CHA-LEE's Tale

[CHA-LEE]

Much to my surprise we were able to have a match today. The range was a little wet and muddy but not too bad. We had four fun stages to shoot and it was all Halloween based. This range has a rule that you can’t shoot into the side berms and all rounds need to impact the back stop. This makes for some somewhat strange stages due to everything being crammed together so you shoot straight down range. The match crew does their best though to make fun stages to shoot.

The first stage of the day for me was an indoor stage with 5 separate boxes. You shot through ports in every box but to add to the fun there was a straw dummy hanging down from the ceiling right in front of you. You had to bob and weave to gain access to the targets and if the muzzle blast was too close to the dummy it started swinging out of control blocking your shots. Almost all of the shots had a no shoot attached to them and to make it even more interesting some of the targets were wearing T-Shirts as soft cover. The hanging dummies gave me hell on this stage. I was leaning forward too much and the muzzle blast from my first shots sent the dummies swinging all over the place blocking my shots. I couldn’t just “Saw” at the targets through the dummy as that would be an almost guaranteed no shot hit, so I was forced to wait for the dummy to swing away so I could engage the targets. HUGE time wasted on that stuff. I also had a hard time shooting the targets wearing T-Shirts. It was all very different and I struggled with it. Fun to experience though!!!

The second stage of the day was a field course with two sections of steel and two more sections of paper targets. One section of paper targets had a soft cover swinging target waving in front of a port where you had to engage 4 targets. The targets behind this situation had varying hard cover on them as well. I shot the stage well up until the port with the swinging soft cover target and that totally threw me for a loop. I felt like I had to rush my shots in order to beat the swinger to the next target and I also “Thought” that if my sights were aligned on the target before the swinger blocked my gun I could still get my hits……WRONG. I ended up with two misses on that final section due to rushing my shots and “Hoping” that my hits would be on target shooting through the soft cover. More important experience gained. I think I am going to set something up like this in practice the next time I go to the range. It’s an interesting mental challenge.

The third stage of the day was another field course. Lots of long distance shots and multiple shooting positions. Most shooters were breaking down the stage into 4 – 5 different shooting positions as they ran around the stage. I chose a different path and shot the whole stage from two shooting positions. I figured that the long/tight shots are going to be difficult no mater what so why not just dig into a couple of positions and shoot solidly verses run around to make the shots only marginally better. This worked out well for me as I was able to shoot fairly fast and solid. I would have liked to shoot the stage the other way just to see how different the stage time would have been .

The fourth and final stage of the day was classifier 99-28 called Hillbillton Drill. It’s a fairly straight forward classifier that has you shoot three open paper targets first, reload and then engage 6 poppers. I knew that this stage was going to be all about cleaning the steel quickly one for one and didn’t get into a mindset of “GO FAST”. I simply told myself to shoot the steel as fast as I could call the shots. This worked out great. I shot the paper at a decent pace with a couple of C’s and then shot the steel one for one quickly. I shot the steel so quickly that when I finished the string I thought that I left one popper up and went to reengage the popper and JUST as I seen it falling I broke an extra shot to shoot it again. This cost me an extra .30 sec with really sucked because had I not taken the extra shot it would have been a 98% run. Since I had the extra shot my classifier percentage ended up being 94.4%, just missing GM. It just sucked that I didn’t have faith in my shots and took the extra shot when it wasn’t needed. More lessons learned.

Overall it was a fun day of shooting. I didn’t feel that I performed that well as I had a hurting first stage and all told three misses. This showed in my match results and I ended up 3rd in Limited at 80% of the winner. I have come to recognize that learning new things usually comes at the price of match performance. Though I would like to finish better in the match, I still think its better to learn the hard way verses learn nothing.

Another match tomorrow. This is one I help put on so lots of work. I hope that the berms are not a complete swamp. I think we really lucked out with the fairly clear berms today. We might not be so lucky tomorrow.

[CHA-LEE]

USPSA match today and it was an interesting day of shooting. The range was a swamp most of the day due to the melted snow and that brought its own challenges. I wasn’t really “Into it” today either. I felt like I was just going through the motions and couldn’t get into the groove of the match. I don’t know if it is due to the extra work with setting up the match, too much ROing, the swampy range conditions or just being a little bit burned out? Whatever the root cause was did have a big impact on the quality of my shooting and I think the worst thing is that I didn’t really care. Maybe some match days are just going to be like that. I know that I would have the same situation happen every once in a while in my previous competitive hobby so its not a “New” thing to experience. I think it just comes with the territory.

One challenge I had through out the day was due to the lighting of the targets. Some of the targets backs were facing the sun so it put the front of the target in a shadow lighting condition. I had a harder time with being able to call my shots on the “shadow” targets. I have battled this before where I was wearing my sunglasses and trying to shoot “shadow” targets with dismal results. The same situation was happening again today but it was too bright out to not wear sunglasses and I really wasn’t motivated to squint without them all day either. So I pretty much dug my own hole in that situation.

I also had a funky grip issue on one stage after a reload. I performed the reload during the stage run and then my strong hand grip felt strange, but I felt like I didn’t have time to regrip the gun to fix it, so I tried to shoot that way. BAD IDEA. Misses like crazy on steel and paper targets. This has never happened to me before but was an important lesson to never settle for a less than optimal strong hand grip position. I was completely useless with trying to shoot with the jacked up grip.

The last stage of the day I repeated the same issue I have done in the past were I stay hot as I shoot back to back stages. When I finish the first stage I holster my gun and lock it in to move over to the next stage, then FORGET to unlock it. Of course this is on one of the speed shoot stages so I waste precious time wrestling the gun out of my holster at the start. I think I am going to change my make ready plan for those situations. Instead of staying hot, I will just unload after the first stage and then make ready again on the next stage. That way I will go through my normal make ready routine before the start of every stage.

Lots of blunders and ho-hum shooting on my part, but the squad I shot with were great. All hard workers, great guys and every stage was run like a well oiled machine. I tend to get roped into ROing quite a bit at these matches I help put on and that can suck because you really don’t have any down time to really program the stage. But regardless of that point, as an RO it makes the whole process a lot easier when you have a great squad to work with. Having a great squad to shoot with was my win for the day. I focused on giving my RO duties 100% of my energy and I hope that my squad mates felt like they got the best RO service possible.

Back at it for the Monday night USPSA match tomorrow. Time to snap out of the “Funk” and get back in the saddle.

[CHA-LEE]

It was a fun match last night. We had two stages, one box to box field course and one classifier. I tired my best to stay away from ROing until after I shot and that worked great on the first stage. I shot the stage fairly quickly and had good points. I did have one miss on a long distance target that had diagonal hard cover and my miss was about an inch into the hard cover right in the middle of the A-zone. It sucks to have a miss but being aggressive during a stage run has its price.

The second stage was a fairly tuff classifier 03-11 El Strong & Weak Pres. Since this is the last stage of the night after people shoot it they usually pack up and leave so the more shooters that shoot, the less people there are to help tape, brass, RO, and score. I was pretty far down on the list of shooters so I started scoring and was stuck with doing it until it was my time to shoot because people kept leaving. This didn’t give me much time to “Program” the stage in my head and I completely messed up the first string of fire. You are suppose to shoot two shots on each target free style, reload, then shoot two shots on each target strong hand. I shot the free style string good and then just stopped, then about 5 seconds later I remembered that I had to reload and finish strong hand. Complete stage planning failure. It sucked but was yet another lesson to NOT RO or Score all the way up until its your turn to shoot. I think I am going to make a new rule to not RO or Score until after I shoot or at least stop doing it 5 shooters before its my turn. We will see how it goes at the future matches. One main thing I am really looking forward to at the Area 2 match is that I won’t have to do any RO or Scoring, just shooting

[SA Friday]

What Charlie failed to mention was HE was the one that picked the classifier. However, this fact was not overlooked at the match. There's a reason many of us old-hats have never shot that classifier before. That thing is just brutal.

[Tom Freeman]

It sucked but was yet another lesson to NOT RO or Score all the way up until its your turn to shoot. I think I am going to make a new rule to not RO or Score until after I shoot or at least stop doing it 5 shooters before its my turn. We will see how it goes at the future matches. One main thing I am really looking forward to at the Area 2 match is that I won’t have to do any RO or Scoring, just shooting

When you are a few away, just hand off the timer to someone.

I did 5-6 people and was a few away and did exactly that. If you dont see an experienced shooter around, send someone in to grab Chris, Louis, Mike or me. I dont mind blowing off entering scores to grab the timer.

[eerw]

sorry Big Panda

I got sucked into chatting away at the counter.

classifier was a challenge..my brain checked out at the make ready. so I didn't fair too well.

[CHA-LEE]

I hope that there are not hurt feelings about my ROing comments. Its up to me to determine when the appropriate time to RO or not is. I just need to find the correct balance that allows me to help out and also give myself enough time to get ready to shoot. Its yet another experience thing that I have to learn.

[CHA-LEE]

I am going to a home grown indoor match tonight. It’s going to be their crazy Halloween match that you don’t get to see prior to shooting. Everyone I have talked to rants and raves about this match so I am excited to shoot it. We will see how it goes

[CHA-LEE]

I shot the Halloween match this past Friday. It was a singe 44 round stage setup like a theater. There were 6 different “Theaters” that you had to shoot in which each had a scary movie theme. The theater consisted of a door threshold and some form of targets beyond the door. Since it was a movie theater theme the lights were turned down so you were shooting in low light conditions. It was also a blind stage so you didn’t get to see the stage before shooting it. You were given a somewhat loose stage description as to what you would run up against but it was pretty much shooting on the fly after the buzzer went off. They also used a mixture of different targets as well. Theater 1 is suppose to have some Zombies in it. Theater 2, Killer Tomatoes that only need one shot each. Theater 3, Aliens. Theater 4, Vampires on IPSC targets and a 3D vampire. Theater 5, Werewolf’s on IPSC targets and two 3D Werewolf’s. Then finally Theater 6, Killer Clowns were the only way you can “Kill” them is to shoot their nose which is suppose to be clay pigeons. You start off with a bag of popcorn in your hand and your unloaded pistol is on a table down range. There is a par time of 99 seconds set and when that par time is met you have to stop shooting and take the penalties on all of the unengaged targets. At the buzzer you get your gun and its off to the races….. Here is a run down of the stage from the mind of a Big Panda with 100 rounds of ammo on his belt

“Are you ready?”…….”Stand By…..” Beeeeeep………..

Get the gun, Get the gun, GET THE GUN….. Got the gun, now lets load it and head to the first Theater. DAMN its dark in here. I see four zombies and proceed to unload three rounds into each one, slight pause to scan for any “Gotcha” hidden targets and don’t see any, Move to the next door!!!

I enter the threshold of the next door and holly shit there is a boat load of tomatoes to blast. I start at the lower right and commence blasting to shots on each as fast as I can see, or not see the sights. Its really dim in this area of the range so a clear sight picture is not going to happen. Vigorous blasting until the gun runs dry on the second to last tomato, reload, rack, and finish up the last tomato. I quickly scan for any hidden targets and don’t see any so I move onto the next door.

I enter the threshold of the next door and there are some aliens to shoot some blocked by no shoots, I blast away as fast as I can but know that some of my shots are not hitting their mark due to my shooting speed and the lighting but the ear to ear grin knowing that there is some serious lead being sent down range. This is a pretty sparse theater so I know there isn’t any hidden targets so I move on without an extra double check for more targets.

I enter the threshold of the next door and I see a few vampires on IPSC targets with a couple blocked by no shoots. I blast them as fast as I can giving each three shots and then finish up on the 3D Vampire that is pretty much a head and torso and since they mandated that you couldn’t take head shots I give it three shots to the body then move on to the next door.

I enter the threshold of the next door and see some werewolf’s on IPSC targets with some of them blocked by no shoots. Once again I start blasting as fast as I can and quickly run the gun dry, reload, rack, blasting in fully blitz mode again mowing down werewolves and finish up on the two 3D Werewolf targets that are like the Vampire ones. ALMOST Done one more door to clear. At this point in the stage I have no idea how much time I have left or how many magazines I still have on my belt. All I know is that I have been blasting without concern of running out of ammo or running the gun dry.

I enter the last threshold and see two HUGE clowns with big noses, its dark here, real dark. I start blasting at the first clown nose 1, 2, 3….. 4 rounds but I don’t see any clay pigeon nose breaking part. Did I hit it? Is it too dark to see? Who cares!!! Move onto the next clown nose!!! I throw 4 rounds at that nose and THEN out of the corner of my eye I see two clay pigeons on a no shoot target off to the left. I swing over and blast the clay pigeons and quickly scan for more but don’t see any and stop shooting. This crazy stage is finally done.

What a wild ride. I was some what in shock at all that had just happened. By the time I snapped out of it and started to look at the targets most of them were already taped. I really didn’t care though as I achieved my goal of doing some serious blasting and having a lot of fun while doing it. I started the stage with 100 rounds on my belt and came back with 30 rounds. It was fun and I am sure it was entertaining for others to watch me shoot it as well

Edited November 9, 2009 by CHA-LEE

[CHA-LEE]

I shot a USPSA sectional qualifier match today. It was a great day and all of the stages were fun and challenging. Too bad I had the worst match performance to date with donkey screw ups on pretty much every stage. A total of 6 misses and 5 no shoots as well. It was strange really. I was shooting too fast all day. Its like my finger wanted to shoot at a certain fast speed no mater what I thought or wanted. Lots of extra make up shots on paper but I hit all of the steel fast and one for one. My sub conscious auto pilot was off doing his own thing today and it was odd to experience him driving the magic school bus off into the weeds. On the long drive home I think this situation falls into one of two categories. My poor hits are either due to losing diligence on seeing what I need to see and simply slinging shots onto the general direction of the targets. OR, I am starting to venture into the next level in the speed of my shooting and am not use to seeing/shooting that fast so I am not sure exactly how to call those shots. Interesting experience for sure. I just need to make sure that I reign in the speed junky auto pilot before the Area 2 match or I will be in for a real beat down. Even though a lot of people would lot like having a poor performance before heading off of a big match, I actually like it. It keeps me humble and refocuses me to a known good level of shooting. I see it as an advantage and not a disadvantage.

I am planning on shooting a club match at the Scottsdale Gun Club Wednesday night in Arizona and I think that will be a good gauge of how I will do at the Area 2 match. Or at least give me one more chance to experiment with my mental game to see how far I can push the envelope before I venture off into the deep end. I am going to pull it back a notch and call every shot SOLID and see where it gets me.

[CHA-LEE]

I just got done with the Area 2 match in Phoenix. The match its self, the stages, prize table and staff were top notch. My performance on the other hand left a lot to be desired. I am too beat to go into a blow by blow analysis of my stage runs. Somehow I ended up getting 15th in Limited which netted me an XD-45 on the prize table. I thought that I would end up way further down on the results list given the “Challenges” I faced. I was able to film every stage run and have listed the links to them below. Happy viewing…..

Stage 1 – Poor stage planning on my part with the target engagement order and timing of the swinger.

Stage 2 – Decent stage run but was rewarded with two mikes for shooting too fast on the paper.

Stage 3 – This was a solid stage run for me and right up my alley. Lots of up close angry blasting.

Stage 4 – Another solid run with only a couple of make up shots on the steel.

Stage 5 – Some more fun up close blasting, but a complete failure during the mag change and a miss following the second mag change and severe impatience on the steel sunk this run for me.

Stage 6 – Huge stage planning fumble on this one. I shot it completely wrong and changed my plan right before shooting it and it showed.

Stage 7 – Decent run, but I should have let the hoser monkey loose a little bit more on the front section and had more patience on the steel.

Stage 8 – Decent run. I used a really different stage plan than most everyone else due to me being able to shoot over the right hand side no shoot.

Stage 9 – Holly craptactular batman!!! I lost my stage plan, shot too fast and had three misses along with a no shoot. I got my hits on both swingers though.

Stage 10 – This would have been a really good run if I didn’t almost fall on my ass entering the last shooting position. This was ultra scary and it was also the first stage of the match for me. Not a “Confidence” builder for sure.

Stage 11 – This is how you almost zero a stage. 50 point stage with a miss and two no shoots, followed by three shots needed on the last steel = donkey punch to the HF.

Edited November 16, 2009 by CHA-LEE

[Spikagirl]

Awesome job!!! Congrats! Now you need to coach me! LOL

LA

[CHA-LEE]

Here is my Area 2 match adventure story. It starts at 3AM on Wednesday when my alarm goes off and I pull myself out of bed and load up my stuff into the car and head out. I got on the road at about 4AM and 13 hours later I was in Phoenix. I left Denver early so I could make it to Phoenix in time to attend the club match at the Scottsdale Gun Club. I pull up to SGC and go through the front door to be greeted by the largest stock of firearms in a gun shop I have ever seen. The place was amazing. If you have never been to SGC and are going to be in the Phoenix area it’s a must as you won’t be disappointed.

The SGC match was a 4 stage match with a couple of run and guns, a classifier and another quick stage. The first stage I shot was a somewhat technical run and gun with black poppers. I was a little leery of the black poppers since this was an indoor match and I have never shot steel indoors before, but they had a foam block on the front of them that seemed to retain the bullet splatter. The lighting wasn’t the best and black sights on black poppers wasn’t going to be optimal. But really, I didn’t care as I was pretty tired already from driving all day and just wanted to shoot. I start off the first stage well and then go to the third shooting position and start shooting and have a stove pipe jam. Hhhhmmmmm, not fun given that I have had zero jams on this gun in a long time. I clear the jam and finish up the stage but the jam pretty much sunk the stage for me. I shot the second stage ok, but had a miss which hurt that run. The third stage was a speed shoot style with turtle targets that you had to shoot through some barrels and ports. I had a miss on this stage as one of my rounds went into a barrel and I went for a reload when I didn’t have to. At this point in the day I was extremely exhausted and wanted to get some sleep badly. The last stage of the day was the classifier called “Can You Count”. This is an ultra hoser stage and I didn’t have the focus to keep from trying to shoot fast so I ended up with some trigger freeze on both strings. The match was over and all of the guys I shot with were great. I headed back to my friends to get some sleep, but all the while I kept thinking about the stove pipe jam. Was it a real issue or just a fluke? It kept eating at me the rest of the night.

Thursday I woke up refreshed and headed out to the Rio Salado Range to check out the Area 2 stages. I pretty much spent all day looking over the stages and had some decent stage plan ideas. We were able to watch the RO’s shoot the match as well and that gave us some good viewing of the swingers and timing stuff. That evening I headed out to the Ben Avery range to shoot their match and it was odd. First off, its shot in the evening when its completely dark at an out door range. The only lighting you get for the stages are from the flood lights on top of the bench rest covers. Second, they use No Shoot targets as the shoot targets and the brown normal targets as the no shoots. Third, they shoot three stages all at once on the same firing line then make the range cold to reset the stages. Fourth, they use time + style scoring. I have nothing against this club and I am sure they do their best to put on a great match. But it was all very, very different for me. The lighting conditions were horrid. Sights??? What are those??? I think the only guys that seen any sights on their guns were the ones that had flashlights on the bills of their hats or had night sights. I have black on black solid Iron Sights so I was completely hosed. I had to shoot everything on pure index, which was a good test of my point shooting skills, but also frustrating as hell. Not to mention the built in mental block of shooting white targets. There was more than once when I pointed the gun at a white target and had an instant thought of “NO!!!” in my head before I had to force myself to shoot. I finally just got over it and figured that it would be a good test of my gun to see if it would have the stove pipe jam again. Sure enough on the last stage of the evening it did it again. This time I stopped and inspected the exact conditions of the jam and captured the stove piped case before I cleared it and finished the stage. I had a similar stove pipe jam issue a long time ago when my extractor spring was warn out. So I swapped the extractor spring and then test fired another 100 rounds. About 40 rounds in it stove piped again. A huge amount of frustration was starting to set in. My gun is messing up now of all times, right before a major match. Since Henning was going to this same match I gave him a call and explained the jam and he gave me some things to try on resolving the issue. I went back to my friends house and after about an hours worth of dremel work the “suggestions” were applied. I went to bed that evening very unsure about the functionality of my gun. I planned on getting to the range extra early the next morning to function fire it a bunch to make sure it was fixed.

Friday morning I headed to the test fire portion of the range and ran 200 rounds through my gun without a single jam. Some confidence was gained by this, but I still wondered if it was really fixed or not. I didn’t bring enough ammo to burn through more rounds just to test it out either, so I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I just had to run with it in the match and see if it was going to work or not. A new issue started cropping up though where the rear sight hinge pin was walking its self out the left side. I have dealt with this before though and just pounded the pin back in the best I could. By the end of the match I had to reseat the pin before every stage as It would walk out about 3mm after every stage run. Fun times, I have to put ANOTHER stock rear crap sight on my gun when I get back home.

Stage 10 – My match started here. It was a pretty straight forward stage with only a couple of different ways of shooting it that all pretty much were the same for stage time. The critical portion of this stage for me was to hit the reload as I moved back into the second shooting position. I seen a lot of people losing time going from the first to second shooting position and knew that if I could minimize this bottle neck that it would be a good thing. When it was my turn to shoot, the buzzer goes off and my gun got stuck in my holster a little during the draw. Not a big surprise given the funky first position. I felt like the rest of the stage was solid until I was entering the last position and started to slip and almost fell down. The only thing that saved me from falling was my foot slipped up against the fault line and stopped there. Otherwise I would have been taking a trip into the dirt. This was ultra scary for me and all I could think about while it was happening was “KEEP THE GUN POINTED DOWN RANGE!!!”. Luckily I was able to recover from it without wasting too much time and kept everything safe. But the extra couple of seconds the whole thing added to my stage time wasn’t good. Without the almost fall I could have had a solid top 5 finish, but oh well. At least it was entertaining for my squad to watch.

Stage 11 – This is yet another stage without too many choices. All you really had to do was decide on either starting shallow with the paper and finish on the steel or start deep and finish on the paper. I figured that the faster I could get shooting the better so I started with the paper and finished with the steel. This is a speed shoot stage so you have to get the lead flying fast. With that mentality I go at it with some mildly restrained shooting and was rewarded with a mike and two no shoots on the first target and needing to take three shots on the last piece of steel. The most frustrating thing is that I nicked the last steel TWICE before hitting it on the third shot. With it being a 50 point stage and having 30 penalty points along with a hurting stage time this was a huge fumble. I did my best to blow it off and move on. But this is when my confidence was at an all time low for the match.

Stage 1 – I had the worst pre stage planning for this stage on the rear steel and swinger. There was a solid wall with a port in it blocking the steel from view from the back of the stage so you couldn’t really time the best approach on tackling the swinger. The swinger was super fast and the activating steel was in the middle of three poppers to shoot. Could you shoot the three poppers from left to right and catch the swinger on its first downward pass? Or do you have to hit the activating steel and then engage the swinger and go back for the last popper? Since you couldn’t see the activating sequence from the back of the stage I went with a safer rout that had me shoot the activating steel, engage the swinger and then finish the last popper. When I shot the stage I ended up waiting what felt like an eternity for the swinger to come out after shooting the activating steel. I also should have shot the right hand paper in the middle of the stage in a different order. That also wasted some time. Bad stage planning on my part, but I felt hosed on not really ever being able to see or figure out the proper shooting sequence of the steel and the swinger.

Stage 2 – This was the last stage for the first day. Since the first three stages of the day were riddled with failure of one sort or another I was in “Angry Panda” mode for this one. The stage had a good mixture of up close blasting and long distance stuff. There were a bunch of different options on how to shoot the stage as a lot of targets could be seen from many different positions. I took the “Keep it simple” approach and shot it as it was pretty much intended to be shot in the stage design. After the buzzer went off it was nothing but angry blasting. I pulled my head off of two targets just before breaking the shot and was rewarded with two misses. Otherwise this was a good run for me. If I wouldn’t have had the misses this would have been a top 10 run. The leaders of this stage shot it three seconds faster. Given my aggressive shooting speed through the stage I figured that my stage time would have been closer to the top guys so I tend to think that they probably found a better way to shoot the stage. Some loop hole that I overlooked? Or maybe I just suck that much? Who knows. It will be interesting to see how the big dogs shot the stage when videos start getting posted.

After Stage 2 we had to Chrono our rounds. This turned into a nail biting experience. I load ammo for both me and my buddy Conrad and loaded the exact same rounds for both of us for this match. We chronoed them through both of our guns at home and they were well into the “Major” power factor velocities so I figured that we would be fine. He was up first and shot three rounds and his average fps was like 905, with a 179.9gr bullet. This put him in Minor territory so they shot three more and his average was 909fps. He then chose to shoot the last round and it was no help and he ended up being bumped into Minor with a PF of 163. This was my new low point in the match. I had loaded the ammo for us that wasn’t fast enough to make major and had caused my friend to be scored Minor. I felt like absolute crap!!! I also figured that since his average was so low that mine was going to be as well and that pretty much would seal the deal on this being the worst day ever to start off a major match. So its my turn to go through the chrono. My first three rounds averaged 911 fps on a 179.6gr bullet, not looking good for me. Then they shot the fourth bullet and it was like 908, no help, then the fifth was a 920 and the last one was a 930. I knew that it was going to be VERY close if I even made major. After they had tallied up the PF it ended up being 165.2!!! So I just barely squeaked into making Major. I still felt like absolute crap for my friend though. For some strange reason, I think I would have felt better if I had gone minor as well. Me ending up making Major and him not seemed like a raw deal. Lesson learned though, build some more padding into the PF when heading to big matches. I am still floored that they were so slow on the chrono there.

Stage 3 – This was the first stage of the second day. This to me felt like my best stage of the match. I don’t think I could have shot it any faster or better without having either a time or hit quality trade off. This stage suites my up close hoser shooting skills so I felt very comfortable while shooting it. This performance netted me a 5th place finish on the stage.

Stage 4 – To me this was the memory stage of the match. Not so much for target position memory, but body placement memory as you navigated the middle of the stage. The targets were arranged so that you had a bunch of tight shots leading into other tight shots that if you overshot your body position would leave you doing a Ray Charles impression as you hunt for targets. I told myself to shoot the targets one for one and to take as much time as I needed for every shot. When I shot the stage it felt extremely slow and deliberate, BUT, I was able to hit all of my body positions exactly where I needed to. I needed two make up shots on the steel and that cost me some time but overall it was a solid run. This netted me a top 10 run for the stage.

Stage 5 – This was a fun stage and once again, up my alley. Lots up up close blasting and running around. I shot the front half of the stage good and went for my reload and completely fumbled it. I had to ditch the first mag and go for a second one to finish the reload. By this time my head was in the “YOU ARE BEHIND SCHEDULE!!!” mode and I started shooting WAY too fast thinking I could make up for the lost time. I had a miss on the first target to the left after the reload and then gave the steel plates zero respect which had me slinging 4 shots at each before picking them off. It sucked to blow this stage. If I wouldn’t have botched my reload I would have shot the back half of the stage in a normal speed and I think it could really have been a home run for me. I could have shot the stage in 17-18 seconds without the drama, which would have put me really close to the top of the results list.

Stage 6 – This stage as an enigma for me from a planning perspective. I couldn’t figure out the best way to shoot it as it seemed like no matter how you shot it there were log jams in movement all over the place due to the placement of the targets. I kept flip flopping between stage plans, settled on one and then changed to another right before I shot it. This resulted in a clunky and lest than optimal stage run. I am really interested in seeing how the top shooters navigated this COF.

Stage 7 – This was the last stage of the second day. There were lots of low ports and cramped shooting conditions. Not the best situation for the Big Panda. Chubby kids like me need some room to throw our weight around you know. I was in Angry Panda mode again for this stage and only allowed “SHOOT IT!!” enter my mind while navigating the stage. The strange thing on this stage is that I had planned on doing my reload AFTER engaging the target to the left of the barrels as I exited the building. But for whatever reason I automatically did my reload right after finishing the last port in the building and before engaging the barrel target. It didn’t cost me any stage time doing it that way and I think it actually helped me. It was just strange for my auto pilot to take over and circumvent my programmed stage plan to make it better. Very cool to experience though. I think I need to listen to that inner voice more when I do my stage planning for things like this that will let things happen when THEY want to, not so much when I want them to.

Stage 8 – First stage of the last day. This was a very confusing stage for everyone I think. I don’t think many people shot it exactly the same and it had you running around all over the place like a chicken with its head cut off. Since I am a big tall bastard I found a hole in the stage where could shoot over a pair of no shoot’s to hit one of the two swinger activating poppers. This would eliminate an extra trip across the COF to hit the swinger that it activated. It also allowed me to shoot the stage in a horse shoe pattern which made target engagement order a lot easier to remember. The only things I regret on this stage were not hitting the activating popper over the no shoots on the first shot and taking three shots on each target on the left side. I had actually inadvertently programmed myself to shoot at the left side targets three times each, which cost me some time, but since I ended up with all three hits on each target I also had better points. So that was pretty much a wash. Being able to shoot over the no shoots and shoot the stage totally different than everyone else was fun and I kept telling everyone that it was my get back for all of the low ports I had to deal with on the other stages.

Stage 9 – This was the last stage of the match. At this point in the match my mind had already checked out and I was having a hard time focusing on my stage plan. I had a plan and it was pretty simple, but I didn’t take the time to burn it in. This and a lot of targets on the stage were set out at that slightly uncomfortable distance where you can’t shoot them really fast and expect to get decent hits and you can’t take a super solid sight picture on every shot or you will waste a bunch of time. Targets at this distance are my weak spot right now and it showed. I ended up with three misses with one of them being in a no shoot. I also fumbled my second reload because I grabbed my shirt along with the mag and had to stop, regrip the mag, and then do the reload at the end of the stage. Other than almost Zeroing Stage 11, this was by worst stage performance. Lots of lost points on this stage. While I was thinking about how crappy I did, it instantly dawned on me that my gun had run flawlessly the whole match. That brought a smile to my face as that in its self was a major win given the issues I was having right before the match.

After the dust had settled and the results were tallied I ended up 15th in Limited, which was very much to my surprise. I figured that I wouldn’t have even been in the top 20 with all of the donkey issues I had during the match. My overall percentage of 78% when compared to the winner really tells the story of my performance though. My performance was lacking and it shows by my percentage. I was just lucky that a lot of other shooters had more issues than me. I will take what I can get though and being able to pull a gun off my the prize table for my performance was a great feeling of accomplishment. I thought about how far I have come since last year and feel grateful that I have been able to improve as much as I have. Last year I finished 73rd and was a “U” in Limited. On Sunday I finished 15th as a struggling Master in Limited. Not many people can lay claim to that level of improvement from one year to the next. I just hope that next year I can look back at the 09 Area 2 match and have the same feelings of accomplishment as I do today.

[CHA-LEE]

Awesome job!!! Congrats! Now you need to coach me! LOL

LA

Thanks!!!

You know I am always willing to help out my friends. Just let me know when and where and I will do my best to help you out

[redmanfixit]

Cha-Lee!! I know you've been down the road a ways since the Infamous Halloweenie match. I was kind of lookin' for a post from you. You and the Conrad Meister winked out pretty fast. Thought I'd let you know how you did. Your time was the fastest of the night!! The Par, as you mentioned was 99.00 sec and you ran it in 64.74. 10 mikes (mostly those damned tomatoes) and only 3 hits on no shoots. (mostly the the damn killer tomatoes again!) There were a few others who were unable to resist shooting the evil clowns so you were not the only one that got penalties on that. Damn fine performance all in all I'd say. A good USPSA gun doesn't necessarily work that well in low light. But that's why we set them up that way!! We (us match doobies) had fun setting it up and were well pleased at the absence of mouths in the room with down corners.

Mr. Anderson won single stack. You three inspired the most awe in terms of the torrent of bullets you unleashed at the targets. It was a hoser stage and you three were truly the hosemasters! Just so U know!

It'll come around again in a year!

Happy Halloweenie!

[CHA-LEE]

redmanfixit> Thanks for the update on the Halloweenie match!!! It was an incredible amount of blasting in a short amount of time. Like I said in my earlier post about the match I was somewhat in shock once the shooting stopped and reality returned to normal. Sorry we had to leave early. Since it was a blind stage most of the people were just hanging out in the staging area shooting the shit and we had a long ride home ahead of us so we decided to bail.

[Spikagirl]

Awesome job!!! Congrats! Now you need to coach me! LOL

LA

Thanks!!!

You know I am always willing to help out my friends. Just let me know when and where and I will do my best to help you out

Thanks! I appreciate any feedback you have! I tried to go to Weld last weekend - but it was canceled... I *might* try to go Sunday, but...My husband's in-laws will be in town... and my husband will be on-call... So, it might be touch and go... Do you know is there a training sesson at Clear Creek? Perhaps I could get my uncle to try it and use Dave's gun or something. When is the next match that you are doing?

Also - are you guys spending T-giving with the fam? If not, I will be having an informal widows and orphans T-giving dinner at my house... The more the merrier!

Again - congrats - you did awesome!!!

LA

[CHA-LEE]

Spikagirl> I am not sure if there is a training session at Clear Creek or not this weekend. I know that the match there on Sunday has been canceled already due to weather. It gets pretty rugged up there in the winter so that wouldn't be my first pick to go shooting for practice.

I am going to try and shoot the HPPS match this Saturday. I am inquiring with the people that run the show over there to see if I can shoot through the match and leave early if I come out early and help setup the match. I should be able to but I am checking just to make sure. If I can't shoot through then I will skip the HPPS match and may do some practice on Sunday if the weather stays nice. But we will have to wait and see what the weather gods have in store for us this weekend. There might not even be a match at HPPS, you never know until the morning of the match.

Dawn and I are having Thanksgiving at her parent’s house so we will be well fed. Thanks for the invite though!!!

[Spikagirl]

Awesome, have fun at HPPS... I want to get to a match to redeem myself!! So I was bummed that Clear Creek cancelled already. Let me know how it goes..

See you on Sat - oh - are you doing anything for your lovely lady's bday???

Laura

[CHA-LEE]

Spikagirl> Yes we are doing something fun for my lady's Birthday. I figure that I didn't want to end up getting killed in my sleep, so I gotta keep my lady happy on her special day

[CHA-LEE]

I was able to shoot the USPSA match today. I went out early to help setup and then shot through the whole match in about 45 minutes. I have never shot through a match before and it was a real different experience. I didn’t have the same amount of time to program the stage plans before shooting the stages and it really showed in my performance. I had one miss for the day, and it killed me because I called it a miss but kept trucking along through the stage as I felt that I didn’t have the time to go back and make it up. The miss was once again from moving my head off target before the second shot breaks. Man that is a hard bad habit to break. I also had a complete stage plan melt down. It was poor planning all around. It was a 22 round stage with two sections of ultra fast blasting and then the end had four poppers and another paper target. I got it in my mind that I would load the gun up to 21+1 and shoot the stage without making a reload. Then at the start of the stage I had an extra shot and knew that my non-reload run was blown but didn’t really know when to do the reload. This causes some hesitations between strings as I wasn’t sure if I should reload or not. Then when I did reload the spent mag didn’t want to come out and I had to shake it out of the gun. Overall it was a train wreck performance other than getting all of my hits.

Overall I was “OK” with my match performance, but I could have done better if I had not shot through and given each stages its due diligence like I normally do. It was good experience though as things like this are built one event at a time.

[Spikagirl]

Thanks for sacraficing your meet for coming out to party with us! We really had a great time and glad you could make it...

We appreciate all you and your lady did to help out and make it a success! Hope you had a good time too.

Until next time, cheers!

[CHA-LEE]

Since I almost have the Minor .40 loads figured out for my lady’s gun I decided to get her gear figured out last night. I got her shooting belt, holster, and mag pouches all situated to match her arm positions and had her do a little bit of dry fire practice. We mainly went through the range commands, Make Ready, Unload and Show Clear, and stuff like that. She is going to need quite a bit of dry fire practice before she will feel 100% comfortable with the process. But we all started in the same boat at some point in time so I am not worried.

Once she feels pretty solid about basic gun handling and range commands in dry fire, I am going to take her out for a couple of practice sessions to get her use to the whole process in a live fire condition.

I don’t want to push her too hard as I want her to do it because its fun for her to do. So I am sure it will be a work in progress for quite a while before she attends her first match. That and now that we are heading into the winter months I am sure she will not find it “Fun” to head to a match in the dead of winter freezing her ass off for half the day. I think a realistic goal would be for her to start shooting some matches by this coming spring/summer. By then she should be ready to go.

I think its really cool that she is interested in it and wants to give it a try!!!

[CHA-LEE]

I loaded a boat load of ammo last night, 2600 rounds, and managed to get one of my fingers caught between a die and a case so I have a nice circular gouge in my left hand pointer finger. It looks worse than it feels really so I am not so worried about it. I just hope that its mostly healed by this Friday.

I needed to load up a bunch of ammo because I am attending a one day class from Matt Burkett on Friday. I am assuming that we will burn through at least 500 – 600 rounds that day and I hope to get some good pointers out of the class. It will be interesting to see what his suggestions are for me to get better. I pretty much known a lot of things that I need to do better in order to take my shooting to the next level, but its always nice to get a fresh third person’s view of your skills or lack there of. I have been having a harder and harder time getting suggestions on doing things better from my fellow shooters. Not that they don’t want to help, but more so I think its that most of us are at the same level of shooting and don’t really know what is needed to bump to the next level of shooting. If we did, we would be at the next level right? Kind of a which came first, the Chicken or the Egg kind of thing.

I have been thinking back to all of the classes I have attended from other shooters and the money I have spent on the training. Each class had its “Golden Nugget(s)” of information that helped me get better and its hard to quantify the value of those things since its usually just one small piece in a larger solution that has to work together seamlessly in order to be successful. Even though some of these classes can be expensive, in the end I feel that they are worth the money. You could try to learn some of these things on your own burning through a lot of ammo and time trying to reinvent the wheel on learning things, or pay someone to show you the right way of doing it and it saves you a lot of time and ammo. So really in the end the “Cost” is about the same but it saves you a lot of time.

I have zero expectations going into this training class and that mind set usually works best for me in a learning situation. If I have an expectation of achieving a certain skill or solving a certain problem in the class I will focus only on that and miss other things. So I would rather go into it with no expectations and simply absorb what is delivered.

The cool thing about this training class is that I will have the chance to attend two USPSA matches the following two days after the class. Unlike the last class I did where I had to fly out of town for a couple of weeks right after finishing the class. I learn best by “Doing” and having some matches right after the class will give me plenty of opportunity to “Do” the things that I learned.

[SA Friday]

You'll have to explain to me how your got your finger caught when we see each other. That ought to be a good one.