CHA-LEE's Tale

[a matt]

We were squadded together. But u decided yo shoot in one day. I ant blame you for saving some money. Maybe next time. Good luck and safe travels. This match is always a good one..

[CHA-LEE]

This past Monday I went down to Colorado Springs to attend the Whistling Pines indoor USPSA match. Given that both weekend outdoor matches were canceled it was nice to get some shooting done on Monday. I was able to bring along three other shooting buddies to the match so it was fun to travel and shoot with friends that night. The match was a four stage event with a good mix of fast and slow shooting along with some running around. Physically I was still not 100% due to the week long sickness so I could feel my arms and legs getting worn out as the night progressed. The strangest thing I experienced was fumbling with my reloads on a couple of stages. I am not sure if this was due to my arms being weaker than normal or just not shooting for over a week. It was strange but I pushed through and had a solid match. I didn’t have any shooting penalties but did have three D zone hits for the match, which is too many. Seeing my sights indoors is still a challenge but the Orange FO in the front sight helps me at least see something. The new 8lb recoil spring worked great and I didn’t have any feeding issues at all. Overall I was happy with my match performance.

I recently ordered some 9lb recoil springs so I will put one of those in next to see how that shoots. Since I am leaving for the Florida Open next week I will leave the 8lb recoil spring in there until after the major match and test out the 9lb when I get back. Hopefully I will be back to 100% physical strength by the time I head out for the Florida Open.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend the cold weather and snow caused all of the outdoor matches to cancel. I did some training on Saturday with a friend even though the range conditions were not optimal. We had to bring a snow shovel to dig out a shooting area to use for the training and were basically limited to doing stand and shoot drills. This was fine as there was plenty to work on already without the dynamic of moving while shooting. I was able to work with my friend to make some headway on his weak areas and we were both happy with the results of the training / practice session. I got my 9lb recoil springs in last week so I give those a try in comparison to my 8lb recoil spring. The 9lb recoil spring started recreating the front sight dipping low then coming back up post shot situation that was seen with the 10lb recoil spring, but it wasn’t as bad. It felt a little “off” while shooting the 9lb recoil spring so I put the fresh 8lb spring back in and it felt normal again. I am going to leave the 9lb recoil spring in there until I get back from the Florida Open match then switch over to the 9lb recoil spring. It will take several thousand rounds for the 9lb recoil spring to break in to a point where it functions like an 8lb spring so I don’t have that amount of range time to break it in properly before heading out to the Florida Open. That will be a project for after the Florida Open.

On Sunday the Boulder Rifle Club hosted a small USPSA match that was only 3 stages. But they had two shooting schedules that ran in the Morning and Afternoon. I participated in both morning and afternoon matches so I was able to get 6 stages worth of shooting in that day. Even though it was simply shooting the same stages twice it was worth the time and ammo invested. Shooting indoors is always a challenge in seeing my sights properly and this match was no different. On all of the stages all I could really see in my sight picture was a dim orange FO dot on blurry iron sights so I had to rely on my index heavily to ensure proper sight alignment. This worked out for the most part but I still ended up with a couple of uncalled misses. Indoor matches are a challenge, but its better than not shooting at all over the weekend.

I am heading out to the Florida Open this coming Thursday so I need to get my shooting gear ready to go and packed up. The weather forecast for Florida is looking awesome in the mid to low 70’s with minimal chance of rain. I am as ready as I am going to get for this match. Hopefully powering through the whole match on Friday does not negatively impact my performance. All I can do is give it my best and see how I end up.

[CHA-LEE]

While waiting in the Orlando Airport I figured I would pull together my Florida Open match report. I made it to the Universal Shooting Academy on Thursday afternoon and got a chance to check out all of the stages. I was really glad to have the chance to check out the stages the day before shooting because the vast majority of the stages were large field courses with many different ways to shoot them. Figuring out the best plan for each stage was a fun challenge and I felt sorry for the guys who only had the 5 minute walk though during the match to figure out their plan.

I shot on Squad 2 which was a great group of guys to shoot with. We all had fun and worked hard to keep the squad churning through the stages efficiently. Its really nice to shoot with a group of guys that all pitch in and make it happen. Our squad started on Stage 2 on Friday morning and it was a lot colder than I expected. The temp was 39 degrees at the start of the match and with the humidity it felt more like 29 degrees. I figured that it was going to be warm so I only brought a thin rain coat to deal with wet shooting conditions, so that had to do for keeping me warm. It was cold but not horrible. All of the winter shooting matches I have been attending lately were good practice in being use to shooting in cold conditions. The one thing that really sucked, is that we started on the bays facing the sun as it was raising. The first stage of the day wasn’t too bad because the sun was not above the berm, but the second and third stages were downright brutal from a shooting into the sun perspective. Even when the sun was up above the berm the sun was still behind the targets making pretty much all of the targets my nemesis “Shadow Targets”. On the first 5 stages of the match I ended up with 3 uncalled misses due to the poor lighting conditions. I was forced to point shoot most of the targets and this resulted in poor or no hits. At the lunch break we switched sides of the range to where the sun would be setting. The stage right after lunch was my biggest disaster of the match. I ended up with 3 misses all on easy close targets. I was still in “Point Shooting” mode even though the lighting was decent and ended up with unexpected misses. As we continued to shoot on that side of the range the sun was sinking lower in the sky and once again the shadow targets became a force to deal with. My poor squading selection at this match totally screwed me from a lighting perspective. Next year I will pick a squad schedule that has the targets facing the sun in the morning and evening.

All told I ended up with 8 misses and 2 no shoots. Racking up 140 penalty points for the match is a huge deficit to overcome at a match of this caliber. As always, I wish that I could have shot a cleaner match, but if I can’t see my sights due to the poor lighting all I am left with is using the “Force” to will hits onto the targets. As proven by my match results, this isn’t a very effective plan. Even though I had a poor performance match, I still had a bunch of fun attending this match. The stages are head and shoulders above most other matches. I think it’s because they are setup by Manny and Shannon who have pretty much seen it all and know how to put together challenging stages with multiple ways of shooting them. It’s a welcome change from the normal “One way to shoot it, follow the leader” style stages that you typically see at major matches.

My fellow squad mates helped me video all of my stage runs which was awesome. I usually don’t like to pester people to video my stage runs because people can be too serious at major matches. But my squad was really easy going and didn’t have any problems with helping me out. I have uploaded all of my stage runs to my YouTube channel. If you want to check tout my stage runs click on the “Video’s” link in my signature. I did my best to help my squad mates with stage plan questions as they came up and we all worked as a team to figure out the best plans. It makes it a lot of fun when the squad works together like that.

At the end of Friday I was sitting 3^rd overall in Limited at 90% of the match leader. I know that this third place standing isn’t going to hold up with the level of talent shooting the weekend schedule. I will have to wait and see where I end up on Sunday evening. My guess is that I will be in the 5^th – 7^th overall range. It will be fun to see if my guess at an overall finish placement is accurate or not.

[Nimitz]

I'm looking forward to the time when I am good enough to shoot 140 penalty points at a major an still finish in the top 10 (no sarcasm intended ...)

Interesting comments about squad selection based on sun location too ... I've only shot a couple of majors and have started at midday so I could spend the morning figuring of the stages ...

As I start to travel to majors I'll probably be doing more of the 1 day shoots so morning starts and rising sun may become an issue ... One more item to add to the pre-match checklist ....

[ZackJones]

Watched your videos those were some challenging stages. You can sure make steel sing! I guess it's all about having the confidence to call your shots on them. Oh and 39 degrees should have felt like a heat wave for you being from Colorado and all .

[CHA-LEE]

I'm looking forward to the time when I am good enough to shoot 140 penalty points at a major an still finish in the top 10 (no sarcasm intended ...)

Interesting comments about squad selection based on sun location too ... I've only shot a couple of majors and have started at midday so I could spend the morning figuring of the stages ...

As I start to travel to majors I'll probably be doing more of the 1 day shoots so morning starts and rising sun may become an issue ... One more item to add to the pre-match checklist ....

Its very frustrating to be in a situation where you know that you can run the stages in the same times as the "Top Dogs" without needing to rush but end up be hobbled by not being able to see your sights due to crappy lighting conditions. I am already considering this match a loss due to my poor squading choice in going against the grain in how the sun raised and set through the shooting day. I will NOT make that mistake again next year.

[CHA-LEE]

Watched your videos those were some challenging stages. You can sure make steel sing! I guess it's all about having the confidence to call your shots on them. Oh and 39 degrees should have felt like a heat wave for you being from Colorado and all .

There is no time to wait for the "Ding" or wait for them to start falling to confirm your hits on steel. Calling your shots is the only way. Luckily for me, seeing black sights on white steel makes calling my shots on the steel a lot easier than the shadowy paper targets. The only steel that was another color was the dark gold plates on the plate rack stage and you can see how well that didn't go in my video.

As for the weather, I was fine with shooting in the cold morning temps. It was just a surprise to see that it was that cold in the morning out there. On Saturday morning when I was driving to the airport it was 54 degrees when I left the hotel, verses the high 30's the morning before. It was actually cool to see the stages warm up in the morning sunlight. All of the props were "Smoking" with vapor coming off of them due to the warm sun. I tried to take a picture of it, but it didn't show up very well.

[a matt]

That's probably why Shannon and Manny shoot around 1oclock in the afternoon. Lol

[ZackJones]

There is no time to wait for the "Ding" or wait for them to start falling to confirm your hits on steel. Calling your shots is the only way. Luckily for me, seeing black sights on white steel makes calling my shots on the steel a lot easier than the shadowy paper targets. The only steel that was another color was the dark gold plates on the plate rack stage and you can see how well that didn't go in my video.

You're right, of course, and in time I will get more comfortable calling my shots on steel. Something that's helping me do that is shooting Steel Challenge with a .22 LR pistol. It's hard to hear the ding so I just have to trust the front sights.

It was actually cool to see the stages warm up in the morning sunlight. All of the props were "Smoking" with vapor coming off of them due to the warm sun. I tried to take a picture of it, but it didn't show up very well.

Yup. It is cool to watch that happen. U.S.A. is a great place to shoot. Years ago I shot the Area 6 match down there.

[CHA-LEE]

This past Saturday the Colorado weather was cooperating with us so we had a local USPSA match at the Aurora Gun Club. This match is usually one of the most heavily attended local matches with close to 100 shooters in the summer months but for some strange reason this match only brought in 42 shooters. I don’t really understand why the match attendance was lower than normal because it was a great day for shooting. The AGC club pulled together five very challenging stages and you had to leverage many different shooting and movement skills to maximize your performance on each stage.

Stage 1 was a large field course that was setup with a bunch of walls in a “Zig-Zag” style shooting area. You had the choice of running through the Zig-Zag and engage the targets on each side up close, or run round the sides of the walls exiting and reentering the shooting area multiple times to engage the targets both close and far away. I dry fired the stage both ways and the stage time was basically the same. I picked the run the whole Zig-Zag stage plan because it was easier to get better hits on target this way. This plan ended up working really good and it was a lot of fun running around as hard as you can while engaging targets.

Stage 2 was another large field course that had your loaded gun starting on a barrel on the extreme left or right of the stage. There were four shooting positions with four targets in each and the targets were a good mixture of open, hardcover, and no shoot blocked targets. The optimal stage plan was to start on the left side and shoot everything on the move as you went to the right. With all of the partial targets this really pushed the limit of your shooting on the move skills. I ended up with one miss on this stage with a hit just barely into the hard cover. This miss was actually caused by another miss that I called a miss on the prior target and I wanted to get the shooting done on the next target as fast as possible so I could make up the called miss. So it was basically a double failure on my part.

Stage 3 was a medium course of fire that only had 6 targets, but four of them were about 30 - 35 yards down range. You basically stepped into the left side of the shooting area, then engaged two down range targets followed by a close target on the side berm. Then hauled ass to the right hand side and engaged the side berm target then finished on the final two down range targets. All of the targets were fully open with no hard cover or no shoots. I knew that with only 6 targets and about an 8 second stage time that the high hit factor for this stage was going to be pretty low so getting good points was a lot more important than a speedy time. My stage plan was to shoot the down range targets as aggressively as possible but to make up any shots that were called marginal. This resulted in three shots on all four of the down range targets but it yielded the best points for the stage. I was only down 3 C’s for the stage in a decent time. I probably gave up about a second in the four extra shots taken on the down range targets, but they were all needed so I really can’t whine about taking extra time to get solid hits.

Stage 4 was the classifier. They used good old El Presidente for this match and its always a fun stage to shoot. I can’t even remember how many times I have shot this classifier but it never seems to get old to me. This time I decided to not rush the shooting and instead focus on hitting my draw and reload. My draw was a little slow but my reload was awesome. I didn’t get a chance to double check the shot to shot on the reload but it had to be a .80 or .90. My shooting was a little slower than it needed to be but I was rewarded with only two C’s and the rest were A’s. My time was 5.51 and points were 58 which ends up being a 10.5 hit factor. When I looked up the result on the classifier calculator it says that it was a 97% result. Those two C’s kept it from being a 100% run.

Stage 5 was a large field course stage that had you starting seated in a chair in the back middle of the stage. The targets were laid out with four to the right with no shoots about 3 – 4 feet in front of open target. Then four to the left which were head shot only with no shoots below the heads. Then four hard cover targets straight ahead seen in a gap between two walls. The right array of targets was the most challenging because the no shoots were placed in a way that kept you from seeing all of the targets without getting right up next to the no shoots, which was too far to run to make it viable. I chose to stand on the chair and shoot over the top of the no shoots, then reload as I jumped down and run over to the left side head shots. This plan was probably the fastest shooting plan but I ended up having another strange failure to fire jam were the slide didn’t go fully into battery about four shots into the string. It took me at least 2 seconds to recover from the unexpected failure to fire jam but once cleared everything else went at planned.
Given that this was a very accuracy biased match I was happy to end up with only one miss for the match. It was a stupid miss, but it wasn’t a killer to my match performance. I am tired of getting these strange not going into battery failure to fire jams. I have been playing around with the 9lb recoil springs to see if I can wear one in before I actually use it. I have been fiddling with one 9lb spring that I believe is worn down to an 8.5lb spring tension. I am going to put that in the gun for this coming weekends match and see how it goes. Hopefully it works well to resolve the barrel lockup issues but not negatively impact how the front sight tracks. I did test a new 9lb recoil spring and it was too heavy for my liking. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t the same as an 8lb recoil spring. The recoil spring fiddling process continues!!!

Edited February 24, 2014 by CHA-LEE

[CHA-LEE]

The winter weather hit hard enough this past weekend to cancel all of the outdoor matches. It sucks to have half way decent weather during the week then get crappy weather on the weekend. Since there was no match shooting to be had I ended up doing some extensive dry fire training on Saturday. Then on Sunday I did some one on one training with a local shooter. We did quite a bit of dry fire training then went to a local indoor range to do some live fire training. It was a lot of fun and we were able to identify several areas of improvement and solutions for fixing them. I did a little bit of shooting, only 20 rounds, at the indoor range to show some examples of things. So that was nice to get at least some shooting done over the weekend.

Tonight I am heading to the indoor USPSA match down in Colorado Springs. This should be four fun stages of practical shooting blasting entertainment. I am going to test out the “worn out” 9lb recoil spring at this match. I also got some new clear lenses for my Rudy Project Rydon glasses so I am going to try those out too. The Rydon glasses give me better peripheral vision verses the Zyon glasses I have been using. Since all of the shots on these indoor matched go straight down range and there are is no steel or moving targets, I really don't think an increase in peripheral vision is going to be a benefit at this match. But It should be a good opportunity to try it out.

Edited March 3, 2014 by CHA-LEE

[CHA-LEE]

The indoor match last night was a lot of fun. On the first stage of the match I went a little too crazy in my shooting speed and ended up with two misses. One of them I called a solid miss but was leaving the shooting position already. The second miss was on the last target in the last shooting position because I decided to go back to the second shooting position to make up the miss I knew I had. I was rushing the shooting in the last position and ended up with a miss anyway even though I went back to make up the miss I knew I had. Mega fail boat on that stage.

The second stage of the match had a couple of options in how to shoot it. You could run up close and hose down the targets or shoot one of the positions from further back and eliminate some running around. I chose to shoot the first set of targets from further back then run up close and hose down the targets in the last two positions. This plan worked out really well and I had good hits.

The third stage was the classifier stage called Quicky 2. This is a two string classifier where you engage three targets free style, reload, then reengage the same targets strong hand. Then on the second string you do it weak hand after the reload. My first string was solid shooting and gun handling. My second string had a pretty clunky transfer to the weak hand and then I pulled my first shot on weak hand far left totally missing the target. I had way too much finger in the trigger guard and my first shot was totally unexpected breaking way before I was ready for it break. Since this was a Virginia count stage I had to resist making it up and simply eat the miss.

The fourth stage was the exact same layout as the first stage but the lights were turned down. Since the lighting was less than optimal I initially told myself that I should go bonkers and try to point shoot the whole stage. But I changed my mind at the last minute and figured that it would probably work out better if I at least tried to see my sights. I could barely see my sights while shooting the stage, but that’s all that I needed to call my shots and ensure my hits. I had a solid stage run on this stage.

I really liked the wider peripheral view offered by the Rydon glasses and I am looking forward to using them outdoors to see if they make any difference. My broken in 9lb recoil spring worked great. I didn’t notice any difference in how the gun recoiled or the sights tracked while shooting the stages, so that is good. I didn’t have any funky failure to go fully into battery jams either, but we really didn’t shoot too many rounds so I am not 100% sold on that issue being resolved. It will probably take a good 4 – 5K of flawless functionality for me to consider the issue resolved.

Overall it was a fun and challenging match. This is the last match I get to shoot until March 16^th as I am going out of state on vacation with my family. We are going on a week long Caribbean cruise so it will be nice to relax on the ship without all of the distractions that come along with regular daily life.

[CHA-LEE]

On Saturday night I got back from an awesome week long Caribbean cruise with my family. It was an awesome vacation and very relaxing. I can’t express how nice it is to turn off my cell phone and be completely disconnected from the world while on a cruise. I was ready to get back to the range by the end of the trip though and was happy to see that the weather was going to be nice for a local USPSA club match on Sunday.

The club match on Sunday was a little strange for me. I still had a little bit of a wobbly or unbalanced feeling from being on the cruise ship so it was a strange feeling to be shooting stages in. I also had two instances where I had a stage plan, thought I programmed it enough, but then when the buzzer went off I ended up shooting a different plan. I am not sure what the stage programming error was that day, but overall I felt out of my element for some strange reason. I only had one stage run where I felt that I executed it well and as planned. Other than that I had fun shooting with friends and the weather was awesome so I couldn’t complain too much. The way I see it any day I get to shoot is better than not shooting.

On Monday Night I went down to Colorado Springs to shoot the indoor USPSA match. The wobbly / unbalanced feeling in my head was now gone and I was able to focus on my shooting a lot better. I shot a fairly solid match. I had one miss on the first stage of the day, which was on a partial hard cover target that I called the shot marginal but it ended up being a miss. Seeing my sights at this indoor match is always a challenge. I was really happy with my aggressive movement between shooting positions though so that was a nice win.

I have been using the Rudy Project Rydon shooting glasses with clear lenses at these two matches. I am not sure if I can tell a difference in my shooting performance while using them, but I do feel that I can see more in my peripheral vision with them. I will keep using them for most of the summer to see if any long term changes can be observed. I have been thinking about getting the Genetyk style glasses as they have less visual obstruction in the middle verses the Rydon’s. Its kind of hard to justify spending more money on clear lens shooting glasses when I already have a couple of pair that work.

I am continuing to run the reduced power 9lb recoil spring and have not run into any funky jams yet. I have only run about 500 rounds through the gun with the new recoil spring so I am still not 100% sold on it being stiff enough to eliminate the intermittent not going fully into battery jams that were happening with the 8lb spring. I am going to keep running the reduced power 9lb recoil spring for a while to see how it does long term.

[CHA-LEE]

Last night I performed a detailed strip, inspection and clean of my Limited gun. Usually when I do this I find something worn out, broken, or cracked. This time was different, everything was 100% and no issues were found. I was in total disbelief so I ended up inspecting everything a lot closer than normal but I couldn’t find anything wrong. It’s nice to not have to fix or rebuild anything during this deep cleaning of the pistol.

I still need to finish building my next Limited gun. Currently I have the frame and slide reworked and hard chrome finished. I need to get all of the internal parts installed and tuned up. I have put that project on the back burner for now since I still have a valid primary and backup gun to take to matches. I should work on that project some more to get it closer to a finished setup that way I can minimize the down time when one of my active pistols takes a dump.

One thing that I have noticed since shooting the Rainier Ballistics Plated bullets is that the barrel wear has been dramatically reduced verses shooting jacketed bullets. I use to be able to “Shoot Out” a barrel in about a season of shooting when using jacketed bullets such as Zero or Montana Gold. With the plated bullets the barrel seems to retain its accuracy and velocity for much longer. That is a really neat long term benefit to using the Rainier Ballistics Plated bullets.

[thermobollocks]

We missed you on Saturday, if only to make you share in our misery

Do you find the Tanfos about as mechanically reliable as anything else you've shot? Also, does powder selection enter into your pistol barrel life?

[CHA-LEE]

We missed you on Saturday, if only to make you share in our misery

Do you find the Tanfos about as mechanically reliable as anything else you've shot? Also, does powder selection enter into your pistol barrel life?

If I was in Colorado on the morning of Saturday, I would have been there with you guys. But I didn't get back to Colorado until 9PM Saturday Night. I am not bummed that I missed out on getting a pound of dust blown into my eyes

The only pistols I have shot an extensive amount of ammo through are the EAA/Tanfo pistols so I don't know how they compare in reliability to other pistols. From my perspective I don't think that the EAA/Tanfo pistols break excessively. I expect stuff to wear out and break, especially since I am using modified lightened parts, springs, etc. That and I grip the gun like a vice to keep the gun from muzzle flipping so all of the high velocity slide movement beats on the gun and parts pretty good. I seem to be really good at finding weak links in the parts due to my extreme grip pressure on the gun.

I am not sure how much powder affects barrel life. I would assume that it does play a roll in how the rifling of the barrel wears due to different burn rates of powder, but given the fairly small amount of powder being burned (compared to rifles) I would think that the heat from the powder would have far less effect on the rifling verses the mechanical friction wear of the bullets being pushed down the barrel. I have only shot a crap ton of two different powders. Hodgdon Clays, and Winchester Super Target. Both of these powders are fairly close on the burn rate chart so I am not sure how one would be more or less destructive to the barrel rifling. I shoot about 5000 rounds between detailed cleans and when I take the barrel out and look down the rifling there is only a very small amount of soot in the grooves of the rifling. This amount of soot in the grooves looks the same between both Clays and WST so i don't think that one is more or less excessive than another. My bet is that the majority of the barrel wear comes from the mechanical friction between the bullet and rifling. Since the Rainier Ballistics bullets are softer than normal Jacketed bullets it would make sense that they would produce less destructive mechanical friction. But then again, I am not a mechanical or fluid dynamics engineer and can't put numbers behind this assumption. So I may be completely wrong.

[thermobollocks]

I've heard rifle guys mention slower burning powders eating throats faster, but I've not shot enough pistol to wear out a barrel before. My one high power/service rifle buddy rebarrels his .223 like every season, but his seasons are only a few thousand rounds, and he's looking for his groups to open up from 1/2 MOA. Same deal on his 6mm Howler or whatever it is.

Do you basically bench/chrono it every so many rounds to see when the groups/muzzle velocity goes nutty? I know parts wear, it's just a question of at what intervals.

[CHA-LEE]

I usually incorporate some accuracy stuff into my live fire training sessions so I regularly monitor how good/bad the accuracy is. For some reason the EAA/Tanfo barrels don't lose much accuracy as they get shot out. They usually lose velocity but maintain good accuracy. I have a barrel that is shot out from a velocity perspective and I use that as a bench mark to rate how degraded my current barrel is. I usually do this back to back velocity test between a known shot out barrel verses the current barrel a couple times a year to keep track of how much the current barrel is degraded. Usually a new or fresh barrel will have about 50fps more in velocity verses the shot out barrel.

[CHA-LEE]

The weather gods played havoc with the shooting this past weekend. There was a USPSA club match scheduled for Saturday but it was canceled on Friday due to the forecast of snow and cold temps. Then to mock us the snow didn’t start on Saturday until 2 PM so we could have held a match that day. I hate it when the weather forecast is inaccurate like that and it causes unneeded match cancelations. But this is the very unpredictable weather time of year so I don’t think anyone really knows what or when the crappy weather is going to happen.

On Sunday I presented a group practical shooting training class. Since it did snow the night before and it was fairly windy we started the discussion and dry fire portion of the class indoors. Doing this portion of the class inside was a welcomed change in plans for everyone due to the 20 degree plus 20+ mph winds that were outside in the morning. By 11am we were done with the dry fire stuff and ventured out to the range to do the live fire training portion of the class. The wind was coming straight north and the bay we were using was facing east so a lot of the wind went over the bay verses into it. We were pretty sheltered from the wind while inside the bay doing the training, which made it not too bad. All of the students got a chance to do a lot of shooting in various shooting challenges and I was able to pick out multiple skills that could be improved for each shooter. I had a lot of fun presenting the class and I feel that all of the students had a good time and got a decent amount of education out of the training.

I was able to do a little bit of shooting myself at the end of the day which was a lot of fun. While presenting training I don’t do any example shooting as I prefer to show examples in dry fire. Its always interesting to see how my actual shooting goes at the end of the day when I am tired and have not shot all day long. I have a specific field course stage that I setup for the training class and I set it up exactly the same every time so its neat to see how my own shooting has progressed from one class to the next when I end up shooting the stage at the end of the day. When I first setup this stage last year I could shoot it clean in about 14 – 15 seconds. I can now shoot it clean in 13.0 – 13.5 seconds. It will be interesting to see if I can get it all done in 12 seconds or less in the future as my skills progress.

As always some shooting is better than no shooting so I was glad to get some rounds send down range this past weekend. This coming Friday I am heading to Houston Texas to attend the Texas State Open match at the Impact Zone range. I attended this match last year and lucked out on being able to shoot the whole match on Saturday to miss the really muddy range conditions that happened on Sunday. Hopefully the weather can work in our factor on both shooting days this time.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I attended the Texas State Open match at the Impact Zone Range located in Hempstead Texas. I flew in on Friday morning and had a chance to check out all of the stages. The Match staff battled wet rainy weather during setup on Wednesday and Thursday and the evidence of sloppy muddy conditions were seen on all bays. Even though the range was fairly “dry” on Friday while I was checking out the stages it was clear that a very dedicated setup crew battled the muddy range conditions to setup the stages. My hat goes off to the match staff for rolling up their sleeves and getting the job done even though it was a really difficult task. Stage 12 was intended to be setup on the back side of the normal bays but the muddy conditions were far too severe to setup a stage back there. Sometime during Friday, Stage 10 got thrown out for a target replacement issue so the 12 stage match was trimmed down to a 10 stage match. Even though two staged got thrown out the remaining 10 stages were challenging and really fun to shoot.

I did my best to figure out solid plans for every stage and felt good about starting the match Saturday morning. I headed to my hotel and picked up some dinner along the way. Not long after I got back to the hotel some grey clouds rolled in and it started raining HARD for quite a while. I went to sleep that night knowing that I was going to experience the Mud Bog range conditions first hand the next day.

When I got to the range Saturday morning the range was a complete mud bog. I started on stage 11 which was thankfully a medium size stage without much moving around needed. The mud in the shooting area was like peanut butter and threatened to suck your shoes off your feet. Since hustling around the stage quickly was out of the question all you could do was try and shoot aggressively in each position to minimize the shooting time. I shot Stage 11 ok but had too many make up shots and a slow time due to the peanut butter mud. Luckily for all of us the sun came out and started to dry out the mud so we only had to deal with slippery muddy conditions on a couple of stages in the morning.

I did my best to move aggressively in the muddy conditions without falling down, which a couple of my squad mates did end up slipping and falling down. By the time we got to Stage 2 the slippery conditions were over with but the shooting areas still felt like walking on bread dough.

Stage 2 is where my biggest match performance issue happened. This stage was setup in a way that had you engaging targets as you were exiting the right side of the shooting area so you could run around a wall and reenter the shooting area down range. I must have had the worst luck ever because I had a nose dive jam just before the last shot I needed to take as I was exiting the shooting area. I ended up racking the slide while backing up to get back into the shooting area to engage the last target again. This whole stop, retreat, reengage, then go again process cost me at least 4 seconds in stage time. In hind sight I should have simply blown off the miss and kept going and eaten the miss, but my auto pilot wanted to go back and make it up. This stage cost me at least 40 match points in lost time. That was a bitter pill to swallow so early on in the match, but it is what it is.

After that I had a miss on stage 4 then another one on stage 5. Both of these were simply due to getting sucked into trying to point shoot stuff instead of staying on my sights. After that I told myself to stop screwing around with point shooting and simply shoot the stages by calling my shots.

Stage 6 was the last stage of the day and I had a really strange situation where I ended up shooting a 1 inch wide steel wall brace TWICE while engaging a target that the wall was blocking. I heard the second shot hit the wall brace so I made up the shot but didn’t realize that both of my first shots on the target hit the wall brace instead of the target. It is very evident in my stage video that the wall is hit twice on my first two shots. That was super frustrating to have yet another miss on a stage bringing my total to 3 misses for the match with only three stages to shoot the next day.

Since I had already given away 40 match points on Stage 2, then 45 more match points in misses I knew that Sunday I would HAVE TO shoot 100% clean to salvage any chance of finishing in the top 3 of Limited. Blake Miguez was pretty much destroying everyone in Limited by at least 10% at this point so there was no chance of me winning, but a second place might be possible if I shot clean and aggressive on Sunday.

Sunday morning I was the first shooter on Stage 7 which was a pretty simple three position stage. With it being dawn I couldn’t see my sights very well, pretty much only the FO in the front sight so I ended up shooting pretty slow. I got all of my hits though so that was a plus. Then on stage 8 I was still stuck in turtle mode shooting slower than I should have on the first half of the stage. Then when I did my reload the spent mag didn’t drop free and I had to rip it out of the gun to complete the load. After that it was off to the races but the slower than should be shooting on the front half of the stage cost me valuable time.

With Stage 7 and 8 performances really nothing more than treading water results I knew that I had to knock it out of the park on Stage 9 in order to finish in second or third. Stage 9 had a shooting area setup in an “H” formation and the layout of the targets basically forced you to every corner and the middle of the stage. You had the choice of shooting the steel from the middle or around the barrels from the front left and right. If you engaged the steel from the middle you had to wait for the front steel to fall before you could shoot the back steel. If you engaged them from the sides you could engage both steel right away. I had an aggressive plan of shooting both sets of steel from the outsides which was somewhat of an awkward shooting position, but it is what it is. I had my stage plan set and programmed and when the buzzer went off I let loose with as much Big Panda fury as I could muster. I was able to finish the stage more than a second faster than anyone else in Limited and netted a much needed stage win. Hopefully that would be enough to pull my final result up into the second place position.

When all of the shooting was done and the results were posted I ended up in third overall in Limited. Blake Miguez won followed by Chad Folger at 88% then I was in third at 87%. I ended up missing second place by only 10 match points. I gave it my best and that netted me a third place finish. As always, I wish that I could have finished better, but it is what it is. The stages were a lot of fun to shoot and my squad was filled with a bunch of great guys. Regardless of where I finished it was well worth the time and investment to attend the match. If you want to check out my stage runs I have uploaded all of the videos onto my YouTube channel.

[Chris iliff]

I haven't been keeping up, so I just finished reading most of what I've missed. I wanted to say that I was thinking you shot a good 2014 Florida Open, despite the poor lighting, .........So Kudos!!!

I worked and shot that match in 2012, didn't fair nearly as well, finishing mid pack in Open.

As you say, some very talented shooters design and set those stages, which I think makes the match one of the best in the country. It has a different flavor and should be on everyone's bucket list of matches.

Take care.

[MarkCO]

My bet is that the majority of the barrel wear comes from the mechanical friction between the bullet and rifling. Since the Rainier Ballistics bullets are softer than normal Jacketed bullets it would make sense that they would produce less destructive mechanical friction. But then again, I am not a mechanical or fluid dynamics engineer and can't put numbers behind this assumption. So I may be completely wrong.

You would win that bet. Mechanical wear is the dominant, and almost only, significant factor in barrel life in a pistol. Bi-metal bullets (which have steel) wear the barrels faster than MGs which result in slightly more barrel wear than jacketed, which have slightly more barrel wear than copper plated, which have slightly more barrel wear than lead which have slightly more barrel wear than polymer coated.

The Ranier's are not really softer, but they are more malleable, meaning they deform with less force.

[Vanniek71]

I was watching your Texas match vids, what happened at the end of Stage 3 where you walked up and stepped on the activator? Looked like you were done with the stage?

[CHA-LEE]

I was watching your Texas match vids, what happened at the end of Stage 3 where you walked up and stepped on the activator? Looked like you were done with the stage?

That stage had two disappearing targets that were activated by a step pad. You could choose to activate and shoot at the DT's during your stage run but you would have to navigate the whole stage, or you could shoot the majority of the stage from the back and then activate the DT's after you were done shooting. Per the USPSA rules if you don't activate DT's before the end of the course of fire, then you would incur Failure to Engage and Misses on the disappearing targets. To keep from getting that penalty all you have to do is activate the DT's before you unload and show clear, which is what I did.

Gamers Gotta Game BABY!!!