CHA-LEE's Tale

[Bramwell]

Hi Cha-Lee,

I am amazed by the ride of your gun and how little muzzle flip you get particularly shooting major. I know it's a lot of factors culminating in that ride, but question..... Are you using a 'push pull grip'? Or a 'squeeze the sides thumbs forward grip'?... Or 'your special grip'?

I have traditionally been a squeeze sides thumbs forward grip person.... As I was taught that, but have been exposed to the push pull, and am currently experimenting to see what works best for me.

Thanks for any light you can shed in my corner.

[CHA-LEE]

Bramwell> I am not using a "Push Pull" style of grip. I grip the gun with a standard Thumbs forward type of grip. My strong hand has a feeling of gripping front to back and my weak hand has a feeling of gripping side to side. My thumbs have zero "pressure" pushing anywhere. They simply lay where they end up. But I think the proper angles of the hands and arms is just as important as the actual grip pressure. Its hard to explain this in text form and a lot easier to show people in person.

For most of the students I train they usually have a combination of wrong hand angles, arm position, stance and reduced grip pressure. All of these things combined need to be optimized to produce a near zero muzzle flip level of recoil management.

Even though I can manage the recoil to a near zero muzzle flip level, I still observe a significant amount of sight and whole gun movement while shooting. There will always be sight or gun movement to deal with and you still need patience in waiting for the optimal sight picture to call your shots. So in that regards it really does not matter how much the gun muzzle flips or not. You still have to do your job in staying observant of the sights at all times.

[CHA-LEE]

Here is some Pivothead first person footage from the Sunday night indoor match. I only got two stages worth of footage because the glasses started getting too stuffy and the lenses started to fog up. I switched them out for normal shooting glasses after shooting the second stage of the match. I started on Stage 4 where I had the nose dive jam. Then Stage 1 was the second stage we shot where I went rage blast crazy at the end. Big Panda Rapid Fire Finger Engaged

[Bramwell]

Thanks for the response Cha-Lee, and I can appreciate how it would be much easier to demo in person rather than typing here. I will be at the Florida Open shooting on Friday, so when you see the Jamaica shirts if you are at the range on that day just stop and ask for Ryan.

Would be great to meet you in person, and don't be surprised if I drag you over the safe area for a demo of that grip!

Keep up the good shooting and the forum, it's a great help.

[CHA-LEE]

We are recovering from a pretty decent snow storm from this week so the match on Sunday got canceled. There wasn’t a scheduled match on Saturday but it was my 40^th birthday so I wanted to do some shooting regardless of the range conditions. The weather was calling for a high of 45 degrees but it was suppose to be a little windy. I packed my shooting gear into my 4Runner and headed to the BLGC range not really knowing how much snow they got out there or how much had melted off. When I got to the range it was a winter wonderland with every berm covered in snow and some drifts 3 – 4 feet deep. Not surprisingly I was the only crazy bastard out there trying to shoot. I tried pulling into the bay that I normally practice in and the snow drift was so deep that my 4Runner got stuck. I did some Forward/Reverse with the traction control off and was able to get dislodged from the drift. Any normal person would have probably said “Screw This!!! I am out of here” but I am too stubborn to give up that easily. I moved over to another berm that had less snow in it but I had to drag the props further to it which wasn’t fun but doable. I finally got a pretty basic stage setup with a few barrels and target stands. By then the wind started picking up and it was overcast so it felt way colder than 45 degrees. The wind was blowing right into the back of the berm so I moved my 4Runner sideways to try and block some of the wind from where I would reload my mags. I also kept my 4Runner running and would hop in every three runs to heat up again. My body kept pretty warm but my hands and face would get pretty cold. Without the wind it would have been not bad at all but the wind was sucking the heat right out of me.

All of this sounds horrible but I was enjoying myself and getting to shoot on my birthday was a bonus. I used the basic 3 targets in three positions stage because I could shoot it several different ways to test multiple skills. I started the practice session with my #2 Limited blaster and was planning on shooting only it but then the beaver tail retention pin broke and it allowed my hand to rotate up enough that the slide was biting me. It was biting me bad enough that it cut my hand so I switched to the #3 Limited gun because its basically the same setup. The good thing about getting slide bite to the point of cutting your hand that day was that my hands were cold enough that I really didn’t feel it. The shooting area of my stage never got trampled down enough to expose the dirt so running around on packed snow was interesting. I used my Merrell Fraxion Shell 6 shoes and they worked out great. Great traction and they keep my feet warm the whole time. I am really liking these boots for daily wear in the winter and also during matches in these kind of conditions. The only bummer about this practice session is that with the whole berm covered in snow there was no way that I would be able to capture any of the brass. Lost brass practice sucks but it is what it is if you want to do some shooting in the winter time.

I captured most of my practice runs on video using the Pivothead glasses. It was cold and windy enough that they were not fogging up. I screwed up a couple of times in getting the video going during my run verses after so not all of my runs were captured. But that is what I get when I try to do a hurried make ready after I take my coat off to shoot the stage. I have listed the video of the practice session below.

Now I have to get my #2 blaster fixed and clean up the other Limited guns. I only have two weeks until the Florida Open so I want to get these blasters running in top condition before heading out for that match. Hopefully the weather calms down and lets the snow melt off this week so we can get some matches in next weekend. I am keeping my fingers crossed but if I have to do another snow berm practice I will.

Edited February 7, 2016 by CHA-LEE

[frunkenstein]

Hats off to the Big Panda and a belated Happy Birthday

[CHA-LEE]

I got my #2 Limited blaster fixed today. The pin in the mainspring housing that is used to pin the grip safety in the down position sheared off. The pin was silver soldered in so I had to heat up the mainspring housing with a torch to get the rest of he old pin out. Then clean it up and silver solder in a new pin. I thought that getting the mainspring housing hot enough with a torch to melt the silver solder was going to scorch off the Cerakote but it held strong like a boss. Fitting the new pin to the grip safety took a while but I got it done. Fiddle project completed. I will run the #2 gun the next time I shoot to see how the new pinning setup will hold up.

[d_striker]

Panda-tron-Happy bday.

[CHA-LEE]

Another super busy weekend full of shooting is in the books. The local club match on Saturday was canceled due to muddy range conditions so I wrangled up some friends and we went out to BLGC to practice instead. The BLGC range was muddy as well but not too bad. We had to build a field course around the dry portions of the bay and it actually turned out pretty good for just winging it. I shot the #2 blaster all day and it ran like a champ. I kept an eye on the pinned grip safety to see if it was going to loosen up again but it held strong so I think I got it fixed for good. The only thing that wasn’t fun was dropping mags in the mud while shooting the stage, but it is what it is. It was a good day of practice.

On Sunday I attended the club match in Pueblo and the weather was suppose to be in the high 50’s but the overcast skies and steady wind made it feel much colder. Since I thought that the weather was going to be warmer I brought my medium weight coat and it was barely enough to keep me warm through the day. When we started the match I think it was just above freezing in the low 30’s. We started on the classifier and I forgot to rack my gun a bunch of times to loosen up the slide glide. The first two shots out of the gun the slide was cycling so slow that it barely fed the rounds and actually failed to go into battery on the third round. I had to rack it to clear the jam and keep pushing through the stage. Luckily it was a short stage and I didn’t give away too many points. The next stage was a long field course and I remembered to rack the slide a bunch before the start of the stage. I started shooting the stage and it was going well until the last position. I had a sever nose dive jam what couldn’t be cleared by racking it which I tried 3 – 4 times then I had to rip the mag out, reinsert it, rack it, and then finish the stage. All told this cost me at least 7 – 8 seconds of monkey show madness dealing with the jam. I gave away at least 70 match points on that stage in lost time. I have had nose dive jams before on this #2 Limited blaster and a good temporary fix is to relube the barrel feed ramp with grease so that is what I did before each run. I didn’t have any more nose dive jams in the match so lubing the feed ramp every run fixed it for the match but I needed to dig into this issue when I got home.

On my third stage of the match it started with your gun on one barrel and all of your mags on another barrel. You also couldn’t put the mags on your belt and had to reload from the barrel. The barrels were on the extreme left/right sides of the shooting area and the stage was a 21 round course of fire so I figured I would use my 21 round MBX mag and shoot everything one for one and not do a reload. This was a good plan but at the start I couldn’t get the mag seated. On the first insertion of the mag I got my thumb caught in between the base pad and the mag well (OUCH) so then I tried to tap it again to reseat it and it still didn’t seat, so I had to hit it again hard to get it to seat. After that I shot the stage well but gave away at least 2 seconds in screwing around with loading the gun.

At this point I had significant issues on the first three stages of the match and frustration was starting to creep into my mood. I did my best to set aside the frustration since most of my issues were equipment related and I couldn’t really do much more than I already was. My equipment ran the rest of the match and I had three solid stage runs to wrap up the match. I am glad that I pulled it together for the reminder of the match but I couldn’t stop thinking about having significant feeding issues to iron out a week before the Florida Open.

When I got home I took apart my STI mags, cleaned them really good. I measured the feed lips and noticed that the two mags giving me issues had narrower feed lips and the lips themselves were looking beat up. Putting new springs in the mags usually solved the issues in the past so I put them in and then did some testing with them on the bench. The two questionable mags still tended to have the tip of the bulled nose down when you pushed them out of the magazine but I wasn’t sure if that was critical or not. I would have to test them out in live fire to validate.

I had Monday off of work for Presidents Day so I went out to the muddy BLGC range again to test these mags out. I didn’t relube the feed ramp to see how long the mags would run in a dirty gun scenario and sure enough those two mags had super clunky feeding and also nose dive jams on both. I brought my MBX mags to test out and they hold the top round a little higher and they would feed like butter. Two of my STI mags are still running reliably, but all of the STI mags have a CRAP TON of miles on them. I have been using the same 4 STI mags ever since I switched over to the 2011 platform and I can’t even put a number on how many rounds have been through them much less how many times they have been dropped, kicked, stepped on or whatever else. I think these STI mags are simply at the end of their service life. Its time to make these beat up old dudes dedicated dry fire mags. In the mean time I will start using the MBX mags exclusively. Its good that I had the MBX mags to fall back on or I would have been up the creek without a paddle right before the FL Open match.

I am feeling like I am well prepared for the Florida Open. I have been shooting a bunch all the way up to the match and I got my gear running the way I want it to. I am not setting any order of finish expectations for the FL Open match. I know that if I can shoot to my ability I will yield a decent result. I simply have to let it happen and have fun while doing it!!! I am also planning on doing some one on one training with Manny Bragg after the match on Monday & Tuesday so that will be a lot of fun as well. I am really looking forward to the first major match of 2016.

[BeerBaron]

I like the practice vid. assuming (and i may be wrong) that it's faster to start either far left or far right and shoot moving in one single direction (vs starting on the middle array) did one way prove better than another? It looks to me like I'd probably want to start on the left and move right but my only reason for that is the left position requires you to move past the barrel (if moving in from the right) before you can see the third (right most) target in that array of 3. it seems like the far right array you don't have to get quite so far around the barrel before the furthest target in that array (T7 if we number left to right across the stage) becomes visible. but I concede it's fairly close. So for me I'd want to start on the left and blast the hardest to reach one (call it T3) on the draw, then the partial, then start exiting as I shoot T1. which is basically exactly what you did on run 1.

[CHA-LEE]

I like the practice vid. assuming (and i may be wrong) that it's faster to start either far left or far right and shoot moving in one single direction (vs starting on the middle array) did one way prove better than another? It looks to me like I'd probably want to start on the left and move right but my only reason for that is the left position requires you to move past the barrel (if moving in from the right) before you can see the third (right most) target in that array of 3. it seems like the far right array you don't have to get quite so far around the barrel before the furthest target in that array (T7 if we number left to right across the stage) becomes visible. but I concede it's fairly close. So for me I'd want to start on the left and blast the hardest to reach one (call it T3) on the draw, then the partial, then start exiting as I shoot T1. which is basically exactly what you did on run 1.

My goal for that training was to practice shooting on the move while walking through the stage. For a right handed shooter started on the left is better. But I like practicing these skills against the grain as well so that is why I tried starting on the right as well. Starting on the Left or Right resulted in virtually identical stage times and quality of hits, which is what it should be. Starting in the middle was about 1 second longer because it created a scenario where I had to cover the same ground (snow) twice when going to the left then coming back to the right. That was to be expected because it takes more time to move a further distance.

Engaging the furthest down range target first while starting on the Left/Right was needed as that allowed me to back out of the position as soon as possible. If I shot the closest target first I would be pinned in the position until I finished the furthest target then I would have a delay in engaging the first middle target because I would have to get around the barrels before I could even see them. Using the target engagement order I did allowed me to initiate my shooting on the move foot speed and maintain that speed until I got to the other side of the shooting area.

[BeerBaron]

Thanks Chalee, that is what I had thought.

[EDA]

Hey Cha-lee, Happy Belated Birthday!

[CHA-LEE]

Day 1 is over for the Florida Open. I started on the morning schedule and the weather was nice but the skies were overcast most of the day. This made seeing my sights virtually impossible. I am feeling a repeat of the Nationals happening all over again where I am at the mercy of the lighting conditions and getting shafted. I managed to rack up 5 misses today and all of them were uncalled misses because I couldn’t see my fricken sights. I had 3 mikes on one stage alone!!! I watched the video of that run on my phone and the targets I had misses on I shot super deliberate and STILL had misses. I had one decent stage out of 6 today and that only happened because the sun came out for a few minutes during my stage run. It really sucks to be hobbled by my eyes in these overcast lighting conditions. By the time we got done shooting and were heading out from the range the clouds were starting to burn off and the sun was out. Just my luck or lack there of.

I am shooting on the afternoon schedule tomorrow so hopefully the clouds will burn off like today after lunch. If not I might be racking up double digit Mikes at this match if I keep on the pace I am going so far. I am trying to keep a positive attitude but it’s frustrating to battle something that you have zero control of fixing.

Edited February 20, 2016 by CHA-LEE

[CHA-LEE]

As I am waiting at the airport for my flight back home I finally have some down time to pull together an update from the Florida Open this past weekend. My hopes that the skies would be clear on the Sunday afternoon shooting schedule were crushed. The skies were once again cloudy and the lighting transitioned between overcast and sunny through the day. The few times that the lighting was good I had solid stage runs. But I still got shafted with the lighting on a few stages. My goal for Sunday was to simply get my hits since I had already racked up 5 mikes the day before.

We started Sunday on Stage 7 which was a back and forth speed shoot with 4 small steel at the end. I shot the front section well but then proceeded to take 4 extra shots on the steel. Then we went to Stage 8 which was an odd one shot per target stage with all of the targets being cut in half and two vertically per target stand. The front section was easy but the back section had to be shot through some small ports. My gun was poked through the port just enough that my front sight was in the shadow and the rear sight was glaring in the sun so I tried shooting very deliberate to get my hits. When I was done I had 4 misses in the back section of the stage with three of them just in to the hard cover line at the bottom of the targets. I tried to keep a positive mindset but with the mike tally at 9 at this point I knew my match was over. All I could do was suck it up and try to have fun on the last three stages of the match.

I shot stage 9 pretty solid but gave away about 2 seconds in the second to last shooting position by rolling over my left ankle as I stepped into a deep hole in the shooting position. I had to shuffle around to recover from that and was lucky that I didn’t fall down or break the 180. Rant Mode On……Why RO’s think it’s ok to allow huge ruts to get dug into the common shooting positions is beyond me. Maintain your stages guys!!! The stages need to be a fair challenge for everyone and if you allow huge ruts to develop and do not fill them then the stage is NOT the same for everyone. Rant Mode Off….. I survived that stage and got my hits but my left ankle was not happy the rest of the day. By the time I got to stage 10 I was in a pretty crappy mindset but I was able to shake it off and have a solid stage run. The only bobble I had was slapping down to my magazine during the reload and it popped out of my hand and I had to catch it before being able to complete the reload. I probably lost about a second on the reload but my run was still solid enough to win the stage in Limited. I forgot that the mag pouches retain the MBX mags a little looser than the STI mags so I need to get them tightened back up to a normal tension.

The last stage of the day for me was Stage 11 and I was the last shooter on the squad. The sun was setting at this time and of course murphy’s law comes into play and the sun is out shining bright right into my eyes just over the top of the berm. I tried lowering the brim of my hat as low as it would go to try and avoid the glare but that didn’t work out too well. As I was making ready for the stage I could see all the targets were in full shadow with sun blasting into my eyes. This combined with two really low ports where I had to point the gun above my head to engage targets pretty much sapped me of any hope in doing well on the stage. I have had this “No Win” scenario mindset before starting a stage and those never turned out good either. I shot the stage the best I could, trying to point shoot at shadow targets because there was no way of seeing my sights and trying to manage the recoil of the gun in the low port positions with my ineffective weak gimp left arm. I shot the stage in a very competitive time but managed to rack up 4 more misses and 3 no shoots. This was a fit ending for one of the crappiest match performances to date.

All told I racked up 13 misses and 3 no shoots. What makes this penalty tally even more appalling is that only 3 stages make up 11 mikes and 3 no shoots of the total. Out of all the misses I was only able to call one of them marginal and it turned out to be a miss. All the rest I had no idea it was a miss until they were scoring the targets. I can’t remember the last time I had 3 misses on a single stage much less three different stages in the same match with 3 – 4 misses each. My buddy Rob Cook was able to get all of my stage runs on video and when I watch the stage runs I am not shooting too fast or being unstable while breaking the shots during these misses/no shoots. All of these misses/no shoots happened when I couldn’t see my sights and I was point shooting at a very deliberate .40 - .50 split cadence. I know you can’t rely on point shooting to get solid hits on targets but when you can’t see your sights what else can you do? This match wasn’t “Easy” from a shooting perspective, but it wasn’t super hard either. All of the difficult shots in the match were doable and I felt that I have practiced enough to be able to make the shots. That is when I can see my sights to make them.

This range has had my number from a poor lighting perspective several matches in a row now. It’s amazing how the inconsistent lighting conditions at this range seem to kick my teeth in every single time. Oh well, it is what it is. Sometimes you are the bug, and sometimes you are the windshield. This time I was the bug.

On Monday I was able to do some shooting with Manny Bragg at his range and we tested several different skills that were leveraged during the match. Of course the skies were clear with zero clouds in the sky and I could see my sights pretty good during the practice session. Why couldn’t this happen the day before? I got some good nuggets of information from Manny on several different skills so that was awesome. It was time well spent and a lot of fun doing some shooting with him that day.

While talking with Manny about my vision issues he suggested that I get some corrective lenses to bring my normal focal point further back so I can see the sights easier. I have enjoyed the benefits of 20-15 distance vision for a long time now after getting LASIK done but it’s probably time to get some glasses to improve my close vision. I made an appointment with my eye doctor this week and am going to see what a +0.25 or +0.50 diopter does from a front sight focus perspective. I have talked to several shooters about this and they all said that you need to balance near sighted focus with how blurry the targets get at distance. Being able to see the sights crystal clear is useless if all you see is a blurry blob of a target at distance in the same sight picture. It will be interesting to see what the eye doctor can come up with during my visit. This transition is going to take some relearning and probably degrade my performance until I get it figured out but I need to do something with my vision issues. The journey continues.....

[CZinZA]

These are very helpful to me, and they're cheap to try

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00KSJNLO0/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1456244231&sr=8-1π=SX200_QL40&keywords=elvex%20shooting&dpPl=1&dpID=31sIHB9KiwL&ref=plSrch&tag=vig-20

Sent by Jedi mind control

[CHA-LEE]

Thanks for the link. I will check them out.

[CZinZA]

Somebody on the forum suggested them to me when i was looking for something to help with my crappy eyesight. I'm just spreading the forum-karma

Sent by Jedi mind control

Edited February 25, 2016 by CZinZA

[CHA-LEE]

I went to the eye doctor today for a checkup and to discuss getting some corrective lenses. They checked my current vision and I am 20:10 in my left eye and 20:15 in my right eye. Eagle Eye distance vision is confirmed. For all of the shooters who wonder how I can score the targets from the back of the stage this is why. Bionic distance vision is enabled but that does not help with seeing my sights. I had the Optometrist set the eye chart to 20:20 then add power until the letters were just starting to get fuzzy. A +0.50 was enough correction to slightly degrade my distance vision but dramatically improve my close vision. We switched between giving both eyes the +0.50 correction and just putting it on the right eye and it seemed like keeping it only on the right eye was better overall because I could still see clearly at distance with the left eye. I got a prescription made for a +0.50 in the right eye and headed over to the local Lenscrafters to get a pair of glasses made. With 1 hour turn around that seemed like the best option given that I want to try this over the weekend.

After I got the glasses it took about 20 minutes of wearing them before I stopped having the strange unbalanced vision/focus feeling. After that it wasn’t bad at all. I did a little bit of dry fire indoors in varied lighting conditions and it was amazing how quickly I could focus on the sights with the glasses on. With the glasses there is zero refocus delay when I look away and then back to my sights. Without the glasses there is a good half second of refocus time to bring the sights into focus. I think it’s mainly because I can’t focus clearly at distance with the glasses so my focus stays close and does not have to adjust much to see the sights crystal clear. When I lowered the lighting and did the back to back testing the no glasses refocus time got even worst feeling like it took a full second to come back to the sights. With the glasses it felt like it stayed the same as with better lighting so I think this might be the “Fix” I need to see my sights in crappy lighting conditions.

I have an outdoor match on Saturday and an indoor match on Sunday so these both will be good tests for these glasses. I REALLY hope this fixes my sight seeing issues in less than optimal lighting conditions. If it does, then it will be on like Donkey Kong for the rest of this season!!!

[racegun9]

Just get that Open #1, #2, #3 Line up going and dump all that limited stuff.

Then you can make use of that eagle vision. Rick needs to stay busy anyway. :~)

[CHA-LEE]

I shot the outdoor PSAC USPSA match today using my new prescription glasses. I could see the sights clearly all day. The sights were so clear that I could easily see the serrations on the front sight while shooting stage. To be honest it was a little distracting at first but then it simply felt like cheating as it made calling my shots soooooo much easier. The distance targets were a little more blurry but not bad at all. They were just burly enough to keep my eyes focused on the sights the whole time. Towards the end of the day it started getting overcast and I could still see the sights really good in those conditions. I can’t believe that I haven’t gotten corrective lenses sooner. I feel like I have thrown away a lot of matches by not being able to see my sights clearly. Oh well, some lessons are harder than others.

I still need to get use to shooting and moving around with the glasses as the focus offset between my eyes is still a little distracting and disorienting. But even with that I was able to shoot pretty effectively today. I clipped one no shoot through a low port but I called it low and it was just touching the perf of the no shoot. Other than that I shot solid points all day capturing at least 95% of the points across all the stages. I screwed up one stage by trying to shoot 20 rounds worth of targets on a 21+1 mag setup and blew through my two make ups half way through the string. That lead to a unplanned standing reload which killed at least 2 seconds of stage time. I shot that stage again for fun and just ate an extra reload at the start of the stage and was able to shoot the stage 3 seconds faster. Shooting the 20 round plan was the better plan, but it was risky and bit me for trying it. I would rather go all out in a club match like this and see if it works verses playing it safe. That is what club matches are for right?

I am super pumped to be able to see my sights again. I am planning on doing some outdoor practice tomorrow and then shoot an indoor match Sunday night. The indoor match will be the true test for the glasses as its really hard to see your sights in there. There isn’t much time left until the Area 2 so I have to get in as much shooting as I can with these new glasses to get use to seeing my sights again. So far I am a very happy Big Panda!!!

[Sandbagger123]

All I did was get a contact lens for the right eye and put it on right before a match. Ask your doc for a sample lens and try it out

[CHA-LEE]

All I did was get a contact lens for the right eye and put it on right before a match. Ask your doc for a sample lens and try it out

I can't do contacts. I could never get use to digging in my eyes to put them in or take them out even when I use to wear glasses before getting LASIK done. I am a wimp when it comes to jabbing stuff in my eyes.

[PatJones]

All I did was get a contact lens for the right eye and put it on right before a match. Ask your doc for a sample lens and try it out

I can't do contacts. I could never get use to digging in my eyes to put them in or take them out even when I use to wear glasses before getting LASIK done. I am a wimp when it comes to jabbing stuff in my eyes.

Contacts, combined with the dry high altitude air, made me miserable for the one winter I tried them on the hill. Glasses are sooo much better.

[frunkenstein]

Give the Panda another advantage, Dang it there goes another 5 percent on my OA.

Edited February 28, 2016 by frunkenstein