CHA-LEE's Tale

[CHA-LEE]

rtr & eerw> Thanks guys. Its amazing what can happen when you stop worrying about stuff and simply shoot as soon as you can call your shots....... Now I just have to learn how to stay in that mind set every time I shoot

[CHA-LEE]

Sean Gains> Thanks for taking the time to check out my video's and provide feedback. Its much appreciated!!!

Stage 4> Yeah there were huge delays between entering the boxes and the first shot. I think that most of this was that I was entering the boxes a little too aggressively and the gun was bouncing around on target so I had to wait for it to settle down. The sights were aligned but he gun wasn't settled and aligned on the target. I really need to work on smoothing out my entry into shooting positions so I can have a solid presentation of the gun as soon as I get to the box. The target distance for this stage was just outside my current comfort zone for calling marginal shots so I was waiting for an almost optimal sight picture to break the shots. This kills a lot of time.

Stage 1> I will fully agree that my draw is slower than a snail. Since I switched over to the blade tech holster I can't do the same scoop style draw that I was doing with the CR Speed holster. I have been intentionally neglecting the speed of my draw to allow myself to focus on my shooting once the gun is out and ready to rumble. A lot of field courses can mask a slow draw because you are drawing as you are moving into the shooting position verses drawing straight to the first target. I need to get back to dry working on my hand speed during the draw. This stage had you starting off with shooting two full size poppers at about 25 yards and to top it off they had no shoots behind them so if you missed you paid for it dearly. So the extra caution during the draw was mainly due to the no shoots. Its funny that you make the 100 yard draw analogy because that is pretty much what it looks like in my motions.

Thanks again for the feedback and if you see anything else that can be done better let me know.

[CHA-LEE]

I attended the indoor USPSA match last night. My lady also attended the match and this was her first official USPSA match and second match all together. She had a great time and did well for her second match. Her accuracy is really good and she got all of her hits on the first stage. On the second stage she shot a little too fast and ended up with some penalties due to dropping hits down into no shoots, but all of the hits were in the A zone area so that is good. She had a good time and is getting a little more comfortable with the match shooting environment. Its cool to see her having fun doing the same hobby as me. I am a proud Panda

My match was ok. I shot the first stage aggressively and moved well. I loaded my 22 round mag giving me 23 rounds for a 22 round stage so I didn’t have to do a reload. I still have challenges with seeing the sights clearly at this indoor range since I got LASIK done. For whatever reason my focus pulls back to the rear sight so my front sight is fuzzy. I have to force myself to refocus on the front sight and then its normal. This does not happen when shooting outdoors so I am not sure what is going on with that. Maybe it’s a strange lighting thing? Either way I shot the first stage three seconds faster than anyone else but had a miss on a partial target blocked by a no shoot. This was the first target in the string and I knew that I had the funky fuzzy sight focus on both of the shots before I could refocus to the front sight. I hoped that my hits were there on that one, but one wasn’t. Not a big surprise.

The second stage was classifier 03-04 called 3-V. I have shot this classifier before and have always been artificially tentative with my shots due to there being a no shoot blocking most of each target. This time I simply told myself to shoot as fast as I could call my shots and not to worry about anything else. This produced a great run for me in shooting speed and consistency of hits. My shots were biased upwards about 5 inches from normal so I had a lot of C zone hits right above the A zone which hurt my points. But my stage time was smoking fast at 6.01 seconds. Being down 9 points on the stage I figured that the overall result would be really hurt but it looks like this is still a 100% run nationally. Its cool to be able to shoot a solid 100% run and not feel like I was pushing it at all, simply letting it happen.

[CHA-LEE]

Last week I went to the Dr for my annual physical and had him check my Lead levels along with everything else. I was not sure what my lead levels were going to be with all of the shooting, reloading, and gun handling I have been doing over the past couple of years so I figured it would be good to get it checked out. The test results came in and they are at 9 with the normal adult range being from 0 – 10. This is really good news as I have been trying hard to limit my exposure to handling lead contaminated items with my bare hands and not shooting at indoor ranges that have poor ventilation. I guess all of the diligent hand washing and wearing gloves has paid off. This is one thing that I really don’t want to screw up or get complacent with.

My physical went well but my Diabetic A1C has gotten worse which means that I haven’t been diligent enough with controlling my diet by minimizing carbohydrates. This is actually a good thing for me because now I have a reason to cut back on eating the stuff I am not suppose to. I am switching over to a very low carb diet for the foreseeable future to help bring my A1C back down and another side benefit to that will be weight loss. I can stand to loose a good 25 – 30 lbs anyway so it’s a win/win for me.

[CHA-LEE]

Last night I finally got the prep work done for my backup gun as well as my new slide. Today I dropped them off at the coater to get bead blasted and then hard chrome coated. This should give the slide and frame a nice dull non-reflective finish. They said it should be all done by the end of next week so I could have my current gun fixed and my new backup gun put together within two weeks. I have to get this stuff done and tested before the major matches coming up in June. I want to have all my equipment setup and ready to rumble by June 1st at the latest. Hopefully I can get it all done before that. Once I get this stuff done I should be good on equipment for the rest of 2010 and hopefully well into 2011.

I can’t believe that my current gun is still going strong with the cracked slide. The frame also cracked again where I got it welded before. But its still running without any issues so I guess it doesn’t want to give up the ghost yet

[CHA-LEE]

I attended a group training class from Ron Avery today. The class was about stage breakdown and strategies. All of the class money went to the Avon Breast Cancer walk fund raiser that Ron’s wife is taking part in this year. It was a great class and the money when to a great cause. The only thing that sucked about the day was the non-stop wind at the range. The wind was howling all day making it more difficult than it had to be. The only saving grade is that the wind was blowing consistently down range so it was at our backs. I don’t think I would have been able to hack it if it was going the other direction. The class its self was good. We shot a bunch of different stages in different ways so we could have hard proof of the right or wrong way of shooting the stages. The focus was always on maximizing the economy of effort through the stages and what you thought was the best way was some times the worst way to shoot the stage. Lots of little tidbits learned today. But one major thing that I learned was to not circumvent a solid normal stance at the start of the stage to simply be a step closer to the first target or shooting area. When you are all twisted up or at a funky angle trying to be a little closer to the first shooting position or eliminate moving your feet at the start it would make drawing slower because my body is contorted in a non-normal position. This may sound like a pretty trivial thing but it’s a pretty huge revelation for me. I know that I have given away a good chunk of time on the draw during stage runs due to doing this exact thing. I look forward to giving this a try in the next match.

For the stage runs I shot Limited 10 which made breaking down the stages even more challenging and also gave me some more reload practice which can never be a bad thing. I am really happy with my reloads lately. I don’t feel like I have to rush them at all but instead focus on getting a solid mag change completed. This mindset seems to reward me with a pretty decent reload the vast majority of the time. Now if I could only get my draw to first shot out of slow poke mode. I think that is the next thing I will really put a lot of work into. I really need to ramp up my hand speed during the draw. For whatever reason my hand speed is good on the reloads but I am super slow and diligent on the hand movements of the draw. Time to raise the bar.

Overall I was happy with the class. It was fun to learn and shoot with friends all the while helping out a good cause.

USPSA match tomorrow down in Pueblo. This will be a good opportunity to put what I learned into practice during the stage runs. I just hope that it isn’t windy down there. I don’t want to grind through another full day of wind. We will see how it goes tomorrow.

[CHA-LEE]

USPSA match on Sunday down in Pueblo. Unlike Saturday the weather was awesome. I think the temp peaked out at about 85 deg and there was very little wind. The PPPS club had six challenging stages to shoot for us and it was a lot of fun. I was still wore out from the day before but I did my best to keep hydrated and fed through out the day. Since it was mothers day I was surprised to see quite a few mom’s at the match. I guess they dig shooting enough to have fun at the match on their special day. That is pretty cool. I used a different video format this time so now the video is in sync with audio, but the audio is not the best. Oh well, at least its in sync. Listed below are my stage runs.

Stage 3 – First stage of the day and the one stage that I never got a solid plan for. I was like the third person to shoot the stage on our squad too, so that didn’t give me a lot of time to try and figure it out. The little stage plan I had completely went out the window after the first target. I shot the second set of targets out of order which forced me to stay planted in one position while shooting the first three targets and then I had to move over and shoot the last target in the string. I wanted to shoot the third target in first and then move over as I engaged the other two and that would have put me in position for the fourth. Opening the door activated a swinger and a clam shell at the same time. By the time you got the door open and the gun up and ready to shoot the swinger was in its bottom lull and the clam shell was just coming up. I engaged the swinger well, but took an extra shot on it to make up a D and that extra time taken made me late for the clamshell and I was left with a head shot. This change in plan on the clamshell totally blew my focus and then I started looking around for targets to shoot, which is never good. I did my best to keep shooting but it was really clunky and forced. I also had a miss on the last target on the right where I am twisted up to the right. For whatever reason I have issues with having consistent tracking of the gun when I am twisted up to the right. This is something I really need to practice the next time I go out for live fire.

Stage 4 – This was an interesting 22 round COF with two swingers that were activated by separate step pads. The step pads were also setup so they activated opposing swingers. So you couldn’t activate a swinger and then shoot it from the same position. You were really left at the mercy of where the swingers ended up when you came back to the middle of the stage. There were also blocking no shoots setup on targets which forced you to go to both ports. With it being a 22 round stage I was able to put my 22+1 mag setup to use and not do a reload. I am not sure that was a big advantage because there was plenty of time to do a reload in a couple of different places during the stage run. But any time savings by not doing a reload is time savings. I shot this stage pretty good but failed to move out of the second shooting position soon enough. I also had to wait for two passes on one of the swingers which killed at least a second. This was my best run of the day though.

Stage 5 – The classifier for the day was the good old El Presedente (CM 99-11). Since my favored turn draw side is opposite of the gun I tend to be slower of the turn draws than most. Given that fact I knew I wasn’t going to be able to burn this stage down in a really good time without risking a lot of points. So I took the approach of simply shooting it at a comfortable speed. I pushed my last shot on the first string low and to the left resulting in a D zone hit but otherwise I had pretty good points. This run gave me an 85% run nationally and more importantly it didn’t kill me in the match by trying to go hoser crazy.

Stage 6 – This was a standards style stage where you turned and could engage all of the paper, reload, then all of the steel. Or all of the steel, reload, then all of the paper. The steel was setup with four pepper poppers and the two end pepper poppers had little US poppers behind them so you had to wait for the pepper popper to fall before being able to engage the US popper. This was a little bit of a mind game because the Pepper/US popper setup was on the extreme outside ends of the COF so you could hit each pepper popper and then come back for the US poppers, but that made for super long transitions. Or you could hit the pepper popper and then hold on target until the US popper became exposed. I figured that the disaster factor was a lot less to simply stay on target and wait for the pepper popper to fall. I think that both ways were about the same time but transitioning back and forth was a lot more risky than simply waiting. This plan worked out will for me and it seemed to allow me to fix my grip after the reload as I waited for the first pepper popper to fall. The only screw up I had was getting only a partial hit on the last pepper popper and it didn’t allow it to fall so I wasted at least a second waiting for it to fall and expose the final US popper behind it. I hate it when the steel goes “DING” but then does not fall. I really liked the aggressiveness of my reload during this stage though.

Stage 1 – This was a memory style stage where you had three boxes setup in a triangle formation. You could start in any box and shoot all of the targets from any box, but not all targets were visible from every box due to the blocking no shoots. To make it even more challenging you had to hit every target with three rounds and it was Virginia count so no make up shots. The targets were set out to about 20 yards so they were just outside of your normal comfort zone for shooting fast. I came up with a plan to shoot the middle targets of the stage from the middle back box, then finish the stage moving to the left box. This left most of the targets pretty open and only needing to “hunt” for one target. I started off the stage ok but called my second shot on the second target bad (high, left) so I knew that I was in for one miss. Then when I moved to the second box and did my reload I seen the top bullet in the new magazine biased way forward as I brought it up to the gun. I slammed the mag home but it didn’t feel quite right and sure enough, when I presented the gun on target the mag fell out. So I had to do a second reload standing in the box. This whole monkey show wasted at least three seconds on the stage. That combined with the miss resulted in a pretty crappy run. The stage winner went to all three boxes as you could get fully open targets in each box but it required more aggressive foot work. I think that I shot the stage pretty good but might have been able to do it faster by going to all three boxes. The hunting for the last target did kill quite a bit of time. This was a good lesson though in both magazine maintenance and stage planning.

Stage 2 – Last stage of the day. Once again this is where I started to mentally break down. Physically I was good, but mentally I was over shooting for the day and found it really hard to focus on planning the stage. I was lucky that the stage plan was pretty simple for this stage but I still felt like I was in an unmotivated fog. I feel that I shot the stage pretty decent with only a few hesitations. But I lost all visual patience on two targets which rewarded me with a miss and a no shoot. In both cases I was moving off target as the second shot broke. I felt like I needed to hurry and we all know what happens when you try to hurry. I also caught myself looking at the targets instead of my sights on the last string of targets. Super poor focus on this stage and I paid for it.

I don’t know what it is about this range but the stages they put together here seem to always exploit the holes in my game. I don’t think it’s a bad match by any means, I think its actually a good thing that it pushes my skills to and beyond their limits. I always come away from this match with new things to add to the “I suck at this” list. I can’t get better until I figure out what I suck at so I can work on doing it better. This match just so happens to regularly exploit the things I suck at. I guess this is an advantage to having so many different matches to shoot at all along the Colorado front range.

From a mental motivation standpoint I think I was mainly running out of steam at the end of the day because of all the shooting we did on Saturday. I know I do my best when I am having fun and it isn’t a grind. When I shoot day after day and it turns into a grind that is usually when my motivation and focus starts to break down. I am not sure how to fix that or even if I want to. I want shooting to be fun, but I also want to be able to perform. I know that I can probably work through shooting when it turns into a grind, but then that kind of circumvents the whole purpose of it being fun. I just need to find the right balance that keeps shooting fun but does not take me into the “Grind” zone. There is no need for me to be pushing myself to the point of it being a grind and no longer fun.

[CHA-LEE]

This coming weekend is the Rocky Mountain 300 match up at the Weld County range. This match only has five stages, but every stage is 60+ rounds. Each stage is setup for a specific challenge in shooting. For example, one stage is a complete hoser stage with lots of up close targets to go blast crazy on. Its fun to watch people start off the stage shooting fast but by the end their trigger finger is slowing way down from being tired. That in its self is crazy. You shoot so many rounds in one stage that your FINGER is worn out!!! Then there is a memory stage that is truly diabolical. You think that a 32 round memory stage is hard to figure out? Double the round count and have twice as many targets that can be shot from multiple positions. This stage usually turns peoples noodles into putty and leads many shooters into the “deer in the headlights” look at some point during the stage. There is also an all steel stage with 60+ pieces of steel in varying flavors and evilness. Pepper poppers, US Poppers, knock down plates, plate racks, and Texas Stars can all be found on this stage. Last year there were many shooters that came to the line with 100+ rounds on their belt to start the stage but ended up running out of bullets before finishing the stage. I think the steel stage is more demoralizing than the memory stage because you can literally run out of bullets before finishing the stage if you are not careful. To round off the match there are also two more field course stages that are true test of your run and gun skills. I am looking forward to shooting this match. I really have no expectations on where I want to finish overall because a lot of these shooting conditions are well outside my comfort zone when compared to a normal match. My only goal this weekend is to have a lot of fun while sending mass quantities of lead down range during stage runs. I am going to run it like a rental and see where I come out on the other end. This will be a fun experiment.

[CHA-LEE]

I picked up my frame and two slides from the coater today at lunch. They were able to bead blast the surfaces then coat them with hard chrome giving it a nice dull finish. All of the parts look incredibly nice and the dull finish is exactly what I was looking for. The price was really good as well at $115 for bead blasting and hard chroming a frame, two slides, and two thumb safety parts. With this price and the turn around time of less than a week makes this place my new “go to” location for coating parts. Now I can start building up the new gun next week as well as replace the cracked slide on my current work horse. Getting the new gun up and running before the end of the month shouldn’t be a problem at all. It will be interesting to see how the hard chrome coating holds up under USPSA style use conditions. We will find out over the rest of the summer.

[CHA-LEE]

I shot the Rocky Mountain 300 today. We were suppose to shoot all 5 stages today but rain and hail hit hard late in the day before we could move over to the last stage. So we have to come back tomorrow and finish our last stage. This is fine as we had to go back tomorrow anyway to do the awards and prize table anyway. So far I have had an “ok” match. Nothing to write home about but not catastrophically bad either. These high round count stages are really giving me a run for my money. Keeping a solid stage plan together seems to be the most challenging part for me. Oh well, I am able to shoot some serious rounds and it’s a lot of fun. Listed below are my stage runs so far.

Stage 4 – This is one of two large field courses and the first stage of the day for me. I shot this stage decent but slow. Nothing really good or bad and only 1 D hit. But my time was off by 3 – 4 seconds from the really fast guys. I also pushed the limits on the rounds per mag saving me one reload but since I knew that I didn’t have any extra rounds I think it made my shooting really tentative. I am kind of glad that I shot it conservatively because others that did shoot it faster had way worse hits or penalties so it was good to get a no penalty run in the books for the first stage.

Stage 5 – This is the all steel stage. My stage plan was pretty simple, but I think I took that for granted and the wheels proceeded to fall of the wagon after the buzzer went off. The plan was to shoot the right side poppers from a standing position and then transition to the left and shoot the left poppers as I moved forward. Well I shot the right poppers good and then when I transitioned to the left I pushed the mag release for some unknown reason and then had to do an unplanned reload. This threw my focus completely out of whack and then I screwed the pooch on the rest of my plan. I basically ended up in battering ram mode and shot whatever I could see from where ever and since I didn’t know when I needed to reload I resolved to the fact that I would simply run the gun dry and then reload, rack and keep going. SUPER ugly stage plan melt down. I gave away at LEAST 10 seconds to the top limited guys on this stage. The only positive thing about this run is that I didn’t leave any steel standing when I was finished. But that isn’t much when you screw the pooch that hard on the stage plan. This is a huge lesson in NOT taking a stage plan for granted. That and I have NO idea what was up with the unplanned reload. Strange suff, but at least funny to watch.

Stage 1 – This was the up close and personal super hoser stage. My ONLY focus for this stage was to NOT try and shoot fast. I knew that if I tried to shoot fast it would lead to mega trigger freeze issues. So I did my best to shoot at a comfortable speed for the range of the targets, which were all less than 2 – 3 yards. I was actually pleasantly surprised at how fast I did end up shooting and it didn’t even feel like I was shooting “fast”. In the middle of the stage I started to “try” shooting fast and all it did was slow my splits down so I reverted back to just letting it happen and finished strong. This was a really fun stage to shoot and I am sure that I have a couple of sub .10 sec splits in there which is really cool to experience when you are not even “Trying” to go fast.

Stage 2 – This was the memory stage of the match. It wasn’t too much of a memory stage but did have a ton of options on how you could shoot it. I tried running through a couple of different plans but none of them felt like they were really solid. Each plan I came up with had me hunting in at least one port for targets which I knew was going to be a bad plan. Since this stage was shot after our lunch break I took that opportunity to have Ron Avery show me how he shot the stage. His plan was not too much different from mine but different enough to keep you shooting most of the time. This advice on how to shoot this stage probably saved my bacon and I was much appreciative for the help. Knowing when to ask for help is an important tool to have, and I needed some help on this stage. His plan had you shooting as you moved through the ports, but you had to keep your feet planted. So my main focus for the stage was to keep moving as I shot through the ports. I shot this stage pretty decent but had a huge hesitation after the first string of targets. I think I was looking for holes in the last target of the first string as I called the last shot marginal and then when I snapped out of the looking for holes mode, I almost did another unplanned mag change. This cost me a couple of seconds on this stage. The rest of the stage went pretty good for me and I did move through the ports as planned so I called the stage a success.

About 10 minutes after my stage run the sky opened up and dumped its fury upon us. It was raining and hailing straight sideways for at least 15 – 20 minutes turning the whole place into a swamp. I took some video of the rain/hail in action but this video doesn’t even do it justice. This was taken after the heavy wave of rain/hail swept through. Luckily the hail was only pea sized and still pretty slushy so no cars were damaged. But since every stage got swamped out we had to stop shooting for the day and plan on finishing up tomorrow. So the match continues tomorrow. We will see how it goes….

[Sean Gaines]

stage 4, when you grab the gun, if you could do something to get closer to the finish line do it, second your wide transition, should have been alotttttt faster. Second position, was easy, you should have been leaning or moving in the direction of the 3rd position while shooting the easy target, the one on the ground.

Stage 5, I would have taken a big step at the buzzer while drawing. What I saw, is you need to go one for one on the steel, I don't need to tell you that, you know that, it just needs to sink in, sorry but its true right? I can give you the Paula Abdul version if you want.....but I don't think you want that.

Stage 1. Excellent, except for a bobled reload, on a stage like that be conscience of your foot work so you can move in and out of those postions smoothly, not bad. Everyone will have pretty much the same time on a stage like that, the one who will win it, will move smoothly in and out of those positions, and get all the points.

Stage 2, looked pretty solid, except for brain F@rt before the plate rack

Something I would take to the training range:

I would push yourself hard, I mean hard, try to work on aggressiveness without sacrificing accuracy. Work on your mental preperation before you shoot the stage, shoot it 10 times or as many times as it takes where you can tell me what the target array is on position 3, and what is your cadence is going to be on those shots.

Charlie, I will say this I did not read your notes, just watched the video, and gave what I saw, I didn't read your post on purpose, didn't want any outside influence on what I saw. I am sure there maybe some similarities in my critique...

good luck

Sean

[CHA-LEE]

Sean Gains> Thanks for the reply. Here are some answers to some of your comments.....

Stage 4 - Oh yeah turtle pace was in full effect on this stage. Transitions, movement and shooting were all super tentative. I couldn’t move down range any more than I did in the second shooting position. You the targets were placed in a way that had you shooting the last target on the left really close to the 180. I tried to optimize the position by shooting the two low targets as I settled into the shooting position but I knew that I was going to have some stand and shoot going on there. The third position was awkward as well with both low and high targets that kept you pinned in the location or you would be breaking the 180. I also HAD TO shoot this whole mag 1 for 1 as I had to engage 11 targets before the last reload.

Stage 5 - This stage had two mirrored rows of poppers at the start. So really your only choice was to shoot one side stationary and then shoot the other side on the move as you advanced down the COF. I didn't want to "Crowd" the left side by taking a huge step forward on the right side. As I stated before, this stage was a complete mental breakdown after the right side of poppers. It really was a complete train wreck.

Stage 1 - This is another stage where the barrels and targets were placed in a way that had you pinned in specific shooting positions. So this meant that a lot of shuffle steps were needed to expose the next target. Believe me, if I could have shot this stage in a more flowing manner I would have chosen to do so. But the restriction of the targets made it impossible to not shuffle step between shooting positions.

Thanks for the tips on the practice. It has been a while since I practiced in a mode that had me pushing the envelope on aggressiveness. As you suggested, I think its time to take the training wheels off again and get some scraped knees as I push it to the next level.

I also need to do more work on mentally programming the stage as you said. I usually do best when I can see the stages the day before and then run them through my head a bunch of times all through the evening. This match is like a club match where you pretty much show up 30 min before you shoot. 30 minutes isn't enough time to get a solid stage plan on five different 60+ round states and it is showing in my performance. It will be interesting to see how I do on the last stage tomorrow. I had time to check it out in the morning and after we called the match so I have had the chance to think about it all evening. We will see how it goes tomorrow.

[Sean Gaines]

Thanks for the tips on the practice. It has been a while since I practiced in a mode that had me pushing the envelope on aggressiveness. As you suggested, I think its time to take the training wheels off again and get some scraped knees as I push it to the next level.

I also need to do more work on mentally programming the stage as you said. I usually do best when I can see the stages the day before and then run them through my head a bunch of times all through the evening. This match is like a club match where you pretty much show up 30 min before you shoot. 30 minutes isn't enough time to get a solid stage plan on five different 60+ round states and it is showing in my performance. It will be interesting to see how I do on the last stage tomorrow. I had time to check it out in the morning and after we called the match so I have had the chance to think about it all evening. We will see how it goes tomorrow.

If you don't have time to practice do it in your local matches, push the envelope, what do you have to lose?????? Nothing, let it hang out and see what happens, take notes of the experience. Adjust accordingly.

[CHA-LEE]

Today was the final day of the Rocky Mountain 300. We showed up early in the morning and much to my dismay it was still quite muddy. The only stage I had left to shoot was also a complete mud bog. The range crew did their best to run the tractor over the stage to smooth things out but it was still super wet and muddy. The start position was still under water and the X’s on the fault line were marked with wooden stakes since you couldn’t see the X’s on the fault line any more. It didn’t look like our stage was going to be getting any more “Love” from the setup crew so I ran and grabbed a shovel so I could do what I could by spreading around the little bit of sand I could find. I worked on it for about 30 minutes and was able to get most of the starting area at least somewhat respectable. I was also able to get the middle section a little better as well, but that was almost a lost cause. Oh well, I did what I could to try and make it better than it was when I got there for everyone on my squad. You can only do so much though in that kind of situation.

Stage 3 – This was the last stage of the match for me and quite a big run and gun stage. You had the option to shoot two poppers on opposing sides of the COF at either the back or up front. If you ran up front to shoot them it would add at least 50 yards to your running at the end. Or you could shoot them from the back of the COF. Since these poppers were out to at least 40 yards they were somewhat intimidating to shoot them from the back. But there was no way that running around in the front of the COF was going to make up a little extra time it would take to shoot them from the back. My main goal was to simply give myself enough time to aim hard and hit these poppers from the back one for one. The front half of the stage went well. I shot aggressively and hit the far poppers one for one. But when I pushed the mag release on the second reload the mag didn’t drop free. I had to rip the mag from the gun before I could finish the reload. This totally blew my timing for the middle section as it put me out of sequence in shooting the between the no shoots. Then I felt like I was behind schedule so I started to shoot fast on the right hand side and was rewarded with a miss. I called the shot marginal and hoped that it was on target, but it wasn’t. I then finished the end of the stage somewhat tentative. The botched second reload really screwed my rhythm for this stage and the miss just added insult to injury.

Overall the match was fun to shoot. It really pushed my stage planning skills beyond their current limit. I couldn’t get over the thought of “Why are you still shooting” after about 40 rounds on each stage. When the results where tallied I ended up 5th in limited at 88% of the winner. I think I could have been up in the 90% range if I didn’t completely ruin the all steel stage. Oh well, that’s how it goes some times. Either way this performance put me 2nd Master which got me some hardware. The match was a lot of fun and 60+ round stages are a very unique challenge to experience. If you have not shot a match like this before, you should come out next year and give it a go. The Weld County Practical Shooters club put in a ton of effort to make this a really nice and fun match. Its well worth the trip to come and shoot.

[CHA-LEE]

USPSA match today. This is one of the matches that I help put on and I actually had to wear the Match Director hat today because the other guys that usually perform MD duties were out. Being the match director really wasn’t much different than other matches here. The only thing that was different is that there were more questions that I had to answer. But the match went smooth. We got setup in record time and then finished up with the match early as well. I can’t take much credit for this because this smooth match process is more due to all of the guys helping out. We have a great group of shooters that are always willing to pitch in and help so it makes putting on matches pretty pain free. All of the stages were fun to shoot and tested a good range of shooting skills. Listed below are my stage runs as I shot them.

Stage 5 – This was a medium field course with 28 rounds to shoot. There were quite a few places where you were shooting really close to the 180 so you had to be really vigilant on your muzzle position. I actually had to DQ a shooter on this stage because he broke the 180. That was a real bummer but needed to ensure a safe environment for all. I waffled on my stage plan a little bit on which targets to engage or not engage from each side and this indecision lead to me double shooting a target. I changed my plan of attack right before shooting the stage and the proceeding double shot target was the result. This cost me about a second on the stage run and the double shot target was the last target I engaged. Other than that I had really good points and did pretty good at keeping moving through the COF where I could.

Stage 1 – This was suppose to be a memory stage but there wasn’t too much to remember. It really ended up being a risk verses reward type of stage as the targets were out to about 20 yards and each had a different amount of scoring zone showing through the no shoots. The basic plan for this was to keep the gun running and wait for a solid sight picture for every shot or you would pay dearly in either no shoots or misses. I felt that I shot the stage pretty good but did end up with some D’s which didn’t do the HF any favors.

Stage 2 – This was the long field course for the match. Basically four sets of four targets and a good mixture of hoser and tight shots. Then to throw a brain teaser in there we had two soft cover swingers blocking the back targets through the door. As much as you want to tell yourself “Just ignore them and shoot through the soft cover” I still found myself waiting a little bit to see brown before breaking the shots. I slung some extra hits into two of the targets for good measure and it paid off with all alpha’s. The complete donkey move on this stage was engaging the 7th target twice and STILL getting a miss on it. This target was a zebra A-zone only target that was pretty close so you could sling some lead fast at it. I shot it fast and called good hits but as I transitioned off the target I seen that both of my hits were just inside the black hard cover. So I shot the 8th target and came back to the 7th target to engage it with two more rounds. This is where I should have known that I was trying to “Hurry” and would pay for it. Sure enough one of my hits was right next to the other two hits in the black and then an alpha about an inch away. I had a nice 2 inch group of three shots right in the black about a quarter inch left of the A-zone. I was telling my buddy about this after the match and he said something about it that made TOTAL sense. He said that your gun usually gets pulled to wherever you are looking. Sure enough, when I came back to the target a second time I was looking at the two hits in the black when I visually acquired the target again. Hhhhmmmm….. How to fix this issue??? Otherwise the stage run was decent but the miss gave it a good kick in the tea bag.

Stage 3 – This was the classifier 99-62 called Bang and Clang. This classifier is a straight up draw and shoot with no other funny business. The 100% HF for this stage is sick. You need to run this stage in less than 2.5 seconds with all the points in order to get 100%. Since my draw is at least 1.2 – 1.3 seconds I would need to shot at warp speed to achieve anything decent. I made the cardinal sin of telling myself “Lets shoot fast…” then proceeded to need make up shots on two of the poppers because I was artificially pushing the speed. Oh well, maybe next time.

Stage 4 – Last stage of the day. This was an interesting speed shoot where you had to engaging each target with three shots. I watched quite a few shooters forget the three shot requirement and end up having to go back and reengage each target with an extra shot. There were also a couple of no shoots blocking some of the targets to get you worried. I simply told myself to shoot each target three times and don’t shoot like a wussy on the no shoot blocked targets. This stage went pretty good for me. I had some hesitations in my transitions due to the forced three shots per target but other than that I engaged the targets as fast as I could call my shots. No shoots? What no shoots?

Overall the match was fun. We had some serious wind but the weather was otherwise great. I think the temp peaked out at about 88 degrees and the constant wind actually made it not feel hot at all. I didn’t hear any complaints from the shooters so I assume that everyone had a good time. I am considering this a WIN for my first time as a match director. I got to see the results before we left the range (Palms are a god send for ultra fast final scoring) and I ended up 2nd in Limited at 99% of the winner. Soooooo close, but yet so far away. Next time I will try to pull my head out of my ass a little bit further

[CHA-LEE]

I attended a USPSA match on Sunday up in the mountains. This is the first match the Clear Creek Practical Shooters have been able to put on this year. The crazy wet weather we have gotten this spring has unfortunately forced the cancel of this match many times. It was nice to get up there to shoot as the weather is always nice and when you have a back “Berm” that is the side of a mountain that is cool to experience. Listed below are my stage runs.

Stage 5 – This was a pretty simple run and gun COF that had you traverse the full length of the berm to shoot the stage. I was the lucky first shooter on this stage but it didn’t really matter to me. The stage was simple and the only thing I was worried about was where to do my reload. Every time I went through the stage in the walk through my instinct was to do the reload after the single target on the right. The issue with that was that it was early in the COF and left 22 shots to finish the stage. I could reload to 21 and then have no room for make up shots but that usually makes me shoot too tentative. Since I was first up I didn’t have enough time to properly burn in the correct reload location so I loaded up my belt with 21 round mags and let the reload happen where it wanted to. I ended up doing the reload right where my instinct wanted to do it so I had to shoot the rest of the COF one for one which made me shoot a little tentative. But overall it was an “OK” run. I could have shot on the move faster which would have saved me some time. My stage run was 2 seconds off the “Fast guys”.

Stage 1 – This was an interesting medium size COF that had you starting anywhere behind the rear fault line. The targets were arranged in a way that forced you to go to both extreme sides of the COF. You could shoot this stage in many different ways but it really came down to two basic plans. You could either shoot slower on the move to expose the blocked targets as you moved through the stage. Or you could stand and shoot then run like hell and stand and shoot again. I went with the shooting on the move plan as I felt that this way kept me shooting most of the time through the stage. As I shot the stage it felt like I was doing it the wrong way because I was bound up in many different places which restricted my movement and had huge left and right transitions which were slow because I was trying to do it on the move. I shot the stage solidly but the time was not optimal. Once again I was 2 seconds off the pace.

Stage 2 – This was an interesting speed shoot stage where you had to shoot two targets with two rounds then two head shot targets with one round. I shot the stage ok but my hurting slow draw really gets exposed on stages like this. I also had to make up a shot on the first head shot which wasn’t needed. It was a marginal outer edge B-zone hit so it was really close to a miss and I can live with making it up because I called it marginal and it was.

Stage 3 – This is the classifier stage and once again it was El Presedente (CM 99-11). Since I already have a somewhat decent run on this stage in my classifier average I decided to give it hell. I started off well and shot the first string fast then went to do the reload and almost launched the new mag into the next berm by missing the mag well. This is really funny to watch on video actually. The new mag hits the edge of the mag well, skips off then gets air born a little bit before I catch it then put it into the gun and finish the stage. This was entertaining for all as there was quite a bit of ribbing given to me for the performance. If you are going to crash and burn, at least make it entertaining right?

Stage 4 – Last stage of the match. At this point I knew I was getting out shot and was off pace for the overall match win so I through caution to the wind and shot this stage completely different than anyone else. The basic layout of this stage had two fabricated tunnels with two targets to engage through them. I am a big bastard and getting low and scrambling around while I am really low isn’t my forte. The right side tunnel had the targets setup in a way that allowed you to shoot one target from the right outside of the tunnel. Then the second target on the right was hidden behind a barrel and a no shoot exposing only about a head shots worth of A/C zone to shoot at from the other side of the wall. Everyone could see the second target but deemed it too risky of a shot with so much hard cover and no shoot blocking it. But shooting the right side targets from outside the tunnel kept you from having to get low twice and scramble around while you are low. With my stage plan I only had to get low once, which I liked a lot more than doing it twice. The back portion of the stage had a lot of difficult shots with lots of steel. I knew that the majority of this stages time was going to be soaked up by the difficult shots on the back of the stage so I focused more on that during my stage plan. How you shot the front section using the tunnels or not was really a wash in time doing it either way. I shot the stage very solid and gave all of the back shots all of the respect they deserved. The result was a one for one shot on the steel and very little time wasted on getting too much of a refined sight picture. This run turned out really well and I ended up beating everyone else in Limited on the stage.

I shot the match clean with no misses or penalties. With my less than optimal stage plans on stages 1 & 5, then botching the reload on the classifier I simply got out shot by the other shooters in Limited. I was happy with my accuracy during the stage runs having only three D’s for the match. This performance netted me a forth overall in Limited at 90% of the match winner. The top 5 shooters in Limited were all within 12% of each other so there was some really stiff competition at this match. Just the way I like it

[CHA-LEE]

I was able to get some decent wrench time in on building up my new gun last night. I got a lot done and built up the trigger with a 1.75lb pull weight. This matches the trigger pull of my current gun. The only things left to do is to tune up the barrel ramp to ensure proper feeding and add grip tape to it which I should be able to knock out this evening. Building up this new gun has been fun and its crazy to look at the new one verses the old one. The old one has a lot of wear and tear on it and you really don’t see the full extent of it until you set it side by side with the new gun. When I get the new gun all tuned up and ready to rumble I will take some pictures of it and post it up.

I have decided to rebuild my old gun to make it the new backup. I need to get the frame welded where it cracked again and at the same time I am going to have the magwell welded on. It is going to take a while to get it all rebuilt and back into action but rebuilding it will be a lot cheaper than buying a whole new gun. That and I can’t just discard my first Limited gun. It may have been put through hell and back a couple of times but I am sure it has a lot more use left in it.

[NickJ]

I attended a USPSA match on Sunday up in the mountains. This is the first match the Clear Creek Practical Shooters have been able to put on this year. The crazy wet weather we have gotten this spring has unfortunately forced the cancel of this match many times. It was nice to get up there to shoot as the weather is always nice and when you have a back Berm that is the side of a mountain that is cool to experience. Listed below are my stage runs.

Stage 5 This was a pretty simple run and gun COF that had you traverse the full length of the berm to shoot the stage. I was the lucky first shooter on this stage but it didnt really matter to me. The stage was simple and the only thing I was worried about was where to do my reload. Every time I went through the stage in the walk through my instinct was to do the reload after the single target on the right. The issue with that was that it was early in the COF and left 22 shots to finish the stage. I could reload to 21 and then have no room for make up shots but that usually makes me shoot too tentative. Since I was first up I didnt have enough time to properly burn in the correct reload location so I loaded up my belt with 21 round mags and let the reload happen where it wanted to. I ended up doing the reload right where my instinct wanted to do it so I had to shoot the rest of the COF one for one which made me shoot a little tentative. But overall it was an OK run. I could have shot on the move faster which would have saved me some time. My stage run was 2 seconds off the Fast guys.

Stage 1 This was an interesting medium size COF that had you starting anywhere behind the rear fault line. The targets were arranged in a way that forced you to go to both extreme sides of the COF. You could shoot this stage in many different ways but it really came down to two basic plans. You could either shoot slower on the move to expose the blocked targets as you moved through the stage. Or you could stand and shoot then run like hell and stand and shoot again. I went with the shooting on the move plan as I felt that this way kept me shooting most of the time through the stage. As I shot the stage it felt like I was doing it the wrong way because I was bound up in many different places which restricted my movement and had huge left and right transitions which were slow because I was trying to do it on the move. I shot the stage solidly but the time was not optimal. Once again I was 2 seconds off the pace.

Stage 2 This was an interesting speed shoot stage where you had to shoot two targets with two rounds then two head shot targets with one round. I shot the stage ok but my hurting slow draw really gets exposed on stages like this. I also had to make up a shot on the first head shot which wasnt needed. It was a marginal outer edge B-zone hit so it was really close to a miss and I can live with making it up because I called it marginal and it was.

Stage 3 This is the classifier stage and once again it was El Presedente (CM 99-11). Since I already have a somewhat decent run on this stage in my classifier average I decided to give it hell. I started off well and shot the first string fast then went to do the reload and almost launched the new mag into the next berm by missing the mag well. This is really funny to watch on video actually. The new mag hits the edge of the mag well, skips off then gets air born a little bit before I catch it then put it into the gun and finish the stage. This was entertaining for all as there was quite a bit of ribbing given to me for the performance. If you are going to crash and burn, at least make it entertaining right?

Stage 4 Last stage of the match. At this point I knew I was getting out shot and was off pace for the overall match win so I through caution to the wind and shot this stage completely different than anyone else. The basic layout of this stage had two fabricated tunnels with two targets to engage through them. I am a big bastard and getting low and scrambling around while I am really low isnt my forte. The right side tunnel had the targets setup in a way that allowed you to shoot one target from the right outside of the tunnel. Then the second target on the right was hidden behind a barrel and a no shoot exposing only about a head shots worth of A/C zone to shoot at from the other side of the wall. Everyone could see the second target but deemed it too risky of a shot with so much hard cover and no shoot blocking it. But shooting the right side targets from outside the tunnel kept you from having to get low twice and scramble around while you are low. With my stage plan I only had to get low once, which I liked a lot more than doing it twice. The back portion of the stage had a lot of difficult shots with lots of steel. I knew that the majority of this stages time was going to be soaked up by the difficult shots on the back of the stage so I focused more on that during my stage plan. How you shot the front section using the tunnels or not was really a wash in time doing it either way. I shot the stage very solid and gave all of the back shots all of the respect they deserved. The result was a one for one shot on the steel and very little time wasted on getting too much of a refined sight picture. This run turned out really well and I ended up beating everyone else in Limited on the stage.

I shot the match clean with no misses or penalties. With my less than optimal stage plans on stages 1 & 5, then botching the reload on the classifier I simply got out shot by the other shooters in Limited. I was happy with my accuracy during the stage runs having only three Ds for the match. This performance netted me a forth overall in Limited at 90% of the match winner. The top 5 shooters in Limited were all within 12% of each other so there was some really stiff competition at this match. Just the way I like it

Nicely done on Stage 4. I wasn't sure if anyone would see the back door on that last target you engaged, instead of shooting through the tunnel.

Edited May 25, 2010 by NickJ

[CHA-LEE]

NickJ> I am not sure if anyone else shot it that way. I know I was the only one to do it that way on my squad. I think it worked out good, but like I said before, I don't think it really saved/cost me any less/more time as shooting through the tunnel. I do know that overall it was WAY less awkward to shoot it the way I did.

[CHA-LEE]

My new EAA Witness Limited is all done and ready for some live fire testing. I got is all done tonight and am very pleased with how it turned out. I put a boat load of time into this gun to get it just right and a lot of the work done isn't very obvious but totally functional. For example, I rounded off all the sharp edges of the frame to make the gun fit nicer in my hand. This blaster should enjoy the competition shooting environment it will be going into. Listed below are all of the modifications I made to the gun along with some pictures.

EAA Witness Limited .40 S&W Upgrades

Henning iFiber Front sight

Henning Smooth Aluminum Grip Panels

Henning XL Firing Pin

Henning ConeFit Guide Rod

Henning Pins (Trigger, Hammer, Sear, Pin Pin, Slide

Canyon Creek Stainless Steel Magwell (Welded on)

Custom Extended mag release button

Frame & Slide sand blasting and hard chrome coated

EGW Hammer

EGW Sear

1.75lb Trigger Job

Wolff 10lb Recoil Spring

Wolff 13lb Hammer Spring

Wolff Extra Power Extractor Spring

[Cy Soto]

It turned out BEAUTIFUL!! I am sure it shoots like a dream too. Quick question though... I know that you don't use the FO rod in the front sight of your older gun and I noticed you didn't put one in this gun either. Why not use a plain black front blade instead?

[CHA-LEE]

Cy> The stock solid sight is too wide (.125 inch). The sight I had on my old gun was a narrow solid front sight (.090 inch) based on the FO sight design. Basically its the FO front sight without the FO hole drilled in it. so I transplanted it over to the new gun. Henning is suppose to be making dedicated solid front sights that are .090 wide and when he does I will be swapping this one out with it. Until then, I will just run what I have.

I will have to make some time this week to get out to the range and sight it in and run it through its paces to make sure its ready to go in match conditions.

I am going to the Steel Challenge state match down in pueblo this Saturday so that will be its maiden run in a match.

[CHA-LEE]

I was able to get out to the range and put my new blaster through its paces. I got it sighted in at 25 yards and ran 100 rounds through it in varying shooting conditions. It ran without a single issue. The only thing that I needed to change after shooting was to smooth out the checkering of the front and back straps a little bit. From the factory this gun has a very aggressive checkering on the front and back straps of the grip. The points of the checkering were a little too sharp for my liking so I smoothed them out ever so slightly and now its perfect. I can slip my hand over them without feeling like my hand is running over a cheese grader but when I grip down on the gun the checkering digs in and creates a really nice amount of traction. I can’t wait to get this bad boy into action during the next match.

[CHA-LEE]

I attended the Rocky Mountain Steel Challenge match on Saturday. This is the only steel challenge match that I will “willingly” go to and its mainly to help support the match with my $$. Last year I shot this same match pretty loosely and was screwing around shooting plates twice on purpose and stuff like that. This year I figured that I would shoot the match straight up without messing around, but also not really taking it serious. I felt that I shot the match “ok”. I know that my surrender draws are super slow so this was a good opportunity to get a lot of practice in on it. One main thing that got reinforced during this match was the cause and effect of “Trying” to go fast and then simply letting the shooting happen. Every time I “Tried” to go fast it resulted in misses and clunky movements. When I would let go and just let the shooting happen that usually turned out to be my best runs. I finished the match with a score of 143 seconds for all 8 stages. This put me 9th out of 52 shooters in Limited division. Since I shot the match with my normal Major power factor USPSA ammo I don’t think this result is too bad. Some Minor ammo would have made shooting a lot easier but I figured that making some mouse fart rounds for this match would do more harm than good. That and I really wanted to get some more normal ammo run through the new gun to make sure it was still working good.

My wife attended this match with me and this was her first outdoor match and third match ever. I knew that this was going to be a pretty long and hot day of shooting so she was going to be in for a doozy of a match. She did good though and was able to shoot all of the plates on every stage and string. By the end of the day we both were worn out and did a boat load of shooting. The good thing is that even though she had a long and some times frustrating day of shooting she still wants go give some other matches a try. I think that she will enjoy the normal USPSA club matches better. We will see how it goes.

[CHA-LEE]

I shot a USPSA match on Sunday. MAN it was nice to shoot a normal match again. I think I was going a little stir crazy with all of the stand and shoot stuff the day before. This match was at the Boulder Rifle club and they have some pretty strict range rules. All of the rounds have to impact the back berm so no shooting into the ground or side berms. This makes for some interesting stages with shooting challenges that are not usually seen at other matches. Listed below are my stage runs.

Stage 3 – First stage of the day and this was a doozy. This was a 32 round COF with a shooting area that you couldn’t leave or you would incur procedural penalties per step taken. This forced everyone to run through the stage in the same direction. There was one popper that activated a clam shell and a swinger with two targets on it. The clam shell was a waste as it was closed by the time you came round the wall to engage it so it was basically a static head shot only target. The double swinger was the one thing on the stage that would kill a lot of time waiting for it. So you had to shoot he popper and then really haul ass to the second shooting position to engage the swinger on its first pass. My plan was to engage one of the swinger targets on its first pass then the only static target you could see from the same position, then come back and finish the second swinging target. But this required a flawless entry into the second shooting position and you had to hit the exact spot in order to see the static target. Well I gave it hell after shooting the popper but I was still way behind schedule on the swinger and missed my spot as well. This resulted in a complete stage plan melt down that sent me into a blasting frenzy. I have not botched up a stage plan this bad in a long time. To top it off I also had two misses. One miss on the second swinging target and another on the head shot clam shell. This was not a good motivator to kick off the match. I tried my best to shake it off and move on.

Stage 4 – This was a long field course with a lot of running and some shooting on the move. There were a couple of areas that were log jams and you need to really minimize the time spent in these places or you would kill a lot of time. At the start of the stage you had a single target on both extreme left and right ends of the stage. On the left side you could enter and exit the opposite direction coming back to the middle of the stage. Or you could pause as you engaged the left side target and run around the wall and reenter the middle of the stage. I chose the later method as it allowed me to keep moving the same direction after engaging the left side target and it also got me a lot closer to the targets in the middle of the stage. The only downfall to this way of shooting the stage was that I would be pinned in the middle of the stage longer than going the other direction. But the targets were closer so you could shoot them faster. After that you reloaded and hauled ass to the end of the stage as you engaged a lone popper that activated a drop out target. At the very end of the stage there were a bunch of targets both fully open and blocked by no shoots. This stage had a really good balance of a lot of different skills in both shooting and movement. This was my best stage run of the day and I was rewarded with a stage win.

Stage 5 – Classifier 99-56 called “On the Upper Pad II”. This is a pretty simple stage where you engage two paper and two poppers from a box then run up and engage three paper through a low port hoser style. I really wasn’t looking forward to shooting through the really low port but it seemed to work out. I shot the stage pretty decent but had a D hit on one of the targets through the low port which jacked up the overall hit factor. Even with the D hit the run was still worth a 93% nationally.

Stage 1 – This was one of two speed shoot style stages in the indoor range. You had to get down into a kneeling position and shoot under this board and through a port. You also had to do a reload between the extreme left and right sides while you are in this kneeling position. I had a significant delay in drawing the gun and then a complete brain fart during the reload. But when I was shooting it was good. Some how I ended up winning this stage, I still don’t know how.

Stage 2 – last stage of the day and another speed shoot. This stage had two shooting boxes and both had a rope that activated a clam shell target. So you could choose to shoot it from the back box or from the front box. All of the targets had a no shoot blocking them. From the back box the shots were too tight to engage with any speed and not risk hitting a no shoot. So I chose to pull the rope in the back box as I ran to the front box. This allowed me to shoot the targets a lot faster from the front box. This plan worked out well but as I entered the front box my forward foot slipped a little and it threw me off balance. Being off balance caused my first shot to go about an inch into the no shoot on the first target. I made up the shot but the damage was already done.

This was a difficult match for everyone based on the results. I thought that I had completely tanked the match with the total melt down on stage 3. When the results were posted I was shocked to see myself finishing 3rd at 93% of the winner. I think this 93% number is funny though. I finished the match at 93% of the winner, I shot the classifier at 93% nationally, and this classifier should pull my classification average up to 93% the next time its calculated. I don’t know if the stars have aligned in a special way to make this possible but either way its pretty neat. My new gun is running great and I am glad that it shoots just like my old one. I think its going to serve me well this season