CHA-LEE's Tale

[CHA-LEE]

Hey CHA-LEE,

Was nice to meet you at Area 5: I was the big dude that came outta nowhere and shook your hand, then later at the safe table when you were looking at your busted roscoe...

Many thanks for the .40 Reload tip - the one with the Gizmo - it has worked great (except I've had got goofy magazine issues at Area 5)

Cheers!

It was nice meeting you too. I am glad that I was able to offer you some help.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I attended the USPSA Area 5 Championships in Polo Illinois. I went with my buddy Conrad and he went out a few days early to visit with family. I flew in on Friday and we headed out to the range to check out the stages. The weather was fairly hot in the 90’s but the humidity wasn’t too bad. We got to watch some of the Friday shooters run through the stages and checked them out between squads as the opportunity presented its self. The reoccurring theme this match was all about tight shots. A boat load of hard cover and no shoots on the vast majority of the targets on just about every stage was the normal setup. I knew right away that if you were not using your sights at this match you would be severely punished with misses and no shoots. Given the level of shot difficulty at this match I told myself that getting my hits was paramount and used that as a primary match strategy. By the time we left the range on Friday I had a good basic stage plan for all of the stages which was good. The bad thing was that my left knee was hurting pretty bad. I have been battling this achy/painful left knee for several weeks now and any time I run around a stage aggressively it really starts to hurt. The left knee pain continued both Saturday and Sunday while shooting the match. I tried my best to take it easy between stage runs but it would still be pretty painful by the end of the day. When our squad would get to a stage I would run through it dry at a slow walking pace and not get into crouched shooting positions while practicing the stage. This helped keep me from really beating my knee up but it also kind of threw off my movement timing on a couple of stages. Oh well, I have made an appointment with my Dr this week to look into this left knee issue. Hopefully its not serious and does not require surgery. Anyway, back to the match. On Saturday morning it was raining when we got up. Our squad was scheduled to start shooting in the afternoon, which was good because the rainy weather was over but was bad because now it was super humid. I was sweating like crazy the whole day in the hot humid conditions. I was drinking a lot of water and kept well hydrated but the real problem I ran into was wet and sticky hands. I couldn’t grip the gun or grab a mag during a reload worth a crap. Almost every time I drew the gun I couldn’t shift my hand to optimize the grip and would end up with a strange grip. So this forced me to draw very deliberate to make sure that my strong hand was positioned correctly on the gun before actually gripping and drawing the gun. This sticky hand situation was the most frustrating thing to deal with throughout the match.

The squad I ended up on was great. Everyone worked their tails off resetting the stages between shooters. It was awesome to be on a squad where everyone works hard and efficient without needing to be pestered to work. I was able to get a fellow squad mate to film my stage runs and he did a great job. Its really cool to be part of an awesome squad like that. I have listed below my stage runs in the other I shot them.

Saturday

Stage 6 – This was a medium size stage that forced you to go to the back left and right corners. Then engage some targets in the middle of the stage and finish on a double swinger setup that were triggered by two different poppers. I felt that I shot the front section of the stage well then overshot the middle a little bit. When I did my reload my mag didn’t want to drop free so I had to pull it out before I could complete the reload. In the back of the stage there were two poppers on the right and a swinger then two poppers on the left and a swinger. Since this stage was tucked into the berm and used solid walls you really couldn’t see the timing of the swingers very well. Since it was the first stage of the match I figured that I would take a safe approach and shoot the activating popper, then the other popper and then wait for the swinger to come out. This plan worked well but did waste a little bit of time. I think that I probably lost a couple of seconds on this stage due to the mag sticking and a less than optimal swinger engagement order. But I got all of my hits so I was happy.

Stage 7 – This was a long field course with a few different ways of shooting it. The port at the starting position had two steel that could be engaged which would activate a swinger on the right side of the stage and then a drop out target in the port. You could see the swinger from a different port at the end of the stage so it didn’t make sense to engage it anywhere else other than the end. I felt that I shot the stage pretty good but a little too deliberate, especially at the end. I once again got all of my hits which was nice.

Stage 8 – This was a medium field course with a bunch of hard shots. Every single paper target had either hard cover or a no shoot blocking most of the A zone. My stage plan for the front right side of the stage was a different than most everyone else. I shot the three targets on the right side from around the right side of the wall instead of engaging the far right paper around the wall then the two others through the port in the wall. I thought that it was more consistent to shoot it the way I did as for hitting one single shooting position verses two. In the front section of the stage I shot the left side well but then had another mag not dropping free issue as I reloaded moving to the right. This cost me a good second of wasted time on this stage.

Stage 9 – This was a larger field course that had some up close blasting along with some really tricky sections. The middle portion of the stage had 5 targets you could engage and two of them could also be seen from other shooting positions. The middle targets were spread out far enough and far away enough to make for some pretty hard shots while doing it on the move. I tried to eliminate some of that by engaging the far left target in between the first and second ports. But the middle section still ended up being really clunky. I also thought that I could get away with point shooting the targets in the first and second ports and was rewarded with two misses on the steel in the second port which activated a drop turner. This was just sloppy shooting due to trying to rush through the stage instead of just letting it happen at its own pace. I probably gave away a good 2 – 3 seconds in extra shots needed and missed positions. The only saving grace here is that I got all of my hits.

Stage 10 – This was a short field course that was only 10 rounds. Two steel through a port then four paper targets as you moved round the wall. The key to this stage was to keep the gun out and ready to shoot while moving aggressively around the wall. I felt that I shot this stage about as good as I could.

Stage 11 – This was another short field course that was only 10 rounds. It was suppose to be kind of a mirror image of the last stage but the way the targets were laid out made it quite different. The steel through the port was spread out further and the first two paper were spread out further than the last two making it not effective to shoot them on the move. You basically had to shoot the steel then transition over to the first two paper and then haul ass to the end to engage the last two paper. I missed one of the steel and had to make it up then I almost fell out of the shooting area at the end which made me shoot slower on the last target. I probably wasted about a second on this stage with the miss on the steel and the really slow shooting on the last target.

Stage 12 – This was a large field course which forced you to both far ends of the stage to engage all of the targets. I figured that the best plan for getting me shooting right away was to engage the right side of the stage first then haul ass to the middle then finish on the left. The middle section had a bear trap that was activated by the left popper and it took a little while to open up but once it opened it didn’t give you much time to engage the target. A couple of guys on my squad tried to shoot the activating popper, then the other popper and the right paper before engaging the bear trap and all of them ended up with at least one mike/no shoot on the second shot for the bear trap. I knew that I could probably fit it all in and get my hits on the bear trap but I didn’t want to risk it. I took the safe rout and only engaged the other steel then waited for the bear trap to open up. I felt that I shot the right side aggressive and solid then in the middle I slowed down waiting for the bear trap and then shot the left side too slow. I probably gave away a couple of seconds taking the safe rout on the bear trap and shooting the left side too slow.

Sunday

Stage 13 – This was the first stage of the day on Sunday. It was a medium field course that had you starting with your unloaded gun on the table. The basic plan was to step into the shooting area and engage one paper through the port then three steel and a paper around the right side of the wall. Then move to the left and engage an open paper, popper, then a no shoot paper and a bear trap through a port. Reload and move forward to engage an open paper, two mini poppers then two no shoot blocked targets. After that move to the left and finish on a no shoot blocked paper. My plan was different than most because I chose to not stop in the middle of the stage after the second port to engage a single no shoot blocked paper. I instead engaged this target from the extreme right of the forward shooting position. I figured that I had to dig into the forward position anyway so why not take that extra target from there anyway. I think that this plan worked out well. I completely botched my reload due to sticky hands and it kept me from engaging the forward targets as soon as I could. This probably wasted a couple seconds of stage time. This mixed with missing the mini poppers a couple of times didn’t help matters either.

Stage 1 – This was a long field course with some really long steel shots at the start. In the first shooting position you engaged 6 poppers, which were two rows of three. These poppers were about 25 – 30 yards down range and all of them were rearward falling so you had to wait a little bit for the front popper to fall out of the way before engaging the back one. After that you hauled ass down range and engaged targets on the left and right on the move then finished down range with three paper and two mini poppers. The middle target at the end of the stage was once again a ways out there and showed only the A zone making it a pretty hard shot. The two main area’s I focused on for this stage was shooting the steel at the start solidly without wasting a bunch of time then keeping moving through the rest of the stage while shooting on the move. This plan worked out really well. I don’t think I could have shot this stage any better or faster and still get all of my hits.

Stage 2 – This was the longest field course of the match. It was a confusing mess of targets and shooting positions. You were forced to go to every single shooting position in the stage and in a couple of positions you could see the same targets multiple times. I think that the shear size of this stage and the amount of shooting positions is what caused the most confusion for people. That combined with some awkward shooting positions that you had to hit made it a hard stage to really dig in and run hard between shooting positions. I missed a big popper in the third shooting position and had to go back and make it up which cost about a second then I completely fumbled my reload after that which totally killed my ability to run hard to the next shooting position. The screwed up reload probably cost me two seconds of wasted time by moving too slow. That combined with some pretty slow shooting equaled a pretty lack luster stage run. I should have been able to finish this stage in under 30 seconds but ended up with a 32 second run.

Stage 3 – This was a long field course with targets hidden all over the place. It was kind of like a memory stage because you had to engage the targets in a specific order or they would be hidden behind walls if you went too far. I think that this was the hardest stage of the match from a pure execution standpoint. You had to hit a bunch of different shooting positions effectively and not overrun targets and end up with an FTE, which many shooters did. I felt that I shot this stage pretty slow and deliberate trying my best to hit my shooting positions. When I was done shooting I felt that I did a pretty good job but ended up with a miss on the 5th target I engaged. I didn’t even call the shots on that target marginal either which made it confusing. The only thing I can think that happened is that I mashed the trigger and pulled the shot off the target. This was my only miss of the match. My goal of shooting a clean match was shattered but given the difficulty of the shots through the whole match I don’t think anyone would shoot a totally clean match.

Stage 4 – This was a medium field course where you had a bunch of stand and shoot shooting positions. You were forced to engage targets in every port and around every wall. I actually shot this stage twice. The first time through one of the targets got taped before it was scored so I had to reshoot the stage. I was fine with reshooting the stage because I screwed up the middle section pretty bad by trying to be fancy and reloading before the door then kicking the door open. The second time I shot the stage I reloaded after engaging targets through the door and that worked out better but then I went stupid on the last three steel of the stage and needed a bunch of make up shots. At least I got all of my hits.

Stage 5 – This was a small stage that was pretty much a hoser kind of stage. Your loaded gun started in the middle and you had the choice of starting with your hands on the X’s on either the extreme left or right wall. Originally I thought that the best plan would be to start on the right then grab the gun as I ran to the left. But the RO mandated that the gun be pointed straight down range and picking it up from that angle while coming from the left would have been awkward. I changed my plan to start on the left the run to the gun, pick it up, then come back to the left. It was one less step of distance needed to be traveled but it had a back and forth movement so it was probably a wash from a stage time perspective. The right port on this stage had a drop out target that was activated by a popper. It took a little while for the drop out target to come out so I figured I would engage the right outside target after the steel then come back for the drop out. This was a 21 round stage so I could shoot the whole thing without needing a reload but I didn’t want to risk it. Not doing a reload would have probably saved me a second of stage time but missing the little steel a couple of times and needing to do an unplanned reload would cost me way more than a second so I took the safe rout and just planned to do a reload. I think I shot this stage pretty good. I wasted a little time by missing one of the middle poppers and doing a reload. The really crazy thing happened after I got the "Unload and Show Clear" command. I unloaded, showed clear then went to pull the trigger to drop the hammer and the hammer wouldn't drop. I was like "WTF is wrong with this thing???". I rack the slide a couple of times and try it again and still nothing. Then I notice that the trigger is still all the way back. My trigger return spring had broken on the last shot of the stage and wouldn't push the trigger back forward to reset the trigger bar on the sear. I was SOOOOOOOO lucky to have the trigger return spring break on the last shot of the stage. I would have been completely hosed if it broke in the middle of the stage run!!! Lucky for me, it didn't break in the middle of the stage run.

After all of the shooting was done I was able to finish the match with only one miss and no other shooting penalties. I really wanted to shoot a clean match and when I looked at the results on the USPSA website NO ONE in the top 30 of Limited shot a clean match. I stopped looking after the top 30 as it pretty much proved my point that this was one really hard match with a lot of difficult shots. I ended up 4th in Limited at 90% of the winner Manny Bragg. I was happy with this finish given the shooting conditions and my own personal battles with the humidity and my knee. While watching my videos I noticed that my transitions while shooting were pretty slow and deliberate along with my other gun handling aggressiveness. When I get hot and am sweating like crazy I move slow. That is a fact that has been proven time and time again. I have said it before but I will say it again. I am just not built to shoot well in hot/humid conditions. As much as I liked shooting this match, I don’t think I will be back to this part of the country in the middle of summer for a match due to the humidity. I guess I am just a hot and dry weather shooter at heart.

[Less]

Sorry to hear about your knee... Last year my doc told me I have moderate arthritis in my right knee. I'm a fairly young too, which made it pretty confusing from the "wait, what do you mean I'm gettin older?!" perspective. If anything, it was one of the reasons I pushed ahead so hat this past year...

About the heat: last year we got the Wisconsin Sectional. It was 99F in the SHADE! Full-on humidity... Bugs... Ugh. Terrible match, really... I think I'd rather head out west to bust caps too, and I live here!

[rtr]

Congrats on your finsh buddy.

[CHA-LEE]

Congrats on your finsh buddy.

Thanks. I am just trying to keep up with you!!!

[CHA-LEE]

I just got back from my Dr visit for my left knee. He says that he thinks I have Patellar Tendinitis. This is good news to me because I was fearing that it may be some kind of joint/cartilage problem which is usually nothing but a down hill situation once that stuff gets jacked up. He recommended that I take it easy for a little while to allow it to heal on its own. He also recommended that I do some physical therapy to help speed up the recovery time. Time to get healed up so I can get back on the band wagon.

[Chris iliff]

Bummer with the knee.

Good job at Area 5. I didn't shoot it this year, but hopefully we can meet at a future match.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I shot a local USPSA match on Saturday. It was a hot day of shooting. I think the temp peaked at about 104 by the time we were done, but it was a dry heat and there was a little breeze so it wasn’t horrible. I was taking it easy on my knee that day picking stage plans that would allow me to not have to accelerate hard using my left knee. This worked well on most stages except for one where you were forced to run hard quite a distance between multiple shooting positions. After finishing that stage I could feel my knee complaining about having to earn its keep. My shooting for the day was pretty sloppy. I think I allowed myself to point shoot more targets than I should have and was rewarded with 2 misses and 2 no shoots for the match. I think a big part of the sloppy shooting was the need to let loose with some fast blasting after grinding through the Area 5 match with all of the super slow and deliberate shooting. Even though the shooting penalties hurt my overall match finish I had fun shooting the match and that was all worth it. Some times you gotta just run it like a rental and have some fun.

On Sunday I presented a training class with a few local shooters. It was 100+ temps again but we had a lot of fun and they all learned a lot. I like presenting training classes. Its fun to watch shooters try things differently and end up producing more consistent and faster results.

[Less]

temp peaked at about 104 ... but it was a dry heat

[CHA-LEE]

temp peaked at about 104 ... but it was a dry heat

I know it sounds corny. But I would rather shoot in 100+ temps with low humidity verses 80 degree temps with 80%+ humidity. I am a big wussy when it comes to dealing with high humidity hot weather.

[frunkenstein]

And this from a Panda from deep in the rain forest ,HMMM.

Edited June 26, 2012 by frunkenstein

[Less]

I'm just saying hot is hot... Dude, be glad Area 5 isn't this weekend!

[CHA-LEE]

I went to a knee specialist Dr today to take a look at my knee. He checked out my X-rays and did a bunch of poking and prodding on my left knee and said that it is Patellar Tendonitis. This is the same diagnosis that my General Practitioner Dr said but I am glad that they are both on the same page. He said I pretty much have to let it heal and it could take a couple of months. In the mean time he said that I could look into getting a special band to go around my knee to put some pressure on the tendon when I am using it actively as that may reduce the pain.

The good news is that over the last week it has actually been feeling a little better each day. So I think its on its way to getting better. I just have to make sure that I don’t over do it and reinjure it before its totally healed. That is going to be hard to do when I like to run around like a crazy panda during stage runs.

[Less]

I went to a knee specialist Dr today to take a look at my knee. He checked out my X-rays and did a bunch of poking and prodding on my left knee and said that it is Patellar Tendonitis. This is the same diagnosis that my General Practitioner Dr said but I am glad that they are both on the same page. He said I pretty much have to let it heal and it could take a couple of months. In the mean time he said that I could look into getting a special band to go around my knee to put some pressure on the tendon when I am using it actively as that may reduce the pain.

The good news is that over the last week it has actually been feeling a little better each day. So I think its on its way to getting better. I just have to make sure that I don’t over do it and reinjure it before its totally healed. That is going to be hard to do when I like to run around like a crazy panda during stage runs.

You could take up bullesye...

All kidding aside, hope it heals right. Also hope your home/area isn't getting burned by the fires...

[CHA-LEE]

I was able to shoot a local club match this past weekend. This USPSA match was hosted by the Boulder Rifle Club. These matches are well known for their very difficult shots and I knew going into this match that getting my hits was going to be the top priority. On the first stage of the match I ended up with a miss/no shoot on a 20 yard partial target. This wasn’t the way I wanted to start my match but it is what it is. I think there was only 3 – 4 shooters who shot that stage clean so I wasn’t the only one racking up penalties on that stage. The second stage of the day was another large field course and I knocked it out of the park. Great stage time with really good points. Then we headed up to the classifier stage which was Riverdale Standards. This is a three string of fire stage. First string is one shot on each target freestyle, reload, one shot on each target freestyle. Second string is the same but you shoot strong hand only after the reload. Then the last string is one shot each target weak hand only. On the first string I shot the stage solid but when I did my reload I crunched my pinky in between the mag and the magwell. OUCH!!!. On the second string I completely missed the magwell during the reload and had to fumble around before completing the reload. This killed at least 2 – 3 seconds. On the last string I grabbed the bottom of the grip then moved the gun to my weak hand and attempted to shoot but the gun wouldn’t fire. I kept pushing down on the safety but it wasn’t moving. I had to stop, flip the safety up then back down before I could start shooting. This fiasco cost me at least 5 – 6 seconds. After giving up 7 – 9 seconds on this classifier, which equaled about 3 misses worth of wasted time, I knew there was no way for me to recover from that and win this match along with the miss/noshoot I had on the first stage. You can’t give away 70 match points in a club match and expect to do well. So I finished the last two stages as solid as I could without pushing hard to eliminate giving away more match points with additional shooting penalties.

I am not sure what the root cause of my reloading issues were during the classifier. I think that on the first reload I got a funky grab on the mag and that put my pinky in a bad place to get crunched. Then on the second reload I know I didn’t bring the gun back high enough to properly receive the new mag and ended up missing the mag well. I don’t normally dry or live fire reloading then shooting strong hand only so I think I am inducing some different gun movement during the reload as I am getting ready to shoot strong hand only. I will have to dry fire this a bunch to see where I am messing it up. The thing that is funny to me is that I am hitting all of my reloads solidly during stage runs while leaving shooting positions and moving around. But I seem to have issues with doing reloads while standing stationary like on a classifier stage.

Due to my super busy schedule lately I have not had time to dry fire in a few weeks, so I am sure that the lack of actual practice is probably causing a lot of the issue.

As for my knee, its slowly getting better. I have been taking it easy on it that last couple of weeks and it seems to help with it getting better. If I do a bunch of crouching or hard launches on it then the pain is immediate then lingers for the rest of the day. But if I take it easy there is only a hint of pain when I start putting strain on it but then its gone as soon as I let off the pressure. The good thing is that its not getting worse. I can live with it taking a while to get better as long as it does get better. If it kept getting worse over time I think I would be really worried. We all break down and wear out as time goes on. So its not really a surprise that my body is starting to complain about certain things.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I took a road trip with the wife to see Mt Rushmore then head up to Minot North Dakota for their USPSA State match. The ND State match was a one day event with 6 stages plus crono all to be done on Sunday. All of the stages were setup really nice and fun to shoot. The only down side was that their attendance was low with only 31 shooters in attendance. We broke up into three squads of 10 and right before we started shooting I was asked if I could be a primary RO/CRO for my squad. I was fine with that but knew that with only 10 shooters on each squad getting stuck with ROing most of the time would severely cut into my stage planning/programming time before shooting each stage. The good thing was that my squad was great to shoot and work with. Most of the shooters worked their tails off getting the stage reset between shooters which was nice. I think that my shooting suffered a little bit by not being able to properly program each stage before I had to shoot it, but given the low turn out for the match I figured that a less than peak performance would still be enough to get the job done. Since I was busy ROing and working most of the time I didn’t get a chance to video any of my stage runs. I didn’t want to bother anyone with filming my stage runs given that our squad was pretty small already and most of us were busy working.

Overall I felt that my match performance was “ok”. Through most of the stages I had a couple minor mistakes here and there but no shooting penalties. I ended up with 2 D’s for the whole match which was nice. I screwed up one stage really bad from a gun handling perspective which cost me at least 40 match points. It was an unloaded gun start with all of your mags on a barrel. I started the stage solid but after I did my reload and took a shot my weak hand palm hit the mag release and I my mag dropped out of the gun. I had to run back to be barrel and get another mag then I forgot to rack the slide to chamber another round. This whole mag fiasco cost me at least 8 – 10 seconds on the stage. This is the fourth time this year that I have accidentally bumped my mag release causing the mag to drop free when I didn’t want it to. I think that either my mag catch lever which engages the notch in the mag is worn down or the mag release spring is too weak. I do have an extended mag button on the mag release but I need that to reach the mag release without shifting my hand during a reload. I will try to solve this issue by replacing the mag catch spring and making it stiffer then if the issue continues I will swap the mag release with a new one. Hopefully I can get a new spring this week so I can try it out this weekend.

Edited July 10, 2012 by CHA-LEE

[CHA-LEE]

The past couple of weeks have been crazy with work so I have not had a chance to update my range diary. I will attempt to get caught back up in this post.

Two weekends ago I attended a section qualifier match up in Steamboat Springs Colorado. This is one of about 9 section qualifier matches that we have in the Eastern Colorado USPSA section to determine who gets slots to the USPSA Nationals the following year. Basically each club gets to host one section qualifier match each year. Last year I barely attended enough of these section qualifier matches to even qualify for earning a slot so this year I am making it a point to attend enough in order to get a slot for the 2013 nationals. I attended this match with my friend Todd and he and I had a lot of good discussions about shooting technique and pre-match warm up. We both decided to warm up physically before starting the match by stretching and running around to get our heart rate up. From a technique perspective I decided to consciously grip the gun harder while shooting. I am happy to report that both of these things really helped improve my shooting consistency through the whole match. Warming up before the match allowed me to shoot the first stage aggressively. Then gripping the gun harder greatly improved my muzzle flip management to allow me to produce faster shooting along with better hits on target. The match its self was a test of many different shooting skills. We had run and gun hoser stages, long range 50 yard shots, Texas Stars, and even a indoor lights out stage where you had to shoot strong hand only and illuminate the targets with a flashlight. I had one technical bumble during the match where I missed my reload on a fairly fast stage which cost me about 2 – 3 seconds to recover from. From a shooting penalty side I had two misses and a no shoot on the stage with 50 yard shots. I called two of the shots “Marginal” and at that distance they ended up being misses. I think I have to do some more shot calling training on really far targets to relearn what is marginal and what is not at that distance. Overall my match performance was ok. I was really happy to deploy the changes before and during the match.

On Sunday the day after the section match I did a training class with four local shooters. It was 100+ degrees that day so we all got a good baking that day but everyone learned a lot and had a fun time. Its very rewarding to help shooters make significant strides forward in their shooting performance over the training day. Hopefully they stick with it and burn in the new ways of doing things to make it their new normal. All I can do is lead them to the water and hope that they take the initiative to drink. We will see how it goes over the next few months.

On Monday Last week I went down to Colorado Springs to attend the indoor ICORE match. Once again my buddy Todd and I went to the match and since we really don’t care about the time plus scoring of the ICORE match we instead use it as a practice session. We made a rule that we must do a reload between shooting positions in order to force us to do more reload practice while on the clock. I also worked on gripping the gun harder during my stage runs. I hit all of my reloads which I was really happy with. I also did well in gripping the gun hard and had solid hits all night long. I was really pleased with my performance during this match/practice session. The only thing that sucked is that I kept getting called from work on an escalation and I had to fly out in the morning the next day to New Jersey to fix a system. This work road trip pretty much wiped out the rest of my week for getting any shooting stuff done.

Last Saturday I had to help setup and run a local match for the High Plains Practical Shooters (HPPS) club. I am on the board for this club so we have to get there early and bust our butts to get everything setup and ready to go for the match. Like always when I help setup the match I really don’t have time to check out the stages from a competition standpoint so I pretty much had to figure out the stages when we got to the berms during the match. Luckily I was on a good squad so I could ask for help when needed. I never really have a chance to really break down and program the stages in this situation though and it showed in my match performance. I had a pretty lack luster match performance with a bunch of shooting penalties (3 Misses & 1 No Shoot). But I was running it like a rental and having fun while doing it so that evens it out. I found that I couldn’t concentrate on gripping the gun harder during my stage runs and I think that was because I had to focus the majority of my attention on simply completing the stage plan properly due to not having enough time to really burn it in.

During the match on Saturday I also had a chance to do some grip strength testing with some of the shooters. I got a digital grip strength meter and I am going to have a bunch of local shooters go through some grip tests to see if there is a definitive correlation between grip strength and classification. I still need to get a lot more data gathered to start looking for trends but from the results I have seen so far its pretty interesting. Hopefully I will have enough data gathered in a month or two in order to make some solid correlations between grip strength and shooters skill level. When I get it all done I will post up the results here on the Brian Enos forum.

[Less]

I got a digital grip strength meter and I am going to have a bunch of local shooters go through some grip tests to see if there is a definitive correlation between grip strength and classification.

Hmmm - that'll be pretty interesting...

[DerrickJ]

On Sunday the day after the section match I did a training class with four local shooters. It was 100+ degrees that day so we all got a good baking that day but everyone learned a lot and had a fun time. Its very rewarding to help shooters make significant strides forward in their shooting performance over the training day. Hopefully they stick with it and burn in the new ways of doing things to make it their new normal. All I can do is lead them to the water and hope that they take the initiative to drink. We will see how it goes over the next few months.

Charlie,

Sorry to intrude on your training diary, but I wanted to tell you that the class has had an immediate impact on my match performance. Today's local match was my first since our session, and I noticed a huge improvement in stance, vision, and shot calling.

Plenty more work to get it into the subconscious, but it's getting there.

I highly recommend one of Charlie's classes if you have the chance.

Thanks brother!

[CHA-LEE]

On Sunday the day after the section match I did a training class with four local shooters. It was 100+ degrees that day so we all got a good baking that day but everyone learned a lot and had a fun time. Its very rewarding to help shooters make significant strides forward in their shooting performance over the training day. Hopefully they stick with it and burn in the new ways of doing things to make it their new normal. All I can do is lead them to the water and hope that they take the initiative to drink. We will see how it goes over the next few months.

Charlie,

Sorry to intrude on your training diary, but I wanted to tell you that the class has had an immediate impact on my match performance. Today's local match was my first since our session, and I noticed a huge improvement in stance, vision, and shot calling.

Plenty more work to get it into the subconscious, but it's getting there.

I highly recommend one of Charlie's classes if you have the chance.

Thanks brother!

I am glad that I was able to help you out. Its cool to see shooters learn new stuff and take their shooting to the next level. Keep at it and have fun!!!

[HoMiE]

How does one go about going to these training classes you do? I would like to go out and get some trigger time in. Thanks

[CHA-LEE]

How does one go about going to these training classes you do? I would like to go out and get some trigger time in. Thanks

I will send you a PM about it.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I shot a local USPSA match. This match ended up being my worst club match to date. Nothing was going right the whole day. Lots of shooting penalties, zero mental focus, Fail to Fire trigger malfunctions due to the over travel set screw digging a divot into the frame and I forgot to bring my match snacks so I totally ran out of energy by the end of the match. Then to cap off the train wreck when I got home and went to put my pistol away in the safe I noticed that the frame of my pistol was cracked. The crack is on the rear left slide rail were the rail groove goes from the safety lever hole back to the end of the frame. This is the exact same crack that happened to my last gun.

I fixed the trigger issue then planned to do some live fire practice the next day to test it out. The live fire practice session was very productive. We found a better way to stand while leaning around obstacles which produced a much more stable shooting platform. Basically if you are leaning to the left, if you use a crouched stance with your right foot forward it greatly improves your stability while shooting. Then on the other side, if you are leaning to the right, and keep your left foot forward it does the same thing. My normal stance while shooting has my right foot back a little bit and I always wondered why I could shoot around the right side of obstacles better than the left side. Now I know. I will have to do a bunch of live and dry fire practice to burn in the right foot forward stance when I am forced to lean to the left around things. The trigger worked like it should which was great but the frame crack was getting worse throughout the day. So I knew I would have to strip down the gun and get it welded up.

On Sunday I stripped down the gun, cleaned it up, then took it over to Rick Hebert so he could TIG weld up the frame crack. He got it welded up and while I was there I had him take 1oz of weight out of the slide. Half an ounce from the front and back to keep the weight reduction balanced. After that was done I took it back home and recut the frame rail and fitted the slide to the frame again. After that I got the frame and slide back over to Rick so he could sand blast them to get it ready for another round of hard chrome coating. There is a local metal finishing place in Denver that does a great job with hard chrome coatings so I took it over there and asked if they could get it done this week. Much to my surprise they got it done in only one day. It usually takes them about a week to get the hard chrome coating done. So now I have tomorrow to get it all back together and I am going to try and function fire and sight it in on Friday. Hopefully all goes well so I can give it a run for its money this weekend in practice and matches.

[CHA-LEE]

Teething pains after the rebuild of the gun caused me major havoc this weekend. I got the gun back together and also got my new 10mm magazines back from being hard chromed so I figured I would give them both a shake down run in practice on Saturday. During practice the new mags were feeding ok but they kept biasing the next round too far forward so the mag wouldn’t drop free during a reload. This was due to the hard chrome making the inside of the magazine a little rough from the sand blasting before they got coated. At the end of the practice session I had a case head separation (WTF I thought that I was done with that crap???) that wiped out my extractor and extractor spring. I swapped out the extractor parts at the range then test fired 20 rounds through it and it seemed to work. I figured I would revert back to my old mag tubes for the match on Sunday until I got the new mag bodies polished up on the inside. Saturday night I got all of my old mag bodies ready for the match and then spent about 2 hours polishing the insides of the new mag bodies until they had a mirror finish on the inside. I didn’t want to run the new mag bodies in the match because I didn’t have a chance to test them out. I figured that I was good to go for the match on Sunday.

The Sunday match was a complete disaster plagued with gun problems. I only shot three of the five stages because I had significant jams or other gun issues on all three stages. I figured it would be best to leave the match early and fix my gun/mags instead of continuing the brain damage at the match. On the first stage I had a double feed on the first mag. On the second stage the mag wouldn’t drop free during the reload. On the third stage I had a failure to chamber jam because the rim of the case couldn’t get under the extractor. Having so many gun problems in only three stages was driving me crazy. I can accept getting beat by other shooters, but when I get beat by my equipment it absolutely sucks.

On the ride home I was thinking about the possible causes of the issues and had a game plan on what to inspect and fix when I got home. For the double feed issue I found that the under side of my slide where the next round rubs against was not polished. Since I just got the slide sand blasted and hard chromed I forgot to polish this part of the slide to make it super slippery. I fixed that by polishing it up. Next was the extractor. I found that the replacement extractor that I put in on Saturday wasn’t tuned properly. The extractor spring was also a little too heavy so I fixed both of those issues. Lastly I inspected my magazines and I think that the springs are simply worn out. Since I polished up all of the new mag bodies the night before I put all new springs / followers in them and then test fed some ammo through them by hand then through the gun. All of the ammo was feeding the way it should and chambering properly so I packed up my stuff once again and headed off to the indoor range to test fire the gun. At the indoor range I ran through 100 rounds of ammo with zero issues. It fed perfectly and the magazines would drop free. 100 rounds is only a small amount of testing to validate functionality but that is all I had time for. Hopefully I have gotten the crazy gun issues resolved for now.

I am planning on shooting the indoor match down in Colorado Springs tomorrow night so I will see if its really fixed or not tomorrow. It sucks to have gun issues but I am kind of glad that this crap is happening now instead of in September when the big matches start up again. Having no big matches right now is a good thing as it gives me some time to iron out these gun issues in practice and club matches.

[CHA-LEE]

Last night I attended the indoor USPSA match down in Colorado springs. We only shot two stages totaling about 35 rounds but I am happy to report that my gun ran fine without any issues. The magazines also dropped free on both reloads that I performed so that is good as well. My shooting performance on the other hand is a different story. On the first stage we shot the classifier called 3-V which is a bunch of partial targets to engage on the left and right side of a barricade with a reload between sides. I started on the right side which went well, hit my reload, then when I presented the gun back on target my sights were super blurry. I was focusing on the target instead of the sights and couldn’t pull my focus back to the sights until after the first shot broke after the reload. I failed to have visual patience on that shot and assumed that I could point shoot it and ended up with a miss.

On the second stage I tried to “Hurry” in engaging the first three targets and ended up with a miss and two nicked no shoots. I love it when I make up a no shoot hit with another no shoot hit. OOOOOPS!!!! I think that I was more worried about the gun possibly screwing up more than focusing on calling my shots and the lack in visual patience showed in my crappy hits.

So far its looking like the gun & mag issues are resolved. But with only 135 rounds shot after fixing it I still don’t have a lot of confidence in it being truly fixed. Once I get 1000+ rounds through it without any issues I will have my confidence built up on its reliability.