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CHA-LEE's Tale


CHA-LEE

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This past weekend was the Area 3 match in Grand Island Nebraska. Holly hot and humid batman!!! I don’t think I sweated so much in one weekend EVER. It was disturbing how much I was sweating all weekend. I tried my best to keep hydrated every day, but I was still pretty dehydrated by the end of each day. The local shooters are use to this level of heat and humidity but I was struggling. The only saving grace was that there was a steady breeze most of the time. It wasn’t a cool breeze but it was at least some air movement. If there wasn’t a breeze I can honestly say that I would have quit and went back to the hotel. Unfortunately the oppressive heat and mugginess ruined a lot of the fun factor of this match for me. I felt very unmotivated to shoot and just didn’t feel into it. I was in total survival mode while attending the match and didn’t feel like I could muster much of a competitive spirit. Being in survival mode my match strategy became very conservative just so I could get through the match with very little penalties. I paid the price in stage time for this very conservative strategy though and it pulled my overall performance down. It was interesting to experience shooting when everything is hot, sticky, sweaty, and unpleasant. Would I do willingly do this again? Probably not due to the lack of fun it was overall.

We got to the range at around noon on Friday and spent the next 3 – 4 hours checking out the stages and coming up with stage plans. The super squad of the match was shooting on Friday and we got a chance to see the big dogs shoot some of the stages. Max Michelle was on fire and pretty much made everyone else look like chumps on the squad. He is an amazing shooter and being able to watch him shoot a few stages was a real treat. By the end of the day we realized that we didn’t have any sun screen on and had already paid the price with some decent sun burns. This along with the hot muggy weather would set the tone of the match for me. Our schedule of shooting was in the afternoon on Saturday and in the morning on Sunday. We decided to get to the range early on Saturday to see how the other shooters were tacking some of the very technical stages to better refine our stage plans. This was both good and bad though as it exposed us to the hot humid weather longer that day, but it also gave us a few more ideas on shooting the stages better. I was able to film most of my stage runs and have listed my stages below.

Chrono – We started the day off at the Chrono. It was about 15 minutes before we were suppose check in at the Chrono per the documented schedule so we got our gear out of the car and I noticed that my gun wasn’t in my bag. OOOOPPPS!!! I left my pistol in the safe back at the hotel. Panic started to set in as I knew that I couldn’t go to the hotel and be back within 15 minutes but I headed out immediately for it anyway. While I was on the way back my buddy Conrad told me that the match was about an hour and a half behind schedule so I wouldn’t be late. I got my gun and we did the chrono and my ammo ended up being 172 PF. This is the same lot of ammo that I used at the Golden Bullet championships where it was 165.5 PF. Its kind of crazy how the same ammo can vary so much from one place to the next. I built up this ammo to be at 169 – 170 PF at home and I am glad that it has a good margin above what is needed to make major.

Stage 1 – This was a huge stage with a bunch of long distance targets. There were basically two different plans of attack. One was to run the full length of the course front to back and then all the way across the back to have close shots on the back targets. The other was to engage targets from further distances and then only move the front to back length of the stage. A lot of the long distance shots were just outside my comfort zone on shooting while moving but I still tried to move a little while shooting in these positions. This ended up hurting me more than anything because I couldn’t break the shots until the gun settled down on target. I should have just picked a couple of stationary shooting position and did more stand and shoot. I went with the plan of taking the longer shots and not having to move across the back side of the stage. Very few shots across the back were body position friendly while shooting on the move and it still left a lot of non shooting dead time so I figured that eliminating the need to shoot on the move in the back section would work better for me. I shot this stage ok and got all of my hits but it took me way too long. My shooting speed was way to slow on most of the targets killing a lot of time.

Stage 2 - This was the tether stage where your weak hand wrist was tied to a cable running down the length of the stage. This basically forced you to shoot the whole front half of the stage strong hand only. At the end of the stage you had the option of shooting with two hands but you would have to do it while still having your weak hand wrist attached to the cable. This required a funky crouch/kneeling position that didn’t work out well for my big ass. This left me with having to shoot the whole stage strong hand only. The back targets were set out to 25+ yards and shooting them strong hand only was a good test of shooting skill. I felt that I shot the stage as well and as fast as I could given the conditions. I got all of my hits which was good. My time was slow though compared to the other guys who could shoot the back stuff from a crouched position using both hands. My only complaint about this stage is that it should have been setup to force everyone to shoot SHO on the back targets. If you were short it was an advantage due to your wrist being attached to the cable at a more natural height for a two handed grip. I big dude like me was pretty much screwed.

Stage 3 – This was a fun hoser style stage. Pretty easy stage to shoot. You started with your unloaded gun holstered and your magazines placed on the barrels through out the COF. This stage was all about keeping the lead flying to minimize your time being stuck in the shooting positions. I had specific target engagement orders setup for the second and third positions but that all went out the window after the buzzer went off. I don’t think it affect my stage time though as I shot the arrays fast and smooth. Its just funky how the auto pilot takes over some times and does his own thing. I think that I should have shot the first section of targets faster to save some time, but then again, if I forced the shooting verses just calling my shots I am sure I would have had way worse hits or even misses. Some times you just have to let it roll.

Stage 4 – This was a speed shoot stage with three paper and four poppers on each side of the wall. The poppers were setup big, small, big, small and they were all forward falling so you had to pick an engagement order to expose them as soon as possible. The best way to shoo the arrays was to shoot the big popper first, then a paper, then another big popper second then finish the last two mini poppers. At the start of the stage I shot and hit the first popper but it must have been an edge hit because it didn’t fall this screwed up my timing for the left side and I lost confidence in my hits making me watch to make sure that the poppers were falling. Then when I got to the right side all was going well until the last small popper which took five shots to take down. This was super frustrating to say the least. I was aiming HARD at the popper and taking my time to break the shots and was still missing shot after shot. On my final shot I decided to aim below the circle in the popper and then I got a hit on it. This is when I realized that my black on black sights were causing the trouble. At this time in the day the sun was setting directly behind the back of the berms. This put all of the scoring surface of the targets in a shadow and worse yet this lighting condition puts my front sight in a shadow condition as well. This makes me artificially point the gun higher trying to see more of the front sight which causes my shots to go high. I battled this sight alignment issue the rest of the day which really took the enjoyment out of the shooting.

Stage 5 – Another speed shoot stage where you engaged two targets from each port. This was another stage where if you were a short person you had a significant advantage on the low ports. I was forced to shoot the bottom two ports strong hand only because I couldn’t fold myself up into a ball and still be contained within the shooting area while trying to shoot with both hands. At the buzzer I had a rare issue where the gun got jammed in the holster during the draw. This was funky and has not happened very often at all while using the blade tech holster. I shot the two upper ports well and tried my best to shoot the bottom ports fast SHO but was rewarded with a miss on the second target engaged on the first lower port. It does not surprise me though as it was a super awkward body position and shooting strong hand only didn’t help matters. I am still trying to understand the purpose of a stage like this. It would have been more fair to not have the ports to open on the bottom, but it is what it is. First miss of the match on a target that was about 5 yards away. This followed by the stage before where I needed 5 shots to take down a piece of steel set me into a pretty sour mood which wasn’t too good to start off with given the hot and muddy conditions. I tried my best to shake it off and think about the next stage.

Stage 6 – This was a fun up close run and gun style stage. The tricky part of this stage was the rope section at the start. There were two different ropes, one activated a drop turner and the other activated a swinger. The drop turner was fast and it was not disappearing so you had to engage that target first, then the swinger. The thing that sucked was that engaging the DT first put you out of time with the swinger to engage on its first pass forcing you to wait for the second pass. I watched a couple of fast open shooters try to pull the ropes, engage the DT, then come out of the port and engage the two static targets on the left then come back to the port to engage the swinger on its second pass. But they ended up waiting for the swinger on its third pass. I am sure that if you could execute it this second way it would be a couple seconds faster, but I know I would have to shoot and move faster than I am capable of executing quality shots so I picked the safe rout and waited for the swinger to expose its self on the second pass. I shot the rest of the stage solidly and since most of the targets were close my shadow front sight wasn’t much of an issue. This was my best stage run of the match.

Stage 7 – This was a memory stage with a bunch of targets that were visible from a bunch of different ports that you had to open. The day before, we watched the super squad shoot this stage and I used their same target/port engagement sequence. I tried coming up with some other plans but would always be running too many rounds per mag or would end up stuck at certain ports longer than I should be. My biggest concern with this stage was with sweeping myself as I opened the ports. You had to be very cautions of your muzzle position during this stage or you would be going home early. I shot this stage as good as I could given how crappy my sights were working out. At this point in the day the sun was really low in the sky and heavy shadows were on all of the targets. Not being able to accurately call my shots lead to five extra shots on this stage. When the shooting was over and I looked at the targets all but one of the extra shots was needed to better my hits. It just sucks to have to waste at least a second or two taking extra shots because your can’t see your sights worth a crap due to the lighting. I at least didn’t sweep myself but at this point in the day I would have probably been glad to get out of the heat sooner no matter what the cause was.

Stage 8 – This was the last stage of the day. I didn’t get any footage of this stage but it was pretty straight forward. You started at the back of the shooting area and had to hit two poppers which activated swingers on both the left and right. I chose to shoot the left popper first, then the right. Then the left swinger and then the right static paper and right swinger. I ended up having to wait for the right swinger for its second pass to get two solid hits on it as my first two hits were an Alpha Delta. I wasn’t sure that my second hit was even there until I seen it after the stage run where the round just nicked the outer edge of the target. I called it a miss and it was about a millimeter away from being one so I can live with taking the extra time to make it up. After the swingers you engaged three targets on the left, reload then engage three paper on the right along with a mini popper. This right side shooting position was super tight and it forced you to shoot one target strong hand only. I felt bad for the left handed shooters as they were absolutely screwed on engaging this target. That to me was a pretty poor target position. After that position you moved forward and engaged three lay down targets and a final swinger that was blocked by no shoots. The no shoots were placed in front of the back swinger so that you were forced to engage it at its full swing movement over the top. You could sling two shots at it in one pass but were at risk of hitting one of the no shoots. Given the lighting conditions and poor sights I chose to wait for two passes to finish off the swinger and stage. My stage run was ok but I wasted at least 2 – 3 seconds on the swingers making my stage time not very competitive.

Stage 9 – This was a funky stage where you had to walk on a plank from the start position over to the platform, pull some ropes to activate two targets and then move to the last position to finish up the rest of the stage. The left rope activated a target that flipped from back to front and then disappeared. You could make it appear again by pulling on a different rope but it was a waste of time. If flipped forward super fast and almost everyone hat at least one miss on this target. There were only three guys that got both hits on this target without going back to expose it again. The second activated target presented its self and stayed presented so it was just another task to perform during the stage run. The only gripe I had about this stage is that the RO’s wouldn’t let us manually activate the disappearing targets to expose it again after it was activated. This to me was total crap because it was considered a manually presented target after it was activated. We should have been given the opportunity to mess with it as much as we wanted in the walk through but the RO’s wouldn’t budge. Either way, it was a waste of time to go back and expose it again verses just eating a miss. I feel that I shot this stage pretty good with only a couple of small hesitations here or there. My big screw up was having trigger freeze on the first target and needing to engage it again, which killed about a second. Other than that the only other thing that I could have done better was to get two hits on the flipping target which I didn’t, but I pretty much knew that a miss was to be expected on that target. This was my second miss of the match.

Stage 10 – This was the infamous range bag stage. For this stage you had to put your unloaded gun and all of your magazines into the range bag. Then all of your magazines had to come from the bag or your hand. So you either had to haul the bag around and get your magazines out of it as you needed them, or drop the bag and keep coming back to it, or pick up a couple mags and shoot strong hand only while holding the spare mags. Then to top it off you had to activate two drop turners at the end of the COF by dropping the range bag onto a step pad. So basically you were screwed any way you looked at it. For me it didn’t make sense to try and haul the bag around with me as I seen others have disastrous results in doing so when it slipped off their arm and screwed up their grip/stance. So I came up with a plan that had me drop the bag at the start and shoot the majority of the targets from the back of the stage. Then shoot the middle targets on the right strong hand only while moving to the last position. This plan seemed pretty solid in my mind and my stage time would have been competitive if I had not screwed up in the second shooting position. I shot the left side first, then hauled ass to the right side and shot too fast leaving a miss on the bottom target. I seen the miss as I was exiting the position and decided to double back to make it up. With this being a 5 HF stage a miss was worth 3 seconds so you couldn’t survive with a miss on this stage. The thing that really sucked is that I decided to go back and make it up after I had dumped the mag so I only had one shot and then had to load and rack the slide once I got back to range bag. Yet more wasted time. I shot the SHO section ok, a little slow but then tried to finish strong and ended up edge hitting the first popper which needed another shot at the end to take down. I gave away at least 3 – 4 seconds on this stage with these mistakes which sucked because I could have had a really good stage time without the mistakes. See what happens when you try to rush…… Don’t do it, it never turns out well.

Stage 11 – This was a funky run and gun stage. The front section was easy but the back section after the tunnel was a cluster of left and right stuff along with a series of 6 poppers. All of the left side paper and poppers were just outside of my fast shooting comfort zone so I ended up shooting really slow to ensure my hits. I was pretty much stuck in a turtle mode of shooting on this stage and gave away a boat load of time in super slow splits. I never got a comfortable stage plan for this stage so I am sure my plan wasn’t the best either. This was my worst performance stage of the match. Not much more to say that it sucked and there wasn’t much I did to make it not suck.

Stage 12 – This was a funky stage with a star that got activated by shooting a popper on the left side of the stage. The star was spinning at a good rate of speed when you got to it and the left half of it was blocked by a no shoot so you would need some luck on picking of the first couple of plates while it was spinning fast. How fast you completed the star was a HUGE part of your stage time so how well you executed on the star really set the pace for your stage run. I got lucky on the star and only needed a couple of make up shots and didn’t waste too much time. When I went forward and after engaging the two right hand targets I went to do my reload but the mag didn’t want to fall free so I had to rip it out before putting in the new mag. Lucky for me there was quite a distance between the start of the reload and the next target to engage so I don’t think it cost me much time. The end of the stage required that you keep the gun running most of the time to be fast. I tried my best to keep shooting the whole time at the end of the stage. Even though I had the stuck mag I still felt that this was my second best stage run of the match.

Stage 13 – This was an all steel popper stage. You started unloaded and then engaged either the white or black poppers, then reloaded and engaged the other array. The black poppers blended in with my black on black sights so that was tricky shoot them as my sights seemed to disappear when they were on the poppers. I chose to shoot the black poppers first to get them out of the way. At the start of the stage the buzzer goes off and I go to load the mag and totally miss the magwell sending the magazine flying. I reach back for the second mag and finally load the gun to shoot the first string. Then reload again to finish the last string. Once I got shooting it went pretty good but the botched load at the start killed my run. Good thing this was only a 40 point stage or it could have been a lot worse to my overall match result. No video for this stage run, probably a good thing too.

Stage 14 – This was a funky port stage where you had to slide a window to three different ports. Through each port there were two paper and two poppers. One big popper in front of a small popper. So basically you had to engage the big popper first them one or both paper then finish on the little popper. I felt that I shot the stage well when I could, but I kept botching up the window movement by moving it too far and having to push it back a little. This back and forth window crap wasted at least 2 – 3 seconds on the stage which sucked but it is what it is. I was glad to be over shooting for the day so I could retreat to some air conditioning and cool down. I was pretty much “Over” shooting the match by the time we got to stage 13 anyway so I knew that my performance was going to suffer and I really didn’t care. No video for this stage either.

After the results were tallied I finished 9th in Limited at 81% of the winner. This result was quite a ways off my performance goal going into this match. But I think this was an acceptable performance given the hot and humid conditions that I was not use to at all. I was totally in survival mode during the whole match and didn’t feel like I could muster any serious competitive performances simply due to the uncomfortable heat. My hat is off to the guys that can perform in match conditions like this as they are way better than me. I am spoiled by the low humidity and relatively nice weather conditions we have here in Colorado and it really showed at this match. I am glad that I experienced these shooting conditions as now I know what to expect. But to be totally honest, I don’t think that I will be putting myself into a situation like that again any time soon. Its just not worth it to me to be miserable all day long in hot, muggy, and sweaty conditions to shoot a match. Maybe that makes me a fair weather shooter or whatever you want to call it, but it is what it is.

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OH!!! I almost forgot to add that our hotel was right next door to a family owned restaurant that was pretty good and they had this HUGE chicken statue in front of the place. Anyone that knows me well knows that I like eating chicken so I couldn’t resist the chance of getting a picture next to this statue. Its funny what you find some times in these little towns.

Big_Chicken.jpg

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This August will mark two years of shooting USPSA for me. These past two years of shooting competitively have been a lot of fun and very challenging. Last August the ink on my M card was barely dry and this August I am nipping at the heels of a GM card. My approach to shooting hasn’t changed much over the last year as my top priorities are still to have fun and give every match the best I can. At this point in my shooting skills I have fully transitioned from hosing and hoping hits onto targets to methodically calling every shot. I have also made huge strides in keeping my mind in the present tense while shooting to keep the dreaded “YOU ARE BEHIND SCHEDULE!!!” monster at bay. This is something that I think I will always be challenged with though. I still don’t dry fire even though I should. The lack of refinement in my draws and reloads are starting to affect my performance when compared to others in my class so its time to buckle down and embrace the suck of dry firing. Maybe I will start next week….. :roflol:

I have been lucky to have the opportunity to attend many local matches along with a hand full of state and regional matches. Its nice to gain the experience of shooting all these matches and there is always some lesson to learn from each. I have also had the opportunity to help with hosting two local matches a month and seeing the match process from the other side is also a benefit to my experience. I apologize if the stages I bring to the matches and setup have given anyone more grief than they should. Stage design and implementation is a whole learning process in its self. I do feel that I can produce some fun and challenging stages though. Being able to experiment with different stage designs and ideas is fun though and I look forward to coming up with something new and fun for every match.

My long term goal of shooting matches at a solid GM level by the end of the year is still what I am striving for. But I think that it’s a pretty lofty goal. Right now I feel that I am able to shoot at a very solid Master level throughout a match. The major crash and burn situations that use to happen are very few and far between these days. I think I am on the right path to achieve my long term goal, but it might be more realistic to expect to shoot at a solid GM level by the end of 2011 instead of this year. Much more refinement in my shooting and movement skills is needed to get there.

The coolest aspects of this sport are people and friendships made while at the range. There are so many great people that participate in matches or shooting in general. Its truly an honor to be part of such a great group of people. I do my best to foster and promote the same attitude both on and off the range. Regardless of how much my shooting skills have or haven’t improved by participating in competition shooting, the improvement of my social skills is priceless. Interacting and participating within the shooting community has made me an overall better person. That to me is far more important than most everything else. Thank you all for accepting me with open arms, minds, and hearts!!! :cheers:

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No USPSA matches for me this weekend. I had to catch up on some yard work on Saturday and then on Sunday I did some live fire practice. We setup a large stage where there were targets all over the place and you had to go to both extremes of the stage to engage all of the targets. We shot this stage a couple of different ways and it was interesting to test out different stage plans. This stage was a good test of run and gun skills with a lot of shooting on the move. I started off the day with shooting Limited 10 so I could practice reloads but I kept screwing up my round count and kept running the gun dry and having to reload and rack the gun. Pushing stage plans with 10 rounds each wasn’t a good idea. It was frustrating the crap out of me so I switched over to shooting Limited and focused on testing my 22+1 magazine setup, which worked great.

After the stage runs we decided to do some accuracy stuff. We have this game where you put a white paster on a target and then shoot at it off hand with 5 rounds at 25 yards. Whoever gets closest wins. With this we let you take as much time as you want. None of us were able to hit the white paster but my buddy Matt got really close. After this we figured it would be more fun to try and shoot 6 inch steel plates at 50 yards. So off we go each taking turns shooting the plates. We were all able to get the plates at 50 so we moved back to 75 yards and gave it a go again. This was quite a bit harder but after compensating for our sight deviations we were all able to shoot the plates off. Since we went this far we backed up some more, which was really as far as we could go being about 90 yards and gave it a go again. This was a lot harder and we were all struggling with picking off the 6 inch plates. We were able to do it, but it took quite a few more rounds to do it. I was able to do it on my 4th shot and at that range I had to aim off target low left to get the hit. At that range though I think there is a lot more luck factor than anything else given the inherent grouping limitations of our ammo. Either way it was pretty cool to pick off a 6 inch plate at 90 yards off hand with a pistol. The delay between the shot firing and the “Plink” was mind boggling long. POW…………. plink. That is the furthest I have ever shot my pistol and knowing what is needed to shoot at that distance is good information. It was a good practice session and I like finishing it up with accuracy stuff.

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I attended the Monday night indoor match down in Colorado Springs last night. This was the ICORE match so we used those targets and also some white paper plates to replicate steel. Shooting indoors has been a challenge for me ever since I got Lasik done. For whatever reason my sights seem to be blurry more often than not when shooting indoors. I don’t know if this is due to me focusing on the wrong place or that the less than optimal lighting is causing me issues. Once again, the black on black iron sights are not optimal in these shooting conditions. I really need to get a serrated solid front sight so its contrast is similar to the rear. I have to beat on Henning to hurry up and build up some of these sights so I can give them a try. We didn’t have too many shooters last night and we all had to work to keep churning through the stages so I didn’t video any of my stage runs. Listed below are my stage runs.

Stage 1 – This was a 22 round COF that had you starting on the extreme right then shot targets as you moved to the extreme left. The cool thing about this stage is that it didn’t have any boxes so it was freestyle in your movement which is nice. The first section was 5 paper targets set in a row then two “Steel” plates. Then you moved about three quarters to the left and engaged two more steel plates. After that you hauled ass to the extreme left and engaged four more paper targets. This stage was a good test of shooting on the move from right to left as well as entering positions to the left and shooting fast. I was able to shoot the stage pretty good but dropped too many points to be competitive in the time plus scoring. When you have a 12 second run that gets 17 seconds of extra time tacked onto it makes it pretty hurting.

Stage 2 – This was pretty much the same stage but they moved everything way back in the berm and added a couple more plates. Then we added a no shoot ahead of the plate rack to solve a shoot through issue which really made it challenging to engage the steel. This time we started in an unloaded and holstered state so you had to load, rack, then start blasting after the buzzer went off. My stage plan was to shoot as I was slowly moving to the left which would expose the steel behind the no shoot. Given the long shots, blurry sights, and delicate foot movement needed this was a really difficult stage to execute well on. I started off good and called one of my paper target shots marginal which later ended up being a miss. Either way I was happy with being able to shoot well on the move from right to left on these difficult shots. I think that I will setup something like this my next live fire practice. The miss screwed up my run from a scoring standpoint but I really didn’t care given how blurry my sights were. I knew there was going to be some “Ugly” in the long distance hits with the blurry sights.

Stage 3 – This was a simple plates only stage. Six plates, draw and engage them with one round each, reload then reengage them strong hand only. I rocked the first string shooting freestyle, hit the reload then picked off the first four plates SHO really good. Then proceeded to miss the 5th plate three times and the 6th plate 2 times. I shot the SHO string from right to left, which is my preferred direction, but I noticed that my recoil control got increasingly worse the more left I swept my arm. It wasn’t until after I was done shooting that I noticed that I was moving my arm from right to left while shooting instead of moving at my knees and keeping my upper body stationary. That’s a pretty blatant screw up in form.

It was a fun match and shooting the headless ICORE targets always seems to be harder than shooting the standard USPSA targets. I really think that the head on the USPSA targets helps me build the correct aiming reference for where the A-zone is on the body. Shooting at the tomb stone shaped ICORE targets leaves my hits usually enduing up in the center but high. That and shooting paper plates, which look like steel but don’t go “Ping” when you hit them is also another strange challenge to overcome. I like it though as it pushes me outside my comfort zone and also helps burn in the proper fundamentals of calling shots on whatever target need to be engaged. I really need to get this solid front sight thing figured out though. If the lighting isn’t optimal I end up being screwed by it more than helped. Hopefully serrations on it will make a sufficient difference <_<

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This weekend is the Mile High Showdown USPSA Section match at the range in Ramah Colorado. I have all of my gear ready to go but am lacking some motivation. I just don’t feel excited about this match for whatever reason. I think I am still a little burned out from the Area 3 match. The cool thing about this match is that we will have some really good shooters from out of state coming in to compete which will make it a hard match to do really well in. All of the regular local heavy weights will be shooting it as well so it will be hard to produce a top three finish in Limited. The only performance goal I am setting for myself is to HAVE FUN!!! Its time for me to have a big match where I don’t have any specific performance goals to set an artificial pressure or expectation level. Time to have some fun with friends and let the chips fall where they may.

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This past weekend was the Colorado State Championships which is called the Mile High Showdown. On Friday I went out to the range early and helped setup the stages. We had a lot of help with setting up the stages and it was much appreciated. With all of the help we got all 10 stages setup by about 3 PM. This was a long day and a lot of hard work. I was pretty beat by the end of the day as I was walking through each stage figuring them out. All of the stages were fun and challenging and I looked forward to shooting them over the weekend. After I checked out the stages my buddy Sean wanted to sight in his new .308 rifle so we went up to the 100 yard range and got it dialed in. He let me shoot it a couple of times and it was pretty cool. I was giving him a hard time about shooting it at 100 yards so we headed off to the 600 yard range to give it a go. Since this rifle was new to him he didn’t know what the drop was going to be at that distance so it took him a couple of rounds to figure it out. But on his 4th shot he was able to hit a standard USPSA target in the center of the A zone. That was pretty bad ass!!! 600 yards is a long ways away. I tried shooting it at that distance but I couldn’t pull the trigger smooth enough to hit the target. The rifle was brand new and had a 5+ lb trigger so it was really hard for me to give it a clean pull without disturbing the sights. I guess I am just spoiled by the 1.5lb trigger on my pistol. Either way it was fun to shoot something different especially after busting my ass all day building stages.

I had volunteered for being a Squad Leader in the match so it was up to me to keep my squad on track throughout the weekend. We had a great squad of shooters and we really didn’t even need a “Squad Leader” as everyone on the squad was great and worked hard to keep rolling through the stages. We all rotated through the RO, scoring, taping, and brassing responsibilities without any issues. To be honest, before the match started I was worried that I would have to babysit and RO all the time during the match being the Squad Leader but it didn’t turn out that way at all. I really appreciated how my squad worked together so well and made the whole experience fun. As I stated before, my only goal for the match was to have fun and I did just that. Listed below are my stage runs as I shot them.

Stage 2 – This was a medium field course with a lot of different target distances and body positions needed to shoot the stage. A lot of the targets in the middle of the stage where either tight or far away enough to really push the limited on my shooting on the move skills. But in order to make the stage flow you had to shoot the middle section on the move. Being the first stage of the day I was pretty amped up and to make matters worse the first two targets to engage were needed to be shot really fast as they were really close. I engaged the first target well but then had trigger freeze on the second target and I knew that I was super tense. So I told myself to “RELAX” and did just that but went a little too far with relaxing. This killed my aggressiveness through the stage and really slowed down my splits. I got all of my hits on this stage but the stage time was about two seconds off the pace due to my slow rate of fire.

Stage 3 – This was a standards style stage where you had four “Zebra” hard cover targets to engage in three different strings from three different boxes. The first string was freestyle from the back box, second string was strong hand only from the middle box, and the third string was weak hand only from the front box. This was a pretty difficult stage to get all of your hits on due to the distance and strong/weak hand shooting. I think I was the only one on my squad to shoot the stage clean. My combined stage time wasn’t very good, but I got all of my hits which is more than most can say.

Stage 4 – This was the memory stage of the match. The day before I had to run through this stage at least 15 different times before I could break it down without shooting at least one target twice. You could see a lot of the same targets through multiple ports so a simple plan was needed to keep you on track. You could shoot all of the targets without using all of the ports but it would be really easy to get lost if you had a jam or misstep during the stage run. I picked the most simple plan that I could figure out which was to engage three targets in the first port, four in the second, then three targets in each of the remaining ports. This plan was easy to remember and execute after the buzzer went off. The only thing that I wish that I did better on this stage run was to speed up my rate of fire. I was still in the “Tentative” mode of shooting after the trigger freeze on the first stage of the day. I probably wasted about a second in slow shooting, but once again, I got all of my hits.

Stage 5 – This was a long field course stage with a lot of running without too much gunning while running. This stage was changed from setup to remove a swinger and drop turn target and replace them with static targets. This was due to the extremely windy conditions that we were facing that day. I didn’t mind that the stage was changed due to the wind as you gotta do what you gotta do. With the static targets used instead of the activators it changed how the stage could be shot in the middle portion. This change was only minor but it did require a change in my plan that I came up with the day before. Luckily I was far down on the shooting order list far enough to reprogram the stage and I feel that the run went pretty well. I got all of my hits and even though I might have been shooting a little slow at the end of the stage I was rewarded with all A’s.

Stage 6 - This was a short course where you started with your unloaded gun on the barrel. At the barrel the stage was a mirror image on both sides of the center wall. One low paper target then one far away paper, one close paper and two plates. You repeated this on both sides at the barrel then backed up and engaged two paper on the left and right. My stage plan was to engage the low left target then the low right target and then finish all of the back stuff from right to left. This seemed like a simple plan to follow but after engaging the low left target my plan went out the window as I shot the next paper target that was in my peripheral vision. I knew that my intended stage plan was blown but I just rolled with it and let the auto pilot do his thing. Very surprising to me, this actually turned out pretty good even though I ended up shooting the front section totally different than I planed.

Stage 7 – This was a really fast run and gun stage with lots of running and super fast shooting. There really was only one way to shoot the stage as you were forced to zig zag around the stage due to the target placement. This was the most fun stage of the match for me. Who doesn’t like to run around and shoot super fast???

Stage 8 – This was an evil speed shoot stage. Two poppers that activated a swinger and drop out/return target. The drop out target was easy, but the swinger was evil. The swinger had two classic IPSC targets with a no shoot in the middle and swung from the bottom. You had to engage the swinger in the middle of its swing because it was blocked at the top of its motion on both ends. I started the stage and had a funky grip on the gun so I had to steer the front sight to the right in order to have it aligned. I tried to readjust my grip in as I was engaging the swinger but my strong hand just wasn’t returning to where it should. I needed quite a few passes of the swinger to get my hits and also had a bunch of D’s. The only saving grace to this stage is that I didn’t have a miss or no shoot on the swinger.

Stage 9 – This was classifier 99-10 called Times Two. I wanted to get 100% on this classifier but I shot too slow on the first string, then too fast on the second needing makeup shots. I ended up with an 86% nationally on this run which isn’t bad, but I know I can shoot this classifier better. This was the last stage of the day though and I was pretty burned out and over shooting by then so it wasn’t too much of a surprise to not do so well on it. Oh well, I will get it next time.

Stage 10 – This was the first stage on Sunday for us so we shot it early in the morning. Another medium size COF that had a few choices on how to shoot it. The main decision you had to make was were to engage two back targets. You could shoot them from either the starting port or through a really low barrel at the end of the stage. The low barrel was really low for me and I knew that I couldn’t engage the back targets well from such a contorted low position. So this forced me to engage them from the starting port. The funky thing about the starting port was that a fault line was set back from the wall the port was on so you had to stand in a funky biased forward position if you rested the port door on your head. Yet another situation that wasn’t optimal but more doable than getting low for the barrel. This is where I made my first major mistake of the match. When I made ready I loaded the mag but didn’t rack the slide. I was more worried about how my sights looked in the early morning light that was pretty shadowy. Big time rookie mistake for sure and I don’t think I have ever done it either. Needless to say the buzzer went off and I drew and pulled the trigger and nothing happened so I had to rack the slide and get going. This wasted at least 2 seconds on this stage and would ultimately cost me about 25 match points. I would later find that these lost 25 match points would cost me two finishing positions in the match. To make matters worse my mad didn’t fall free during the reload and I had to rip it out of the gun. Oh well, big time lesson learned here. DON’T CHANGE YOUR MAKE READY PROCESS!!!! :(

Stage 1 – This was the last stage of the match for me. It was a medium field course that had you run over a mini bridge and also run through a cooper tunnel. It was a 20 round stage so I loaded up to 21+1 at the start and didn’t plan for a reload. The only place where I thought time could be made up on this stage was to shoot the steel at the end of the stage as I was coming through the cooper tunnel. This was a real challenge to do as you had to keep moving and shooting in a really low position while shooting colt speed steel set out to a distance that was not too optimal for this kind of shooting. I thought that I executed well on this stage. I needed two make up shots on the last steel at the end which were the only two extra rounds I had in the gun so this made me shoot the last three paper really conservative to ensure my hits. I think I could have been a second faster on this stage if I had not missed the last steel and been able to unleash on the last three paper.

Overall I was happy with my performance. I didn’t have any shooting penalties (no misses or no shoots) and I had a lot of fun shooting with friends. I knew that I had shot a couple of the stages slower than I should have which would hurt my overall standing. When the results were tallied I ended up 4th in Limited at 87% of the winner Ron Avery. Second and Third place in Limited were at 89% and only 20 match points ahead. The make ready bone head mistake on stage 10 cost me a second place finish in the match. Oh well, every match has its “Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda” situations. My results are what they are and I achieved my goal of having fun during the match so it’s a win in that regard B)

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This past Saturday was one of the local USPSA matches that I help put on. I had the responsibility of Match Director and that was an interesting experience. We got all of the stages setup and ready to rock on time but ran into some palm pilot issues right before the start of the match. We were able to get it ironed out without too much delay but it was still a little hectic. With all of the running around in the morning making sure that everything was on track I never got a chance to walk the stages from a competitive standpoint which did affect my match performance. I still had a lot of fun shooting though and during these matches where I help out I really cant expect much other than to have fun. Being so busy during the match I wasn’t able to video any of my stage runs. Listed below are my stage runs in the order I shot them.

Stage 1 – This was an interesting long stage where every target was cut in half. The cut direction in the targets were different as well as some were cut in half from top to bottom, left to right, or diagonally. To make it even more difficult the targets where separated by about 4 inches and a no shoot was used in the gap between the two. Each half target was a separate scoring target and only required that you engage them with one round each. If you treated the targets as a single whole target and shot center mass you would rack up a bunch of no shoot penalties. You had to aim hard on every shot or risk being punished severely. This was a fairly low hit factor stage so points were more important than time so I focused on shooting as many points as I could. I shot the stage a little too cautiously trying to get as many A zone hits as I could and that hurt my stage time. I know I could have shot the stage 3 – 4 seconds faster but I don’t know if I could have shoot it at that speed without dumping a lot of points or hitting the no shoots.

Stage 2 – This was a medium stage with a good mixture of up close blasting along with shooting on the move. You started on two really close targets and the hardest thing about them was to not get over amped up while engaging them. The rest of the stage was pretty smooth flowing with some shooting on the move and then you finished the stage on a series of targets that had some fashion of hard cover. You really had to reign in your visual patience to shoot the back section quickly. I don’t think I could have shot this stage any better than I did given the plan that I used. You could have saved time by engaging the three hard cover targets on the move as you made it to the end of the stage but I felt that it was too risky to shoot them on the move.

Stage 3 – This was classifier 99-16 called Melody Line. This is a pretty straight forward classifier where you engage six targets with varying hard cover with one round, reload, then engage them again with one round each. I had watched some GM’s shoot this stage on youtube and noticed that their shooting cadence for the first and last two targets was a lot faster than the middle targets. I figured that I would try that change in cadence but I ended up shooting a cadence instead of calling my shots. This lead to two misses. Both misses were the last shot in each string as I broke them too early. That’s what I get for shooting a cadence instead of just calling my shots. These two misses threw a significant monkey wrench into my overall finish for the match.

Stage 4 – This was the speed shoot stage and had three shooting boxes. There were four targets to engage and each target required 4 shots. The key to this stage was to keep moving through the boxes as you engaged the targets, especially the middle box. This kind of ultra fast shooting is right up my alley. Unleashing a lot of lead in a short amount of time is one of my strong suits so this stage didn’t stand a chance of slowing me down. I was able to shoot fast while moving through the boxes and came out on top of the heap for the match on this stage. Why can’t they all be super hoser stages like this?

Stage 5 – This was a challenging long stage that was setup in a “U” formation. You could start on either the back left or back right of the stage where you had to engage two steel poppers and two paper. Then in the middle was a sea of paper targets with varying hard cover or no shoot blocking along with two swingers that were actuated by different step pads. Getting the timing of the swingers down was challenging. There were a bunch of different ways to break down the stage and it wasn’t clear as to which plan would be best. To compound the issue I was the first shooter up and had only seen two other shooters from the squad before us shoot the stage. Since I didn’t have much time to break down the stage I picked a plan that was as simple as I could make it. I started on the back left then went around the stage in a “U” finishing on the back right. I was only able to figure out the timing of the left swinger along with engaging other targets while it came out and was left with simply stomping on the second step pad and waiting for the swinger to come out to engage it. I shot the left side of the stage well but the right front was a little clunky due to not having a solid stage plan. I ended up getting all of my hits but did have a couple of D’s. After watching other shooters run the stage in a different way I would have been able to shoot it at least a second faster using a variation of their plan verses my basic one. Oh well, you have to roll with whatever plan you have in that kind of situation.

The match was fun but a lot of work. Putting on these matches is a lot of work for sure but I also know that they couldn’t happen without the help from shooters like myself that are willing to put in the effort make it happen. I am getting better with coming up with and programming stages with very little time to check out the stage. That is a good skill to have so getting forced into these situations is a good learning experience.

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On Sunday I attended another USPSA match up in Boulder. I was still kind of burned out from the match on Saturday but I needed to deliver some brass to a couple of shooters so I figured I would just shoot the match while I was out that way. This range has a lot of shooting restrictions, such as not being able to shoot into the side berms or into the ground, so the stages end up being kind of funky. I had expected the stages to be somewhat funky but this time they were down right brutal to the point where it wasn’t even fun. They were so brutal that I am not even going to into breaking them down. I had lost all interest in shooting the match competitively by the time we got half way through the second stage. I had to give up competitively or else I would have been so frustrated with the situation that I would have blown a gasket. I don’t know how the others on my squad kept up the good moral. I just wanted the shooting to be over so we could break down the stages and head home. I know that the match staff is doing the best with the range restrictions they have but making stages that are so difficult and punishing that it makes the shooting not fun isn’t good. I can honestly say that I wont be back up there any time soon. Its just not worth the time, effort, or ammo to not have fun. Maybe I am just a wimp for letting this match beat me down this way? :unsure:

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You should probably stay away from the IPSC World Shoot; The two field stages at Boulder had the kind of difficulty level normally associated with that kind of match.

If we only shoot field stages then our accuracy skills will suffer, particularly if most of the targets are within 5 yards. I've shot at level 4 and 5 matches that had steel targets 35-40 yards away at the end of a field stage, crouching down through a low port with your pulse racing at 140+ bpm.

Over the past few years I've noticed that the stages at the US Nationals are becoming more like the types of stages that I used to shoot in Europe (in IPSC), more accuracy is required, tighter shots and more stop/start shooting.

If we don't make the stages challenging then we risk watering down the sport, many shooters like the 'run-and-gun-close-blaggy' stages, but truth be told its not a real test of shooting ability, its more a test of running.

There's some good information on this type of thing from Brian Enos, at www.brianenos.com/pages/hate.html

Here's a snippet:

These days the matches have more rounds on one stage than entire matches we used to shoot. Everywhere you go you see targets stuck all over the place just to get the round count up. Nobody wants to come to the match if you’re not going to be running around spraying bullets all over the place. I’ve watched guys capable of winning big matches shoot standard exercises—they have no basic shooting skills whatsoever. But yet they can win major tournaments because the matches no longer test shooting skill. Instead they test cranking rounds all over the place on easy targets.

And then we have the classification system, and the competitors misuse of it. Every match you go to you hear of this or that guy who’s sandbagging on a local level so he can stay in a class lower than he should be so he can win a gun at the next area match. It’s bullshit. It’s that spirit that’s killing the sport. I’m not bitching at shooters specifically. It’s the "American Spirit" that pisses me off— the spirit of mediocrity. It ruins everything. Most sports in the US eventually become "Americanized" and lose whatever passion they had. While IPSC outside the United States is far from perfect, at least they still design courses that challenge your skill level. In the United States it’s all about how many rounds we can squeeze into a match and in what order the "classes" go to the prize table.

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BritinUSA> I agree that we need more long and tight shots in our matches that test our pure shooting skills. I have noticed that one main skill that separates the GM’s from the rest is their ability to shoot accurately and more importantly quickly while shooting accurately on tight and long shots. For us to get better we need to be able to shoot quickly and accurately at long distances.

My heart burn with the match on Sunday was not the difficulty of the shots. For example I shot stage 4 without any penalties and that’s with me jacking around shooting half of it strong hand only while hanging off of a wall. Stage 4 had only 40% of the match shooters which shot it clean without any penalties. When 60% of the shooters cant shoot a stage clean its too hard. When you have a solid B class shooter that simply quits mid stage run due to the frustration of not being able to hit the targets that isn’t good.

These matches are a product and the shooters are the customers. Customers don’t care how things use to be, they want what their tastes or desires are right now. When you make references to how IPSC or the Nationals stages are setup in comparison its like saying that an apple tastes different than an orange. They will be obviously different as they are different things. When I go to a local USPSA match there are certain expectations as a consumer for what I am getting into given the club I am shooting at. Every club has their own flavor of stages and shooting challenges just as I stated in my initial post about this match. This match tends to have funky stages due to the range limitations. These range limitations usually make the stages less fun to shoot. As I said before I don’t want to drag anyone through the mud on the quality of the match. The match staff does the best they can with what they have. All I am saying is from a consumer standpoint I would much rather shoot at other matches that have less restrictive rules so the stages can be setup with more dynamic shooting challenges.

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I recently had my old Limited frame welded and hard chrome coated so I am ready to build it up with the new top end I got for it. I did some work on it last night and hope to have it all back together some time next week. It will be nice to get my old blaster rebuilt and back into action. My goal is to build it up exactly the same way as my primary gun so I have a true backup that will be as close to the same thing as I can get it. There will always be a little variance in form or function from one gun to another but my goal is to minimize that as much as possible. Having a backup gun that is the same as my primary will also allow me to test things more effectively. I will be able to test fire things back to back without needing to fiddle with changes in between shooting. I am going to give the fiber optic front sight a try again. I haven’t tried the FO Front sight since I got LASIK done so it will be neat to test out again. Its fun testing stuff out. What can I say, I am just a fiddler. That and it gives me an excuse to not dry fire :goof:

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This past Saturday we had a work party for the USPSA club I help with putting on matches. We rebuilt some of the walls and did a general clean up of the score and prop shacks. There were seven of us there working our tails off for about five hours. We got a lot done but still had a lot to left to do by the time we called it quits. I really wanted to get the beat up walls rebuilt but we only got to about half of them. We could have stayed longer to push through some more but the 95+ degree sunny day was taking its toll on everyone so we called it quits. We need at least another 5 – 8 hours to get the rest of the walls rebuilt so another work party day will need to be setup soon. It was a lot of work through and by the time I got home, I was beat. Sunday was our local match there so it was going to be another busy day of setting up and working hard. To be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to getting up early Sunday morning to bust my ass all day yet again.

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Sunday morning I got up early to head to the range to help setup my stage for the match. I decided to try a stage with some soft cover to shoot through and it turned out pretty neat. I was still pretty worn out and unmotivated from working my tail off the day before so I knew that my shooting was going to suffer. Once again I didn’t have a chance to really check out the other stages before the match started so I ended up coming up with a shooting plan not too long before I had to shoot the stage. This lack of stage breakdown also tend to negatively affect my stage runs. But these are the prices you have to pay in order to help put on the match. We had 80 shooters attend the match so it was a long day of shooting for all. Listed below are my stage runs in the order I shot them along with the videos.

Stage 5 – First stage of the day and this was the stage that I setup for the match. It was a 32 round COF with three paper and two steel plates that needed to be engaged through the soft cover in the center of the stage. You were also forced to both extreme ends of the stage to engage all of the paper. You could shoot this stage a bunch of different ways and there wasn’t any single way that was obviously better than another. The center section had a bunch of tight shots through soft cover so you really couldn’t shoot it on the move effectively. The main thing that dictated your strategy was your mag changes. You could opt for a more aggressive shooting run and perform two reloads or push the limits on round count and do only one mag change. Since all of the down range shots were pretty difficult I opted for a plan that allowed me some extra makeup shots in the middle section then shoot one for one on the rest of the stage. I am glad that I picked this plan because I needed a bunch of makeup shots in the middle section. I shot the middle section ok until I got to the second plate which took 4 shots to pick it off. This killed at least 2 seconds on the stage run. Missing the plate so much forced me to scale back my shooting speed quite a bit which also added time to the hurting stage run. When all of the dust had settled I was greeted with a miss on the last paper target that was laying sideways with hard cover on the bottom which was engaged in the middle section. This was really frustrating because I called a marginal low shot and made it up with what I though was a solid A zone hit, but it ended up being a mid C zone hit about 4 inches low into the hard cover. Not a good start to the match.

Stage 1 – This was a cool stage with two basic plans of breakdown. You could either weave through the stage as you did a lot of run and gun. Or you could run around the right side of the walls and reenter the shooting area to engage targets as you advanced down range. I am not very confident with shooting from funky stances as I reenter shooting positions so I chose the weave through the stage plan. I decided to shoot the first target on the right strong hand only so that I didn’t have to index completely right then swing back to the left in order to start running and gunning. Others thought that I would risk dropping points on this target shooting it SHO but I knew I could shoot A’s pretty fast SHO so that wasn’t a concern. Watching the video though, I don’t think I saved myself any time by shooting it SHO as I had to pause my body movement to ensure my hits. It was fun to try but I don’t think that I saved or lost anything by doing it. The risk factor was a lot higher by doing it though. I ran through the stage and thought that I had a really solid run and then found that I had a No Shoot / Miss on the 5th target in on the stage. After watching the video I can see where I was planting my foot as I broke the shot and that probably pushed my shot right into the no shoot. I am at a toss up on what to do in order to fix this. I can either work on getting lower as I shoot or work on being able to shoot faster so I can get my hits in between steps. The answer is probably both.

Stage 2 – This was a medium length stage with a couple of different options on how to shoot it. You were locked into the front section because you had to engage targets right on the 180. After that you could either engage a target on the extreme right or head to the left port. In the middle there were a bunch of paper targets to engage followed by a couple of targets to engage through the right port. This was one of the stages where I didn’t have much time to figure out the best plan on shooting it I didn’t feel comfortable with doing a reload in the middle of the stage as it would leave me shooting from a stationary position later which would waste time. I instead picked a plan that had me shooting 22 rounds then reload and rack the gun as I backed up in the stage to engage the last paper target. I think that this plan worked well to optimize my moving while shooting through the stage and also optimize my movement while I was reloading, but it was probably not the best plan. Once again, I thought that I shot the stage solidly but then ended up with an alpha/miss second target before the right port. After watching the video in slow motion I can see where I pushed the shot left as I completed a step while shooting on the move.

Stage 3 – This was classifier 09-02 called Diamond Cutter. At this point in the match I had scoring penalties on each stage so my overall match was completely sunk. So I decided I would let it all hang out on this classifier to see what would happen. Given that this classifier has four partial targets the risk factor of shooting fast without dropping hits into the no shoots is high. I gave it all I had as far as shooting speed and ended up with marginal hits on three of the four targets then was rewarded with a miss/no shoot on the last target. These poor hits were obviously due to me mashing the crap out of the trigger as I “tried” to go fast. Oh well, it’s a dud classifier performance, but it was fun to shoot fast.

Stage 4 – Last stage of the day and this was the speed shoot stage. You started at the back left of the COF and had to engage three targets from over a wall, activate a drop out/return target with a step pad, then engage a lone paper target visually blocked by no shoots on the right. Given where you started there you had at least a 2 step delay before starting shooting by engaging the targets over the wall or the extreme right target first. The only thing that I could think of to get me shooting faster was to throw one of my mags onto the step pad at the same time I drew the gun so I could shoot the drop out target as I moved to the far right. I was really pumped up for this stage as I wasn’t sure if I would have enough time to throw the mag with my left hand then build my grip to engage the drop out target. I was so amped up that I clipped the no shoot blocking the right hand target in the upper right shoulder as I transitioned over to the right target. Other than clipping the no shoot I had all A’s on this run and would have won the stage. But clipping the no shoot killed the HF of the stage run.

Overall I was pretty sour with my performance. I had scoring penalties on every single stage which completely blew out any change of finishing well in the match. I was totally spent physically and mentally by the third stage of the match and it really showed in my performance. The last few matches I have been trying to push myself up into a new level of shooting speed on the further distance targets and I think that I have found the visual speed limit of my black on black solid sights. I can only call my shots accurately if the lighting is just right. If the front sight gets into a shadow condition verses the rear then I have to pause to “Find” the front sight in the notch and process its alignment visually. I think that this is some fallout from getting LASIK done. My cone of effective fast focal vision has been reduced quite a bit after LASIK. I just feel like the solid front sight is holding me back right now. So I am going to throw the Fiber Optic sight back on and give it a try for a month or two. I haven’t tried the FO front sight since getting LASIK done so I think its only fair to test it out again with my new eyes. Hopefully swapping front sights will allow me to call my shots faster so I can get my shots on target in between steps. I will try getting lower while shooting on the move as well, but I don’t think that I will ever be able to completely buffer my lumbering steps, at least not when I am trying to move around fast. I am a big dude and a lot of effort is needed to get my fat ass moving around quickly. It is what it is.

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This weekend my lady and I went up to Steamboat Springs for our anniversary. We took Friday off and headed up there early in the day to avoid the weekend traffic. We got up to Steamboat and were greeted by awesome weather. It was 60 – 70 degrees and the skies were very clear. It was a great weekend to get away and enjoy the mountains in the early fall weather. I was able to bring my shooting gear and participate in the USPSA match there on Saturday. My lady rocks for letting me shoot a match on our anniversary weekend. I had installed the Fiber Optic sight and was looking forward to using it at this match. I had not gotten any live fire practice with it before shooting the match so it was going to be an interesting learning curve. I didn’t get a chance to video any of my stage runs but I have listed them below in the order I shot them.

Stage 1 – This was a medium length 20 round stage with three shooting positions. You started behind a barricade and had to engage four paper targets from the left side of the barricade then move a few steps to the right to a door. Opening the door activated a fast drop turning disappearing target and a swinger at the same time. There were also a couple of static paper targets to engage through the door as well. The drop turner was really fast and it dropped downwards about 2 feet as it flashed towards you so you had to track the target downwards as you engaged it. The speed of its presentation forced you to engage the drop turner first then the swinger followed by the two static paper. After that you moved to the right again and engaged four poppers. There were two poppers that were also setup as hard cover and they were slightly blocking two outside poppers. I shot this stage pretty well. On the first array of targets I shot a little slower than normal because I was distracted by the FO front sight but then I just rolled with it the rest of the stage. I called one shot marginal in the middle section and sure enough it was a D zone hit. I was happy with the run and being able to see a lot more front sight feedback by tracking the movement of the FO within the front sight. This was very cool.

Stage 2 – This was another medium length 24 round stage with three shooting positions. You started in the middle of the stage touching a barrel. Then had a choice of direction to go to engage targets through gaps in the walls. Each position had four targets to engage at varying distances. The walls on the stage were setup so the right side was further up range than the left side. A lot of shooters where running to the left side first then shooting the stage left to right, but this didn’t make sense to me as you could start shooting sooner if you went to the right first then shot it right to left. The only thing that was a challenge with that plan was moving right to left as you reloaded. You had to be carefully to not break the 180 during the reload while moving right to left. Before the stage run I told myself to not make up any shots so I could get a true on target hits representation of my called shots. Then I shot the stage while pushed the limits on speed. I called one marginal shot but didn’t make it up because I wanted to see how bad it would be after the run. This hit ended up being a D zone hit right where I expected it to be and the rest of my hits were really good. Being able to watch the FO dot on the front sight track up and down while shooting was cool. I have not had that much front sight feedback during the recoil process in a long time.

Stage 3 – This was an interesting stage where you started in a box with two milk jugs in your hands. Your gun was unloaded and holstered. You had to run to another box and place the milk jugs on a table before you could draw and load your gun. So there wasn’t any way to optimize the draw or load as you ran to the second box. Then you had to perform a reload some time between the first and last shot fired or incur a procedural penalty. I figured out the hit factor shooting the stage straight up doing the reload or skipping the reload and taking the procedural. Based on doing a 1.5 second reload it was a slight HF advantage to not do a reload and take the procedural so I figured I would use shooting speed to my advantage and not do the reload. Doing this plan required that I shoot the paper fast though which all of it was blocked by no shoots so it was risky to push the envelope. But I figured I would give it a try and see how it ended up. Well, I ended up shooting the paper too fast and had two no shoot misses because I was shooting way too fast for the shot difficulty. Two no shoots, two misses, and a procedural on an 80 point stage = super sucky stage finish. I almost zeroed this stage due to all of the penalties. Oh well, I was pushing the limits on shooting speed with the new FO front sight and found the limit on this stage. That is just part of finding the ebb and flow of shooting speed as I was figuring out the front sight.

Stage 4 – This was an interesting medium stage that forced you engage targets from four corners of the shooting area. There were three walls that blocked a line of eight targets. You had to engage one target on the extreme back outside of the walls, then engage three from both front corners. The shots were tight in the front so you were forced to shoot from a single position. The only place to optimize time on this stage was to shoot the two outside targets on the move as you bounced in and out of the shooting position. I shot this stage well but it still felt like it took forever to shoot the front section because of being pinned in the shooting positions.

Stage 5 – The last stage of the day was classifier 99-53 called Raw Deal. I have shot this classifier before and knew that this was all about being able to shoot the paper quickly and hitting the reload. You basically started seated with your elbows on some X’s on a table with a playing car in each hand. You stand up as you draw and engage three targets set in increasingly distant order, reload, then engage the other three target setup in the opposite distant order. The 100% time for this stage is 6 seconds which is pretty doable from a time perspective and the stage performance really comes down to the quality of your hits. Since I shot this classifier before I remember the shooting speed I used before and for some unknown reason I ended up shooting the stage in a cadence verses calling my shots. This lead to three D’s and a miss on the stage in a time of 5.6 seconds. I still don’t know why I didn’t just call my shots like every other stage as I could have shot and called my shots at the same speed as cadence shooting. I guess I just got over confident in being able to shoot this stage and felt like I didn’t need to call my shots. That’s what happens when you take things for granted.

I am happy with the results of using the FO front sight again. I did have some teething pains with getting use to it during this match but that was to be expected. I am glad that I went back and tried it again though. There were some targets that were in shadow conditions which would have been a lot harder with the solid front sight I was using before but the FO front sight made it a lot easier to call my shots. Much to my surprise I didn’t have any shots where I lined up the center of the FO with the top of the back sight. I battled this a lot the last time I tried using the FO front sight so I figured I was going to have issues with it again but for whatever reason I didn’t. A lot more practice is needed with it though to get it totally burned in. This is good motivation to get out and do some serious live fire practice.

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The USPSA classification recalculation was done today and I can see that all of the major match results are showing up in my classification average. With a lot of mid 80% finishes at the major matches it has pulled down my classification average a little. I knew that my average was going to take a hit with the big match attendance but it seems to have dug a bigger hole than I expected. Oh well. My classification average is what it is and does reflect my current shooting skills. Earning a GM classification is going to take a lot more work if I plan on going to so many major matches every year. Maybe I should change my classification goal to earn my GM card based on major match finishes? That would be a lot more representative to my skill level verses burning down some classifiers and getting the GM card that way.

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This weekend was really busy with shooting and gun stuff in general. I got my backup gun totally rebuilt and tweaked up so I figured it would give it a test run using it at the matches this weekend. Its REALLY nice to get this old work horse back into action. Its been out of commission for way too long. I have it setup almost exactly the same as my other gun with the only difference between them being the areas that I want to test out. I built up the backup gun with the trigger a little further back in the trigger guard to see if that would help with me pulling the muzzle up and left when I pull the trigger some times with my other gun. I think that my other gun has an optimal trigger depth for shooting fast but it’s a little too far forward. I will be testing the trigger depth on these two guns to see what the right balance is. Having two different guns setup identically except for only minor changes like this is awesome for quickly testing things back to back at the range. I also finished up a trigger job on an XDm-40 for a friend and got it function fired on Saturday. The trigger job turned out pretty good and I am sure the owner will be happy with it. Its fun to work on other guns than the EAA/Tanfo’s every once in a while.

I shot two USPSA matches this weekend. Saturday was the High Plains Practical Shooters match where I brought and setup a stage that required a lot of running around and shooting on the move. I like being able to setup stages at this match because they have less restrictive range rules and you can make some really creative courses of fire. The weather was pretty ominous the morning of the match though. It was really foggy and there was a slight drizzle of rain every once in a while. The forecast called for a clear sunny day but you really can’t bank on the forecast much here in Colorado. By the second stage of the match the fog had cleared and we were all treated to some great shooting weather. I was a little leery of using my untested backup gun in the match as it is unproven in match conditions, but you have to let it loose some time right? I was able to video my stage runs and I have listed them below.

Stage 1 – First stage of the day and the fog and chilly weather was still in full effect. I could feel that my fingers was COLD and clammy due to the slightly moist weather. I tried my best to warm my fingers up but that left them pretty moist and somewhat sticky. This resulted in a bad grip on the gun during the draw and I couldn’t shift it in my hand to correct it through out the run. I tried to shift the gun to the right position after the first two targets but it didn’t work, then again after the second section of targets and still no joy, then finally during the reload I tried to shift my grip again and it still wouldn’t budge. It was like I had glue on my hand and the gun didn’t want to budge from the initial grip location. This forced me to manually realign the sights after every shot which completely ruined my shooting speed. That along with getting impatient with it and throwing misses on the steel made it even worse. I got my hits but they were not pretty. I think I racked up a total of 5 D’s and a boat load of C’s on this stage. This was not a good start to the match.

Stage 2 – This was a 22 round COF that was basically all head shots. For a minute I was thinking about using my 22+1 setup so I didn’t have to do a reload but then I figured that it would make me shoot way too slow knowing that I didn’t have many make up shots. Some shooters chose to use a 22+1 setup and shoot the whole stage from the right front corner. I chose to go down the left side and then do a reload as I moved to the right side. My plan was simple, shoot the A’s in the heads as fast as I could. This plan worked out well for me and I ended up with more points than anyone else in Limited on this stage due to it. I don’t know if I could have shot the stage any faster if I had not reloaded and shot it all from a single position. Even if I could have shot it faster the risk factor was way too high for my liking.

Stage 3 – This was a funky stage with all “Zebra” hard cover paper targets that were setup in a cart wheeling formation then three plates down range. It was 21 total rounds so once again you could run 22+1 and not do a reload but the risk factor was too high. If all of the paper was wide open then hell yeah, but with only a A zone available that was way too risky. My goal on this stage was to shoot A’s as fast as I could call my shots. This lead to some extra shots for make ups but the gun was running fast and I finished strong by cleaning up the steel one for one. I ended up getting all A’s on the paper for a perfect points score on this stage. I was really happy with this stage run even though I did have some extra shots on the paper.

Stage 4 – This was suppose to be classifier 09-13 called Table Stakes but the no shoots on the paper targets were setup on the wrong side of the scoring targets. Since the stage was setup wrong the match director decided to make it a non-classifier stage and it would be fixed after the match to let people shoot the classifier if they wanted to. Since this was essentially a practice run on the classifier I figured I would experiment and try shooting the stage from a seated position. I figured I could be on target faster by not standing up and I was but shooting from a seated position completely ruined my upper body stability. I knew I was in trouble after the first two shots when my whole upper body rocked backwards far enough to move the gun off the target. This got worse when I tried to transition quickly down to the steel. Lots of makeup shots were needed on the poppers and by the time I was done with the steel I was nice an angry so I let the last paper have it with 8 shots in a fury of blasting. Take that you paper target for making me try a plan that didn’t work :devil:

Stage 5 – This was the long field course that I setup for the match. The targets were arranged so that you had to go to all four corners of the stage as well as the middle. You could shoot the stage in a boat load of different ways and many people used different plans. There where two basic plans. One, haul ass to a stationary position and shoot fast. Or two, shoot a lot of it on the move while trying to minimize the log jam of the stationary positions. I chose the latter plan but knew that a “Turtle pace” of foot speed while shooting on the move wouldn’t work either. So I focused on keeping my foot speed high while shooting on the move and this was the only thing I worried about during this stage run. I shot most of the stage really well but screwed up a little at the end due to getting to the port earlier than I expected. I screwed up the order of engagement at the end of the run which had me engaging targets through the port twice which wasted at least a second. But given how much I had not solidified my plan before shooting it I was kind of surprised that was the only part that got screwed up. I accomplished my goal of having fast foot speed while shooting on the move and was patent enough to see what I needed to see before breaking the shots. This was a really fun stage to shoot and got your heart pumping at the same time.

Stage 6 – The match crew fixed the classifier and we shot it again. This time I stood up to shoot which resulted in a lot better recoil control. I pushed the limits too far on the steel and needed a couple of make up shots to take the steel down but I was only down one point on the paper. This resulted in a 94% run nationally which was a little surprising. I knew I gave away .3 - .5 second in mak up shots so getting 100% on this classifier should be really doable in the future. I didn’t get a chance to video this run.

After the match I got to test fire the XDm-40 and I also had some other shooters fire it to make sure it would function correctly with different grips and shooting styles. It ran flawlessly so I was happy with how it turned out. As for my match performance I felt that I had given up at least 20 match points on the first stage due to the crappy grip and not being able to fix it during the stage run. I ended up second in Limited behind fist place by 3 match points. Third in Limited was 11 points behind first as well. Now that is some close shooting and really exciting competition!!! I used the yellow fiber optic in the front sight for this match and really felt like it was too dull in the overcast morning lighting conditions so I swapped it for the neon green FO rod when I got home. The neon green FO seemed to be really bright when I put it on and I hoped that it wouldn’t be overkill for the match on Sunday, but I would only find out after trying it in match conditions the next day.

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Sunday I attended another USPSA match up north hosted by the Weld County Practical shooters. They had five really fun stage setup and even though the weather was a little overcast in the morning we ended up with really warm weather in the afternoon. I think it topped out at about 95 degrees yesterday which was a little surprising as this is suppose to be fall. I was eager to give my backup gun another good test run with the new neon green fiber optic in the front sight. The gun had run flawlessly the day before so I was a lot more confident in it functioning today. We didn’t have too many people on the squad that could RO or run the palm pilot so I ended up doing quite a bit of ROing. This is fine but I didn’t have time to coordinate others to video my stage runs. So no videos for this match. Listed below are the stages in the order I shot them.

Stage 2 – This was a stand and shoot stage where you started with your hands on a barricade then engaged two paper and four steel, reloaded and engaged a mirror image of targets on the other side. The steel was setup with two large poppers in front of a plate and mini popper. Some people were shooting the big poppers then paper then the plate and mini popper. But to me it didn’t make sense to transition back and forth as it would take more time in transitions verses just waiting for the big poppers to fall out of the way. On the right side of the stage I shot the paper well then missed the first popper which screwed up my timing for the steel. This forced me to wait for the one of the big poppers to fall all the way down before I could engage the plate behind. I shot the left side correctly hitting the steel one for one and it all went down in a good timing so I think I picked the right plan but failed to execute. The bright green FO front sight was nice and bright making it easy to see where I was lined up which was nice.

Stage 3 – This was the classifier for the match called On the Move CM 03-09. I had shot this classifier before and tried shooting it with taking one large step to access all of the targets. This time I figured that I would shoot it as intended and shoot it on the move as I walked diagonally towards the opposite side. I was able to move pretty smooth through both strings of this stage but I favored the no shoots in the middle too much and ended up with three D zone hits. I call them all D’s but since this is a Virginia count stage I couldn’t make them up. This was good enough for an 81% nationally which should give my classifier average a firm donkey punch. It’s a good thing my average is already hosed up from all of the major match results.

Stage 4 – This was the long field course stage of the match. The front of the stage had the shooting area setup in a “Y” formation so you could start on the extreme left or right. There were targets placed on both the left and right of the whole stage so there was a lot of back and forth transitions as you moved down range. To finish the stage there were three targets to engage over a short wall strong hand only. I shot the front half of the stage well but then overran a target towards the end and had to take a couple of steps back to engage it. This wasted a couple of seconds on the stage run. It sucks because I seen how this could happen during my walk through but I chose to ignore it and paid the price.

Stage 5 – This was a hoser style stage with a good mixture of up close blasting and some far away shots. The extreme left and right of the stage had three paper targets and two poppers were visible. One of these poppers was in the middle of the stage and could be engaged from the far left and right or through the middle. The middle of the stage was a series of up close hoser targets that were blocked by barrels and walls. You could start on the extreme left or right of the stage. I chose to start on the left then shoot the stage left to right. I had a smoking run going until the very end where I engaged the far right steel heard a “Ding” but it didn’t go down so I reengaged it after finishing the string of fire. This cost me an extra 2 seconds on a 10 HF stage which mathematically didn’t make sense to do but I felt that I didn’t want to settle for intentionally leaving a piece of steel up. I absolutely HATE it when you call a shot on steel good, hear a solid “DING” but then later see that it didn’t go down due to it being an edge hit. That drives me crazy to no end. If it wasn’t for the edge hit I would have had a very solid run and won the stage :angry:

Stage 1 – This was a medium size stage where you started seated behind a table with your loaded gun on the table. At the start you engaged four paper targets at close range then moved to the right and engaged four targets are varying distanced down range then four more on the extreme right. There were two ways of shooting this stage. One was to shoot the middle section on the move then reload and finish on the right. The other was to break up the stage into two shooting positions and shoot half from one position reload as you moved to the right and shoot the rest from the extreme right. I decided that it would make more sense to shoot the middle section on the move as this would meter my shooting speed better for the longer shots in the middle. I knew that if I did the stand and shoot plan I would end up pushing the shooting speed too hard and end up with crappy hits. I was able to execute my plan fairly well but still ended up with two D zone hits on partial targets with no shoots blocking them. I can somewhat live with these D’s given the rate of fire and target left available. The interesting thing on this stage was that my local rival chose the stand and shoot plan and we ended up with almost the exact time. I thought for sure that the stand and shoot plan would be slower but it wasn’t. It just goes to show that the execution of a plan is probably more important than the plan its self.

It was another fun match and I REALLY liked the neon green fiber optic front sight. I felt that I could shoot faster on the further targets and still be able to call my shots well. Being able to call my shots more accurately and quickly was the whole goal in trying the FO front sight again so I am really happy with the results so far. The neon green FO is bright and always present but not overwhelming. I think I am going to throw the neon red FO on my other gun just to see how that looks the next time I shoot. But as of right now I am really liking the neon green. My backup gun ran flawlessly once again and now I am fully confident in using it any time in match conditions. As for my shooting performance, I felt like I had a better than average match, but nothing special. I didn’t have any shooting penalties but having to back up and engage a target and reengage the one popper on stage 5 killed at least 25 match points. I ended up second in Limited 13 match points behind the winner. I can’t wait to get tuned into using the new FO front sight. I really feel that it will allow me to shoot the further away stuff a lot faster than I was with the solid front sight.

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I attended and help setup a local USPSA match on Saturday. This is the match that I regularly help out and I brought a memory stage to the match. It has been a long time since we had a real memory stage so it was about time. There was quite a bit of whining from the shooters about it but I don’t think that people really hated it verses being frustrated with the difficulty of it. We have to test these skills in matches but rarely do so I think this was the main catalyst for people being bitter about the stage. I worked my tail off in the morning setting up my stage along with one of the others and didn’t have any time to check out the stages from a competitive stand point. I knew this was going to be a rugged day from a performance perspective because I didn’t get a chance to see the stages before hand and some of them were pretty technical with a lot of choices. My squad was pretty limited in who could RO or run the Palm Pilot so I ended up ROing most of the day as well. No video’s from this match, there just wasn’t time.

Stage 1 – This was the memory stage that I put together. It was a 26 round stage where you started with your unloaded gun and all mags on the table in the middle of the shooting area. You started on either the extreme left or right side of the stage. The targets were classic IPSC targets setup in a solid row across the back berm then there were five sets of double stacked barrels placed in front of the paper targets to limit visibility of all the targets from any one single position. I picked a plan that had me starting on the extreme left, then the far right shooting most of the targets from right to left as I was moving to the right. There was a little bit of back and forth needed to engage all of the targets but it was pretty straight forward. The hard part was to keep moving at an even pace to expose the next target while shooting or you would get lost pretty easy. I shot the stage too fast and called a couple of my shots marginal which ended up being missed or no shoots. No shoot blocked classic IPSC targets are a lot different sight picture to work with. We don’t shoot the classic targets very often so this was another good thing to practice. I ended up with a decent time but 30 penalty points ruined the run.

Stage 2 – This was a funky stage where you had four targets on both extreme right and left sides then a popper, two swingers, and a clam shell in the middle. The popper activated both swingers and the clam shell. To make it even more evil the swingers were setup with no shoots blocking the left to right lull in the movement. So you had to shoot them in their full swing. They were about 15 – 18 yards out at well making it a difficult to accurately engage the swingers without wasting a boat load of time. I walked up to the stage with the squad and this was the first time I had seen the stage then I found out that I was the second shooter in the shooting order. I didn’t have a solid plan at all but figured I would engage the popper first then the right side targets and then the swingers and clam shell, reload then move to the right and finish up on the left side paper. I think that my plan was ok, but I executed it like crap. I dicked around with both swingers for two passes and still didn’t know if I got my hits or not then tried to rush through the rest of the stage and ended up clipping a no shoot visually blocking the last target. This sent me into a frustrated rage and I unloaded the rest of the mag into the last target. I shot the last target at least 10 times during my “Fit” and the funny thing was that they were all A zone hits. Maybe I should just shoot every stage pissed off?

Stage 3 – This was the classifier for the match. We used one of the new classifiers called “Eye of the Tiger” CM 09-14. This is a straight up turn and shoot stage where you basically have three head shots at 7 yards. I was fresh off of my angry run on the last stage so I told myself that I would simply shoot this classifier angry from start to finish. The buzzer went off, I turned and engaged the heads as fast as I could call my shots and was rewarded with 25 points in 2.96 seconds giving me a better than 100% nationally performance. I like it when the angry panda shooting pays off.

Stage 4 – This was the speed shoot stage of the match. You started seated on the left side of the stage and then had to engage one paper over a table, two paper down range then two more paper between two sets of barrels. The only plan choice you had on this stage was where to engage the paper down range. A lot of people were engaging it first after they stood up, but to me that didn’t make sense. I chose to haul ass over to the table position first then engage the down range paper on the way to the last position. Then in the last position I shot them strong hand only due to the limited space in moving around and the closeness of the targets. I ended up with a miss on one of the down range targets even though I called one of my shots marginal and made it up. Once again we were using the classic IPSC targets on this stage and its hard to know where to aim on them as the A zone is a little funky. I think that my shots went over the top of the target as I was aiming high to ensure that I was in the A zone. A miss on the speed shoot stage isn’t good as there isn’t enough points to mask a screw up like that. Oh well.

Stage 5 – This was the long field course of the match and had a huge round count. This 40 round stage had a boat load of different ways to shoot it and to be honest my head was spinning trying to figure out the best plan of attack. I had not seen the stage much while helping setting it up and I was early in the shooting order but I was stuck ROing all the way up until it was my turn to shoot so I asked them to put me at the end of the squad in the shooting order. This was good because it gave me the time I needed to figure out the stage. With it being 40 rounds technically you could shoot it with only one mag change but it would be pushing the limits on each mag. Using only one mag change also forced a different shooting plan which I felt wasn’t the best. So I went with a plan that had two mag changes but kept me moving through the stage at a decent pace. My plan had me shooting four mini poppers on the move through a gap in a wall at about 15 yards. The movement was required to expose all of the poppers in sequence and I knew that the execution on this portion of the stage would make or break my stage run. The rest of the stage was fairly easy shooting and all I would have to do is keep moving towards the end as I shot. Well the buzzer went off and I executed my plan flawlessly. I shot the mini poppers one for one smooth and fast then chugged through the rest of the stage as quickly as I could call my shots. This was a great stage run for me and I wish they could all be that way. Its too bad I didn’t get a video of it. It would have been nice to see what the run looked like from a third person view.

Overall I had a mixture of train wreck and great runs for this match. I could live without having the train wreck runs, but I think that is just part of the game when you help setup and work the match. I am getting use to the neon green FO front sight and like it more and more every time I shoot. I think I will stick with this sight setup for a while to get it burned in and used to it. I used my backup gun this weekend as well to get some more match condition use under its belt and it has run flawlessly. Its nice to have a fully functional backup gun :cheers:

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Sunday was a sectional qualifier USPSA match up in Dumont hosted by the Clear Creek Practical Shooters club. These sectional qualifier matches tend to bring in more shooters because of them being leveraged to figure out who qualifies for nationals slots or not so we were all going to have a long day. I had not gotten much sleep the night before so it was going to be a really long day for me. I showed up early and helped setup a stage and then got a chance to check out the stages before the match. I didn’t video my stage runs which I now regret but at the time it seemed like more work than it should have been to use it. Listed below are the stages in the order that I shot them.

Stage 2 – This was a medium stage where you started on the back left or right and engaged three targets then moved forward to engage a series of targets through ports in long wall. Starting on the right allowed you to engage targets as you moved forward to the wall where as starting on the left didn’t. This to me made it clear that I had to start on the right even though I would have to reload moving to the left once at the wall. The wall had a bunch of ports where you could engage the same steel poppers from multiple locations. I chose a plan that had me engaging only the required paper through the middle ports then finish on the steel in the left most port. This plan worked out well for me but I did have a couple of D zone hits. Both of them were marginal called shots that I didn’t make up so I called them correctly but was hoping they would be C’s instead of D’s.

Stage 3 – This was the classifier stage for the match which was the old tried and true El Presidente CM99-11. I have never really done well on this classifier in the past. I would either shoot too fast and get crappy hits, shoot too slow and have a crappy time, or botch my reload and have a crappy time. This time around I told myself to simply shoot as fast as I could call my shots and not worry about the draw or reload, simply let it happen. What do you know I ended up with a pretty decent run finishing it in 5.52 seconds down four points. Not the speediest time or best points but a fairly decent run. This netted me a 93% run nationally. With the 100% the day before and a 93% today, my classification average is on its road to recovery.

Stage 4 – This was the speed shoot stage of the match where you started with your loaded gun on a table then engaged two paper on the left side, two through a left port, then ran around to the right side and engaged two paper on the right side and then two through the right port. The left side port was pretty low and one of the targets was high up behind the wall along with its bottom half being blocked by a no shoot. This awkward target/port setup was a really hard position for my big panda ass to get into. I don’t fold in half and then shoot above my head very well. This resulted in a no shoot hit on this target which sunk an otherwise decent run. The midgets of the USPSA world got their revenge on the Big Panda on that stage. They have to get their jabs in when they can I guess.

Stage 5 – This was a long field course stage where you started at the front of the stage then backed up about 20 yards to the back while engaging targets. I am always leery of shooting these kind of stages because it promotes flirting with the 180 if you really want to be aggressive and fast while retreating to the next target to engage. I shot the stage as well as I could given my over safe method of engaging targets. I probably gave away a couple of seconds on the stage making sure that I was well up range of the targets I was engaging but I would rather give the time away verses get DQed. I am glad that I didn’t RO anyone on this stage because I would have sent at least 4 people home for breaking the 180 ever so slightly as they aggressively navigated the stage. Even though I didn’t design this stage it is a lesson for me to not have situations like this that promote unsafe shooting as being the fastest way to navigate a stage. Its simply not safe and very unfair to the shooters that don’t want to push the limits of the safety rules. We shouldn’t punish competitors for being safe.

Stage 1 – This was a cool field course where you had to engage all of the targets from on top of a zig zag plank system. If you stepped off of the planks you would get a procedural so you couldn’t jump down and cut across to another area skip running on the planks. This was a neat plank setup that had you suspended about a foot off the ground and they were a little bouncy when you walked on them. To shoot the stage competitively you had to shoot on the move while on the planks and the bounciness made shooting on the move even more difficult. Unfortunately by this time in the match it was about 4PM and I was totally burned out, hungry, and tired. I just wanted the shooting to be over so I could head home and it really showed in my visual patience. I shot the front section of the stage well but tired to hurry on the back section and was rewarded with two misses. One miss I can live with because it was while shooting on the move and bouncing along the plank at the same time. The second miss was my last target and I simply slung two shots at it wanting the shooting to be over and only had one hit. Very poor focus of visual patience on this stage sunk what would have been good run. But I really didn’t care. I was so beat and over shooting for the day I was seriously contemplating not shooting the stage and heading home early.

This match was a grind. It was a really long day of shooting due to all of the extra shooters attending for the section qualifier and on top of that I was really tired going into it due to getting crappy sleep the night before. The initial plan for the day was to shoot the match and then do some one on one training with Ron Avery afterwards but I had to cancel the training with Ron due to being tired. It sucks to miss an opportunity to get some good training time in, but it would have been a total waste to try and push through it after the match. We have arranged to get some one on one time after he gets back from the nationals. That will work better for me.

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BritinUSA> At Clear Creek I was on Squad 2, which had about 20 shooters PLUS two that were shooting a second gun through the whole match. That combined with about 5 reshoots on Stage 1 (last stage of the day) due to range failures made it a looooooooooooooong day :(

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Wow, I didn't realize that you've only been shooting uspsa for a couple years. You appear like you've been doing it for much longer than that.

I've shot two matches so far and I'm hooked. My second match was the last HPPS event. Your stage killed me. It didn't help that I had to shoot it first in my squad. I wish I could have watched glen and then copied his strategy. It was a good stage though. I'm finding that I like stages that require movement covering further distances. Being relatively quick on my feet helps make up for being slow on the draw, target transitions, slow follow up shots, and only being able to TRULY call about 30% of my shots.

Your success is inspiring. What were you originally classified as?

Edited by d_striker
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Wow, I didn't realize that you've only been shooting uspsa for a couple years. You appear like you've been doing it for much longer than that.

I've shot two matches so far and I'm hooked. My second match was the last HPPS event. Your stage killed me. It didn't help that I had to shoot it first in my squad. I wish I could have watched glen and then copied his strategy. It was a good stage though. I'm finding that I like stages that require movement covering further distances. Being relatively quick on my feet helps make up for being slow on the draw, target transitions, slow follow up shots, and only being able to TRULY call about 30% of my shots.

Your success is inspiring. What were you originally classified as?

Big Panda is a fast mover. he is a force to learn from.

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