise” within cruise but it turned out great. The next stop was in Portugal where we did a little bit of sightseeing on our own. Then our final stop was in Spain where we planned on going to the beach, but it was too cold that day being in the high 60’s. The weather was awesome for walking around and checking out the local shops and sights, but the ocean water was way too cold to do any swimming. After these stops then we had a couple days at sea to get back to Southampton. We booked another excursion to check out Stonehenge  on the way back to London. Stonehenge was cool to see even though it was raining and really windy. We spent the night in London then flew to Glasgow the next day and spent a day there checking stuff out before we headed home.

 

I have never been to Europe for a dedicated vacation before to check things out. It was cool to see the sights and experience the local cultures. I have been there several times in the past for work but those were always hit and run trips where I didn’t have any time to check anything out. Now that I have been there to as a tourist I can officially check that off my list.   

 

When we got back to London I started to get a mild sore throat and it got progressively worse in the following days. By the time we were flying back home the sickness was hitting me full force and it was a down right miserable trip home. I don’t get sick easily, but when it do it’s usually a bad one. This time was no different. The past few days I have been hacking up a lung while grinding through this sickness. The only saving grace to this is that the sickness hit at the tail end of the vacation so it didn’t impact my experience while in Europe. Hopefully I can get through the worst of this sickness before this weekend so I can get some shooting done.

 

If I feel better by this weekend I am planning on going out to practice on Saturday then a local match on Sunday. It will be interesting to see how taking this long break from shooting has affected my skills.

 

In the meantime one of my fellow shooters pointed out that the stages for the 2018 Area 3 match didn’t look “Crazy” like previous years. I checked them out and sure enough, it looks like they will be using fairly normal stages for this event. Since they are going to use “normal” type stages this year I signed up for this match and will be going in next weekend. Hopefully this match doesn’t turn into the circus show it has been in the past. This is my final attempt in attending this match if the stages end up being a clown show again. We will see how it goes.

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I was finally able to get some shooting done this weekend. On Saturday I got some Live Fire training done with a few friends. Taking three weeks off with zero shooting had me worried about jumping back in the saddle. This worry only lasted about 2 full mags of shooting then it was back to normal. I was able do some testing on blasters 1, 2 and 4. Mainly it was an effort to shoot some groups back to back to see if the POI was different between the blasters. The #2 and #4 were dead nuts on with the same POI but the #1 had an upward biased POI of about 2 inches at 10 yards. This upward bias started happening after I changed the slide pin and beat down the frame rails so these changes have definitely made some changes in the barrel lockup position. I still have a little bit more to do in the frame rail beating so I am going to leave the sights alone until I get the frame to slide fit right where I want it. But when its done I am likely going to need a .190 - .200 tall front sight to bring the POI back down to where it should be.

 

For the practice session we used the existing Cowboy jail house as the shooting area and a good mixture of paper and steel targets at varied distances. To prepare for the Area 3 match I brought some Brown paint for the steel as they usually use target color brown for all of their steel which is abnormal so a good thing to practice. Using the Jail House was a good test for the +0.75 diopter glasses because of the varied lighting conditions while being inside and out side of the house. The new glasses worked good and I could see the front sight much more clearly in the less than optimal lighting conditions. The increased target blurriness wasn’t distracting either. I think these new shooting glasses will work much better than the old ones.

 

On Sunday I attended a local USPSA match at the Aurora Gun Club. We started out the day with a mild drizzle of rain which was enough to keep your rain coat on but not heavy enough to cause trouble. With the rain was also some overcast conditions which was another good test of the new shooting glasses. I didn’t have any issues seeing my sights effectively through the varied lighting conditions that day which was great. For the match I had one D zone hit and one Miss which was due to taking too many make up shots and running out of ammo on the last target. The miss was a bitter sweet issue where it always sucks to have a miss, but it was great to be able to call marginal and bad shots then immediately make them up in the overcast lighting conditions. Some “Wins” are a little more expensive than others.

 

By the end of the match it got pretty hot and I was slacking on staying hydrated. My arms and back were starting to cramp up on the last stage of the day which was a bummer. The overcast and rainy conditions tricked me into not keeping on my normal hydration schedule and I paid the price. It sucks to make a super novice mistake like that which I haven’t done in a really long time. I am not sure if being on the tail end of this sickness also didn’t play a roll as well. I am just glad that when the serious dehydration started I was done shooting. If I had a couple more stages to shoot I would have been in trouble.

 

Tonight I am heading down south to attend the indoor match at Whistling Pines. I am going to shoot my #2 Limited gun so I can give the new shooting glasses a try indoors. I am excited to see how they will work as I haven’t used them indoors yet. This will be by last chance to do any shooting before heading out on Friday for the Area 3 match.    

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Shot the WP indoor match last night. The new shooting glasses worked great. Much better than before. I was able to call all of my shots in the normal lighting stages. They had one stage where the lights were turned down on purpose to create more of a challenge. Only the Red Dot shooters could see their “sights” on that stage. All of the iron sight shooters were pretty much forced into point shooting at the targets and hope to get hits. I lucked out and got my hits but many others didn’t. Overall it was a good test of the new shooting glasses in less than optimal lighting. 

 

Now its time to get my gear reset and ammo loaded for the Area 3 match this coming weekend. I am shooting the weekend AM schedule so hopefully that will help in minimizing the exposure to heat and humidity while on the range. I am not looking forward to that part. 

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I attended the Area 3 match this past weekend. The weather was actually bearable this year. It was hot and humid but not miserably so. We didn’t get any crazy wind or rain storms either. The best thing was that all of the stages were “Normal” instead of all of the crazy circus stuff they have done in the past. Realistically the stages being “Normal” is the only thing that brought me back to this match. The stages had a good mixture of shooting and movement challenges that tested a lot of skills. My “Brown” steel practice worked out and I was able to shoot the brown steel pretty good. They also had dark purple steel which really kicked my butt because I couldn’t see a definitive front/rear sight on that due to being so dark.

 

I went into this match while still getting over the Europe vacation sickness and paid the price. I was physically able to grind through the hot and humid weather on Saturday by snacking and drinking 1.5 gallons of fluids. But I was sweating like crazy that day and it pretty much sapped me of all my nutrients. I tried to get replenished Saturday night but I was physically struggling on Sunday. On Sunday I was physically and mentally out of it and it showed in my results. I racked up 3 misses, 1 no shoot and 6 D zone hits on Sunday which pretty much sunk my chance at doing well in this match. I also had a few mental errors in stage strategy that were really uncommon for me. As always in humid conditions I also struggled with “Sticky” wet hands that lead to several botched grips during the draw. This was a bummer because there were several stages where having a “Rocket Draw” was required to be competitive.

 

Overall I was happy with the “Normal” stages used for this years match. I hope they stick with this moving forward. I wish I wasn’t getting over a sickness during this match but it is what it is. Sometimes you need to push through the suck and hope for the best. After the results were tallied I ended up 7th overall in Limited at 91% of winner Shane Coley. Hopefully the next Area match will go in my favor as I have succeeded in screwing up the first three Area matches this year.

 

 

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When I got home from the Area 3 match Sunday evening and on my door step was my new automated brass rollsizing machine. This is a rotary style roll sizer that is fed by a Dillon case feeder. This bad boy is build STOUT and chugs through brass like a BOSS!!! I primarily got it to roll size my 40 brass because I am tired of doing the push through sizing on a single stage press. I also got a 9mm conversion for it so I can run both 40 and 9mm brass. It came preconfigured for 9mm and I had a full 5 gallon bucket of 9mm brass that was wet tumbled so I ran it all through the Rollsizer. It took about 2 hours to chug through the 5 gallon bucket of 9mm brass with very little drama or issues. The primary log jam in processing the brass is feeding brass to it. The Dillon case feeder runs pretty good but its slower than the Rollsizer. I used a mixture of hand feeding the brass in the drop tube while the case feeder was also dropping it. Doing that really sped up the process. But you would be fine with loading up the Case feeder and walking away while it chugs through the brass at the pace of the case feeder.

 

After the 5 gallon bucket of 9mm was done I did the caliber conversion to the 40 shell plate which was easy as could be. Remove 1 screw that retains the shell plate, take off the 9mm shell plate, put on the 40 shell plate, then reinstall the retaining screw. Done. It took less than a minute to make the caliber conversion. I then ran about 3500 cases of 40 brass through it to see how it would do. Once again it chugged through it all with very minimal drama or issues. Once again the log jam was the Case Feeder so I did a mixture of hand feeding along with the case feeder and the brass was getting processed really fast.

 

The roll sizing is primarily done on the “belly” of the brass just above the rim and about half way up the case. It roll sizes the portion that a normal resizing/decapping die in the press can’t get to. I measured the diameter of the “belly” on the roll sized brass and compared it to manually push through sized brass and they were identical which is awesome. The only difference between push through sizing and this roll sizing is that the rim of the case isn’t touched during the roll sizing process. We will see if this causes any issues with the end result as I case gauge fully loaded ammo, but I don’t think it will be an issue. I will be reloading the 40 brass this week so I will know soon enough if there are any new case gauging issues.

 

I was able to take a video of the Rollsizer chugging through some 9mm brass and uploaded it to my YouTube channel. All you need is a Case feeder to feed this bad boy and you are in business. You can check out this roll sizing machine at http://rollsizer.com . This roll sizer isn’t cheap, but it’s really high quality and ships out fast. I think I waited less than 5 days between ordering it and it showing up at my door step. That is amazing given that it was coming from Australia. I am really looking forward to NEVER push though sizing my brass on a single stage press again!!!

 

 

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