CHA-LEE's Tale

[RaylanGivens]

I watched your video on a 65" television at normal speed, and then slowed it down to 1/8th speed... You can see that you have to raise the front of the gun slightly after each shot with the 10/18 spring combination... Your gun points almost perfectly with the 8/17 spring combination. Certainly a worthwhile test.

An 8lb recoil spring seems very light for a major power factor limited gun... I would have thought that a light slide like yours would require a heavier recoil spring to take away some of the slide's energy...

[CHA-LEE]

I am trying not to let the actual spring rates get me spooked. When I was shooting my EAA/Tanfo guns I was using an 8/13 spring setup on that. Yes I was cracking slides on the EAA/Tanfo guns but that setup was awesome for me so i kept feeding slides to it. The bummer with the EAA/Tanfo guns is that you can't buy just a slide, you have to buy a whole upper. Buying whole uppers 2 - 3 times a year got too expensive and that is ultimately why I switched to the 2011 platform.

I will run the Limited gun with the 8/17 spring setup for a while and see how it goes. If I start cracking slides then I may try using a shock buff or go up a little in spring weight. But I can at least buy just a slide for a 2011 and it not cost me a bunch of money. That and if this setup works really well for my style of shooting then feeding slides to it as they crack may simply be what is needed. We are racing guns after all and I don't expect things to last forever. When you are running guns at their red line breaking stuff is to be expected. That and I am really good at breaking stuff already.

[Sandbagger123]

watching the vid it looks like it barely has enough oomph to chamber the next round.

[thermobollocks]

After coincidental ammo testing at the last practice sessions, I'm convinced a heavier spring is only a mitigating factor against crud, poor feed geometry, and bad ammo.

[CHA-LEE]

Last night I shot the Whistling Pines Indoor USPSA match. This was the first match using the 8/17 spring combo and the timing and sight tracking was just different enough to make it slightly distracting while shooting. It felt “easier” to shoot aggressively but the distracting part of it took my attention off of calling my shots. I had 2 uncalled misses for the match which were both on really aggressive shooting speed targets where I was evidently not paying attention to my sights. When shooting really fast I kept having this feeling like I was artificially delaying the next shot because I was waiting for the sights to return but they were already there. So I was varying my trigger finger speed to see how much I could push the splits and still not have the feeling of waiting on my sights. This “Testing” is probably what lead to my misses because I can remember consciously trying to “Shoot faster” on the targets I had misses on. Consciously thinking about stuff while shooting isn’t the best combo and my match results showed. There is also the indoor less than optimal lighting situation going on there so I need to take that into account as well.

I still think that the 8/17 spring combo is better, I just need more trigger time on it so it feels normal while shooting aggressively. The cool thing is that it’s still feeding reliably with over 1000 rounds on the gun with zero cleaning being done. If I keep the gun clean and lubed it shouldn’t have feeding reliability issues.

This coming weekend I will do some more live fire practice with it to get used to it some more. I have ordered some more springs so I can convert the other two Limited blasters to the same spring combo. So my three blasters should be back to identical configurations pretty soon. I have accuracy testing and aggressive shooting splits on the agenda for the next practice session. This week I will get the #2 blaster cleaned up and ready for another weekend of plundering.

Edited August 2, 2016 by CHA-LEE

[CHA-LEE]

This weekend I was able to get some practice in on Saturday and shoot a match on Sunday. The practice on Saturday was more of a fun shoot than anything. I pulled together several friends and we setup a complex field course stage with a bunch of positions, steel and different ways to shoot it. It was a challenging stage to shoot, break down, and program.

I was able to figure out the best stage plan right away but I was lazy on actually programming it so the first couple of times I shot the stage I felt like I was thinking through the whole stage as I shot it. After I put some more effort into programming it I was able to execute the plan a lot more fluidly and improved my stage time by about a second. The cool thing is that all of my stage runs didn’t vary more than one second with about the same quality of hits. The bad thing is that I started off the practice session lazy in not programming the stage effectively enough. I gave up 1 second in stage time by not doing it and even though that may not seem like a lot, it’s still a donation in performance. I need to maintain the same stage programming diligence regardless of the shooting conditions.

We got to shoot the stage 5 times before the rain started coming down and we had to quit. It was a bummer because I could have shot a lot more that day but the weather wasn’t cooperating.

On Sunday I attended the USPSA match at the Aurora Gun Club. The morning had an odd amount of fog which was strange to shoot in. But the fog burned off by the time we got to the second stage which was nice. I shot solid for the whole match and only had 2 Delta hits with no shooting penalties. My biggest mistake for the match was a trigger freeze as I was exiting a position and had to stop and go back to make up the shot. That cost me at least a second and a half in stage time which in hind sight was a bad idea because the hit factor of the stage was about 10. It’s hard to do the Hit Factor math on the fly though and it’s even harder to not shoot all of the targets on purpose. Oh well, that is my penalty for actually trying to go fast instead of simply letting it happen.

After the match I was able to do some accuracy testing with different springs. I retested the 8, 9, and 10lb recoil springs to see if they made any different in accuracy. The 8lb spring does create slightly worse accuracy than the 9 or 10lb spring. The 10lb spring produced the best accuracy. But the variance in my groups was much more based on my shooting ability than mechanical accuracy that day. I need to redo this testing another day when I am “Fresh” and not after a hot club match were I am worn out and hot. Having shot the 8/17 spring setup for a little while now, I am really liking how it feels and tracks. I am liking it so much that even if the accuracy suffers a little it may be worth using it anyway. It’s hard to explain, but shooting the 8/17 setup just feels and looks “Normal” to me. As I said before this setup feels and looks very similar to my old EAA/Tanfo setup that I shot many many thousands of rounds. It’s funny how we get use to certain things like that.

I have been using the Lucas Oil Extreme Grease on the Limited guns and I think that may now be too thick for the 8/17 spring setup I am using causing some inconsistent lockup and thus worse accuracy. I am going to fully strip and clean the grease off of the gun and relube it with the Lucas Extreme Gun oil and not use any grease. This should eliminate any friction or slowing down of things that the grease is doing. I may redo the accuracy testing sometime this week after work if my schedule allows. I want to get this fiddling done with so I can settle in on a config before the final major match push coming up in Sept/Oct.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I was able to get some practice done on Saturday and attend a USPSA match on Sunday. The practice session on Saturday was good. We setup a large field course stage with a lot of running around and mixture of shot difficulty. I shot the #2 Limited blaster that day and was testing the Lucas Extreme Oil on it instead of the grease. The oil made the felt recoil a lot more harsh since it was not slowing down the slide like the grease. I didn’t get a chance to do any slow motion video of it to see how much more it was moving around verses the grease but it didn’t seem to affect my shooting much while shooting the stage. I was shooting really solid that day though so that was nice.

 

On Sunday I attended the Boulder Rifle Club USPSA match and proceeded to make a monkey show of it. I racked up 3 misses and 2 no shoots for the match and a boat load of D’s. I couldn’t get into the shooting and was getting lazy on calling my shots. I had to work some on call stuff the night before so I only got about 4 hours of sleep so I think that was a big part of my inability to perform at the match. Or I simply sucked that day as that can happen as well. I shot the match with the #2 blaster with only the oil on it and it functioned without any issues. After the match I was able to do some accuracy testing with the 8lb and 10lb recoil springs. The 8lb recoil spring produced a 3 inch group at 10 yards. The 10lb recoil spring produced an all rounds touching group at 10 yards. So…….. even though I really like how the 8lb recoil spring feels and tracks while shooting it is producing horrible accuracy. I am going to have to switch back to the 10lb recoil spring. Since I am switching back to the 10lb recoil spring I will also switch back to the grease which I know works solidly. Now I need to see if I can stick with the 17lb hammer spring or if I have to go back to the 18lb hammer spring. The testing process never ends.

[CrashDodson]

With regards to the sleep...I have started doing my dry fire in the mornings rather than at night now.  I feel like I get more out of the sessions and I feel myself improving faster.  My overall dry fire experience will be noticeably poor if I get less than 7 hours of sleep.  If I get good sleep my response time is considerably faster and I have so much more focus.  I drive down par times on good sleep days.  

I have always been bad about waiting till the last minute the night before the match and staying up till 1 am cleaning guns or loading ammo.  I had nothing to compare my performance to until I started dry firing in the morning.  I can now see how much of a difference it makes and I am working to try and get better sleep on match days.  

[CHA-LEE]

This weekend was a busy one. On Saturday I served as Match Director for the HPPS match. As always this is a long day. The match ran smooth and we got quite a bit of help for setup so that was nice. I had to do registration/score keeping as well so I didn’t have a chance to walk the stages from a competitor perspective before the start of the match. I had to figure them all out as we got to the berms while shooting the match.

Lucky for me, most of the stages had fairly straight forward stage plans needed. There was only one stage where it had multiple solutions and I didn’t have enough time to figure out the best plan. We were doing a work party day on Sunday to move all of our props to a new storage barn so I had the shooters leave that confusing stage setup after the match so I could check it out more on Sunday.

I mostly shot the match “ok” with only a few minor issues here or there. I had a rookie mistake of bumping my safety back on after a reload on the second stage. But I really screwed the pooch on the classifier. The Classifier was named “Pucker Factor” which is a quick 8 shot stage with varying hard cover at different distances. I have shot this classifier many times in the past and this time I figured I would try going super aggressive while point shooting at the targets with a hard target focus. I shot the stage in 2.6 seconds but this resulted in 3 misses, 3 D’s, and a few C’s. Zeroing the classifier and giving away 40 match points was painful. I decided to reshoot the classifier but this time call my shots like I normally would and had a stage time of 2.9 seconds only down 3 points. The bulk of the extra time between the two runs was also due to a slightly botched draw. So once again I prove to myself that it’s not fastr and does not create better hits to try and point shoot stuff verses using my sights and calling my shots.

On Sunday the HPPS crew worked hard to move all of our props and gear into the new storage barn. It was a lot of work but now we have a lot more space to store our stuff and plenty of room to grow our prop collection.

After that we shot the match stage several times in various different ways. There were four different stage plan variants that were all “doable” options. Some plans felt choppier than others from a position to position or target transition perspective. Not surprisingly the “Choppy” stage plans resulted in slower stage times even though the hit quality remained the same. During the match I shot the stage in 15.6 seconds using a really choppy but easy to program and execute plan. I know I didn’t have enough time to program that stage plan properly during the match so I put more effort into programing it before the practice run. I was able to shoot the original “choppy” stage plan in 13.8 seconds. I then reprogramed the stage to a more flowing stage plan and was able to consistently shoot it in the 12.5 – 12.7 second range. It was fun to be able to run multiple different stage plans to figure out the optimal stage plan by proving which way was best on the clock. I could have figured this out during the match if I simply used my stop watch to time the different stage plans. But when you are running the match as MD, Score Keeper and don’t even get a chance to look at the stage from a shooting perspective before you get there, you have to settle for what you can muster in the heat of the moment.

Is switched over to the 10lb recoil spring with 17lb hammer spring for this weekend and really didn’t notice much difference while shooting the stages. To be fair I wasn’t even thinking about the spring change while shooting the match or during practice because I was too busy or worn out. I just shot the sights as soon as I seen them aligned properly on the targets. I proved in slow motion video that using a 10lb recoil spring does make more of a slide closing bounce in the muzzle, but I am not sure if it really matters after the buzzer goes off during a stage run. Liking how it feels while shooting is less important than it getting the job done. So I think I will just stick with what works until the major matches are over for this year. I can fiddle on that stuff again in the winter time when the major matches are over with.   

[CHA-LEE]

I presented some competition pistol training this past weekend in Salt Lake City. It was a lot of fun and everyone seemed to enjoy it. It’s always cool to see the “Lightbulb” moments happen during the class. I didn’t shoot much at all during the class but that is normal when I am training. I am trying to branch outside of Colorado with my training and presenting this class was a good step in getting my name out there from a training perspective. Hopefully I can get a chance to go back out there for some more training in the future.

 

Before I left I did some fiddling on my Open gun to install the medium flat trigger shoe and replace the 90 degree C-More mount with the Cheely Delta Point Pro mount. I got the Delta Point Pro in right before I left for SLC and was able to mount it on the gun but didn’t have any time to sight it in. I am going to see if I can make it to the indoor range sometime this week after work to get it sighted in and see what it looks like while shooting. The dot is small but super bright. I really like how the smaller 2 MOA dot looks verses the 6 MOA on the C-More. But I will need to test it out in live fire to see if it’s really an advantage or not.

 

Beyond that I have to get my normal Limited shooting gear cleaned up and ready for the Utah State match in SLC this coming weekend. I am flying out Friday morning so I only have a few days home before I am back on the road again. I am looking forward to this match as it’s always fun to shoot and a great group of people running the match. My goal this time is to stay hydrated so I don’t repeat the same mistake of getting mega dehydrated at the Area 1 earlier this year. Hopefully I only need to learn that hard lesson once.

 

On a non shooting topic, I purchased a 2015 KTM 1190 Adventure R motorcycle a couple of weeks ago and that thing is a BLAST to ride. I want to be able to ride it to matches so I need to get it setup with paniers and boxes to haul my shooting gear. I am not sure if I will be able to get it all setup before the weather starts to get too cold to ride so I am thinking of that as a 2017 goal. I will be getting rid of my Jetta TDI later this year so I need a fuel efficient vehicle to drive to and from the local matches. I don’t want to put a boat load of miles on my 4Runner driving to all of the local matches. We will see if it works out or not. Either way it’s a lot of fun to ride and I am looking forward to taking it up into the mountains to see what it can do in the dirt.

[PatJones]

Charlie, I didn't know you had a bike. You should look into electrically heated vest, it will add 2 to 3 months of comfortable riding to your year. It's especially nice on a cold morning as it doesn't take up much space in your luggage after it warms up in the afternoon. I'm particularly impressed with the stuff from Aerostich.

[Husker95]

When it starts to get cold, just trailer your bike behind the 4-runner and go to the local matches.  Then your nice and warm........

[CHA-LEE]

I am too much of a wimp to ride when its really cold. For the winter matches I will take my 4Runner.

[CHA-LEE]

Last night after work I was able to do some sight in and accuracy testing at the Centennial Gun Club indoor range. I started off with my Limited gun to verify that it’s still sighted in. Then I switched over to the Open gun to sight in the new Delta Point Pro. The Delta Point Pro was really easy to sight in and with the dot on the lowest setting I was able to shoot some wicked small groups. I initially sighted it in with the POA/POI at 10 yards then pushed it out to 15 and 20 yards to see what the vertical shift would be. With a 10 yard zero it made the 20 yard hits way too high. I changed the zero to a 15 yard setup and that worked well for both 20 and 10 yards. It’s a little high at 20 and a little low at 10 but nothing dramatic. I didn’t have much more time to do anything but shoot groups while sighting it in. I am looking forward to testing this new sight setup out on a normal outdoor range in normal lighting conditions. This will probably have to wait until after the High Desert classic in October though as the next month is chocked full of major matches.  

 

My final four majors of the year are all jammed into the next month. I have the Utah State match this coming weekend. Two weeks after that is the New Mexico Sectional. Then Two weeks after that I have the Limited Nationals. The weekend after the nationals I have the High Desert Classic in New Mexico.

 

I am looking forward to attending all of these matches and feel like I am practiced up and prepared as well as I can be. The only performance goal I am setting is to finish in the top 10 at the nationals. If I can see my sights, unlike last year, a top 10 finish should be doable. I am use to the new shooting glasses now and they do help me see my sights a lot better in questionable lighting. So not seeing my sights shouldn’t be an issue. My guns have been tuned up and reliable for a while now so that shouldn’t be an issue. Lastly I have been injury free this whole year so I am not battling neck or left arm strength issues any more. It’s all up to me to get the job done. Time to man up and make it happen!!!  

[HDGoose]

Congratulations on the win at Utah state Charlie! Judging from the results my stage (4) wasn't the only one that you burned down - nice shooting!

[CHA-LEE]

On 9/5/2016 at 1:36 PM, HDGoose said:

Congratulations on the win at Utah state Charlie! Judging from the results my stage (4) wasn't the only one that you burned down - nice shooting!

Thanks for the compliment!!!

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend was the Utah State Championships in Salt Lake City. I decided to fly out to this match instead of drive because I didn’t want to burn up two days driving. This match is historically biased towards rage blasting as a lot of the targets are pretty close with very little hard cover or no shoots. This year was the same flavor. I purposefully reined in my shooting speed so I wouldn’t get sucked into shooting too fast for good hits. I shot most of the stages at about 80% - 85% shooting speed on the mega fast blasting sections and it worked out good. I might have been able to make up a little bit of time of some stages by shooting faster but I would have probably given away the advantage in less points or penalties. I also decided to aim hard for the steel and succeeded on that goal most of the time. The few times where I tied blasting at white I was rewarded with misses.

We shot 8 stages on Saturday and 5 on Sunday. The weather was great on Saturday and I was shooting pretty solid. I burned down a couple of stages but basically took it easy on most of them because I didn’t want to get sucked into blasting crazy. I had one miss for the match and that happened on Saturday while shooting on the move. I called the shot good but it ended up nicking the edge of a wall and deflecting off target. I racked up an alarming amount of D’s for the match (12 total) which was strange for me. Most of them were on the “Turtle” targets at distance but I was also able to rack a few up on closer open targets.  I did have a few stages where I was only down 2 – 3 points total and I felt like I was aiming hard the whole time so it’s odd to have so many D’s. The only thing I can think of is pushing the boundary with shooting on the move, especially on no shoot partials, and aiming too far into the C-zone to avoid the no shoots.

On Sunday the clouds were heavy in the sky and I had to shoot the first four stages in overcast lighting. I am super glad that I had my prescription glasses because I would have been screwed without them. It was harder seeing my sights in that lighting but I could at least see them. I finished the last 5 stages strong. My buddy Nick was able to get all but one of my stages on video and I have uploaded them on my YouTube Channel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HkTFYJNKGM

After all of the scores were finalized I was able to come out on top for the win in Limited. Bob Krogh was second at 97% and then Kenny Terry was in third at 93%. I was sure that Bob was going to give me a beat down at this match, especially since I was scaling back my shooting aggression on the close stuff. But he had a few rough stages at the start of the match and couldn’t recover from them. This is my second win in a row for the Utah State match so it is cool to pull off back to back wins.

Now it’s time to get my gear cleaned up and ready for this coming weekend. I am planning on doing some accuracy & long distance shooting training on Saturday to prepare for the nationals. I keep hearing threats of there being long distance shots and super accuracy stuff for the nationals so I need to put some range time in on shooting that kind of stuff. It’s been too long since I have shot anything past 30 yards anyway. Time to embrace the SUCK!!!

Edited September 6, 2016 by CHA-LEE

[CHA-LEE]

Last week I got a lead level test done and received the test results today. My Lead level is 5 this time around. Last year it was 9 so its nice to have it go down four points since last year. I have been pretty diligent in washing my hands any time I handle ammo or reload. I also use latex gloves when cleaning my guns and mags to keep the solvents from leaching crud into my skin. Given how much shooting, gun handling, and ammo loading I do I am surprised that my lead level is as low as it is. I guess this shows how good lead handling practices keep your lead levels down. 

[CHA-LEE]

This weekend was a little rugged for me. I came down with a cold on Thursday and was only about 75% better by Saturday but I decided to shoot the CRC match anyway. With the Nationals only a couple of weeks away I need all of the rounds down range that I can get. I shot the match OK but was in a partial sickness fog most of the day. The one thing I really wanted to test out that day was my new Salomon Speed Track shoes. They seem to be a mixture of the Speedcross 3 and the Fellraiser. The shoe fit is similar to the Speedcross 3 but the sole has the same lug and rubber compound as the Fellraiser. They felt a little snug when I first put them on but they broke in nicely and were very comfortable. My trusty Fellraiser shoes were pretty much worn out so it was time for some replacements and I am glad that I tried out the Speed Track version.

 

On Sunday I was feeling better and about 85% back to normal. I didn’t have the same sickness “Fog” that I had on Saturday which was nice. I shot the Pueblo match that day and had a good time shooting with friends. I shot a pretty decent match but had several execution mistakes. There were a couple of stages that had lots of steel shots in a row and I would start aiming hard but then I would stop aiming and just blast at white. This would result in good one for one hits to start off with then needing a bunch of make up shots once I stopped aiming. I need to aim hard all the time. I am not sure if battling my sickness while shooting is the root cause to this or not.

 

The other strange thing that happened a couple of times this weekend was my inability to reach the mag release and push it fully in mid stage run. Out of the 11 stages I shot this weekend this happened 3 times. I can correlate these events with hard acceleration to the left during the draw and my strong hand would register on the back of the gun a little to the right. I can feel that my strong hand position is off slightly when this happens, but I have too much grip tape on the gun to reposition my hand easily. I need to work on getting the gun out of the holster sooner so I am not grabbing it when the holster is getting deflected a lot by my leg while launching hard.

 

This coming weekend is the New Mexico Sectional match in Clovis. I need to get my gear cleaned up and repacked for that match. I am also really low on ammo so I need to put some serious time behind the reloading press this week to get stocked back up. If I can get 2500 rounds loaded up this week I should be good to go through the rest of the major matches I have this year.

[CrashDodson]

I saw you at the NM sectional.  I was ROing stage 2 and pretty busy so I didnt have time to introduce myself.  Nice shoooting by the way.  You wouldnt happen to have video from the match would you?  Would love to compare your runs to mine. 

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend was crazy from a travel and shooting perspective. On Friday I drove down to Clovis New Mexico to attend the NM Sectional match. I have never attended this match so it was cool to shoot at a new range and make some new friends. This was an 8 stage major match with all field courses and shot all in one day on Saturday. The weather was threatening rain on Saturday so I brought my rain/mug gear but didn’t need it. On Saturday it was really foggy in the morning and overcast most of the day. The overcast lighting and slightly humid conditions were good practice for the Nationals. I shot the first 5 stages in heavy overcast and had revert to aiming hard and slower shooting to ensure my hits. I tried shooting more aggressively on stage 6, which was our third stage of the day and it was a complete failure. So I reverted back to plugging along mode and waited for the sun to come out so I could turn on the afterburners. After Lunch the clouds started to part and the sun was finally coming out to assist my efforts in seeing my sights. I shot stage 1 after lunch and burned it down. Stage 2 was going good until I edge hit a popper and it didn’t go down but I was already long gone running to the next shooting area to make it up. Then on Stage 3 I screwed up by “Trying” to shoot fast and ended up point shooting instead of watching my sights. Since Stage 3 was out final stage of the match I asked if I could reshoot it for fun to see if I could do better on it. The RO’s were fine with it so I reshot the stage and was able to execute my plan just as I wanted. The only difference is that I told myself to stay on my sights the whole time and not worry about going fast or slow. It was nice to be able to redo a stage run like that and verify right away what I was doing wrong.

I drove down to the match with my buddy Dean and he was able to capture all of my stage runs on video. Huge thanks to Dean for the video work through the whole match.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCXSjW3UrLM

After the results were tallied I ended up High Overall in Limited and actually HOA for the whole match. I was kind of surprised to be HOA for the match as there were several solid GM’s in Open and I did a good job of screwing up on three stages. But I guess I sucked just a little less than everyone else and ended up HOA. Right after the results were posted we tore down the stages and then a mega rain storm rolled in. We decided to head back to the Hotel and get cleaned up then power through the drive back home that night. We drove back that night and got home at about 1AM. Man, that was a long day.

Since we got home Saturday night, I set my alarm for 6AM to see how motivated I would be Sunday morning to attend the club match at Weld. The Weld match was a section qualifier so I didn’t want to miss it. With only about 4 hours of sleep I drug my carcass out of bed Sunday morning and got ready for the day. Lucky for me I was able to catch a ride to the range with my buddy Sean. I am glad that he drove because I was tired and in a sleepy fog. The worn out sleepy fog never completely lifted that day so I had to embrace the suck and push through it to get it done at the match. The Weld match was a lot of fun to shoot. They had some great stages to shoot and a lot of shooters in attendance. The weather was great and the sun was out so I was able to shoot pretty solid given my worn out and tired state. This performance was just enough to edge out a match HOA win by 2 points over Open Shooter John Arenas. We got done shooting and started heading back around 4 PM and man I was WHIPPED!!! I guess driving over 1200 miles in a weekend to shoot two matches takes it out of you.

 

[CHA-LEE]

This coming weekend is my final chance for some practice before heading out to the Limited Nationals. I am going to skip the weekend matches and practice instead. I am heading over to Grand Junction to do a weekend of practice with Bob Krogh as we both have a bunch of stuff to work on and can help each other out.

 

Now that the nationals stages have been released we can do some dedicated practice on some of the shooting challenges that are defined. I need to do a lot of work on turtle targets at 30 – 50 yards. It’s been forever since I have shot anything beyond 30 yards so it will be good to put some more effort into that anyway.

 

I am bringing 1500 rounds to this practice session. I hope it’s enough to figure out this long distance stuff. I am looking forward to this final chance for a tune up before the Nationals. Hopefully the hard work pays off next weekend.      

[PatJones]

Go get 'em boss...

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I was able to get some really good practice in with Bob Krogh. We shot at the range in Grand Junction and tested a bunch of different stuff. On Saturday it was raining in the morning and overcast all day so that was a really good test for less than optimal lighting shooting conditions. We setup a swinger and shot it a lot in a couple of different configurations. I am pretty solid on shooting swingers leveraging the tracking method so I helped Bob focus on getting his swinger game polished up. We incorporated the swinger into a field course stage that had some very hard left and right leans as that is another area that we needed to work on. Then we worked on the 20 – 50 yard stuff which was a total shit show for me. We shot groups at 50 yards and I found that my Point of Impact is about 8 inches low. I also found that on the clock I am still mashing the trigger just enough to dip the front sight and produce a POI that is an additional 6 – 8 inches lower. With a mechanical 8 inches and a mashed 8 inches if I aimed at the center of the turtle target my shots were consistently off the target low at 50 yards. If I aimed at the top of the target I would still get solid D zone hits and Misses on the bottom of the target.

I used fixed sights on my Limited guns so there is no time to swap front sights and test for reliability before the nationals next weekend. I also don’t want to change my sights when I don’t have a sighting issue on targets within 20 yards. So I had to resort to pointing the front sight high in the sight picture to get hits at 30 – 50 yards. After a crap ton of sight alignment and on target aiming position testing I found that If I displace my front sight upwards so the fiber dot is aligned with the top of the rear sight blade and I put the top of the front sight on the top quarter of the target I could yield consistent middle of the target hits at 30 – 50 yards. It is super hard to aim like that on the clock and shoot at an aggressive pace, so I am forced to shoot pretty slow splits. Using this front sight displacement process is retarded and slow, but it’s the only viable solution I could come up with that would yield consistent A/C hits at the really far distances. Given that I couldn’t even hit the targets before using a normal sight picture I will settle for donating some time and getting hits.  

On Sunday the lighting conditions were awesome. There were no clouds in the sky and the sun was out all day long. We worked on the swinger stuff some more and then focused on some port to port field course stuff with lots of running between positions. We biased the shooting within the stages to be difficult shots and kept the hit factors low with a lot of non-shooting running time. This forced us to make getting A’s a top priority verses trying to go hoser crazy. After that we worked on the long distance stuff some more and I was able to put another 100 rounds into the new sighting solution. The new sighting solution is slow but it gets me hits and that’s all I can ask for at this point. After this we setup the 25 yard / 15 yard standards stage that has two barricades. This stage is defined in the nationals match book and requires one shot on 6 targets then reload and reengage the targets strong hand from 25 yards. Then do the one shot free style then reload and week hand from 15 yards. The significant challenge with this stage is that every other target has a significant amount of hard cover on it with the Zebra target being the widow maker. Shooting a 25 yard zebra target at 25 yards is no joke. It’s also not fun at 15 yards week hand. We shot this standards stage a bunch of times and I was only able to shoot it clean once. Bob was able to shoot it clean 3 times which was awesome. But for both of us to shoot it half way decent we had to use a shooting pace that was agonizingly slow. The best hit factor we could produce on the stage was a 3.5 which puts it in perspective. I am honestly surprised that they would pick such a difficult shooting challenge for the nationals. Expecting a C or B class shooter to shoot this stage clean in unlimited time is pretty much impossible. Why they would pick a stage that is going to annihilate 99% of the competitors is beyond my comprehension. But then again it wouldn’t be the nationals without at least one retarded stage. All we can do is try to survive it the best we can.

It was a great weekend of very productive practice. I am glad that I made the trip over the mountains to practice with Bob. I know that I would have been sucked into attending the local matches in Denver if I stayed home this weekend. Now it’s time to get all of my gear cleaned and packed up for the nationals. I am heading out on Friday evening and am looking forward to seeing how I stack up against the top dogs this year. My primary shooting goal is to simply hit the targets. If that nets me a top 10 finish then it is what it is, if not then oh well.    

[CHA-LEE]

Well the Limited nationals are over and I got my ass handed to me. Once again the Universal Shooting Academy range had it in for me on many different levels. That range somehow has a magical combination of all my “Kryptonite” in one fell swoop. I battled lighting issues in seeing my sights, rainy weather, high humidity that had me sweating like crazy, muddy range conditions, midget low ports, carnival stage props and sticky/sweaty hands. I tried my best to overcome all of these challenges but my attempt was well short of my goals.

The Stages for this year’s nationals had the most difficult shooting requirements that I have ever seen at a single major match. You needed to be on your “A GAME” to even survive some of them. Having to battle all of the other crap as well was an overwhelming task. I can honestly say that this nationals was the least “Fun” match I have shot in a very long time. I racked up an agonizing 12 misses and 3 no shoots through the match which is an alarming amount of shooting penalties. Not to mention a laundry list of mistakes I made on several of the stages that equaled a miss or more in lost time. Out of all 22 stages I only had two stage runs that I felt like they went “Ok”. The rest were all circumvented in some way or another due to whatever Kryptonite the stage had waiting for me.

When the final results were posted I ended up 19th overall which is well short of my goal in making the top 10. I truly believe that if I wasn’t battling all of the other crap along with the stages I could have achieved my goal, but it is what it is. The Universal Shooting Academy range has always kicked my butt over the years and I think it’s time for me to face the facts that it’s just not going to happen for me out there. This nationals will probably be my last time I attend a match there. It’s simply not worth the time and expense to go out there and get thrown under the bus by things I have zero control over. I have to accept the fact that I am a desert climate shooter, not a swamp climate shooter.

My squad mate Elias was awesome enough to get all of my stages on video and I helped him with his. I have compiled the video and uploaded it onto YouTube. Every stage is there in all of its ugliness. The only thing missing is some clown music for some of the stages.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53lkbapioGI

Now that the Nationals are over I need to get my gear reworked and repacked for the High Desert Classic this coming weekend. We drive out tomorrow morning so I only have this evening to get everything ready to rumble. I am really looking forward to having FUN at this match verses the sucky grind the Nationals turned out to be. We will see how it goes.