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CHA-LEE's Tale


CHA-LEE

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I shot an indoor USPSA match last night with the Open gun. It was a frustrating experience on several levels. I am still battling ammo feeding issues and had to clear a couple of jams on the clock. I am still recovering from a cold so I was still a little fuzzy from a mental and physical perspective. Then I had to work my ass off ROing most of the night because the rest of my squad was too busy flapping their gums instead of helping out. Non-helping “Consumer” shooters really test my patience and put me into a sour mood. I was pretty much “Over it” after the second stage and it really showed in my shooting. Oh well, sometimes it doesn’t go your way.

With these ammo issues I have zero confidence in the gun running when it needs to and I am really distracted by it on the clock. I keep expecting it to fail during my stage runs and I can’t focus on the task at hand. I think I need to stop shooting the Open gun in matches until I can get some reliable ammo figured out. It does not make sense to keep battling this fundamental issue during matches. That and I really need to do a crap ton of practice with the open gun to get comfortable with it anyway. I think I jumped into shooting matches with it way too soon.

For matches I am going to switch back to shooting my Limited gun to build my confidence back up. I am going to continue to use the Ghost holster so I can get used to it. It’s still a really different process of locking, unlocking and making sure it’s seated properly and what not. So I need a lot of practice in using it verses the trusty Blade Tech.

This coming Saturday is the HPPS match that I run. With the recent snow I am not sure if it’s going to melt off fast enough to host the match on Saturday. I am keeping my fingers crossed as I want to do some outdoor shooting. In the meantime I will do some dry fire with the new holster and my Limited gun to get back on the iron sight bandwagon.

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I know how you feel. I spent a lot of time fighting the ammo learning curve when I first went to open. That's why I'm so reluctant to change anything in my ammo and equipment now that things have been proven so well. I've been amazed at how the most insignificant thing seems to affect reliability.

No offense meant toward your ammo loader and a major hats off to him for helping you out, but I believe it's mandatory that you load your own. I think it's important to make sure that the exact combination of components find their way into your loading routine one step at a time and first hand.

I also think that you have to run it in matches to make sure the reliability is there when the heat is on. I'm not saying don't take a step back and test more thoroughly, just don't test too long before putting it back in action.

Maybe an attitude adjustment is the most important change in equipment you can make when breaking in a new open career. ;-)

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Yeah, I was trying to cut corners on getting the ammo loaded and it isn't working out. I am going to have to buy another press and have it dedicated to 9mm. The problem is that I don't have a bunch of extra $$$ laying around to get a whole new press setup and ready to rumble. I will have to save my pennies for a while to get one. In the mean time I will set the Open gun aside for now. At least until I can focus on making my own reliable ammo.

Shooting Open is primarily for the poor lighting indoor matches anyway. I will have to push through the "Suck" of not seeing my sights indoors while shooting Limited.

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Why not just set up another tool head with 9mm?

Pat nailed it. My current 650 is dug in hard on .40 with all kinds of goodies. I looked at getting a 9mm conversion kit with my bullet feeder, dies and everything else and it's surprisingly close in price to simply buying a whole new press.

I would rather leave my .40 press alone and get another dedicateed to 9mm. I just don't have the extra $$$ to do it right now.

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I know how you feel. I spent a lot of time fighting the ammo learning curve when I first went to open. That's why I'm so reluctant to change anything in my ammo and equipment now that things have been proven so well. I've been amazed at how the most insignificant thing seems to affect reliability.

No offense meant toward your ammo loader and a major hats off to him for helping you out, but I believe it's mandatory that you load your own. I think it's important to make sure that the exact combination of components find their way into your loading routine one step at a time and first hand.

I also think that you have to run it in matches to make sure the reliability is there when the heat is on. I'm not saying don't take a step back and test more thoroughly, just don't test too long before putting it back in action.

Maybe an attitude adjustment is the most important change in equipment you can make when breaking in a new open career. ;-)

It's definitely a weird and frustrating thing and no offense taken. What's been pretty eye opening to me is that I literally have had zero ammo issues since switching to open and if anything have been much more diligent in paying attention while loading. Even weirder is that when loading up a big batch and then simply randomly splitting into two bags, Panda will have consistent issues with his batch whereas I won't have any issues.

The odds of me randomly selecting "the good" and getting him all the bad just seem unrealistic so I think there are a lot more gun and actual shooter variables that can play into how ammo runs than I had previously thought. The biggest variable that I can identify is his grip strength and when reviewing the failures he's had, they mostly relate to the ammo "breaking apart". I'm thinking that his strength is a contributing factor and is actually inducing a lot of different forces than I am during recoil and it is literally shaking apart the ammo while shooting.

We are also running on the ragged edge of testing light plated bullets with very little bullet surface area to get neck tension and then trying to balance the "crimp vs swaging" equation while maintaining some type of consistent level of accuracy all of which is not an easy challenge or thing to overcome.

The person loading is also a huge variable and the biggest one that I think should be eliminated as well. For the sake of the experiment and what we are really trying to figure out and prove which is; can 115gr plated bullets be pushed at major velocities while being reliable and reasonably accurate? I hope the person doing the loading is what's causing the failures vs it being a component issue so to isolate that variable the Panda will be getting a loaner press for christmas to do his own testing.

Nothing about the situation is really ideal from a testing or load development standpoint but I think it's closer to being reliable than it feels but who knows and all you can do is keep eliminating variables.

Another cheaper solution though not a great one for the volume you shoot is the Dillon square deal and you could sell it for almost what you paid for it when you decide what your next real press will be and you have a suitcase of cash laying around?

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+1 on the 1050. Everyone knows I loaded for years on an old RCBS Piggyback II Rube Goldburg special. I know how frustrating switching things around can be. In the spirit of Open shooting, I say once you get a press cranking out consistent rounds... no matter what the brand, leave it alone.

At any rate. We all know Cha-lee will eventually get what he needs to kick some serious ass soon enough.

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This past weekend all of the local club matches were canceled due to the lingering snow and resulting poor range conditions. Since the matches were canceled I wrangled up some friends and we went out to practice down in Pueblo on Sunday. The Pueblo range is about 100 miles south of where I live and hasn’t been impacted by the snow. The weather was going to be in the high 50’s so I figured it would be the only and best chance of shooting over the weekend. We got to the range and it was totally dry and warm enough to shoot without needing a coat.

The only thing that sucked is that I have been battling a head cold the last few days and am pretty much right in the middle of the worst of it. I purposefully didn’t take any medicine that would impact my mental state of physical reactions because shooting while hopped up on cold medicines isn’t a good combination. So I felt extra crummy that day but I was at least not in a medicated fog. I pushed through the suck and got a bunch of good testing and practice done.

The first thing I tested out was my new Pivothead video glasses. I got the Durango model that was on sale over the holidays and put some clear lenses in them. They fit my face pretty good and provide ample protection while on the range. They are really easy to operate for taking footage of runs or the stage while walking it. I was able to capture several of my practice runs that day when I remembered to turn it on. When I got home I used the Windows Movie Maker program to trim down the individual movies and compile them into a single movie. I have listed that video below. This is my first stab at making a video that has a combination of runs. After I finished it and published it I noticed that I had a spelling error in the text at the end. Oh well, that is what I get when I try to do stuff while I AM hopped up on cold medicines.

The second thing I tested that day was my #1 Limited blaster. I have been battling the too high of POI on the #1 blaster ever since we replaced the barrel. The next step was to replace the slide and that is what I was testing. With the new slide and bushing barrel I could nock out a 1 inch paster off hand at 10 yards fairly easy. The POI was dead nuts on at 10 yards so I think we have resolved the issue. I had Rick make the replacement slide the exact same weight as the old one to keep it the same from a testing between Bull Barrel and Bushing Barrel perspective. I alternated shooting the #3 Bull Barrel and #1 Bushing barrel gun between stage runs to get a decent understanding in how they fell. The bushing barrel setup has a more harsh felt recoil and seems to muzzle flip more. The bushing barrel setup is about 2 oz lighter on the front of the gun verses the bull barrel setup. Initially the harshness of shooting the bushing barrel gun was distracting but after shooting it several times it wasn’t too bad. The unforeseen benefit I did notice while shooting the bushing barrel gun is that it made me want to grip the gun harder to manage the recoil properly. Gripping the gun harder is never a bad thing. The Bull barrel gun feels totally “Normal” to me so the little bit of testing I did with the Bushing barrel gun needed to be taken with a grain of salt. I need to so a lot more testing with the bushing barrel gun to see if its an advantage or not. Or if its just different and no better or worse.

I brought my Open gun but purposefully didn’t shoot it. I let the other guys shoot it a couple of times for fun and they had a blast with it. There was one failure to fire issue while they were shooting it. I inspected the round and it looked the same as the other “dud” round from the match where it had a fairly light primer hit but it didn’t go off. I had them put the round back in the gun to see if it would fire on a second or third hit but it never went off. When we took the round out after the multiple hits the whole primer was caved in like a funnel and that is a very good indicator that the anvil within the primer was missing. When a primer does not have an anvil it will cave in like that and never go off because the primer compound isn’t being pinched in between anything when the firing pin hits it. I need to put some more effort into figuring out the Open gun ammo so this kind of stuff does not happen. I am not going to shoot the Open gun in matches until I get it figured out.

All together it was a good day of practice for me. I shot about 200 rounds through the Limited guns. It was nice to get back to shooting Limited where stuff just works. I only have to worry about the loose nut behind the wheel. Hopefully the winter weather takes it easy on us and we can do some matches this coming weekend.

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Now that I am back in Limited mode I figured I needed to do some more slow motion recoil management tuning with the bushing barrel gun. I was able to get footage of both the Bull and Bushing guns and I noticed that they both have excessive slide speed causing too much muzzle flip as the slide bottoms out on the frame. After trying a bunch of spring and firing pin combinations I settled on the same rounded firing pin block and an 18lb hammer spring. I was using a 15lb hammer spring before and it's too light now. I am eager to try this out in a match setting.

I came up with the first spring setup before my neck blew out the last time and I had even strength in both hands and arms. I should have done this type of testing sooner than now but I guess I was just hopeful that I would regain full strength in my left arm which I haven't and probably never will. I should have done this retuning process a lot sooner to keep my blaster's balanced to my current strength.

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With the winter weather canceling all of the outdoor matches the only opportunity we have to shoot are the indoor matches. With that said, I attended the Centennial Gun Club match Sunday night, which was the final match of 2015.

Since I tore apart my Open gun to get it Cerakoted I decided to shoot this match with my #1 Limited blaster which has the new slide and bushing barrel. Since I put the 18lb hammer spring in it I was eager to give it a try anyway. That and I need to get some more rounds through it to break it in before getting the slide coated. I figured I would give the Pivothead glasses a try again as well. Then to top it off I was using some new Merrell boots that I got for Christmas. So this match was more of a test drive of “New” stuff verses using what I am use to.

The new Bushing Barrel & Slide setup seemed to shoot significantly less harsh with the 18lb hammer spring verses the 15lb spring I was using before. The 18lb hammer spring slows down the slide just enough to take the harshness out of the slide bottoming out on the frame. I am sure that using slide glide for lube instead of plain oil like I had in it the last time I shot it also made a difference in the felt recoil. I am excited to try out the Bull Barrel gun with the 18lb hammer spring but that will have to wait until another practice session or match.

I am getting use to operating the Pivothead glasses but keep forgetting to turn them off quickly after my stage runs. There is a lot of excessive footage to trim off of the end of the videos when I edit them. I need to build the turning off the glasses into my reholstering process. The glasses felt a little “stuffy” in the warm indoor range. They didn’t fog up, but they didn’t feel like they were breathing enough either. I am sure these things will fog up on a hot summer day when they are on my huge melon. More testing will be needed to see if I can improve the ventilation. These glasses are fun to see my shooting from a first person perspective, but it really does not provide much training assistance like a third person view would. Either way I compiled the stage runs into a single video and uploaded it to my YouTube account. I am getting better at editing and compiling the videos with the Movie Maker software but I know I need to integrate some more stuff to spice it up.

For Christmas I got a pair of Merrell Fraxion Shell 6 Waterproof boots. These boots are warm and comfortable to wear all day long in the cold. But more importantly they are light weight and the sole has a large lug type pattern that is made of soft rubber that is very similar to the Salomon Fellraiser shoes. I needed some new winter shoes for every day stuff anyway. But these bad boys work just as good as the Fellraiser shoes indoors on the slippery concrete floors as well. I am sure they will perform just as well outdoors too once we start doing outdoor matches this winter. It will be nice to have some warm boots for the cold outdoor matches that also perform like the Fellraiser shoes once the buzzer goes off. I might get another pair of these bad boys just in case they discontinue them before I need another pair.

Overall the match was good and I had fun shooting with friends. I got to test a bunch of new stuff out and everything worked great. I made a few minor mistakes during the match but nothing horrible. I got all of my hits on the stages and I really can’t ask for much more than that while shooting in the poorly lit indoor ranges. We will see if this cold and snowy winter weather beaks before next weekend so we can shoot outdoors. If not there will also be another indoor match the first fill week of January down in Colorado Springs.

Edited by CHA-LEE
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The weather wasn’t horrible today so I decided to wrangle up some friends and get some practice done. The range was mostly clear with only a little bit of snow in the corners and the temp topped out at 45 degrees. A slight breeze made it just cold enough to need a coat when you were not shooting. The Sun was out without a single cloud in the sky so that was good.

This past week I did some more fiddling on the #1 blaster with the bushing barrel and wanted to test it out again. I also wanted to do some back to back testing with the #3 Bull Barrel blaster to see how it felt with the 18lb hammer spring. I alternated shooting the two guns between stage runs and it was interesting to shoot them one after the other. The Bushing Barrel gun still feels snappier but its not harsh like it was with the 15lb hammer spring. The Bull Barrel gun has a much more subdued felt recoil with the 18lb hammer spring which is more of a “Push” feeling than a “Snap”. After shooting each blaster over and over its hard for me to make a solid determination as to which one is “better” than the other. The Bull Barrel gun is comfortable to shoot as its felt recoil is a lot less dramatic than the Bushing Barrel gun. But the more dramatic felt recoil of the bushing gun makes me grip it harder which in turn helps promote better recoil management and aggressive transitioning. I need to do the back to back testing again but force myself to grip the Bull Barrel gun with the same pressure as the Bull Barrel gun to get a true apples to apples comparison.

I used my Pivothead glasses again today because I wanted to test out using them from an RO / 3rd person perspective. The lighting on the bay we were using was dramatically different from the left to right sides. On the Left side I could see my sights really good as the targets were facing the sun. On the Right side I could only see the fiber in the front sight as the targets were in shadows with their backs against the sun. I wondered if that dramatic sight observation difference would be evident in the footage but was bummed when I downloaded the videos and you really couldn’t see it. I also got mixed up in turning on/off the video feature of the glasses and ended up not videoing stage runs and videoing taping targets after the stage runs. I feel like a bone head for getting that mixed up but I guess that is part of the learning curve. The little LED’s that show the status of the glasses is just outside my peripheral vision and I can’t see them unless I take the glasses off slightly and look for them. So I can see how I got the videoing mixed up without being able to see the LED status. I compiled the footage of what I was able to capture in my stage runs and runs of my friends then uploaded it to my YouTube channel.

I also used my new Merrell boots and they worked great. My feet were warm all day on the range and never got too warm either. They make great traction just like the Fellraiser shoes but I know my feet would be freezing with those on today. The only thing that was a little nagging is that I got a few small pebbles of sand in my shoes here or there so I had to take them off a couple of times to let the pebbles out. These boots don’t seal tight to my ankle so if I am kicking dirt around during the stage run it will be able to get in through the top. Merrell does make a taller boot of the same kind so I might need to check that out to see if having a higher ankle will solve the issue. The only thing I worry about is them still being flexible enough even though they are higher up on the ankle. I will have to test that out in the shoe store. Since I got these shoes I have worn them all day like normal shoes and they work great for every day winter shoes as well. So I think these things will serve as good every day kicks even if I have to get the taller ankle support version.

The Match on Sunday was canceled due to board member availability to make the match happen. It’s a bummer but it is what it is. Since there isn’t a match I am planning on going back out to practice with friends again and see if I can get this Bull vs Bushing thing nailed down. I am going to forgo using the Pivothead glasses tomorrow so I can focus 100% on my shooting. The weather is suppose to be a little better tomorrow so I am looking forward to another fun day of blasting outdoors.

Edited by CHA-LEE
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I find it so much harder to remember what's going on and get where I want to get when it's cold. Maybe that's a separate skill to work on.

Keeping a decent core body temp is important. I find using a coat with a hood to keep the wind and cold off of my neck/head makes a huge difference. The fleece hooded jacket I was using today was a little colder to wear on my body and arms than my other jacket with no hood. But the hood on the fleece kept my head and neck from getting cold which was way better overall. Keeping your hands from getting cold is also very important. Once you let them get cold it's really hard to warm them back up while on the range.

Managing the cold weather conditions so you can still perform your best is a skill that you need to hone. It's really no different than figuring out what is needed to perform in mega hot & humid conditions, rainy conditions, muddy conditions or whatever else we get forced to endure while shooting. That is the "Practical" part of this game we play.

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Good job getting in some practice Sat. We should have done the same. Jarrod and i went ice-fishing Sat and it was -36 when we got out of the pickup. Not a typo. High of -7 that day. I'm going to remember it this summer when we're sweating it out at the Mile High.

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Good job getting in some practice Sat. We should have done the same. Jarrod and i went ice-fishing Sat and it was -36 when we got out of the pickup. Not a typo. High of -7 that day. I'm going to remember it this summer when we're sweating it out at the Mile High.

-37 !!! You guys are crazy............ The Big Panda would be in hibernation mode if it was that cold.

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Sunday was another day of Limited blaster practice outdoors. The weather was better than Saturday with virtually zero wind. No coats were needed and the sun was shining bright with zero clouds in the sky. The weather was great for January and we took full advantage of it.

We setup a large field course stage with some tricky entry/exit shooting positions along with some difficult steel shots. There was a lot of scampering around and shooting wide arrays of targets within the positions to test those skills. I continued my Bushing vs Bull barrel Limited blaster testing and focused on gripping both guns with the same firm pressure. When gripping both guns the same the felt recoil was only slightly different and the on target hits were pretty much identical. The only difference I could see between them was when shooting from a circumvented stance condition where I had to rely on muscles to manage the recoil verses a normal solid stance. The Bushing gun would displace more than the bull barrel gun while shooting in a circumvented position. Pretty much the same type of situation as using a lighter plastic grip verses the metal grip but not as pronounced. The bushing barrel gun is about 2oz lighter on the muzzle side due to the lighter barrel. I need to do the testing again with a Tungsten guide rod in the Bushing gun as that should add about 2oz back to the front of the gun. Doing that should make both guns feel and perform identically. But a part of me wants to keep the bushing barrel gun the way it is and do some more testing with it. I like that it proved that I was getting lazy in gripping the gun hard while shooting the Bull barrel setup. It will be nice to have a blaster that forces me to keep my grip pressure “honest” to shoot it properly.

I shot about 250 rounds on Sunday and about 400 rounds on Saturday so it was a great weekend of practice and training. I need to respect the steel a lot more than I currently am as that seems to be the number one issue right now. I am falling back in the mode of shooting at “white” instead of picking a specific spot on the steel to aim at. It’s been a while since I did some dedicated all steel training so that is on my to do list the next time I get an opportunity to shoot outdoors. Other than that I think that my overall skill set is pretty good. There is always something that can be improved but I really don’t see any huge issues that need resolved, besides the steel. One thing I really like is that my “cold” stage runs are within about a second of my subsequent runs. This tells me that my stage breakdown, programming and plan execution skills are right where they need to be in order to perform my best on the one and only run I get on a stage in a match.

It’s nice to get back in the normal swing of things shooting Limited verses battling the Open gun. I needed to put some decent time into my Limited blasters anyway to prove functionality and get them ready to rumble for the 2016 major match season. Right now #2 & #3 Limited blasters are 100% ready to rumble. The #1 Limited blaster has proven reliable functionality through enough rounds so I am stripping the parts off of the slide so it can get Cerakoted black like the others. After that I will have to get the parts back on, sight it back in and make sure the front sight won’t drift but that shouldn’t take too much time or ammo to validate. I feel really good about having all three Limited blasters ready to rumble before the start of the 2016 major match season. The first major for me is the Florida Open which is about a month away and I should be totally prepared by the time I head out for that one.

As an added bonus this weekend Rick got my Open gun parts Cerakoated so I picked them up. I started putting the Open gun back together last night. It’s going to take a little while to get it all back together and fitted because of the added layer of coating making the fit a little too tight on some parts. That is normal and part of the fun. Once I get the gun back together I need to sight it in and test out the next lot of ammo. For the next lot of ammo we are trying some shorter 1.115 OAL and two different levels of crimp. Hopefully one of these setups will eliminate the bullets shaking out of the case before its fired issue. We will see how it goes.

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