CHA-LEE's Tale

[CHA-LEE]

We got back from the cruise today. I am going to shoot a USPSA match tomorrow. Time to see how much rust has built up over the two weeks without shooting. Should be intersting

[CHA-LEE]

USPSA match today. Well I guess shooting is like riding a bike, you never really fully forget how to do it. We had some fun stages today. I had decent runs on four of the five stages. Then on the fifth stage the wheels fell off the wagon. The stage had the IPSC “Turtle” targets and a bunch of steel plates and poppers. I did “Ok” on the steel, but shot the middle section of the stage too quickly and was rewarded with two misses and nicked a no shoot. One mike was due to me moving my head before breaking the final shot. The other I called marginal when the shot broke but didn’t make it up because I felt like I would run out of rounds before the reload. This is a frustrating situation that I have been in before. Where I push the round count further than I feel comfortable with and settle for called shots that are marginal. Every shot on this stage commanded an extreme amount of respect and I got sloppy with respecting the shots and it showed. Other than that mishap my match was pretty decent. I was happy with everything else and had a lot of fun shooting so it was a double win for me.

Indoor match tomorrow night. This is going to be run as a make shift ICORE match instead of a normal USPSA match. I am debating whether to shoot it for ICORE score or to just shoot it like a USPSA match and keep my own score. We will see what happens tomorrow.

[CHA-LEE]

I attended the ICORE style match last night. I decided to shoot it USPSA style and not worry about the hits outside the Zero scoring zone. We ran three stages that night. It was a good mixture of close and far targets, shooting around a wall, and even shooting from a mini trampoline in the last shooting position. The first stage we shot it free style, then the second stage we shot half of it free style then two sections strong or weak hand only. The third stage was a repeat of just the around the wall section with the targets rearranged a little bit. I had a good time shooting and didn’t have any misses. I did have a few D hits though as I wasn’t patient enough for some of the longer distance shots. It was fun though and that’s all that really matters.

I checked the USPSA website for the updated classifications today and they finally updated the listing. I have now officially bumped up to Master class in Limited with an 86.8% classification percentage average. I have mixed feelings about this achievement. On one side I am happy to have earned a Master classification due to my hard work and match performance. On the other side I feel that it is nothing more than a letter in the alphabet and not really a definition of my shooting skills. I know enough about competition practical shooting now to know that even at my current skill level I am only scratching the surface of what can really be achieved in this sport. Its like being stranded in a life boat in the middle of a vast ocean. To get back to land will take many hours, days, or even years of sticking to the task at hand before progress can be made. I still have a ton to learn, perfect, and experience and it makes me feel like a novice all over again. I really like that the learning aspect never really stops with this sport. That and a humbling experience is never more than a stage away. It will be interesting to see how far my skills can progress. I am totally up for the challenge of seeing how far I can go.

[eerw]

I have now officially bumped up to Master class in Limited with an 86.8% classification percentage average.

the path is full of learning...you never reach a point of full knowledge no matter the letter after your name.

[Bigpops]

CHA-LEE - congrats on making Master!!!!!

[MarkCO]

Congrats dude!

[MarkCO]

Actually, you are higher than that. You have a 74% flagged as F when it should be B. Master is 85% up, so anything under 80% should go B flag.

[CHA-LEE]

Thanks guys. Its been a fun year of shooting and more importantly its been great to meet and become friends with such a great group of people during this voyage!!!! The coolest thing about this practical shooting sport is that everyone is a GM when it comes to kindness, friendliness, and willingness to help each other out

[CHA-LEE]

Well I have decided to attend the USPSA Utah State Championship this coming Saturday. It’s a last minute decision and I was lucky enough to make entry into the match as I was the last person to enter. They have 8 stages setup for the match and one of them is a 47 round beast which looks really fun to shoot. This is a one day match so it will be a lot of shooting in one day. I am going to this match on my own, no shooting buddies coming along, so it will be interesting to see how I do. There are about 40 competitors in Limited division and a GM followed by about ten M shooters so I am sure its going to be a challenging match to do well at. I am not setting any finishing goals for this match. I am instead going to set a goal to call every shot in the match and execute well against my stage plan. Where I end up is where I end up. It will be fun to shoot at a new range and with a group of totally different shooters. Time to put my game face on

[CHA-LEE]

The USPSA Utah State Championships were this past Saturday. What an exhausting adventure. The match was a Saturday only match with 8 stages to be shot. I didn’t want to take another day off of work having taken a whole week off last week so I figured I would “Iron Man” drive out there after work on Friday and get there early in the morning and shoot the match. Its about 550 miles from my house to the range in Utah so I was in for an 8+ hour trip. I decided to leave home at about 7PM on Friday and got into Logan Utah at about 4AM. Needless to say I was a little tired, ok a LOT tired. So tired and cranky in fact that I checked into my hotel and at 4AM just so I could get ANY sleep and take a shower before heading to the range at 6AM. After getting about an hour of sleep, my alarm went off and it was time to gear up and head out for the match. I am glad that I got any sleep really, even just an hour gave me quite a bit more energy. But I knew I needed more rest than that to battle through a fairly hot 85+ degree full day of shooting. In comes by buddy called “5 Hour Energy”. Bottle number one went down the hatch at around 7AM. The first stage of the day was a fairly easy one that had a single popper activating two targets. The first one to engage was a drop down target that appeared twice but was a head and shoulders only target with a no shoot both above and below. So vigilance was needed when engaging it or you would pay for it. The second mover was a medium speed swinger with two targets on it. I had never shot a double target swinger before so that was interesting to say the least. I just tracked it in its movement and pulled the boom lever when I seen the sights on the A zone. Since the swinger never went behind a wall or no shoot you could track it in its full range of motion which made it easier to shoot this way. The rest of the stage was easy.

The second stage of the day was the “Monster” stage being 47 rounds. You couldn’t have any of your mags on your belt at the start so you had to strategically place them on barrels along the COF. You also started with your gun unloaded and holstered. To make it even more interesting you started with your hands submerged to the wrist in water. So at the start you had to pull your hands out of the water, fling or wipe them somewhat dry, then retrieve your mag(s) load and start blasting. The first 18 shots of the stage were mostly close up hoser shots and this ate some peoples lunch. Wet hands + fast blasting = gun that flops around like a trout out of water in recoil. I used a liberal amount of ProGrip on my hands before the stage and this stuff shed the water off great with a simple flick of the wrists. I didn’t battle my grip at all during the stage so kudo’s to ProGrip for working like it should.

The third stage of the day had a Polish Plate Rack. I have seen this thing on YouTube before and they seem pretty evil on the video’s. MANY shooters were looking at it and talking about it before the match began. The thing that made this Polish Plate Rack (PPR) even more painful is that it had a weight set on one side of it and a falling popper would activate it. You had to engage the activating popper before engaging the PPR and the popper was on the opposite side of the COF. So by the time you got over to the PPR it was swinging around at a decent speed already. After watch some of the shooters navigate the PPR it was the most consistent with its movements if you engaged the plates from the middle outwards. I did just that when it was my turn and it worked out pretty good. I think I only had two make up shots on the 8 plates of the PPR. The rest of the COF was easy but this is where I made my first mistake of the match. On the last string of targets you ran up to a short wall and engaged three targets at fairly close range with two being open and the furthest one away being somewhat blocked by a noshoot. The no shoot target pushed my hits further up and out on the target and I had a C & D hit, the D being my last shot. After shooting the string I noticed the D hit and took an extra shot to make it up with a C. This cost me about a second to make up 2 points. Not super bad, but cost me about 5 stage points.

The fourth stage of the day was where the first squad bottle neck happened. They had two medium size stages on one berm and the Squad ahead of us was just finishing up the first of the two when we got there. So we had to wait for them to finish the second stage which was about 45 minutes. This is when the first wave of super tiredness started to hit me. The standing around and waiting was catching up with my tired body and it was hot out which made it even worse. Another 5 Hour energy goes down the hatch and I can feel my body resist the artificial boost of energy but it eventually kicks in and I keep chugging along. By the time we got to shoot the fourth stage of the day my mind was in block and tackle mode and that does not go well with this stage as it was a slight memory style stage. I knew I couldn’t choose an ultra complicated stage plan so I went with the battle axe approach of sweeping from one extreme side to the other as I mowed through the rounds. This worked out fairly decent but I had two make up shots which cost me some time and I am sure there was a more efficient and faster way to shoot the stage.

The fifth stage of the day was the biggest gamble of the day for me. It was a 21 round COF with two mini poppers, a small plate and some fairly far away A zone only shots. I could load up to 22 in my gun at the start which would give me one makeup shot but no reload. Or I could play it safe and reload in the middle of the COF and lose some time doing the reload. I decided that I would probably be better served by going for the no reload strategy and just earn my hits. I shot the first section of the stage great, shooting accurately and quickly. Then I got too aggressive in the middle section of the stage as I was shooting on the move from right to left and was rewarded with a miss on a head & shoulders target that was blocked by hard cover. Then in the final shooting position I had a miss on the last mini popper and made it up with my only spare shot to finish the stage. My stage time was really good, but the miss didn’t do me any favors. This was my first penalty of the day so up until now my match was going pretty good. I did my best to brush off the miss and it was lunch time.

We took about an hour break for lunch and I decided that I should sit down and give myself some rest. BAD IDEA. Even though I ate some lunch my body was in full shutdown mode by the end of lunch. I was dragging ass big time. I dip back into my cooler and pull out another 5 hour energy and throw it down the hatch. I think I could actually hear my subconscious start laughing as I drank it. It did nothing to boost my energy and gave me a sour gut. I did my best to suck it up and push through the conditions but it was really down hill from here and I still had three stages to go.

The sixth stage was a quick stage with three poppers and two clamshell style targets that you could engage in a specific order to optimize the moving targets. I was the last shooter on the squad to shoot the stage and I was REALLY grateful to be last. It gave me a ton of time to push through the exhaustion fog and come up with the best way of shooting the stage. I only had one fumble during the stage and it was at the start of the timing string of targets. It didn’t screw up the timing of the string as it was the first activating steel that I missed, it just cost me some time making up the shot. I shot the stage ok and executed on the timing section perfectly after the makeup shot so I was happy.

The seventh stage of the day was a classifier called “Six”. It’s a fairly easy classifier to shoot and only 30 stage points so my goal was to simply not give away points my getting a miss on the paper. I shot it somewhat aggressive and needed a makeup shot on the mini popper but shot the rest of it clean. My time wasn’t so good due to the makeup shot needed but I got my hits and that was all I was worried about.

The last stage of the day thankfully was fairly easy with minimal options on how to shoot it. I was completely out of gas both mentally and physically at this point in the match. You started the stage seated in a car with your loaded gun on the dash. At the signal you had to grab your gun and engage a single target through the passenger window. Then swing to the left and engage two targets through the drivers side window. After that you get out of the car and from the drivers door you engage two poppers down range. After that it was a run and gun hose fest. I have never had a problem with shooting very quickly at up close hoser stuff but on this stage my trigger finger felt like it was stuck in slow motion. I also stumbled a little while trying to run from one shooting position to the next. At this point in the day I was pushing myself to the absolute limit both physically and mentally. I was determined to run it like a rental until the wheels fell off though. One thing that surprised me is that I was able to engage a lone open target on the right strong hand only at a full run. I didn’t even plan on doing it SHO, I just did it. In the final shooting position there were three targets all close to each other and I mowed them down with the last burst of fury I could muster and was rewarded with a miss, the second miss of the day. Even though I had a miss on the stage I was happy with being able to finish the stage in a decent time and also to be done with shooting for the day.

After all of the dust had settled and the results were tallied, VERY MUCH to my surprise I had finished 3rd overall in Limited at 92% of the winner. I had given the match all the concentration and energy I had and it paid off in a really good finish. I wish that I wasn’t as tired and mentally worn out as I was during the match. But this is what gaining experience is all about. The first lesson learned here is that a full night of sleep is a MUST before taking on a full day of shooting. Second lesson of the match was finding that I was able to shoot closer to my normal club match speed (about 95%) and still get really good hits. But I still have to respect every single shot to ensure solid hits. My two misses at this match were TOTALLY due to me not respecting the shots because I thought that they were “easy” shots. Every single shot needs to be respected. The match was fun and the stages were challenging. The shooters on my squad were great and I will try my best to make it back for next years match.

I got home Sunday night and picked up my mail and was greeted by my M Card sent from USPSA. Before going to this Utah state match I questioned my abilities, wondering if I really am able to shoot at a master level at a decent size match. I think the results from this weekend have answered this question. I still have to earn it, nothing is free, but at least I know I am capable of shooting at this level when it counts. That is a huge step forward for me in confidence.

Edited September 28, 2009 by CHA-LEE

[CHA-LEE]

In my hurry to leave on Friday for the Utah match I forgot to pack my video camera so I didn’t get any footage of my stage runs. This sucks but was probably a good thing as I was already spreading myself thin as it was being so tired that day. Not having to worry about filming the stages was nice. I wish I had some film of a couple of stages that I have been thinking about after the match. But I guess that is another experience lesson learned. Make sure that you have all of your equipment packed!!!

[MarkCO]

Well done!

I was wondering where you were this weekend as I did not see you in the results for Aurora and did not see you at CC.

[SA Friday]

3rd overall limited, I'm assuming that was 2nd Master?

[CHA-LEE]

MarkCO> Thanks man. I still missed shooting the local matches

SA Friday> I was 3rd Master. The guy that won is a Master in Limited but has a GM classification in Production and it looks like those wicked skills also work in Limited as well. There was one GM in Limited but he ended up finishing 5th. I don't see the results posted on USPSA yet, but they are posted on the Utah club's website. The link to them is below. The two misses cost me a very solid second place finish

http://www.utahshooters.org/results.php?match=252

Edited September 28, 2009 by CHA-LEE

[SA Friday]

I found them. I got mad snooping skills.

Stage 8 is what hurt you, bro. The classifier looks bad, but didn't hurt you as bad as the mike on Stage 8. Your finishes on two of the big stages really solidified your overall, but you quite literally had to hammer the 200+ point stage or you were screwed.

Pretty good considering. Next time take a buddy and split the driving/sleeping time on the way.

The irony I find in this is the qualifier match at Clear Creek had almost as many shooters, and more GM's and almost as many M's. Not as many stages though...

Big Panda Representing!

[CHA-LEE]

SA Friday> I knew going into this match that the big 47 round stage was where you would make or break the whole match. With 235 stage points on a single stage you needed a very solid run there to make your match worth something. I am super glad that this stage was the second one of the match for me. I was still pretty fresh and alert and my first stage of the day tentativeness was over with. If this stage ended up being one of my last three stages of the day, I really doubt that I could have executed it as well or as fast.

Yes, this is the last large match that I go to driving through the night and getting no sleep. I use to be able to do that crap when I was younger and not be affected too much the following day. But this time it was a big time reality check. This Big Panda isn’t a spring chicken any more and needs to act accordingly

[eerw]

Yes, this is the last large match that I go to driving through the night and getting no sleep. I use to be able to do that crap when I was younger and not be affected too much the following day. But this time it was a big time reality check. This Big Panda isn’t a spring chicken any more and needs to act accordingly

it wears on ya..don't it..

looks like some good shooters there...Russell is a very good iron sight shooter, the Waki boys have been at this game for a long time..

take the lessons and learn from them!! Glad you had a safe trip.

[CHA-LEE]

I am going to get some live fire practice tomorrow with some friends. I am looking forward to getting some good practice in. I had to change the barrel on my EAA and this practice will give me a chance to get it sighted in and worked out to ensure functionality. My focus for tomorrow’s practice is going to be shooting on the move and keeping my shoulders moving towards the next shooting position. I have been watching some Saul Kirsh video’s and he is a big proponent of the shoulder movement thing. We will see how it goes.

[CHA-LEE]

Good practice session today. I went through about 250 rounds and shot with a bunch of friends which made it even more fun. Since there was a mixture of different divisions of guns shooting today we all decided to score the targets Minor and I shot L-10 instead of Limited. You have to get those mag changes in the mix when practicing you know. We used 9 targets, three walls, and 6 barrels for the stage creation. We were able to make about 5 different stages by moving the stuff around and everyone had a decent challenge on every COF and we kept the “Hoser Blasting” to a minimum. Every shot you had to earn.

My main goal of the day was to keep the shoulder movement going towards the next shooting position and I am not sure if I got it down or not. Its hard to shoot a stage subconsciously and then want to consciously command a specific body movement. I am going to need a lot more practice with this to get it down. I also focused on shooting fast but always in control, giving every shot the respect it deserved. The few misses I had, were called marginal or poor when I broke the shot and the same goes for the few D’s I had as well. No surprise misses or poor hits for me. We tallied up the points on every stage run and calculated the hit factor so you could know right away if your run was better or worse compared to another. Scoring the targets minor really makes you earn those A’s. I thought that this was a good thing to do for me. It kept my shooting and shot calling diligent all day.

Tomorrow is the local USPSA match that I help put on so its going to be an early morning and a lot of work. I am looking forward to it though. It will be nice to get some club match blasting going

[CHA-LEE]

Great match today. We got a bunch of help with the stage setup so it went fast and I wasn’t worked to death before the match, which was great. I still didn’t get to check out the stages from a competition stand point much before the match so I pretty much figured them out on the fly as we got to them. I had a good match though. The results have not been posted yet, but I know I had one miss for the day but I don’t think I remember getting any D’s. I shot all of the stages at a competitive pace and they seemed to flow when I shot them. The miss that I had was on a partial “turtle” target that I tried to engage on the move from right to left. I knew it was an aggressive move to try and engage the target that way and the no shoot was up to about half way in the A-zone so it pushed my shots high on the target. So high that I had a miss and a high A-zone hit. It was a nice lesson to learn though. The risk verses reward on engaging it that way wasn’t worth it and I knew it was “iffy” when I planned on shooting it that way. But its all about lessons right, especially at club matches. This was a nice lesson to learn. Other than that stage screw up the rest of my stage runs were very solid. It will be interesting to see the results when they are posted. The normal top dog GM’s were not shooting in Limited today so I will go out on a limb and say I have a good chance of winning Limited today with my performance. We will just have to wait and see when the results are posted

[CHA-LEE]

The results have been posted for yesterdays match. I was able to take the win in Limited by 14% over second place. Its nice to get a Win but as I said before, the normal bad ass GM’s were not in attendance so its somewhat a hollow win for me. If I am going to do well at the Area 2 match next month I need some more solid performances like this under my belt to get my confidence level in sync with my expectations. My goal is to finish in the top 20 in Limited at the Area 2 match. I think its doable if I keep the same focus I have had lately.

Indoor match tonight, we will see how it goes…..

[eerw]

Indoor match tonight, we will see how it goes…..

BRING YOUR GAME!!!!

see ya tonight

[CHA-LEE]

Indoor match last night. Interesting evening of shooting. I didn’t feel very “into it” while there and even though I went through the stages multiple times before shooting I just felt like I couldn’t get much mental traction on the stage plan. The first stage was a box to box situation with a pair of targets you had to engage between the first and second box. My stage plan was to engage the two targets between the first and second boxes then move to the second box, finish those targets and then do a reload between the second and third box. When I shot the stage, I finished shooting the two targets on the move between the first and second box and then paused to reach down for a mag change and then did a double take and started hauling ass to the second box. When I think about it now, I should have just rolled with the flow and let the reload happen when it wanted to. That would have allowed me to be really aggressive with my movement to the third box and not be performing a reload which slows me down. Most of the shots on the stage were tight so a lot of respect was needed while shooting. I had one called miss that I made up in the last box and I was happy to see the makeup shot happen automatically, no thought about doing it, it just got done. Overall my first stage run was “ok”, no misses or penalties, but was somewhat clunky and slow because of the pause and reload in the wrong place. I think I could have shaved off maybe a second on that run if I had not screwed up those two things.

The second stage was classifier called Body Guard 1. Six targets all with varying amounts of hard cover or no shoots blocking the targets. Once again, a lot of respect was needed for every shot and it tries to suck you into shooting on the edge of the penalty zones of the targets as that is where the A-zones are located. I took a safer “Center of mass” approach to shooting the stage and ended up with an ok time and all my hits, but three of my hits were just into the “D” zone of the targets and it really killed the hit factor of the run. This was more of a risk management run as I knew that a lot of other shooters would go all out on the stage and end up with at least one miss or no shoot. To really burn this classifier down you need to have zero fear or hesitation while engaging the targets and it would either be a hero or zero run.

I shot the match clean with ok stage times and since I seen just about everyone else in Limited have some level of penalty or simply shooting slow I wouldn’t be surprised if I came out on top of the heap in Limited. I will just have to wait for the results to be posted to see how it turns out.

[CHA-LEE]

I had some time yesterday to get caught up on some of my shooting busy work. I built up about 1500 rounds to hold me over for a few weeks of shooting. Its nice to have some rounds ready to go on the shelf verses trying to build some up the day before shooting.

I also did some maintenance on my primary pistol as it had some minor things to tweak. I actually got some work done on my new backup competition gun as well. I have been slacking big time on getting the backup gun done and it was nice to make some head way on it yesterday. My goal is go get the backup gun together and function tested before the Area 2 match in November. I need to dedicate a couple of more evenings to it in order to finish it up. Hopefully by next weekend I can have it ready for some test fire sessions.

I was planning on going up to Steamboat Springs for their match this Saturday but he weather isn’t playing nice this weekend. Some rain and snow have rolled into the state this past couple of days and it isn’t looking like it is going to let up in the mountains. When its try it’s a 3 hour drive up there but that can quickly turn into a 5 – 6 hour drive if its snowing in the mountains. I am keeping my hopes up that the weather will pass before I have to head up there, but if it does not I may just have to cancel the trip. That will suck because this is their last match of the season so I will have to wait until next year to go up there and shoot again.

Sunday is going to be a sectional qualifier match down in Pueblo. I am going to that match for sure and the weather is looking good so far. So far my match performance at the sectional qualifier matches has been pretty sucktacular for some strange reason. I am not giving these matches any more or less importance mentally so I don’t think it’s a mental psyche out thing. I am not sure what it is. Maybe just bad luck? We will see how it goes on Sunday. Either way it will be 6 stages of shooting and no matter how it goes fun will be had while shooting.

[jkatz44]

I had some time yesterday to get caught up on some of my shooting busy work. I built up about 1500 rounds to hold me over for a few weeks of shooting. Its nice to have some rounds ready to go on the shelf verses trying to build some up the day before shooting.

I also did some maintenance on my primary pistol as it had some minor things to tweak. I actually got some work done on my new backup competition gun as well. I have been slacking big time on getting the backup gun done and it was nice to make some head way on it yesterday. My goal is go get the backup gun together and function tested before the Area 2 match in November. I need to dedicate a couple of more evenings to it in order to finish it up. Hopefully by next weekend I can have it ready for some test fire sessions.

I was planning on going up to Steamboat Springs for their match this Saturday but he weather isn’t playing nice this weekend. Some rain and snow have rolled into the state this past couple of days and it isn’t looking like it is going to let up in the mountains. When its try it’s a 3 hour drive up there but that can quickly turn into a 5 – 6 hour drive if its snowing in the mountains. I am keeping my hopes up that the weather will pass before I have to head up there, but if it does not I may just have to cancel the trip. That will suck because this is their last match of the season so I will have to wait until next year to go up there and shoot again.

Sunday is going to be a sectional qualifier match down in Pueblo. I am going to that match for sure and the weather is looking good so far. So far my match performance at the sectional qualifier matches has been pretty sucktacular for some strange reason. I am not giving these matches any more or less importance mentally so I don’t think it’s a mental psyche out thing. I am not sure what it is. Maybe just bad luck? We will see how it goes on Sunday. Either way it will be 6 stages of shooting and no matter how it goes fun will be had while shooting.

could you post some pictures of you equipment including your backup gun?