CHA-LEE's Tale

[CHA-LEE]

Last night I was able to attend an indoor USPSA match at the Bristolcone range. I didn’t realize until I got there that this was a “Super Classifier” match with all classifier stages. To be honest, if I would have known that up front, I wouldn’t have even gone as I wanted to do some field course stages instead of stand & blast type classifiers. This kind of put me into a bummer attitude and I didn’t really care much about my match performance and it showed. On every stage I had some kind of minor error like fumbling with the draw, extra shots, and trigger freeze. To top it off a few of the stages required some heavy duty aiming due to shot difficulty which was extra difficult because of the poor lighting in that range. Overall it was a mediocre performance on my part which isn’t a surprise since I pretty much gave up before I stared due to being disappointed about it being a Super Classifier match. The good news is that my Atlas Titan ran like a champ and I got to shoot.

I am looking forward to the outdoor match at the Aurora Gun Club on Saturday. I plan on installing my new .170” tall Dawson front sight this evening so I can verify the sight in Saturday morning before the match starts. This should be the FINAL step needed to get the sights on the new Atlas blaster settled. I will be glad to get these sights resolved so I can focus on shooting instead.

If the weather works in our favor I might be able to do some live fire practice outdoors on Sunday as well. The range I practice at has been closed the whole week after the major blizzard that hit us due to excessive muddiness. Hopefully the range will dry out enough by Sunday to not contend with a significant amount of mud. I am ready for this winter/wet weather to be over with so I can get some good live fire practice done.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I was able to shoot an outdoor USPSA match at the Aurora Gun Club. We had some rain and snow the night before the match which made it humid and cold. The humid/cold weather was also accompanied by heavily overcast skies the whole day. Us Coloradoans are not used to humid/cold conditions which made it feel bone chilling cold all day. There was a bunch of whining from my squad mates about frozen hands or fingers while shooting stages. I did my best to keep my hands warm between stage runs but every time I made ready for a stage run it was an alarming wakeup call grabbing my metal griped Atlas Titian and feeling it instantly sap the heat from my hands. BUUURRRRRRR!!!

 

With the lighting being marginal due to the overcast skies I was forced to only use the fiber in the front sight for the vast majority of the targets. This poor lighting made me slow my shooting way down compared to the rate of fire I would normally shoot the targets at. I also had several makeup shots that I ultimately didn’t need. This “Aim your ass off” approach worked out well from a hits perspective as I didn’t have any penalties and no D zone hits. But the slow shooting and extra make up shots really slowed down my stage times. I know I could have shot most of the stages at least a couple seconds faster if the lighting was normal. But I was happy with being patent enough to reign it in and not revert to point shooting at a faster pace which would have likely resulted in worse hits. I think this aiming patience is the product all the indoor match shooting I have been doing over the winter.

 

Even though I was able to get the new Dawson .170” front sight installed on Friday and the windage verified before the start of the match, the lighting was too poor to really see a difference verses the old setup because all I could see was the fiber in the front sight. I would have to wait until Sunday before I could test out that front sight in better lighting.

 

Overall I was happy with my performance at this match. I wish I had better lighting and warmer weather so I could shoot faster, but this is all part of the game and another variable we need to be able to overcome successfully.

 

The match on Sunday was canceled due to the poor weather up in the mountains. So I decided to get some live fire training done instead. The weather on Sunday was much better than Saturday. The Sun was out and the temp was much warmer making it a much more enjoyable time on the range. I was able to double check the POI of my Atlas Titan at 25 yards this time and it was within an inch of my POA. I got super lucky in swapping front sights and measuring it to make sure it was centered on the slide like the last one since I didn’t need any windage adjustments.

 

We setup a 20 round field course stage that had a good mixture of stationary shooting on partial targets, shooting on the move in the middle then another section of stationary partials at the end. I shot this stage a bunch of times in varied strategies. The lighting was good enough to assess the new front sight and I was able to see the top corners of the iron in the front sight well making it easier for me to call my shots while shooting aggressively. The bays at this range face south so all of the targets where in a shadow condition which was also another good test of the sight setup. I was able to call all of my shots well during that practice session which was great. I am glad to finally get the sights completely figured out on this new Atlas blaster.

 

During this practice session I also gave the new AMG Commander shot timer a good workout. I got this shot timer on Thursday after waiting 60 days to get it on the Pre-Order. The menu is pretty intuitive and its easy to make setting changes or review strings of fire. While using it for this practice session we had a good mix of different loudness guns to see how it worked on different guns. We had a couple of Limited Major, Carry Optics in 9 Minor and a PCC in 9 minor. To get the shots picked up on all of these different guns we had to turn the sensitivity up to level 8 out of a maximum of 9. This was also with it being able to pick up shots while still being about 5 – 7 yards away from the shooter. We could probably use a lower sensitivity setting if we pointed the microphone on the front towards the shooter and also stayed physically closer to the shooter. Overall the Commander shot timer worked without issue. It is supposed to have a Blue Tooth connectivity function to be able to pull times directly into your phone via Practiscore. But I haven’t played with that function yet. I wanted to see if it would work as a basic timer first before I got distracted by other fancy features.

 

From a personal use perspective I don’t find this AMG Commander timer as user friendly as my Pocket Pro II. When the Commander is clipped onto your pocket the screen is facing directly outwards so you can’t see it when looking down. You have to unclip it from your pocket and rotate the screen towards your face to see the output. The Pocket Pro II has the screen on the top edge so it is facing up towards you. This eliminates the need to remove the timer from its location to see the times or review the shots.

 

The screen location on the Commander also makes ROing others more challenging because it prefers the mic to be pointed at the shooter to pick up the shots. The mic is on the front just below the screen so you can’t see the screen if the mic is pointed at the shooter. The solution for this is to jack up the sensitivity to the max so the screen/mic can face the RO but still pick up the shots. But this can lead to missed shots if you are not right on top of the shooter or invalid “Shots” being heard because of accidental bumps on the timer being picked up because the sensitivity is super high. I reverted to holding the shot timer in a manner that had the screen pointing straight up and that seemed to work the best all be it an awkward manner of holding the timer.

 

The cool thing that I like about the AMG Commander is that it has a Multi-Par Time function as well as the ability to change the volume of the Beep. These two features are awesome for dry fire use. I still need to do some testing with it in dry fire to see how it works out from an ergonomics perspective.

 

I still need to do a lot more testing with the new AMG Commander shot timer to see how it works in all of its functionality. But so far, I don’t see anything on it that would make me replace my trusty Pocket Pro II.

[euxx]

2 hours ago, CHA-LEE said:

Overall the Commander shot timer worked without issue. It is supposed to have a Blue Tooth connectivity function to be able to pull times directly into your phone via Practiscore.

 

You can use PractiScore functionality for practice, though it is crafted more around match use.

 

The plan is to have separate app for practice needs, so you can run your drills without spending time to create matches, stages or adding shooters up front (but optionally tag runes after the fact) and also have an unbounded history. A early preview of that look something like this:

 

 

Edited March 25, 2019 by euxx

[CHA-LEE]

24 minutes ago, euxx said:

 

You can use PractiScore functionality for practice, though it is crafted more around match use.

 

The plan is to have separate app for practice needs, so you can run your drills without spending time to create matches, stages or adding shooters up front (but optionally tag runes after the fact) and also have an unbounded history. A early preview of that look something like this:

 

 

What is the purpose of the gobbly gook you posted?

Edited March 25, 2019 by CHA-LEE

[CrashDodson]

I think it was supposed to be an image but it didnt work

[euxx]

19 minutes ago, CHA-LEE said:

What is the purpose of the gobbly gook you posted?

 

You say you don't see the image or my description makes no sense?

[CHA-LEE]

Just now, euxx said:

 

You say you don't see the image or my description makes no sense?

The "Image" is just a bunch of random characters. Was that what you intended to post? If so, what is the purpose of that?

[euxx]

Just now, CHA-LEE said:

The "Image" is just a bunch of random characters. Was that what you intended to post? If so, what is the purpose of that?

 

It's a screenshot from the app. Not sure where random characters came from.

Are you looking at this post in a web browser or tapatalk app? Try the former.

[CHA-LEE]

I am looking at it via a web browser. I am not going to load taptalk just to look at a screen shot.

[RaylanGivens]

1 hour ago, CHA-LEE said:

Overall the Commander shot timer worked without issue. It is supposed to have a Blue Tooth connectivity function to be able to pull times directly into your phone via Practiscore. But I haven’t played with that function yet. I wanted to see if it would work as a basic timer first before I got distracted by other fancy features.

 

The cool thing that I like about the AMG Commander is that it has a Multi-Par Time function as well as the ability to change the volume of the Beep. These two features are awesome for dry fire use. I still need to do some testing with it in dry fire to see how it works out from an ergonomics perspective.

 

I still need to do a lot more testing with the new AMG Commander shot timer to see how it works in all of its functionality. But so far, I don’t see anything on it that would make me replace my trusty Pocket Pro II.

 

The ability to pull times via BlueTooth is helpful when scoring stages...  There are no miss-typed times and the tablet operator can pull the time from anywhere on the stage...  Helpful if the scorekeeper is pulling times from targets at the back of the stage while the RO is at the front of the stage with the shooter.

 

The real advantage of BlueTooth connectivity is that it pulls the times from every shot the shooter takes during his run...  PractiScore (versions 1.5.23 and up) then saves that shot data for every shooter that shot with an AMG timer...  Importing the match into PractiScore Competitor (separate PS App for competitors) can then take advantage of those statistics...  PractiScore Competitor can display all the splits for any shooter that was timed with an AMD timer...  It can also graph all the shots fired for any number of shooters on a stage that were timed with an AMG (aka Commander) timer.

 

The ability to see your shot times for a stage is an amazing tool...  The ability to see your shot times compared to other shooters is an incredible teaching tool...  I shot a classifier stage with another shooter that had similar hits, but was much faster than me...  I graphed our shot strings and it was apparent that he was much faster getting the rifle up and on target than I was...  After the first shot our shot time graphs were parallel, but he always had the advantage he started out with...  From that data I could tell that, compared to this shooter (who turned out to be a GM), I could shoot fast enough, but needed to work on speeding up my time to the first shot.

 

The multiple par times are cool, as you mentioned...  I use one for the draw and a final overall time...  The multiple delayed start times are also helpful...  I set the fixed time to 5 seconds and the random delay to 3 seconds...  The timer's first beep is then between 5 and 8 seconds...  Helpful if you're practicing by yourself as it is still random, but gives you some extra time...  Of course it has 'Instant' for matches, too.

 

It also has multiple presets that are saved...  I use the first preset for running matches - Instant start, no par times...  second preset for range practice - random start, no par times...  third preset for dry fire - random starts and par times.

 

The AMG Commander has way more capabilities than any of the old timers.

 

[CrashDodson]

I really like the AMG for dry fire.  I can use it in the house without having to tape over the speaker.  The par times are cool.  I haven't taken it out of the house yet. 

[euxx]

5 minutes ago, CHA-LEE said:

I am looking at it via a web browser. I am not going to load taptalk just to look at a screen shot.

 

I wasn't suggesting to. How about now? I tried to edit my post above.

[CHA-LEE]

The screen shot now shows correctly in your initial post. Cool stuff.

 

[RaylanGivens]

3 minutes ago, euxx said:

 

I wasn't suggesting to. How about now? I tried to edit my post above.

 

The image shows correctly now...

 

[euxx]

11 minutes ago, CHA-LEE said:

The screen shot now shows correctly in your initial post. Cool stuff.

 

Thank you 

[euxx]

2 hours ago, CHA-LEE said:

From a personal use perspective I don’t find this AMG Commander timer as user friendly as my Pocket Pro II. When the Commander is clipped onto your pocket the screen is facing directly outwards so you can’t see it when looking down. You have to unclip it from your pocket and rotate the screen towards your face to see the output.

 

BTW, there is a little hack that helps with timer on the belt issue

https://pistol-forum.com/showthread.php?33692-AMG-Lab-Shot-Timer&p=818236&viewfull=1#post818236

[RaylanGivens]

Or use the silicone skin protective cover with a lanyard around your neck...  or belt...  or...

 

[CHA-LEE]

Last night I was able to attend an indoor outlaw action pistol match at the Front Range Gun Club. They setup two large field courses that we shot two different ways each. The stages had a lot of running around and a good mixture of shot difficulty. The lighting at this range is better than most indoor ranges so I was able to see my sights pretty good which was nice. My Brooks Launch 5 shoes worked great in producing awesome traction on the slippery concrete floors. I could run and stop as hard as I wanted without worrying about slipping which was awesome.

 

I shot the match solidly without any shooting penalties or major mistakes. I did rack up 2 Delta hits which I called as Delta’s but was already leaving the position and it didn’t make sense to go back to make them up. The one thing that was a little odd was a couple of times I had a magazine eject from a pouch when I turned to the right and started running hard up range. I always have an extra magazine on my belt so I didn’t get screwed by the missing magazine. But it was interesting that the same issue happened twice during the same type of movement. In my video of the stage runs I can see my hips rotating aggressively during the turn and first few acceleration steps and that is when a magazine pops out of the pouch. I guess this is a new factor to deal with now that I am running hard with focused movement aggression. I will tighten up the mag pouches a little bit to keep that from happening again.

 

This match was a good test of the trigger adjustments I made on my Atlas Titan Operator on Sunday. On Sunday evening I decided to fully tear down the Titan Operator and do a detailed clean, inspection and reassemble. During that process I noticed that the Sear Push Through pressure on the trigger break was about half a pound heavier than I prefer so I did some sear spring tweaking to get it back to where I like it. The trigger is now identical to the pull weight and feel of my older Limited guns. While I had the blaster apart I did a close inspection on every part and everything is still looking good. There is only a slight amount of wear on the parts that are expected to wear with no surprises. The EGW HD Extractor needed a very minor adjustment to add some more tension to the pinch force. But staying on top of the extractor pinch force is also expected during normal cleaning and maintenance intervals.

 

The Atlas Titan Operator has been boringly reliable through the first 3K down the pipe. There has been zero drama and nothing but solid reliability and exceptional accuracy. Just the way it should be!!!  

[CHA-LEE]

The weather this past weekend was too cold and wet on Saturday to do any shooting outdoors. I focused on loading ammo that day to get stocked back up. On Sunday the weather was in the low 42’s which isn’t warm, but the sun was out and there wasn’t much wind. I was able to get out to the range with some friends to do a little bit of live fire training. We setup a memory stage and shot it a bunch of times. I took my time figuring out the best stage plan that would keep my gun running as much as possible. Some of the others in the group started shooting the stage way before they really had it figured out and it showed in their performance. My first run on the stage was in the high 7 second range which I felt was OK, but I was still leaving some meat on the bone due to shooting a little too slow on the tighter shots and not blending the shooting with the movement. I used the same stage plan and focused on blending the positions as well as not aiming too hard on the tight shots. This stage had a couple of tricky transition & foot work areas that could eat up decent chunks of time. By the time I had smoothed out the edges I was able to consistently shoot the stage in the mid 6 second range with only a handful of C zone hits which I was happy with. The thing I was really happy about was not being way off the mark to start off with by putting in some extra effort in figuring out the stage before trying to shoot it.

 

After the outdoor practice session I headed up to Longmont to attend the Outlaw Indoor match at the Trigger Time Gun Club. The bay we started on had two medium length stages which had some serious rage blasting potential. The first one was a box to box type of stage with 6 different targets but each target needed 4 hits. This stage had turtle targets that were not very far away which sucked people into going bonkers and racking up misses or very poor points. I shot this stage aggressively but not crazy which allowed me to get good hits in a decent time. The next stage was a lateral movement stage with a bunch of close targets stacked two on a single stand. This was basically hose it down with vengeance while moseying across the stage setup. Once again I shot aggressively but not crazy because I didn’t want to donate a bunch of points. This worked out well.

 

The last stage of the match was a large field course stage that had a good mixture of aiming, hosing, and movement challenges. The middle of the stage had a port wall with three targets to engage through it, then two targets to the right of the wall then two more targets below the wall in a really low position. This was a really cool section of the stage that allowed the opportunity to blend the “Getting Down” movement into the target engagement sequence. I was able to blend the different arrays while getting low enough to engage the under the wall targets without delay. Everyone else was struggling to get into this low under the wall position. I had the flexibility and mobility to both get into and out of this position without any issues which was a direct result of all the agility training I have been doing lately. I was really happy with being able to tackle this shooting and movement position effectively due to all of the physical training I have been doing.

 

I was able to post footage of my practice session and match runs on my Instagram account. Check it out there if you want to see the Big Panda get after it.  

[WFargo]

This week was the first time for me shooting major  ( just got my SVI 2011 in .40 S&W. )

I was shooting minor (9mm ) before that.

It just amazes me how you are able to not let the pistol recoil....  

Man, I've got some practice ahead of me... 

Anyway, I really appreciate and enjoy your Insta videos.  

They are inspiring to me. 

[CHA-LEE]

3 hours ago, WFargo said:

This week was the first time for me shooting major  ( just got my SVI 2011 in .40 S&W. )

I was shooting minor (9mm ) before that.

It just amazes me how you are able to not let the pistol recoil....  

Man, I've got some practice ahead of me... 

Anyway, I really appreciate and enjoy your Insta videos.  

They are inspiring to me. 

A big part of minimizing total muzzle flip magnitude is gripping the gun hard with significant pounds of grip force. Have you tested your grip strength in pounds of grip force? If not I would suggest starting there so you at least know where your current grip strength is. Gripping "Hard" isn't enough if that grip pressure is minimal amount of pounds in grip force. There are several threads about grip strength training on this forum. Get searching

[CHA-LEE]

Last night I was able to attend the Indoor USPSA match at the Whistling Pines Gun Club in Colorado Springs. This was a four stage match that had all field course stages which was a little different than their normal setup with a speed shoot/classifier stage. Two of the stages also had Right to Left movement with some shooting on the move which was also different than normal. This was all good stuff to experience as testing those skills are required.

 

I started off the match by botching my draw and getting a poorly registered strong hand grip on the gun. This caused the sight alignment to be really misaligned on the first two target arrays. I tried my best to steer the sights back to alignment before breaking each shot but it was a serious battle. I donated 11 C’s and 2 D’s due to this issue for this stage run which was a huge donation of points. Not to mention taking longer than I should have in the shooting while trying to adjust the sight alignment on each shot. The only saving grace in this situation is that I didn’t have any misses. Starting out the match in a hole like that always sucks but I buckled down and got the remaining stages shot fairly well.

 

I don’t know what it was that evening but I wasn’t into it mentally. It’s not that I didn’t want to be there or didn’t have fun. I was simply not “hungry” to be there and compete. I was basically going through the motions while not really being into it. I thought that this attitude would negatively impact my overall performance more than it really did. I donated a little bit of performance due to that mental attitude, but it wasn’t a significant drop in overall performance. I guess the auto pilot is working properly.

[WFargo]

21 hours ago, CHA-LEE said:

A big part of minimizing total muzzle flip magnitude is gripping the gun hard with significant pounds of grip force. Have you tested your grip strength in pounds of grip force? If not I would suggest starting there so you at least know where your current grip strength is. Gripping "Hard" isn't enough if that grip pressure is minimal amount of pounds in grip force. There are several threads about grip strength training on this forum. Get searching

 

Yes, I've actually purchased a grip strength device, and I've tested my grip strong and weak hand as you instructed in your video.  

I've been lifting weights for the past 20 years, so strength-wise I'm where I need to be, I believe. But I find it very difficult to maintain that grip during a stage.  It sort of 'wanders' out of my mind when adrenaline kicks in.   I do realise that I need to put in a lot of practice to engrain this into my system.   During dry firing I can manage it, but during live fire, I tend to lose it. 

Ah well..... practicing is part of the fun, so we'll get there eventually, I'm sure. 

Edited April 3, 2019 by WFargo

[CHA-LEE]

3 hours ago, WFargo said:

 

Yes, I've actually purchased a grip strength device, and I've tested my grip strong and weak hand as you instructed in your video.  

I've been lifting weights for the past 20 years, so strength-wise I'm where I need to be, I believe. But I find it very difficult to maintain that grip during a stage.  It sort of 'wanders' out of my mind when adrenaline kicks in.   I do realise that I need to put in a lot of practice to engrain this into my system.   During dry firing I can manage it, but during live fire, I tend to lose it. 

Ah well..... practicing is part of the fun, so we'll get there eventually, I'm sure. 

 

The easiest way to make gripping the gun HARD all the time is to change your habit of not gripping it hard any time. Basically put, any time you handle a pistol (Dry, Live, etc), and point it at something between your face and a target, you should grip it HARD as if it would fire a shot. If you do that then there is no decision to make and gripping the gun HARD is the only thing that is ever done.

[WFargo]

Thanks, that sounds like a good plan!