CHA-LEE's Tale

[HoMiE]

Good luck Charlie!

[CHA-LEE]

I finished shooting the Nationals today. It was a challenging 3 days of shooting but the weather was awesome and the stages were good. I felt that I shot fairly solid for most of the match. I had 2 misses for the match which is a bummer, but it is what it is. The first miss was really out of my control as I the sun was just above the berm right behind the some partial targets I was engaging. I could only “Hope” hits onto the targets in this lighting condition and ended up with a miss just into the black hard cover. The second miss was a total bone head move where I started to transition off of the target as I was breaking the second shot. I had some other minor movement mistakes and did some fault line dancing here or there that delayed my shooting. With all of the movement mistakes and two misses I think I left about 60 match points on the table for others to exploit. When the early schedule results were tallied I ended up 2nd overall in Limited at 95% of Manny Bragg. My goal was to be sitting second behind Manny after the early schedule was finished and I was able to accomplish that. But I am not sure if being 5% off of Manny will be good enough to achieve my ultimate goal of finishing in the top 10 overall. All I can do is wait and see how my performance holds up to the competition in the main match.

 

I am serving as an RO on Stage 9 for the main match. It will be cool to see everyone shoot that stage as it’s a pretty demanding scramble blasting type of stage. Beyond that I am going to do my best to capture as much brass as I can while ROing. My goal is to pick at least one full 5 Gallon bucket of 40 caliber brass if not more. At the very least that will help pass the time over the next three days.

 

I was able to get all of my stage runs on video but haven’t had the chance to compile them and get it posted on YouTube. That will probably not happen until I get back home.

[CHA-LEE]

The 2017 Iron Sight Nationals are now in the books. I shot the early schedule then worked the late schedule. I worked Stage 9 which was a scamper here and there field course which was super dusty. Working that stage for 3 days wasn’t very fun due to the dust, but it was cool to see all of the competitors tackle the challenge. It was rewarding to do my part to help the match happen as I feel that giving back to the sport in a volunteer capacity is important. Hopefully more people follow my lead in the future and help make these matches happen.

 

Since I was ROing Stage 9 I had a chance to reshoot it for fun once after the shooting was done for the day on Saturday. When I shot this stage during my match I didn’t have the best plan and botched my movement causing me to “Dance” on one of the fault lines. My Match run was 20.11 sec down 9 points. On the reshoot I used a better plan that eliminated some extra movement and it resulted in a 16.56 sec down 9 points. The reshoot would have been a stage win and 29 more match points which sucks to give away. I didn’t put enough effort into the stage plan the first time around to optimize the movement and I paid the price for that bad decision. Since I had my shooting gear on I also reshot Stage 7 for fun and did it in 14.42 down 7 points. During the match I shot stage 7 early in the morning and couldn’t get my finger going due to cold hands.  The reshoot performance would have given me 8 more match points on that stage putting me 3rd on the stage. I know that reshooting stages and comparing them to your match performance isn’t 100% realistic but it was a good exercise to confirm that I gave away about 37 match points on those two stages alone due to bone head stage plans or cold hands. These two issues alone cost me 4 positions in the overall which would have put me 6th instead of 10th.

 

My goal going into this match was to make the top 10, which I achieved just barely by finishing 10th. I am glad to achieve this goal as I have been striving towards it for a long time now. But it’s also a bitter pill to swallow knowing that I could have been in the 5th – 7th range fairly easily without a few stupid mistakes that were totally avoidable. I shot this match fairly reserved at about 90% of my peak ability to simply keep myself from going crazy and giving away needless points in shooting penalties. I also gave away time in poor stage plans on a few stages, like stage 9, which ended up costing me a lot of match points. These are all lessons that can only be learned through experience though and I will be better prepared next time. I had a total of 2 misses for the whole match. The first was unavoidable due to the lighting conditions during a stage run. I was engaging some partial targets right into the direction of the sun and could see much of anything. All I could do was crank off some rounds in the general vicinity of the targets and hope to get some hits but instead ended up with a miss. The second miss was on a fairly easy head shot that I pulled off early trying to exit the position aggressively. Both of these misses could have been avoided if I was more diligent in staying on the sights or letting the gun settle a little longer before breaking the second shot.

 

The good from this match is that my #1 Limited blaster ran the whole time with ZERO issues. It was nice to not have any blaster issues to deal with during the match. My squad was primarily full of my fellow Colorado shooters so that was nice to shoot with friends. I had fun while shooting the match and treated each day of shooting as a separate club match. It was cool in the mornings and it made getting the aggressive blasting juices flowing difficult, but it is what it is. Overall I am happy with my match performance even though I know I could have done better by eliminating stupid mistakes. But that could be said for just about any match. I am yet to shoot a match perfectly with zero mistakes and I am sure that nobody else has either. All we can do is work towards minimizing mistakes.

 

 

[Searchnman]

Looks like a good run sir! Congratulations!

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I attended the High Desert Classic in Albuquerque New Mexico. This is always a fun match to shoot and consists of 10 large field course stages. This year the match was heavily biased towards difficult distance or partial shots so you had to stay diligent on your sights or you would be punished with misses or no shoots.

 

I used my #1 Limited blaster for this match and it ran like a champ through the whole match without any issues. My shot calling is still not fully tuned into the new sight setup using a .090 wide front sight and a .100 wide rear notch but it seems to be working out fine so far. I have been erroring on the side of waiting for a perfect sight alignment for the difficult shots and this is allowing me to get good hits, but it is wasting some stage time in over aiming. I will need to do a lot more shooting with this sight setup to get my shot calling tuned in at the same level as my old sight setup. That will be my winter project.  

 

I shot this match fairly well and didn’t have any misses or no shoots, which was great. I had a few minor mistakes here or there that cost me some time but that is somewhat to be expected as every match has some minor mistakes. I had one significant blunder on Stage 5 where I edge hit a popper that activated a swinger in a different position but the popper didn’t go down. I went to the final position and the swinger wasn’t going to I had to go back to the popper, shoot it down, then wait for the swinger to come out. This blunder cost me at least 4 seconds of stage time and about 25 – 30 match points. Giving up two mikes worth of match points on this blunder wasn’t fun, but it is what it is.

 

Stage 8 had a long wobbly bridge where you had to engage several partial targets and 4 mini poppers with no shoots behind them. This wobbly bridge was freaking a lot of people out and most shooters were doing everything possible to not use it. You could shoot the targets from the wobbly bridge if you had one foot on the bridge and the other on the ground, then run around the bridge and get on it again in the same manner on the other side. But that was really awkward shooting and wasted time running around the bridge and getting back on it. I am not sure why shooters were avoiding the wobbly bridge as it wasn’t that bad if you simply used a low and wide stance to absorb the movement with your legs. I shot the stage from the wobbly bridge and gave everyone a decent beat down on that stage because of it.

 

I was able to get all of my stage runs on video and have uploaded it to my YouTube channel. I want to thank Laruen Horner for doing the video work.

 

 

After all of the results were tallied I ended up high overall in Limited and also HOA for the match. It was a really close race between Mark Hillegas and myself in Limited as he was only 8 match points behind me by the end. Congrats to him for a great job!!!

 

I only have one more major match this year which is the Icarus III Shootfest just outside of Las Vegas. This match is over the last weekend of October so I have a couple of weeks to get my stuff ready to rumble again. I need to swap the front sights on the #2 and #3 blasters and get them sighted in again then reload a bunch of ammo. This has been a crazy month of shooting so far with several major matches happening pretty much back to back. It will be nice to get some down time after all of these majors are over.

[CHA-LEE]

This weekend I was able to shoot two local club matches. The weather was cold in the mornings on both days just to remind us that winter isn’t far off. Cold weather gear is a must from this point forward. 

 

During the week I swapped the front sight on my #2 Limited blaster and I was able to sight it in before the start of the match on Saturday. Since I got it sighted in I decided to use it for the match. It’s been a while since I have shot that blaster in a match so it was time for it to earn its keep. 

 

The weather forecast for Saturday called for wind in the afternoon and it was dead on. The wind started in the morning and kept getting stronger and more violent as the match went along. By the time we got to the last stage it was a full on wind/sand storm. We had a bunch of false starts and reshoots due to the wind knocking over steel and paper targets. Not to mention sand blown in your eyes endlessly. We pushed through the suck and got it done, but it wasn’t much fun.

 

I shot ok for the match given the crappy windy conditions. I racked up 2 no shoots for the match. Both were called bad so I knew it was happening. Both of these were 100% due to mashing the trigger. 

 

On Sunday the wind was gone which was awesome. It was a little colder this morning so keeping my hands warm was the top priority. I did a good job of keeping my hands warm and that allowed me to shoot with full aggression right out of the gate. I used the #2 Blaster once again and it worked great. It’s nice to give that blaster a workout for a couple of matches. I shot the match pretty well. A few pieces of steel gave me some trouble simply because I wasn’t picking an aiming spot on the steel. Same old lesson relearned once again. 

 

Its nice to get back in the normal club match swing of things. I have one more weekend of local club matches before I head out to my

lady major match of the year. The last match of the year is the Icarus Shootfest just outside Las Vegas at the end of the month. 

[CHA-LEE]

This week I had to travel to Salt Lake City for work. I reached out to my buddy Kenny Terry who lives in SLC to see if there was any potential for doing some shooting. He said we could do some live fire practice at his local range so I brought my shooting gear.  We were able to do some practice on both Tuesday and Wednesday after work. We setup a large field course and shot it a bunch of different ways. The stage had a good mixture of fast blasting, hard aiming, steel and scampering around. I used my #2 blaster for this practice to get some more run time on it and it worked great.

 

Since we were shooting at the end of the day when the sun was setting this was a good test of the Dawson sight setup. The brightness of the fiber on the Dawson front sight isn’t as bright as the Manny Mini dot setup. It was harder to see the fiber in that lower lighting conditions which is a bummer. I think I will have to switch fiber colors to neon green when the lighting gets crappy as that is easier to see than the neon orange in those conditions. On the second day of practice I tried the neon green fiber and it was easier to see on the shadowy targets but it was also distracting while shooting everything else. I think this distraction was mainly due to it simply being an abnormal color from what I am used to seeing. I have done a metric crap ton of shooting with the neon orange fiber so it’s going to take a while to get used to a different color fiber. When I was shooting my EAA guns I really liked the neon green fiber so I know I can get used to it once I put a decent amount of time behind the gun with it. This will be a fun project to test during the winter months.

 

With the new .090 wide front and .100 wide rear sight setup I am yet to have a situation where I was shooting and didn’t see a light bar on both sides of the front sight. This is a surprise to me as that setup is a lot tighter visually than my old setups that had a .030 - .040 width difference between the front and rear sights. I think I am going to stick with this setup through the winter and see how it goes. I need to do some more shot calling training on this “tighter” light bar sight setup to properly call partial and distance shots effectively. I am really liking how I can see the top and sides of the front sight a lot easier with the Dawson setup. The fiber is lower within the front sight than the Manny Mini Dot so it makes it easier to see the top and sides a lot easier. A lot more training and testing is needed with this new sight setup but that will come in time.

 

The 2018 USPSA Nationals dates and location were announced today and it will once again be hosted at the Universal Shooting Academy in Frostproof Florida. That is a real bummer as the nationals at that range has all of my kryptonite in one location. Crappy lighting conditions, weak stage design, sketchy weather, swampy hot & humid temperatures, and finally really expensive travel costs. At this point I don’t think I will attend as it’s never been a “Fun” nationals match when hosted there. It’s not worth the brain damage to attend a nationals there again.

[CHA-LEE]

This weekend was a busy one from a Club Match perspective. The cold and windy fall weather was present in full force on both Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday it was the HPPS match that I run so there was a lot of work to be done. We had a very low attendance with only 20 shooters and most of those guys didn’t show up until late in the morning. With minimal setup help that morning we had a long and tiresome stage setup process. We got all 6 field course stages setup but it did put us behind schedule by about 30 minutes due to the lack of help. With this being the start of fall it’s not surprising to see such an anemic attendance because of the less than optimal weather. Oh well, it is what it is.

 

Since we only had 20 shooters we ran 2 squads and we separated the squads by 3 stages so we wouldn’t log jam on each other. This worked out good and we got through the match as quickly as we could. The temperature topped out in the low 50’s which wasn’t bad, but the wind was something else. There was a sustained 20+ mph wind with gusts much faster than that. Keeping the stages together and consistent in the wind was a little bit of a challenge but it was a lot less of a problem that I expected it to be. The new steel walls that we are using now are heavy enough to not get affected by the wind too much which is awesome. The older and lighter wood walls that we have were a lot more prone to blowing over and needing additional spikes to secure them to the ground.

 

I didn’t get a chance to look at the stages from a competitive perspective before the start of the match and used the “Wing It” stage planning method as my squad got to each stage. I had a couple of stages where I didn’t have the best stage plan, but I had to roll with the plan I had due to not having enough time to rework my existing stage plan. I shot the #2 Blaster that day to get some more run time on it and it worked great with zero issues. I had to keep a gun cover on it all day to keep the dust out of it due to the wind. One thing that I did notice while shooting in the direction of the sun and the targets being in a heavy shadow is that the fiber dot isn’t as bright as the Manny Mini Dot setup. The Dawson front sights have a shorter fiber rod and that does reduce the brightness of the dot. The font edge of the fiber dot is also recessed inside of the front sight blade and that also makes it not as bright. I am going to do some more testing with the bulb size of the fiber on the back to see if the bigger bulb makes the front appear brighter.

 

My shooting performance for the match was pretty lack luster due to setting up and running the match. The less than optimal weather conditions didn’t bother me much so that is a good thing. I had 3 D’s and 1 Miss for the match which were all on the “Shadow” targets where I couldn’t call my shots well due to the dim fiber. I am not too worried about my performance at this match because my top priority is to run it.

 

On Sunday I was able to attend the Clear Creek match up in the mountains. This is their last match of the season as it gets too cold and snowy up there in the winter time. It was cold in the morning with sporadic wind. One minute there would be no wind, then the next a micro burst would hit the berm and cause havoc on the stage. We had quite a few reshoots through the match due to the crazy unpredictable wind. For this match I used my #1 Blaster. I mainly used the #1 Blaster because I wanted to do a back to back comparison to the #2 from the day before. I didn’t notice any difference in how the #1 shot verses the #2 the day before which is a good thing. I ran into the same dim fiber on the shadow targets issue with the #1 blaster that day. I didn’t think about changing the fiber bulb size until after the match so I had to live with what I had for that match. The sky was overcast and this made for some challenging lighting conditions which further accentuated the dim fiber issue.  I racked up 3 D’s and 1 Mike/No Shoot for this match. The Mike/No Shoot was a complete bone head mistake on my part during the classifier. I started the stage and had a mega trigger freeze after the first shot. It was so bad that I transitioned to the next target, fired a shot right into the no shoot then had a mega trigger freeze again. So I transitioned back to the first target to get a second hit on it then back to the second target to get a second hit on it. The only thing I can think of causing this would be a poor grip on the gun with my strong hand registered way too far to the right combined with cold/stiff fingers due to the weather. Either way I screwed up that classifier in fantastic fashion that generated good entertainment for the rest of my squad mates. I reshot the classifier for fun to see if the issue would happen again and it didn’t. I as able to boss out a 108% score on the fun run which was cool but the ship had already sailed on my match run. Donating 25 match points in a Mike No Shoot pretty much sunk my chance of an overall match win.

 

One cool thing that I was able to test out for this match was my new ESP Stealth Electronic Ears. I won an ESP certificate at the nationals. ESP is located in Colorado so I was able to swing by their shop last Sunday to get impressions made of my ears. This Saturday the finished product showed up in my mail box so I decided to give them a go on Sunday. They fit my ears perfectly and sealed really well. The adjustable volume allows you to change how much “normal” non-shooting things you can hear. The really cool thing is how it handles the shots fired. The loud shot is basically restricted to the same volume as a normal noise. It still sounds like a shot but it’s not loud at all. If I could correlate it to anything it would be like hearing shots fired in an indoor range while you are outside of the range in the retail area. The other cool thing is that the ears canceled all wind noise that I would normally hear with passive ear plugs with filters. It was a little distracting at the start of the match because I could hear a lot more of the “normal” non-shooting sounds and conversations. The other thing that was interesting was how loud the Clickity-Clackity sounds were during my Make Ready process. By the time we were half way through the match it was starting to feel normal to hear all of the new stuff and it didn’t affect my shooting at all. I am really looking forward to using these ESP electronic ears for my training classes as it should make communication with the students a lot easier. I will keep using these ESP ears for matches but I will also bring my passive ear plugs as well as backups.

 

This week I need to get my blasters and gear cleaned and packed up for the Icarus Shootfest match happening just outside Las Vegas. This will be my final major match for the 2017 shooting season. I have never been to this match or range before so it will be cool to try out a new place. To be totally honest, I am glad that this is my last major match of the season as I am getting a little burned out on all the travel. The last two months have been bonkers with major matches and travel. Living out of a bag and sleeping in random hotel beds gets old after a while. Once this major is in the books it will be nice to settle back into the local club match shooting schedule while staying close to home.

[CHA-LEE]

This past year I have been using + .50 diopter lenses in both eyes to help pull my focus back to the sights and minimize my ability to focus hard on the targets at distance. This setup has been working great but now it’s time to replace my cheap Lens Crafters glasses for some more appropriate and protective shooting glasses. I already had some Rudy Project Rydon glasses and took them into a local optometrist to get some + .50 diopter lenses made for it. This took a couple of weeks to get done and was fairly expensive costing $275 for just the lenses alone. But these glasses are more comfortable to wear and provide much better eye protection in how the lens wraps around your face. I haven’t had a chance to shoot with these glasses yet but testing them back to back with the Lens Crafters glasses in dry fire doesn’t seem to be any different, which is a good thing. I am going to bring these new Rudy prescription glasses with me to the Icarus match and give them a go there.

 

I am a little leery about attending a major match with brand new glasses and new electronic ears which I only have 1 club match on. I will bring my old glasses and ear plugs just in case the new stuff becomes distracting. We will see how it goes.

[CHA-LEE]

Well…… The Icarus Shootfest III match was a complete FAIL for me. I am not one to sugar coat things so I will lay it all out as the facts dictate. I have shot a lot of matches over the years, from club level up to the nationals this Icarus Shootfest III match was the WORST run match I have ever attended. It was so bad that I quit half way through the match and simply left out of disgust in the match “product” offered. I didn’t return on Sunday. This is the first match that I have ever “Quit” due to it being run so horribly and I have attended some pretty bad matches over the years. The Entry fee was $105 and I wouldn’t have paid a $20 club match fee for what I experienced. Listed below are the primary issues with this match that all combined forced me to tap out and walk away half way through the match.

 

Zero Administration communication before during or after the match. There was no pre-match e-mail communication about the squad to stage schedule or match schedule at all. No stages or match book was provided before the match. Results were not communicated directly to the competitors at any time. And no post match wrap up to point you to where the results were posted or even thank the match sponsors. This match administration effort was worse than even a hurting club match much less a major.

 

The match schedule was blown out from the start and only got worse as the squads went from stage to stage. Our squad got log jammed behind the squad in front of us several times and once it was for almost an hour for what seemed to be no good reason.

 

There were Illegal Stages, Targets, and WSBs. Illegal target presentations, steel targets of illegal sizes, paper shoot targets with painted on “No Shoot” areas, and illegal restrictions defined in WSBs stating that you couldn’t cut corners between shooting areas. Most of the stages had really low walls that you could shoot over easily but the “Ground to infinity” verbiage wasn’t listed anywhere in the WSB’s.

 

There was Horrid officiating on just about every stage. Invalid range commands, invalid popper calibrations, poor target score calls, inconsistent WSB interpretation/reading, fast timer beeps, scoring targets while the shooter was still shooting the stage. There was a shooter on my squad was using a comp on his single stack and no RO’s even batted an eye at it.  

 

There were several blatant safety violations not being called by the RO’s. I witnessed 4 obvious 180 violations that were never called by the RO’s, AD’s happening without corresponding DQ’s, and I got full body swept by a PCC shooter on my squad because he was unbagging his PCC anywhere behind the the shooters on the berm.

 

There was inconsistent target presentation and function because NONE of the targets or props were nailed down. Targets and barrels were moving around as the match went along changing the way the stages could be shot or changing the presentation of the targets behind vision barriers.

 

Unreliable and inconsistent steel. Several shooters on my squad got screwed on popper malfunctions because the steel wasn’t nailed down and kept moving around changing the weight. The polish plate rack malfunctioned on every single shooter on our squad where a plate would be hit but the plate wouldn’t fall and the RO’s didn’t care. You were basically forced to keep shooting the partially dislodged plates repeatedly until they all fell.  

 

Lastly, all of the stages were not fun to shoot due to their design and the bays with sandy cake mix type of dirt they were built in. Every single stage had forced running or stupid gun handling requirements for no good reason at all other than to add time to everyone’s stage run. All of this excessive running and gun handling made the hit factor average for the match about 5. I shot 6 of the 11 stages before I quit and I won almost every stage I shot. My displeasure about the stages wasn’t because I couldn’t shoot them effectively. They were simply not fun stages to shoot. Like, not fun at all. The highest hit factor I had was 5.5 with the others in the mid 4’s and low 5’s. The super sandy and cake mix dirt was horrible to move around in. I had to take off my shoes and socks at least 4 times to get all of that sand and fine dirt out between stage runs. It doesn’t make sense to have a “Foot Race” biased match that is basically like running on a beach with really loose sand.

 

I hate to up and quit a match half way through, but I simply couldn’t handle any more of the train wreck I was exposed to already. I could have easily won high overall in Limited if I stayed and finished the match, but even knowing I could win this match wasn’t enough to make it worth finishing. I hate to sound like a whiny quitter, but everyone has their breaking point and mine was reached half way through the match. Needless to say I will never go back to this particular match or any other match that club is hosting. All I can do is learn from this experience and vote with my feet in the future. To everyone else looking at attending this match in the future BUYER BEWARE!!!

 

Thankfully the whole weekend wasn’t a total loss. My wife traveled to this match with me and we were staying in Las Vegas at the Trump hotel. Since I had some extra time on my hands after quitting the match we decided to go to some shows, do some sight seeing and of course get some gambling done. We went to an awesome steak house in Circus Circus called “The Steak House”. We also went to the David Copperfield magic show which was tremendous. I did some gambling on the roulette wheel and walked away with $1475 in profit. Ok, after winning that much I literally ran away from the casino so it wouldn’t vanish just as fast as it appeared. On Sunday we checked out the Hoover Dam and other local attractions. It was nice to do some Las Vegas tourist stuff and I for sure enjoyed those activities way more than I would have enjoyed going back to that hurting match on Sunday.

 

For the rest of the Colorado crew that stuck through it and shot that whole match, my hat is off to you in your perseverance. Congrats to all of the “winners”, if there can be such a thing given the train wreck they had to endure to make it to the end.    

Edited October 30, 2017 by CHA-LEE

[titandriver]

What club put this match on Cha-lee? Helps to know which ones to avoid in the future!

 

Thanks!

[CHA-LEE]

TROPANG VEGAS - NV15

[Vanniek71]

Ouch, I was looking at scores and wondered what happened. I was thinking major blaster fails - at least it wasn't that!

[CHA-LEE]

4 minutes ago, Vanniek71 said:

Ouch, I was looking at scores and wondered what happened. I was thinking major blaster fails - at least it wasn't that!

 

Yes, my blaster was running fine and has been ever since I switched to the Dawson front sight. I used the old #1 Blaster for the few stages I shot at this match and it ran like a champ even in the super dusty conditions. I think that my sight breaking issues will be a thing of the past with these more resilient Dawson sights. But I am also really good at breaking stuff so who knows what will be the next thing to break. The only thing that I can be sure of is that I WILL break something eventually. Its not a matter of if, only when. 

Edited October 30, 2017 by CHA-LEE

[HoMiE]

Shootfest huh? Must be one of those outlaw matches I keep hearing about. 

[CHA-LEE]

It was marketed as a Sanctioned USPSA match........ But what happened was far from that.

[titandriver]

1 hour ago, CHA-LEE said:

TROPANG VEGAS - NV15

Thanks Cha-lee!

[funkymonkey1111]

Cha-Lee,

 

Sounds like a pain--glad it turned out to be a good visit in Vegas, at least.  To those that have never been to an HPPS match, I can attest Cha-Lee puts on a great match every month

 

I was reading your posts from earlier in the year when you were considering American Select versus NobelSport Prima SV.   I know you ultimately decided to go with the Prima SV, but it seemed that all of a sudden that was just the choice, where earlier there had been some preliminary discussion of the different powders you were considering, their temp sensitivities/reactions, accuracy, etc., and then it seemed that there was just a winner without a further discussion (or maybe I completely missed a post discussing the final analysis).  

 

I was wondering if you could give a sentence or two on why Prima SV ultimately prevailed over American Select (if it was anything beyond most consistent speed standard deviations between the two). 

[CHA-LEE]

In my testing the performance difference between American Select and Prima SV was very minimal. They both burned very clean, had the same fairly soft felt recoil, and are not temperature sensitive. Prima SV won out simply because of its much more consistent standard deviation. The American Select powder has a much larger standard deviation (15 - 20fps swing) verses Prima SV's 5 - 10fps swing. I think this standard deviation issue with the American Select powder is primarily due to the flake size of the powder. The flakes are huge on the American Select powder so getting a consistent drop weight was always a problem. It would always float +/- 0.1 grain in my press. The Prima SV powder is a very small ball shaped powder which meters much more consistent in my press and it easily retains a +/- 0.05 grain drop consistency. The American Select issue with metering consistency and resulting larger standard deviation spread is what killed it for me verses the Prima SV powder. 

 

I have been using the Prima SV powder for quite a while now with zero issues. My Prima SV ammo has consistently produced a 170 - 171 power factor at every major I have attended this year. I can see myself using Prima SV for the foreseeable future for all of my .40 Major ammo. In fact, I just ordered another 24lbs of it a couple months ago. Powder Valley usually has it in stock at the best prices if you are looking to buy it online.

[StuckinMS]

1 hour ago, CHA-LEE said:

In my testing the performance difference between American Select and Prima SV was very minimal. They both burned very clean, had the same fairly soft felt recoil, and are not temperature sensitive. Prima SV won out simply because of its much more consistent standard deviation. The American Select powder has a much larger standard deviation (15 - 20fps swing) verses Prima SV's 5 - 10fps swing. I think this standard deviation issue with the American Select powder is primarily due to the flake size of the powder. The flakes are huge on the American Select powder so getting a consistent drop weight was always a problem. It would always float +/- 0.1 grain in my press. The Prima SV powder is a very small ball shaped powder which meters much more consistent in my press and it easily retains a +/- 0.05 grain drop consistency. The American Select issue with metering consistency and resulting larger standard deviation spread is what killed it for me verses the Prima SV powder. 

 

I have been using the Prima SV powder for quite a while now with zero issues. My Prima SV ammo has consistently produced a 170 - 171 power factor at every major I have attended this year. I can see myself using Prima SV for the foreseeable future for all of my .40 Major ammo. In fact, I just ordered another 24lbs of it a couple months ago. Powder Valley usually has it in stock at the best prices if you are looking to buy it online.

Great to know.  Thanks for the information! 

[CHA-LEE]

I was able to shoot two local club matches this weekend. On Saturday I helped run a special non-USPSA match that was a fundraiser for one of our local Junior shooters. We setup USPSA style stages but allowed people to reshoot stages for $5 a run to better their score if they liked. We also allowed people to sign up for multiple divisions to reshoot the whole match. I loaded up my 4Runner with a bunch of guns and gear that morning with the intent of shooting the whole match in 5 different divisions (LTD, L10, OPN, PRD, and PCC). I started out the match shooting Limited and Limited 10 since it didn’t require me to swap out guns or gear. Then I switched over to my Open setup and barely got through all of the stages before the crazy wind shut everything down. It was windy in the morning and got increasingly worse as the day went along. The match was scheduled to have the stages available to shoot from 10AM to 3PM, but we had to shut it down by 2PM because the wind was insane and kept blowing down steel, paper targets, walls, and barrels.

 

The final stage I shot with my Open gun the trigger was getting heavier and heavier as I shot and by the end it felt like it took 10 – 15 pounds to pull the trigger and drop the hammer. I finish the stage but pulling a super heavy trigger slowed my shooting way down. The gun was full of sand from the relentless wind so I figured something got in there and screwed up the trigger action. When I got home I did a detailed strip and clean on the Open gun and found that a piece of sand had gotten in between the sear lip and hammer hooks. This pretty much ruined the sear to hammer hook engagement and I had to completely redo the trigger job to get it fixed up. I have never seen a trigger job get ruined like that due to sand, but I was basically shooting in a full force sand storm so crazy failures are likely to happen.

 

The good thing about this match is that my Limited and Limited 10 runs through the stages were very solid. I thought that I was going to struggle with the Limited 10 runs more than I did due to only having 10 rounds to work with between reloads. But the extra reloads ended up going fine. Feeding a Limited gun every 8 – 10 rounds isn’t much fun though.

 

When the match was over we were able to generate $1185 in donations for the fundraiser match which was awesome. It’s cool to see local shooters band together for a fundraiser match like this. Mission Accomplished!!!

 

On Sunday I attended the Aurora Gun Club match. It was colder that day with a high temp in the mid 50’s. There was just enough wind to keep your coat on all day but it wasn’t bad. Most of the stages at this match were super accuracy biased. Being patient with your shooting and staying hard on your sights was a must or you would get severely punished. There was only one speed shoot stage were you could let loose and go blasting crazy. I think it’s funny how these mega accuracy biased stages get setup at the local matches after the Nationals. There seems to be a thought process that we need to make the shooting challenges at the local matches harder because stages at the nationals are usually harder from a shooting challenge perspective. All this does is donkey punch 80% of the local shooters because they don’t have the skills to shoot these stages clean, nor want the skills to do so. I practice this kind of stuff so it doesn’t bother be, but these stages pretty much annihilated most of the competitors in the match.

 

I shot solid that day on all of the stages except for the Classifier. The classifier stage was one of our last stages to shoot and the sun was at an angle where it reflected off of the top of my slide as I shot. On my first shot the sun reflection blinded me and I couldn’t focus on anything. I had to resort to point shooting the targets and needed a bunch of make up shots on the steel and crappy points on the paper. The only saving grace is that I got hits instead of misses or no shoots.

 

For the matches this weekend I was testing the big bulb of fiber on the back side of the front sight. This worked out better as it made the fiber brighter in the less than optimal lighting conditions. It’s still not as bright as the Manny Mini dot fiber, but it’s better than before. The really good thing is that I have had zero front sight issues since switching to these Dawson front sights. Hopefully they will continue to be reliable so I can focus on shooting instead of endless sight failures.

 

Tonight I am heading down to Colorado Springs to attend the Whistling Pines match. I am taking my Open gun to give the reworked trigger job a go and have some red dot fun. This will be my last match for a couple of weeks because I am going on a Caribbean Cruise next weekend through all of next week. I am really looking forward to a relaxing time and some fun in the sun with my Lady!!!   

Edited November 6, 2017 by CHA-LEE

[a matt]

Great match idea.

[CHA-LEE]

Last night I shot the indoor match at Whistling Pines. I shot Open that night with my reworked trigger job. The trigger worked flawlessly all night and I was able to do some very aggressive blasting. Running that dot gun at full throttle is a lot of fun. It is difficult to maintain a hard target focus when shooting it though as I am so used to staying sight focused with my Limited gun. I would need to shoot Open exclusively for at least several months to make a hard target focus the standard when shooting. But I am just an Open “Tourist” using it only at these indoor matches.

 

On the first stage of the match I had a nose dive jam that took 2 – 3 seconds to clear. This was on my 155mm magazine that I use the majority of the time. I think the spring finally gave up the ghost on that mag. I have never changed the spring in that mag and it has lasted quite a long time so it’s time to replace it anyway. I decommissioned the 155 and used my 140’s for the rest of the match which worked flawlessly.

 

The concrete floors in this range are pretty slippery and I had several instances where I tried to accelerate hard out of positions and ended up slipping instead. I didn’t stumble or fall while slipping but it did cause my footwork to get a little screwed up. Not being able to haul ass properly in these slippery conditions is frustrating, but there isn’t much I can do about it. Overall it was a fun evening of shooting with friends.  

[PatJones]

Last night I shot the indoor match at Whistling Pines. I shot Open that night with my reworked trigger job. The trigger worked flawlessly all night and I was able to do some very aggressive blasting. Running that dot gun at full throttle is a lot of fun. It is difficult to maintain a hard target focus when shooting it though as I am so used to staying sight focused with my Limited gun. I would need to shoot Open exclusively for at least several months to make a hard target focus the standard when shooting. But I am just an Open “Tourist” using it only at these indoor matches.
 
On the first stage of the match I had a nose dive jam that took 2 – 3 seconds to clear. This was on my 155mm magazine that I use the majority of the time. I think the spring finally gave up the ghost on that mag. I have never changed the spring in that mag and it has lasted quite a long time so it’s time to replace it anyway. I decommissioned the 155 and used my 140’s for the rest of the match which worked flawlessly.
 
The concrete floors in this range are pretty slippery and I had several instances where I tried to accelerate hard out of positions and ended up slipping instead. I didn’t stumble or fall while slipping but it did cause my footwork to get a little screwed up. Not being able to haul ass properly in these slippery conditions is frustrating, but there isn’t much I can do about it. Overall it was a fun evening of shooting with friends.  

If you can wipe off the soles of your shoes before just before shooting, it makes a big difference indoors. Shooting indoors creates a lot of dust on the floor that sticks to our shoes. At Trigger Time we have de-lead wipes at the exit to the range and I occasionally grab one on the way to the line if there's particularly aggressive movement in the stage.

[CHA-LEE]

Yes, this range also has the floor mounted "Sticky Sheets" that you can walk on to remove the dust from your soles and this usually works pretty good but not always. I do the "Sticky Sheet" prance before my stage runs to help in improving traction but by the time I walk to the starting position of the stage my shoes have picked up some dust. I also use my outdoor Salomon shoes as they produce better traction indoors than normal shoes. Slipping around is just part of the challenge when shooting indoors on slick surfaces.