thermobollocks Posted April 28, 2015 Share Posted April 28, 2015 There's a lot of people who can perform at home, and in good conditions, but I'm consistently impressed when you can deliver to your ability in any possible shooting weather. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted April 28, 2015 Author Share Posted April 28, 2015 There's a lot of people who can perform at home, and in good conditions, but I'm consistently impressed when you can deliver to your ability in any possible shooting weather. Big Panda's like to get the job done all the time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stician Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Congrats on the strong Texas finish! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted April 30, 2015 Author Share Posted April 30, 2015 Thanks!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted May 4, 2015 Author Share Posted May 4, 2015 This weekend was actually nice for a change. We still had some rain, but luckily it was in the evenings after the shooting was done. On Saturday I did some training for a friend and it was a lot of fun. He made some significant strides forward in his shooting skills and shot a bunch of ammo while doing it. I got to shoot my new Limited blaster a little bit to confirm that the POA/POI was where it should be. I only shot about 50 rounds through it but it was running good and hitting where it should. I need to do some more tweaking on the trigger as the break is a little too creepy. I am trying to sneak up on the sear’s secondary cut so I don’t over do it and end up with hammer follow issues. I recently got some ESS shooting glasses and tried the Crossbow tinted lens version on Saturday. Even though the lens was tinted I was surprised at how clear they were. I didn’t have any issues seeing my sights while using them for the little bit I did in shooting that day. But then again the sun was out with zero clouds so I can see how I could get away with using the tinted lenses. I figured I would give the clear lenses a try on Sunday for the match. On Sunday I attended the USPSA match at the Aurora Gun Club. The weather was warmer than expected topping out at almost 80 degrees but by the end of the match it was heavily overcast with rain lingering in the distance. I tried the clear lens ESS Crossbow glasses and really liked their huge field of unobstructed view. The frame and lenses fit to my face very well leaving only very little gaps between my face and frame/lens. I like the contoured fit, but the side effect in the hot shooting weather is that they trap quite a bit of sweat on my face. I had to take them off and wipe the sweat off of my eyes and face several times during the match. I had to do this with the Rudy Project glasses too, but less frequently. I am wondering if I need to do some fiddling on ESS glasses to promote some “Breathing” to keep the sweatiness down. I may end up wrecking a pair of glasses, but it’s worth a try. The match its self was fun. The stages were not too hard and had a good mixture of blasting and aiming. The one thing that was strange is that there were a lot of stages where you had to retreat up range at some point during the stage runs. There were also several target arrays setup just ahead of the 180 so it was easy to over run the shooting positions and cause a 180 break issue. I have practiced this type of movement or shooting positions a lot, so I didn’t have an issue with it, but we had several DQ’s due to breaking the 180. Nobody had a gun pointed at them and no shots were fired up range while breaking the 180, but it’s still a little unnerving when it happens. One side of me wants to point the finger at the stage designs that were pushing the envelope of the 180 and the other side wants to point the finger at the shooters not being mindful of the 180. In the end, this is a big kid game with big kid rules. Some times the only way people learn these 180 lessons is by being DQed. I shot a fairly solid match with only a few small issues here or there. I didn’t have any misses or no shoots for the match, which was nice. I was also able to reign it in and let loose as needed, which was also nice. The only major blunder I had was on the classifier where I tried to draw really aggressive and got a crappy grip on the gun which produced a front sight to the left sight picture. I tried to power through it and drive the front sight back to aligned while shooting aggressively, but still ended up with 3 D’s and a bunch of C’s. Crappy points divided by a decent time resulted in a pretty crappy classifier stage run. That is what I get for “Trying” to draw faster than I am use to. I guess some lessons you never learn. I am glad that I got to shoot both days on the weekend and avoid the rain. Hopefully next weekend will allow me to do the same time. I need to start putting some more rounds through the new Limited gun to break it in and prove functionality. I will fiddle on the trigger a little more this week and plan on using it exclusively next weekend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted May 6, 2015 Author Share Posted May 6, 2015 Rain, Rain, and more Rain. Man this is a soggy spring here in Colorado. All of this rain is good for the lawn, plants, and critters but not so good for outdoor gun games. The rainy weather is forecast to continue through the rest of this week and into the weekend. I highly doubt that the local CRC club match will happen on Saturday due to wet/muddy range conditions. There is also a match scheduled for Sunday down in Pueblo but that is looking iffy as well. I am keeping my fingers crossed on the Pueblo match happening as it will be too wet and muddy at any of the outdoor ranges around Denver to even go practice. All of this shooting down time has allowed me to get caught up on some projects and other maintenance items. But I have almost run out of things to tinker and fiddle with in my man cave. I put some more trigger wrenching effort into my new Limited blaster. I have eliminated all of the creep in the break and fine tuned the trigger pull weight to the magical 2lbs 4oz that my trigger finger seems to prefer. I have no idea how my trigger finger settled on 2lbs 4oz for a trigger pull weight, but for whatever funky reason that weight feels perfect. Heavier than that and I mash the crap out of the trigger while shooting. Lighter than that and I have trigger freeze issues on the ultra fast blasting stuff. I have gotten all of my travel stuff reworked and packed for the Oregon State Match as I am heading out to that in a couple of weeks. That is a one day match where I am shooting it all on Saturday then flying home on Sunday. Hopefully the weather will play nice for that match as I don’t want to do another “Mud Bog” match. All I can do is keep an eye on the weather and take the appropriate gear to deal with the range conditions. I might go fiddle crazy on my ESS Crossbow shooting glasses this evening to see if I can improve their “Breathability” while wearing them. We will see if I can keep from wrecking them in the process. My dremel kung fu is strong, so I am not too worried. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PatJones Posted May 6, 2015 Share Posted May 6, 2015 Looks like the Oregon state match is in Bend. That's in the rain shadow of the mountains, it's not as wet as the western part of the state. I love Bend, my brother lives there. Have fun, I wish I was going. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted May 11, 2015 Author Share Posted May 11, 2015 Well, this weekend was a bust from a shooting perspective. There was too much rain to do any shooting outdoors and we got hit with a bunch of snow on Saturday night making it not very appealing to drive to Boulder for their indoor match on Sunday morning. That and I vowed to not shoot indoor matches that aggravate me because the lighting is crappy. I decided to sleep in this weekend and get some stuff taken care of around the house. I started having some back/neck pain on Sunday afternoon and it continues through today. I have a strange muscle in my back that knots up if I sleep at a funky angle and the only way to chill it out is to take some muscle relaxers. I took some muscles relaxers last night before going to bed and woke up with the same pain. Usually that will take care of the muscle knot issue so I am not sure if this pain is the actual muscle knot issue or some kind of new pain due to some neck issue. All I can do is take it easy and see if it chills out over the week. Hopefully it’s just the knotted back muscle issue that is being worse than it has been in the past. I REALLY don’t want to deal with more neck issues again. We will see how this week goes. Hopefully this neck/back pain issue is just the knotted muscle issue. I am keeping my fingers crossed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted May 13, 2015 Author Share Posted May 13, 2015 Well……. My neck is jacked up again. This time it’s affecting my right shoulder and arm. So I think this time around it’s the original disk rupture that is acting up again. I am in pain and have restricted movement to minimize the pain. But I am not crippled with pain like what has happened in the past. I have been taking it easy and putting myself on an Alieve regiment to keep the inflammation down. So far that is all I have needed to keep the pain under control and I hope that it doesn’t get worse. We will see how it goes over the next couple of weeks. The lucky thing is that I am not experiencing numbness or strength loss in my right arm like has happened in the past. Hopefully this current blowout does not go down that path. I restarted my ruptured disk surgical solution research and was surprised to find that since the last time I looked into it the FDA has approved multi-level cervical artificial disk replacements. This is great news as it wasn’t an option the last time I talked to my doctor about it. The best solution they could offer the last time was a single level artificial disk replacement and a fusing of the second level above it, which I didn’t want to do. I have setup a surgery consult meeting with a neurosurgeon so we can talk about the options that are available today. The only bummer is that the earliest appointment is in the middle of June. Hopefully this current neck issue isn’t still kicking my ass by then. Needless to say, I am pretty bummed about this neck situation. I wish it was healed for good after the last two major blowouts, but I can’t seem to catch a break. Even if this current neck situation heals and I am back to “normal” I am still dead set on getting surgery done. I would rather go under the knife with a known solid solution verses crossing my fingers and hoping that it won’t blow out again. Bionic Neck here I come!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richc2048 Posted May 13, 2015 Share Posted May 13, 2015 You shoot like a well oiled machine now anyway. Might as well make it literal and make yourself an actual machine for shooting. ha! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frunkenstein Posted May 14, 2015 Share Posted May 14, 2015 Great a "Bionic Panda " just what the competition needs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted May 18, 2015 Author Share Posted May 18, 2015 The Neck Pain continues but I am at least somewhat functional. I am on a daily regiment of neck/back exercises and treatments. Doing that along with taking Alieve has allowed me to be somewhat functional this past week and through the weekend. Some days it barely hurts at all and others it’s pretty painful. But I have stayed away from the heavy duty pain meds as it’s not been that painful yet. The rainy weather stopped long enough this weekend for us to get some shooting in. On Saturday I had my monthly match director duty for the HPPS match and did my best to grind through the pain and not make it worse. I purposefully restricted my lifting and bending over so I was fairly useless for the stage setup and tear down portion of the match. But I did do the sign up and scoring which was enough. I wasn’t sure if my neck pain would allow me to shoot so I decided to not get on a normal squad and try to shoot through the stages if I could. Much to my surprise shooting the stages didn’t flare up my neck pain, but being in pain while shooting did add an interesting level of mental clarity during the stage runs. My focus was to not do anything stupid that would hurt my neck and I succeeded at doing just that. At the end of the match the dark clouds and rain were looming close in the sky and I thought that we were going to get out of there without getting rained on. But one of the squads ended up a whole stage behind everyone else. This last squad ended up finishing the last stage of the match in the rain. I did my best to RO and Score for them during this last stage to help them push through it and get done. It was sucky but I am glad that I brought my rain coat or I would have been screwed. I am still not sure how that squad ended up a whole stage behind the rest. During the shooters meeting I told everyone that the weather forecast was calling for rain in the afternoon and to not “Dilly Dally” on churning through the stages. I asked a couple of shooters on the squad why they were so delayed but nobody had a specific reason as to why. I assume they were just taking their sweet time on every stage and got caught off guard at the end of the match. Hopefully that is a good lesson for them to not jack around on churning through stages the next time we face those conditions. Or maybe they like shooting in the rain? Either way they all got done and we were able to get everything packed up and put away without getting soaked to the bone. On Sunday I did some training with a shooter and we had a good time. I didn’t do much shooting but did get a few more rounds down the pipe of my new Limited gun. I also tested it with the MBX magazines and it fed and shot without any issues. I did have one instance where my support hand pushed the mag release during recoil and I half way expected that might happen as I still need to get an Extra Power mag release spring in that gun. Other than that it’s running good but I still need to get about 1000 rounds through it before I consider it good to go. Hopefully I will get a chance to do some more shooting with it this month between major matches. Since I was able to shoot this past week with my jacked up neck more than it already is I am going to stick to my plans of heading out to Bend Oregon for their state match this coming weekend. Hopefully between now and then my neck will heal up some more and be in even better shape. All I can do is keep at my proactive neck treatment stuff and take it easy. We will see how it goes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted May 24, 2015 Author Share Posted May 24, 2015 This weekend I attended the Oregon State Open match in Bend Oregon. I few into Portland and then took the 3.5 hour drive down to Bend. It was raining the whole way down and I got into bend too late to check out the stages so I checked into my hotel and kept my fingers crossed that the range wasn’t a mud bog. The shooting schedule didn’t have us starting until 10AM the next day so I would have enough time to check out the stages in the morning before the start of the match. Saturday morning I got up early and headed to the range and was pleasantly surprised by the dry range conditions. It was in the mid 40’s with a little wind so it was a little chilly in the morning but not horrible. Most important is that the range was dry. I had my fill of slopping around in the mud at the range lately so this was a welcomed change. I was able to get a solid walk through on all of the stages before the start of the match so I felt ready to go once the match started. We had a small squad of shooters and the first stage of the match we lost two more due to DQ’s. This brought the Squad count to 7 shooters. Since this was the “Staff Shooting” day none of the stages had standing RO’s and we had to RO ourselves just like a club match. I stepped up and did a lot of ROing and didn’t mind as it beats not getting to shoot. With a 7 shooter squad all of us had to bust our hump to get through all of the stages. There wasn’t much time to stop and take a break as you were either ROing, Taping/resetting, Shooting, or resetting your gear after the stage run. Even though we had a less than optimal squad size, everyone worked hard and had a fun time. There was one shooter who forgot to put all of his mags on his belt before starting the stage so he only got to shoot about a quarter of the stage before stopping because he was out of ammo. We were all bummed for him but it is what it is. I am sure that issue was mainly due to the small squad size and the pace at which we were churning through the stages. I shot fairly well on the first four stages of the match then we had a squad log jam before starting our 5th stage. This gave us a break in the action for about 30 minutes, which was nice to take a little break. But it really derailed me mentally. I was the second shooter on the 5th stage and I ended up with 2 misses on the stage because I simply wasn’t being visually patient enough with the swingers. The next stage I was first up and the mental fog still had not lifted resulting in 5 make up shots on one piece of steel and 5 D-zone hits. Yikes!!! The last two stages of the match I buckled down and forced myself to be visually patient. This resulted in some successful stage runs with all of my hits. I wrapped up the match with 2 misses and 1 no shoot which is more match points than I would like to give away, but pretty darn good given the pace and workload of shooting that day. We also had overcast skies most of the day so I was really happy with being patient enough to see my sights most of the time. After the first day of shooting I was sitting HOA in Limited. The “main match” shoots on Sunday so I will have to see if my performance holds up. The weather Sunday is supposed to be better so they shouldn’t have to shoot in overcast skies or overly chilly weather in the morning. Not to mention not having to RO themselves all day long on small squads. But these are all excuses to make myself feel better about my performance. I think that the small squad, ROing, and overcast skies probably affected my overall performance about 5% or less so it wasn’t a huge disadvantage. It is what it is and matches only happen with the dedicated volunteer efforts of others. I will have to wait and see how my performance holds up against the “Sunday” shooters. I should know by 5 – 6 PM tonight. In the meantime I am hopping on a plane back home Sunday morning so I will be back home well before the end of the match. This was a “Hit & Run” match for me but I am glad that I went. They did a good job pulling the match together and the stages were a lot of fun to shoot. I am adding this match to my 2016 shooting schedule already as I would like to give it a try again. We will see how it goes. Oh yeah..... Huge THANKS to Rob Cook for helping with videoing my stage runs!!! Rob is a lot of fun to shoot with and we had a good time shooting together. I have already uploaded my stage run videos to my YouTube channel if you want to check them out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted May 25, 2015 Share Posted May 25, 2015 How did your neck hold up at the match? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted May 25, 2015 Author Share Posted May 25, 2015 My neck did ok at the match but the 3.5 hour drive to and from Portland did a number on it. It's slowly getting better so that is all I can hope for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted May 25, 2015 Author Share Posted May 25, 2015 (edited) Final results for the match have been posted. I ended up 2nd overall in Limited at 98% of Sebastiao Filho. I have shot against Sebastiao at other major matches and he is a solid contender. Congrats to him for pulling off the win at this match. My two misses on stage 1 pretty much did me in for the win. My misses were on the top targets of the double stacked swingers, one miss on each. I will be adding that target scenario to my "suck" list for things to practice. The good thing is that we don't face that type of target configuration very often. But that skill still needs to be honed so I will beat it up in practice. Edited May 25, 2015 by CHA-LEE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted May 25, 2015 Share Posted May 25, 2015 Final results for the match have been posted. I ended up 2nd overall in Limited at 98% of Sebastiao Filho. I have shot against Sebastiao at other major matches and he is a solid contender. Congrats to him for pulling off the win at this match. My two misses on stage 1 pretty much did me in for the win. My misses were on the top targets of the double stacked swingers, one miss on each. I will be adding that target scenario to my "suck" list for things to practice. The good thing is that we don't face that type of target configuration very often. But that skill still needs to be honed so I will beat it up in practice. I've never seen double stacked swingers. You should put one in the HPPS match. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thermobollocks Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 Final results for the match have been posted. I ended up 2nd overall in Limited at 98% of Sebastiao Filho. I have shot against Sebastiao at other major matches and he is a solid contender. Congrats to him for pulling off the win at this match. My two misses on stage 1 pretty much did me in for the win. My misses were on the top targets of the double stacked swingers, one miss on each. I will be adding that target scenario to my "suck" list for things to practice. The good thing is that we don't face that type of target configuration very often. But that skill still needs to be honed so I will beat it up in practice. I've never seen double stacked swingers. You should put one in the HPPS match. I knew someone was going to say that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted May 26, 2015 Author Share Posted May 26, 2015 Why stop at a double swinger when you could just as easily do a triple? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PatJones Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 (edited) You gonna have one of those triples at the mile high? Edited May 26, 2015 by PatJones Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 (edited) Final results for the match have been posted. I ended up 2nd overall in Limited at 98% of Sebastiao Filho. I have shot against Sebastiao at other major matches and he is a solid contender. Congrats to him for pulling off the win at this match. My two misses on stage 1 pretty much did me in for the win. My misses were on the top targets of the double stacked swingers, one miss on each. I will be adding that target scenario to my "suck" list for things to practice. The good thing is that we don't face that type of target configuration very often. But that skill still needs to be honed so I will beat it up in practice. I've never seen double stacked swingers. You should put one in the HPPS match. I knew someone was going to say that That's why the HPPS match is one of the best club matches around. The stages truly test your skills....Except for that one stage you did with the 40lb ammo can. Edited May 26, 2015 by d_striker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 Why stop at a double swinger when you could just as easily do a triple? I like the way you think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted May 26, 2015 Author Share Posted May 26, 2015 You gonna have one of those triples at the mile high? No, I don't want my tires slashed and teeth punched out by 150+ competitors. I might be able to fend off the 30 - 50 competitors at a local club match, but not 150. That and the Mile High Showdown stages are set in stone. No major changes can be made at this point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drewbeck Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 Ya, I'm not sure you want to be advertising double stacked swingers either, the crowd could get out of hand rather quick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Husker95 Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 I think a double is a must for the July or Aug HPPS club shoot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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