ihatepickles' shooting log

[ihatepickles]

Picked up a S&W 625JM and I'm going to try and keep things simple. Did an action job on it with the help of some springs and things are smooth at 7 lbs now. Bobbed the hammer and I'm running a Blade Tech rig with a Speed-E-Loader on a CR Speed belt. Nice setup for me.

Load development... has been a hassle due to lack of primers. I ended up finding 2000 Federal match primers to get me started. I'm running a 200 gr RN moly bullet at 170 PF with Clays. I also worked out a less accurate 130 PF load with Clays, I need to tweak this load a bit because I'm unhappy with giving up accuracy for softer recoil.

I shot a local outlaw match with this rig and got crushed by a SHO/WHO stage. Who knew my first outing with this rig would focus on my worst skill? Guess I should've know. Took 10 shots for 5 poppers of various size around a barricade in around 20 seconds. Ugh.

Same match, shot a surprise stage pretty well. I called a shot good that ended up being bad, don't really know why. The rest of the stage went well, including not engaging the surprise no-shoot on a drop turner. It was around 5 seconds for 5 shots including opening a door.

last stage of the match, seated start from concealment but I didn't have anything decent cover garment other than my shirt which slowed my draw way down. There were 5 poppers partially protected by no-shoots and 1 paper. I needed 8 shots due to missing the first two pieces of steel, I don't remember calling my shots at all... I bet that's why I missed. I was around 12 seconds on this stage.

It's the same ol' lesson, hits are faster than misses.

I might pick up a 627 for ICORE, haven't decided yet. In the meantime I'm going to build a SSD 1911 since my current 1911's are all bull barrel setups. I'm thinking Caspian frame and slide.

[ihatepickles]

I got to the range yesterday and worked paper for the entire time. I first zeroed a new front sight to my S&W 625 and then I got on with the 100% humidity and fairly moderate temps in the high 70's. The summer heat and humidity is going to be hard on me this year.

The batteries in my electronic muffs died after 5 minutes at the range so I got a slightly different experience that I've become accustomed to. I nearly decided to work some steel to see if using electronic muffs were affecting my discipline to not listen for hits on the steel. I stuck with my paper only plan and resolved to turn my muffs off the next time I shot steel instead.

I left my timer at home...

I'm trying to spend my precious practice ammo on shot calling and movement drills. It's good and bad I suppose but I often go into vaporlock when I'm working these drills. Since I'm working on shot calling, I'm making up any non-A hit I feel I've fired. The issue however, is mentally managing my revolver's ammo status. So a typical scenario for me is something like:

"Engage T1 and T2 from 15 yard line, Engage T3 and T4 from 10 yard line."

I need all kinds of practice with my revolver reloads as well and I like running stages like this. If I get my required hits my plan works out pretty well and I really only end up sweating the reload. If I take my makeup shot though, about a quarter of the time the wheels come off the bus and I end up with a loud click on a spent chamber. Nothing in the world of shooting sports is as loud as an impedent click. I've so far resisted the urge to count shots, I try and make my plan based on number of targets in the array and designate my reloads at a certain point in the COF. I usually have a plan B reload scheduled as well. I'm finding with sloppy revolver work I have to occasionally rely on plan C reloads, which is rediculous and a person might as well just count their shots at that point.

The plan A, plan B, plan C reloads came from my time shooting Production division and I thought it'd apply well to Revolver division given the limited capacity. It still applies I suppose, but due to many things outside of my control (high round cound stages, 3 targets in an array, etc...) the penalty for sloppiness is much greater. For example a makeup shot in Production rarely changed my reload schedule. Pretty much every makeup shot in Revolver blows the entire schedule out of the window. Managing the pre-stage jitters on a 12 round stage is hard for me, I need more confidence in my shooting.

On an up-note, I'm calling shots well. I occasionally still drop a shot into the ether though, and if I had any idea where to begin troubleshooting that I would. Calling an A and scoring D is confusing. However, I'm overall doing a pretty good job of calling the shot.

I'm still using my 170 PF load and finding that I'm getting some bullet movement within the case while firing. Bullets are inching forward in the case under recoil, the 6th round is .020" longer than before it was under recoil. I'm putting a reasonable crimp on the round, .452" + .020". Haven't played with this yet but I'm going to sort this out before I worry about a reduced PF load for ICORE. There's only so much time in the day to play with guns.

I placed an order for a 4500 count of Billy Bullets' 230gr .452" offering. Dealing with Rudy was a nice experience. I'm shocked when I hear about people doing business this way and if you want to know what I'm talking about, I suggest you call Billy Bullets and place an order. That's all the clues I'm going to give out, but it was a very positive transaction.

[ihatepickles]

I worked on dryfire last night after taping up the speaker holes on my timer so it wouldn't keep the whole house up at 11pm.

I felt my eyes were having a tough time getting great focus on the front blade during the whole session. More than once during the session I was focused on the target instead. Maybe it was the indoor lighting? Seemed like I spent most of my time reminding myself to use perfect front sight focus.

I worked on reduced 30 yard drills and 15 yard SHO/WHO. After 30 minutes I was struggling so I lowered the bar and did some basic drills. I spent 10 minutes working on natural point of aim and grip. I spent a few minutes with a bad grip and getting reset on the gun with a proper grip, simulating a crappy draw that needs to be fixed during the COF. I also think I need more work with my grip after a reload, I often end up much lower on the frame after a reload.

For reduced targets, I have some reduced size targets I bought from Chris Patty at CPWSA. These seem to be unavailable, I'm hoping I can find a new source as the 3 I have left are in sad shape. At 10 yards they look like 30 yard targets.

Regarding reloads, I'm currently doing strong hand reloads. Revolver goes into my weak hand with the cylinder open, weak thumb nails the ejection rod while the strong hand is collecting a new moonclip. I need some study material of hand position for these reloads, something still feels awkward and inconsistent.

[ihatepickles]

Went to the range tonight. Took 10 runs on the plate rack, had 6 clean runs which felt pretty feeble. My best run was around 4.5 seconds on 6 plates. I'm not dwelling as much on speed but rather accuracy. Those 4 runs with a plate left standing were humbling.

I ran a shorter strain screw tonight and didn't have any bad ignitions. The trigger is 6.25 lbs right now. I'd like to get that down a bit more, but for now it's acceptable. My longer strain screw keeps my trigger around 7.5 lbs. The Miculek spring is handy with the curved neck, but it seems like it changes the feel of the trigger pull. The weight of the trigger seems to build slightly until it finally breaks. My next experiment is to thin the mainspring as I don't think I can reliably shorten the strain screw anymore, there's hardly any curve left in the spring as it is.

So anyway, back to the range report. Not a great night really, I took 200 rounds and left with 100 rounds unfired. After the plates I did movement drills and focused on breaking an A zone shot at 10 yards while I moving into a box. I seemed to be dropping shots low during this session.

I've need to rebuild my grip, I mean the way I'm gripping the revo (although I'll mod the grip too, more on that later). What I have now isn't consistent. The revo doesn't feel as full in my hand as an auto does, but I don't want closed backstrap grips so I can stay close to the trigger and cylinder latch. My weak hand doesn't have a good pocket to fit into. It's there on a perfect grip/draw, but otherwise it slides off my strong hand under recoil. My weak hand is wrapping under the revo, this doesn't happen to me with an auto either. I think some pictures might help, I just need to find my tripod to make that happen.

There's a void along my palm crease while gripping the revo. I'm going to bust out the epoxy putty and make the grip ugly, but hopefully making it more solid in my hand. Glad the grips are $15 Hogues instead of some nice piece of wood I'd have talk myself into mangling.

[ihatepickles]

Took 10 runs on the plate rack, taking 2 plates at a time. This gave me a lot of live fire practice to focus on draw and grip. I don't care at this point that my draw is in the 2 second range for a 15 yard shot. Sure it could be better, but I'm putting my first shot where it needs to go and that sets the tone for the rest of the string. So anyway, my draw and grip. It's... flakey. I'm working on it. I did manage a couple of great 2 shot rips that made me smile. My best was sub-2 seconds and I was hero or zeroing it to get there. Sometimes it just feels good to let it rip.

I spent the rest of the session working on reloads, moving reloads, moving shots. I'm considering switching to a weak hand reload. Not to sound completely idiotic, but sometimes I have trouble coordinating the strong hand reload and end up holding the cylinder parallel with the ground, not the best way to get a moon to drop into the chambers. With weak hand reloads, I find it's much easier to remember that basic little fact o' physics and it has the added benefit of (for whatever reason) giving me more peripheral reference. I don't get as tunnel visioned reloading weak hand, as I find sometimes happening with the strong hand reload, dunno why that is.

So back to the range, I had some good moving reloads. I only did advancing movements today, and had a 20 yard marker and the 12 yard marker. I timed my reloads while standing still, then hauling butt to get to the 12 yard mark, and then also while quick walking while reloading, and found the moving reload was a second quicker on 4 attempts.

My moving shots were done advancing from 20 yards to 12 yards. My very first run I had great hits, all A's and it felt smooth. I kept up the strong work and even had some good strings retreating while firing. I'm very happy with that mini-session, something about the heavy revo trigger and moving equals good shooting for me. Should give me some confidence on the next movement stage at a match.

Pretty good day at the range. Finished up the day with 2 strings at 12 yards, pushing as hard as I could. It was 2 paper targets 6 yards apart. I tore it up, at least by my standards. I had a 2.1 draw... with .26 split, .42 transition, and another .26 split for 3.04 seconds with 4 A's. Man that felt great, real progress I could track and smile about. I still lament my draw, but... I get my first hit in the A zone. I need more dryfire reps on the draw and I'm trying to keep positive rather than 'hating' my draw. I just need more reps to get there.

Today's theme was definitely hero or zero. It worked out in my favor.

[ihatepickles]

I forgot to update my log yesterday when I got home. I think I've found my ICORE load, couldn't get a handle on how fast they 230gr's were moving, too much direct sunlight for the chrony to function correctly. I need an IR skyscreen/box setup... The load feels soft and it shoots great 25 yard groups, offhand was 3" at that distance. I'll put it on the sandbags another day. It doesn't shoot to the same point of aim that the major PF load hits though, not sure how I'll resolve that in the end. Apparently my 625JM runs fast, as this load is 3.4gr of Clays, which my most forum accounts is very very soft. 3.9gr of Clays makes major for me though, which is again very low.

I didn't have a lot of practice ammo with me, so I did about 15 minutes of dryfire at the range and 15 minutes of live fire. I was a bit shocked how much different dryfire felt while at the range vs. home. Whatever I'm doing in dryfire at home it doesn't feel the same as dryfire at the range. Wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't felt it first hand. Someday soon I'll sort that out.

Live fire went pretty well but nothing stood out as super. Still, nothing was terrible either. In my mind I think this was just a baseline day for me. I had a good consistency with my draw, in 50 or so presentations today, I had a single terrible grip example. I think I still need more work with a grip and still haven't modded my grip for a better fit.

It was my 3rd day of livefire this week, the web of my strong hand is a bit bruised from recoil. Nothing terrible, but it's tender. I'm off to shoot an outlaw match today and that'll be my last livefire for 4 days.

[ihatepickles]

Shot the outlaw match, had 1 good stage, 1 'ok' stage, and 1 miserable stage.

The good stage I simply got all my hits, 9 shots on 7 paper and 2 steel, in 13-ish seconds with a reload. Could've gone faster, but glad I didn't, I'm not sure if my hits would've been there... my focus was wandering all day.

The terrible stage was stacking 3 shots on each paper target. There were 3 targets in 3 arrays. Well, like a moron I was counting shots and got confused. Never ever ever ever count shots. Maybe one day I'll learn. It was incredibly frustrating and I'm not sure I got my head back into the game. The first array had good hits, the second array was were I first paused to figure out what 3+3 was, the last part of the second array had bad hits. I somewhat pulled it together on the last array which was the furthest shot, around 18 yards.

The 'ok' stage was 3 arrays, reloads between the arrays. I'm 99% sure a popper was malfunctioning, I'm sure I got 3 hits on the popper with .45 170PF loads... but it's a outlaw redneck rules match and you can't really arb' anything. Oh well, wish I had a better idea of how well I could shoot that stage.

Had a few humorous discussions with the locals about how they had trouble seeing their bullets holes on the paper. I tried to let them know it was a bad habit, but I'm sure it fell on deaf ears. I really have to get on the new shift so I can hit some matches with a rulebook and some revolver shooters to observe.

The revolver ran great, I've fired about 1500 rounds since I picked it up and about 1000 of those have been with the 6.25 lbs trigger. No misfires. I'll consider this my baseline and grab a new spring to start thinning for an even lighter action, hopefully.

[ihatepickles]

I shot the Indiana Section this weekend and my performance was below average. I didn't want this to read like my excuse sheet, but I do want to document how badly I boned the prematch stuff. I shot poorly because I didn't do the work.

I didn't get my prematch chores squared away far enough in advance. I went out to the range to watch the Friday shooters for a while and scope the stages. Came away with a few good plans for breaking down the complicated stages. I forgot to register before leaving the range... one more thing to do Saturday morning.

Went home, had dinner with Dad since he was in town (I never miss dinner with Dad, the match be damned if needed) and headed home. Clipped my ammo, thankfully it was already inspected for primers and case gauging. Chamber checked every moon. Then I did a quick inspection of the revolver at midnight before the match and found the ejector rod had backed out. Crap. So around 2am I was satisfied I had a good working revolver and put everything away.

Got 20 minutes down the road and I'd forgotten the primers I was trading Hopalong so I had to turn back. I got to the range at 8:40am, registered, and got to the shooters meeting at 8:55am. At this point I'm not even holstered up. Gotta love the crack of noon start.

Well, I roll up to the first stage, shake hands with Hop and Bill, holster up, and did the walkthrough. I was about 4 shooters deep on the pain in the butt hardcover stage. I was frazzled. I was worked up. I had my head up my ass. Shot 5 Mikes. I don't mean this to sound so mercenary, but I really (REALLY) should've checked all my Mike targets. There's a good chance they pasted the front targets before I had a chance to see the Mikes, which would've gotten me a reshoot. I screwed up the stage bad due to nerves and wandering focus so I earned my score. I put the nail in the coffin by not using my rules knowledge to help me.

The rest of the match went decently for my skill level. I had one more poor stage and the rest I feel OK about. The shooting was tough, tons of reloads with arrays that usually didn't break easy for a revolver guy. It was a good match design, can't complain one bit about the challenges. My scores were always within 5 points of the stage winner, sometimes I had better scores than the stage winner. That's my silver lining. On the 8 stages I did decently on, I got a lot of points - usually right on par with the stage winner. My times were quite a bit slower.

Looking back onto my times, my reloads were the main culprit. Second problem was bad hits, but I was able to call the shots bad (for the most part) and take my makeups. It took a lot longer than the speedier guys. Oh well, I don't feel bad about that for now. My movement was OK when I was running all-out. Big big note for followup: work on moving reloads. I dropped my moons at least 3 times (not) hitting my moving reload.

So, for this match: Get some rest you moron. Reloads, reloads, reloads. Moving reloads, ad nasseum. Vision, I have the eyes to call my shots but I'm not using the info to influence my first shots.

That match was fun, even in defeat.

[ihatepickles]

A quick note before I forget, I looked through my range bag for the post-match tally. I fired 314 rounds at this match and the minimum roundcount was 268. So, I fired 46 extra shots.

That sure does sound like a lot, averaging out to around 4 1/2 extra shots per stage. My recollection of the match is that I began taking a lot more make up shots as the day wore on, I think fatigue was catching up to me at that point. The Revo sure does put a pounding on a shooter.

[ihatepickles]

I shot the local match today. I'd forgotten about my range diary until I got home, so not a lot of the memories stuck with me. On a personal note I shook hands with Chris Keen today, he was there too. I purged a ton of my shooting gear and wanted to get back into the game. I'm shooting an XDM 5.25 in Production.

I showed up early to set the stages up and get a little extra time to walk-through. The first two stages were decent, with 24 alphas and 4 charlies. The third stage saw the arrival of 5 more charlies. The fourth added 10 more charlies, I feel that was being lazy on the front sight.

The fifth stage plan fell apart and I scored a miss in the confusion. I can recall hammering 2 shots and never saw the sights on the second shot, which was my miss. The fifth stage was a bit of a memory stage and I lost track of 2 papers that had already been engaged. That put me at slide lock unexpectedly, and again at a second surprise slide lock later due to now being off-plan. One of my reloads hung up hard and I nearly dropped the mag.

The sixth stage had some really tough 18 yard swingers that were non-disappearing, I scored alpha-charlie and mike-mike. The misses were mine, I should've been more patient - again I can't recall seeing my sights locked on the target while firing. I also saw a better shooter game a much better sequence that saved a 10 yard sprint in favor of a wide leaning shot. I was the first shooter on this stage and I didn't decide on my plan until about 30 seconds before "make ready".

The match was fun, I need to get a dryfire regimen going though. Since I've been off for so long, I think it'd be best to start on grip and stance. I'll also build some dummy rounds and practice my mag changes. Shooting is fun.

[Chris Keen]

It was nice meeting you today.

Oh and by the way ...... I hate pickles too!

[ihatepickles]

I've been pretty busy with work in the last few months and my reloading chores have been neglected. It's really more of an issue with everything being torn down so the garage can get rewired and painted, so I don't have an easy option other than mounting the 650 to a 2x10 and clamping it to the kitchen table. That sounds like a lot of work so... I hit the range today with some Federal (American Eagle) 147gr stuff and really liked how the 5.25 ran. At $12 per 50 it's not the cheapest but it's right there with WWB bulk so I'm OK with it due to my current reloading issues.

I'm signed up for the Indiana SS/Prod/Revo Match at the end of October. This will probably be the only non-club match I'll get a shot at before winter, I don't think I can afford Area 2. I've been considering my goals a lot lately, both in shooting and in life. The life stuff is tougher to nail down, my feelings are all over the place. Luckily shooting is something I can get my head around more easily.

My 2012 season goals:

• Shoot at least two Level 3 matches in Production
• Stick with the XDM 5.25 platform the entire season
• Put 10 hours of practice in per week, dry and live fire
• Drop 50 lbs of dead weight
• Earn my USPSA M card in Production

With the remaining time in 2011, I feel I have a realistic shot at everything.

Anyway, this is a range diary so onto the shooting.

Top Shot gave me a bit of inspiration this week. I wasn't 100% sure on my natural point of aim (NPA). I'm a NRA HM in across the course rifle, I know the importance of NPA. On the pistol side of things, I truly had no idea where I was on this. I didn't really have a pre-canned NPA drill for pistol, so this is what I devised: I took a proper grip, aligned my sights on target, and then closed my eyes. I would hold the pistol on target while counting to 10 and then opening my eyes to see if alignment was right. I found I was off quite a bit usually, I didn't particularly care if I was off target but when the sights were not still aligned I knew I had a problem. I tweaked my grip a bit. I found I could eventually hold the sights aligned during this drill.

At that point I made the exercise more challenging. Sights aligned on target, close eyes, lower the pistol to low-ready, then present it onto the target again and open my eyes. That was a disaster, huge errors in alignment occurred. A big cause is something I do a lot, shrugging my shoulders into tension. I relaxed my shoulders, things got better but not good. I ran out of corrective ideas and decided to stop this exercise so I could think about the causes and some possible fixes. I believe NPA plays a big part in draws and first shots after mag changes.

I worked at the range on wide target transitions. I put most of my conscious effort into snapping my eyes onto the target and driving the gun to catch up with my eyes. From draw I had a great run on my 3rd attempt, 2 shots on 2 targets (10 yards away, 10 yards apart), reload, 2 shots on 2 targets and in 4.85 seconds with all Alphas (8.25 HF). I was flowing really well on that one, my average times on this over 10 runs was 6.5 seconds with 6 points down (5.23 HF). The lessons I took away were mostly that my mag changes need more work. I was mainly very precise on my first 4 shots and very sloppy on my last 4, in retrospect I was flustered by bad mag changes and trying to make up time. Bad mag changes are bad enough to warrant their own practice routines, no doubt. But letting the bad mag change impact my attitude for the rest of the run gets me fired up too.

I shot freestyle standing groups on 3 25 yard targets. I think I need to work on getting aggressive on the trigger on my tighter aimed shots. I find myself holding the sight picture for what feels like eternity waiting for the shot to break. Holding the sight picture for a long time has no positive effect on the groups as far as I can tell. In fact a lot of times it's all negative. In my head I'm thinking "fire the shot already, you're right on the A zone", having any complex thought like that while mid-run is bad as far as I'm concerned. I thought about this when I was driving home, I think I'm lightening up my weakhand grip on longer shots subconsciously. I've got that in my range logbook to work on next time, I'm hopeful that this is the cause of my meek triggerwork at longer range.

I ended the day with something I'm generally pretty good at, shooting while walking. I setup a barricade 10 yards off my 3 targets. Starting with the buzzer with no line of sight to the target and trying to find the right speed to powerwalk parallel to the targets but keep good hits. Firing fully across your body while staying parallel to the targets is tough. I know that in a match I wouldn't choose to do this, I'd favor a bit of an angle to keep my upper body more aligned with my hips. I had to accept a fair amount of pistol cant to shoot this setup halfway decently. The 5.25 is a new pistol to me, I'm still not 100% solid on the point of impact for canted shots so this was a good thing to work on. I like to leave the range on something positive since I usually I push myself into harder stuff early in the session.

Stopped off at the local shop on the way home to buy 2000 rounds of the Federal 147gr stuff. Pricey but I think it's the cheapest and softest recoiling mass produced reloadable stuff I can get. As always, saving the brass for once the garage is useable again.

I'm not great at logging my dryfire, but last week and this week combined I dryfired 8 sessions of 1 hour. I'm loosely flipping around in Steve Anderson's book getting familiar with a few drills. I'm not sure of the page numbers as it's not in front of me. I've got a piece of foam I'm taping over my timer speaker to cut down the volume of my obnoxious Pocket Pro II to help keep the natives less annoyed at my practice in the house.

Edited September 22, 2011 by ihatepickles

[ihatepickles]

I shot my first IDPA match today, the match was the classifier. If my math is right I scored 103+ seconds, classifying me Expert in ESP. The gun ran well and the 147 Federals are well zeroed to my setup. It was a really beautiful day, a bit too breezy, but nothing too bad. A nice fall day.

Stage 1 was smooth and I dropped 3 points, one of my Mozambique strings was 2.03 seconds down zero points and my sights were razor sharp focused (hell yeah!). Stage 2 had a jerky mag change but otherwise pretty nice, I dropped 2 points. Stage 3 was awkward. The RWR mag changes baffle me, clearly without some practice I'm going to screw these up pretty badly. I'm going to consider whether I want to put practice time towards IDPA right now, or just run these as USPSA practice matches. Anyway, Stage 3 dropped 6 points. I ended up face down in the gravel on the movement, so clearly I need to consider the range surface more carefully, my feet just slid out on the starting motion. I also did some mental exercises to ensure I kept the pistol vertical, 20 yards is a distance pistol cant would mess with the results. A fun match, but my goals are focused on USPSA for now. My raw time 98+ seconds and with the dropped points I should land in Expert. Master doesn't seem too far away.

Tomorrow I'm shooting the BGSL USPSA match, despite the drive. I blew out the side of my cleats working on movement in the backyard, so hopefully I don't repeat my faceplant with my less grippy trail runners. New cleats on the horizon I guess, gotta budget them out though...

[ihatepickles]

I shot the BGSL USPSA match today, it was a very fine day to be outdoors.

First stage was the classifier, CM 06-04 Flluffy's Revenge 1. I shot 5th or 6th in the order, and I can recall feeling nerves. Not sure why, I think it was just the first stage of the day nerves. I had a glacial draw, I think final time was 5.68 and 37 points. Pretty bummed with my performance on this one, it was a simple stage and my mind wasn't focused. I remember having some good sight pictures on the paper and some blurred sights on the steel (with a make up shot on steel as well).

Second stage was a symmetrical stage with 15 feet of lateral movement. Eight paper targets with some no-shoots and a wide transition in cramped space. This was a nice stage, very good shooting test. I had a slow draw but a quick and accurate first shot, if that makes sense. To elaborate, it took extra time to find the grip but presentation was quick. I was a bit nervous on the gravel with a fall fresh in my mind from yesterday. My mag change while moving sucked, it was terrible. I can recall having a really poor index on the magazine and missing the magwell twice. I would've been better served making a standing reload and hauling butt to the next position. Let me revise, I would've been better served practicing reloads last night instead of watching football.

Third stage was a cool stage for a Production shooter. There were 10 amoebas with some hardcover. The stage required 15 yards of lateral movement. Four targets were reachable on the left and six reachable from the right with a bit of leaning. Being right handed, I would've preferred moving left to right since I had a mag change. I chose right to left though with a quick step to the left as I changed mags. So 5 targets, mag change (and hop left), 2 targets, haul butt, 3 targets. I believe I broke this stage down as well as possible. My mag change was sketchy but I hit it. I think I was 17+ seconds and scored 94 points, hard to say where this puts me in the standings but I'm happy and hopeful for a top 5 stage finish.

Fourth stage was a V shaped stage, starting at the tip of the V and engaging 6 targets on each side of the ends of the V. Rearward movement required. My strategy was vanilla but correct, 4 shots through the window, mag change 2 at the end, reverse and forward again, 2 at the end, mag change, 4 through the window. My execution was poor though. The scheduled mag changes were solid, the best of my match. There was an unscheduled mag change though coming off the left side position, as soon as I started movement I ejected my mag through force of habit. Once I made the mistake my brain froze for a bit and I'm sure my movement slowed down too as I tried to figure out what to do. I did my unscheduled change after missing the magwell on first attempt. The targets were a hosefest at 6 feet and I scored all Alphas.

Fifth stage was the maze. Start near middle, hose 2 targets far left, move lateral 20 feet and engage 5 poppers. Four were FFPs and one was a reversed FFP, that's such a poor design in my opinion. Rearward facing FFPs don't always fall correctly. Oh well. Proceed down the middle, hang a left for 2 paper and 3 poppers. Move back to the middle and advance and hang a right for 1 hoser paper, 2 10 yard papers, and a 7 yard swinger. Fun stage. Each of my 2 mag changes were solid, despite movement. This is a guess, because I'm only realizing it now as I write this, but I think by the 5th stage I'd finally gotten my head fully into the game. I felt my movement was good, my visual patience was poor, and my grip came apart a bit on the first set of poppers. I hurried a few shots that I didn't have good front sight focus on but made them up with slight penalty. The swinger was bad, I believe I 2 Charlie'ed it. It was my favorite stage for the fun factor though. I also had to shoot first on this stage, and I think it helped. I felt a bit of extra nervousness so I spent a lot of time watching the previous squad shoot it. By the time I stepped to the starting position my plan was ingrained well and I didn't struggle.

Next weekend is the Silver Creek USPSA match. I'll be drilling on mag changes all week long. I may shoot an outlaw match as well this weekend, trigger time is hard to pass up. I really have to get my range membership renewed, right now I have no place to go to practice live fire with movement.

[GentlemanJim]

Mr Pickles

You were gone for so long....

Its real nice to see you back

Jim

[steel1212]

FYI that forward faller that was set to fall rear ward was setup wrong and wasn't noticed by me until it was to late. Sorry about that. It caught me as well as I watched it fall instead of moving on cost me a few seconds.

[ihatepickles]

Jim, even when I wasn't around I still had my eye on you...

Corey, no sweat man. It was a really good match regardless. See ya at Silver Creek if you're around.

[steel1212]

Jim, even when I wasn't around I still had my eye on you...

Corey, no sweat man. It was a really good match regardless. See ya at Silver Creek if you're around.

Yup I'll be there. Dave puts on a hell of a good match!

[ihatepickles]

Results posted: 6th place Production with 89 Alphas and 11 Charlies. 96% of the available points, the gurus tell me that's about right. Gotta work on my mag changes until I'm sick of it. Then I'll work on mag changes a bit more.

Edited October 3, 2011 by ihatepickles

[ihatepickles]

I'm so damned frustrated right now with my mag changes. I've put 2 hours in tonight and I feel worse than when I started.

[ihatepickles]

I attended a 1 stage practice match at Silver Creek. It was 19 rounds for 95 points. They had 4 pieces of steel and a drop turner on the left. On the right, 4 paper and a plate rack of 6. Between the left and right was about 9 yards of lateral.

The first run was 18+ seconds down 12 points with 4 makeups. My mag changes were poor. My movement was fast but the extra shots tanked it..

Second run I pushed as hard as I could, 14 seconds down 24 points. The mag changes were fast. The shooting was poor.

Third and fourth run I was 17+ and 15+ seconds, down 10 points. The 17 second run had a badly missed magazine change, I didn't rotate the magwell to where I could see it. The 15 second run had 2 acceptable mag changes and a really good rip on the 4 steels to activate the turner. I took a few other runs at it but the light had gotten bad and I mostly focused on methodical livefire mag changes.

Traffic sucks with the bridge issues here in the 'Ville or I would've had an earlier start and more shooting. Cleaned the XDM for the first time, right at 2000 rounds. So far it's been reliable without a single issue. It is holding zero perfectly and it eats everything I've thrown at it. I really like the Comp-Tac holster coming from a Bladetech DOH perspective. Wish I'd used a higher holster in competition long ago, I definitely prefer it. I ordered some new grip tape, the Dawson tape that came on the gun has lost it's grip. I bought some TruGrip and an Xtreme Grip, I figure I'll experiment and see what I like. I'm completely dependent on grip tape now, I have no idea how I shot without it.

My mini vacation is over, back to work tomorrow. I'm going to put an hour of dryfire in each night after work. I decided to skip the outlaw match on Saturday in favor of helping setup our club match. Club match on Sunday at Silver Creek. The outlaw match isn't very challenging and it usually leaves me frustrated at what it could've been if not for their squabbling politics.

[ihatepickles]

I dryfire practiced my mag changes for 30 minutes. A particular frustrating moment was when I realized I was going through the motions without focus. I switched to some wide transition drills instead. I finished the night with a dozen table starts. I don't feel too verbose tonight, just documenting the work.

[monicataliani]

I dryfire practiced my mag changes for 30 minutes. A particular frustrating moment was when I realized I was going through the motions without focus. I switched to some wide transition drills instead. I finished the night with a dozen table starts. I don't feel too verbose tonight, just documenting the work.

I feel you on this! By the time I have worked 10-12 hours and taken care of all the stuff I have to do every day it is hard to find time. Then when I do, I am so tired that I have a hard time focusing. I don't really have any suggestions to help, but wanted to say good for you for making yourself practice even if you weren't feeling up to it. That shows your dedication. Hang in there!

[38supPat]

If you find you are dong bad practice like blowing mag changes slow down. Do a bunch at 50% speed and work on perfect technique and then pick the speed up again once you are hitting them consistently again. If that doesnt work, stop and do something else. There's no point practicing badly.

[ihatepickles]

I shot the Silver Creek match and have mixed feelings. It was a really nice day and I had fun. I was really sloppy though breaking shots. I think I had 6 Mikes and at least that many Deltas.

The field courses were cool, they were setup to favor movement. My mag changes are still lacking, I'm lowering the gun too much. I feel like I really need more live fire practice on my mag changes. The dryfire mag changes and live fire are still 2 different things for me and this is probably a mental approach to practice versus what's going through my head when I'm shooting.

Results usually aren't posted until Wednesday, but I'm going to guess I only hit 70% of the available points.