CHA-LEE's Tale

[Jimdoe]

I just watched all your vids from OFC, and man do I have a lot to learn. The way you executed the stages was just smooth and it flows. Some of the stages I ran exactly you did but with an added 5-10 secs . I may have to re-read all your post/blogs specially the stage break down to learn more. I'll see you at the range next time. Grabbing second behind Manny a big win no matter what. Congrats.

[Jimdoe]

Whoever designed stage 11 is a genius. I never thought of using toilet seats for that.

It was a fun stage but not so much for the open shooters, some of em got shrapnel/splinters from gas hitting seat cover.

[CHA-LEE]

Graphite is probably gonna get everything really dirty and messy, I think you'd like climbing chalk, talc, gold bond, etc a lot better and it would be cleaner.

If you want the cheapest and best moisture mitigator pick up a bag of portland cement or plaster powder, they'll suck the moisture out of anything.

You are probably right about the graphite powder being too messy. I am going to do some testing this week with a few different things to see what works and isn't super messy.

[CHA-LEE]

Really bummed I had to miss this match. Always fun shooting with you. But life has a tendency to get in the way sometimes.

As to the sticky finger issue, pool chalk would be a good solution. Just buy a cube of that and rub it on your finger when needed. I have also seen people fill up a spice container with their favorite dirt as it is free and easily portable.

The pool chalk cube is a great idea. I will pick up one of those as well.

[CHA-LEE]

I just watched all your vids from OFC, and man do I have a lot to learn. The way you executed the stages was just smooth and it flows. Some of the stages I ran exactly you did but with an added 5-10 secs . I may have to re-read all your post/blogs specially the stage break down to learn more. I'll see you at the range next time. Grabbing second behind Manny a big win no matter what. Congrats.

Thanks for the compliments. As for the stage breakdown process check out the thread I started on that below. Hopefully this helps improve your strategy in breaking down stages.

http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=204084&hl=

[PatJones]

Charlie. I use cornstarch when shooting Revo in hot conditions so my hands don't get sticky when I'm trying to re-grip after a reload. There is a cornstarch product from Gold Bond in a small size that offers convenient packaging for the range. I will be at Dumont shooting Revo on Sunday if you want to check it out.

[d_striker]

Charlie. I use cornstarch when shooting Revo in hot conditions so my hands don't get sticky when I'm trying to re-grip after a reload. There is a cornstarch product from Gold Bond in a small size that offers convenient packaging for the range. I will be at Dumont shooting Revo on Sunday if you want to check it out.

Not to mention, cornstarch is great for other areas when it gets hot and swampy.

Oldest restaurant trick in the book.

[CHA-LEE]

Charlie. I use cornstarch when shooting Revo in hot conditions so my hands don't get sticky when I'm trying to re-grip after a reload. There is a cornstarch product from Gold Bond in a small size that offers convenient packaging for the range. I will be at Dumont shooting Revo on Sunday if you want to check it out.

Cool. I will be at the Clear Creek match so I will track you down and check out your Corn Starch.

[Vanniek71]

Not to mention, cornstarch is great for other areas when it gets hot and swampy.

Oldest restaurant trick in the book.

That's funny. Coming from a long illustrious restaurant career, I cannot tell you how many times corn starch saved me lol. I used to stash a box in the employee restrooms! Edited September 23, 2015 by Vanniek71

[CHA-LEE]

This weekend was a busy one from a club match perspective. On Saturday I attended the Aurora Gun Club match and tested out a couple of “Slippery finger” solutions. The first was some Monkey Butt powder that is really slippery and the second was a normal pool cue chalk. On the first stage of the day I tried the Monkey butt powder just on my trigger finger and it made the pad of my trigger finger super slippery. I could feel the pad of my finger slipping around on the front face of the trigger shoe while shooting and this was really strange. The timing of my shooting was off due to this slipperiness because it was so distracting. This lead to an uncalled miss on an open target due to being distracted. For fun I shot the stage again using the pool cue chalk on the pad of my finger and it actually felt more sticky than normal. I think that the pool cue chalk is too abrasive and it makes sense as it’s used to create more friction traction between the cue tip and the cue ball. It was dry at the range without creating sweaty hands so I think the slipperiness of the Monkey Butt powder is just too much for this range condition. I shot the rest of the stages pretty good and had fun in the nice weather.

On Sunday I did a double header club match starting with the Clear Creek match up in the mountains then an evening match at the Centennial Gun Club. The Clear Creek match was once again “Dry” shooting conditions but I did try a lesser amount of the Monkey Butt powder on the first stage. Once again I had the strange finger slipping around on the front of the trigger shoe feeling and to make it worse the first stage was a difficult strong hand only affair with some long distance plates to engage. I wiped off the powder for the next stage right after that which was the classifier, shooting both stages back to back. Then it felt normal again while shooting but I botched up the reload and had to wrestle the magazine into the gun. With a donkey show on the first two stages of the day I knew this was going to be an up hill battle for the rest of the match. Once again I decided to quit messing around with the powder for the rest of the match and used dirt here and there to tame down the hand stickiness when needed. I shot the rest of the match OK, but not really good. I racked up a miss on the last stage of the day on a really easy close target as I was trying to shoot aggressively while entering a position. I called it marginal and expected a hit to be there, but it ended up being a miss. Oh well, it is what it is.

At the CGC match in the evening, I was really leery about attending this match as it’s pretty difficult to see my sights indoors with their substandard lighting. Lucky for me all of the stages had pretty close shots and even in the poor lighting I could still get my hits. I forced myself to be more visually patient to attempt to see my sights more and let the gun settle between shots and this worked out well. I got all of my hits and didn’t even have any D-zone hits. The other thing I got a chance to test at this match was the Monkey Butt powder as this indoor range tends to be more humid than normal. The extra humidity produced a slightly more sticky hands scenario I was looking to test and I figured out a balanced amount of powder to use without going overboard like I had before. I will get to test this out in Florida next week for the nationals.

With this past weekend being my last opportunity to shoot before heading out for the nationals I am feeling as prepared as I am going to be. This week I need to get all of my gear cleaned up, reworked, and packed for the trip so all of my spare time will be used for that. We will see how it goes at the nationals. If I don’t have any train wrecks at the Nationals I should be able to produce a top 10 finish. I don’t want to get all wrapped around the axel on setting performance goals though as all I can do is take it one shot at a time while I am there. Then see if it’s good enough to achieve my overall finish goal.

[HOOLIHAN]

Good luck at Nationals Charlie!

[frunkenstein]

We will be watching the scores.

[PatJones]

13th. 2% behind Leatham. Well done boss.

[CHA-LEE]

Holly brutal match Batman!!! I will write up a full report later but all I can say now is that I am glad it's over.

[Al Capizzo]

Nice finish at Nats!! Hard work pays off.

[thermobollocks]

Holly brutal match Batman!!! I will write up a full report later but all I can say now is that I am glad it's over.

That's how you know it's good! I hope it was fun.

[CHA-LEE]

I flew back from the 2015 Limited USPSA Nationals this morning. This match was a huge mental test for me in pushing through the suck and stay positive even though I was struggling hard on the first two days of the match. When I checked in for the match they had moved me to the “B” Super Squad with Rob Leatham, Chris Tilley Todd Jerrett, KC Eusebio, Shane Coley, Shannon Smith, Phil Strader, Elias Frangoulis, and Lesgar Murdock. It was interesting to see how the “Big Boys” interact on a squad, perform their craft and deal with adversary. All of them were great guys to shoot with and it was a great opportunity to see a lot of awesome shooting. All of these guys are bad asses!!!

Day one had us shooting the “Middle” group of stages, which were the lowest total point value stages of the match. The weather forecast called for rain so I brought along my rain coat and I needed it. We started off the match on Stages 10 & 11 while it was raining, overcast and bagged targets. Any one of those things suck by themselves but compound all three at the same time and it was really no fun at all. I ended up with a miss on my first stage on a no shoot partial that was bagged and I couldn’t see my sights well enough to call my shots. I was just lucky that the miss wasn’t low getting into the no shoot. The second stage I shot OK which was a stand and blast double clam shell thing. I got my hits with no penalties so I was happy with simply surviving and not get soaked while doing it. This would be the theme of the day, Survive and TRY not to get soaking wet. I battled seeing my sights in the gloomy overcast lighting and had to rely on point shooting most of the time to try and “Hope” my hits onto the targets. I still managed to rack up 3 misses that day and all of them were uncalled because I couldn’t see my sights. To cap off the day a heavy rain came in before we started our last stage of the day. It rained hard for a good 20 – 30 minutes and the stage we had to shoot was the prone stage. With 3 – 4 inches of standing water in the shooting area and the wood platform for shooting prone from being soaked and really slippery I was like “Do I really want to inflict this torture on myself?”. As soon as the rain stopped the RO’s got us started on the stage. I proceeded to throw myself down into the mud and shot the stage the best I could. I was distracted by the water splashing everywhere, slippery footing conditions and wet slippery hands but it is what it is. I am not sure how “Practical” that was but the show must go on. Needless to say I was glad that this was our last stage of the day because I was over it. Giving up a bunch of C’s and D’s, slow shooting and 3 misses on day one was not the start I hoped for but I wasn’t the only one struggling either.

Day two we started on the high numbered stages which was a mixture of smaller field course stages, more stand & blast standards stuff and a few large field courses. We started in the morning and it was REALLY overcast which was good and bad. It was good because we didn’t get our eyes blown out by the sun coming up just above the berm while shooting, but it was also bad because it was dark enough that I couldn’t see my sights AGAIN. Holly Frustrating Batman!!! I can’t even express how frustrating it is to be crippled by crappy eye sight in these poor lighting conditions. It was another day of relying mostly on point shooting and HOPING that I would get my hits. I had to shoot slower than normal to let the gun fully settle before breaking the next shot in hopes that the sights would be lined up enough to get a decent hit. Even though I tried my best to get my hits I still racked up 2 more misses and a no shoot as well. This day was a frustrating grind of shooting in very poor lighting conditions. Crappy hits plus slow stage times due to shooting slow in trying to get hits was putting me further and further behind the pack of the top shooters. At the end of this day my spirits were pretty beat down. I didn’t see how I would be able to dig myself out of this hole with only one day of shooting left and if the lighting was crappy on the last day it would pretty much be a waste of time.

Day three we shot on the PM schedule and it was pretty hot and muggy BUT the sun was out and there were very few clouds in the sky. We were shooting the first 6 stages of the match which were mostly large field courses worth a lot of points. The sun is out, and there are a lot of match points on the table to capture. I had hope that I would be able to salvage some kind of decent overall finish if I shot solidly. We started on stage 4 which was one of the few stages that had a couple of different ways to shoot it. I thought I had a solid stage plan for it but then after seeing a few others walking the stage I knew I had the wrong plan. I had to scrap my first stage plan then build and program another one in not too much time. My new plan was slightly different than the others on my squad in the front section but it just felt more efficient to me so I stuck with it. I settled on my strategy then burned in that stage plan like no other. I only had about 10 minutes before I had to shoot the stage so I didn’t have the luxury of letting it marinate like I normally do. I knew that I had to finish solid on every single stage this last day to recover my match and it all hinged on performing solidly on this first stage. I normally don’t get nervous about performing but this time I was. I did my best to let the nerves subside before the start signal and let the stage happen per the plan. I was able to execute my stage plan and shoot aggressively because I could see my sights. The run was solid and that was a huge confidence builder after getting kicked in the teeth on every other stage in the past two days. I let this confidence build and had another solid run on stage 5 then survived the strong hand standards stage 6. Stage 1 was the house where I knew I would have issues with seeing my sights inside, but I was able to reign myself in and get my hits in a decent time. Then we got to stage two and I had my first “issue” of the day. This stage had you running laterally in the back then jump over a short port/wall opening to go into the middle section of the stage. The buzzer went off and I ran right and shot aggressively, then ran left and shot aggressively. Then reloaded heading to the port/wall, lifted my left foot to get it over the port/wall and it got hung up on the bottom of the wall and I fell in the middle of the port!!! I fell hard and missed racking myself on the bottom of the wall by about 2 inches as all of my weight hit my leg instead of my nuts. Luckily I was able to catch myself on the fence netting with my left hand to keep from falling forward and did my best to keep the gun pointed down range the whole time. I was a little dazed and confused at first then powered out of it and finished the stage getting all of my hits. I bashed my right arm on the side of the port wall really hard and the bruise will be there for a while. I lost about 3 seconds in falling down on the stage but luckily I wasn’t hurt too bad and didn’t break the 180 while falling down. This cost me at least 20 match points, which was a bummer because I had been shooting penalty free up to that point. Stage 3 was the last one of the day and it was one last kick in the teeth as it was facing into the setting sun. You had to engage targets left and right which were not too bad to see then engage a couple of swingers, some steel and some static targets straight down range shooting right into the setting sun. This was absolutely horrible lighting conditions and shooter after shooter on my squad were racking up misses like crazy. Rob Leatham had 5 misses on this stage…… FIVE!!! Seeing everyone crash and burn on this stage was unnerving to say the least. When it was my turn to shoot, I set the brim of my cap as low as it would go and still be able to see my sights then gave myself the ONLY goal of getting my hits. I shot the stage pretty deliberate to ensure my hits and I ended up getting all of them, which was awesome. I guess the past two days of honing my point shooting actually paid off. I couldn’t stop thinking that this is exactly how crippled I felt in not being able to see my sights on the first two days of the match. Seeing how many of my squad mates crumbled in this lighting condition made me feel a little better about my shooting performance on the first two days.

With my third day being solid with no misses, but one fall down, I wasn’t sure how I would end up. I hoped it would be enough to bump me up into the top 20 but I would have to wait to see the results once they were posted. Much to my surprise I ended up 13^th overall at 90% of the match winner Dave Sevigny. I barely missed my performance goal of top 10 and I would have been in the top 10 if I had not fallen down on stage 2. But it is what it is. This was a brutally hard match for me with the heat, humidity, rain and crappy lighting. Everyone was racking up misses and no shoots so that is the only thing that kept me in contention. I was able to learn some good lessons at this match and deploy some valid solutions so that in its self was worth the time and effort in attending. The Nationals are scheduled to be at the same Universal Shooting Academy range next year. To be honest, I am really not excited about going back again next year. I don’t want to gamble on their being decent lighting so I can see my sights. I also might be rocking an Open gun by then too, so it might not matter as much with a Dot Gun. We will see how it goes as there is a lot of time between now and the 2016 Nationals.

My squad mate Elias was able to get some of my stage runs on video and I uploaded them onto my YouTube channel. Huge thanks to Elias for helping me out with the video work!!!

Edited October 8, 2015 by CHA-LEE

[frunkenstein]

For your problems with vision I still think you rocked very well.

[BeerBaron]

well done on battling through. Top 15 is a massive achievement in that kind of company.

it may not be what you want to hear, but having read "bad lighting, could not see my sights, uncalled misses" from you more and more often in the recent posts on your blog tells me that if you want to stay competitive you may need to put down the iron sights and pick up the dot.

I am just a hack but I struggled in production for a year or so. Massive astigmatism in my eyes meant even prescription lenses did not offer a proper solution. I was getting beaten down mentally as my gun handling improved, my movement improved, my mental game improved but I was still getting crap results. I would get so many un-called misses where to me it looked like everything was good but due to looking through a slightly different part of my lense I wasn't seeing an 'accurate' sight picture.

I much prefer the more 'pure' aspect of shooting a non-compensated, iron sight equipped pistol that has something in common with a duty gun and is somewhat 'practical' but I eventually took my medicine and bought an open gun. I'd previously had zero interest in open as to me they were like comparing touring car circuit racing cars to drag cars. One still resembles a normal car and requires normal car handling skills. The other is just loud and nuts and only goes in a straight line and is totally impractical for anything except it's narrow form of competition.

Even moving to a division that in my area is arguably more competitive my results immediately improved. As I got a handle on the open gun my results improved further and most importantly my enjoyment improved too. If I racked up a miss it was because I had jerked the gun off target, or not had the required visual patience etc. But whatever it was it was my fault and something I could diagnose and work to imrpove. With the iron sight gun the misses were just totally baffling to me.

I now enjoy shooting a lot more and I'm improving my results too. I still have much more learning and improvement in front of me than I do behind me but accepting that my eyesight was just not good enough to play the iron sight game was the best choice I've made. I still love my iron sight pistols and still shoot them for fun, but in competition I run the dot.

It really levels the playing field when it comes to eyesight. Yes guys with better vision have an advantage in open too but it's no where near as big a gap as it is in the iron sight divisions. With a cmore you will have no problem seeing the dot in basically any lighting condition from dark indoor range to full bright sunlight over your shoulder. The only time I've had issues with the dot is in the rain if rain gets on the lense you can get a few phantom dots! But at least that problem is the same for all in open.

I think if you move to open you'll enjoy matches more and be fighting for those top spots again.

[CHA-LEE]

My open gun is in the process of being built. It won't be too long until I can get it on the range. It will be an interesting voyage for sure.

[d_striker]

Cheater.

[Richc2048]

I never thought I would see the day where your ability to see your sights would out weigh the sheer joy you get beating those open super guns with iron sights.

[BeerBaron]

My open gun is in the process of being built. It won't be too long until I can get it on the range. It will be an interesting voyage for sure.

no doubt. I'm quietly confident it'll help rediscover a bit of love for the shooting. Plus it's a new division to learn and while the basics are the same there are subtle differences in how you go about shooting a stage in open. Best of luck with the experiment.

[Bkreutz]

My open gun is in the process of being built. It won't be too long until I can get it on the range. It will be an interesting voyage for sure.

You'll need to bring it along on your next trip up here. Welcome to the dark side.

[thermobollocks]

I'm going to have to get your hands on an ICORE open gun.