Askomiko

[askomiko]

Greetings from Finland. We are sort of endangered species here, after two school shootings in one year politicians have pressed the "we have to do SOMETHING" -button, and it shows. Getting licenses for guns has been tightened, with doctor examinations and club membership requirements and other extra hoops. I figured a range diary can't hurt when proving that you really do the sport thing actively, so I might as well start to write this range diary here.

I've been shooting actively for .. maybe 4 years, this is my third summer competing in IPSC (and finnish reservist 3-gun). I shoot standard, at this moment with Tanfoglio HC limited custom, also know as EAA Witness Elite Limited in US. Standard/limited is my main focus, rifle, 3-gun and "long" range accuracy rifle (.308 Savage at the moment) come as a bonus.

Ranking as of 31.5.2009: 76.14%, which is A, for the first time. Just by 1.14%, but still. The ranking is different from US ranking, ours is calculated as average of 4 highest match results from the last 5 matches (lev2 and up) you have attended.

2007: Shooting minor, with CZ Tactical sports in 9mm. 60%'ish scores.

2008: Started the season with CZ TS .40, switched to current Tanfoglio in summer. I attended pretty much every IPSC pistol match there was in the country, totalling 8 pistol matches, 1 IPSC rifle match and 7 Finnish reservist 3-gun matches (SRA from now on). Here's a video from a funny little SRA match in the middle of a forest: http://www.askomiko.com/sissicup3.mp4 Exotic! Usually they are just like IPSC matches, in normal ranges, only that coming from the military backround, military clothes are ok. And the stage description might say "enemy." Ooh, so un-politically correct...

Considering that the summer is short up here in north, it's quite a lot.

2008 IPSC pistol matches:

24.2.2008, Indoor match in my home town. 52%. The winner was on fire, as usual, 2nd place finisher got 79%. I got 53%.

18.5.2008, Bigger match in Kouvola. 59%. Looking the videos now, my shooting looks somehow ankward and sloppy.

8.6.2008, Medium match in Loimaa. 71%.

29.6.2008, National Standard and production championship, Mikkeli, 53%

6.7.2008, Medium match, Jyväskylä. 71%. First match with the Tanfoglio. Don't remember much anymore, some stupid mistakes.

20.7.2008, National open and modified championship, Sipoo. 59%. The gun killed me, the sear had worn so that the hammer wouldn't stay back, so I was shooting a single action revolv.. pistol. I remember being very very pissed, but then I won a CZ Shadow from the lottery at the end. Sort of saved the day (month).

27.7.2008, Medium match, Vaasa. 83%. I felt good here, got my first stage win too. Video here. http://www.askomiko.com/rasti3.wmv

25.8.2008, Medium match, Porkkala. 53%. I remember being pissed off on the way back. Got at least one major malfunction on a speed shoot stage.

There's somehow a 10-15% drop in the results when our 6 time national champion and nordic champion is in a match and shooting limited, let's just say he just rules his class. Year is a long time, and I felt quite big improvement this year. In the Vaasa match, things kind of worked. Compared to the first match of the year, there was a noticeable difference. At least I hope so.

Just for fun, here's a summary of all stages, SRA and IPSC from 2007-2008. Excel reveals a slighty upward trend across the 166 stages, 64 stages in 2007 and 102 stages in 2008.

2009 so far:

31.1.2009. Indoor match SRA.

22.2.2009. Indoor match, 65%.

14.3.2009. SRA, Mikkeli. Cold. Fun.

4.4.2009. SRA. Cold. Fun. Did somewhat good. I have to put this video of one stage because I beat my dear shooting buddy so much on this one: http://www.askomiko.com/kivaari_heh.mp4 First 4 paper targets maybe 25m, rest are 100 meters away, some paper on the mid port, the rest are steel. Oh, and yes, that is ice, which explains the non-exploding "granny on ice" - style movements.

26.4.2009. SRA in the middle of a forest, again.

3.5.2009. SRA in a proper shooting range. Bad.

16.5.2009. Bigger IPSC pistol match, Kouvola. 74.3%. I shot steadily, finishing 10th-15th for all stages, except... Almost zeroing 2nd biggest stage due to shooting 4 misses in two swingers hurt a lot. Add fumbling with the reload.. Crash and burn. Without that.. Well, there's always room for "IF":ing. Bought 8100 bullets here, gearing up for hopefully lots of training in the summer.

24.5.2009. Medium IPSC pistol match, Ilmajoki. 80%. Pretty good here, only two own mistakes: one miss and one standing reload. Video: http://www.askomiko.com/Pop.mp4

7.6.2009. Medium IPSC pistol match. 89%. Zero mistakes, only 17 C's in the whole match = 468/485=96.5% of available points. Felt real good. But after the match, I had to do some IF'ing again: two nose dives cost me 2 seconds in total, dropping me from 3rd place finish to 4th... Video here: http://www.askomiko.com/ppm.mp4

So, this season has started good, the gun works (eek, am I allowed to say this aloud, the gods will punish me), and I feel I do better and better on each match.

Borrowed from Seth: "My current focus is on my own physical conditioning and improving my speed and efficiency on range." Yes, movement.. The aforementioned standard national/nordic champ is from our club, and it's great to watch him (and the other national champ (production) shoot and move. Yeah, a good club, eh. ) He is just insane in pretty much all aspects of the game, but what I'd most like to improve for now, is to be ready to shoot when I arrive a at a shooting position. In addition to that he can shoot while moving, moves fast as hell, jumps into ankward shooting positions, and gets up from those like a electric rabbit on a spring, has splits of an UZI and never misses a shot. Well, that's a long list, but lets start somewhere.. The main thing after all, is to constantly improve, not to beat others, just your dear shooting buddy, who's always within 5% and will own me if I stop.

Edited June 24, 2009 by askomiko

[askomiko]

We have an indoor range in town, (a rare thing in Finland) but because of work schedules I missed most of the club practises there. That might be good too, the lead levels might be a bit unhealthy there. But some shooting in the long winter is necessary, I remember making lots of progress in winter 2006-2007, when I could attend all practise sessions there.

Training sessions of outdoor season 2009 so far:

23.4. 120 rounds

26.4. SRA match

30.4. 300 rounds

3.5. SRA match

7.5. 160 rounds

8.5. 50 rounds

9.5. 100 rounds

14.5 50 rounds

15.5. 230 rounds

16.5. Bigger pistol match

17.5. Medium IPSC rifle match. Sucked hard.

22.5 300 rounds

24.5 Medium pistol match.

Vacation! Lets go shoot! ->

26.5. 200 rounds

28.5. 200 rounds

29.5. 230 rounds

30.5. 50 rounds

<- Vacation

1.6. 230 rounds

5.6. 160 rounds

7.6. Medium pistol match

13.6. 150 rounds

17.6. 200 rounds

22.6. 320 rounds. This was today, so I remember something about it:

Drill 0: Accuracy shooting from 20m

Drill 1: start with gun pointing at target #1, at beep, run few meters right and engage target #2. Repeat to left from there.

Drill 2: add reload on the way.

Drill 3: Three targets with or without tight N/S's. Is it faster to shoot them from 20 meters or run closer and shoot. I ended up preferring to shoot them from 20m.

Drill 4: draw while sprinting forward. Focusing on the exploding start. And with cleats, the range grass is now mud.

Drill 5: shoot target while moving towards it

Drill 5: shoot target while backing away from it

Drill 5: shoot targets while moving left to right

Drill 5: shoot targets while moving right to left

Drill 5: emptying mags at full speed from 10m

Drill 6: accuracy shooting

Plus a few training sessions on another range, I haven't written those down since there's no book on that range. Better start writing those down too.

Next matches:

5.7.2009 Medium pistol match

12.7.2009 Medium

25.-26.7.2009 IPSC Pistol National championships

1.-2.8.2009 SRA Championships. Biggest match of the year, in competitor numbers, and this year it is held in our neighbourhood, so we are building it for the whole week.

(9.8.2009 IPSC Rifle national championships. Lets see if I go or not.)

I like how all those big matches are grouped, 3 weekends of high quality shooting.

Whoa, lots of text.

Edited June 22, 2009 by askomiko

[askomiko]

Here's a training spoof video I made to spice up the upcoming DVD of Season 2009 matches: http://www.askomiko.com/Montage03_pieni.mp4

[Al Capizzo]

That is an interesting way your region has for figuring your classification. No doubt more representative of a shooters abilities than our (USPSA) system of classification. Are the Tanfoglio guns popular, or at least common, in your area? As I'm sure you know, they are a small but I think growing segment in U.S.

[askomiko]

I guess I could say Tanfoglios are somewhat common, but I feel STI's outnumber them. CZ's are common too, Tactical sports/Standard IPSC in standard, but especially SP-01 (shadow) in production. Production has boomed in recent years, nowadays there usually are a few competitors more in Production than limited. Now to thnk of it, I don't have a clear idea what guns are most popular now in standard. On our club, many shooters have Tanfoglio, maybe it has something to do with the champ dude shooting one, and he ends up with the chore of tuning ours too. Most likely it is the price though, CZ TS is 1000e, Tanfoglio is 1200e, STI's Edge is 2100e. And having owned the CZ TS in both 9mm and .40, I feel the Tanfoglio is more accurate and vastly easier gun to shoot than the CZ in .40. And the CZ is ugly too. (That makes it very suitable for ruthless dremelling though... )

I like Tanfoglio because it's so ergonomic, it fits my hand so well and has a low profile slide. Every time I try STI's, I end up hurting the base of my right thumb with the safety lever and dragging the slide with my thumb, they just don't fit. I almost wish they did, with so many cool guns available in that platform. Moving thumbs to clear the slide is no big problem, but the safety lever just kills me, I can't figure out how to grip the gun so that it doesn't gnaw my bones. Dremel to the rescue I guess...

Edited June 23, 2009 by askomiko

[askomiko]

Back from shooting, this time with my friend's new Oberland AR-15 with 24" bull barrel. Nice! My plan for tempting him to join the dark side is working...

[askomiko]

Dry firing with a loaned open gun I might buy. I ended up in the dark side myself!

[askomiko]

Yahoo, open is fun fun fun! One box of ammo with the open blaster, my first time ever with a proper open gun, perhaps the funniest 15 minutes I've ever spent on range. First round and the pressure blast on my face was a bit of a surprise.

I have a bad feeling about this...

[askomiko]

I caught the only hours of rain in the whole week. 220 rounds, back in the iron sight -world.

I tested my ammo with chrono, and noticed that magtech primers gave about 177pf, whereas same load with remington primers was ~174.

Some freestyle group shooting from 25m (to avoid getting wet in the rain..)

Strong hand only, 25 meters.

Weak hand only from 10m

Draw and engage 3 targets from 7 meters, comfortable 3.00s with all A's, then 2.5 with good hits, then 2.30s. Then I experimented going as fast as my trigger finger allowed, and ended up at 2.00, 1.95 and 1.86 with ~1.1 draw, but the hits were bad. My vision couldn't keep up, I couldn't see pretty much anything. But it was fun.

Moving back to 15 meters, I noticed that my focus on the front sight went blurry after the first shot, when shot my regular style, eg. I watch the spot where the front sight will land after the shot. So I experimented with looking at the front sight for it's whole range of movement, and noticed the the focus stays there, and the front sight is sharp when it comes back. But it felt weird to look at the bouncing arc. This definately needs more experimenting!

Edited June 28, 2009 by askomiko

[askomiko]

Yesterday: Few hundred rounds. Looking at the front sight all the time might be a good thing. This time I noticed the focus thing might have something to do with lighting too, the blur phenomenon was happening more when the sun was shining on the targets, not so much when it got cloudy.

Then, in the heart of night, I failed with the open gun, I tightened the C-more a bit too much and ruined the thread on the mount... I loaded my first batch of open ammo with VV 3n37 since I didn't find any 3n38 locally.

Today: Range session with our club, few rounds with standard gun, and few rounds with "almost c-more equipped" open gun. Open is still fun as hell. And I may have pushed one of our older shooters to the path leading to the dark side when I let him try the open blaster. "Hey, this is ridiculously fun."

Match coming on the weekend, I hope I can get some proper trigger time tomorrow, and not break anything.

Edited July 2, 2009 by askomiko

[askomiko]

Friday: Bang bang, open time.

Sunday: Match. Started out good, but got three misses in the last three stages. I would have won the biggest (32 rounds) stage without that one mike. Not a difficult target, I was just sloppy on that one. Oh well.. At least I can be happy that I wasn't very slow. Finished 6th in standard. In retrospect, having fun with the open might not be the best idea, as I remember not looking at the front sight at the stages. Overall, a good match, not too bad disasters, just those three annoying stupid mikes.

[askomiko]

Sunday: match. A bit of rain. First stage went bad, I felt like driving a tractor in freeway, no acceleration. Fumbled a reload and dropped the mag. Others were better, but with a few little mistakes. No penalties of misses though. Finished 7th, with clubmates 4th and 5th. = Team win. Looking forward to the next match, which is the championships, in two weeks. Forgot the video camera home, dammit! I also shot few stages with the open gun for fun. It's "#%¤ difficult to find the dot when doing anything other than basic upright shooting position!

Home at 3am, work at 8am, ugh. zzzz..

[askomiko]

Wednesday, getting ready for the championships, testing my ammo, and PF was way off. Another test batch is in order. Someone had brought a small barricade to the range, with high and low ports, awesome! Combined with the boxes I made earlier, I finally got some training done with ankward shooting positions, eg. leaning around the barricade, and shooting thru the low port. 300 rounds of fun, I've now learned not to bring out the open gun just before a match.

Edited July 22, 2009 by askomiko

[askomiko]

Some more basic shooting yesterday. I almost lost the hammer pin pin when I disaassembled the gun and sprayed it with brakleen over the kitchen sink. I thought the pin dropped there, so I emptied the .. whatever that is, the smell-locking-thing under the sink, which is full of disgusting goo. Well, it wasn't there. Note to self: take the pin completely out and put it to a safe place...

[askomiko]

Back from the match, with very disappointing results. Blegh.

I started out good, first two stages were ok, but then, incredibly stupid misses started appearing. Stepping to the line without a clear idea what you're doing is a recipe for total disaster. Somehow I just couldn't steer out of the tailspin of one miss per stage.

I just learned they're having a four week course on the range where the match was, first two with the match stages. I'd sooooo want to be there! 1000 rounds per day, one to four weeks... well, do the math.. I bet I wouldn't recognize myself after that.

The aforementioned shooting buddy beat me so hard it hurts.

Videos to come, as misses are invisible..

Edited July 26, 2009 by askomiko

[askomiko]

Here's the video of 4 stages (out of 12), feel free to comment: http://www.askomiko.com/mikko_suomussalmi.mp4

All stages had many different possibilites to engage them, so stage planning was important. And.. I failed in that department.

1st: One shot per paper target. This went fine in my opinion. I lost only one second to the stage winner. Six plates in the beginning, I had a brain fart in the start and stood still behind the car for too long. (My original plan was to shoot the plates from behind the car, drop mag and take another mag from the trunk and reload. Damn those first plans, they always seem to haunt me, I can't discard them properly..)

2nd: The 2nd biggest brain fart of the day. I shot last on the first stage, and first on this one, and my stage plan didn't have time to evolve into including reloads. Blegh...

3rd: Nice big stage. It might have been better to run clockwise, as that would have made it possible to engage more targets while moving.

4th: Last stage of the first day, and everything was ruined already, so I shot the popper 3 times just for fun after seeing the minor PF shooters struggle with it.

I have the mother of all brain farts on video too, but I didn't include it here.. I forgot to engage one target on a stage called "steel hell".. Which was exactly that. A forest made of poppers, tight no shoot poppers, and paper targets.. Ugh. Again, it was my stage plan that killed me. I had three competing plans while I stepped in the box, and as you can guess, they didn't merge properly on the fly.. So, 2 mikes and 1 proc.

I wish I had the 12th stage on video, that was fun. But it was arranged behind the berms for 270' shooting sector, so it was impossible to take video, unless you had a hat cam.. Last stage for me, and I had had a million misses already, so I shot it more carefully, but still managed to pull off one mike! That was just mind boggling. 27A 4C 1mike.. wtf.

Have a plan. See the front sight. It is really that simple. ARGH!

Edited July 28, 2009 by askomiko

[askomiko]

Moved to a new place, with a lovely little reloading room.

I've been shooting mostly open lately, and I've managed to shoot one practise stage with a somewhat proper "open" style, that being, fast. Otherwise, I'm faster with a standard gun than with my open blaster. I also complained to court about my permit for the open gun, which was only issued for 10 years. Just thinking about that makes me mad, our elected screwups are on a road to end shooting in our country.

One thing I hate about in open is the amount of powder it eats! I can only get about 800 rounds from one pound of powder. And of course it's illegal to store more than 4 pounds, so I have to trust that the store has some in stock.

Now, back to reloading, I'll make some 1000 rounds tonight and spend them later this week.

Edited August 25, 2009 by askomiko

[askomiko]

I shot a few hundred rounds with the open gun last friday, basically hosed like a madman and had fun. With my secret technique, I managed to shoot half a mag with 0.09-0.10 splits. Lots of noise and flame, what could be more fun. (I was kind of waiting for someone to run to the range and start yelling me not to shoot full auto gun there.)

Today I went to the range, trying to get familiar with standard gun again, but after maybe 80 rounds, the slide stop broke. So I ended up shooting 400 rounds with the open blaster once again. Basically two drills from several different distances:

1. Draw and shoot 3 targets from box A, move to box B and shoot 3 targets. Sideways movement. With and without reload. Trying to focus on keeping the gun up and getting ready to shoot as fast as possible.

2. Draw and shoot 3 targets. First without a par time, then with a par time. Knee deep in brass, I finally started to manage to keep somewhat good hits while picking up the pace. With the par time, I aimed to shoot with a steady pace, and fire the last shot precisely at the par beep. Around 13 meters, I used par times 3.00, 2.90, 2.70, fastest try around 2.4 with all hits but bad score. After a few par time runs it started to feel a lot easier to keep the steady pace and not lose the hits. On one round, I had every single split and transition exactly 0.27s, which was funny. Somehow aiming for the steady pace made things work better. Or just being knee deep in brass, I dunno...

Shooting open is just insanely fun. Standard feels so dull now... I planned to leave the open gun home, but luckily I took it anyway.

[askomiko]

Newest ranking says I'm at 82%, with 14 attended matches from previous 24 months, which is highest number of participated matches in the whole list. Yay.

Edit: No wait, there's one guy with 15 results. Damn.

Edited September 9, 2009 by askomiko

[askomiko]

We made some wall props to the range, yay! Finally, we can have something that at least resembles a basic stage, altough the targets are still only in line against the back berm in the static target holders.

Small match tomorrow. First match since the championship match, where I busted my knee, and it's been weird since. I hope I don't have to use whole of next season budget for a knee surgery.

[askomiko]

The 3-gun match went OK, and we won a fun little side event: rifle, shotgun and pistol on table, team of three shooters clean out array of steel plates on varying distances. Each shooter shoots a randomly selected gun. The lottery was good for us, since we all got our own guns.

I totally crashed a shotgun stage, which required use of one slug in the end. My shotgun reloading sucks. Other stages were ok, the last rifle stage even surprisingly good. I managed to eliminate a lot of wasted slow movement there by getting to the right spot and stopping there without stepping too far and then having to go back, which is my usual weakness. My feet need a memory of their own, so I can program them to run to the exact spot and then just shoot.

Edited September 14, 2009 by askomiko

[askomiko]

Yay! First match with open gun. We were supposed to have a limited team, but my limited gun started acting up just before the match, and then one team member got sick. So I shot in open.

Summary: Fun as hell.

First stage was crappy, trigger freeze while moving thru windows-> return to shooting position.. argh. Got better after that. A few "almost" perfect stages, I want to practise a lot so I could get a perfect one some day.. This one left the best feeling: Video from Stage 1 (mp4)

I had the fastest time, 1.1s faster than the open winner. I finished 99.72% because of bad points. ("What, am I supposed to AIM too?!?" )

I was a bit worried about the partial targets right after the start, and I ended up taking two extra shots on them, as the first shots felt bad. (And if I remember right, they had only 2 holes...) I also checked the reload from video, it's about 1.1s, probably faster than I've ever done, anywhere. The end looks funny, like a small train puffing out smoke in there. I accomplished the goal of shooting "non stop" in the end.

Edited September 20, 2009 by askomiko

[askomiko]

Season is coming closer... I had a revelation, of something that is probably obvious to everyone, even to me, but I just hadn't done it before: shoot a complete accuracy practise session of several hundred rounds with left hand only, and you will learn a lot! At the end of the session, I even started hitting the target! And after few hundred rounds of WHO, shooting SHO felt SO easy. I've gotta do this again.

Before this, it's always been, "gahh, left hand practise... well ok, I'll do 20 rounds."

[askomiko]

I've forgotten to write to this diary, but I haven't stopped shooting! I got a spot to the European handgun championsships, so I've decided to practise more than in previous summers. Regular dry fire, regular live fire twice a week. That probably won't beat E. Grauffel, but I want improve and perform more constistently at my level.

Yesterday, live fire while focusing on movement. The leaning out while shooting the last target is a big time saver, and I've known that for years, but now it's the time to burn that into my mind as the default movement starting mode, not something I have to think about. "Remember to get going!"

Today, I will focus specially on getting ready to shoot as fast as possible after movement.

[askomiko]

Small targets and 3 hours focusing on shooting as soon as possible after movement, with video camera running to inspect my shooting afterwards. It's almost silly how much time I shaved from first runs of yesterday, with the same range setup. My movement looks so silly. It's almost as if I'm falling to the ground face first, but then move my legs just enough not to. It's not running, it's moonwalking. And when going to the left, my left hand looks like it's scraping the ground, like a gorilla's forearm. Only that my forearm is not gorilla shaped, more like spaghetti.

Things I spotted from the video, for future training: get a good solid stance after you're done moving, don't stand there like a ballerina with one foot. And break the grip and let the left hand swing free, when there is more than 3 steps. When going right, I now hold my grip with two hands on this maybe 4m transition, but not when going forward or left. A little bit longer movements, and then I'm smart enough not to run with both hands on the gun. But I have to program it into my head also for shorter distances like this.

Phew, that's a lot.

Here's a video of one of the runs, I ran stepped with those funny little steps, way too far on this one, but the gun fires on a proper time, not half a second after I see the target. Notice how I leave my left foot on air, that is stupid I think?

->

http://www.askomiko.com/1.88.mp4

Comments appreciated.

Edited June 4, 2010 by askomiko