CHA-LEE's Tale

[CHA-LEE]

Dravz> Sure. The primary goal in seeking sponsorship is to trade your representation of a company or product for some kind of compensation. The ratio of representation level verses the compensation on both sides is always variable and totally dependent upon the level of sponsorship. Every compensation agreement between the two parties comes with unique stipulations, which most of the time are confidential. This is why you don’t see sponsored shooters explaining their “Compensation or Representation Requirements” in great detail to anyone. Along those lines I am not willing to discuss the exact details about my current sponsorship details. But I will explain my current stance in what I am willing to provide potential sponsors as far as product/company representation.

What I can offer potential sponsors is listed below. Its up to each potential sponsor to look at my offerings and decide what level of sponsorship my offerings are worth to them. If they determine that what I have to offer is something of value to them they can provide a proposal of sponsorship which will stipulate specific requirements of the sponsorship agreement. In the end, its up to me to determine if the proposal is viable and either accept or decline the offer.

(1) I provide professional and courteous representation of myself and my sponsors on and off the range at all times.

(2) I attend many local, section, state, area, and national level pistol shooting events each year.

(3) I am able to prove effective use of product demonstrations. This goes along the lines of “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday” type of marketing.

(4) I am willing to provide product support in the events that I attend and on my own personal time as needed. Customers may need assistance with understanding, using, configuring, or repairing the products I represent. I do my best to assist them with those needs as I can or direct them to who can provide them assistance.

(5) I can provide confidential research and development testing assistance and effectively communicate testing results for whatever testing is needed.

I hope that this clears up the topic for you. If not let me know.

[dravz]

I hope that this clears up the topic for you. If not let me know.

Yes, thank you, but what do they do for you?

I'm not asking for specifics, but are the kinds of things they provide to you for all your work? Branded apparel? Match fees? Travel expenses? Free equipment? Ammunition? All this and money on top? Or is it "just" getting their particular stuff for free?

That's what I'm trying to get at -- how "complete" is sponsorship in the shooting sports?

Thanks for your insight.

[CHA-LEE]

dravz> Obviously I can't speak for other sponsored shooters as I don't know their particular sponsorship details. The challenge here is that everyone is is at a different skill set and dedication level with regards to major match performance and ability to effectively represent their sponsors. On the other side of the coin the sponsors themselves have limits in how much they are willing to spend in sponsoring shooters. The higher up on the food chain you get the more comprehensive the sponsorship assistance gets. Or at least that is how it should work. But I can almost guarantee that there is only a very small group of the very best shooters that have sponsorship deals that cover everything (Guns, Ammo, Gear, Travel, Match Fee's, etc) as well as provide an income to live on. Most of these top end shooters have transitioned from only being sponsored to actually working for the companies that are considered their primary sponsors.

From the way I have seen it both in past sports/hobbies and the shooting sports where I have been sponsored, an effective sponsored competitor will always put in WAY MORE with respect to representing their sponsors verses what they receive in compensation. It is never a one to one exchange of effort put in verses assistance given. That is just how it is and always will be. This is an important fact that people must understand before they even think about seeking sponsorship.

[CHA-LEE]

With all of the snow and canceled matches lately I have had to resort to Dry Firing. Since I screwed up my neck the last time I went Dry Fire crazy I am taking it easy this time. I have 30 dummy rounds that I use for dry firing (10 in each mag) then weighted base pads to make the gun and magazine the same weight as it would normally be while shooting. I came up with a pretty basic dry fire program where I will do a hands at sides draw, then rack a round out to reset the trigger. When the magazine is empty I will load another mag then do hands at surrender draws then rack out a round each time. This gives me at least 10 hands at sides and 10 surrender draws. Then I will use the last 10 rounds to do one shot draws then reload and shoot again. Doing this gives me 10 more draws and 10 reloads. I will throw some extra reloads or draws in here or there when I am trying out different stuff so I usually end up with 50 total repetitions.

Due to my lack of dry firing in the past my draws and reloads have been agonizingly slow during matches. I have set a par time of 1.1 seconds for both draw types then 2.3 seconds for the one shot draw, reload then another shot. These times are no where near super fast, but it is what I can do and still break clean called shots.

Last night I was remembering a tip about reloading from a Manny Bragg class I took. His basic statement was that a fast draw and reload is primarily about using fast hand speed to get to the gun/mag and get those things out and ready to use fast. With my draw the biggest time consumer is getting a solid grip on the gun while its in the holster before I pull it out. I have fast hand speed getting to the gun and getting it out once I have a grip. But building the grip while its in the holster is where I am losing a lot of time. Due to how much grip tape I use its hard to reposition my hand during the draw so if I grip it wrong its nearly impossible to shift my hand to correct the bad grip mid draw. I might explore using less or no grip tape to see what that does.

On the Reload front I had a “Light Bulb” moment last night. Manny would say that you would have to drop your weak hand aggressively and “Slap” at the new mag while getting it off the belt to keep an consistent aggressive hand movement through the whole reload process. I honestly never tried this before as I was always worried that I wouldn’t grip the magazine correctly or actually slap the magazine off my belt sending it flying. But I tried it in a bunch of different variations and HOLLY CRAP it actually works. My reloads went from a very deliberate grab and movement motion 1.3 – 1.4 seconds down to a consistent 1 second using the aggressive magazine slap method. Of course I tried pushing the limits and trying different stuff so there were moments of mega fail with magazines flying all over the place, but that is just part of figuring out what works and what doesn’t. I really look forward to practicing and perfecting the mag slap reload method as it will show positive results during matches.

I just need to take it easy and no go overboard with the dry fire so I don’t end up blowing out my neck again. But I think that any amount of dry fire is better than none!!!

[CHA-LEE]

My dry fire routine continues each night this week. Its actually kind of strange as I find myself looking forward to doing it in the evening after work. I think its because I am finding out new ways of doing things faster or more efficiently and am enjoying trying to optimize it.

For the reloads I am trying to burn in the fast hand speed and “Mag Slap” technique so it becomes my new normal hand movement during a reload. So far I am getting better at keeping my hand speed up but still need a good amount of practice to polish up the actual grab of the magazine off the belt so I can consistently insert it in the gun. Another cool thing that I found is that if I keep the mag well at chin height in the “Ready for new Mag” position it’s a LOT easier to get the reload inserted and seated. This is higher than I held the gun before so burning in this new gun position is also going to take a while. But once I get it all burned in I should be able to do sub 1 second reloads without much trouble.

While working on the draw I have been tweaking the position of my holster on my belt so the angle of the grip matches my normal hand angle when reaching for the gun during the draw. I simply kept using a normal arm movement motion and hand angle while reaching for the gun then tweaked on the holster to reposition the grip angle to match it the best I could. I had to move the holster forward on my belt about an inch then twist it outwards to have the top of the gun pointing straight forward in my normal shooting stance. After making these adjustments getting my hand to the gun aggressively and building a consistent fast grip was WAY easier. Since I am able to get my hand to the gun faster and grip it faster I am able to get it out of the holster faster. From a completely relaxed arm and hand state I am able to do one shot draws at a very comfortable .8 - .9 second time. If I point shoot the shot breaking it before I am really seeing the front sight clearly I can get into the .6 - .7 second range. The last time I did hard core dry fire like this I was able to replicate these times but that is also when I blew out my neck so I am a little leery of pushing the speed envelope too much or too long.

After tweaking my holster to optimize my draw I did some more draw, one shot, reload one shot drills and could get them down into the 1.7 - 1.8 second range. But I wasn’t too consistent going that fast. I will need a lot more repetitions to truly burn this stuff in and make it the new normal. A new thing that I tried was to do this drill with my eyes closed. Much to my surprise I was actually able to do the drill about half of the time correctly at the new faster speed. I think this shows that I am burning in some kind of “Muscle Memory” for these skills. Doing this drill with my eyes closed was more of a mental hurtle to overcome at first. But once I simply told myself “make it happen” I stopped thinking about the mechanics of it and just did it. This was really cool to experience.

I am planning on going out for some live fire practice on Saturday since the match has been canceled so I can test out these draw and reload skills. Until then I will continue to dry fire in the evenings.

[CHA-LEE]

I was able to video some of my dry fire practice tonight. Below is a video of a couple one shot draw, reload, one shot drills. I had the Par timer set to 1.7 seconds for these runs. I wanted to video this practice so I could break down what I am doing that is wasting time and movement. One main thing that I see myself doing is bobbing my head to the sights on the draw. I thought I might be bobbing my head during the draw but I didn't realize how much until I seen the video. I will work on keeping my upper body and head still during the draw and bringing the gun to my eye.

I still find myself dropping the gun too low during the reload and then botching the load of the new mag. These two runs in the above video are just about the best I can do at this point. I am still botching quite a bit of reloads while practicing when I slip back into my old mode of pulling the gun back too low. I even had a reload tonight where I got my pinky solidly pinched between the magwell and the magazine.... OUCH!!! I got that on film too for your entertainment. You can hear my wife giving me some ribbing for the mega fail boat reload performance....

[frunkenstein]

Hey Cha-lee that reninds me of the lat HPPS match where you did the same thing OUCH!!!!! I would've thought you had learned about that ,

[CHA-LEE]

Since the match was canceled on Saturday I went out and practiced with friends instead. The night before I got pretty drunk at a dinner party so I was “Foggy” most of Saturday. This “Foggy” mental state wasn’t the best place to be in while practicing and it really showed in my shooting. I was able to get some shooting done though and my main focus was to keep my draws and reloads aggressive during the stage runs. I was able to keep my first shot at or under 1 second on most of the stage runs where we were drawing to a partial target at the start. After the stage practice I did some one shot draws to a piece A/C Zone steel out about 10 yards. I was able to do .80 - .90 one shot draws and get solid hits. If I pushed the speed faster in the .6 - .7 range I couldn’t hit the target worth a crap as I was breaking the shot before the sights were settled down. I think the fastest I was able to draw and fire a shot was a .63 which is WAY faster than I have ever been able to do it before. Granted I would only be able to get hits on a lot closer target with that kind of draw, but its cool to be able to actually do it that fast on demand. I still need a lot more dry and live fire practice to get these draw and reload skills burned in but its cool to be able to see a marked improvement in this live fire practice session.

[CHA-LEE]

On Sunday we had a USPSA Match up at the Weld range near to Ft. Collins. The weather was cold but bearable. Luckily there was not too much wind or we would have been a lot colder. The sky was overcast all day and there was a slight fog in the morning so I knew I was going to battle seeing my sights properly most of the day. This combined with consciously focusing on drawing and reloading during the stage runs had a negative affect on my stage performances from a shooting or planning perspective. I hit all my draws and had very solid reloads on every stage which was a major win for me. But on the other side of the coin my shooting and stage planning were pretty lack luster. I ended up with 4 misses and 1 no shoot for the match which is a boat load of penalties. Not to mention completely blowing a couple of stage plans. Looking back on the match I should have swapped the fiber in the front sight to the Orange color so I could see it better. I wasn’t able to effectively call my shots on some of the stages due to the less than optimal lighting conditions. This mixed with frozen finger shooting, which leads to mashing the trigger, pulls your shots all over the place leading to poor or no hits. Lastly its never good when you are consciously thinking about doing specific things (Draw/Reload) during a stage run. So essentially this match was a glorified practice session for me. I was glad that I was able to deploy some of my new gun handling skills, but I need to burn those in during dry fire so I don’t have to consciously think about them during a stage run. Hopefully the nightly dry fire will do just that.

[CHA-LEE]

I continue to dry fire every night after work. My draws and reloads are getting more consistent but its still rough around the edges. I am thinking about changing my make ready process to integrate an aggressive one shot draw and reload to load the first mag in the gun. But I need to get the reloads more solid before I fully cut over to that plan. It would be crappy to send a magazine flying across the stage during the make ready process because I botched the reload during the dry fire routine.

[co-exprs]

I would relish the opportunity to watch you throw a mag down range when told to make ready. Sorry, but that would be pretty funny.

[CHA-LEE]

I would relish the opportunity to watch you throw a mag down range when told to make ready. Sorry, but that would be pretty funny.

I am sure you and many others would find that very entertaining

[CHA-LEE]

The USPSA match scheduled for this past Saturday was canceled due to a snow storm that rolled through the state on Thursday. Since the match was canceled I planned on getting some live fire practice instead on Sunday. On Sunday I was able to get about 300 rounds of live fire practice under my belt. I was practicing at an indoor range so it was challenging to see my sights effectively but it was good practice. We setup a stage and ran through it a bunch of different ways. I tried doing my new make ready process during the practice session and battled seating the magazine correctly doing a fast slap/grab reload. The strange thing was that I was able to hit all of my reloads during the stage runs with ZERO issues. I hit every reload quickly and solidly. I guess that is what counts more than anything.

During this practice session I mainly ran my Limited gun but also got a chance to run through the stage with my M&P 45 that I setup for home defense. I don’t get to shoot this gun very often so I took this live fire practice opportunity to give it a run through the paces. It was a lot of fun to shoot and it was very nice to know that I could shoot it just as fast and effective as my limited gun. The only thing that sucked was that I got a little bit of slide bite from it. Using a really high grip and having chubby paws = slide bite using just about any gun with a normal height slide. This a huge reason why I prefer shooting the EAA/Tanfo pistols. The slides are half the height on those guns and are up further than the 1911/2011 based pistols.

Overall it was a really good practice session. I would have preferred to shoot outdoors so I could see my sights better, but beggars can be choosers. At this time of the year you have to take whatever shooting you can get. I can’t wait for spring to come so we can put this snow and winter weather conditions behind us.

[CHA-LEE]

My daily dry fire routine in the evenings continues. I have been trying to do the weak hand reach across the middle motion during the draw and keep getting mixed results. Some times it works really good, other times it does not. One thing that I have gotten a lot better at is my surrender draws. I can consistently do .9 – 1 sec surrender draws without fumbling for the gun in the holster. I am using an elbows down arm position with my thumbs touching my cheeks and my hands totally relaxed. Doing this allows me to get a precise grip on the gun and smooth draw each time.

I think that I am finally starting to build the mag slap hand motion during the reload into a subconscious thing. I don’t have to even think about slapping for the new mag aggressively on the reload any more. The only draw back to this is that all of the aggressive mag slapping has created a bruise on my middle finger where the under side of my second finger joint hits the base pad of the mag. Since this bruise keeps coming back with excessive reload practice I have been alternating between draw and movement drills and reload drills every other day to give my finger a chance to heal up.

The main thing that I have learned through all of this dry fire training is that I get the best results if I totally relaxed my arms and hands. Any time I build up some tension “Trying” to be aggressive or fast it end up screwing up some portion of the draw or reload.

Last night I did some dry fire drills for the classifier called “Can you Count”. This classifier has you drawing to a very close target, shooting it 5 times, reload, then engage another target with 5 shots. You repeat this twice on two sets of targets. The 100% time on this classifier is 3 seconds for each string. Much to my surprise I was able to do 3 second runs in dry fire if I started with the lower target then reloaded if I moved to the higher target. For whatever reason I could hit a smoking fast reload going from low to high verses high to low. When going from high to low I would miss the magwell about 50% of the time during the reload. I need to spend some time in breaking down this failure mode. I think that the main reason why I am having trouble with the reload is because I am artificially bringing the gun too low during the reload as I get ready to transition to the lower target. I will need to experiment with this movement more to figure out what the main challenge is in executing it properly.

[co-exprs]

I hate that classifier. I have never been able to develop any rythm in my trigger finger. I've been working on it for a long time, but never seem to make any improvement. Bill Drills are a noted hole in my game.

Glad you are pushing you're learning curve forward again. Oh wait... you shoot in my division. Darn!

[CHA-LEE]

On Friday night I attended an Indoor Flashlight Match. I used my M&P 45 since it has night sights on it. There were two stages, one which was really dark and required the use of a flashlight to see the targets. On this stage I shot the whole stage Strong hand only and held the flashlight up near my head. Shooting strong hand only wasn’t an issue but I ended up shining the flashlight on the gun/sights too much and it totally illuminated my rear sight but I couldn’t see my front sight. I have run into this issue in the past but totally forgot about it. Since I couldn’t see my front sight I was forced to point shoot looking at the targets and this lead to a bunch of misses. If I had a chance to shoot this stage again, I would try holding the flashlight at belly height towards the targets but away from my sights. This way I could at least see the black front and rear sights in front of the illuminated target. On the second stage it was low light so you didn’t need a flash light but if you didn’t have night sights you were pretty screwed. I shot this stage ok, a little too fast and it resulted in a couple of misses. I also didn’t seat the mag all the way on the last reload and had to recover from that on the clock. The fumbled reload isn’t a surprise given how awkward you have to hold the gun to keep the muzzle pointed straight down range during the reload. This is one of the rules of this match so you can’t do a “Normal” type of reload.

Overall it wasn’t too much fun, but a good learning experience. I like shooting my M&P 45 as that is my home defense pistol and its nice to get some trigger time on it.

[CHA-LEE]

On Sunday I attended a USPSA match at the Aurora Gun Club. This is the club that I was on the board for and this was the first match attending without being on the board. So I showed up at the normal non-setup time, checked out the stages, and hung out like a regular consumer. To be honest, it was strange not having to bust my hump before the start of this match. The weather was great for the match and shooters came out of the wood work all over the place to shoot. We had 87 total shooters in attendance so it made for a long day of shooting with 21+ shooters on each squad.

My focus for the match was to allow my draws and reloads happen and see if I could do them as fast and effective as I can in dry fire. Since I was worrying about my draws and reloads some of my other shooting skills started slacking. I kept getting sucked into looking at targets and point shooting verses just looking at my sights. Or I would try to rush the shooting and end up mashing the trigger. I paid for this dearly in penalties. On one medium field course I ended up with a Mike / No Shoot because I was just slinging shots at the target. Then on the classifier I ended up with a Mike / No Shoot and a scoring No Shoot because I was trying to hurry. Giving away 60 match points on shooting penalties is pretty crappy. But the good news was that I hit every single reload solidly and quickly. I also hit all but one of my draws really well. On the draw that I flubbed it was on a stage where I was in a twisted up starting position and it put by upper body in a funky position when compared to my waist. I have to do some more dry fire practice with these funky hand and body starting positions.

With 60 points flushed down the drain in penalties my overall finish was lack luster. Hopefully the new draw and reload start becoming subconscious actions soon so I can stop thinking about them on the clock and focus on my sights. Tonight I am going to an indoor USPSA match in Colorado Springs. I think I will just let go of trying to force anything and let it happen. This is the only way that I will be able to see if things are getting properly burned in or not.

[BritinUSA]

It looked good on video though...

[CHA-LEE]

I shot the indoor USPSA match last night in Colorado springs. Mentally I wasn’t there and this translated to pretty crappy shooting. On the first stage you started with your unloaded gun and first mag on a table. At the start I picked up the gun and got a funky grip and this lead to a really bad sight picture with the front sight biased to the left. I tried to point it to the right and shoot but it kept returning to the left after every shot and I put three shots into a no shoot before I got two good hits on the scoring target. Chalking up three no shoots on the first of only two stages pretty much sunk my match and I lost all motivation to shoot. I think I was just too wore out from the weekend to focus both mentally and physically for shooting last night. Oh well, some times you win some times you lose. Time to rest up and rebuild the reserves so I can pull it together for this coming weekend.

[CHA-LEE]

I am pleased to announce that I have picked up Rainier Ballistics as my bullet sponsor for the 2012 shooting season. I am really looking forward to representing them on and off the range this year!!!

[Sean Gaines]

I am pleased to announce that I have picked up Rainier Ballistics as my bullet sponsor for the 2012 shooting season. I am really looking forward to representing them on and off the range this year!!!

good job panda!

[CHA-LEE]

This past Saturday I helped setup and run the match hosted by the High Plains Practical Shooters club. We are thinking about hosting the Mile High Showdown in September and the only way we can do it is if we setup base stages and then shoot them twice make minor changes between stage runs. During this club match we tested this double stage use concept using 3 berms and creating 6 stages out of them. With only using 3 berms we could only have 3 squads so we hoped that we wouldn’t get more than 45 shooters but we ended up getting 60+ shooters which made for huge squads. With the 20+ shooter squads there was extra waiting around and stage to stage squad movement log jams which made for a long day of shooting. But our basic concept of using one physical base stage then shooting it two different ways worked.

As for my own shooting, I put a lot of effort into NOT worrying about my draw and reload speed and simply let it happen. I succeeded in letting it happen on its own and most of my draws and reloads were solid and aggressive. I did fumble a reload on the classifier but all of the others were good. I think that I have fully burned in the faster hand speed during the draw and reload. But I still need a lot of repetitions to polish it up. For the match I had two misses and one no shoot for shooting penalties. One was a miss/no shoot when I was forced to shoot 22 rounds one for one with no make ups. The other miss was due to me moving my head on the last shot in a string as I exited the shooting position. I called both misses and sure enough, they were. Other than these shooting penalties I felt like I had a solid aggressive match.

On the live fire practice front I have made a change. A new indoor range opened up about 10 minutes drive from my work. They only have 6 lanes and they are not too far. But the lighting and ventilation is good so I signed up for it. I am going to try and shoot 100 rounds three times a week there. I think that being able to get solid draw, reload, and live fire practice in three times a week will help me burn in and polish up the draw and reload skills. The only thing that sucks is that most of my brass gets thrown forward into the lanes and you can’t rake brass back from the firing line. So I will end up losing quite a bit of brass with this practice. We will see how it goes as time passes. But so far I am really excited to get a chance to do live fire practice on a regular basis AND it not being too time consuming.

[Chris iliff]

Dang Charlie, I had to go to the second page to find you!

Hope the new range works out for you. Dryfire is great, but real trigger time is priceless!!

[CHA-LEE]

Chris iliff> The new indoor range is working out great. I have been going 3 times a week shooting 100 rounds in each session. I got some 2/3rd size USPSA targets and can fit 2 or 3 on a single target carrier. So that gives me multiple targets to transition between during the drills. This gives me an opportunity to do a bunch of different "Stand and shoot" style drills. The only things I can't really practice are up range facing starts or shooting one the move. Both of these things I have been practicing in dry fire though. If I keep at this pace of live and dry fire practice this whole year I don't see how I couldn't bring my shooting skills and gun handling mechanics to the next level.

[CHA-LEE]

I was able to attend a USPSA match this past Saturday. This match was a pretty tuff match from a shot difficulty perspective. There were a boat load of partial targets and super awkward shooting positions. After looking at the stages in the morning I knew that aiming hard was going to be paramount for this match verses trying to burn stages down. On the first stage of the day I had my only mistake of the match. I was in the middle of engaging a series of close targets and much to my surprise my magazine dropped free right in the middle of the string of targets. I knew that I had a funky weak hand grip on the gun but it must have been had enough for my palm to bump the magazine release during recoil. Having to do an unplanned reload & rack to get going again in a section of the stage where you were suppose to be hosing out the rounds while moving fairly quickly is an ideal way to waste a bunch of stage time. I ended up with a 16 second stage run when it should have been an 11 second stage run. Wasting 5 seconds on this stage due to the unplanned mag drop is the same as getting 2 mikes and a no shoot on a normal stage time run. OUCH!!!

Since I gave away about 30 - 40 match points on the first stage of the day I knew that I had to shoot clean and solid on the rest of the stages if I was going to have a chance of pulling out a win in Limited. On the rest of the stages I did shoot clean and solid but still ended up less than 1 match point short of winning Limited. I was close to pulling it off but fell just short. I did have 4 D’s through the whole match so that did play a roll in me not succeeding. But with all of the partial targets and awkward shooting positions I can live with the D’s verses getting misses or no shoots.

I was able to let go of “Trying” to draw and reload quickly so I could focus on my shooting instead. All of my draws and reloads were solid and aggressive which was cool. Being able to execute the more aggressive draws and reloads from a subconscious level is really nice and tells me that my live and dry fire practice is starting to pay off.

This is going to be a fun year of shooting and I am really looking forward to working hard to take my shooting skills to the next level.