CHA-LEE's Tale

[eerw]

Another thing that works really well is a hand putty used for physical therapy or can be found at stores with rock climbing equipment.

works great for working parts of the hand, individual fingers and as well as squeezing and pushing out.

I used that years ago when I was shooting a lot more and more serious about it.

it comes in different resistances too.

as you found..it works great when you are driving and other times when you have a free hand.

[d_striker]

Well, I have been doing a little experiment the past few weeks. About a month ago while shooting a match I felt like I had to physically grip the crap out of the gun in order to manage the recoil. I started thinking about it and it dawned on me that I had not been doing any hand or grip exercises for a long while. So for the last three weeks I have been doing a daily grip exercise while driving to work. I am using a standard spring loaded gripper and I perform 100 squeeze reps on my strong hand, then 100 reps on my weak hand. I repeat this process one more time giving me 200 reps per hand. When that is done I squeeze and hold the gripper closed for 100 seconds on each hand. At first this was a pretty significant hand workout and I would have to take some breaks in the middle of the reps. Now I can complete all of the reps on my strong hand but have to take one break on my weak hand during the second set of 100 reps. I will need to up the rep count pretty soon to keep it challenging.

For every day activities with using my hands I don’t feel like I have gained a significant amount of hand strength or muscle bulk by doing these grip exercises. But I do feel like I don’t need as much effort to grip the gun while shooting. This past weekend I noticed that I didn’t even feel like I was gripping the gun hard but I was able to manage the recoil and muzzle flip a lot better than before I started these regular exercises. So the benefit of this experiment is showing up in my shooting for sure.

My initial goal was to perform this daily grip exercise program until the Area 2 match but since I am already seeing positive results in my shooting I think I will have to maintain some level of grip exercises on a regular basis. I have always had pretty good hand strength so I guess I got complacent in assuming that my every day life would give my hands enough exercise to keep them in top shooting form. Its neat to be able to identify a weakness I didn’t even know I had and find a successful solution. The ever changing learning process churns along…..

I do the same thing while sitting in the office to build grip strength for golf. Now it's for shooting as well. (People don't realize how similar the two sports are. The fundamental concept of both is to hit your target.)

I focus on primarily building strength in my pinky, ring, and middle finger in both hands. I don't focus so much on the index fingers. I usually do sets of 10 and hold for 10 seconds for each rep. I haven't thought of holding for 100 seconds...

Dead hangs on a pull up bar work great as well.

Edited November 4, 2010 by d_striker

[CHA-LEE]

Thanks for the advice guys. I am not an expert on exercising or strength training so I just came up with a system or reps and sets that produced a good burn in the forearms while doing it. I have read elsewhere that its more important to do heavier weight with less reps verses a lot of reps with lighter weight. I have a hard core gripper I got from a match I attended and have been thinking about switching up my hand work outs. Such as doing a high rep low weight on Mon, Wed, Fri, then doing a low rep high weight on Tues, Thurs. It will be fun to give it a try and mix it up to see what comes of it.

I guess my ultimate goal is to be able to shoot with what I feel as a “normal pressure” grip but in reality it is a crushing hard grip when compared to a normal shooters gripping force. The way I see it, the less conscious effort I have to manually interject into the process of shooting the better. The more physical grip pressure I have will just mean faster and more solid management of the recoil.

[d_striker]

I guess my ultimate goal is to be able to shoot with what I feel as a “normal pressure” grip but in reality it is a crushing hard grip when compared to a normal shooters gripping force. The way I see it, the less conscious effort I have to manually interject into the process of shooting the better. The more physical grip pressure I have will just mean faster and more solid management of the recoil.

You nailed it on the head right there. Using arbitrary numbers, applying 50 lbs of force @ 40% effort is better than applying 50 lbs of force @ 90% effort.

Again, my experience relates to golf...One ideally should only grip the club with enough force to prevent loss of grip of the club. This usually works out to about 35%-45% for most people. Gripping it any more than 60% tends to prevent crucial things from happening. A 90% death grip is not good. However, there is a tremendous amount of force required at the transition from the backswing to the downswing. This is where a strong grip is necessary. There is quantified data that shows a direct correlation between grip strength in the left hand and driving distance.

But yeah, long story short, the more force one is able to apply with less effort, the better.

Edited November 4, 2010 by d_striker

[CHA-LEE]

This past Saturday I did some more live fire practice with a couple of my friends. We setup stages and shot them in many different ways. Surprising to me a huge take away from the practice session was learning something new about foot placement at the start position when the first shooting position is only a step away. It seems pretty basic but finding a starting footing position that allowed me to only take a single step with the leading foot in order to get into the shooting position produced a lot better results. Before I was doing a half shuffle step as I got into the shooting position and this delayed my on target time as I got my footing ironed out. I was able to use this new starting feet position situation in the match on Sunday and it worked out great. Double win on that new skill. Since we were focused on figuring out the footing and steps we worked to optimize the starting position along with the first two shooting positions. It was interesting to see the results on the timer when choosing different ways of moving around the stage. The biggest take away from the movement testing was to keep your center of gravity between your feet but to not use a super wide stance which limits how fast you can get out of the shooting position. As always its just a matter of finding the sweet spot that works for your body type and shooting style. We didn’t shoot a boat load of ammo but we worked for hours on movement which was well worth the investment.

We started off the practice session by shooting the 6 inch plate at 40 yards. All three of us were able to hit it on the first shot. At the end of the training session we decided to try the same plate back at 50 yards but shoot it weak hand only. It took me two shots to take the plate down but being able to hit it was cool. I like starting and finishing the live fire practice sessions with accuracy stuff. I think it really helps solidify the foundation of being marksman first and foremost. If you can’t hit what you aim at, it does not matter how fast or slow you shoot.

[CHA-LEE]

This Sunday was the local USPSA match that I help put on. I setup one of the field courses in the morning along with all the regular running around getting the match ready. We had great weather which is pretty lucky for us given that its November already and we have not had any snow yet. We have had a pretty delayed entry into fall and winter this year which is a little strange but good for the match schedule. I worked my tail off all day at this match ROing most of the time so I was beat by the end of the day, but all of the stages were a lot of fun and very challenging. I was able to get all but one of my stage runs recorded which was good. Listed below are my stage runs along with the video’s.

Stage 5 – This was a tricky 32 round long stage where all of your magazines started in a bowel in the middle of the stage and you had to start on either side of the stage. This was the stage that I setup for the match and I figured that it would have a bunch of different options in shooting it but it was pretty mind boggling. I really didn’t think it would have so many options. Since you had to get your magazines in the middle of the stage there were a bunch of different ways of retrieving your mags. Some people stood at the barrel and repouched their mags, others chose plans that had them coming back to the bowl to get their next mag. Since I have a magnetic holder on my second mag pouch I decided to pick up two mags at once and slap one onto the magnet and load the next one so I wouldn’t have to come back to the bowel. My stage plan was pretty simple. You had the choice of running around shooting everything on the move or picking one side to shoot most of it stationary and the other side on the move. I chose the latter plan as I thought that the shot difficulty would cause too slow of shooting on the move for both sides. The only way my plan would work is if I really cranked out the rounds on the stationary side to minimize my log jam being in that position. Then shoot on the move with fast foot speed going down the other side. This plan worked ok for me but I ended up nicking a no shoot on the right side and had a miss on a diagonal hard cover target on the left side. On the right side I called my no shoot hit marginal and came back to it after finishing the string to see if I had to make it up and that killed some time. On the left side I was stepping fast and I think that my miss was during one of the hard steps. I called the shot good but it had dropped down into the black in the A-zone. This was probably not the most graceful stage plan but it kept me shooting most of the time.

Stage 1 – This was a medium stage which had you start with your unloaded gun and first mag on the barrel. The back of the stage had a step pad that activated a swinger that was mostly blocked by the barrels. A LOT of people were getting misses on the swinger due to hitting the barrel trying to shoot the swinger twice on its first pass. If you tried to shoot the swinger from the left side of the stage it was a head and shoulders shot, if you shot it from the right side of the stage there was half of the target available. I was able to watch a few shooters run the stage and figured that I could hit the step pad and then engage three other targets down range as I moved to the right and then engage the swinger on its second pass to finish the stage. This plan worked out really well and even though I shot at the swinger three times I ended up with two A’s and C zone hit. This was a fun stage to shoot and I don’t think that I could have shot it any better.

Stage 2 – This was another long 32 round field course stage that had you starting at one of three barrels The barrels were spread out so you could pick a different path through the stage. My initial plan was to start at a barrel in the middle of the stage and then back up to engage some targets placed up range then come back forward to finish. This seemed like it would be the best plan as it had less overall steps to take but it would have me flirting with the 180 as I engaged the two back targets while backing up and shooting. Shooting while backing up is one of my weak skills so I decided to change my plan to start at the furthest back barrel and move forward aggressively as I engaged the back targets. This seemed to flow better for me anyway even though it was more steps. The middle section of the stage is where a lot of time could be made up by shooting on the move while having fast foot speed and I capitalized on this part of the stage being able to shoot and move quickly. The end of the stage had you working in two different ports. The first port had a popper which activated a clam shell then a far open target and a close head shot. All of these were pretty easy to engage. I then moved to the right port and engaged two more paper targets along with a final popper. This was a really good stage run for me once again. I don’t think that I could have shot it any better. Unfortunately my camera man was jammed up solving a scoring issue so I didn’t catch this run on film.

Stage 3 – This was the classifier stage called “Six”. This is a pretty basic classifier. Turn, draw, and engage two paper and two poppers. By this time in the day the sun was shining directly in front of us at about a 45 degree angle so the targets were in the shadows. I drew and when the gun was mounted all I could see was the green FO of my front sight beaming like a glowing light saber. Since I couldn’t see my rear notch at all due to the overwhelming FO I tried to point shoot the targets and ended up with two make up shots on the steel and then a miss on the left side target. This was a really crappy classifier run but I wasn’t surprised due to the lighting conditions and not being able to see my sights well. Good thing this classifier was only worth 30 match points because I sucked bad on it!!!

Stage 4 – This was the speed shoot stage of the match. This stage was right next to the classifier but it was angled to the right side of the berm which was good because it enabled me to see the sights better. I decided to use my one step lesson learned the day before to get into the first position which worked great but I wasted the minimal movement by twisting the gun in a funky way during the draw causing it to jam up. Once the gun was out of the holster it was on like donkey kong though and I let the bullets fly. I think I lost about a second on the draw due to the jam up but my time was still really good compared to others. The really cool thing about this stage was that I was only down three points. Being able to collect a boat load of alphas during this fury of blasting is a nice confidence builder. This was a fun stage to shoot for sure.

This was a pretty solid match for me. I wish that I had not clipped the no shoot and got a miss on stage 5 but that’s what happens when you are pushing for peak performance. We had 80 shooters for this match and I was able to earn HOA for the match. This was a surprise really as I thought for sure that a couple of the stages would be biased in favor of the Open shooters. I will take the win as I earned it with some really solid shooting. This is a nice confidence builder before heading out to the Area 2 match this week. After the match I chronoed my Area 2 match rounds and they came in at a safe 169 PF so I should be good down in Phoenix.

My goal at the Area 2 match this year is to make it into the top 10 in Limited. Looking at the past years results it takes about an 80% finish to get into the top 10. I know I am capable of shooting at or better than 80% of the top dogs so this is probably a conservative performance goal. But I don’t want to put any artificial pressure on myself while shooting down there. I want to be able to shoot every stage within my means but at the same time give it the best I have. I don’t get psyched out by big matches so all I have to do is let the shooting happen. No matter where I end up I am sure it will be a fun match and many lessons will be learned. If my performance is rewarded by some good loot off of the prize table then its just icing on the cake.

[frunkenstein]

Cha-lee good luck to you and all our fellow competitors who travel to the great south west. Maybe next year if I get my gimp fixed i can join you all in a few of the bigger matches. I shot your stag from 2 positions (stage 5) and hit paper on all my shots but 4 were in the black. I felt that limiting my movement would be my best move. seeing that this was my last stageof the day and I was worn out. I didnt RO but I did score and all that I could. I hope we get the scores soon, but that is the way the ball bounces. Shoot there socks off.

[Cy Soto]

I hope we get the scores soon...

<frunkenstein> The results of yesterday's match are posted in the USPSA web page: http://www.uspsa.org/uspsa-display-match-results-detail.php?indx=41

<CHA-LEE>That Stage 5 was well-intended for folks shooting high-capacity guns. Those of us shooting Revolver, Single Stack, Production or L-10 think that you are evil for making us stand in front of that stupid basket for what seemed like an eternity while we put our mags back in our pouches!

[frunkenstein]

Thanks Cy I guess my notification eco isnt working. Not that I'm in top anyway HAHA.

[MarkCO]

<CHA-LEE>That Stage 5 was well-intended for folks shooting high-capacity guns. Those of us shooting Revolver, Single Stack, Production or L-10 think that you are evil for making us stand in front of that stupid basket for what seemed like an eternity while we put our mags back in our pouches!

Grab 2 mags, stuff and reload while moving to one side or the other, shoot one side. Move across the back grabbing 2 mags, stuff and load again while moving. Total time over a limited shooter should only have been on the order of 4 to 6 seconds or so for 2 extra reloads and 4 extra steps. NEVER stand still!

[Cy Soto]

Grab 2 mags, stuff and reload while moving to one side or the other, shoot one side. Move across the back grabbing 2 mags, stuff and load again while moving. Total time over a limited shooter should only have been on the order of 4 to 6 seconds or so for 2 extra reloads and 4 extra steps. NEVER stand still!

I made two HUGE mistakes on that stage... The first one was to put the retrieved magazines in my pant pocket. I never bothered to check how deep my pockets were until after the beeper. After I drop my mags in there I felt slide all the way down so I grabbed a few more and stuffed them in the pouches. The next big mistake was not shooting this COF from farther back. I thought that I couldn't see the two targets behind the barrel from back there and again, I never bothered to check.

To make matters horribly worse, in my last shooting position I had to throw an extra round on my second target (I clipped the no-shoot) and, by target four, I had run dry of ammo. For a fraction of a second I thought to dig in my pocket and grab another magazine but decided that that it was better to take the miss.

I still think that CHA-LEE is evil... Nah, just kidding, Big Panda knows that I have nothing but love for him!

[CHA-LEE]

Cy> There were a lot of options on how to shoot stage 5. If I was shooting single stack or production I would have shot a portion of the stage strong hand only so I could carry an extra mag in my weak hand. There really wasnt a good reason to stand at the barrel while you placed the mags on your belt. You could have easily grabed a couple of mags and put one in your belt then loaded the other while getting into the first shooting position. Then simply head back to the barrel again as you go to the other side. This stage was a great test of shooters skills and stange planning........ It was a little evil as well

Believe it or not this was the "Tamed Down" version of this stage. My initial concept for this stage was a take off from the Area 3 match where all of your mags had to come out of a range bag that you had to carry around the stage. But Matt Hess talked me out of this far more evil variant of the stage

[driver8M3]

I made two HUGE mistakes on that stage... The first one was to put the retrieved magazines in my pant pocket.

fyi: for production and single stack, you cannot use magazines that come out of your front pocket...b/c the front pockets do not comply with division rules for magazines (behind the hip bone).

you didn't say whether you used the front or back pocket, so this might not be relevant.

[CHA-LEE]

Day one of the Area 2 Desert classic are in the books for me. Wow I had a crappy day of shooting. 5 total misses on five stages. Some of the misses are due to shooting in the early morning with dark shadow targets (Black targets on black sights sucks), others are pushing the envelope while shooting on the move and of course one on the crazy fast swingers. Two of the field course stages I had two misses on each, OUCH!!! It didnt help that we shot pretty much all of the technical swinger stages today and didnt have a chance to see them in action before hand. That combined with shooting the morning schedule caused some serious vision issues for me due to some targets on each stage being completely shadowed due to the boat load of barrels used at this match.

At this point my original goal of making the top 10 in Limited is pretty much toast. I can see getting away with a couple of misses for the match, but having five misses already has blown that goal out of the water. It sucks to know that my match is done on the first day, but it also puts zero pressure on me for the rest of the stages. Hopefully tomorrow will go better than today. It will at least be nice to start in the afternoon where the sun is high in the sky and there will not be any shadow targets to battle through.

Time to run it like a rental and see where I end up......

Edited November 12, 2010 by CHA-LEE

[Tom Freeman]

Time to run it like a rental and see where I end up......

Nope. Shoot steady and dont give away any more points.

[CHA-LEE]

Tom> You are right. I am in a better mood now. Tomorrow will be a new day and I need to treat it as such.

[CHA-LEE]

Well the 2010 Area 2 match is over and I am back home. I have had a good amount of time to reflect on the match so here are my thoughts. I wanted to first point out that this years match was an awesome event. All of the stages were well thought out and challenged a wide range of your shooting skills. A one trick horse would be in big trouble at this match. I think that the only thing that was missing from the match were really long shots. I can’t recall any shots that were more than 20 yards away but this was offset by a decent amount of partial shots which commanded a lot of respect. The prize table was STACKED with guns and many other awesome prizes making every other prize table I have seen this year look like a joke. I don’t know how these guys get so much loot for the prize table but its incredible.

My performance goal for this match was to finish in the top 10 in Limited. When I got to the range on the first day to check in I looked through the Limited division shooters and was surprised to find 9 GM’s and 14 M’s. The competition was going to be stiff for this match for sure. I was on Squad 13 with most of my Colorado friends and some local AZ shooters as well. Our squad was scheduled for the Friday and Sunday morning shooting schedule which left Saturday as the only day we would start in the afternoon. I didn’t know it at the time but having to shoot on two mornings would greatly impact my ability to see my sights clearly which in turn resulted in a boat load of misses through out the morning stages.

In the mornings I couldn’t see my sights worth a crap. This combined with some targets being hidden behind barrels in their shadow made things even worse. Black sights on black targets is a horrible combination. On a lot of the morning stages I had to revert to putting the FO of the front sight on the target and then “Hoping” that my index would be good enough for my hits to be there because I couldn’t see any alignment of the front post to the rear notch. On average my stage times were well within the top 10 results for the stages but due to my crappy hits or lack of hits all together my overall stage finished were in the toilet. I can understand and accept shooting a stage wrong or making a mental planning mistake to screw up a stage but getting beaten by my vision was very demoralizing and frustrating. Since I couldn’t see my sights I had to devolve my shooting to breaking the shot when I consciously commanded it verses seeing an acceptable sight picture and allowing the shot to break subconsciously. This eroded a lot of my attention on navigating the actual stage as it took a lot more effort to simply decide when to shoot.

After battling my vision most of this past weekend I have come to the fact that after getting LASIK done my ability to focus on the sights has been diminished and thus I need to make some sight configuration changes. I think that I really need a FO rear sight to go along with the FO front. In an perfect world, if I could get some tritium lit FO rods that would probably be the best solution as the FO would shine in any lighting conditions. The thing that sucks is that nobody makes a FO rear sight for the EAA/Tanfo Limited guns much less having tritium backlit ones. Right now I think my only viable option is to have the current sight dove tail welded up and then have an STI/SVI style dovetail recut so I can use those style rear sights. There are a bunch of sight options for the STI/SVI guns and not being able to leverage these options is a significant disadvantage.

Figuring out some new sight options for less than optimal lighting will be a fun challenge to solve over the winter months. Hopefully I can figure something out for the 2011 shooting season. I don’t want to struggle through another match like I did at the Area 2 without being able to see my sights.

Either way listed below are my stage runs as I shot them. I was able to get all of my stage runs on video so those are listed as well. Here is the ugly, bad with a little bit of good mixed in there…..

Day 1

Stage 12 – First stage of the match and we get going on one of the speed shoot stages. This was a funky stage that had two poppers and three paper targets. To the right of the poppers there was a drop turning target with a no shoot that fell in front of it leaving a head and shoulders shot. I didn’t get a chance to see many people shoot this stage but it seemed like you were basically stuck with waiting for the drop turner to finish its movement before you could engage it. The drop turner exposed its self twice but on the first exposure the blocking no shoot was bouncing a little as well as it settled down so it was risky to try and engage the DT on its first exposure. Since this was the first stage of the match I didn’t want to push my luck and settled on a conservative approach of shooting the activating popper first, then everything else before finishing on the DT head shot. I ended up waiting for the DT to present its self on the second pass so my plan did waste valuable time. The guy who won the stage engaged both steel first then the DT on its first pass to save almost 2 seconds over my run. But I was happy to get through the first stage of the match without any issues.

Stage 1 – This was one of the longer field course stages of the match. The only options on this stage were in how you engaged the targets in the middle of the stage. I chose an engagement order that had me shooting less on the move but shooting faster as I didn’t like getting really twisted up shooting a lot of targets on the move in the middle of the stage. I ended up with two misses on this stage. The first miss was on the first target I engaged as I moved forward in the stage. Even though I took three shots at it I still ended up with an alpha/mike. I called one solid shot and two marginal ones so I was only a little surprised to see that I only had one hit on the target. The second miss is on the first target I engaged as I exited the first port position. This target was heavily in the shadows and I couldn’t call either shot good or bad since I couldn’t see anything to call. My transitions trough the rest of the ports was lack luster to say the least but I felt that I finished the stage with an ok time. Having two misses on this stage sunk my run.

Stage 2 – This was a short stage with a couple of different options on how to engage the targets. The steel on this stage really rattled my concentration. The second popper I shot was either really heavy or I only nicked it because it took forever to fall and as I transitioned away from it I seen it still standing in the corner of my eye. This made me transition back to it only to see it starting to fall before I got back to it. This sent me into an “OH SHIT YOU ARE BEHIND SCHEDULE” mind set and I shot the rest of the stage too fast. I called my second shot in the far left port marginal but didn’t make it up and it ended up being a miss just into the black hard cover on the target. This was a poorly executed stage performance that was exasperated by the steel lot falling as quickly as I expected it to. At this point in the match I knew that I was in deep water. Being only three stages into the match and racking up three misses wasn’t a good situation to be in. It wasn’t a disaster at this point but the hole was dug.

Stage 3 – This stage was an interesting combo of shooting on the move, timing activators and shooting prone. I shot the front half of the stage well and then went to do my reload but my spent mag did not fall free. Unfortunately this happened at the most in opportune time of the stage as I was suppose to be stepping on a step pad as I completed the reload and mounted the gun to engage the clam shell. After resolving the mag change situation my whole timing plan for the clam shell, swinger and static targets was blown and I devolved into hosing whatever I could see. This lead to a miss on one of the static targets and another miss on the swinger which I called marginal but didn’t want to waste the time to make it up on another pass. Adding two more misses to the tally of the day bringing it to 5 total for the day was a solid kick to the nuts for me. I knew that my aspirations for a top 10 finish in Limited was sunk by this time in the match and it was a bummer.

Stage 4 – This was the only memory style stage in the match as it had a lot of the same targets that could be engaged all over the place. There were also at least one target placed in a way that made it only seen from a specific port. You basically were forced to engage at least one target through each port in the side walls. The stage could be very confusing if you chose a stage plan that had you swinging from the left to the right a lot so I picked a pretty basic plan that had me moving less but taking longer or tighter shots. I thought that my stage run was decent but a little slow due to the harder shots. I was able to finish the stage in 19 seconds which was a couple seconds slower than the top shooters. The newly crowned Limited National champion was able to crush everyone shooting this stage in only 13 seconds. I would love to have seen him shoot this stage that fast.

Day 2

Stage 5 – Everyone was calling this the run and gun “Truck” stage because you started standing in the bed of a pickup truck. This was a fun run and gun stage that had a good mixture of close open and further tight shots. I took a more aggressive stage plan than most by trying to shoot the steel on the move to the right which resulted in a lot of make up shots but it still saved time compared to others plans. The misses on the steel once again frustrated me which lead me to shoot the far right paper target too fast leading to a miss. Without this miss it would have landed me a solid top 10 finish for the stage but the miss killed the run. Lucky for me this stage was thrown out of the match due to one of the targets not having a no shoot on it one of the days.

Stage 6 – This was an interesting standards kind of stage that had you starting forward touching a shelf. Then you had to back up and engage two paper targets on the left and right, then drop down and engage two paper and two poppers. Being a big bastard I don’t look forward to shooting these kind of stages simply because its not very comfortable for me to drop down and fold myself in half while shooting targets. This stage was designed for those short skinny guys that can move around like ninja’s. Some how I was still able to pull out a 9th overall on this stage even though I was more than a second and a half of the top times.

Stage 7 – This was a cool stage with a bunch of shooting order options. I am not sure if I picked the best plan by running to the far left at the start, but it seemed to flow the best for me if I started on the left. When the buzzer went off I tried my best to minimize the non shooting time by hauling ass to the first position but wasted time is wasted time. I think that the only place on this stage where I felt that I wasted time was engaging the first target. Otherwise this felt like a pretty solid stage run for me and I got all of my hits so I can’t really complain.

Stage 8 – This was a shorter stage with only a couple of options on how to shoot it. I figured that the only way I would be able to save some time was to not do a reload and use my 22+1 mag setup. You started the stage with your gun on a shelf and I must have slightly pushed in the mag release as I picked up the gun because the mag popped out after the first shot and I had to tap and rack in order to recover from the failure. Needless to say this three second delay put a hurting on my stage time. Without the mag issue I would have been in the 14 second range on the stage time with would have been right with the big boys.

Stage 9 – This was a fun hoser kind of stage, pretty much the only hoser stage of the match really. There were two basic plans for shooting this stage. The first was to go to each “intended” shooting positions to engage all of the targets. The second was to jam your whole upper body through the port in the middle of the stage so you could shoot the swinger and other paper targets to eliminate an extra shooting position. Since I am a big bastard I chose to shoot the stage straight up by going to each shooting position. It didn’t make sense for me to cram my body into the port and shoot from a funky position. I would rather shoot from a normal aggressive stance and let the lead out with a hurry. My plan seemed to work out pretty good as I netted a sixth place finish for the stage. For me this was the most fun stage to shoot in the match.

Day 3

Stage 10 – This was a very basic stage with really only one way to shoot it. We started early in the morning and once again my eyes failed me. After the buzzer went off and I mounted the gun on the first target I knew I was in trouble because I could only see the dim FO of my front sight and zero correlation of where the rear notch was to the front sight. I had to shoot this whole stage on pure index as calling my shots was completely out the window due to the poor visibility. I thought that I was shooting deliberately enough to at least get my hits as I took a LONG time to break each shot. But I was rewarded with 4 D’s and two misses. When I watch this video and listen to the slow splits I should have had all A’s on this stage if I could see my sights. Super bummer of a stage run and it really broke my spirit.

Stage 11 – Last stage of the match for me and it’s a speed shoot timing stage. Two swingers with mirrored target presentation. At this point in the morning the sun was just above the foot hills but was shining straight at your back. I took a test sight picture before while making ready and grimaced as I was greeted by super shiny glaring sights. So glaring that I couldn’t even see the FO in the front sight. You can actually see how glaring the sun was by how bright the big popper on the left is in the video. At this point I simply gave up before the buzzer even went off. I chain sawed some rounds down range and ran out of ammo before I could finish the stage. I was rewarded with three misses to finish off my match.

I was glad that the match was over as the frustration of being forced to shoot while not being able to see my sights was over. Not being able to see my sights really wrecked my shooting at this match. I think that if I had been on the two afternoon, one morning, schedule I would have been able to perform a lot better simply due to being able to see my sights. I will keep this in mind and request that I be on the afternoon biased schedule next year. In the mean time I need to figure out something different on my sights.

I was feeling pretty beat down by the match but that all changed when they did the raffle drawing. They were raffling off an AR-15, some laser training rifle thing, and a kick ass Cameron’s Custom 6 Inch Limited gun. I got 10 raffle tickets and put five in the AR bucket and 5 in the Limited gun bucket. They drew the winners starting with the laser rifle, then the AR and lastly the Limited gun. Very much to my surprise my name was called and I won the Limited gun!!! It was very cool to win such a great prize after having one of the worst big match performances ever. After that the results were tallied and the class winners were crowned. I ended up 22nd in Limited at 73% of the winner Taran Butler. Even though I was 22nd at the prize table I was still able to pull a little .380 pistol off the table with a few more guns left for others to take. This shows how deep the prize table was for this match.

I was able to learn some good lessons at this match and gain some more big match experience. Regardless of match results these lessons alone were worth the trip. I will be back next year for sure, ready to learn some more lessons

[d_striker]

Man you're fast. Especially for how big of a dude you are.

You looked good in all of those videos...You were moving fast, shooting fast, shooting fast while moving fast, and reloading fast. It's a bummer (to say the least) that the lighting conditions hindered you from getting the hits that you should have gotten.

It's crazy how well you manage recoil. Your front sight doesn't appear to move at all 95% of the time.

See you at HPPS on Saturday?

Edited November 17, 2010 by d_striker

[CHA-LEE]

d_striker> Thanks for the nice comments. I think that my body speed through the stages is good enough but I know that my on target splits are slower for the tight or far away targets when compared to the top flight GM's. I was able to see some video of Taran Butler shoot the same stages and his splits on the far away targets are absolutely sick. He is able to consistently maintain .15 - .18 splits on targets out past 15 yards and this saves a significant amount of stage time. I am going to do some more 15+ yard target practice the next time I go out as that seems to be a major road block for me. The sooner the shooting is over, the sooner the stage is over.

I don't know if you get the ECOUSPSA results update e-mails but the HPPS match on Saturday was just canceled. I might head out there anyway to get some live fire practice in though. Maybe we can meet up out there and work on our skills?

[frunkenstein]

Hey Cha-lee I lookes on eco and didnt find any cancellation. Any idea why?

[frunkenstein]

Also another note Tom S. picked up the poppers from Keith down PPPS. I guess we need to get with some one on getting them back there and the bill delivered to the responsible party so Keith can get paid.

[CHA-LEE]

frunkenstein> I think that the ECOUSPSA website has not been updated with the HPPS match cancellation because Roger Briden is still on the road coming back to Colorado. He manages the ECOUSPSA website so we will have to wait until he gets back home and settled in before he can update the website.

As far as the poppers go I am planning on going out to Ben Lomond on Saturday to practice, why don't you and Tom come out and practice with me? Bring the poppers and we can get them into the storage containers. I will let the HPPS Match staff know that they have been received and they can workout payment with Keith as needed.

What do you think about that plan?

[frunkenstein]

Good plan Tom was more aware of the plan than me. We'll be there see you then.

[CHA-LEE]

I was talking to Henning Wallgren about my vision issues at the Area 2 match and he suggested that I try opening up the width of the rear sight notch. With that in mind I have been using a .090 front and a .120 rear sight setup for a long time and he suggested to try a .130 and .140 rear notch to get some more light around the sides of the front sight. So this evening I did some fiddling and built up two rear blades, one at .130 and another at .140. I put each one on my backup gun to test it against my standard setup and it seems to work better in dry fire.

The really cool thing that I found is that I was able to recreate the same poor lighting conditions I experienced at the Area 2 match in my basement by fiddling with the lights. I did some back to back dry fire testing with my old and new sight setups and the wider rear notch setups seemed to work a little better. Its not a huge difference, but it’s a difference.

The more I think about this situation I think that an optimal setup that would work in all lighting conditions would be front and rear FO with tritium back lighting them. That way the FO rods would glow in both good and bad lighting conditions and I would be able to at least make some kind of front to rear sight alignment feedback in the poor lighting conditions. The bad thing about this is that nobody makes a FO rear sight for the EAA/Tanfo guns much less tritium back lit FO sights. I could probably rig up a standard FO rear sight setup using the stock sights but I think I should hold off on doing that until I find the best rear notch width first. I have a lot of testing and fine tuning to do before I get to that point though.

[BritinUSA]

Why not keep a bottle of liquid paper in your range bag. All you need to do it put a thin line of white on top of the rear sight blades so you can distinguish them against the darkened targets. Then wipe off after the stage.