CHA-LEE's Tale

[35WLN]

My son and I really enjoyed squading with you. We learned alot watching you, Scott and Frank. Not only from your shooting abilities but also the amount of work that you top shooters do for reset. I think it was a really positive thing for my son to see. One of the funny quotes from my son at the match about you was "I didn't think a limited gun could shoot that fast, do you think I can borrow yours dad?"

Adam

[CHA-LEE]

BBoyle> That is a good idea. I will give some different lens colors a try. The only ones that I have tried were orange colored ones and I didn't like those because it seemed to make everything look almost the same color just different shades. I had a hard time with quickly distinguishing between the brown "Shoot" and white "No Shoot" targets. Maybe some other colors would work differently? All I can do is try it out right? Thanks for the idea.

[CHA-LEE]

35WLN> I am glad that you and your son had fun at the match. It was fun shooting with you guys. I always try to have fun and help out the best I can both in resetting the stage or sharing stage plans. The way I see it, if I work hard for my squad mates they will do the same for me. The shooting comunity has so many great people at every match its really awesome to be part of such a great culture.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I helped setup, run and shoot one of the local matches. It was humid in the morning and then the summer heat really baked us the rest of the day. I had a hard time staying focused on my sights and paid the price in poor hits or lack of hits. I didn’t film my stage runs as I was too hot and too busy helping RO most of the day to even care about filming. I racked up a total of 6 misses and a no shoot during the match which pretty much represented my lack of “Motivation” to shoot well. I knew that I really didn’t care about doing well as I was focused on making sure that the match ran smoothly. But I didn’t expect the end result of my shooting performance to suck that bad. I guess I just suck some times and there isn’t much I can do about it when my brain is focused on other things. Hopefully this weekend I will be better focused so I can shoot better. I know for sure that being responsible for setting up and running the match has a pretty significant negative impact to my shooting performance. On that note, I am stepping down from the club board at the end of the year and going back to being a normal shooter. The end of this year will be two and a half years of setting up and hosting matches for this club twice a month. I have put in my time and now its someone else’s turn to step up and make it happen.

[BBoyle]

Nothing wrong with feeling a little burned out. Especially after 2 and a half years! Outside of getting ready for a major match, I would never take a local match seriously and just have fun, whether I did good or bad.

Brian

[CHA-LEE]

This was a busy weekend of shooting. On Saturday I went up to Steamboat Springs to attend their match as it was a section qualifier match. We have been getting a lot of rain this spring/summer and this weekend was a wet one. Lucky for us the rainy weather stopped long enough for us to shoot the match but right after we were done the rain started coming down hard. The weather gods favored us on Saturday. The match was a little different than normal as some of the field courses had mandated shooting positions and targets to engage, so it wasn’t as “Freestyle” as I would have liked. But it was shooting and we got to do some blasting without getting wet. I wasn’t able to film any of my stage runs as I wasn’t motivated to get them filmed and we only had an 8 person squad so working the stages was more important than filming. Every stage was biased towards aiming hard with lots of long distance or tight shots. This was an Open gun biased match for sure. My Open shooter friend and I decided to have a competition to see who could get the least amount of shooting penalties and D zone hits. This was a good motivator during the match to aim hard and keep focused on my sights. I had one stage where I mentally melted down because I picked up my gun off a barrel at the start and my magazine fell out after the first shot. Unfortunately my first shot was on a popper which kicked off a swinger that was in a critical timing section. Having to do an unplanned reload then figure out the swinger timing on the clock sent me into a blasting frenzy which left me with two misses and two D zone hits. This stage alone pretty much sunk any chance of me doing well overall. After that I was pretty unmotivated to shoot well since I knew I had already blown the match out of the water. It was fun shooting with friends, but it sucked to perform so crappy. I REALLY need to find a solution to the extended mag release issue on my gun. When I lay it on its side its laying right on the mag release button so any amount of downward pressure applied while picking it up will unseat the magazine. More fiddling is needed to overcome that challenge.

[MarkCO]

I think we all shot pretty bad except Ron...

But it was fun to shoot with you, it's been a while since we actually got to shoot a match together.

I'd look for a spot around your mag release towards the front where you would not touch it and consider a gate. Much like they use for a protected stop button on a machine. That would put the weight of the gun on the gate instead of the release and not mess up you mag changes...

[CHA-LEE]

On Sunday I went down to Pueblo for their normal USPSA club match. The weather man called for hot 95 deg temps with possible rain in the afternoon. So once again we were racing against the clock to get the match shot and packed up before the storms rolled in. We were lucky once again as we were able to shoot the match and it didn’t start raining until we were almost done putting all of the props away. They had 6 stages setup for the match and the attendance was a little less than normal so we ended up with 10 person squads. With the reduced amount of shooters on the squad I didn’t want to bother anyone with filming my stage runs. My Open buddy and I had another friendly competition to see who could have the least amount of shooting penalty and D zone hits. I ended up doing worse than the day before. I had 2 misses and 7 D’s. Holly crappy batman!!! Granted one of the misses and four of the D’s occurred on a single stage that I completely tanked. I really need to work on buckling down and pushing through a poorly executed stage while still maintaining decent hits. When I know a stage is blown I completely give up and just start slinging lead somewhere near the targets which never turns out well. Maybe its because I don’t care about the stage any more because I know its blown? Either way its something I need to work on doing better.

[CHA-LEE]

MarkCO> You are right. I have been thinking about adding a nub or screw to the frame just below or above the mag release button so that it will rest on the nub/screw instead of the mag release button. Drilling and tapping the case hardened frame isn't fun though so I have avoided doing it in the past.

[CHA-LEE]

This past Saturday I attended a USPSA match which I brought a stage to and helped setup. The Wednesday before the match I came down with a cold and battled through it on Thursday and Friday but was still feeling the affects of the sickness on Saturday. I was ok in the morning but as it started heating up I was really struggling physically. The heat of the day plus my lingering cold made it really hard to keep focused on shooting but more so physically staying aggressive. After the first stage I was actually considering packing up and leaving I was feeling so bad, but I stuck it out and finished the match. Since I knew that I was at a physical disadvantage I knew that I had to have very solid hits on every stage with no penalties. So I focused on calling my shots and not settling for any marginal or bad called shots without making them up. This turned out well from a hit quality perspective. All told I only had 3 D zone hits and no shooting penalties. I was not able to film any of my stage runs as I didn’t feel motivated to film them due to being sick and struggling through the day anyway. It was a good and challenging match and I learned a lot about being more patent to keep diligent on calling my shots. But I was totally wiped out after the match. Shooting matches in the middle of the summer while you are sick isn’t the easiest thing to do, but once again, worth the experience gained.

[CHA-LEE]

This past Saturday I was the match director for one of the local USPSA matches I help out with. We setup 5 fun stages to shoot and had a lower than normal turn out of only 50 shooters but given the heat of the day it was kind of nice to get done shooting sooner than normal. I decided to give my M&P 40 Pro setup for Limited Minor a try that day as I just got in the extended base pads I had been waiting for. It was fun shooting a different gun at the match, but I had quite a few issues during the match. The gun and gear ran flawlessly the first three stages but then on the fourth stage I had one mag that went nose dive crazy on me. One mag had like 10 nose dive jams in a row which forced me to sling shot rack the gun to get it to chamber a round. Bang, rack, Bang, rack, Bang, rack isn’t the best way to shoot a stage. Then on the final stage of the match it was a run around crazy stage and I bumped into the threshold of a door as I passed through and all my mags fell off my belt. So about 20 rounds into a 32 round stage I reached down to do a reload and there were no mags on my belt. So I just called it quits and unloaded and showed clear taking a Zero for the stage. I was able to reshoot the stage for fun after the squad was done shooting but I still had one instance of the nose dive jam during the stage run. I think that the main issue causing the nose dive jams is due to using the undersized brass that I use for my EAA. The smaller diameter case cause the top round to tilt downwards as it rests up against the feed lips of the magazine. I will have to reload some new Minor ammo using standard size cases to see if it resolves the nose dive issue. The other thing that I need to do is get some new mag pouches that are dedicated to fitting the M&P magazines. I tried to get away with using the same mag pouches that I use for my EAA setup and the mags flop around in the pouches a little bit and that is what caused my magazines to fall out that one stage run.

I was happy with how the gun shot when it was running as it should. But I had a hard time pushing the shooting any faster than I would if I was shooting major rounds in my EAA limited gun. I also had a few instances where I overshot my transition positions due to the way lighter gun. That was really hard to get use to and I honestly never felt totally comfortable with it. Switching from a 44oz super taker of my EAA over to this 24oz feather weight M&P is a significant change. I actually caught myself checking to make sure that I had not dropped/lost my gun a few times through out the day because it was so much lighter on my hip.

My initial impression is that I can shoot this gun fast and it does not muzzle flip when shooting, but the felt recoil is still more than I expected it to be. I think that the harsher than expected felt recoil is due to the gun being so light. Given my limited experience with this gun its currently a disadvantage for me to shoot it when compared to shooting my EAA Limited Major gun. I would probably need 5000 – 10000 rounds to really get use to this gun in how it shoots, transitions and recoils. I will get the nose dive issues resolved but in the back of my head I am wondering how much effort and money I should put into getting this thing totally ironed out. It is just an experiment after all so knowing when to say when is important. Before I get too crazy with figuring this M&P out I will switch gears and give the my EAA Limited Minor gun a try to see how it compares. I know that my index, grip style and trigger setup prefer the EAA Limited frame design so maybe that transition will be easier or more natural?

[CHA-LEE]

On Sunday I shot another USPSA match but this time I used my normal EAA Limited gun shooting Major PF. Next weekend is the Colorado State match and I wanted to get at least one match under my belt using my normal gun and gear before heading out to the big match. Shooting my normal EAA Limited gun was nice and comfortable and I shot it well that day. Through out the match I only had three D’s and all the way up to the last stage I didn’t have any shooting penalties. The last stage of the day was the classifier which was a turn and shoot three head shots two rounds each Virginia count. On the last head I called my second shot marginal and made the shot up before I could even think twice about it. I ended up with three hits on the last head so I got dinged with an extra shot and an extra hit. 20 points in penalties on a 30 point stage = no good. It sucked to have the penalties on the classifier but I would rather get a penalty like that knowing that I am calling my shots and making them up as needed verses spraying and praying. It was a pretty solid match for me and I was second by 11 match points. Most important for me though was getting back into the normal groove of things with my EAA Limited major gun. Doing well at this match is a real confidence builder going into the Colorado State match next weekend.

[OpenDot]

It was nice to meet you in colorado!!

Edited August 1, 2011 by OpenDot

[CHA-LEE]

OpenDot> Nice to meet you as well. I will probably see you again down at the Area 2 match in November!!!

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I went down to Montrose to shoot the Colorado state championships. It’s about a 6 hour drive down there but the scenery was great. We got to the match on Friday afternoon and had a chance to check out the stages. The stages were setup but there were no targets on the target sticks. So you had to imagine where the targets and no shoots were placed which made breaking down the stages a little hard. We had time to check out all of the stages the next morning and luckily my stage plans were pretty much the same. We only had 8 people on our squad so all of us had to chip in and bust ass to churn through the stages. Because we were so busy working I didn’t want to bother anyone with filming my stage runs. Listed below are my stage runs in the order that I shot them.

Choke Point – This was a medium field course with two ports on the left and right then you went down the center and engaged four poppers and two more paper on the extreme left and right. I felt like I shot the stage ok, but needed a couple of make up shots on the poppers. All of the steel in this match was painted dark blue and dark colored steel tends to give me trouble. I probably gave up a second on this stage with the misses on the steel. The good thing was that I didn’t have any D’s.

A Real Steel Challenge – This stage had you starting at a door way touching the sides. There was a plate rack with a single paper target below it then three paper and a mini popper on the extreme left and right sides. They intended for you to shoot the plate rack and low paper through the door way but I was tall enough to see over the visual blocker no shoots on the left hand side. So I went to the left side shot the three paper and mini popper, then cleared out the plate rack and low paper, reloaded then moved to the right and finished the last 3 paper and mini popper. This plan seemed to work out well even though I had a couple make up shots on the plate rack. I was happy with this run.

Go Fast – This stage was setup on an old town store front used for the cowboy shooting. You were on the porch and started at either the left window or right. You basically had to engage four poppers from the left window, then two paper in the middle door way, then four more poppers in the right window. I started on the left then moved to the right. At the start I missed the 3rd popper then missed the 4th popper and these were both separated by a good distance so I had to saw back and forth a couple of times to clean up the steel. This wasted at least a second on the stage dicking around with the steel.

Eight is Great – This was a stand and shoot stage with two movers. You had a big popper that activated a swinger that was off to the right. Then a static paper and a plate that fell over and as it fell over it exposed a disappearing paper target that fell backwards. The disappearing target took a while to expose but once it did there wasn’t much time to engage it before it was gone. Initially I was going to blow off the DT and just shoot the string in a popper, static paper, plate, swinger order. But then I seen another shooter successfully shoot the same order but also engage the DT after the swinger. I felt like it was worth going for it and it took less than a second to engage it so it made sense hit factor wise. When I shot the stage I called a marginal shot on the static paper so I had to shoot it three times and this put me behind schedule with the swinger which I was only able to sling two “Hoper” shots at it which ended up being C and D hits. To make matters worse I only got one hit on the DT which made it a waste of time to go for it. If I could have shot this stage again I would have stock to my original plan and blow off the DT.

Get Off your Butt – This was a speed shoot stage where you started seated in a chair and your loaded gun was laying flat on a barrel in front of you. The best plan was to pick up your gun and then start on the extreme right side of the stage. Then engage all of the targets as you moved to the left. Since it was an 18 round stage there was no reload needed. This kind of stage is right up my alley so I was really excited about shooting it. At the start I pick up my gun then fire the first shot and it was followed by a “CLICK”. I look at the gun and my magazine had popped out. So I had to reseat the mag, rack it, then continue on. This whole fiasco cost me 2 seconds of fumbling with the failure. When you blow 2 seconds screwing around with your gun on a 6 second stage its pretty much over. I figure I lost about 25 match points on this stage due to this failure. This is like the 987038402402384 time that I have accidently pushed in the mag release while picking up the gun off of a table or barrel because the gun is resting on the mag release. I need to make some kind of change to the gun to keep this from happening.

Zombie Zig Zag – This was a head shot only stage that had a shooting area that was zig zagging down range. There really wasn’t much planning needed on this stage other than aim hard and keep moving down range while shooting. I felt that I shot the stage well but the shooting was slow. This stage was all about getting our hits as it was really easy to try to shoot fast and end up with misses.

Be Careful Down There – This was a large field course. The targets and no shoots were setup in a way that tried to force you to go to all four corners of the stage. My stage plan had me moving less but taking longer and more difficult shots. I tried to shoot this stage fast with the far shots and it bit me in the ass on the down range targets. They had four large poppers that had no shoots behind them and I ended up with a miss on a popper that went right into the no shoot. Then I edge hit one of the big poppers and it didn’t go down. So I ended up with a miss and a no shoot on this stage combined with a less than stellar stage time which resulted in a crappy run. I should have picked a plan that had me running around more and engaging the targets closer. There were a bunch of different stage plans used for this stage and it would have been nice to give a couple of different plans a try to see which one really works out the best.

Strategic Advance - This was a medium field course that had one lone target to the left that you had to take first then a bunch of targets on the right that you had to engage on the move as you advanced forward. Then reload and move to the left to finish the rest of the targets down range. This was a pretty straight forward stage without many options on how to shoot it. I felt that I shot the stage well and everything went as planned. My stage run was only about a second longer than the stage winner so I don’t think I could have done much better other than shooter faster.

Stay Close to the wall – This was a short speed shoot stage which had you engage four targets from the left side of a wall then 8 more targets as you moved around the wall and down range. A fast time on this stage was about 7 seconds so speed was key to finishing well. I shot the left side well then finished the first four targets on the right well. Then I went to do my reload and the magazine wouldn’t drop free. I had to rip the old mag out before finishing the reload so I could finish the stage which wasted at least three seconds. I ended up with a 10 second run on this stage which absolutely killed my hit factor. Once again you can’t spend almost half the stage time dicking around with your reload and expect to have a good finish. This reload issue cost me about 30 match points.

After the match I was not happy with being forced to battle my equipment on a couple of stages. Both of the equipment failures combined cost me at least 55 match points which is a significant donkey punch to my match finish. I ended up 6th in Limited at 79% of the winner. Without the equipment issues I should have been able to finish 3rd or 4th at about 85% of the winner, but it wasn’t meant to be. The other thing that I noticed is that my draws and reloads are getting really slow and deliberate which is a huge waste of stage time. My lack of consistent live fire practice is starting to show in my match performance. I thought that I could rely on my experience to perform well, but there is no getting around the need for consistent and effective practice. I am just not sure I am up to the task right now. I am in the process of rebuilding my GTO so I can get it back on the road and that is consuming all of my extra time and money. My shooting may have to play second fiddle for a while until I get the GTO back together and running.

[CHA-LEE]

This past Saturday I went out to do some live fire practice with my buddy Todd. Usually I invite a bunch of people to go practice but that day I only wanted to have one other person there to help RO and maximize shooting time. We setup a 24 round stage with a bunch of tight targets, steel, ports and movement. We reshot this stage a bunch of times switching up the starting position to change it up a little bit. I like that we setup a stage that forced me to do a reload on every single stage run. My main focus of the practice was to try and improve upon my engaging targets while crouching so I could engage some low targets through a port. I think that we made the shots too difficult because I felt like I couldn’t move to a crouched position while engaging the difficult targets without greatly circumventing my shooting speed. But I pushed on and tried doing it over and over without much success. It was a good learning experience but really frustrating. The other thing that I was trying during practice runs was shooting with more or less bent arms trying to find a good middle ground to help improve the tracking of the gun but not inhibit my ability to transition quickly. If my arms were too straight I would get awesome sight tracking and muzzle flip control but it really killed my target to target transition speed. If my arms were too bent I would get awesome target to target transitions but my muzzle flip control went out the window and my on target hits when to crap. The one thing that I did find out is that I shot the really tight shots faster and better when I straightened out my arms just a little bit. So I planned on trying the “extended just a little bit” at the next match I attend, which was on Sunday.

We also setup a precision shooting challenges where we tried to shoot a 1 x 1 inch white paster at about 35 yards. I was never able to hit the white paster but I did end up with a 1 – 1.5 inch group at 35 yards off hand. It was pretty cool to be able to shoot that accurately from a normal standing position and freestyle grip. The one enigma here is that we both tried shooting our guns from a support position on the bench and when I shot I couldn’t produce a group at all. I don’t know what dynamic is so different about shooting from a supported super stable position but I couldn’t shoot a group to save my ass. Granted I rarely shoot from a supported position so I may be inducing things that I am not even aware of.

After the practice I wasn’t really happy with my performance. I left more frustrated and less confident with my shooting abilities than I came to the practice session with. But it was nice to get out and shoot in a non-match environment where I could simply try stuff. I know that on a lot of my practice runs I was spending a tremendous amount of mental focus on trying to execute the new thing I was doing. In past experience I know that any time I start thinking about what I am doing or trying to force an action while shooting it makes everything else turn clunky and worse. So maybe that is just part of trying to push the boundaries of your shooting? All I know is that even though I was frustrated with my performance I still feel that it was worth taking the time to do it.

[CHA-LEE]

This Sunday I attended a USPSA match in Aurora. This is one of the matches that I help put on so once again it was an early morning with a lot of work setting up. At least this time I was only responsible for setting up one stage instead of being the match director. After the tuff practice session the day before I told myself to not second guess my shooting or actions during the stage runs. Instead I told myself to just let the shooting happen. My only goal was to call every shot and let the shooting happen at whatever pace I could effectively call my shots. I didn’t want to add any additional pressure to my stage runs so I chose not to film them. Listed below are my stage runs in the order that I shot them, unfortunately without video. I say unfortunately because this match ended up being one of the best overall match performances I have had in a long time.

Stage 1 – This was a 30 round medium length field course that had you zig zagging through the stage as you engaged alternating open and zebra hard cover targets. All of the targets were fairly close which lured you into shooting fast but you also had to shoot quite a bit of it on the move and this mixed with the zebra targets raised the missing factor really high. My only goal on this stage was to keep low while shooting on the move and to call every shot solidly. The buzzer went off and I called every single shot and moved through the stage effectively. I had three makeup shots on the stage which I called marginal but all of them were not needed. It sucks to have three extra shots that are not needed, but that is a small price to pay verses ending up with a miss. I was only down 1 point on this stage in a really good time so I really can’t complain much about the extra shots taken.

Stage 2 – This was a large field course where you had three partial paper targets on the left then about a 10 yard run to a door where you had to engage two mini poppers. Then there was a bunch of down range targets you could engage from the door but some were blocked by barrels and you could only see them from a port on the far right of the stage. Through the port you could see all of the down range targets but there was 18 shots worth of targets to engage which were all partials at a good distance using either no shoots or hard cover. I wanted to keep my plan simple so I shot the left paper then ran to the door and engaged only the two poppers, reloaded then hauled ass to the port on the right and finished the stage. The really cool thing is that I automatically pushed my arms out a little bit more than normal when engaging the far partial targets and this really helped me keep the sights tracking where I wanted them to so I could break the shots as soon as possible. This is something I wanted to do after trying it in practice the day before but I didn’t even tell myself to do it or even think about doing it. It just happened and that is cool.

Stage 3 – This was classifier CM 03-05 called Paper Poppers. You have the choice of shooting six poppers or two paper targets first then do a reload and engage the other array. I have shot this classifier in the past and I knew that the 100% hit factor was insanely high so I knew that knocking this one out of the park was going to be a waste of effort. I simply planned to shoot it solidly and get all the points I could. I shot the steel first then bumbled my reload a little bit which cost me a little bit of time but then finished on the paper solidly, down zero points. This performance was a 79% nationally which isn’t a surprise given that my surrender draw sucks and I bumbled the reload. If I could have dropped .40 second combined off my draw and reload this would have been a 100% run.

Stage 4 – This was a 10 round speed shoot stage where you started touching a wall then engaged two targets on the right as you started moving around the wall. Then you get back into the shooting area in front of the wall and engage three tight targets with no shoots blocking most of them. I shot the stage in a good time but ended up with 2 D zone hits on the partial targets. Its funny because each of these targets with the D’s I shot three times and all three hits were within about 3 inches of each other. I called them marginal and made them up but still ended up with the D’s. I think that I simply over reacted to the no shoots and aimed a little to high left trying to avoid clipping the no shoots. My stage time was right where it should have been, but the D’s really hurt my run.

Stage 5 – This was another medium field course that had a bunch of different options on target engagement order and navigation through the stage. Most of the targets were pretty close and open so there was a lot of lead to unload in a hurry. The main thing about this stage was to not get bound up in a couple of different shooting positions that required an awkward stance to access the targets. I told myself to not try to go fast but to instead see as much as possible. This resulted in an awesome performance that yielded some amazingly fast shooting without even feeling like I was going fast. There were probably 4 – 5 different targets that I had sub .15 splits followed by really fast transitions. When the dust had settled after the stage run I was only down 3 points on the whole stage with all of the points down being C’s. I know that I couldn’t have shot this stage any better than I did as it was 100% subconscious driven from start to finish.

Once the match was over I had no shooting penalties and only 2 D’s. This is the best overall performance I have had at a local match in a long time. I am still trying to piece together how a frustrating day of practice can lead to such a fantastic match performance the next day. Are the two associated some how? Maybe all of the forced/commanded shooting on the practice day really drove home the importance of allowing myself to let go and let my subconscious take care of the shooting during the match? I am sure I will be chewing on this for a while trying to figure out the correlation. But either way it was really nice to shoot up to my potential for a whole match

[frunkenstein]

For those of you who didnt witness Cha-lees stage 5 at AGC it was the very impressive to watch and since I was scoring being right in the middle makes it that much more impressive. Way to go Panda. Yhe Panda was growling (litteraly).

[CHA-LEE]

I had a very busy four days of shooting. On Saturday I attended a USPSA club match out in Buyers Colorado. This club just started hosting matches so I really wanted to come out and help support their match by attending. I lent a hand doing a little bit of setup as well but not much. The last three matches here have been plagued with crippling sand storm wind. I was keeping my fingers crossed in hopes that the wind would leave us alone that day. As luck would have it the wind did leave us alone so we all got to enjoy the match without getting our guns and gear sand blasted most of the day. The match only had 25 shooters attending but we made the most of it and had some fun stages to shoot. My match performance was up and down. I would shoot a couple of stages good then make some stupid mistakes on other stages. We only had 8 people on our squad so we all had to bust ass to churn through the stages. I didn’t video any of my stage runs due to the small squad size. Through the match I had three misses in shooting penalties. The first miss came on a strong hand only portion of a standards style stage. I called it marginal and it ended up being a miss. The other two misses were on the classifier stage. We shot classifier 99-51 called single tap standards. There were four different strings of fire at four different distances. The first was prone, second was kneeling, third was strong hand only and the last was weak hand only. I was doing good until the last weak hand only string where my gun failed to fire 3 – 4 times due to my trigger not having enough travel. I have battled this issue in the past and it was rearing its ugly head again. The trigger over travel set screw digs into the frame making a dimple and if you put any sideways pressure on the trigger the tip of the set screw hits the edge of the dimple which reduces its travel. I have carved off the dimple multiple times but it keeps coming back so I am not sure what a long term fix for this is other than always having an excessive amount of trigger over travel. Either way, with three misses this put a pretty big dent in my overall match performance. It was fun shooting in the nice weather, I just hoped that I had better luck with my gun on the classifier.

[CHA-LEE]

On Sunday I went down to Pueblo to shoo their USPSA club match. After having three misses the day before my goal was to take as long as needed to make sure that every shot was good. This mindset worked well because I didn’t have any shooting penalties but still collected a total of 6 D’s though the six stages which is less than optimal. Capturing only 91% of the available stage points isn’t good. I need to be in the 95% or above area. If I can eliminate the D’s then I should be right on track. I didn’t video any of my stage runs once again. We had plenty of people on the squad to film, I just didn’t want to bother anyone with it. I wanted to focus on my shooting and eliminate all the unneeded distractions so filming my stages was first to go. I need to get back into the habit of filming my stage runs though. I felt that my overall match performance was ok. Not super solid but good enough to get the job done.

[CHA-LEE]

On Monday and Tuesday I attended a Competition Pistol class presented by Manny Bragg. I was the one to coordinate the class and was happy to have Manny work with us to come to Colorado for some training. We had the training at the Clear Creek range up in the mountains so we could enjoy the view and cooler weather. I took this same class back in 2009 when I was classified as a B in Limited so I thought it would be really interesting to attend it again to see what I could glean from the class a second time. I am sure everyone knows how good a shooter Manny Bragg is, but he is also an amazing trainer. We had 8 students in the class including myself and we all walked away from the training class with new found shooting knowledge. I shot about 1200 rounds through the class and learned a lot about some weaknesses in my shooting and movement skills. One of the main eye openers was how he effectively proved that slower on target splits that guaranteed hits without needing makeup shots was way faster than trying to chain saw out the rounds and make up shots that were marginal. The other was his importance on snapping the eyes to the next target before the gun gets there. This allowed me to prep the trigger while transitioning over to the target so I could break the shot right as I got moved over to it. Snapping the eyes also made the aggressive transitions come to a stop a lot smoother. I was able to properly execute the eye snapping technique along with the trigger prep while transitioning a few times and when I got it right it was awesome. Ever since I experienced the eye snap technique I can now see how I have been keeping a hard front sight focus as the gun transitions which makes me overshoot the target aiming spots. Its going to take quite a bit of practice to master this newly found skill, but when I do get it down I can see it taking my shooting to a new level of performance. I am glad that I took this class again. Sure there was a lot that I already knew that he went over during the class but being able to come away with a few key nuggets of information which I know will improve my shooting skills once I master is well worth the cost and time.

Now I just have to recover from four days of hard core shooting. Its been a long time since I blew through 1500 rounds of ammo in 4 days. Not to mention driving 600+ miles over that same time frame. I need a little bit of time to recover and get some more ammo reloaded. But I am really looking forward to the match this coming Saturday. It will be fun trying to put these new techniques into practice. I am sure there will be some challenges learning them but it will be well worth the effort.

[CHA-LEE]

This past Saturday I shot a local USPSA match. This was one of our section qualifier matches so we had a bunch of shooters in attendance. I had to shoot through this match because I had to head up into the mountains in the afternoon to attend my mothers birthday party. I hate shooting through but this is the only way I was going to be able to shoot the match. Since I was going to shoot through I showed up early and helped setup some of the stages. I figured that I would put in some extra effort during setup so I wouldn’t feel like a dead beat leaving early and not tearing down. We setup 6 fun stages to shoot and it was going to be a challenging match for all. I shot the whole match in about an hour and a half then headed back home to get ready for the birthday party. I didn’t film any of my stage runs due to scampering through all of the stages and jumping from squad to squad. But I have listed them below.

Stage 1 – This was a short speed shoot stage where you started with your loaded gun on a barrel. At the start you engaged four heavily no shoot blocked targets on the right as you advanced forward then two more targets at the end which were on the extreme left and right. My only goal on this stage was to not push any hits into the D zone on the targets as that is what most of the no shoots were trying to force you to do. I had a slight trigger freeze about half way into the stage which forced me to double back and reengage a target. This cost me about half a second but I got all of my hits and didn’t drop any into the D zone so I was happy with the result.

Stage 2 – This was a large field course style Classifier called Leftys Revenge. You start on the far right of the stage standing behind a table with your loaded gun on the table. At the start signal you engage three paper from behind the table then move to a barricade on the left. At the barricade you engage two paper and two poppers then move left again to a wide barricade and have to shoot three more paper targets through a wide port. I shot the first and second positions well but then got a little too impatient in the last position and had two rounds hit a no shoot. I called both shots bad and made them up, but the damage was already done. My stage time wasn’t bad but the two no shoots sunk the overall performance. Digging myself into a 20 point hole two stages into the match wasn’t a good situation to be in.

Stage 3 – This was a large field course that was almost like a memory stage. You could see a bunch of the same targets from many different locations within the shooting area and most of the stage plans I could come up with had be pushing 20 rounds in a single mag. This stage had a Texas star then two poppers on both extreme ends of the stage that activated a clamshell and drop out and back disappearing target. When I got to the stage I had ZERO stage plan. This was a huge OOOOOPS moment because this was the main stage that I had setup for this match. I couldn’t believe that I never looked at the stage from a competitive standpoint. I tried coming up with a decent stage plan in the 5 minutes that I had to check it out between shooters but nothing was feeling good. Before I knew it I was up and I had to roll with a half baked stage plan, if you could even call it that. What resulted after the start tone was pure commanded clunky and forced shooting. I ended up with two misses, a hurting stage time, and 4 D’s to top it all off. Holly Craptacular Batman!!! At this point in the match I was pissed because I forced myself into shooting two stages with half baked stage plans and racked up 50 points in shooting penalties. I thought for sure my match was sunk at this point.

Stage 4 – This was a medium stage that was pretty much a speed shoot. You started with your hands touching a barrel then engaged two targets on the left then four on the right as you hauled ass to the front section of the stage. Then you engaged three more targets on the left followed by the last target straight down range around some barrels. Thankfully this stage was pretty straight forward and there wasn’t much planning needed. All of the targets on this stage were turtle targets so my main focus was to capture as many points as possible. It was really easy to go chainsaw crazy on this stage and drop a bunch of points so I did my best to reduce that possibility. I ended up with a decent stage time with good points. I had a slight hesitation at the start which probably cost me half a second but it is what it is.

Stage 5 – This was a box to box stage where you started in a back left or right box then moved to the opposite side box then forward to a middle box to engage all of the targets. You started unloaded and holstered so at the start you had to load, rack, then start blasting. I started in the back left box then moved to the back right box. Then reloaded as I moved forward to the last box. One main way to improve time on this stage was to start exiting the back boxes as you were engaging the last couple of targets. This bit me in the ass because I called a marginal shot in the second box then tried to make it up before I stepped out but the shot broke just as my foot was touching down outside of the box. So I ended up with a foot fault procedural on this stage. When I looked at the target I engaged outside the box I had a really low D zone hit along with two A’s so I can see why I wanted to make it up. I just hated paying the price of making it up with a foot fault. Without the foot fault penalty I could have had a really solid stage run.

Stage 6 – This was a long field course that was built round one of the cowboy town fronts which had a jail cell built into it. The stage forced you to go into the jail area then back to the far left and right sides of the shooting area. The stage also had two swingers in the middle that were never in an optimal location to engage right after shooting their activating poppers. Since figuring out a graceful swinger presentation plan wasn’t in the cards I picked a stage plan that had me shooting the stage starting on the left moving forward of the shooting area then backing into the jail area to engage the middle targets. Reload as I moved to the far right and then engage the swingers last as they came out. All of the shooting up to the swingers was great but since I had not timed the swingers I had to wait for each one to present its self before I could engage them. I probably wasted about 2 seconds waiting for the swingers to appear but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Much to my surprise I ended up winning this stage with the fastest time.

I was able to finish the whole match in an hour and a half and the hurried shooting pace really showed in my performance. All told I ended up with 2 No Shoots, 2 Misses, 1 Procedural, and 5 D’s. Giving up 60 match points in penalties was a significant hit to my overall match performance. I ended up 3rd in Limited at 89% of the match winner Ron Avery. Out of the 31 competitors in Limited, nobody shot a penalty free match so I guess it was a hard match. But that is still not an excuse for getting the stupid penalties. The thing that has been grinding on me is how I was able to come up with a kick ass plan for stage 3 after the match as I was driving home. A lot of good that does me after I shot the stage…… DOH!!!!

[CHA-LEE]

This coming weekend is the 2011 Mile High Showdown USPSA match being hosted by the Weld County Practical Shooters club. The MD was scrambling for people to RO the match so I stepped up and volunteered my help. This means I have to shoot the whole match (12 Stages) on Friday then RO on Sat/Sun. This club puts on some great club matches so I am sure they will have awesome stages for this big match. I have a boat load of stuff to get done this week before the match starts so its going to be a busy week. Even though I am shooting the whole match on Friday I am going to do my best to stay focused in order to allow myself to shoot the best I can. My goal for the match is to shoot it within my means and to not force myself into shooting before I have a solid programmed stage plan. Hopefully I can talk one of my squad mates into filming my stage runs. We will see how it goes. Good luck to me!!!

[Chris iliff]

Good luck Charlie!!

I ate nuts and raisins, trail mix, (about a handfull) every stage at Indiana State. All day in the heat and humidity for 11 stages. I had a very light lunch ( half a sandwich and chips) and stayed hydrated with G2 and water every stage. I never got that lethargic feeling us big guys can get. Hope you have a great time. Go get 'em!!

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I attended and ROed the 2011 Mile High Showdown hosted by the Weld County Practical Shooters club. Since I was ROing the main match over the weekend I had to shoot the whole match on Friday. Churning through 12 stages and a minimum of 320 rounds made for an extremely long day of shooting. We started at 8 am and finished at 7pm. After finishing shooting the whole match on Friday I was completely wasted. It also didn’t help that we had record breaking heat that day topping out at 99 degrees. I did my best to keep myself hydrated and drank over 2 gallons of water, but I was still not drinking enough evidently. After we shot 8 of the 12 stages I was mentally and physically tapped out and the last four stages of the match I was pretty much in survival mode and making both mental and physical mistakes regularly. Shooting the whole match in one day probably cost me at least 5% in reduced shooting performance. But that is the price you pay when you volunteer to help RO the match for the weekend shooters. I was able to get most of my stage runs filmed which was cool. I also had a good time ROing on Saturday and Sunday. The match director paired up experienced RO’s with less experienced RO’s so that the new RO’s could get some good training. I think this worked out really well.

Stage 1 – This was a medium length course of fire. You started with your toes touching the forward fault line and had to engage four paper targets then move to the back left port where you engaged some paper entering the shooting position and then a popper that activated a clam shell and swinger at the same time. Then you moved over to the right side port and had the same sequence of static paper with a popper that activated a clam shell and swinger. This stage was pretty straight forward and the main focus was to get the shooting done as soon as possible. After you engaged the popper you shot the clam shell before it even came up off the ground. This was a really strange target to engage since we never shoot targets that are laying flat on the ground. There were many shooters on our squad who had misses on the clam shell while it was still on the ground. So I focused on getting solid hits on those targets. My stage run was ok, but I almost ran out of rounds before the reload. I had to rack the slide after the reload to chamber a round and finish the stage. Lucky for me I loaded up 21+1 at the start of the stage.

Stage 2 – Another medium length course of fire. There were a bunch of paper targets on the left side of the shooting area which you had to engage on the move. Then there were four mini poppers down range on the left side of the wall then two paper on the right side of the wall. I don’t think that I shot this stage correctly. I should have engaged the two down range paper on the right about half way through the stage then finished on the steel. I should have also done a reload instead of trying to shoot the whole stage without doing one. Not doing a reload made me shoot the steel and right side paper WAY too conservatively. I only had two extra rounds and use one on the poppers and knowing that I only had one extra round really killed my shooting aggressiveness.

Stage 3 – This was a short stage that had you starting on one side of a teeter totter then had to go over to the other side to engage all of the targets. I was the second shooter up on this stage so I only got to see the activator timing once. With only seeing the activators once I figured that I could engage all of the static paper between shooting the steel and activated targets. The disappearing target on the right took a LONG time to come out so I figured that I could jam in all four static paper then finish on the DT last. I think that my target engagement order plan worked out well but I wasted too much time on taking the first shot as well as moving over to the right side of the teeter totter. I also rushed my shots on the last four static paper and ended up with 2 D zone hits which hurts on a low points stage like this.

Stage 4 – This was one of the longest field courses of the match. Everyone was calling it the “Maze” because it had so many walls and you could see the same targets from all over the place. I focused on properly planning the front of the stage because that was the most critical movement part of the stage. I didn’t give the back section of the stage the same amount of attention while planning and paid the price. I ended up with a miss on a totally open target after the reload and then botched up the swinger activation which forced me to shoot the activating popper then wait for the swinger to come out. This wasted at least a second of stage time. This sucks because I think I could had a super solid stage performance without the miss and screwed up target engagement order at the end. I could tell that this is where my mental game started slipping away during the match because of these pretty basic mental errors.

Stage 5 – This was a long field course where you started in a jail cell. You had to shoot a down range popper to “open” the door of the jail then you could move to the rest of the stage. The rest of the stage had to be shot from wooden planks that were about a foot off the ground and pretty bouncy. You couldn’t step off the planks or you would receive one procedural penalty per step taken. The planks were two one foot wide scaffold planks nailed to logs so they were really narrow and bouncy which made it pretty precarious to move around aggressively. I started the stage ok but got caught up on the side of the jail wall as I exited. I almost lost my balance a couple of times while running around on the planks but it was mainly hard to shoot from such a narrow stance. I tried to keep from running around on the planks as much as possible by taking some longer and tighter shots but I think it was a waste of time. I took way too long aiming hard for the awkward tight shots then also ended up with a miss on the last target that was only a couple of millimeters into the black hard cover. Crappy stage time plus a miss made this a pretty bad run. I am all for having fun stages to shoot, but mandating that you had to stay on the planks was pretty crappy. I had a really kickass stage plan that had me cutting across the shooting area from plank to plank but couldn’t do it because of the mandated procedural penalties if you stepped off.

Stage 6 – This was another off the wall stage that had you starting in the back of a “Bus” that was a scaffold setup with planks that had you about 5 feet off the ground. This stage was long and it had a bunch of trees all over the stage that were blocking targets but were considered soft cover so you could shoot through them. You had to engage targets from both sides of the bus through the windows then had the choice of shooting the down range targets from the bus or run down to the forward shooting area to engage the remaining targets. The down range targets were pretty far our there at about 35 – 40 yards with hard cover and no shoots so they were hard shots to make if you wanted to shoot from the bus. But if you ran down to the forward shooting area all of the soft cover trees were blocking the targets so you would waste a bunch of time hunting for the targets between the trees. I figured that I had to aim hard for all of the down range targets anyway so I would shoot the whole stage from the bus. I was the only shooter in Limited to do this on our squad and I ended up shooting the stage two seconds faster then the fastest shooter running down to the forward section. Unfortunately I ended up with a miss on the far right down range target. I had two good A zone hits on it but one of them was about a quarter of an inch into the black. Without the miss I would have knocked this stage out of the park, but it wasn’t meant to be. Its cool to hear the shot break and then a few tenths of a second later hear the steel ding. That is a good tell tail of how far away the down range targets were.

Stage 7 – This was another speed shoot stage. You could start anywhere with your hands touching a wall. I chose to start in the middle so I didn’t have to move much through the stage. The stage had two swingers that were activated by poppers and there were enough static paper targets around to engage one between the steel and swinger. So the name of the game on this stage was to keep the gun running as much as possible. I thought that I executed the stage run pretty good, I wish I didn’t need two shots on the second popper as that added some extra time to my stage run, but even with that it still ended up being a decent stage run.

Stage 8 – This stage was one that everyone was talking about the whole match. It was a pretty basic stage that had two texas stars. The thing that got everyone excited was that one of the texas stars was swinging by the time you got to it. This is a very unique setup that I have never seen before. The swinging texas star ate a lot of peoples lunch. I watched some shooters empty two and three mags trying to clear it and still had to give up on it. I shot the first star really good then battled the swinging star a little bit then tried to finish hard. I figured I could point shoot the last for targets at the end of the stage and ended up with a miss on the second target in. I don’t know if it was lucky for me or what but this stage ended up getting thrown out of the match because the swinging star started to fling plates off while swinging and the RO just let the shooters complete the stage. This happened to a few squads and then the range master said that it wasn’t fair and they didn’t have time to reshoot all of the squads so it got thrown out. I was only glad that it got thrown out because I had a miss on the stage, but I am sure we will be seeing this contraption again at some of the local matches up there. This thing is evil for sure.

Stage 9 – This stage had you starting seated in a chair with your gun unloaded on a table. You had to engage some paper on the right then some more on the left then a high and low paper in the port followed by some poppers. Go through the door and engage some more paper through ports. The stage plan that I tried to program had me shooting the poppers first through the port followed by the low/high paper then the mini poppers because it took forever for the big poppers to fall. But when I got to the first port I started shooting the paper instead of the big poppers. When I went through the door I did my reload but by mag didn’t want to drop free so I had to pull it out before completing the reload and finishing the stage. You can see in the video how much slower my shooting, movement, and transitions are. By this time in the match I was completely out of gas running on fumes and it really shows in my lack of aggressiveness in shooting the stage, much less being able to stick to my stage plan.

Stage 10 – This stage had you starting outside the shooting area and you had to engage three paper then go through a door. After you went through the door you had to engage some more paper on the left and right as well as two sets of 8 plates straight down range on the extreme right and left of the berm. I chose a plan that had me shooting the right sight plates from right inside the door at a further distance then reload and go to the left to finish the paper, plates on the left then two middle targets. During this stage I was fighting myself to pull my focus back to my sights. I was looking at the small 6 inch plates out about 25 yards and missing then thinking “You dumb ass, look at your sights not the plates!!!”. My stage time was about 4 seconds off the top time which wasn’t horrible but I also had a miss and a no shoot. The miss and no shoot pretty much sunk my stage run. I am also not sure what happened to the video on this stage run. I gave my video camera to a fellow squad mate ready to rumble but the stage never got filmed.

Stage 11 – This stage allowed you to start anywhere inside the shooting area. You were forced to go to the extreme front left, right and middle so it made sense to start in one of those positions. I started in the front right and then shot as I backed out then moved to the far left and finished in the middle. I figured I could save some stage time by not running up to the port in the middle but stay back and shooting the plates and poppers further back. But I ran into the same missing issue as the last stage. I kept looking at the plates instead of my sights. I think that my plan was fine, I was just too exhausted to execute it well. That and flirting with the 180 as I backed up on the right side cost me time because I backed up more than I needed to in order to be extra safe. I hate stages like this that reward shooters with better stage times by risking breaking the 180. I at least got all of my hits on the paper so I was happy at the time.

Stage 12 – This was a medium length stage that had you starting seated in a chair with your gun unloaded on a table. There were targets on the right then a bunch of targets on the left and down the middle that were visible from many different locations. Most shooters were turning the stage into 5 or 6 different shooting positions in order to avoid taking tight shots as there were a bunch of zebra hard over and no shoot blocked targets. I picked a more basic stage plan that had only three shooting position but had me taking a lot tighter shots. The only challenge with this was it was now about dusk and there was very little day light to work with. I shot the first two positions well then went for my reload and completely missed the magwell which sent the mag flying. So I had to reload again with a different mag which all told probably wasted about 3 seconds of stage time. I ended up with a pretty hurting stage time of 17.13 seconds and the top limited shooter ran the stage in 14.42 seconds. Unfortunately I didn’t get any video of my stage run either. This was the stage that I ROed over the weekend though so I was able to reshoot it for fun a couple of times while waiting for squads to show up. I wanted to compare how I would do on the stage in different physical and mental worn out levels. I also wanted the stage run to be the first shots fired in the day to make it consistent “Cold” shooting conditions. On Saturday I reshot the stage later in the day after I was hot and a little worn out and was able to shoot it clean in 13.07 seconds. On Saturday I reshot it again right before lunch time when I felt really fresh and not worn out and was able to shoot it in 12.31 seconds clean. When I reshot the stage both times I used the exact same stage plan as I did on Friday to make the comparison valid. I was really surprised at how much more aggressive I was able to shoot the stage the less worn out I was. I knew that it would be an advantage to shoot when I wasn’t hot and worn out, but I didn’t expect it to be that much of a difference. It’s a cool thing to learn.

After the match results were tallied I ended up with 4 misses and one no shoot in shooting penalties. This landed me 5th in Limited at 88% of the winner Paul Clark Jr. I was surprised that I finished that high up on the results given how poorly I shot and fell apart at the end of the match. But I will take whatever I can get in those shooting conditions. I have learned a really good lesson about shooting a big match like this in one day. The lesson is to not do it. This now has me pretty leery about performing well at all out at the Nationals. ROing the Open/L10/Revolver match for three full days in 100+ degree weather will probably have me too wiped out to perform well during the Limited match. All I can do is give it my best and see how it turns out.