CHA-LEE's Tale

[MrT_shootsAcz]

Thanks Cha-Lee!  This is a very helpful review.  I have been using the standard "grippers" and while grip strength has improved I'm still battling forearm fatigue with symptoms of tendonitis after long sessions.  I might have to give this a shot...

[cheby]

I injured my tendinitis with the captains of crash a few years ago. Daily dry fire did not help either. It took 6 months of physical therapy to recover. I also know a few people who went through the same experience. 

[CHA-LEE]

I had the day off yesterday so I scheduled some more gunsmithing time with Steve Pitt. We tackled the frame to slide fit along with the barrel bushing. Given that there wasn’t a ton of material needing removed to fit the slide to the frame we decided to do it with files instead of the Mill. File fitting these parts was a lot of fun. The repetitive process of measuring, test fitting, and precision filing took me a couple of hours to get it done. Chasing the high spots or interference between the parts was an interesting puzzle to solve as it moved around quite a bit during the process. Since I am using a frame that had its frame rail width cut from a prior build we couldn’t get the side to side fit perfect. But the vertical fit is dead on. The side to side fit isn’t horrible but it has a little bit of movement. The most surprising thing during this fitting process was how “lumpy” the slide rails were. To the naked eye the slide rails looked pretty good. But that was quickly proven wrong as the fitting process started. After that we got the barrel bushing OD fit using a lathe then fit the ID using a reamer.

 

The day before the Slide to Frame fit I finished the trigger job and extractor stuff. I also fitted a lot of the other small piece parts. This way it’s ready to shoot once the major component fitting is done.  The next major component to fit is the barrel. We should be able to get that completed during the next session along with some other cosmetic stuff. If we keep on the pace we are going this bad boy should be able to shoot after the next session. It will still be a long way from being “Done” but it will be cool to shoot it.

 

I have been waffling back and forth on what coating I want to use on this blaster. I want to do Hard Chrome as I like how that looks and holds up to holster wear. Hard Chrome worked great on my EAA/Tanfo blasters. But I am also not sure if I want a blaster that looks dramatically different than my current Burnt Bronze/Black Cerakote setup. Another option would be a PVD coating like IonBond. I have several weeks before I really need to make that decision. That should give me enough time to settle on a coating.

[CHA-LEE]

This Saturday was the HPPS match that I run. We got lucky with the weather this weekend so it was an enjoyable time on the range. As always I was running around all morning long getting stages setup and other things ironed out. I was only able to look at the first few stages from a shooting perspective before we got the match started. This bit me in the butt later in the match when we got to the 5th stage and it had some options in how to shoot it. It’s hard to perform my best at these matches because I can’t 100% focus on my shooting due to being the MD and trying to make the match happen. Oh well, this is my donation to the sport. I shot the first stage poorly with at least 2 seconds worth of misses on steel plates. Then I rushed the shooting on a target behind a barrel and pushed a shot into the barrel which resulted in a miss. This wasn’t the best way to start a match but I didn’t let it get me down. I pulled it together for fairly decent runs on the next three stages with only a few minor issues here or there.

 

On the 5th stage I had a complete mental blunder. There were several different options in target engagement order on the second half of the stage and I kept waffling between plans. I was running out of time before needing to shoot the stage and I picked a plan that ended up being the wrong plan. The plan optimized the movement but made the shooting way harder than it had to be so it was slower. I only had 2 shooters ahead of me before I settled on that plan so I didn’t have enough time to program it effectively either. I hit all of the targets when I shot the stage but I wasted at least 2 seconds in slow shooting and choppy execution.

 

The last three stages of the match were all on the same berm and short speed shoot setups. These stages were almost identical to the three speed shoots at the 2016 USPSA nationals. Stage 6 was a single popper at 10 yards. Stage 7 was a Bill Drill at 7 yards, and Stage 8 was 3 plates, reload, and 3 plates. To be honest, I was looking forward to the draw to the popper stage all week. I have been working on improving my hand speed during draws for a while now and this was going to be a good test of that effort. My performance on that stage was Rock Start status with a .69 Draw. To be fair this wasn’t a precisely aimed shot. As soon as the gun appeared in front of my face I broke the shot while focusing on the target. So I technically point shot the popper . Had I waited for the seeing the sights clearly it would have been another tenth of a second or more. But on this kind of stage you had to let it rip with aggression. Much to my surprise I was the only pistol shooter to have a sub 1 second draw on this stage. I thought for sure more people would post up some .80 - .90 results. I guess doing a Rocket Draw on demand was a little too much for most to execute. I did pretty good on the bill drill with a 1.79 down 1 C. I didn’t want to go crazy on that stage so I shot it kind of reserved. Then I completely flopped on the plates. I needed an extra shot on all but one plate simply because I was aiming at “White” instead of the middle of the plate. Oh well it is what it is.

 

Overall it was fun shooting with friends and the weather was nice for February. I know I could have done better on most of the stages if I wasn’t stuck in an MD mindset worrying about everything else. But as I said, this is my donation to the sport. I was looking forward to shooting the Weld USPSA match on Sunday, but that got canceled due to high winds. Its strange to have a match canceled over wind, but when I checked the forecast it was calling for 25-30mph winds. The same crazy windy forecast was shown for my practice range so it didn’t make sense to go out and practice either.

 

Since there wasn’t any shooting to be had on Sunday I got some more work done on my #4 Limited blaster. We spent about 4 hours on the barrel fit and got it about 90% done. Fitting the width and length of the barrel hood to the breach face took a decent chunk of time. The majority of the time was spent on getting the barrel lockup height setup. There was a lot of testing with the barrel in and out then taking a little bit of material off of the barrel hood and lugs where it was bottoming out. After that was done we cut the lower barrel lugs using a hand cutter then started testing the fit with different size gauge pins. We had to call it quits for the day before we got the lower lugs fit to the .200 diameter slide stop. Finishing the lower lugs shouldn’t take too much more time then we can get the barrel link figured out. I am planning on doing some more work on this bad boy on Wednesday. After that session all of the major components should be fit properly and only cosmetic finishing will be needed. It’s exciting to have this bad boy almost ready to shoot. It will be interesting to see how it turns out once it’s all done.

 

This past weekend was my last opportunity to shoot before I head out to the Space City Challenge in Houston Texas. This will be my first major match of the year. I have been keeping an eye on the weather and its looking like it will be rainy down there during the match. This is a bummer as nobody likes slopping around in the mud. But it is what it is. I will pack my rain gear and embrace the suck if need be. Shooting in less than optimal weather is part of the process when competing at majors. If anything, this will be a good test of my rain gear for the 2018 shooting season.

[Ryan626]

Hey Charlie, 

 

I have been watching this Houston area chiropractor on YouTube and people swear by him.   I'm not from the area but I do plan to visit a buddy in Houston in the future and I may try it.

 

 

 

 

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I attended the Space City Challenge in Houston Texas. The weather forecast was looking grim leading up to this match, but it turned out a lot better than it could have been. I flew in on Friday morning and while driving to the range one of my shooting buddies sent me a text stating “Be prepared for mud….”. I was prepared for muddy range conditions, but I wasn’t excited about slopping around in the mud for the next three days. When I got to the range it was muddy in areas, but it wasn’t horrible. My spirits lifted and I was able to check out the stages and watch the Friday shooters without getting very muddy at all. Sure there were some sloppy areas to avoid or navigate through, but overall it was WAY better than I thought it was going to be. I spent about 4 hours on the range checking out stages and reuniting with friends. The only real bummer of the day was that I totally forgot to put on sunscreen and paid the price that evening when I looked in the mirror back at the hotel. You would think I have learned that lesson by now. But no, I am still stupid at times.

 

I was scheduled to shoot the weekend schedule with 8 stages on Saturday and 4 on Sunday. But that schedule was changed on Friday by the MD. The new marching orders were to get the whole match shot on Saturday because the rain forecast was really bad for Sunday. Getting this info on Friday was great because it allowed me to stock up on provisions for the next day properly.

 

Saturday morning came and the range survived another night with only a little bit of a sprinkle. The shooting areas within the stages were in really good shape from a mud perspective. But you still had to keep your eye out for sloppy mud pits around the range outside of the shooting areas. My hat is off to the match staff for doing their best to make the stages as user friendly as possible given the wet conditions. This day of shooting had significant changes in lighting, wind, and some drizzle at times. It was overcast most of the day which made seeing my sights a challenge. I racked up 3 misses for the whole match which was a bummer. The real bummer is that they were all uncalled due to the poor lighting. Two of them were hard cover misses where my bullet went through a barrel just before hitting the A zone. These barrel misses were less than an inch into the barrel both times which would have been A’s if the shot was biased a little bit further away from the barrel. The third miss was on an upside down head shot where I must have pulled the shot off target low. This was a strange one because I was shooting very deliberately at it and it was still an uncalled miss. The lighting was really overcast during that run so once again seeing my sights to call my shots was very difficult. Overall, the overcast lighting made me shoot most of the match like a wimp as I had to resort to point shooting a lot of the time. This kind of lighting is where the Manny Mini Dot would have been much better than this Dawson front sight. That is until the mini dot would break in half mid match. So I am not missing it bad enough to switch back.

 

The other challenging thing to deal with was the wind. We had a constant 15 – 20mph wind with gusts much faster than that. This caused quite a few false starts and reshoots because steel kept getting blown down. It also made a lot of the paper targets move around in the wind while shooting the stage. The wind really didn’t bother me while I shot the stages and it actually helped make it feel nice from a temperature perspective.

 

We got all of the stages shot on Saturday just in time. It wasn’t more than 10 – 15 minutes after we finished the last stage that it started to rain for REAL giving the whole range a good soak. We got super lucky that day to only get sprinkled on a few times while shooting the match. The next day, as forecast it was raining like crazy the whole morning. Even though it’s difficult shooting 12 stages in one day, I would much rather do that in somewhat decent range conditions verses try shooting in super rainy conditions.  When the results were tallied I ended up taking first in Limited. It’s cool to start off the 2018 Major Match season with a win, especially in poor lighting conditions. My buddy Blake was able to get almost all of my stage runs on video. Thanks for the video help!!! Now it’s time to rest and get my gear unpacked and reworked for the coming weekend.

 

 

[B_RAD]

I always enjoy watching your videos. 

 

[cheby]

I enjoy these videos as well.

Cha-lee - what is your practice routine? Do you still dry fire? How much do you live fire? From this journal It looks like you just shoot matches.

Thanks 

Edited February 28, 2018 by cheby

[CHA-LEE]

Oh there is plenty of practice going on both Live and Dry between all of these matches. My practice schedule isn't very consistent from one session to the next. I am always changing it up to fix different things or just have fun. The things I practice are heavily biased to what is kicking my butt at matches.

[Brophy-J]

Registration opens for the New Mexico Section Championship in a few hours. You going?

[CHA-LEE]

2 hours ago, Brophy-J said:

Registration opens for the New Mexico Section Championship in a few hours. You going?

 

Unfortunately I am not going to be able to make it to the NM Section match this year. It falls on the same weekend as the Colorado State Champs and there is too much distance between the two events to try to shoot one on Friday and the other on Sat/Sun. From my house to the Jal range hosting the NM Section is an 10 hour drive one way. There is no way I can shoot the whole match on Friday then immediately try to drive 10 hours home. If I was a robot, then that might work. But I am only human. I checked flights for that location and nothing is close enough to make sense either as it would take about 10 hours of airport, flying, and driving to get it done as well. Not to mention flights costing close to $400. I spent quite a bit of time looking at all of the flying and driving options to shoot both matches, but it just doesn't make sense to try and force it to happen. Technically it can be done, but I would shoot both matches like crap because I would be wasted from all the crazy travel between them. 

 

We need to invent a teleportation device so we can eliminate these travel time problems

[CHA-LEE]

Ok……… I have been delaying this post as long as I could while getting things ready for this announcement……..

 

For the last 2 years I have been writing a practical shooting training book. This book is finally finished and its call Path of Focused Effort, A Training Guide for Practical Shooting. The genesis of this effort was triggered by the mountain of training content I was attempting to convey while presenting training classes. There simply wasn’t enough time to convey all of the content during the class without consuming a lot of limited class time. The initial goal of this book was to enable the students to read and understand my practical shooting & training concepts before attending my class. This morphed into deploying an end to end solution for all of the skills and challenge we face while competing in practical shooting events. The content within this book can stand on its own and there is no need to attend one of my classes to “Get it”. But I am using this book as the foundation of the training process and concepts I deliver while presenting classes. I don’t like to toot my own horn very often, but I wish that I had THIS book when I started this game 10 years ago. It would have saved me a lot of time and $$$ while honing the processes of maximizing performance. As with anything training related, magic skill pills don’t exist. You still need to put in a coordinated and diligent effort to improve your performance. This is why I named the book “Path of Focused Effort”.  

 

I have released a new website to market my training and book sales. The website link is listed below. Check out the website and let me know what you think. I am not a big fan of self-promotion or high pressure sales tactics. If you find value in proven effective training content, my book will help you achieve maximum performance. If you are looking for the next “magic pill” to fix all of your issues without concerted effort needed, then this book isn’t going to make much of any difference in your performance. This is probably the worst sales pitch ever, but I lack the ability to beat around the bush. Enjoy the adventure and stay safe!!!

 

www.bigpandaperformance.com

 

[MemphisMechanic]

Excellent news, Charlie. Looking forward to seeing what kinds of reactions it gets.

[StuckinMS]

26 minutes ago, CHA-LEE said:

Ok……… I have been delaying this post as long as I could while getting things ready for this announcement……..

 

For the last 2 years I have been writing a practical shooting training book. This book is finally finished and its call Path of Focused Effort, A Training Guide for Practical Shooting. The genesis of this effort was triggered by the mountain of training content I was attempting to convey while presenting training classes. There simply wasn’t enough time to convey all of the content during the class without consuming a lot of limited class time. The initial goal of this book was to enable the students to read and understand my practical shooting & training concepts before attending my class. This morphed into deploying an end to end solution for all of the skills and challenge we face while competing in practical shooting events. The content within this book can stand on its own and there is no need to attend one of my classes to “Get it”. But I am using this book as the foundation of the training process and concepts I deliver while presenting classes. I don’t like to toot my own horn very often, but I wish that I had THIS book when I started this game 10 years ago. It would have saved me a lot of time and $$$ while honing the processes of maximizing performance. As with anything training related, magic skill pills don’t exist. You still need to put in a coordinated and diligent effort to improve your performance. This is why I named the book “Path of Focused Effort”.  

 

I have released a new website to market my training and book sales. The website link is listed below. Check out the website and let me know what you think. I am not a big fan of self-promotion or high pressure sales tactics. If you find value in proven effective training content, my book will help you achieve maximum performance. If you are looking for the next “magic pill” to fix all of your issues without concerted effort needed, then this book isn’t going to make much of any difference in your performance. This is probably the worst sales pitch ever, but I lack the ability to beat around the bush. Enjoy the adventure and stay safe!!!

 

www.bigpandaperformance.com

 

Well said,  will evaluate your link and provide feedback as requested.  Thanks 

[StuckinMS]

I believe the website is very straightforward and to the point.  I actually did some work in Parker, CO back in 2010.  Visited again last year with the family, and am trying to figure out how to move.  Keep up the good work and know that the amount of dedication you have exhibited is inspiring to those reading your post and taking your classes.  I would like to possibly talk about taking a class with my son if you work with junior shooters.  We would be interested in doing it after nationals this year if your weather will still allow it.  He has earned his first slot at nationals this year.

 

Thanks and keep up the hard work!

[CrashDodson]

I like the name of the book

[CHA-LEE]

2 hours ago, StuckinMS said:

I believe the website is very straightforward and to the point.  I actually did some work in Parker, CO back in 2010.  Visited again last year with the family, and am trying to figure out how to move.  Keep up the good work and know that the amount of dedication you have exhibited is inspiring to those reading your post and taking your classes.  I would like to possibly talk about taking a class with my son if you work with junior shooters.  We would be interested in doing it after nationals this year if your weather will still allow it.  He has earned his first slot at nationals this year.

 

Thanks and keep up the hard work!

Sure. Send me a message via my website and we will see if something can be worked out.

[Vanniek71]

2 hours ago, StuckinMS said:

I believe the website is very straightforward and to the point.  I actually did some work in Parker, CO back in 2010.  Visited again last year with the family, and am trying to figure out how to move.  Keep up the good work and know that the amount of dedication you have exhibited is inspiring to those reading your post and taking your classes.  I would like to possibly talk about taking a class with my son if you work with junior shooters.  We would be interested in doing it after nationals this year if your weather will still allow it.  He has earned his first slot at nationals this year.

 

Thanks and keep up the hard work!

Man who developed that website? It looks really good! ???

 

Also an unbiased review of the book so far, since I am about 1/4 way through - great info and invaluable. Like Big Panda says it’s not going to GM you by reading it, but if you get off your ass and follow it, and do the work - it CAN help you get to GM. 

[ATLDave]

Book ordered.  The effective sales pitch, CHA-LEE, was your long history of thousands of helpful, insightful, well-written posts on this board, not the one announcing the book itself.  I can't wait to read it.

[funkymonkey1111]

Charlie,

 

Are you going to have the books at matches at all?

[CHA-LEE]

26 minutes ago, funkymonkey1111 said:

Charlie,

 

Are you going to have the books at matches at all?

 

Yes I will be bringing some to sell at the local Colorado matches I attend. Its too cumbersome to haul a bunch of books around while flying to out of state matches though.

[funkymonkey1111]

8 minutes ago, CHA-LEE said:

 

Yes I will be bringing some to sell at the local Colorado matches I attend. Its too cumbersome to haul a bunch of books around while flying to out of state matches though.

Thanks--i should've been more clear--the Colorado matches

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend was a busy one. On Saturday I stepped outside my comfort zone and attended a Practical Rifle match. I have a “3Gun” AR that I built several years ago and have been tinkering on it for a long time. I decided it was time to bust it out for my very first Rifle match. This AR is setup for Limited division with an MRO red dot 1x sight. The match used Hit Factor scoring and everyone was scored minor power factor. So shooting A’s was important verses the normal 3Gun rage blasting of 2 anywhere on brown. I felt like a fish out of water while attending this match. My gun handling was poor and I didn’t figure out the best way to grip the gun until 2 stages in. I shot like a wimp poking out as many A’s as I could. The good news is that I only dropped a hand full of C’s and 1 D for the whole match. My AR also ran like a well oiled machined without any issues. The bad is that the 150 yard gong steel destroyed me. I had never shot steel at that distance with this AR and never a flasher type of target like that. To make it worse my electronic ears were dampening the shot sound long enough that I couldn’t hear the ding either. So I shot and hit the same steel several times without needing to because I couldn’t hear the hits. Overall it was fun to run around and shoot stuff with my AR. It’s a totally different skill set though and to get good at that would require a lot of training time which I don’t have to waste on that platform.

 

One major reason why I shot that match is that I had an opportunity to do some pistol practice after the Rifle match. We were able to leave one of the rifle field courses up and use it for practice. I used this practice to break in my #4 Limited blaster. I sighted it in and it was shooting all rounds touching groups at 10 yards. When shooting it on the stage the first issue I noticed was the super shiny back of the slide. The whole gun is still naked without any coating and the shiny steel was blinding on the back of the slide. I used a sharpie marker to black out the back of the slide and that helped a lot. The second issue was the beaver tail tang not being far back enough which lead to the slide chopping on the top of my strong hand. I shot the gun about 250 rounds and a decent size blister was forming on the top of my strong hand by that point. The third issue was that it would get a nose dive jam at the upper portion of the feed ramp once it got dirty. The feed ramp angle on this barrel hasn’t been tuned yet and it’s a pretty steep angle. I had to keep oiling the feed ramp to keep it feeding properly during the practice.

 

Even though I had some issues with the #4 blaster on its maiden practice voyage none of the issues are serious. Teething pains are always expected when working up a new blaster. I already got the beaver tail extended so that issue should be resolved. I also changed the barrel feed ramp angle and depth so that should also be resolved. I will have to wait on getting the gun coated before the “shiny” issue will be resolve. Until them a sharpie black out will need to do the job. I was able to get all of this stuff reworked on Sunday evening so I am going to take a chance and run the #4 blaster at the indoor USPSA match at Whistling Pines on Monday night.

 

On Sunday I attended the local PSAC match. It was windy all day and we had a couple of instances where the wind blew down targets, walls and barrels. I shot my #2 blaster at this match and tried by best to keep a gun cover on it but it still got filled with dust. By the end of the match it was cycling pretty slow and racking the slide felt crunchy. Luckily it didn’t have any failures during the match but I wouldn’t trust it for another stage run after the end of the match. I shot the match pretty solid that day with really good points and aggressive stage times. The only blunder I had was dropping my mag out of the gun accidentally in the middle of a target array. The start position had the gun staged loaded on top of a barrel. When I picked up the gun I got a funky grip with my support hand I felt the heel of my palm touching the mag release. As expected after one of the shots it recoiled enough to hit the mag release and out went the mag. This cost me at least 2.5 seconds to recover from which was worth about a mike no shoot in lost match points. Oh well, it happens to us all at some point.

 

Tonight I am heading to the Whistling Pines match to give the #4 blaster its first match run. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the nose dive jam issue is resolved in live fire. We will see how it goes

[CHA-LEE]

I shot the indoor match at Whistling Pines last night with the #4 Limited blaster. The gun ran without any issues. The feeding didn’t feel clunky at all. The tip of the bullets were hitting just above the middle part of the feed ramp which is right where they need to hit. The beaver tail was better but it’s still a little narrow on the back portion. The top of my strong hand was still getting beat up by the slide on a couple of stages. Adding a little more width to the back of the beaver tail should resolve that problem. This match was only about 80 rounds total so it really wasn’t an extensive test of the feeding while the gun is dirty. I need to get several hundred rounds on it without cleaning or lubing to see if the feeding issue is really resolved. This is fine because I need to get a few thousand rounds on this blaster to fully break it in before I can get it coated.

 

I shot the match ok with a couple of mistakes. I had 2 misses for the match. The first was on a head shot at about 10 yards that I called marginal but it ended up being a miss. Seeing iron sights effectively indoors still remains difficult. The second miss was on another head shot on the classifier while shooting weak hand only. I mashed the crap out of the trigger during the shot and pulled it way low right into the hardcover. I knew immediately that it was a miss, but since it was a Virginia Count stage I couldn’t make it up. It sucks to eat misses like that.

 

It was fun to get some more rounds down the pipe on the #4 blaster. It’s also nice to get the issues resolved one at a time. It won’t be long before this blaster is fully broken in, coated and ready for action.

 

[CHA-LEE]

I had the day off yesterday and took that opportunity to do some more shooting with the #4 Limited blaster. My primary goal during this session was to shoot it some more to see if the high feed ramp nose dive jam issue would happen when the gun is dirty. At about 300 rounds in, the feeding started to get really clunky while shooting and it would replicate the high nose dive jam when racking by hand. I suspected that I didn’t add enough feed ramp angle on my first attempt to resolve the issue and this testing session confirmed it. The good news is that the wider beaver tail has resolved the slide bite issue. That and the accuracy is still looking good when I do my part.

 

During the practice session I also did some slow motion video of the shooting to confirm the spring combo. I thought that I had a 20lb hammer spring installed but it was an 18lb hammer spring once I took it apart. The lighter hammer spring was causing a little too much slide velocity and more muzzle flip. The 10lb recoil spring was also causing some excessive muzzle dip after the slide snaps forward. This may be a compounded issue because of the hammer spring being too light as my other Limited blasters using the 20lb/10lb combo cycle properly. I have swapped the hammer spring with a 20lb and also put a 9lb recoil spring in there for the next round of slow motion muzzle flip testing. It will also be interesting to see if the 9lb recoil spring will negatively affect the accuracy like it does on my other Limited blasters. I will check that as well the next time I get out to the range.

 

This coming weekend I am going to Salt Lake City to present a training class. It will be fun to do some training and watch the light bulb go on during the class. Hopefully I can also do some blasting myself during the class to get some more rounds through the #4 and do some more spring testing. We will see how it goes. Presenting the class is the top priority so if I don’t get time to do additional testing it is what it is.  

Edited March 8, 2018 by CHA-LEE