Husker95 Posted October 9, 2015 Share Posted October 9, 2015 Open gun?! Revo?! Get back on track......come over to the Stack. That's where the cool kids are playing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted October 12, 2015 Author Share Posted October 12, 2015 You guys are talking crazy with this low mag capacity division talk. Don't you know that once you go up in mag capacity that you can't go backwards? So the only place I can go is to Open from Limited Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted October 12, 2015 Author Share Posted October 12, 2015 I got back from the Nationals on Wednesday and had just enough time to unpack, rework my shooting gear, then repack my clothes and gear. On Thursday I drove down to Albuquerque New Mexico for the High Desert Classic. My work booked me for a last minute training event the following week and I had to fly out on Sunday for that work trip. So that meant I couldn’t shoot the weekend schedule for the HDC and instead shoot the whole match in one day on Friday. I got to the range at about 3PM and had a chance to check out half of the stages as the other half were not fully setup yet. The match staff was shooting the first 6 stages and I helped them tape and score on their last few stages. This match is well known for its 10 large field courses and this year was no different. There was a lot of running and gunning to be had on many of the stages and lots of activators as well. The match theme this year was based on the Breaking Bad TV show and the match was called “Breaking Bullets” which was pretty cool. They named all of the stages after Breaking Bad scenes or actors and put a lot of effort into making some cool props. The weather was nice on Thursday but pretty overcast and that had me a little worried as the forecast was calling for more overcast skies on Friday. I didn’t want to battle seeing my sights again after doing so at the nationals only a few days before. On Friday I arrived at the range early as instructed and met up with my squad. My squad consisted of 3 shooters including myself to start off with but eventually got a few more added to it as we churned through the stages. We had a dedicated timer RO to run us through the stages, thank god, but we had to tape and score as well which made for some crazy fast stage turn around times. I was glad that I had put some homework into my stage walk throughs the day before because I would have been screwed otherwise with the rapid fire pace we were churning through the first 5 stages. Eventually our squad grew to about 7 shooters and that was a welcomed slow down in the stage churning process. On most of the stages I had fairly decent runs and didn’t risk much with my plans. I ended up picking the wrong stage plan on one stage but I shot that stage when we were still in the “Rapid Fire” churning mode and there was no time to dissect or reprogram the stage plan anyway. I also ate a Procedural on that stage to top off the hurting. I ended up with two misses total and both were called very marginal but I was running the round count to the limit and didn’t have extra bullets to make them up. Unfortunately they both ended up being misses instead of hits. Lastly, I trashed the all steel stage by trying to shoot the steel through a taller port than normal and couldn’t hit anything unless I was literally aiming off of the target high. This lead to a complete meltdown on the rest of the run because I didn’t know where I should be aiming to get hits. Where the sights off? Were my eyes off? I am not sure but it was a train wreck. Overall I felt that I shot the match fairly well but did leave some meat on the bone for others to exploit. I would have to wait until all of the weekend shooters finished up to see if my performance would hold up or not. I headed back to the hotel to get cleaned up then had some dinner with my buddy Nick. We had a good dinner talking about the match, stages and shooting in general. I spent the night in Abq then jumped back on the road to head home first thing Saturday morning. It was a long and lonely 7 hour drive home to think about all of my mistakes during the match and wonder if my performance was going to be good enough to win. Glenn Shelby was shooting the weekend schedule and he is a solid Limited GM. If he hooked up on all of the stages then it was his match to win. The weekend shooters shot 7 of the 10 stages on Saturday and the last 3 on Sunday. When the Saturday results were posted Glenn was shooting strong and didn’t have any penalties. If he kept on that trajectory I predicted he would beat me by 25 – 30 points. The waiting game continued through Sunday. On Sunday morning I flew to Virginia for work and when we landed I turned on my phone and my buddy Nick texted me that I won. The scores were posted on USPSA and sure enough, I had won over Glenn by only 9 match points. WOW, that I didn’t expect!!! With the Limited Nationals and High Desert Classic being my last two major matches of 2015 and basically being less than a week apart it has been a crazy and exhausting week of shooting. Its super cool to wrap up the year with two very good match finishes. It will be nice to settle back into the normal local club match shooting schedule. This year I attended 15 major matches which is a crap ton of events to attend for a Non-Pro Shooter. I will be trimming this major match schedule back some for 2016 to eliminate the mega hot and humid matches. Even though the clubs that host these matches do a great job running the events, the mega hot weather takes all of the fun out of it. My primary goal this year was to have FUN and I feel that I succeeded at doing that the majority of the time. Most of the “No Fun” matches were not fun simply because of the oppressing heat and humidity during the match. So I am going to avoid the “No Fun” weather matches for 2016 and see how that goes. Now it’s time for some much needed rest. Hopefully I can get some good rest after work this week while out of town. I feel the need to go in to Panda Hibernation mode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 Charlie laying it down in VA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frunkenstein Posted October 13, 2015 Share Posted October 13, 2015 I can see that Dman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted October 13, 2015 Author Share Posted October 13, 2015 Charlie laying it down in VA. That is AWESOME!!!! I had a moment today when I actually wanted to do something like this. But I had to restrain the Big Panda so I wouldn't get fired. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted October 16, 2015 Author Share Posted October 16, 2015 I found something interesting the other day about my own shooting. I was helping a friend out looking for some examples of reloads and moving in my match videos and I noticed something strange about my left shoulder position while shooting. My left shoulder was lower than my right when the gun is mounted and I am shooting. I looked at other videos and the same low left shoulder position was there all the way until just before my last neck injury. In the videos before my last neck injury my shoulders are even in height. I didn’t even realize this was happening so I stood in front of a mirror and pretended I was drawing and shooting a pistol. Sure enough, my left shoulder was a good 3 – 4 inches lower than my right. I put a little more effort into canting my support hand wrist forward and extending my left arm just a little bit more and that brought my left shoulder up to the height of my right. I think this uneven shoulder issues was due to my neck injury dramatically reducing the strength in my left arm. I either couldn’t or stopped trying to cant my wrist forward as much as it used to and just let my arm settle into where it felt comfortable. Ever since my last neck injury I have been battling with producing recoil management like I had before the injury. A lot of times this less than optimal recoil management would force me to shoot slower because the sights were bouncing around more than I was use to. In dry fire I can produce the “correct” even shoulder position by canting my wrist forward a little bit more but I am yet to test out the recoil management differences between the two shoulder positions. I will give this a try over the weekend. It’s crazy how your body adapts to injuries or loss of strength and you don’t even realize it. Maybe the low left shoulder position is what I have to use from now on since my neck injury? I will try the different canting position and see how it works out. If my neck starts hurting after doing it I think I know the answer. But I want to test it out to see if I can regain some more recoil management that I lost. If I can regain my supreme recoil management like I had before, then it should allow me to shoot faster and still retain accuracy. I have been missing not being able to consistently lay down super fast shooting Big Panda style. We will see how this testing goes. This testing actually comes at a good time of the year as I am done with all of my major matches for 2015 and can experiment with stuff without worrying about it negatively impacting my major match performances. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WYgunner Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 Charlie laying it down in VA. What happens when Panda orders an end cut and doesn't get it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glock26Toter Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 AH HAHAHAHAHA! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aaronsdmf Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 omg....nick that was epic... :roflol: :roflol: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted October 19, 2015 Author Share Posted October 19, 2015 Damn Right!!!........... When you go to a "Steak House" and they can't get your steak right when you ask them several times before hand to get it right, it results in some Big Panda RAGE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted October 19, 2015 Author Share Posted October 19, 2015 I shot a couple of matches this weekend and “tried” to deploy a different grip along with other things and had very inconsistent results. I would focus on changing my grip then stop looking at my sights or miss shooting positions. When I consciously gripped the gun harder with my left hand the recoil management was better and I could see the improvement in the sight tracking. So gripping harder is the way to go, but it’s going to take a crap ton of retraining to burn that grip pressure in. I also tried shooting my #3 gun on Sunday and was missing steel like crazy. When I got home I found that the front sight drifted to the right quite a bit. Bummer. Saturday I had to serve as the MD for the HPPS Match so that meant getting up super early and busting my hump all day. Dealing with the jet lag from my VA work trip and trying new stuff wasn’t the best mixture of things. Then on Sunday I was really not motivated to shoot but I went anyway since I needed to pick up some stuff from a buddy at the match. I was totally unmotivated all day and it showed in all of my stage runs. I had significant issues on all but one stage. Trying to shoot with jacked up sights and being highly unmotivated isn’t a recipe for success. Oh well, it is what it is. Since I was gone for a week for work I have a crap ton of stuff backed up that needs to be done for work and around the house. So the shooting stuff is going to take a back burner this week. Not to mention I need to load a bunch of ammo because I am out does not help. I think I will be taking next weekend off from the matches to help get my mind, body, and projects in order. I have been running it in the red line for a while now to get through these final big matches of the year. Now it’s time to throttle back, regroup and take a break. Hopefully the weather doesn’t turn really crappy by the time I get everything squared away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted October 20, 2015 Author Share Posted October 20, 2015 (edited) I was able to get a bunch of gun wrenching done yesterday. Lately I have been playing musical chairs with my three Limited guns as they are all in different stages of use. #1 was having accuracy issues so we decided to put a bushing barrel in it instead of a bull barrel. But when I tried to sight it in the point of impact was really high. I tried a .200 tall front sight but it still wasn’t enough so Rick put a different bushing in the gun that lowered the front of the barrel a little more. I have yet to give it a try to see if the POI is back down where it should be but I am planning on giving that a try the next time I am at the range. The #2 blaster is what I have been using as a primary for the last few months since #1 has been out of commission. It just got done serving me well at the Limited Nationals and High Desert Classic along with several club matches so I decided to give it a full strip down and detailed clean. Everything still looked great after a close inspection of all parts so I lubed everything back up and put it back together. I will continue to shoot this blaster as my primary until the other two get back into the normal swing of things. The #3 blaster is the newest one to the fleet and I just got it through its initial break in and teething pains process. I have about 2500 rounds through it now and other than the front sight drifting there haven’t been any major issues. I am considering this one “broken in” and now it’s time to get it Cerakoated like the first two. I tore this one down, cleaned it up and inspected everything. Everything is still looking good so I stripped the main components and got them to Rick so he can get them coated. After coating this one will probably need some more break in to smooth out the slide to frame mating points but it shouldn’t take too much time or ammo. Some of my shooting buddies think that having three Limited blasters is overkill, but this situation I am in now is exactly why three are needed. This way I always have at least one solid proven functional Limited blaster to leverage at all times. I am well ahead of the curve in getting the other two blasters back in action before the start of the 2016 major match shooting season so I am feeling really good about that. I still have to do some trigger jobs for a buddy and load a crap ton of ammo so I still have many hours of work ahead of me this week. It will be nice to get all of this backlogged busy work done so I can get caught back up after all of this travel. I know the cold winter months are not far off so I may end up with more “Wrenching” free time than I want once the local matches start getting canceled due to crappy weather. I need to make the best use of my time now while the weather is still cooperating. Edited October 20, 2015 by CHA-LEE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted October 26, 2015 Author Share Posted October 26, 2015 This weekend I took Saturday off to hang out with my lady and then wrench on my motorcycle in the evening. It was nice to take a day off from shooting to recharge my batteries. On Sunday I did some training with a friend during the day and that was a lot of fun. It’s cool to see shooters discover new skills and try out new things that will help them take their skills to the next level. The weather was a little cool in the morning but it ended up really nice. I think our “Nice Weather” weekend days are numbered given we are going into fall and winter. It was nice to take advantage of the good weather while we could. I was able to test the sight in of the #1 blaster on Saturday with the lower barrel bushing and the POI was still about 2 inches high at 10 yards. It’s closer than it was before but still too high. It currently has a .200 tall front sight so the next step is to try a .215 tall front sight. Hopefully that brings the POI back down to where it should be or we may have to do some more drastic rework efforts to solve the issue. Like replacing the slide or hacking on the fixed rear sight. I am planning on replacing the front sight and trying it out again this coming weekend. I am keeping my fingers crossed that this taller front sight will be enough to fix the high POI issue. Sunday Evening I attended the CGC indoor match. The lighting is still sketchy at this match, but the stages were mostly setup with close shooting. This allows you to get away with point shooting stuff when you can’t see your sights properly. I shot the match fairly solid and only had 1 D zone hit which was nice. The only issue I had was not pushing the mag release hard enough on the first stage during the reload and having to fiddle with it to drop the mag. This wasted about a second of stage time which was about a 10 match point donation to the competition. Overall I was happy with my match performance and it was fun shooting with friends. This week I need to put some serious time behind the reloading press. My goal is to get at least 3000 – 4000 rounds loaded and ready to use. That should get me enough ammo stocked up to handle the match and practice shooting work load for a little while. With the Open gun projected to getting built in the next week or so I want to have my Limited gun stuff squared away before I dive into the Open gun project. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Husker95 Posted October 26, 2015 Share Posted October 26, 2015 You going 38 SC or 9 mm major for Open? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thermobollocks Posted October 26, 2015 Share Posted October 26, 2015 One of the weird things I noticed is with the light at your back at CGC, a gold bead front lights up way more than a fiber optic does. I don't know if there's any way to work that to your advantage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted October 26, 2015 Author Share Posted October 26, 2015 You going 38 SC or 9 mm major for Open? Its going to be setup for 9mm Major. 38 Supercomp is way too expensive from a brass perspective. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted October 26, 2015 Author Share Posted October 26, 2015 One of the weird things I noticed is with the light at your back at CGC, a gold bead front lights up way more than a fiber optic does. I don't know if there's any way to work that to your advantage. I might have to do some testing with a front sight painted gold with some finger nail polish Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thermobollocks Posted October 26, 2015 Share Posted October 26, 2015 One of the weird things I noticed is with the light at your back at CGC, a gold bead front lights up way more than a fiber optic does. I don't know if there's any way to work that to your advantage. I might have to do some testing with a front sight painted gold with some finger nail polish Your best chances for success there may lie in a ramped front sight and extremely fine brushes. I got some sight markers for giggles, and it beats the nail polish approach solidly 'cause nail polish is so viscous that it forms massive drops. Model paint may be a more viable solution. I find that approach difficult to combine with a fiber, so if you wanted to pursue it in the most thorough possible way you may wind up with "indoor" and "outdoor" guns. Also worth noting, Novak sells a gold bead front but it's like a low/carry profile so I don't know if it'd jive with the super deep rear notches. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BritinUSA Posted October 26, 2015 Share Posted October 26, 2015 You going 38 SC or 9 mm major for Open? Its going to be setup for 9mm Major. 38 Supercomp is way too expensive from a brass perspective. You'll be lucky to get more than 1-2 reloads out of 9mm brass but .38 Super can be reloaded over and over and over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PatJones Posted October 26, 2015 Share Posted October 26, 2015 SDM makes gold bead sights with real gold beads that don't tarnish. I believe they make kits for gunsmith fitting. If I carried an autoloader that's what I'd carry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drewbeck Posted October 26, 2015 Share Posted October 26, 2015 Just pick up some .040 brass music wire from the hobby shop. Cutting it will enlarge one side and leaving it slightly long out the front and bending will keep it in and allow you to yank it out after. I know you hate the adjustable sights but I went to a Novak adjustable and you can get it way lower than the battle sight variants. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted October 26, 2015 Author Share Posted October 26, 2015 (edited) You going 38 SC or 9 mm major for Open? Its going to be setup for 9mm Major. 38 Supercomp is way too expensive from a brass perspective. You'll be lucky to get more than 1-2 reloads out of 9mm brass but .38 Super can be reloaded over and over and over. I don't plan on reloading the 9mm brass. At 3 cents a case its not worth trying to reload it. Verses paying 15 cents per case for 38 SC and only getting back 50% of what I shoot locally which is typically what I get back while shooting 40 Cal. Here is the math on Annual Brass cost.... At the same cost, I could shoot almost 400% more of the 9mm brass verses trying to capture and reload the 38 super comp brass. I could even let the 9mm brass lay and not capture it at all and still be 150% more use vs cost out of it compared to reloading 38 super comp. 9MM Brass 3 cents a case times 25K = $750 1st Reload = 12,500 Total Uses Before Brass is Depleted = 37,500 .38 Super Comp Brass 15 Cents a Case times 5K = $750 1st Reload = 2,500 Remaining 2nd Reload = 1,250 Remaining 3rd Reload = 625 Remaining 4th Reload = 312 Remaining 5th Reload = 156 Remaining Total Uses Before Brass is Depleted = 9843 Edited October 26, 2015 by CHA-LEE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bkreutz Posted October 26, 2015 Share Posted October 26, 2015 You going 38 SC or 9 mm major for Open? Its going to be setup for 9mm Major. 38 Supercomp is way too expensive from a brass perspective. You'll be lucky to get more than 1-2 reloads out of 9mm brass but .38 Super can be reloaded over and over and over. I don't plan on reloading the 9mm brass. At 3 cents a case its not worth trying to reload it. Verses paying 15 cents per case for 38 SC and only getting back 50% of what I shoot locally which is typically what I get back while shooting 40 Cal. So really, the 38 SC brass would really cost me 30 cents per case even if I was reloading it just to lose another 50% of it. I buy used brass and then separate by head stamp. Win, Federal, Speer, and Remington go in #1bucket, IMT, Ammoload, CBC, and anything Chinese or Russian go in the recycling bucket, everything else goes in #2 bucket. #2 bucket is my "lost brass" bucket that I use for matches and don't even attempt to pick it up. #1 bucket is what I use for practice and indoor matches where brass is picked up, I color code the heads Black, Blue, Green, Yellow, and Red for each time they are reloaded. When they get to Red, they go in #2 bucket and are left at the range. I'm loading 9Major at 172PF. Welcome to the dark side Charlie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thermobollocks Posted October 26, 2015 Share Posted October 26, 2015 Got a 9mm roll sizer yet? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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