CHA-LEE's Tale

[CHA-LEE]

While I was at the Area 2 match I ordered a GSI Bullet Feeder for my Dillon 650. It came in on Friday last week and I finally got around to installing it this week. You have to swap tool heads because the GSI Bullet feeder has its own special tool head so moving the dies from the old tool head to the new one took some time to get everything readjusted properly. Once I got all of the dies readjusted it was time to test out the bullet feeder function. I had some issues with the bullet shell plate over advancing every once in a while. I called GSI and they said it was probably due to the bullet shell plate retaining springs being a little too weak. They said they would ship me some stiffer springs to try out. In the mean time I took the existing springs out and found that an EAA firing pin spring is small enough to fit inside the standard GSI shell plate spring. I cut the firing pin spring to fit inside the GSI shell plate spring and put it all back together. This gave the shell plate a more positive engagement as it seats into the positions. I tried it out and it worked a lot better. I was able to load about 500 rounds without any issues going at a steady reloading pace so increasing the spring tension did help minimize the issue. If I tried to go faster with the reloading pace it would screw up again so hopefully the GSI springs that are coming are stiffer yet to keep it from happening again no matter what speed I go.

I have only loaded about 500 rounds using the GSI Bullet feeder so I really haven’t gotten a lot of run time on it, but I like it so far. I was able to run the press at the same handle speed as when I was manually placing the bullet so it can at least go that fast. Once I get the over advancing issue resolved I should be able to run the press at a faster rate which I couldn’t do when manually placing the bullet. Speed of reloading aside I like the consistency of the bullet seating using the bullet feeder verses doing it manually. When placing the bullet manually I would get 2 – 3 instances during a 1000 round reloading session where the bullet would lay over right before it seats and it would jam up the press. This failure mode has not happened with the GSI bullet feeder and I don’t think it can given how the bullet is retained in the bullet shell plate right before its pressed into the case.

I am planning on doing some serious reloading over the long holiday weekend so that will give this new GSI bullet feeder a solid testing. I think the hardest thing to get use to is not feeling like a lazy ass by not needing to manually place the bullet on the case one at a time while reloading

[CHA-LEE]

I had the day off today so I decided to head out to the range with my buddy Conrad. We had limited props so we setup a pretty basic stage with targets and barrels. Even with limited props we were able to make a pretty challenging semi memory type of stage with a good mixture of open and partial targets. We could shoot the stage a bunch of different ways so that is what we did. I went through about 100 rounds of ammo and that was more than enough given the style of practice we were doing. The range we were at was facing south and the sun was just over the top of the back berm so it made seeing my sights and calling my shots pretty difficult. The targets were also in a heavy shadow condition which added more difficulty to it. It was fun to shoot in these less than optimal lighting conditions as it forced me to wait long enough to call my shots properly.

Since I didn’t get to do any shooting last weekend it was nice to get some practice in. The weather was nice as well which was a welcomed change. Hopefully this nice weather holds out for the matches scheduled for this weekend.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I was able to do a boat load of club match shooting. On Saturday I attended the local USPSA Match at the Boulder Rifle Club. Historically this match is an accuracy biased match and this time around was the same. Every stage had difficult shots at distance or partials. Every stage had a relatively low hit factor so getting solid hits was paramount. I went with the game plan of taking however long it takes to get my hits and that worked out very well. I shot the match clean with no shooting penalties and no D zone hits. I was able to capture 94% of the available points which was pretty good given the excessive amount of partial shots on each stage. This match has two stages on the indoor range and then three stages on the out door bays. I used my clear shooting glasses for the indoor stages and my photochromatic sunglasses for the outdoor stages. This allowed me to see my sights pretty good in these varying lighting conditions.

On Sunday I attended the local USPSA match at the Aurora Gun Club. This was one of the section qualifier matches and it attracted 79 shooters spread across four squads. Given the 20 shooter squads it made for a long day of shooting. At this range the bays face south and in the winter time the sun is just coming up behind the bays so it puts the targets in a heavy shadow condition. On the first stage of the day you are usually forced to be shooting right in the direction of the sun which makes seeing your sights and calling your shots pretty difficult. This exact issue got me on the first stage of the day where I was shooting into the direction of the sun and ended up with a miss on a head shot target just below the head into the hardcover. That was the only miss of the day but it hurt none the less. I shot the remaining stages pretty solid and knocked the last stage out of the park. I hoped that my solid runs on the remaining stages would be enough to pull out a win, but I fell 6 match points short and ended up in second overall to Paul Clark Jr. Other than the miss I felt that I had a pretty solid match.

On Monday I drove down to Colorado Springs and attended another Local match at the Whistling Pines Gun Club. This is a 4 stage indoor match with a classifier. The first stage was a three shooting position stage with a tricky middle section that forced you to move through the shooting box while engaging targets to gain access to all of the targets. I shot this stage pretty solid with no delays. The second stage was another 3 shooting box setup but you had to move a 5 gallon bucked from the start position to the last box and hold it in your strong hand while engaging targets weak hand only. I had a solid stage plan but didn’t burn it in properly which lead to a critical plan failure right from the start. My plan was to shoot 5 targets freestyle from the first box, then transition the gun to my weak hand and pickup the bucket with my strong hand, then engage the remaining targets weak hand only. What I did was shoot the first 5 targets freestyle then I picked up the bucket with my weak hand as I took off for the second box. I tried to transfer the bucket handle to my strong hand and gun to weak hand on the way over but that resulted in the bucket handle hitting my mag release and dropping the magazine out of the gun. So I had to drop the bucket to put a fresh mag in the gun which I missed completely sending the magazine flying then grab for the last mag on my belt and load it into the gun. After that I transferred the gun to my weak hand and picked up the bucket and finished the stage. That whole mag dropping, reloading fumble, bucket fumble fiasco cost me at least 10 seconds of screwing around. At least it was entertaining for my squad mates to watch. The next stage was the classifier which I shot pretty aggressive and ended up with a miss, which I called a miss but couldn’t make up because the stage was Virginia count. The last stage of the match was a low light short two box speed shoot which I shot solidly but had 2 D zone hits. The D’s were not a surprise given my inability to see my sights in the low light conditions. It was a fun but frustrating match for me from a performance perspective.

The next two weekends I will not be able to shoot as I have to fly to Malaysia for work to present some training. I am glad that this extended work trip is happening at this time of year as the cancelation of local matches is very probable given the chance of poor weather. That and freezing your butt off while shooting local matches is never really that “Fun”. Its probably a good time for a little break anyway. Taking some time off from shooting all together should help me reset for the 2014 shooting season.

[thermobollocks]

Have fun! http://www.masshootingclub.org/

Whoever came up with the bucket stage is a total sadist.

[CHA-LEE]

Have fun! http://www.masshootingclub.org/

Whoever came up with the bucket stage is a total sadist.

Thanks for the link. I will see if I can check it out while I am out there. I don't want to risk bringing any firearms into the country though. Even if I don't get to shoot it will be cool to check out how they run matches in Malaysia.

[thermobollocks]

Oh, of course. Flying with guns in-country is annoying enough I wouldn't want to mix it with work, especially if I have to go out of DIA or come into Reagan. It'd be worth observing, though.

[CHA-LEE]

I am about half way through my Malaysia trip. It took 31 hours of travel time using three different flights to get from Denver to Kuala Lumpor Malaysia. I can’t sleep on planes so that makes for a long and exhausting travel event. I have finally gotten onto a normal sleeping schedule. It’s crazy how much longer it takes to reset my sleeping schedule when going overseas like this. When I was younger it wouldn’t take more than a day or two before I was back to normal. These days it takes about a week. I guess that comes with the territory of getting older. The big “40” is only a few years away after all.

There are a couple of shooting ranges here in Malaysia and an IPSC club hosts matches at one of them. I sent an e-mail to the match director of the local IPSC club asking them if they had any matches going on while I was here but unfortunately they don’t. Even if I couldn’t compete in a local match (I don’t have my shooting gear) it would have been cool to go watch and show my co-workers what IPSC shooting is all about. The gun laws are very restrictive here and Malaysian citizens have to go through a bunch of back ground checks, applications and acquire special licenses to even be a member of a shooting range much less own a firearm. Coming from a nation where firearm ownership and use are as normal as apple pie its pretty strange to experience gun restrictions in another country.

Before leaving for this trip I was bummed that I would be missing out on a couple of weekends of local club match shooting. I have been keeping track of the club shooting scene back home and funny enough, I haven’t been missing any shooting due to the poor weather in Colorado. It has been either too cold or too muddy for hosting club matches so all of the matches I would have attended have been canceled. I don’t know if this is divine intervention that my work trip ended up being scheduled while local matches would be canceled or what, but its pretty cool that it worked out that way.

I have been taking this shooting down time to read some new shooting books and do my annual re-reading of the Brian Enos Practical Shooting Beyond the Fundamentals book. I finished reading the new books and they were ok, but nothing special. The next book to tackle is the Brian Enos book. I also brought my Captains of Crush grippers and have been doing daily grip exercises. I am planning on doing a grip exercise each day while on this trip. It will be interesting to see what the results end up being when I get home and test my grip strength on my digital grip dynamiter. I have been slacking in doing grip exercises over the last couple of months so this extra focus on grip training is a much needed change.

I hope the remainder of my trip goes by quickly and that my travel home goes smooth. I get back home on December 19^th late in the evening. I am tasked with serving as the Match Director on Saturday the 21^st so that only gives me one day to recover from the travel home before jumping back into the normal swing of things from a shooting/club match perspective. I am sure I won’t be fully recovered from the travel home by Saturday, but it will be nice to be home. I hope that the weather holds out for next weekend so we can even have a match. You never know what will happen weather wise this time of year. It could be 50 – 60 degrees and sunny or 20 – 30 degrees and snowing. All we can do is wait an see what mother nature has in store for us when the match day comes.

[CHA-LEE]

I am heading home from Malaysia tomorrow, YAY!!!! The 30+ hour travel home is going to suck, but it will be nice to be home. I am planning on knocking out the rereading of the Brian Enos book on the flight(s) back home as there will be plenty of time for that while traveling.

I have been keeping up with the daily grip exercises and it seems to be paying off, at least from what I can tell in how much effort it takes to close the grippers the further into my reps and sets I get. Right now I am doing 4 sets of 25 reps on the "T" gripper. Then I do 3 sets of 30 second hold closed on the "1" Gripper. This workout is done by moving the same gripper from hand to hand and doing all of the sets and reps back to back with no breaks.

I didn't bring any of the heavier grippers with me so I have not had a chance to retest the fully closed difficulty of the #2.5 on each hand. But I have noticed that I can get a lot further along into the work out before my forearm muscles really start to burn. I am not sure if this is building more actual grip pressure strength or just extending my endurance? I will see what the digital grip dynamiter says when I get home.

[CHA-LEE]

This past Saturday I served as the match director for the HPPS match. I actually had to serve as match director and score keeper since our score keeper was not able to make it. The weather was calling for a high of 37 degrees with it in the low teens first thing in the morning. Since I had two positions to fill for this match I got out to the range about an hour earlier than normal so I could get my stage setup quickly then focus on the other stuff. I was hauling some barrels around for my stage and while moving them a double stack of barrels started to fall off the cart. I tried to catch them but ended up getting hit in the back by another set of barrels. The barrels hitting my lower back threw my back out and I was in pretty bad pain the rest of the day. There was no way I could move around aggressively during stage runs and if I tried to transition aggressively between targets my back would spasm and the gun would be bouncing around all over the place. I tried my best to grit and bear it through the match day, but by the end of the day I was almost seeing stars with the extreme pain. My last two stages of the match were a complete train wreck due to the pain and inability to move around without my back having crazy spasms. This is not how I wanted to spend my Saturday and if I wasn’t the Match Director + Score Keeper for the match I would have packed up my gear and drove home before the match even started. But it is what it is. My back is doing a lot better on Monday and it should be back to normal by the time next weekend rolls around. All I can do is rest and take it easy to let it heal up.

[a matt]

Hope u get feeling better soon. Are going to shoot the Fl.Open in Febuary? Didnt I see you shooting it last year? Thanks.

[CHA-LEE]

Yes, I am planning on shooting the Florida Open in 2014. That is a fun match and a good way to start off the 2014 shooting season.

[CHA-LEE]

I have allowed my lower back to heal up and its pretty much back to normal today. Since my back was doing better by the end of last week and being off for the holidays I was able to get a lot of shooting done. On Thursday and Friday I had some good live fire practice sessions. I did some stage based training with a couple of friends and that was a lot of fun. I also got a chance to test out my new Shotmaxx timer watch I got for Christmas. It worked great for practice both in ROing others and ROing myself during the practice sessions.

On Saturday I attended a local USPSA match. The weather was nice with a high temp of almost 60 degrees so it was nice to shoot in a T-shirt instead of being all bundled up in cold weather gear. I made a tactical error during the match though as I was wearing my photochromatic sunglasses and the sky was cloudy and overcast. Even though its cloudy, the lenses still get tinted pretty dark and they ended up being too dark to see my sights properly on the first two stages I shot. I couldn’t call my shots worth a crap and it didn’t dawn on me that my sunglasses were two dark until I had shot two stages. I switched over to my clear lens glasses and I could see my sights but was still having a hell of a time shooting steel and ending up with way more C & D hits than I wanted. Then I had several stages where my magazines were not dropping free from the gun during reloads and that was wasting time on the clock during stage runs. I chalked it up to it simply not being my day for anything to go right and left it at that.

It has been about 2000 rounds since I did a detailed cleaning of my Limited gun so I decided to go completely through it on Sunday. While I was disassembling and cleaning the upper I noticed that the rear sight was loose allowing it to shift left to right as well as up and down. It wasn’t moving much but it could move enough to cause the strange accuracy issues I was experiencing in the match. I am glad that I found the loose rear sight but I am bummed that I didn’t notice it sooner. I need to pay more attention to that kind of stuff between detailed cleans.

Either way, its nice to be back in the normal swing of things. Hopefully the Colorado weather continues to work in our favor on the weekends so we can keep shooting through the winter months. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

[CHA-LEE]

I am glad to report that my back is 100% back to normal. I was ready to rumble for some local club matches this past weekend but the weather gods had another plan. The forecast started looking grim for the weekend on about Wednesday last week and I knew that it would be pretty likely that the local outdoor matches would get canceled. To hedge my bets on doing any kind of shooting this past weekend I attended an indoor IDPAish style match on Friday night at the Boulder Rifle Club. This was a two stage match with some pretty basic run stop shoot style stages. But doing some kind of match shooting is better than not doing any shooting at all. I still have not had a chance to verify my point of impact after retightening the rear sight, but it seemed to be close enough to get the job done. I still need to take some time to shoot some groups to see if its really set correctly or not. I am planning on attending the indoor match down in Colorado Springs tonight and I will see if I can get that done before the match. Not knowing if the bullets are going exactly where I am aiming is disconcerting, but easily fixed.

On a good news front, I have heard from a couple of my sponsors about the 2014 shooting season and am happy to report that Rainier Ballistics and Power Factor Shooting are both on board with continuing my sponsorship support for the 2014 shooting season. This is great news as their sponsorship help allows me to enjoy this sport even more than I imagined I could. I wanted to give these sponsors a huge THANK YOU for their support!!!

I have been planning my 2014 Major match shooting schedule and basing it off of my 2013 shooting schedule as much as possible. Last year I attended 15 Major matches and I am planning on the same amount this year. Hopefully all of the same major matches happen around the same time line as last year. If not I may have to shuffle my schedule around a little bit. As of today, my major match schedule is listed below. Its going to be another busy year of shooting, it should be a lot of fun!!!!

Florida Open – Frost Proof, FL

Texas State Open – Hempstead, TX

The Oil Field Classic – Bellville, TX

The Cow Town Classic – Cresson, TX

USPSA Area 1 Championships – Benton City, WA

Rocky Mountain 300 – Ft. Collins, CO

Area 2 Regional Steel Challenge Championships – Pueblo, CO

Colorado State Championships – Montrose, CO

Mile High Showdown – Ft. Collins, CO

Great Plains Sectional – Louisville, NE

USPSA Area 3 Championships – Grand Island, NE

High Desert Classic – Albuquerque, NM

Utah State Championships – Salt Lake City, UT

USPSA Handgun Nationals – Hurricane, UT

USPSA Area 2 Desert Classic – Phoenix, AZ

[pkm]

The state match is in Montrose this year ....

[CHA-LEE]

The state match is in Montrose this year ....

I am not actually sure if the Colorado State match is in Montrose or not. Last year it was in Montrose so that is why I have that listed as such. In 2014 the Colorado State match is suppose to be on the Front Range but no clubs have stepped up to host it yet. I am keeping my fingers crossed on one of the local Front Range clubs picking up the state match and running with it. All we can do is wait and see what happens.

[a matt]

I see you are shooting all day friday at the Florida Open. I'll stop by and say hello, I'll have the Rainier Ballistics hat. They are a great company, good luck this year !

[thermobollocks]

Is "Fort Collins" WCFW or somewhere else?

[moose76]

Is "Fort Collins" WCFW or somewhere else?

Pretty sure he means Weld.

[CHA-LEE]

Yep, weld is the range I am referring to.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend of match shooting was an interesting test of weather and range conditions. On Saturday I attended the USPSA match at the Colorado Rifle Club. I showed up early to help setup and it was 21 degrees with wind. All of the berms were covered with 3 – 4 inches of snow as well. Saying that it was cold during setup that morning would be an understatement. That and hammering nails into the frozen ground was not too much fun either, but it at least kept the blood pumping. Most of the shooting areas on the stages started out as packed snow in the morning and then ended up as sloppy mud by the second stage in the match. I used a pair of Salomon Speedcross 3 CS shoes for this match as these shoes are water resistant, unlike the normal Speedcross 3 shoes. They worked great in the cold, wet, snowy, and muddy conditions. My feet stayed warm and dry the whole match and they had great traction in the varying conditions. I always keep a pair of these shoes in my car along with the Fellraiser shoes I use for normal dry/summer range conditions. As for my shooting performance, I felt that I did ok. Shooting with frozen fingers is always a unique challenge and there was a lot of that during this match. I ended up with two misses for the match, one complete uncalled miss on a far target, and then another called miss just barely into the hard cover on the classifier. I was not happy with the misses, but I felt like I shot most of the stages solidly.

On Sunday I attended the USPSA match down in Pueblo. Down there the temp was in the 50’s but the wind was howling all day long. It was strange to shoot some of the stages because the walls and targets were moving around with the wind. There were a couple of times where I was close to a wall while shooting and the wall got blown into me causing me to get knocked off target or mess with my shooting platform. I tried my best to stay away from the walls, but some of the stages required that you cram into ports or between walls. I took my time during these stage runs and just let the shooting happen at whatever pace it could go. The other variable we had to contend with was a small squad which was full of non-workers or newer shooters. When you are ROing, Taping, Setting Steel, Brassing, all the way up to your turn to shoot it usually does not produce a solid stage performance. I shot a clean match, but probably gave up 5+ seconds combined on stage runs by not executing 100% solid due to working too much. It is what it is I guess.

When I got home on Sunday I noticed that my rear sight was cracked at the dove tail cut. There has been a crack forming for a while but it was getting really bad so I figured I would swap it out. When I tried to remove the rear sight, it broke completely off leaving the dove tail portion in the slide. I am glad that I decided to swap it out as I don’t think it would have had many more matches left in it before it broke off while shooting a stage. I replaced the rear sight without any issues but now have to sight in my gun again. The never ending churn of breaking stuff and replacing it never stops. I am getting really good at breaking stuff. I don’t know if that is a good or bad thing.

[Joshg]

Nothing worse than shooting with cold hands, especially on an all metal gun!

[CHA-LEE]

Nothing worse than shooting with cold hands, especially on an all metal gun!

Its pretty shocking how fast an all metal gun will completely drain any warmth you have in your hands on these cold shooting days. Frozen finger blasting for the WIN!!!

[thermobollocks]

The first 8 or 10 booms ought to warm it up a little

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend the weather gods finally gave us a break. The weather was great on both Saturday and Sunday which made shooting the club matches a lot more enjoyable. On Saturday I served my duty as Match Director for the HPPS match. As always this is a lot of work before during and after the match. But it was worth it. The only thing that sucked was hammering the long spikes into the frozen ground. That can be a real workout but it at least keeps you warm in the cold early morning. I shot most of the stages in the match fairly solid. The last stage of the day was a long field course with four different shooting positions and a good mixture of open, partial and steel targets. I can honestly say that I shot this stage to the maximum of my ability. It was as close to a “Perfect” stage run as I have ever shot in a match. I wish that I had that stage run on video so I could review the run afterwards, but I didn’t get it on camera. I am sure that this performance would have been a solid enough to handily win a stage at the nationals. It was a really cool thing to experience and it made me really proud to accomplish a stage run like that.

After the match we had a club board meeting and I volunteered to continue my service as Match Director for the 2014 shooting season. It’s a lot of work, but I really like being able to give back to the sport I like so much.

On Sunday I went up to the Weld County range to attend their USPSA match. The stages were fun and challenging. They had a good mixture of shooting challenges spread across all of the stages. Several of the stages required stage plans that pushed the round count to 18 – 20 rounds before a reload with a bunch of steel to shoot as well and that was a fun challenge. Only having a few makeup shots before running the gun dry made it a very hard requirement to aim hard and get your hits. I shot four of the five stages pretty well. I only tanked one stage by racking up two misses on it, but that stage was pretty difficult and confusing from a stage plan perspective. I ended up ROing too long before it was my turn to shoot and I had not burned in my stage plan very well and it showed in my performance. Then I ended up rushing my shooting on a couple of far targets and that is where I ended up with the misses. It sucks to tank a stage like that but it is what it is. Overall it was a fun match to attend.

I had the day off on Monday due to a work Holiday so I went out to my friends private range to do some practice and training with a couple of buddies. When I got to the range there were many people there and I wasn’t really motivated to shoot so I just hung out for a couple of hours. Eventually I was able to do some shooting but I was more into giving some training to by buddies than shooting myself. This lack of motivation really showed in my shooting that day, which was a bummer but not unexpected. Overall it was fun to hang out with friends and do some training. I should have know that I wasn’t very motivated to shoot and left my gear in the car, but some lessons are harder than others. Honestly I think I was just burned out from a full weekend of shooting the prior two days. You have to know when to say enough is enough I guess.

[CHA-LEE]

I have a late Range diary entry from last weekend. I was starting to get sick on Thursday of last week, it got a little worse on Friday, then a little more worse on Saturday (match day), then it hit with full force on Sunday and I have been totally out of commission until today. I went to the Dr on Monday and he said I had some kind of virus and there wasn’t really much he could do for me other than give me a pat on the back and say “You are going to have to suffer through this one and let it run its course”. Holly Cow was this sickness a butt kicker!!! At one point this week I was so weak and exhausted that walking down the stairs in my house, putting on my shoes and tying them was considered a significant accomplishment. I am glad to report that today I am feeling much better. I am probably at 75% of normal which is a huge step forward from the bed ridden slug I was only a couple of days ago.

The Match on Saturday was hosted at the Aurora Gun Club and is usually one of the highest attended matches locally. This Saturday was no different and the weather was awesome. I went in full winter shooting gear and ended up taking off most of it by the time the match started. I knew I was sick and battling a cold weather match while you are sick sucks so the nice weather was very much welcomed.

On the first stage of the day I had a strange failure to go into battery feeding issue where the slide was 90 – 95% forward but the barrel was still unlocked a little bit. This forced me to rack the round out mid stage run to keep going. I found the round that I racked out and there was the faintest firing pin dimple on the outer edge of the primer so that’s how far the barrel was unlocked and dropped down slightly when the hammer dropped and no bang happened. This is the second or third failure exactly like this since I have been using this new gun with the 8lb recoil spring. I think that the 8lb recoil spring may be a little too light to function properly when the gun gets dirty, which it is dirty right now but not horrible. I have also been using the current 8lb recoil spring for a while so I took it out and compared its length to a new one and sure enough the old one was shorter by almost a quarter of an inch. So the 8lb spring I had in the gun was probably functioning more like a 7lb or 6lb spring which I know is too light to feed and lock up properly. I really like how the gun shoots and the sights track with a fresh 8lb recoil spring, but those springs may degrade too quickly for my liking. For now I put a fresh 8lb recoil spring in there but I am planning on getting some 9lb recoil springs to test out later. Hopefully a “worn in” 9lb recoil spring will function more like a fresh 8lb spring and I won’t have to worry about replacing it so often.

I shot the match “ok” but had a decent amount of small errors on just about every stage. I chalked the small errors up to my diminished focus due to being sick that day. It was fun to shoot in great weather even though I was sick. Attending matches while you are sick or under the weather is part of the “Practical” part of practical shooting. Experienced gained during the match was worth the effort of going.

We are getting another round of snow tonight so I am not sure how much this is going to affect this weekends club matches. There isn’t a USPSA match scheduled for Saturday, but there is a match scheduled this Sunday. Hopefully the weather works in our favor once again. I would really like to get some more club matches under my belt before I head to the Florida Open in a couple of weeks. I am really looking forward to attending the Florida Open as it’s the first major match of the year for me. I get my annual dose of shooting “turtle” targets at this match as these are the only kind of targets they use there because of all the international shooters that come to attend the match. I am going to shoot the whole match on Friday this year. This is mainly due to the travel costs. I am going to this match solo as none of my fellow Colorado shooters want to go. So getting the whole match done in one day verses two helped save me money on rental, hotel, and flights.