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CHA-LEE's Tale


CHA-LEE

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The match on Saturday got canceled so I decided to go out and do some live fire practice instead. My main goal for the practice session was to test out the new wider rear sight. It was interesting shooting with the wider rear sight notch. Being able to see the targets between the sides of the sights was pretty different. There were a couple of times where I was able to see my hit on the paper between the notch and front post and that was strange. I only used the .140 wide rear notch for this practice session and I thought that it worked out well as it gave me a lot more front sight feedback between shots. The only detriment is that I felt like the front sight was swimming in a huge rear notch.

I practiced with friends and they wanted to learn how to shoot swingers better so the majority of the practice was focused on them. It was nice to help out some fellow competition shooters figure out how to shoot swingers. I was also able to shoot about 150 rounds and that was plenty of practice for me. When I got home one of my other shooting buddies needed a gun part so he came over. He uses a .105 wide FO front sight that is serrated on the front. I tested his gun in the same low light conditions and even though he still has the standard witch rear notch I was able to pick up and see his front sight better than mine. I figured that I would shoot the Sunday match with my current setup but then swap over to a .105 wide serrated front sight to see if that works better.

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Sunday morning came early as we were going out to help setup. Man it was cold in the morning. On the drive out to the range it was in the mid to upper 20’s with a decent wind to make it even more cold. We got to the range early and helped setup the stages in the cold and windy conditions. For me this is the first “Cold” shooting match of the winter. Every shooter was rewarded by coming out to shoot with frozen fingers and bitter cold winds. I don’t think it got above 35 degrees at any time while we were at the range. Due to the cold I didn’t video any of my runs. I couldn’t force myself to ask anyone to film me as that would expose their hands to the bitter cold for longer than I would have liked. So no video for this match. Listed below are my stage runs in the order that I shot them.

Stage 2 – This was the speed shoot stage where your loaded gun started on one barrel and you had your hands placed on the other barrel. You had to run and grab your gun then engage two targets on the far left, one in the middle and two on the far right. You could stand in one position and engage the two right targets along with the middle but it didn’t make sense to me to stand and shoot flat footed. My plan had me shooting the middle target on the move as I went from left to right in the shooting area. This worked out well except for one D zone hit on the first target I engaged. Even though I lost some points with the D zone hit I had a really good stage time which pretty much made up for the loss in points.

Stage 3 – This was the classifier stage for the match called Hillbillton Drill. You shoot three paper on the left, reload and then engage 6 poppers. I have shot this classifier before and there are two key factors to this stage. First you need all of your points on the paper and second you need to take down the steel quickly one for one. I failed on both of these fronts as I ended up with a D hit on one of the paper targets and then edge hit one of the steep poppers causing it to not fall so I had to pause before I reengaged it. This performance resulted in a pretty lack luster 75% nationally. Its at least low enough to not throw a monkey wrench into my classification average.

Stage 4 – This was a long field course that had you doing a lot of port work. There was one really low port which three targets could be engaged through but my knees would not be having it this day. I don’t know if it was the cold or what but every time I tried to get low enough to engage all three targets through the port my knees were groaning in protest. You only had to engage one of these targets through the low port so that is what I ended up doing then engaging the other two from around the wall further down the stage. I know that this stage plan had me doing an extra shooting position compared to others which wasted time, but I would rather do that verses blow out my knees. After you were done with the front section you ran down range and engaged some more targets through two more ports aggressively. When moving between ports you stepped on a step pad and that triggered a swinger that could be engaged on its first pass as you settled into the last port. I shot the last port a little too aggressively trying to save some lost time and ended up with a miss on a partial target blocked by a no shoot. I called that shot marginal and hopped that the hit would be there but it wasn’t.

Stage 5 – This was another fairly long field course that had you start off with some ultra fast hosing followed by engaging two poppers about 30 yards away. Then there was a long series of partial targets along the right hand side blocked by barrels. The targets and barrels were spaced apart just enough to make it fairly easy to get lost as you shot them on the move. My original plan had me doing a reload in the middle of this section but I then changed my plan to shoot all of the start stuff and the barrel partial target section before doing a reload. This would require 20 rounds so I loaded up my gun to 21+1 and told my self to simply shoot one for one. This worked out great and I ended up only being down 4 points for the stage. This was the best stage run of the day for me. I like it when a plan works and I am also able to execute it effectively.

Stage 1 – This was a medium length stage which had three up close hoser targets then a series of 20 yard partial targets. Both the left and right sides of the stage were mirrored in their target presentation. So you basically shot the left side, reloaded as you went to the right and repeated the process. All of the partial targets on the back side of the stage was killing a lot of time for a lot of shooters so I decided to deploy my “Put the FO on the target” method of shooting to see how it worked out. This plan allowed me to shoot the stage in a good time but my hits were horrible. I had one miss, a no shoot, and then 4 total D zone hits. It was cool to shoot the stage quickly but I sacrificed way too many points doing so. This stage was killing a lot of shooters in miss or no shoot penalties so even though I had shooting penalties as well, I was still able to win the stage due to my fast time. Lucky for me that everyone else struggled on this stage as well.

I felt that I shot an OK match but nothing to write home about. The new sight setup did take a little while to get use to and I think that the .090 front sight is too narrow for the rear blade notch of .140. I am going to swap over to the .105 front sight this week so I can give that a try next weekend. Shooting in the bitter cold wasn’t very fun, but everyone else at the range seemed to suck it up and push through. The winter shooting season is upon us now. I am sure there will be many more chilly matches to shoot in the not too distant future. Thinking about it right now makes me yell out BURRRRRRR!!!

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This Saturday I had to play Match Director for a local match. The weather was pretty decent in the morning, which made setup not so painful. But I have been battling a sickness all week which had me sapped for energy, focus or motivation. I tried my best to stay focused and on task but it was pretty rugged for me. My voice was pretty much horse all day so I let others RO and Score as much as I could. The cool thing was that there was a lot of people ready and willing to step up and help out. This took a lot of pressure off the situation for me which was much appreciated. Since I didn’t have a solid competitive drive for shooting the match I figured I would use the stage trigger time to test out my new sight setup. The .105 front mixed with the .140 rear seemed to work a lot better for me, especially on the shadow targets that I have battled in the past. I told myself that I would consciously be 100% observant while shooting in order to really evaluate the sight setup. Throughout the match I had three shots which I called as misses and sure enough they were misses. All three misses were due to me starting to move my head to the next target as the shot broke which pulled the gun off target. I normally don’t have any issues with this but I can see how it happened as I wasn’t very focused on executing solid fundamentals. My stage runs were ok but nothing to right home about. Given my super run down physical condition and lack of motivation to even be there in the first place due to being sick, I wasn’t up to putting in the effort to effectively program the stages much less perform well while shooting them. I was able to achieve my one and only goal for the match which was to evaluate the new sight setup. I am happy with how they worked in the varying lighting conditions. I really want to try it out at the indoor range where I had the most trouble seeing well. But that will have to wait.

On Monday I am leaving for Korea on a work trip that will have me away until the tenth of December. I will miss a couple of matches while out there, but given my current physical state I am kind of looking forward to some extra time to recover. I am sure that I will be chomping at the bit to come back and shoot towards the end of the trip through.

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Since I am stuck in Korea for work and have a lot of down time to think about things this is probably a good time to reflect upon my shooting over the past year. At the start of this year my annual goal was to be a solid GM level shooter by the end of the year. I knew that this was a lofty goal but I tried my best to get there. Since I still have not earned a GM classification much less perform like a solid GM shooter I can honestly say that my goal has been missed. I do believe that I am shooting at a solid Master level right now though and still have a few things holding me back. One unexpected challenge I have faced this year is getting tuned into my new eyes post LASIK surgery in January. I don’t want to make getting LASIK a cop out for not achieving my goals but I do think that I had to relearn quite a few visual processes after getting it done. Hell I am still dicking around with sight configurations in an effort to find something that works in the majority of lighting conditions we shoot in. I hope that I will be able to find a sight setup that works without having to go over to the dark side and shoot Open.

Over the past year I have been able to attend a boat load of club matches along with 9 major matches. I took all of my major match finish percentages and averaged them out and ended up with an 83% average finish for the year. To me this is a decent accomplishment to finish well at many of the big matches. The only bad match that I had for the season was the Area 2 match last month and I really attribute that poor result to not being able to see my sights due to the funky lighting conditions.

Even though I attended a lot of local club matches I really consider those as my practice for the bigger matches. Sure I want to do well at the local matches but that does not keep me from testing and trying things during these matches which may not be optimal at the given time but allow me to gain more experience in figuring things out.

My goals for the 2011 shooting season are going to be a little more skill focused verses having a generalized goal like I had in 2010. My first goal is to figure out a sight setup that works for my post LASIK eyes. This has to be a top priority for me as being able to see and call my shots is the foundation of shooting. My second goal is to shoot 15 – 20 yard targets faster. When I watch videos of the top shooters this is the main skill gap between them and me. They can crank out the rounds on the further and tighter shots a lot faster than I currently can. Maybe this is a skill I already have but don’t have the confidence in? Either way I will be exploring and improving this skill extensively next year. My last goal is to finally address my horribly slow draw. I told myself that I would worry about my draw once I started losing stages by sub second times and that time has come. I can’t afford to be giving away half a second on drawing any more. This will mean that I will have to confront my long term nemesis named “Dry Fire”. It sucks but its time to bite the bullet and start dry firing. I absolutely hate dry firing but if I want to achieve the level of performance I know I can obtain, it has to be part of my training program.

Currently I am planning on keeping the same local match attendance pace as last year along with about the same amount of major matches. The good thing about picking the major match schedule for 2011 is knowing what matches I don’t want to go back to. It also gives me an opportunity to try some new matches that I have not been to yet. I look forward to next years shooting season as it will be another opportunity to learn, experience, and perfect my shooting skills. I don’t know if I will ever reach the peak of my shooting potential but its going to be a fun voyage trying to be the best I can be.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey Cha-Lee glad to hear that you are back. Todays match was cold but a great match the stages were really cool. Only negative was I hurt my hip setting up and put me at a disadvantage the rest of the day, but you do what you can. The good news I get to become Bionic on Jan. 25 2011. Then I have to relearn how to shoot( a good thing ). See you at HPPS .

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frunkenstein> It sounds like you guys had a really good match down there this Sunday. I really wanted to go but I was still trying to recover from the Jet Lag after returning from Korea. I do plan on shooting the HPPS match this weekend though. It will be nice to get some rounds down range.

Great news about getting your hip fixed in January. I am sure you are really tired of all the pain and loss of mobility due to your bad hip. The road to recovery may take a while but you will be better off in the long run.

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Saturday I attended a USPSA match hosted by the HPPS club. This club shoots in eastern Colorado out past Kiowa so its usually colder and wind out there verses Denver. When I left my house it was 25 degrees, by the time we got to the range it was 13 degrees but thankfully it wasn’t windy. If it was windy like it normally is, it would have been brutally cold out there. Due to the cold or maybe the holidays we didn’t have many shooters attend the match. Sixteen die hard shooters came out to shoot and luckily we all pitched in to help setup the match. Even though we were short handed the five stages went up on schedule and they all were a good test of your shooting skill. Since there wasn’t many shooters we decided to have one big squad. We took turns ROing and then after we shot we would send a couple of shooters back to start tearing down the last stage. This worked out pretty good and got us out of there at a decent time. Since it was super cold and we all had to work our tails off I decided not to video any of my stage runs. I wanted to focus on the task at hand and not worry about finding someone to video the stage runs. Since I had not shot in about 3 weeks I wasn’t sure how good or bad my performance would be anyway. Either way listed below are my stage runs.

Stage 1 – This is a long field course that I actually brought and setup for the match. Your gun was unloaded on a barrel in the middle of the stage and you had the option of starting on the extreme left or right of the stage. The targets were setup so you had to go to the extreme left, right and middle in order to engage all of the targets. I chose to start on the right and run to the extreme left as I loaded my pistol. I ran hard to the first position but fumbled with loading my mag way too long. I was standing at the first shooting position by the time I finally got the mag seated and ready to go. I think this killed at least a couple of seconds on my stage run. From the first shooting position you engaged two paper targets then two poppers then lastly a lay down target right in front of you. Reload as I headed to the middle then engage a string of six targets from right to left through two ports and between walls. My initial plan was to only do one reload as I moved to the middle position but I had a couple of makeup shots which blew out my plan so I reloaded again as I moved to the far right where I engaged two more paper, two poppers and the last lay down target. My shooting for this stage was a little too deliberate and slow then I tried to artificially speed up in the middle of the stage and was rewarded with a D zone hit. To be honest the first couple of shots out of the gun were somewhat of a surprise not having shot anything for three weeks. Its funny how quickly you forget what its like.

Stage 2 – This was another long field course with a good mixture of longer shots, movement and close blasting. The stage had two large shooting areas and all of your magazines had to come off of barrels placed around the stage. From the first shooting position you engaged one paper, four poppers and then another paper about 20 yards away which was blocked by a barrel in the second shooting position. There were about 5 people on our squad that either forgot about the long distance paper all together and got an FTE or remembered it as they started running to the second shooting area and had to back track to engage it. I didn’t understand why it was such a mental enigma for the shooters as I didn’t have any issues with it. When you were done with the first shooting position you grabbed your mag off a barrel and placed it in your belt as you hauled ass to the first shooting position in the second area. I was trying to put the mag into my front mag pouch but it wasn’t going in which slowed my aggressiveness in running due to the fumbling around. I should have just slapped it on my magnet mounted on the outside of my second mag pouch, but I was worried about it getting bumped off by the full out running to the shooting position. Fumbling with the magazine probably cost me a second on the stage. When I got to the first shooting position in the second area you engaged four low paper targets that had Zebra hard cover showing only a stripe of scoring zone down the head and body. You could shoot fast but it was risky due to the tight hard cover. After that a reload as you moved to the right to engage another zebra hard cover target followed by six targets as you advanced towards the final shooting position through a port. I felt like this was a pretty decent run in the shooting department. Without the magazine fumbling it would have been a really solid run.

Stage 3 – This was a medium stage with 8 targets setup in a horse shoe formation. Two double stacked barrels were in the front and back of the shooting area so you couldn’t see all of the targets from a single position. The targets had random hard cover on them in funky places and the stage mandated that you engage each target with three rounds. The hard cover mixed with the three rounds was a tight rope balance between going hoser crazy and aiming in a target spot that did not have hard cover. It was really easy to drop hits into the hard cover on this stage so I decided to take a little more time to aim hard to ensure my hits. My plan was pretty simple, engage one target on the left, then three on the right as I advanced forward. Reload, then finish the last four targets from one position. This resulted in a pretty decent run but a little too conservative. If I let it all hang out, I could have probably shot the stage at least two seconds faster. But I don’t know if all my hits would be in the brown.

Stage 4 – This was another standards kind of stage that I brought to the match. Three shooting boxes and you started in the middle box. There were seven targets setup in a V formation and they had increasingly harder shots the further out they got. The front middle target was fully open. The second row had hard cover up to the middle of the A-zone. The third row had a no shoots head blocking all but 25% of the bottom A-zone. Then the last row had the same no shoot setup but hard cover blocking the head and shoulders. The stage procedure had you engaging each target with 1 round from every shooting box. Since this stage is all about aiming hard and having confidence in your shot calling I decided not to shoot fast or slow but to instead break each shot as soon as I could call it good. When the buzzer went off I executed this plan perfectly. As soon as I could call the shot good I broke the shot. This resulted in an awesome run shoot way faster than everyone else. I finished the stage more than 4 seconds faster than everyone else and got all of my hits. Being able to shoot this confident and fast on these kind of shots is exactly what I need to perfect as this is what separates me from the solid GM’s. Its nice to get a taste of what I need to be doing on a regular basis.

Stage 5 – This was the classifier for the match. It was 09-12 called Any Given Sunday. I have not shot this classifier before but I figured that the best way to shoot it was to draw to the left middle target and then shoot left to right as I was moving my shoulders to the left. Then transition hard over to the final target on the left side of the barricade. My plan was solid, but after the buzzer went off my gun got jammed up in my holster during the draw. It took me three yanks to wrestle my gun out of the holster killing at least two seconds. By then I knew that the classifier was done so I shot the stage too fast at the start and then took my sweet time to finish it. I didn’t want the classifier to count against my average so I pretty much sand bagged it. When I was done shooting there was a miss on the first target so it didn’t even matter anyway.

Overall it was a cold but fun match. It was nice to be back out on the range with friends and having fun shooting stages. It didn’t take me long to get back in the “Saddle” from my break from shooting. The only thing that could have been better would have been warmer weather. Winter time is here though, even if we have not gotten a lot of snow, the cold finger shooting time is upon us.

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Sunday I shot another USPSA match. The night before I stayed up until about 2AM playing poker with my friends so when my alarm went off at 6AM I was not too excited about getting up. I forced myself to get up though as I was taking two other shooters up to the match and didn’t want to pull out of that responsibility. After taking a 5 Hour energy I was good to go for the day. When we got to the range it was about 35 deg, which isn’t exactly warm but it was a lot warmer that Saturday morning. This match had a lower attendance than normal with 42 shooters, but it was enough to have four squads of 10. With only 10 shooters on the squad I once again felt like it would be too much of a pain in the ass to film my runs so I didn’t get any stage footage. Listed below are my stage runs.

Stage 4 – This was a long stage with a lot of port work. This is the most technical stage of the match with four walls in a line that all had at least one port. There were poppers that would activate two swingers at once which could all be seen from multiple ports. So a solid stage plan would be needed in order to effectively complete the stage without double engaging the swingers. My plan was as simple as I could make it that kept me shooting most of the time. Being the first stage of the day I shot it a little tentative from a speed perspective which killed precious time but I was rewarded with really good points. I only had one hesitation on the stage run when I missed a popper and started to transition away from it before I realized it was a miss to I had to go back to it in order to make it up. With the slower shooting and missed popper I think I gave away about 2 seconds on this stage.

Stage 5 – This was a long stage with two shooting areas separated by about 20 yards. Both shooting areas had 8 paper targets setup in a line that were blocked by a sea of Christmas tree’s. The Christmas tree’s were considered soft cover so you could shoot through them. The tree’s were placed so that you couldn’t see all of the targets from any one position within each shooting position. So you were basically forced to shoot through some of the trees and do a little bit of hunting and pecking in order to gain visual access to all of the targets. On this kind of stage you could waste a significant amount of time bobbing and weaving looking for targets before shooting them so I chose a different approach. I picked one shooting position where I could see at least some part of most of the targets and by moving one step left or right I could see the remainder of the targets. The challenge with this plan was that for a lot of the targets the only thing I could see was a corner of a head or shoulder so I had to shoot solidly through a tree in order to hit the body. The key to this stage was hitting that special spot in both shooting areas and really hauling ass between shooting areas. I was able to hit my shooting positions well and pretty much used the “Force” to aim at where the body of the targets would be shooting through the tree’s. The funny thing about the stage run was that I was really happy with how well I dug in and hauled ass as fast as I could run between shooting positions. This stage run turned out well and I got all of my hits with only one D zone hit.

Stage 1 – This was a medium length stage were both sides were mirrored in target presentation. You started in the middle of the shooting area and had to move to the extreme left and right to gain access to all of the targets. Each side had four paper targets on the side, then three plates and two mini poppers. I shot the right side from right to left, then the left side from left to right. This was another type of stage where shooting longer distance tight shots quickly would really separate the men from the boys. My focus for this stage was to shoot as fast as I could call the shot valid and it paid off in spades. I was able to shoot quickly and accurately finishing a couple of seconds faster than the next closest Limited shooter.

Stage 2 – This was a speed shoot stage where you started on the right and engaged two paper targets then a popper that activated a standing clamshell target that dropped a no shoot away and back then finished on a partial paper on the far left. The shooting area was about 10 yards long and the key in shooting this stage was to keep moving to the left the whole time as you engaged the targets. The popper was rearward falling so the only way you could really speed up the timing of the stage was to engage the popper multiple times to make it go down faster. I started the stage with a poor grip but luckily the target was close, while transitioning to the second target I was able to fix my grip and get rocking for the rest of the stage run. I engaged the popper with three hits which helped speed up the opening of the clamshell target. Other than the botched grip I don’t think I could have shot this stage any better.

Stage 3 – This was the classifier stage for the match. This was classifier 99-08 called Melody Line. It’s a pretty basic stage where you turn draw and engage six targets with 1 round each, reload, then reengage them with another round. The 100% hit factor for this stage is pretty tuff. You have to shoot it in 6.4 seconds with all A’s in order to get 100%. This means that you must have zero hesitation or over aiming while shooting. When it was my turn I drew and started the first string and the third target in I called a miss high. I was pushing the limits on shooting fast and got bit for circumventing the fundamentals. I could have probably shot it faster and with more points if I simply suck with my normal plan of waiting to call every shot good. See what happened when you try to force “Trying” to go fast into the equation. Oh well, this was my only shooting penalty for the day and since it was a 60 point stage it wouldn’t hurt my overall match results too much.

This was a fun match and I really felt like my shooting was back to normal. It sucks that I screwed the pooch on both classifiers this weekend. My current classification average in Limited is at 92.1%. I am so close to earning the GM classification right now I can taste it. But I will have to wait until 2011 for that to happen since there are no more USPSA matches this year. If I keep working on shooting the further and tighter targets faster like I have been, I am sure that GM card will be coming in the mail sooner than later.

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frunkenstein> Thanks for the nice comments. I try my best to help others out when I can. I hope that your surgery goes well. After its done give yourself time to heal up and recover. The matches will always be there when you are ready to rumble again so don't over do it if you don't have to.

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I shot the indoor ICORE match down in Colorado Springs last night. My main goal for the evening was to test out my larger sights in the indoor lighting conditions. We shot two stages on the tombstone ICORE targets so it’s a little bit different than shooting on the standard USPSA targets. Both stages were pretty much the same just shot in different formats. The first stage we shot three separate strings of three targets from various positions. The first position was starting with your gun on the floor and you were laying prone. At the start you pick up your gun and engage three targets from under a wall. The second string you started behind a barricade and engaged three targets through a port in the barricade. The last string you started standing at the end of a wall with your hands touching the wall. At the start you stepped to the left and then engaged three targets. In separate strings this was pretty straight forward and easy. On the second stage we shot all three positions at once starting in reverse order. The shooting was not that difficult but I was happy with how much better I was able to see my sights and call my shots. I think that the bigger sight setup is a more productive setup than what I had before so I am going to convert my backup gun to the same configuration. Hopefully I have this sight situation figured out so I can get back to working on shooting better.

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What's you sight set up now versus what you had on the gun?

interested in what you are experiencing since I have been playing with some different thing too.

I was using a .090 front with a neon green FO, then a .120 rear notch.

Now I am using a .105 front with the same neon green FO, and a .140 rear notch. The front sight also has serrations on the front of it.

To me these two setups have the same proportion of light gap on the sides but I am able to pick up and focus on the front sight a lot easier in varied lighting conditions. I honestly don't know if this is because its bigger and there is more to see or if the serrations on the front sight help with reflecting light in a different way which makes it more pronounced in varying lighting conditions. Having the same small diameter FO rod but a wider front sight also seems to take my attention away from looking at the FO rod so I can see the outline edges of the front post better. The FO is still there to grab my attention but its not as overwhelming as it was on the .090 front sight.

I tried a .090 front, .140 rear setup but that had too much light gap on the sides and it felt like the front sight was swimming in a huge rear notch. That and some times I would be able to see holes appear on the target in the light gap between the front and rear sights and my brain would have a really hard time processing that information. When it would happen I would be like "WTF IS THAT!!!!???". Kind of like a windows blue screen event when it runs into a funky condition its not ready to deal with.

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Cha-Lee it will be a great pleasure to call you a GM. You deserve it and your willingness to help your fellow shooters adds to that honor.

A big + 1. Thanks for your help and insight this year.

Merry Christmas to you and yours.

Bill

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I was able to get in some live fire practice last night at a local indoor range. We setup two small stages and shot them multiple times using different start conditions and positions. The indoor range we were shooting at was somewhat dark as they had the lights at half mass. This was another good test of my new sight setup. Even though I wasn’t able to see the FO of my front sight lit up I was still able to pick out and see the front sight really well. This was really cool and helps build more confidence in being able to see my sights in less than optimal lighting. I shot about 100 rounds and that was good enough for me. It was nice to get some rounds down range as it seems like it has been forever since the last time I shot.

The winter months are upon us so the weekend shooting schedule is always up in the air depending on the weather. We are suppose to have a match on Sunday, but we have a cold front moving in that might force the match to cancel. If we do shoot it will probably be in the mid 30’s. Its not as fun to shoot when its cold, but it gives us all a chance to perfect our frozen trigger finger shooting skills.

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The Sunday match got canceled today so a couple of friends and I decided to go out and practice instead. I am really lucky to have a friend who has a private range at his disposal and we were able to use it today to get some live fire practice in. My buddy was able to plow about 5 inches of snow off the range so we could use it and by the time we got shooting the berm was pretty dry. It was about 35 – 40 degrees out so it wasn’t “Warm” but the wind wasn’t blowing much which made it not so bad. We setup five different stages and shot each one a couple of times using different plans. We had a lot of partial targets with hard cover and no shoots covering the majority of the targets. My main focus while shooting the stages was to not be intimidated by the tight shots and simply shoot as fast as I could call my shots. For the most part this worked out well and every shot that I called bad was in fact bad. I intentionally didn’t make up any of my marginal or bad called shots to see how far off my hits were and much to my surprise my bad called shots were only an inch or two into where they shouldn’t have been. My quest in shooting the long and tight shots faster will be a long road but today was a good start which produced a lot of good feedback.

After we shot the stages we finished the practice session with some more crazy accuracy stuff. Since I always want to push the envelope I decided that we should shoot the 6 inch plates at 125 yards from a freestyle shooting stance. This is well past the furthest distance we have tried it at before. When you look at 6 inch plates from 125 yards away they are SUPER tiny. The initial challenge was to shoot two 6 inch plates from 125 yards and only use 5 rounds to get your hits. We decided that it would be best to get some help from a spotter in order to help with figuring out the correct hold on the plates. When I brought the gun up and aligned the sights onto the plate for the first shot my front sight was huge in comparison. I fired my first 4 rounds slowly and missed with each shot but with the help of my spotter I was able to adjust my aiming point ever so slightly the 5th round hit its mark. I had to aim for the left center edge of the plate in order to hit it. Since I had figured out where to aim on the first run I was able to pick off both plates within 4 rounds the second time I tried it. This may sound dumb to others, but I never imagined that I would be able to shoot such a small target so consistently from so far away. It was really cool to be able to pick those plates off from so far away. After everyone gave it a go at 125 yards we decided to move back up to the 50 yard mark and try it again. After shooting the plates down from way further back shooting them at 50 yards seemed like a walk in the park. The one thing that was a little strange is that I had to use a 6 O’clock hold in order to hit the plates. I guess my bullet is still climbing at 50 yards when I sight it in at 20 yards. When using the 6 O’clock hold I was able to pick off the plates with out much effort. Its funny how shooting way outside your comfort zone but being able to succeed, such as shooting 6 inch plates at 125 yards, really puts things in perspective when you go back to the “Normal” short distances we shoot at. If we simply execute the proper fundamentals of shooting there should be NO reason why we should ever miss a target during a normal stage run.

It was a good practice and it was nice to shoot with friends. I still have a long way to go in honing my index, shot calling and execution of the fundamentals but today’s practice gets me one step closer to my end goal of shooting faster and more accurately on the longer and tighter shots. Tomorrow I plan on attending the indoor USPSA match down in Colorado Springs. More trigger time in match conditions is always a good thing.

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I attended an indoor USPSA match last night. Since the weather has been cold and the outdoor matches have been canceled the indoor match bought in a lot of shooters. We shot two stages, one field course and a classifier, and it was a lot of fun. I didn’t get any video of my stage runs, even though I wish I had. I have been trying to build my confidence in shooting further and tighter shots faster and this match had a good mixture of both. In the past I struggled a LOT with seeing my front sight effectively at this indoor range so it was also a good test of my new bigger sight setup.

Stage 1 – This was the medium size field course that had you starting on the extreme left then moved to the middle and right engaging targets through ports. In the first position you had three paper, two totally open and one with a no shoot blocking most of the lower A zone. Then you moved to the middle position which was a barricade with a narrow port in it. Here you engaged 5 targets at varying distances all of which had the same level of no shoot blocking most of the bottom portion of the target. This middle section is where I really wanted to execute quickly and solidly because it is exactly what I need to improve on. After the middle section you reloaded and headed to the far right and engaged three more targets, two open and one no shoot blocked through a small barrel port. I shot the first section well then nailed the middle section shooting quickly and efficiently. My splits and transitions in the middle section were fast but also in control. I shot as fast as I would have engaged fully open targets. At the last position I missed my footing position slightly and this combined with shooting a lower port disturbed my ability to effectively manage the recoil while shooting so I had to engage the final no shoot target with 4 rounds. The front sight was tracking very inconsistently and every time a shot broke I called it bad or marginal. I need to work on this type of shooting position the next time I do some live fire. It felt like I wasn’t crouched low enough and tried to get lower by bending forward at the waist. But I am thinking that this situation was magnified by the right hand wall being right next to me which kept me from having a wide stance to get lower.

Stage 2 – This was classifier 03-04 called 3-V. I have shot this classifier at 100% in the past and know the pace of shooting needed to do well, but it didn’t go so well this time. I usually shoot this stage engaging four targets from the right side of the barricade shooting right to left, then three targets from the left side of the barricade shooting left to right. At the start I drew and then broke the first shot early calling it a miss and since this is a Virginia Count stage I couldn’t make it up and basically gave up on the stage after the first missed shot. Since I already blew a good run out of the water I simply threw the rest of the rounds down range and ended up with another miss on the left side along with some really crappy points. I know I can shoot this classifier a lot better, but it just didn’t work out this time around. Hopefully I can get a rematch on it sooner than later.

Overall my match was OK. I shot the first stage well and executed on my goal of shooting the middle section quickly. My second stage sucked but I can at least be safe knowing that it will not screw up my classification average. My new bigger sight setup worked well. I think this is going to be my new sight setup standard as it seems to work well in a wide range of lighting conditions. I just wish that I had this sight configuration out at the Area 2 match in November. Oh well, that is what experiencing lessons like that are for right?

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