Askomiko

[askomiko]

I'm going to European championships. Quite a training motivation boost!

Today, I continued on the same topics, and videoed again. Now my left foot stayed down, yay. But I think I might be a bit faster when running without gun, that needs to be changed.

[askomiko]

Next match on sunday. Day before yesterday, the gun stopped working, it became manually operated open gun, wouldn't feed the next round properly. I cleaned it, and yesterday it worked perfectly. Whew, I guess I need to keep it a bit more oiled up.

Today will be the 5th day in row spent on range. Powder reservoir is quickly diminishing, the budget restraint manifests itself. Perhaps I should go to the range without ammo some day. Big scale dry firing, which is exactly what I've been doing before or after shooting live fire on the range. Videoing and checking things afterwards seems somewhat useful. Slow motion splitscreen or double image videos, hehe. I now usually manage not to leave the left foot like that.

I wish I had stationary steel targets to save the patching time. But then the ammo consumption would triple, uh oh.

[askomiko]

Note to self: Great two threads on movement: http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29373&st=0&p=339411& http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=25498&hl=

When going to right, I lean to the right, then just lift my right foot and start from there. I've gotta try this cross-stepping-thingy tomorrow.

Pic: a short distance with hard acceleration = just gets harder to stop. Needs more testing.

Edited June 10, 2010 by askomiko

[askomiko]

A match from yesterday. First stage was a 9 round short course, with a plate and 4 targets with a no shoot swinger in front of them. A bit "uncertain" or hesitating start, I could've shot it faster. But still ok. Second stage had 4 targets far away, 35 meters, and then an equally long run to the next 4 targets. I had one mike on the longest targets, which is stupid, as I shot 3 rounds for that target. So I made up a bad shot with another bad shot, ugh. Then there was a 24 round stage, (the first one in video) which I started with a plan which I now regocnize as a very stupid one: 25 rounds in gun, when there was enough space to do a reload. I almost succeeded. I entered the second position wrong, and engaged the targets in wrong order, and that made me use my only spare round, which I would have needed in the end, as you can see form the video...

Then the next one, a start with thumbs placed on the wall, a simple stage with high hit factor. The targets were covered with thick plastic, because of the rain, which was very annoying. Too many make-up shots here. The next stage was a a short one with uncomfy position in the end -> get down to your belly and shoot. I chose not to, and instead bend over like you see in the video, and won the stage by 0.12s and two points, which accounted for a whopping 8% difference before the 2nd place!

The last one was a long course. Nice open targets in the start, and then pretty small partial targets for the rest. Without those, it would have been a mad hose-fest. (Which is great of course.. ) Perhaps this was better, as I remembered to aim..

Those two misses hit me pretty hard. Well, there must always be some room for improvement. The most important being: get the damn points!

And here's the video:

Edited June 14, 2010 by askomiko

[askomiko]

The video here:

Match from yesterday: one stage win, one crash and burn, one slightly failed stage (lost the dot and spent a week finding it, and then ran the gun dry), and the rest with basic performance.

On a funny side note, a squad mate shot one very close target with so fast split time (open gun) that you couldn't hear two shots, it was just a bit louder boom. And you can't hear it on video either, only in super slow motion you can hear them separately. And the video shows that the approximate split time was 0.08 -> 25 frames per second:

1st frame: a smoke cloud above the gun=the bullet has left some time ago

2nd frame: nothing

3rd: a fire ball=the 2nd bullet has just left the barrel

Awesome!

Video:

Stage 1: A very fast and close run and gun thingy. The challenge was to resist going madly too fast and get misses. Incredibly slow draw, gotta fix that.

Stage 2: The crash and burn. I was sure of my hits when shooting, and then at the targets. 1 miss and two N/S. I was " , I did not shoot those, they must be someone else's bullet holes!" But I guess they weren't.

Stage 3: this one I won, a simple stage.

Stage 4: simple again

Stage 5: A bit more challenging stage. There were 1 paper and 4 plates in about 20 meters. The plates were hidden behind a steel no shoot-target, if you shot from the starting position, so they were very tight shots. You could also decide to drop down in the left and right spots and shoot them from there, the no shoot target didn't bother then. But it is obviously very slow to get down and then up again, and as most people don't practise shooting pistol while lying down, the shooting isn't comfortable either. The three poppers in the middle were only visible from the low center port. Notice my super elegant low port shooting style...

In my run, something went wrong... I just lost the dot, and thought "is it broken?". I guess that it was not, I just lost it. Weird. Never happened before in a basic standing stance... Then I forgot to reload and ran the gun dry. Ugh. At least I got the last damn poppers without trouble.

Edited June 21, 2010 by askomiko

[askomiko]

I'm exothermic. Today, it was around +31c/87f, and shooting was so easy and stable. It was the same thing with baseball (or actually, finnish baseball, which is different): hot weather=hit the ball to the moon, +10c/50f = barely to the middle field. Now a cold .

I've been working on my draw. The key seems to be "get the hand moving". A sharp start, instead of a smooth start makes for a much faster time, while still not rushing the sight picture any more than before. Also, unloaded starts. I now like unloaded starts, mag off the belt. My goal is to get it to a steady 1.8 second from 15 meters. I can load the gun pretty fast, but finding the dot on target is slow. I have the slide racker on the right side, and the slowest part for me is getting the gun from racking position into proper sight picture. Any tips for that?

I've finally got the book "With winning in mind". So.... "I am in the top 10 of Finnish open nationals this year."

Edited July 8, 2010 by askomiko

[askomiko]

Shooting steel today, in wonderful +32c weather. Stationary steel plus lots of ammo = . Gotta have more of this. Shooting steel is not allowed on my regular range, that's a serious flaw. Stationary steel targets would triple my ammo consumption.

I am in the top 10 of Finnish open nationals this year.

Edited July 12, 2010 by askomiko

[askomiko]

A match. This time I didn't do any huge mistakes. No mikes, no penalties, no brain farts. All stages except 6th had no shoots, but I managed to stay off them. I only shot one stage badly, and that was enough to drop me from 2nd to 4th. Good competition, with a world class shooter winning the open. Nothing went seriously wrong, and I got good performances, specially towards the end, which left a very good feeling. It's also fun to get a good performance and be happy about your match, and then look at the stage percents and see that you're getting 70%. That's the problem with those Really Good Shooters, they rape the percentages of us mortals! (And I want to do just that some day!)

Stages as I shot them:

Stage5: I failed with the last steels and lost out around 20 match points.

Stage6: It might have been a better idea to shoot the steel once, and then shoot the static targets. Anyway, I would have won without that last make-up shot, which was not needed.

Stage7: One shot per target, tight shots if you decided not to move in the shooting area.

Stage1: Table start, two targets on extreme right with a N/S in between, then two poppers with a N/S popper in between, and again two targets in extreme left with a N/S.

Stage2: The longest stage, I was a bit too slow. Long distance shots. The first steel which I shot form the end of the first corridor took too long, I hit it with 3rd round.

Stage3: A fun little finger excercise. Mag in place, chamber empty, I got a good start, 1.13s. I shot the last targets differently from our squad. There were 3 targets from the window, one straight ahead and high, and other two low on the ground, left and right of the window. Everyone else shot them left to right, which was a bad decision IMO, and so I shot the high one first, because you could see it earlier, and then the transition on the low ones was easier, when the high and longer target doesn't mess you up.

Stage4: Again I shot a bit differently from others, deciding to take targets in a different order so I could shoot them on the move. This one felt good, but as an afterthought, it might have been better to shoot the popper on the right in the beginning, not at the end. But that would have been a difficult shot on the move, and slowing down would have eaten the benefit I got from it. I didn't quite hit my foot placement and had to hunt the targets a bit through the very small shooting ports. A very fun stage. The target I shot last: I forgot about it, I originally wanted to shoot it as I come to the shooting ports. Luckily I remembered about it while shooting the 4 poppers.. It would've been great if the hat cam worked, but it seems to have died.

And here's the video:

Argh, there's something wrong with youtube, it shows slow speed. Arr, I'll try re-upload later.

E: Now it works!

Edited July 26, 2010 by askomiko

[askomiko]

Yay!

Standard championships are over, 111 competitors in class, I was 9th. The first stage of the match, and the first stage of the year with a standard gun for me, and I won it. The next wasn't so good, but not a disaster either. I had two misses in the match, the latter was a really stupid one - a close and wide open swinger as a last target of the stage, I threw two shots at it, and felt almost immediately that there was a miss, but I did not pick it up for some idiot reason. I brought the gun back up, then down, and then up once again, and still didn't take the extra shot. I guess the first paper target mixed my head, since that one felt like I shot a mike no shoot, when in reality I had two A's. I had to pause and check it after shooting 5 plates in between. So, that was a disaster stage. That stage alone cost me enough points to drop from 7th to 9th. I'm happy about my 9th place finish, but a proper focus would have gotten me higher, breaking 90% for the first time with a standard gun. The open shooting has definately improved my shooting this year!

Now, the highlight of the year, open championships is two weeks away... And then some other little match in few weeks, with just 1200 competitors, full of no-names like Grauffel, Kirsch, Hobdell and the rest. I will kick their asses! *cough*

Video (it is HD, you can click it and watch on youtube to get a bigger image):

Edited August 17, 2010 by askomiko

[askomiko]

Open championships are done. Heavy rain for the first two stages. Shooting open in rain is not very much fun, getting the lens full of water drops does not help. Mag changes were difficult, "whooops, there it flies, into the mud". 10 stages, 8 of which are on the video, the weather was so bad it would have killed the camera. It wasn't the smoothest match for me, too many mistakes.

Stages as seen on the video:

Stage1: This left the worst feeling of the day. 32 round memory stage. I had a good plan, and after the first mag change it all went down the drain. I wasn't supposed to change mag there, and I was supposed to skip the third shooting window completely, and shoot more from the fourth. But as I found myself changing the mag and shooting on the third window, my mind went blank. "What am I doing, which targets have I shot, where am I, how many rounds do I have, where are the targets..." And it shows on the video. Going slow motion, trying to figure out a new plan on the fly. Luckily, I ended up having holes in all targets, it was just slow.

Stage2: A great fun stage, with lots of movement. Targets on both sides, I'm especially proud of the fifth shot, which was a mini popper pretty far away, on the move.

Stage3: Simple stage, only problem was that the farthest targets were 50 yards away. For some weird reason, I had two mikes on the farthest one. I noticed while zeroing the gun, that with a 25m zero, the bullets go very high on 50 meters, almost over the target. I thought I aimed low enough, but it seems I didn't.

Stage4: Go forward, or don't.

Stage5: Super duper fast time, but one mike...

Stage6: I seem to have troubles with targets that are very close and low. Again, a loooooong movement, which is great, you don't see that too often in matches in my opinion.

Stage7: Fun plate fest.

Stage8: A stage with mini targets. I dropped a bit too many points here. The mini targets are a bit tricky to shoot.