CHA-LEE's Tale

[dagger10k]

Congratulations!

[Chris iliff]

Congrats! I read your posts and advice you give and it is all great. Hopefully one day we'll share a squad. Way to go getting the GM!!!!

[Chris iliff]

Congrats! I read your posts and advice you give and it is all great. Hopefully one day we'll share a squad. Way to go getting the GM!!!!

[Leozinho]

Congrats on GM and the improvement on your neck!

I had a herniated C4/C5 last summer, complete with numbness in arm and loss of strength due to the pinched nerve. It healed without surgery.

[Hannu]

Just noticed "GM" after your name in todays match results I am just slow as usual...

Anyway: Congrats !!

Edited March 20, 2011 by Hannu

[Hannu]

What do you do, when shooting feels too easy ? Just remove rear sight blade and it gets alot more difficult: "...rear sight blade is just slowing my slide cycle..."

I am kidding, right ? No, it was CHA-LEE today in Weld County match - what a great attitude

[CHA-LEE]

Hannu> Thanks for the complement and Video. Shooting that stage with no rear sight was challenging for sure but fun. I just feel like a bone head for not bringing a replacement rear blade so I could fix it. I have a spare at home, but that doesn't do me any good when I am at the range

[CHA-LEE]

I felt well enough to shot both USPSA matches this weekend. I am glad to report that my neck didn’t give me any grief with all the shooting this weekend. On Saturday I shot ok on most stages but had some challenges. On the second stage of the match it was a super hoser stage that was very time biased and when I pushed in the mag release button for the reload the mag didn’t drop free so I had to rip it out. When I tried to put in the new mag I flubbed the load and it went flying so I had to grab another mag off my belt. This wasted at least 3 seconds on the stage and murdered my hit factor. On the classifier we shot a multi string stage where you had to shoot freestyle reload then finish one handed. Once again I flubbed the reload on the first string and after that I simply gave up on the stage. The last stage of the day was a huge box to box stage where you had the option of going to all four boxes and engage targets close or only do three boxes and engage a quarter of the targets from far away. I tried to shoot the stage from far away and ended up missing on a small 25 yard plate 4 – 5 times which killed that run. I should have run to all four boxes and shot the targets close. Oh well, lessons learned. I didn’t film any of my stage runs as I wanted to focus on my shooting. One really cool thing about this match is that I was able to shoot some SICK on target splits (.09 - .10) for the fast shooting stages. I wasn’t even really “Trying” to shoot fast either.

On Sunday I went to another USPSA match up north about 60 miles away. We got to the range and checked out the stages then pulled out our gear to get ready and I noticed that my gun wasn’t in my range bag. I left it at home by accident. Luckily my lady was nice enough to meet me half way so I could get it and head back to the range. By the time I got back to the range my squad was almost done with their first stage. I had to basically jump out of the car, throw on my gear and then immediately shoot the stage. This didn’t work out too bad but my stage run was a little choppy without having the time to burn it in properly. The next stage was where I made a significant stage plan error trying to shoot 22 rounds before a reload and it included 6 plates. I missed on one of the plates and had to do an unplanned reload which killed time. The next stage I ended up ROing all the way up until it was my turn and since it was a “simple” stage I didn’t really bake in a stage plan and ended up paying dearly for it. So far my match was pretty much going down the toilet and the next stage up was the classifier. I start the classifier and on my third shot in the blade on the rear sight breaks off so all I am left to aim with is a front sight post. No rear sight plus some 18 yard partial targets equals some hurting hits and misses. I recently switched range bags and took out the spare rear sight blade so I was up the creek without a paddle on the last stage. I had to shoot the last stage of the match without a rear sight basically using only the front sight and the “Force” to make sure I got my hits. Needless to say it was iffy since I couldn’t even call my shots but instead “Hope” that my hits would be there. I ended up with two misses on this stage, one on the first swinger and the other on a right hand target towards the end while shooting on the move. The video above that Hannu posted is this last stage run with no rear sight. I tried my best to blow off all of this adversity and have some fun while helping out others with working the match. I felt that I did good with rolling with the punches but it was still a bummer. This match was one of the worst cluster F#CK matches I have ever produced. What a train wreck. Hopefully I have used up all my bad luck for 2011 in one match.

[frunkenstein]

Hey Cha-lee isnt that twice you forgot the gun? Well I'll have to be first to admit that even without a rear sight you still shoot better than myself and quit a few others WTG. See you at AGC My partner and I have planned some practice for me and my new shooting style with a bionic hip. The main thing is I need to go back to basics. See you there.

[CHA-LEE]

On Sunday I was the Match Director for a local match. We were able to get all of the stages setup on time with a bunch of help from the local shooters. I didn’t get any time to check out the stages from a competitor standpoint so once again I was stuck with figuring them out on the fly. I had to do a lot of running around during the match solving issues and trying to make sure that the match went smoothly so my mind wasn’t really on the shooting. That and I had to use my backup gun due to replacing the rear sight on my primary gun but not having time to sight it in before the match. I didn’t film any of my stage runs because I felt that it wouldn’t matter given the situation. Below are the stages as I shot them.

Stage 4 – This was a box to box stage that had 5 paper targets that you had to engage one shot on each from each box. The boxes were setup at 10, 15, and 25 yards and you had to shoot weak hand only in the last box. To cap it off it was Virginia count so you had to make every shot count. I shot the stage pretty good in the first two boxes but in the last box I was struggling with the weak hand shooting. I got all my hits but the weak hand portion collected a lot of D’s. I think I was just trying to force the shooting too fast. I wasn’t giving the gun enough time to settle after the shot broke and I transitioned to the next target. I need to work on my weak hand shooting in the next practice session. I have been neglecting it for quite some time and it shows.

Stage 3 – This was classifier 09-07 called “Its not Brain Surgery”. You start seated in a chair with your gun loaded on a table in front of you. At the start you pick up the gun and engage three head shot only targets at 10 yards with 2 rounds each. At the buzzer I picked up the gun and started shooting quickly. I called a marginal low shot on each target so I ended up with three makeup shots. When the shooting was over I was greeted with some mega hurting hits. On the first target I had three hits on the target, one in the lower B zone, another half way in the B and half way in the back and then another about half an inch down into the black. The second target had two hits in the lower B zone then another on the perf of the B zone and the No Shoot. On the last target I had one in the B zone and then two about an inch low in the black. When you have a miss and a no shoot on a 30 point stage its pretty much going to be a Zero and that’s just what it was. I was aiming for the A zone in the head so I think that my backup gun is sighted in a little low. This is just something that I was going to have to deal with for the match because I didn’t have time to sight it in. But I will have to address this during the next practice session.

Stage 5 – This was a huge 40 round field course. There were 5 different arrays of four paper targets. You could start anywhere in the shooting area and get as close to the targets as you wanted. I came up with an aggressive stage plan that had me running and gunning most of the time. At the start of the stage I was having a really solid run. I was shooting fast and smooth then really hauling ass between shooting positions. Due to the target arrangement I had to do two reloads. My plan had be doing the second reload as I ran hard to the last shooting position but this is where disaster stuck. I dropped my hand down to grab my second mag and it was missing. I looked down and my whole belt was missing on the left side. The Velcro had come undone and the whole left side of my gun belt was hanging behind me like a monkey tail. Out of desperation I frantically grabbed behind me trying to feel for a mag and lucky for me I was able to grab one, reload and finish the stage. Needless to say this cost me at least 4 – 5 seconds on the stage so it blew what would have been an awesome run. When I got done shooting I was greeted by a whole squad of smiling and laughing shooters. I guess its really entertaining to watch a fat kids gun belt fall half way off then try to reload from the dangling end. I laughed about it myself as it was funny. I just wish I had this run on video. I am sure it would have been epic entertainment!!!

Stage 1 – This was a 22 round speed shoot stage with some technical movement while shooting needed. You started on the front left of the stage then had to engage one target down range then engage three left side targets as you retreat to the back left side. Them move hard to the right and engage three targets as you step on a step pad to expose a disappearing target. Then advance diagonally to the middle front as you engaged four more paper targets. Since this stage allowed you to do a lot of shooting on the move I chose to shoot everything one for one and not do a reload. This worked out well and the only hesitation I had was a slight waiting for the DT to expose its self. Other than that it was a very solid run. I think that shooting this stage without a reload was an advantage and I did my best to exploit it.

Stage 2 – This was an interesting long field course. It had some long distance poppers on the right hand stage and the shooting area moved away from it as you went down range. So you had the choice of engaging it first or trying to lean sideways and engage it half way down the stage where you could be otherwise running. I chose to draw to the poppers first then engage four close paper targets on the right. After this you stepped on a step pad and engaged a swinger followed by a one paper target on the left as you started hauling ass forward. Reload as you ran forward and then engage 5 paper targets through a port. Given my prior mediocre stage runs I knew that if I hit a home run on this stage it would give me a really good chance to win the match. So I let it all hang out. I shot the front half of the stage great then ran forward and when chainsaw crazy trying to finish fast and ended up with a miss. My stag time was awesome, but with a miss it pretty much nullified the fast time. I knew I was going to be in trouble on the back half when I was looking at the targets while shooting them instead of my sights. I hoped that all of my hits would be there but they came up short. Same old lesson relearned at least for the 100th time.

The match its self ran like a well oiled machine. All of the shooters were happy with the stages and there was very minimal log jam of the squads between berms. From a match director perspective, I don’t think it could have run much better or smoother. Its really nice to see a match run the way its intended to. My shooting performance on the other hand left a lot to be desired. I ended up 2nd in Limited only 20 match points back from the winner. To be honest, I was really surprised that I ended up that close with zeroing the classifier, reloading from my half removed gun belt, having a miss, then to top it all off shooting my backup gun which didn’t feel exactly like my primary gun. Oh well, these are all more lessons learned and gives me more stuff to work on in practice

[CHA-LEE]

I just noticed that my range diary now has over 20,000 views

I never thought that there would be so much interest in people looking at my range diary. Hopefully what I post here helps others shoot better as well

[CHA-LEE]

I had a busy weekend of shooting. On Saturday I was able to get out to the range for some live fire practice. I went out with a couple of friends and we setup some basic accuracy biased stages to run through multiple times. We had some small 3 inch steel plates to use so we set those up at about 20 yards away which made for some very challenging shots. These little plates were eating my lunch even though I would take extra time to aim hard and press the shot off cleanly so I knew that I had a sight misalignment issue. Sure enough my rear sight was off causing a point of impact deviation about 3 – 4 inches to the right. After I got the sights realigned the little steel was still a challenge but a lot easier to hit than before. We also did some shooting one the move practice and I noticed that I had a strange sight tracking situation during recoil. This turned out to be due to me shooting with by arms bent too much. I started forcing myself to shoot with straighter arms and the sight tracking and hit consistency got way better. I think I have been lulled back into shooting with bent arms and try to manage the recoil with muscles instead of my bones and tendons. This was something that I had to consciously think about the rest of the training session. Towards the end of the training I had a case head separation which wiped out my extractor. This was very unexpected as the last time I had one of these was about a year and a half ago. It sucked to lose an extractor but I would rather it happen during practice verses during a stage run in a match.

[CHA-LEE]

This Sunday I shot a USPSA match. Once again this is the match that I have to help setup and run so lots of focus was put into running the match and not my shooting. The weather was suppose to be nice in the morning and then turn for the worse in the afternoon so we all hoped to get the match done before the bad weather rolled in. We were not that lucky though and had to finish the match in a full force snow storm. That was the worse weather match I have ever attended. We literally had to scrape the wet snow off each target to score them then try to mark the hits with pens or markers because there was no way that we could tape them. This poor weather tested the will of everyone but only a few bailed before the match was over. We have some HARDCORE shooters here in Colorado for sure!!!

Due to setting up, running the match, and dealing with the weather my own shooting performance was horrible. I honestly wanted to quit after the second stage in the match. I just wasn’t into it and couldn’t focus on my stage plans or while shooting. This resulted in a total of 8 misses and three No Shoots for the match. What a train wreck. I am starting to learn that there is no way I can expect to perform to the best of my ability when I am responsible for working the match. I have thought about this long and hard and I am going to step down from the board of the club at the end of the year. By the end of the year I will have dedicated about two and a half years to helping run these matches. That is enough for me and its time for others to step up to take on the challenge of running the matches. I don’t want to keep helping with this match until I am totally burned out and want to quit shooting all together. I just need to find the right balance of helping out but not over doing it to a point where it burns me out. I know for sure that I can’t achieve a healthy work/play balance in the situation I am currently in. So some kind of change will need to happen eventually.

[CHA-LEE]

Monday evening I went down to Colorado Springs to shoot the indoor USPSA match. We shot two stages, one box to box field course and a classifier. My buddy Matt and I made a pact on the way down to focus on seeing our sights as we both have been fighting this lately. We both had a chuckle at saying that we were going to be doing some “Sight Seeing” that night. I wanted to film our stage runs but Matt didn’t want to film his runs as he thought it would distract him. I didn’t want to bother anyone else with having to film my stage runs so I didn’t film mine either. Listed below are break down of the stages.

Stage 1 – This was a 16 round stage with three shooting boxes. From the first box you engaged 4 open paper targets at varying distances then moved to the middle box. In the middle box you had the choice of engaging only one target or two. I chose to only engage one target as it allowed you to not “hang out” in the middle box long wasting time. Then in the last box you engaged three targets though a small port. My main goals during the stage run were to keep my arms straight and call my shots. I achieved both of these goals in the first two boxes but in the last box I failed to keep my arms straight enough causing the funky recoil situation. I think this was due to having to shooting from a low crouched position holding the gun a lot higher than I normally would. I need to practice this shooting stance the next time I go out. Overall it was a decent run. I had three extra shots due to calling some marginal and making them up. On those targets I still had three hits but made up D’s with C’s or A’s. So I succeeded in my quest to do some “Sight Seeing” on that stage.

Stage 2 – This was classifier 99-23 called Front Sight. This is a two string classifier with the first starting up range with your wrists above your shoulders. Then the second string you start facing the targets with your hands at sides. I shot both strings in control and as aggressive as I dared knowing that it was a Virginia Count stage and no make up shots could be taken. I ended up with a total time of 5.12 second down 9 points. I thought that this would be an “OK” result but was surprised to it coming in at 74% nationally. You really need to burn this classifier down to get even close to a GM score.

Overall I was really happy with my performance that night. I achieved my goals of keeping my arms out and seeing my sights on both stages. I just need to keep that level of diligence on these fundamentals in future matches.

[eerw]

Big Panda..you got some WICKED trigger on the first stage...

good to you run and gun!!

[CHA-LEE]

eerw> I try to make it entertaining for all that watch Plus those targets scared Matt so bad it made him fall down during his stage run. I had to show those targets who they were screwing with

[CHA-LEE]

Here are some of my stage runs from last Sundays match. I was only able to film a few stages due to the weather turning for the worse and soaking everything. This was my suck tacular match with lots of penalties. But I figure I have to post the bad along with the good so here it is......

Stage 3 – This was an interesting stage that I actually came up with and setup. You had to shoot four paper targets from under the center wall then engage paper and steel targets on both sides of the stage. Both sides were pretty much mirror setups. I shot under the wall and the left side well but sucked on the right side. I had an Alpha Mike No Shoot on the first target I engaged on the right side then a Charlie Mike on the second target. This is what I get for trying to point shoot the targets instead of looking at the sights. OUCH!!!

Stage 4 – This was actually my only decent stage run of the match. It was a speed shoot stage with a couple of different options on how to shoot it. I picked a plan that kept me shooting the whole time and it paid off.

Stage 5 – This was classifier CM 09-03 called “Oh No”. Lots of tight shots truncated by no shoots on this stage. That combined with a loaded gun table start made it pretty painful. I have an extended mag release button and when I set the gun on its side its resting right on the mag release so if I push down on the gun at all while picking it up it will pop the mag out. This leads to a super ginger and slow pick up process in order to keep the mag in the gun. I ended up with two mike no shoots on this stage, both on the middle target. I think both of them are from mashing the trigger because they were low left hits about an inch into the white. Yuck once again.

Stage 1 – This was a fairly straight forward medium field course. I got pulled into the left hand port and this screwed up my position for the right hand targets. By this time in the match the poor weather was really starting to roll in and you can see the partly foggy windy conditions in the video. I ended up with a miss on the far right target in the left side port. One of my hits was about half an inch in the black. So yet another miss to add to the tally. Right after this stage run the rain and snow started to fall and it turned absolutely miserable the rest of the match.

[CHA-LEE]

This Saturday I was able to attend a USPSA match at a new range/club in eastern Colorado. This is the club’s second match and it was fun but once again mother nature handed out an afternoon beat down. In the morning the weather was awesome, it was mid 60’s with very little wind and clear skies. We were all loving it until out of no where the wind kicked up and the desert sand storms plagued us the rest of the match. We had a constant 30mph wind with gusts up to 50mph. We literally got sand blasted the second half of the day by flying sand and dirt. The sand and dirt was getting into everyone’s gear and guns causing all kinds of problems. The open gun guys were screwed. Those guns are finicky as is, but add a bunch of sand to the equation and it’s a nightmare. I even seen a couple of Glocks jam up which tells you how bad it really was. My EAA limited gun has never been finicky about running dirty and it soldiered on without a single hiccup. Matches like these are what separates the truly reliable guns from the marginally reliable ones. We shot 6 big stages and I consumed more than 200 rounds in the match so there was a boat load of blasting. This high round count actually caught quite a few shooters off guard and there were a lot of people begging and borrowing ammo to finish the match. I always bring 300 rounds to each club match so I was covered. I was able to only film three of my stage runs. Once the wind kicked up it was “Batten Down The Hatches” time and I didn’t want to risk damaging my camera trying to film the stage runs in the sand storm. Listed below are my stage runs in the order that I shot them.

Stage 2 – This was a fairly easy stage with a bunch of ports and hoser distance targets. I had trigger freeze a couple of times when I “Tried” to go fast. No surprise there. I was more disappointed in how I got sucked into every port. This wasted time on each port getting into and out of the shooting positions. I should have stayed further back in the shooting area. My time wasn’t stellar, but I had decent hits. Other guys on my squad tried pushing the speed too much and ended up with misses on some of these close targets.

Stage 3 – This was a 41 round stage that had a shooting area that went straight forward about 20 yards. There were 5 separate goups of 4 targets setup on the extreme left and right of the shooting area with a generous helping of no shoots mixed in. Then a single popper straight ahead of the shooting area. The best plan of attack was to simply walk at a slow pace forward as you engaged the target groups on the left and right. Since the targets were grouped in fours it wasn’t friendly to 20 round mags and you would be forced to make two reloads if you wanted to engage all four targets in each group at once. This is what most people did during their stage runs, but I figured that it made more sense to save a reload and load up 21+1 then reload and rack to finish the stage. This meant that I had to shoot three of the four targets in the third group of targets then reload, rack, and reengage the last target in that group. There was plenty of time to keep moving forward while doing this so I didn’t see it as too much of a log jam. But it also meant that I had to shoot 22 rounds one for one with no make ups on the first 11 targets. This was some what of a risky plan given all of the no shoots and tight shots while shooting on the move. I embraced my plan and executed it perfectly which resulted in my best stage run of the match. Too bad I didn’t video tape it…….. OOOOPS!!!

Stage 4 – This was another 40 round stage which forced you to do two reloads. You started forward and had to engage 8 poppers, half full size and half small. Reload, then engage four targets on both the right and left ports. Reload again and engage two targets through the right port as you moved to the far right and then engage two targets on the far right. Then finally haul ass to the far left and finish the last four targets. I started the stage strong, mowing down the steel quickly only needing one makeup shot. Then I went to do my reload and it the mag missed the magwell and I had to catch it mid air. When I caught it the bullets were facing back towards me so I had to flip it back around before I could load it in the gun. This whole reloading fiasco got me pissed off and I pretty much gave up on the stage run. I chain sawed the rest of the targets not caring much about the result. This lack of respect gave me a miss on the back right port about an inch into the hard cover. I should have buckled down and shot the rest of the stage solidly, but I let the fumbled reload fluster me. I have to stop doing this as it will bite me in the ass at a big match.

Stage 5 – This was a 32 round field course. You started on the left side and engaged four paper then moved to a port and finished two more paper. Reload and then engage two low paper and four steel. The four steel were two big poppers with two little ones behind so you had to wait for the big poppers to fall before engaging the little ones. My plan was to reload to a 21 round magazine and finish the stage but that required to shoot 20 rounds after the reload. I chewed up that buffer by missing the steel a bunch of times so I had to do an unplanned reload after the middle section. I tried to push hard after that to make up lost time and finished the stage strong. I wish that I had not screwed up my stage plan on this one by missing so much, but it is what it is. I am glad that I was able to think on my feet quickly and throw in an extra reload after the middle section. This was the last stage I was able to video due to the wind and sand storm. By the time we were done with this stage the wind was blowing full force. It was strange because it was totally calm and then out of no where BAM super nonstop wind.

Stage 6 – This was the classifier CM 08-01 called 4 Bill Drill. This classifier has two strings. The first string is draw and engage any target with 6 rounds, reload and engage another target with 6 rounds strong hand only. The second string is draw and engage any target with 6 rounds, reload and engage another target with 6 rounds weak hand only. By this time the wind was howling and it was moving you around while shooting. I shot this stage the best I could given the windy conditions but ended up with a miss on one of the far targets. I also ran into a trigger issue on the weak hand portion. If I push my trigger in with a right side bias it does not go back far enough to drop the hammer due to the over travel screw creating a dimple in the frame. If the over travel screw hits outside of this dimple it does not go back far enough to drop the hammer. I had to pull and repull the trigger 3 – 4 times to finish the weak hand portion before I could fire all 6 shots. I need to fix this before heading out to Texas as they have a significant weak hand section on a stage. No video of this run due to the wind.

Stage 1 – This was the final stage of the match. It was a 24 round stage where you started with a loaded gun on a table and then you were seated on a bucket. There were four targets in the middle that forced you to dig deep into the middle to access all of the targets. Then you had to run to the far left and right to engage three close paper and two poppers further away. I shot the stage well but needed a couple of makeup shots on the steel. Once again I am not too surprised because of the wind pushing you around while shooting. I got all of my hits so I was happy.

Overall the stages were very hoser biased with a ton of rounds needed. The wind and sand storm conditions were down right brutal. I was VERY glad to be using the Zyon sunglasses made by Rudy Project. These are a lot more wrap around and block the wind from just about any direction. They were priceless in these windy and sandy conditions. I need to fully clean my gun after this sandy match. This is fine because I need to tune up the trigger a little bit to resolve the weak hand trigger pull issue anyway.

[BritinUSA]

I spent nearly three hours cleaning my gun on Sunday after this match. My trigger is now hosed up completely, I had sand/fine grit all over the sear, trigger, disconnector, I think I may have bent the trigger bow when I was squeezing the trigger so hard to try and get it to fall, without realising that the problem was with the trigger not resetting.

[CHA-LEE]

BritinUSA> When I ROed you on the last stage and your gun was stuck in your holster because of all the sand I was like "HOLLY CRAP!!!". If a fairly simple race holster like that can get jammed up I think a sear and hammer are going to be in big trouble. Its matches like that which make me happy to NOT have a tight fitting gun. My gun has a fair amount of slop and runs no matter if its full of sand or not

[MarkCO]

Took me an hour to clean my Glock! I usually only clean once every 10K rounds or so. I think the magwell facing into the wind was the biggest problem.

[MoNsTeR]

My open gun amazingly did not miss a beat, even on the last stage. I did have to spend a ton of time cleaning it though, and it was clean when the match started!

[CHA-LEE]

Last night I shot an evening indoor match in Boulder. We shot 4 total stages and it was fun except for me being very challenged with seeing my sights. This range has a long target wall where we placed all of the targets. The targets are lit up really well but all of the shooting positions have poor lighting. So when you index your sights onto a target your eyes are drawn to the fully lit up targets and the sights are a super blurry mess. I tried forcing myself to pull my focus back but even when I did it was still really blurry and I couldn’t even seen the fiber optic in my front sight. Since I knew that seeing my sights was a lost cause I chose to try and point shoot the targets through the match. This worked out pretty good for the full and half targets but it killed me on the head shot only targets. We used classifier 09-14 called Eye of the Tiger which is three head shots. I ended up with 4 misses on this stage simply because I couldn’t see my sights and tried to point shoot it. Oh well. It is what it is. My whole goal in attending this match was to test fire my gun after cleaning it and fixing the trigger so it would function correctly shooting weak hand only. The gun ran flawlessly and its ready to rumble for this weekends big match. I am heading down to Houston Texas on Saturday to attend the Space City Championship. We are going to check out the stages on Saturday then shoot the whole match on Sunday. I am really excited about having a chance to shoot at a new match and new range. The weather forecast is looking really good as well so it should be an awesome weekend for shooting and having fun. My performance goal at this match is to finish in the top 3. It’s a lofty goal but I think its achievable.

[MarkCO]

Best wishes for the match. I know you can do it!

[CHA-LEE]

I got back from the Space City Challenge on Monday. What a great match. They had 8 fun stages to shoot and the weather was awesome. I guess in the past they had rain issues but this year the skies were clear so we were all in for some great shooting weather. We flew in on Saturday and spent most of the day at the range checking out the stages and getting our plans down. All of the stages had a good balance of fast and slow shooting so it was a pretty good skills test. The one thing that was really cool is that seven out of the eight stages had at least 4 pieces of steel but usually more. This match does a random drawing prize table on Saturday after the shooting is done so people don’t have to wait around too long on Sunday. I thought that was really cool. We were scheduled to shoot the whole match on Sunday in half size squads so we didn’t have a boat load of time to chit chat or screw around while shooting the match. I was able to film all but one of my stage runs for this match, but the bummer is that I had the camera set on a close up focus setting so the video’s are a little blurry. Oh well, at least I was able to get the runs filmed. Listed below are the stages in the order that I shot them.

Stage 2 – This was a long field course with a bunch of timing stuff. In the first shooting position you engaged a popper that activated two clam shells then the second clamshell started a Texas Star spinning in the second shooting position. Some guys were jumping to the right to engage the star first while it was still stationary then coming back to the first position, but that wasted a lot of time. I rocked the first shooting position and then got eaten alive by the texas star. The easiest way to stop it from spinning was to pick off one of the top plates first then work your way down. I slung 5 shots at the star before connecting with the first plate and that got be pretty flustered. I tried my best to push through the rest of the stage and kind of over did it at the end of the stage by trying to shoot some of the targets by looking at the target instead of the sights. I was rewarded with a flier right into a No Shoot for that laps in judgment. Even though I sucked on this stage I thought it was actually a good thing to start the match off with a firm punch to the chops. This made me respect the rest of the stages a lot more.

Stage 3 – This was a port to port stage. The key to this stage was to not get sucked into the middle ports or that would waste a lot of time by moving more and hunting for targets. You were forced to go to the far right port first to engage a mini popper that activated a double scissor style swinger that was only visible through the second port. So basically you shot the stage from right to left while trying not to crowd the ports. Each port had some tight and open shots so you had to mix up your shooting speed quite a bit. I had some extra shots on this stage but they were all needed. I ended up with a decent time along with decent hits and was happy with the stage run.

Stage 4 – This stage was a really basic stage. You start with an unloaded gun on the barrel then engaged a bunch of paper targets on the left and right then a polish plate rack at the end. The left and right paper at the start was a little tricky because you could overrun the left side if you were not careful. The other thing that was odd about this stage is that the polish plate rack was a knock off version and didn’t have a built in counter weight in the middle that would cause it to spin erratically once it got off balance. It pretty much just spun one direction or the other and that was it. So the shooting order of the plates was different than a normal polish plate rack. At the start of the stage, I got a funky grip on the gun and had to shoot from a strange grip through the first mag which affected my shooting speed and hits. I was able to regrip the gun during the reload so I finished the stage the best I could. I had some extra shots on the plate rack but I thought it went pretty good. This was a decent run as well.

Stage 5 – This stage was a challenge from a couple of different fronts. The first challenge is that it used the “Turtle” targets and you had to engage 6 of them from the back of the stage which was about 25 – 30 yards away. The stage forced you to run flat out from one side to the other as well as back to the middle. There really was only one way of shooting the stage so it really came down to shooting and running speed to make up any time. I noticed that a lot of shooters were taking forever to shoot the long shots and they were only giving the running a half ass effort so my main goals for the stage were to crank out the rounds from the back of the stage quickly and then really haul ass during the running portions. I could run the two front and middle shooting positions with one mag using 20 rounds with no make ups and that was my initial plan, but there was plenty of time to do reloads before and after the middle section of the stage. I told myself to shoot the back left and right sections as fast as I could call solid hits without over aiming and if I did make up shots I would just do a reload before heading to the middle. This plan worked out well for me. I ended up with a lot of makeup shots which killed time but I would rather have makup shots but get all of my hits verses have misses. My plan paid off for this stage and I ended up winning it by a significant margin.

Stage 6 – This stage was some what of a memory stage. You could start anywhere in the shooting area but were forced to engage 6 inline mini poppers though a port at the back of the stage so that is where everyone started. After the steel you had to engage a bunch of targets on the left and back parameter of the stage. Most of the targets were blocked by walls with no shoots or hard cover on them. They were also placed in a way that wouldn’t allow you to see them all from any one given shooting position so you had to engage some of them on the move but it was tricky because of all the tight shots. I kicked around some ideas of starting forward on the stage and then backing up as I engaged the targets, ending on the steel, but it just didn’t flow and was a fairly complicated plan to program. So I took a more conservative plan that was easy to program but required some tight shots on the move. I figured that I would do more damage by trying a risky plan and MAYBE ending up with a better run but had a lot more risk of ending up with a bunch of misses or no shoots. I was able to execute my plan fairly well. I wish I was a little more patient on the steel but its hard to not chain saw some rounds at a big row of steel when there is nothing else to do.

Stage 7 – This was classifier 06-03 called Can you Count. This is an insane hoser classifier with two strings of five rounds reload five rounds. On my first string I actually jumped the gun a little bit on the start and then did a double pump on drawing the gun. This got me all worked up so I shot the first target erratically then when I reloaded and regripped the gun I pushed the mag release with the palm of my weak hand which dislodged the mag after the first round so I had to tap and rack before going again. The first string was blown taking almost 6 seconds to complete. The second string went well but the damage was already done. I lost about 20 match points on this stage due to the first string bumbling. The video only shows my second string.

Stage 8 – This stage was a simple steel only stage. You had to engage one plate rack and the middle popper, reload, then engage the second plate rack weak hand only. I tried to “Hurry” on the first side so I ended up with a bunch of makeup shots. Then after the reload I ran into the same failure to drop the hammer when I pull the trigger issue that I thought I fixed before leaving for the match. I had to double pull the trigger on the second plate before it fired and this killed a couple of seconds. So another lack luster run which cost me another 15 match points.

Stage 1 – This was a funky stage with a back pack that you had to either have in your hand or on one of the barrels at the front of the stage while you were shooting. The back pack had a couple of heavy bricks in it so it was too heavy to carry in your mouth. It also didn’t make sense to thrown it up on your shoulder as that took a long time to get it up and off your shoulder. I figured the best plan of attack was to grip one of the bricks by the side of the back pack and shoot the front 8 targets strong hand only. Then dump the back pack on the barrel, reload and finish the two plate racks through the ports. This was a really conservative plan because it forced an almost standing reload near the front of the stage after shooting the strong hand only section, but I seen a LOT of guys throw the back pack down on the barrel and it would bounce and fall off. By holding the bag by the brick you could place the back pack on the barrel smoothly and quickly and not worry about it bouncing off. I have always been confident with my strong hand only shooting so I knew I wouldn’t lose much if any time by shooting the front half one handed. My plan went off without a hitch and I knocked it out of the park winning the stage by three seconds. Unfortunately my camera man forgot to film this stage run so there is no video of this run.

Overall I feel that I had a good match. I had some technical execution issues on three of the stages but only had one no shoot penalty for the match. I ended up in second place at 96% of the winner Paul Clark Jr who is a bad ass in Limited. I achieved my goal of finishing in the top 3 for this match. I wish I could have eliminated the minor screw ups as that would have put me in contention for the match win, but there is no such thing as an error free match. It was nice to compete at a GM level my first big match after earning the card though. This was a really fun match to attend and I will be back again next year