CHA-LEE's Tale

[MarkCO]

Congrats!

[RangerTrace]

I wish I would have had the chance to meet you at the SCC! Congratulations on your finish!

[Chris iliff]

Hey man, thanks for the stage breakdowns!! Come back and post any time!

[CHA-LEE]

Fortrax> Any time buddy. I will keep an eye on your range diary and try to pitch in with what I can. Keep up the good shooting!!!

[CHA-LEE]

This past Saturday I was the Match Director at the match close to me. Once again a lot of work went into setting up and running the match. But we got a bunch of help to make it happen. We also didn’t have as many shooters as normal so it made for a shorter than normal day of shooting. This was actually a good thing because we were going against the grain with regards to the weather. The forecast called for rain showers in the afternoon but we didn’t know when they would actually happen. It was kind of chilly all day with a high of about 50 degrees and there was a little bit of wind to put a bite into the cold. We had five fun stages to shoot and everything went off without a hitch. I was able to get all of the stage runs filmed and I was glad that I did because I was able to try some different shooting skills that day. Listed below are my stage runs.

Stage 1 – This was a port to port stage where you could only engage targets through ports. The targets were arranged in a way that forced you to engage targets from both sides of the ports so it was a little different than normal. My main goal on this stage was to position myself in front of each port so I wouldn’t have to shuffle when in the shooting positions. This was hard at the end of the stage because there were two really tight targets set almost directly straight down range. I felt that I shot the stage ok, not really good as I still needed to shuffle around in a couple of shooting positions. I ended up nicking the head of a no shoot in the last shooting position which sucked, but I was only down 2 points as far as scored hits.

Stage 2 – This stage was a standard type of advance forward as you engage targets on the left and right then some steel at the end. In the middle of the stage there was one target on the extreme right and left right after the walls so that was the log jam in this stage. The only way I figured I could minimize this log jam and still keep shooting most of the time without too many left to right transitions was to engage all of the left side targets down range of the walls while moving to the middle. This required making some pretty difficult shots while moving. I only ended up shooting this section on the move for about two steps before I reached the middle stopping section but I think that I was able to execute my plan fairly well. The only thing that sucked was the end while shooting the steel. I needed a bunch of makeup shots before I finally told myself to slow down and earn the hits. I think I wasted about 2 seconds of stage time dicking around with the steel. I got all of my hits on the paper though so I ended up with a decent hit factor.

Stage 3 – This was classifier 99-48 called Tight Squeeze. It’s a pretty straight forward classifier. Draw from surrender, two hits per target, reload, then two more hits per target. With the hard cover and no shoots on this stage its pretty much required that you have all A’s or else you will end up with a miss or a miss/no shoot. I botched my draw but shot only as fast as I could call solid A zone hits. I ended up with what I thought was a really good run only being down 1 point in a fairly decent time. But it only comes up as 88% nationally. I think I would have to shoot this faster to do any better, but it would be really risky. Since I already have my GM card in the bag I figured I would earn all of the points I could get and not worry about shooting fast trying to burn it down.

Stage 4 – This was a speed shoot stage where you started in a box and had to engage three paper that varied in distance from close to far. Then move to the right side shooting area and hose down some close targets finishing on two targets that were on either side of the barrels. The middle target in the first box had a no shoot blocking most of the lower A zone and this was blocking my normal aiming point on the target. I tried aiming higher, basically for the C zone right below the head but one of my shots was high and to the right ending up being a miss. When I got to the right shooting area I lot my footing as I was engaging the second target and had to reengage the target. This waited about a second. So I ended up with a miss and blew a second on the stage pretty much sinking any chance at a decent finish on this stage. I really wanted to reshoot this stage just for fun so I could see what time I would end up with when everything was clicking but the next squad was waiting on us so we had to move on.

Stage 5 – This was a really cool stage with a bunch of different ways to shoot it. You started in a box in the middle of the stage then were forced to the extreme left and right sides of the stage. You had to engage four targets under one wall then four more over another. The really cool thing about this stage is that everyone had a different way of shooting it and lots of plans worked pretty good. Some people went with the plan of finishing on the under the wall stuff last because they didn’t want to get back up. Others wanted to do the under the wall stuff first to get it out of the way. This stage allowed me to use a skill that I have not tried much at all before. My plan was to engage the first three targets on the left as I was getting low into a crouched stance so I could engage the under the wall stuff right away. Then reload as I got up and shoot the over the wall stuff on the move as I got to the extreme right. When I shot the stage I felt that I had ROCKED it with a solid run. But when they started scoring the targets I had a miss on the second target on the left side. I had a hit nicking the left side of the neck but it was about 1mm away from touching the B zone perforation. I think this miss was due to biasing my index on the target higher than it should have been while I was in the middle of crouching. Then my second miss was on the last shot under the wall. I think that this was due to being in a funky leaning over crouched position and not being about to manage the recoil effectively. Even though I had two misses during the section I was wanting to execute well, I felt like it was a win because I was able to move smoothly into a crouched position then through the crouched position fairly well. I really need to practice this skill during my live fire practice sessions. Being able to transition directly to the under the wall targets saved me at least 2 seconds on the stage run. It was a cool thing to experience!!!

Overall it was a successful match. Everyone liked the stages and we got everything put away and packed up earlier than normal. I also found a new shooting skill that I need to hone in future practice sessions. It doesn’t get much better than that for a club match. On a side note, I have been working on a new M&P 45 that has a thumb safety. I got it to replace my XDm-40 for home defense duty. I did a bunch of work on the M&P 45 and wanted to give it a shake down run after the match. The trigger breaks at a crisp 2.5lbs and with the tungsten guide rod along with a 13lb recoil spring it shoots amazingly well and tracks perfectly post shot. I used factory Federal 230gr FMJ ammo for the test run and it chewed through 70 rounds without a single hiccup. I got lucky on replacing the rear sight because it was sighted in perfectly. I really like the thumb safety on the M&P because its location is in the same place as the EAA guns which I compete with. On my next test run I am going to run some 230gr JHP’s through it to see if it feeds that ammo well. Hopefully it does so I can consider that project finished. Fiddling on guns is almost as fun as shooting them so its really cool to see something come together well on the first go around.

[frunkenstein]

Kudos on the shoot sat. When I first saw the stages I was a Little grumpy ,but by the end of the day I felt good, I still am having transiton issues and I too was indexed to high on 2 of the left side targets on stage 2, so 2 misses. My speed is improving except on stage 1 I didnt think I moved that slow but "It is what it was".

[CHA-LEE]

This past Sunday I helped put on another local USPSA match. This time I was just a stage setup monkey and not the match director. Later this month we have a big match called the Rocky Mountain 300 which has 60+ round stages so I wanted to setup a stage that pushed the limits on round count to get use to a bunch of shooting all at once. I setup a 38 round stage called RM 150 as its kind of like half the round count as the real RM 300 stages. This stage proved to be a widow maker for a lot of shooters as it pushed you far outside your comfort zone. It was a fun stage and had a lot of options on how to shoot it. It also tested a lot of different shooting skills. I liked it so much that I am going to set it up again the next time I go live fire practice. We got done setting up the stage and I was still super tired from lack of sleep the night before. I only got about 4 – 5 hours of sleep and I was dragging ass all day. I battled staying focused all day and it really showed in my shooting. I videoed some of my runs but it wasn’t even worth it to get them processed and posted. So listed below are my stage runs without video’s.

Stage 5 – This was the classifier called Both Sides Now # 2. You start behind a barricade with your hands touching some X’s. On the signal you engage three paper on the right side, reload, then two paper and two poppers on the left side. All of the paper targets have some level of hard cover or no shoots on them so this classifier tries to slow your shooting down artificially with the tighter shots. I told myself to NOT shoot fast, but instead to shoot as soon as I could call my shots solidly good. When the buzzer went off I engaged the right side targets right to left and called my second shot on the last target marginal so I made it up with a solid A. Hit the reload then shot the left side from left to right. I called my first shot on the first paper marginal so I made it up then on the last steel I called the shot marginal and made it up. The super cool thing about this classifier is that I actually called my shots good and was moving on to the next shot before hearing the “Ding” of the steel. This really hit home on the last popper where I called it marginal and was breaking the makeup shot right as I heard the “Ding” of the first shot. I figured that since I had three extra make up shots that my stage time would be hurting, but it was still really good at 5.97 seconds. I was only down 1 point for the classifier and it resulted in a 9.8 Hit Factor. I was surprised to see this end up at a 104% nationally. It really didn’t feel like I was shooting fast and I wish that I had this on video to put the shooting speed into perspective of how I felt while shooting. But the stage run didn’t get on film. Oh well, it was really cool to experience.

Stage 4 – This was a speed shoot stage. You started in the front middle and there were essentially three different shooting positions to gain access to all five targets. There were two front targets that forced you to stay pinned in front or lean hard left or right at the back of the stage to access them. Since this was a speed shoot stage I opted to limit it to only two shooting positions and lean hard shooting on one foot on the right side to finish up. This plan worked ok but I was falling out of the shooting area on the right side and had engage the last target as I was almost totally fallen out. This resulted in two D hits on the last target. It sucked to give up two D’s but my stage time was good enough to make it a decent run against the others.

Stage 1 – This stage was a partial run and gun stage with some serious accuracy at the end. You started in a box then ran to a port in a wall as you stepped on a step pad. This activated a swinger in the port you engaged first then finished on two paper on the left. Then you hauled ass to the middle of the stage where you engaged four paper on the right and one on the left. Then reloaded and went to the end of the stage where you engaged two paper on the extreme left and right of the berm followed by four poppers. The paper targets were heavily blocked by no shoots and out about 20 yards. So you were pretty much dealing with head shots. When it was my turn to shoot the stage, I ran through the front half but called two very marginal shots on the left side shoot on the move targets but I had already ran past them. When I got down to the end of the stage I called two marginal shots on each no shoot blocked target and noticed that I had collected two no shoot hits in the process. Now my brain went into panic mode and since I thought that I had two possible misses up range I turned around to head back to engage that target I thought I had misses on but I was out running the RO and just stopped. Since I couldn’t get back up range due to the RO I ended up with a Reshoot. The reshoot went better on the front section of the stage but I completely bombed the back end of the stage and collected two more no shoot hits along with missing the steel like crazy. Super yucky stage run on that.

Stage 2 – This was the 38 round stage that I setup in the morning. You started in a box and had to engage two poppers along with a little plate behind. These were out about 20 yards so you had to really earn your hits. After the steel you engaged two paper on the left then started moving to the right to engage 7 paper targets in a row as you moved to the front right side of the stage. On the front right you engaged three poppers, two plates and one paper through a port then move to the left side to engage two paper on the left and three more paper down the middle. I was the second shooter up and even though I setup the stage I really had not looked at it from a stage breakdown perspective. The only plan that I could come up with right away was to shoot the steel, left paper and all the shooting on the move paper, reload then finish the stage. But the challenge with this is that this was 21 rounds before the reload. Since I didn’t have time to figure out a different stage plan I loaded up 21+1 and hoped that I would hit the steel one for one. After the buzzer went off I missed my first and second shots on the steel and my stage plan went completely out the window. I was completely lost and had to revert to shooting whatever I could see which is never a good plan. I ended up running the gun empty and had to reload twice on the stage, both times in unplanned positions. Since my stage plan was so jacked up all of my shot calling fundamentals went out the window and I was looking at the targets while shooting. It was an UGLY stage run that had a lot of wasted time along with a miss and a no shoot. I really wish that I had more time to figure out the stage as I think I could have shot it well if I had time to program a better stage run. At this point in the match I was pretty much over it and wanted to go home. I wasn’t focused on the shooting and being really tired didn’t help matters.

Stage 3 – This was another long distance target stage. You started in the middle and had to go to the left, middle and right sides of the stage to gain access to all of the targets. All of the down range shots were 15 – 20 yards away with a lot of them being partials. There was also a zebra target in the middle of the stage where you could only see half of its head from the left or right sides. Since my match was already toast I figured I would run it like a rental and go for the 18 yard half a head shot from the right side of the stage. I took 4 shots at it but still ended up missing it all together. With three total misses on the stage that was pretty much a bust as well.

Even though I had a pretty lack luster match I really liked shooting with the people on my squad. I also liked how I was able to call every single shot so well on the classifier. One major practice take away from this match was to replicate the stage that I setup for the match. I really want to setup this stage again so I can figure out some weaknesses in my skills. This was a really good test of switching gears and transitioning from one type of shooting to another. Now I just have to find some weekend free time so I can setup and practice this stage.

[CHA-LEE]

I shot the indoor USPSA match last night. We shot two stages, one box to box field course and one Classifier. We had 30 shooters in attendance which is a lot for this little match. Sunday night I touched up the trigger job on my primary gun as it was getting a little long in the tooth so I wanted to give it a good match condition test Monday night. My over travel and pre travel screws had backed off a little bit causing more than needed trigger travel. I also polished up the sear lip and hammer hooks to smooth out the break of the trigger. After reworking the trigger on Sunday night it was breaking at a very nice 1.5 lbs with very little pre and over travel. In recent matches I have had trigger freeze a couple of times which pushed me into slapping the trigger due to the extra travel. So it would be nice to see how it shot under match conditions with the tightened up and smoothed out trigger job. Much to my delight the trigger worked and felt perfect during the match. I didn’t feel like I had to slap the trigger at all as a simple and short press would light off shot after shot.

I wasn’t able to video my stage runs as there was always a lot to do in order to keep the match flowing. But I have listed below my stages in the order that I shot them.

Stage 1 – This was a 20 round box to box stage. You started in a barricade box facing up range. At the start you turned around and engaged four targets from the right side of the barricade then hauled ass to the middle box. In the middle box you engaged one open target and then another that was half blocked by a no shoot. Once that was done you ran to the far right box and engaged four more paper targets in alternating open or no shoot blocked configuration. I always seem to battle being able to focus on my front sight indoors and this continued once again this evening. But instead of just blasting and hoping that my hits would be there I buckled down and waited for my front sight to come into focus before breaking the first shot in every box. This probably added .30 - .40 second to each shooting position but it resulted in solid hits on the targets. I was really happy with being able to alternate my shooting speed between the open and no shoot blocked targets. I didn’t even think about shooting them at different speeds but it just happened that way. Its cool to be able to sit back and let the “Auto Pilot” figure out the shooting speed based on what I see.

Stage 2 – This was good old El Presidente 99-11 classifier. I didn’t want to give away any match points on this stage so I told myself to once again wait until I can focus on my sights before shooting. This caused some delay but paid off in hit quality as I was only down 2 points. I ended up with a 10 Hit Factor which is good for a 92% nationally. I didn’t feel like I shot the stage fast but ended up with a 5.78 second stage time. I think I could have shot this stage faster out doors where I can focus on my sights better, but it is what it is.

My trigger worked out great that night and more importantly I allowed myself to be patient with picking up the front sight during the stage runs. Doing this wasted some stage time, but it was well worth it to produce consistently good hits. Plus I got to shoot with a bunch of friends and had a good time while doing it. How does it get any better than that???

[eerw]

You da PANDA!

Always fun to hang out shoot with you and Todd.

and thanks for the info on triggers!

[CHA-LEE]

I received an e-mail today from the USPSA Nationals NORI staff letting me know that my application has been accepted to help RO the nationals. I am really pumped about getting a chance to not only attend the Nationals for the first time but to also see the other side of the match from an RO’s perspective. ROing the Nationals will also give me the experience needed to apply for my CRO certification. So this will help on that front as well. Time to schedule the extra time off for this match!!!

[CHA-LEE]

On Saturday I organized and lead a work party for the local USPSA club. Our main objective was to rebuilt the walls and make sure the other props were in good condition. The weather was nice and in the low 80’s so it made for great working conditions. We were able to get all of the walls rebuilt and some other stuff sorted out. After working we decided to setup a little stage and shoot it. We were all beat from working most of the day and it really showed in all of our shooting performance. I couldn’t shoot the stage clean to save my life. The only thing that I did shoot well was the accuracy challenge we did at the end of the practice session. We setup paper targets out to about 30 yards and did a slow fire three shot drill on the heads. I was able to take my time and break three clean shots which resulted in a group about 3 inches in diameter. We also setup a bonus target which was a spent shotgun hull at the same distance and we were only given one shot to hit it. I took my time and broke the shot clean but my hit was about 2 inches high. It was dead on from left to right though which was cool. Either way it was nice to finish the practice session with some semblance of good shooting.

[CHA-LEE]

Yesterday I shot a USPSA match down in Pueblo. This was the first really hot shooting day of the spring as the temp topped out at 90 degrees. Luckily we had a nice breeze most of the day which made the heat not so bad. But I was still really beat from all the work we did the day before. I struggles all day to keep myself focused on the task at hand to keep my head in the game. This was actually a really good thing to experience as its something I have had issues with championing in the past. I was able to push through mental and physical fog and actually produce some decent shooting performances. My buddy Dominic was able to do a fantastic job of filming my stage runs. So I have listed my stages below with the video’s interlaced.

Stage 2 – This was a 30 round stage that had a big time gamer twist. You started in a shooting box then about 5 yards ahead of that was another box that had a heavy sack. Then straight ahead of that was a step pad that could only be activated by dropping the sack on it. This step pad activated a drop out/return target that was non-disappearing. In its resting state all you could see was the upper A-zone in the head and the rest was blocked by a no shoot. This was about 10 yards out as well making it a significantly difficult but doable shot. So your options for the stage were to retrieve the bag and throw it on the step pad and engage the drop out when it came out. The second option was to ditch the bag and step on the step pad but this would incur a procedural penalty. The last option was to not step on the step pad and take the really tight head shot. My initial plan was to skip the step pad and take the head tight head shot. But then I started doing the math on the stage hit factor it seemed like it would be a lot safer to skip the bag and step on the step pad so I could engage the drop out as it came out but I would have to eat a procedural. Then I found out that I was the second shooter up. I tried my best to program the new way of shooting the stage but I didn’t have enough time. When I shot the stage I defaulted back to my original plan of skipping the step pad and had to back track to run over and step on it. Even though I wasted some time back tracking I still don’t think that my plan was the best. I should have stuck to my original plan and skip the step pad and take the hard head shot. Oh well, I got all of my hits and it wasn’t a complete train wreck.

Stage 3 – This was a funky box to box stage. You started on top of a pallet then had to run to three different shooting boxes that were surrounded by sideways pallets. The targets were placed so that you were forced to go to each box. Since everyone was forced through the same stage path the only way to get an advantage was to shoot fast. This is something I can do fairly well. The berms are really gravely at this range so running hard and changing directions can be a challenge. I actually almost fell down entering the second box even though I was trying to take it easy. Other than that I think my stage run was really solid.

Stage 4 – This was a strange wall stage where you had to enter and leave the shooting area multiple times due to the walls. The first shooting position had you engaging targets on the extreme left and right sides which were right on the 180. After that you moved around the second wall and engaged three poppers and a paper through a port in the middle of the wall. Then from the left side you engaged a swinger and a partial target. Then move hard to the right and engage the right hand swinger followed by two more static paper targets. I had a lot of extra shots on this stage as my grip was a little funky and my sights were not totally aligned when I broke some of the shots. This resulted in three D’s and the need to reengage the right hand swinger for a second time to ensure I had my hits. I got all of my hits but the points were not pretty. No penalties so that was good.

Stage 5 – This was classifier 09-13 called Table Stakes. You start seated in a chair with your fingers interlaced behind your head. You gun is unload on the table in front of you with your magazine on the table as well. Pretty simple stage procedure as all you have to do is load your gun and shoot the paper and steel as you see them. At the start I botched the load of the mag in the guns so this wasted at least half a second. After the botched load I decided to take it easy and get solid hits. I ended up with a lack luster time but was only down 1 point. This less than optimal stage run netted me a 75% run nationally. Decent for the match points but not good for classification.

Stage 6 – This was a 32 round stage that had a boat load of stop and go shooting positions on the left and right. The targets were grouped together and the further down the stage you got the tighter the shots got as well. At the end of the stage you engaged three head shot only targets from around the wall. Given the location of the targets it was pretty much impossible to flow through the stage. You were forced to start and stop a bunch of times. During my stage run my mag didn’t drop free during the reload so I had to pull it out of the gun. Then I had a miss in the third to last shooting position. I was trying to avid nicking a no shoot and pushed my shot below the target. This stage was brutalizing everyone with shooting penalties so I didn’t feel too bad about having a miss. This was my first shooting penalty for the match.

Stage 1 – This was the last stage of the day and it was a speed shoot. You start facing up range with your fingers interlaced behind your head. At the start you turn and engage the paper and steel then do a mandatory reload and reengage the paper with two rounds each strong hand only. I figured that the key to completing this stage well was to get the most points possible so I told myself that I wouldn’t accept any marginal called shots. Even though my turn draw sucks I did my best to get turned round fast and on target. I rocked the first string then nailed my reload then proceeded to shoot the strong hand string as fast as I could call my shots. I needed a couple of make up shots on the strong hand string but it paid off in good points. This was a nice wrap up performance to finish off the match.

This match was a test of both physical and mental endurance. I drank about a gallon of liquid that day but was still parched after the match. Even though I was mentally and physically beat I was able to execute on my shooting as needed. This was a great stride forward for me as I know this skill will come in handy later on this summer at some of the big matches.

[Chris iliff]

Charlie, I too struggle with a long match in the heat. Mentally, I've found I can easily start to fade after several hours in the heat and humidity of Indiana. I think our size can wear us out (those young, zippity small guys piss me off, lol).

Ive found staying hydrated and the snacks really help me. But, for me, the biggest help has been to recognize the lethargic feeling and nip it in the bud with positive thoughts. Mentally hyping myself to stay tuned in, so to speak.

[CHA-LEE]

frotrax> You are spot on with your comments. The main thing that I focused on that Sunday was keeping positive thoughts and that went a long way in keeping the happy train rolling forward. I think that a major blunder on my part was to not have any snacks to eat during the middle of the day. I drank plenty of fluids to keep properly hydrated but didn't eat anything during the match and it really left me without much energy. I seem to always forget about needing something to snack on in the middle of the match at the start of the summer season. In the winter I can get away with not eating anything during the match simply because we are not being put through much physical effort. But the summer time demands a different approach to keeping your body well hydrated and nourished.

[eerw]

frotrax> You are spot on with your comments. The main thing that I focused on that Sunday was keeping positive thoughts and that went a long way in keeping the happy train rolling forward. I think that a major blunder on my part was to not have any snacks to eat during the middle of the day. I drank plenty of fluids to keep properly hydrated but didn't eat anything during the match and it really left me without much energy. I seem to always forget about needing something to snack on in the middle of the match at the start of the summer season. In the winter I can get away with not eating anything during the match simply because we are not being put through much physical effort. But the summer time demands a different approach to keeping your body well hydrated and nourished.

Charlie...I found as I have gotten older, keeping mentally in it on a hot day was extremely tough, feeling exhausted and beat came a lot faster than in my younger years on the range.

I found hydration and food very important as well as a steady dose of anti-imflamatory meds helped. I now tend to keep a lot of snacks in my car and range bag. A mix of proteins and some sugars for that quick pick me up.

remember..old guys and big guys got to eat.

Edited May 10, 2011 by eerw

[CHA-LEE]

This past Saturday I was able to attend a USPSA match at one of the new clubs out in Byers. This is the second match I have attended there and we were all a little worried about the weather. The last match the temperature was good but it was super windy and we got sand blasted all day. This match the skies were overcast and it was threatening to rain/snow on us all day. The forecast called for rain/snow in the afternoon so we all hoped that it would allow us to shoot the match without getting soaked. We lucked out with the weather and it just started sprinkling rain after we tore down all of the stages and were putting the last few props away. I am glad that mother nature let us shoot as the Sunday match was canceled for that weekend. Getting some shooting in is better than having none in my book. I have listed below my stage runs in the order that I shot them. I wasn’t able to get my stage runs filmed as our squad was small and we were all busy the whole day.

Stage 2 – This stage was a 29 round field course that had you starting seated at the back of the stage holding a rope above your head. The stage was setup with walls going straight down range so it was a hall way type of configuration. The start and middle of the stage was some pretty basic left and right targets in ports or between the walls. Then the far front stage had two paper on the left then three poppers which the last one activated a clam shell, then you finished on a head shot only target that was about 15 yards out. The head shot was eating peoples lunch as it was far away enough to be a fairly hard shot but you also had to lean around some barrels so it was an awkward shooting position. I ran through the front and middle portions of the stage ok. I had some trigger freeze until I forced myself to relax and let the shooting happen. Then I finish the stage at the front section nailing the poppers and clam shell in perfect timing then transitioned to the head shot and the first two shots I called really bad misses so I took too more shots which I called marginal but didn’t want to waste any more time to ensure my hits. I was relieved to see that I got two hits on the head shot after shooting the stage and checking out the target.

Stage 3 – This was a 26 round medium field course where you started anywhere outside the shooting area. The shooting area was setup with two walls on each side pointing inwards like a “V”. Then there was about a foot wide gap between the walls on each side where you had to engage paper and steel targets. At the front of the “V” there were two barrels so that you couldn’t move all the way forward. In the forward position there were a bunch of paper targets setup in a wide formation so you had to move left to right in order to see them all. The easiest way I figured out how to shoot the stage was to start straight of the right hand gap in the walls so I could see the first paper I was going to engage. That way I could step in and start shooting right away. On the right side there were three paper targets then you moved to the left gap in the walls and engaged four paper and one mini popper. After I reloaded as I moved forward and engaged another mini popper then shot the remaining paper right to left. This plan worked out well. I needed a couple of make up shots on the steel which wasted time but it is what it is. At this point in the match I noticed that the overcast skies made it fairly dark but some UV light was getting through which had my photochromatic sunglasses still turning dark. So I had dim lighting on top of the darker sunglasses which made seeing my sights harder than it should have been. I struggled with seeing my sights all day so I have ordered some clear lenses for my sunglasses.

Stage 4 – This was the classifier stage for the match called 06-06 Golden Bullet Standards. You start facing 6 paper targets at about 10 yards and engage them all freestyle with one round each, reload, then reengage them strong hand only one round each. Then on the second string you do freestyle and weak hand. I burned through the first string well in a good time and had all of my hits. But then on my second string I had a miss on my freestyle portion then had two more misses on the weak hand portion. Three total misses on this stage was super ugly. This classifier showed me that I really need to work on my weak hand shooting.

Stage 5 – This was a 16 round medium field course. You started on the back left corner of the shooting area and had to engage targets through ports in two walls. The twist to this stage is that the WSB mandated that you engage the last two targets weak hand only. With this weak hand only stipulation only stated that you had to “Engage” two targets at the end so you could have shot them free style then reengage them weak hand. So this is what I did. I stepped forward and engaged all but one of the targets through one port then ran over and engaged the last target weak and along with reengaging another target. My stage time was good but I ended up with a miss and clipped a no shoot. My stage time was fast enough to absorb a miss, but not a miss and a no shoot so that was a poor stage run.

Stage 1 – This was a 30 round stage where you had a sea of targets setup in a “U” formation. Then a single wall down range which was visually blocking some of the down range targets. This stage could be shot a bunch of different ways due to all of the targets. One way would be to slowly move forward as you engaged targets on the left and right then shoot around both sides of the wall. The other method was to draw and shoot one side of targets from a stationary position then engage the other side as you were moving forward and then engage the remaining down range targets from the right side of the wall. I opted for the second plan as the left side of the stage had a lot more targets to engage along with more hard cover, no shoots and stuff like that. It just made more sense to shoot all of these targets from a solid stationary position quickly verses trying to do it on the move. This plan worked out really well as I was able to shoot fast and accurately then haul ass up to the front of the stage to finish. This was my most solid stage run of the match and it was nice to finish strong.

It was a fun match and I learned a couple of good things. First, I need to get some clear lenses for my sunglasses for these less than optimal lighting conditions. I actually ordered some this morning so they are on the way. The second thing I learned is that I need to work on my crouched shooting skills. My stage 5 miss and no shoot were both due to not being able to manage the recoil well in a crouched position and thus the gun was tracking funky while shooting. The next time I get some live fire range time I am going to work on both crouched shooting and shooting while moving down into a crouched position. But I don’t know when the next time I will get some live fire in. Next week is one of our local big matches called the Rocky Mountain 300 where they have five stages but they are all 60+ round stages. I am really looking forward to shooting this match as it really pushes you out of your comfort zone due to the insane round count on each stage.

[CHA-LEE]

This past Saturday I shot the Rocky Mountain 300. This is the one big match of the year that only has five stages but each stage is 60+ rounds. Mother nature didn’t cooperate with us this weekend as it rained off and on Thursday – Saturday. This turned two of the stages into a complete mud bog and two others into a half mud bog. There was only one stage that wasn’t a mud bog and that only happened because the berm is mostly sand. It was so muddy in fact that I didn’t even try to wade through the mud bogs to check out the stages before the start of the match. This forced me to break down and program each stage as I got to them during the match. The mud bog situation on most of the stages really changed how you could shoot them since you really couldn’t shoot on the move effectively. When your feet are 10lbs heavier and stuck in the mud it makes shooting on the move WAY harder. This forced me to come up with a lot more “Stand and Shoot” stage plans than I would have liked. I know for sure that the two stages that were a complete mud bog could have been shot at least 10 seconds faster if we could have shot on the move or simply run effectively when we had to. The only bad thing about the match is that the muddy conditions varied on both Friday and Saturday so this greatly affected the even playing field for all shooters. But there is nothing any of us could have done to improve the muddy conditions so we just had to make the best of it we could. Since shooting while moving was greatly limited my primary focus was to shoot a clean match while keeping my shooting speed up. Out of all the Limited shooters that finished on Friday none of them had a penalty free match so I figured that if I could simply shoot the match without any penalties I would end up doing fairly decent. I was able to get all of my stage runs filmed so you guys can enjoy the sloppy shooting conditions along with me. Listed below are the stages in the order that I shot them.

Stage 2 – This was our first stage of the match and the whole shooting area was about 6 inches deep of sloppy wet mud. You started in the middle of the stage, between the center walls and had to engage a massive amount of paper targets that were all along the back wall. I tried my best to turn the first two shooting positions into one with minimal foot movement needed. This was about the only thing I could do to optimize this stage. If this stage was dry I could have shot a lot of it on the move, especially the middle section. But you gotta do what you gotta do. I had some extra shots on steel then my second mag change I had a strange mag seating failure. Very rarely if I miss the mag well in a certain way and the tip of the mag hits the magwell strange the top round will slip forward and actually pop out keeping the mag from seating. This is exactly what happened on the second mag change. So I dumped a full mag right in the mud. Other than this I felt that I shot the stage the best I could given the conditions. But even at that my stage time was 10 seconds off of the top Friday stage runs so I think they had a lot less sloppy conditions to shoot in and could shoot a lot of the stage on the move.

Stage 3 – This was the biggest mud bog stage of the match. The mud was deep on this stage and it was tacky as well which made it a really hard stage to navigate. It felt like you were trudging through peanut butter. The only way to shoot the stage with any kind of efficiency was to shoot the front half of the stage on the move. This was very hard to do and shoot with any speed. Every step had the gun moving all over the place due to the sticky mud so you had to wait for the gun to stop bobbing round before being able to break your shots. I tried my best to keep moving smoothly through the stage and keep the gun running as much as possible. I ended up with all my hits but both the movement and shooting felt painfully slow.

Stage 4 – This was the best stage on multiple levels. First the berm was not a mud bog, secondly it was some what of a memory stage and third it was a really challenging stage to shoot. I was the fourth shooter up when we got to the berm and I didn’t have much time at all to come up with a stage plan. The whole right side of the stage was really confusing because of all the ports and gaps in the wall along with not being able to see all of the targets from any one position. Programming a 62 round stage with this amount of complexity in about 10 minutes from first seeing it was a huge challenge. The stage plan I came up with had me shooting 22 rounds on the first and last magazines of the stage so I had to shoot a ton of shots one for one or I would have completely hosed up my stage plan. In hind sight I should have come up with a slightly different stage plan that allowed me to have extra rounds for makeup shots. This would have allowed me to shoot more aggressively than I did knowing that I had to shoot everything one for one on two whole mags. But I didn’t have time to burn in a more complex stage plan and had to roll with what I could come up with in 10 minutes. When the buzzer went off I was able to execute my stage plan without a hitch. I shot a little tentative on my first and last mags as I didn’t want to run out of ammo by taking make up shots but overall I felt like it was a very solid stage run for me. Not to mention a lot of fun to shoot.

Stage 5 – This was an all steel stage and it has been my nemesis for the past couple of years. I always seem to have a fundamental issue with aiming hard for that much steel and I end up running the gun dry a bunch of times and getting my reloads all jacked up. To make matters worse the wind was kicking up and causing a bunch of problems with blowing steel over so a lot of the poppers had to be set super heavy and we were told to not worry about them falling or not as they would consider any hit good. I didn’t mind that they allowed steel to not fall when hit as the RO’s had to do what they had to do to keep the shooters running through the stage. But it’s a huge mental block to get over when you shoot steel and it does not go down. At lest it is for me. I started screwing up on this stage from the get go by running the gun dry on the first magazine and it went down hill from there. Then at the end of the stage in the last shooting position when I did my last reload I seated the mag and then went to rack the slide because I didn’t know if there was a round in the chamber or not and it went off as I started to rack the slide. Technically this was an AD since the gun went off when I didn’t intend it to even though it was after the reload was done but the gun was pointed down range towards the targets when it went off so the RO didn’t stop and DQ me. I consider myself very lucky to not have gotten DQed for this situation. I have thought about this event a lot and still don’t know what went wrong. I don’t think I actually pulled my trigger finger back to make the gun fire. I think that I had my finger inside the trigger guard and when I started to rack the slide the gun rotated in my hand a little pushing the trigger into my trigger finger. Or maybe my weak hand thumb bumped into my trigger finger pushing it into the trigger while I was racking the slide. I rack the slide by pinching the slide ahead of the ejection port and I can see how its possible for my thumb to hit my trigger finger. Either way it has me doing some serious thinking about my failure to keep my booger picker out of the trigger guard when manipulating the gun.

Stage 1 – This was the speed shoot stage of the match. This stage was pretty basic. You started unloaded in the front middle of the stage then had to engage targets from a “U” shaped shooting area. The whole right side of the stage was a complete mud bog so going over there wasn’t worth it. You were pretty much forced to shoot the whole stage from the middle front and left side. When we got to the stage this was the first time I seen it and I ended up being the first shooter. I took the simplicity of the stage for granted and had some flaws in my stage plan. I also had two errors during my stage run which wasted about 3 – 4 seconds which isn’t a good thing on a speed shoot stage. My first error was having a miss in the first shooting position and then having to go back to make it up. Even though this wasted time, I am glad that I made it up. But the second error was when my magazine wouldn’t drop free on the last reload. I had to pull the old mag out before loading the new one to finish the stage. Its time to replace the magazine springs as this is a tell tail sign of them getting weak. But this was a fun hoser stage to unleash a lot of lead in a hurry.

In the end I finished the match without any shooting penalties so I achieved my primary goal. This ended up paying off well as it netted me a 2nd place finish in Limited but I was still 12% back from the match winner. Paul Clark Jr won Limited. He shot on my squad and absolutely demolished all of is. He shot phenomenal all day and I don’t think that any pro’s would be able to beat him. It was his day to shine and he made the most of it. I think that I could have been closer to him in the overall results if I had actually seen and broke down the stages before getting to them during the match as I know I gave away at least 50 match points by not having the best stage plan on two of the stages. It would have also been nice to do more shooting on the move but the muddy conditions pretty much ruined being able to do that effectively. Either way it was a LONG tiring day of shooting after slopping through the mud all day. I was happy to be done shooting and was happy with my results. Of course there are always things that could have been done better, but the list seems to be getting smaller with every match.

[MarkCO]

Actually Charlie, stage 3 was a little worse Saturday and stage 2 was a little better Saturday. All in all, it was fairly even between the 2 days. ROing was quite the sport in and of itself...

[edwin garcia]

Did you get all your mags back?

I cringe every time you drop a mag for reload and it disappears in the mud(stage 2).

Thanks for sharing!!

Edwin

[MarkCO]

Did you get all your mags back?

I cringe every time you drop a mag for reload and it disappears in the mud(stage 2).

Thanks for sharing!!

Edwin

I shot Friday and RO'd Saturday. Had a guy with a new 2011, shiney new mags, fumble a reload and it went feedlips first into the mud. He picked it up and stuffed it in, got 2 rounds off before total meltdown and he realized what he had done.

[CHA-LEE]

Did you get all your mags back?

I cringe every time you drop a mag for reload and it disappears in the mud(stage 2).

Thanks for sharing!!

Edwin

Yep, I got them all back!!! We would actually have one person on the squad be dedicated to "Mag Recon & Recovery" duty to keep track of where the mags went while shooting the stage.

Each stage had a bucket of water that you could use to wash the mud off your mags so you could get them ready for the next stage. This was the first time that I have had to literally wash my mags off during a match

But its another shooting experience under my belt so I know what to do next time

[Avezorak]

Yea North Texas Section last year at DoubleTap Ranch last year was like that. 5 gallon buckets of water at every stage. One guy brought a buttload of Glock mags and just loaded up a few fresh ones for each stage and threw the muddy ones in the bag for later. I think the Revo guys were laughing at us more than usual. All in all, it was absolutely miserable and I loved it!

[CHA-LEE]

This past Saturday I attended the Rocky Mountain Regional Steel Challenge match. The only reason why I go to this match is because my lady likes to shoot it and she went with me. She hasn’t shot for about 3 – 4 months so she was rusty and had to relearn some shooting fundamentals but she did ok and had fun shooting. I wasn’t much into shooting the match myself as I have a really hard time having fun shooting steel challenge. Standing in a box and shooting stationary plates over and over again just doesn’t turn my crank. That and I seem to have a visual processing challenge with the steel not falling. Many times I found myself doing a double take to look at plates I already shot because they didn’t fall after being shot. Since all of the steel in USPSA matches falls after being shot I think I have trained myself to confirm hits by seeing the steel move/fall in my peripheral vision as I am shooting through the stage. Shooting the steel challenge stages where the steel never moves proved to be a significant mental road block to battle against all day. This along with me using Major Power Factor USPSA loads for steel challenge is a pretty decent disadvantage verses the hard core guys using mouse fart steel loads. One good thing that came out of shooting this match is that my gun broke in two different area’s. First the Trigger pin screw broke then when I got home I found that the rear sight hinge pin was also broken. I was glad to find these failures before heading out to the Double Tap match this coming weekend. When I got home I did a detailed strip of my gun to clean and repair it so I could test fire it on Monday during some live fire practice. My lady was happy with her performance at the steel challenge match and her M&P 40 ran 100% solid all day which was nice. She really likes the instant gratification of hearing the “DING” of the steel when she hits it. This year she used a lot less ammo than the year before so that in its self tells me that she was shooting better than last year even though she hasn’t been practicing at all. She was happy so I was happy.

[CHA-LEE]

I had the day off on Monday so I figured I would get some live fire in to test out my rebuilt and cleaned primary gun. We setup normal USPSA style stages and ran through them in multiple different starting positions ways. On my very first stage run I engaged the first two targets and then when I went to engage the third target I pulled the trigger and nothing happened. I stopped to check out what the failure was and the trigger was stuck in the back position. The trigger return spring had broken so it was not resetting the trigger lever back forward post shot. I swapped out the trigger return spring with a spare that I had and this spring was a little lighter than the one I had in there before so it changed the take up pressure needed before pushing through the sear and breaking the shot. It took me a little while to get use to it but I was ok with it by the end of the day. After the spring failure my gun ran fine for 250 more rounds without any more failures or funkiness happening. I got some good practice in but it was hard to shake the feeling that my gun having three failures in a row within the last 300 – 400 rounds. I hope that all of the gremlins have been worked out before I head off to the Double Tap this coming weekend. I would hate to blow a stage due to a stupid part failure but there isn’t much I can do between now and then to test it out further. All I can do is take my backup gun so I can something to fall back on if my primary gun takes a dump mid match.

I am really excited about shooting the Double Tap Champs in Texas this coming weekend. That match is always fun and challenging to shoot. My performance goal for the match is to finish in the top 5 which I think is doable given the past history of top shooters in attendance. I will give it my best and I hope that my primary blaster is done breaking for at least another 500 rounds so I can make it through the match without any issues.

[MarkCO]

Best wishes for a solid match!