James Flowers

[JFlowers]

Third match with the revolver. Scores show good hits on all but one stage, but the times are putting me in the bottom of the lineup. Devon worked with me some and showed me a number of things I was doing that were burning time, especially in the reloads.

Local Match - Rowan County Wildlife Club - April 11, 2009

Stage 1 - Classifier "After Work Blues"

The first position of the classifier went well. Moved to the second position and missed the second steel which forced me to do a standing reload. The third position also went well. Points looked good but time was horrible. Then to make matters worse, when the targets were scored - my miss on the steel hit the paper target so I could have taken the steel and one shot on the paper without the reload and been fine.

Stage 2

Last stage of the day and the wheels came off. Lots of silly misses. Dumped a round from a speedloader and got my target pattern off badly. Need more dryfire reloading practice.

Stage 3

First stage of the day. Remeber to beat Scott Perman who designed this monstrosity! Shot the stage ok, except for one target. Two low shots meant two mikes and two no-shoots. This was the center target over the high barricade. Dumped a round from a speedloader here as well.

Stage 4

This is suppose to be a stage at Area 6. Sort of a bastardized Melody Line. One freestyle, reload, One Strong. Second String One Weak. Two misses, both weak hand. Time was horrible, but I got the points and that was enough to push this stage up to about 50% and be the only stage I was not 50 out of 51 on.

Stage 5

John always designs good stages. Had a couple of make up shots on the steel plates, but overall a good run, just slow as sin. Stages with long runs between shooting positions should make up for the slow reloads, but not yet.

[John2A]

Stage 3

First stage of the day. Remeber to beat Scott Perman who designed this monstrosity! Shot the stage ok, except for one target. Two low shots meant two mikes and two no-shoots. This was the center target over the high barricade. Dumped a round from a speedloader here as well.

I think there are a lot of people that wanted to beat Scott for that stage. Great stage and fun as all get out to shoot.

I got to see the layout on Friday night and thought Ok not too bad, well that all went out the window when I heard the BEEP.

[JFlowers]

DRYFIRE 4/15/2009

Goal I - Reload. 100 reloads.

Worked on the reload Devon showed me last weekend. Had lots of trouble with doing different things with my hands at the same time. By the end of the session, it had smoothed out to where my right hand was finding the next load as my left thumb dumped the empties.

Goal II - 50 D6R6 @ 10 secs

From surrender, draw, shoot six, reload, shoot six. Not every pass was under the beep, but the majority were. Need to continue to dryfire and smooth this process out.

[JFlowers]

Fourth match with the revolver. Scores show good hits on all but classifier (of course!). Times are beginning to settle down. No more stages with huge times, instead the times are even, if still way too long, about 25 seconds longer than my Open Gun times.

The really bad thing is the smoother, faster reload I worked on dryfiring all week just went flying out the window when the buzzer went off.

Local Match - Competitive Shooter of Statesville - April 19, 2009

Stage 1 - Open field course

Steel in the center, six targets on each side. This stage went well. I blew one reload and got only 5 rounds in the gun and took a miss rather than reload again.

Stage 2 - Scott's House stage

Drew to the left target. Dumped 4 live rounds and reloaded for the six targets on the right (strong hand around the wall). Shot the left second and third target moving into position, then the fourth weak hand. Then cleared the back 5 targets and two poppers. Only 1 'D' in the run and that was on the target I took weak handed.

Stage 3 - Classifier 99-07

Since I was setting up stages I picked the classifier. 3 Strings of 6 rounds each with no reloads on the clock. Perfect for finally getting a good classifier in. NO, could not do that. The center target with no shoots, I managed a hit on each no shoot.

Stage 4 - James' Madness

Open field course with too many misses for targets that were wide open. But the reloads were smooth with no dropped rounds.

Seeing keyholing on occassion. Not sure if its gun or ammo related. Need to start investigating.