Multi-gun match this month was... interesting for me to say the least. It was fun (as always), but I had some interesting problems and definitely picked up on some things that I need to work on.
The division I was shooting in is “Tactical Irons”, which means that all the guns I'm using have iron sights. Also, by the rules we're using any one A hit or any two hits on paper count as neutralizing the target and earns no penalty. There's a 5 second penalty for only one C/D hit, 10 second penalty for no hits, and a 15 second penalty for failure to engage.
Here's my match video:
Oh boy. There's so much to say about what happened at this match.
Rifle/Pistol
The procedure on this stage was starting down range in a shooting box, hands at sides. On start signal, grab the dummy with your weak hand and shoot the paper strong hand only. You then drop the dummy in the second shooting box, ground the pistol and retrieve your rifle (which is cold, safety on). Through the top port, shoot the six reactive steal down range at 50 yards (an RO called the hits), drop down to the low port and shoot the six again.... then there was a similar thing on the other end.
This stage just took forever-- for everyone. Many people had scores of more than two minutes. I think mine (with penalties) was around 4 or 5 minutes. It took a very long time. Shooting that steal at 50 yards was difficult. In some cases, my sight completely covered up the target. I didn't worry too much about getting all of my hits on that steal. I got some, and then moved on. Normally, I wouldn't do this, but I just didn't have the ammo with me-- 90 rounds (of which I used about 67). I didn't want to run out at the end. I definitely need work on my long range accuracy, but I decided this wasn't the place to acquire it. To tell you the truth, I was actually pleased that I hit anything at all considering I almost never practice with that rifle.
Shotgun Only
You know, I'm usually pretty good at shotgun shooting-- but not today! I got tripped up on several things. This is my instructor's gun. He's left handed, and the safety was switched to the other side. I kept fumbling with the safety. The aiming point is slightly different than the gun I usually use too-- also borrowed. Also for some reason, I was pulling to the left. Recoil anticipation? I'm not sure.
As always-- slow reloads.
On the positive side, you can see me dropping down several times here. I learned my lesson about proper stance last month and stayed at least reasonably low for most of the match. This was definitely an improvement and I'm happy about that.
Shotgun/Pistol
Welll.... the shotgun problems on this one were the same as the last stage, and I almost ran out of ammo. Eeek! That last shot I took was the last shell I had.
Transitioning to pistol was strange. I was slow and hesitant. Suddenly I have this thing that doesn't recoil and is super small! You can see me kind of hesitate there. However, I got all of my hits on this stage. :)
Overall, I think I did alright. I finished with 52% of the best score in my division and 32% of the best score overall. I think I can do better, and will do better in the future, but I definitely had fun.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Friday, April 8, 2011
April Pistol Match
Another great match out at Easter Nebraska Gun Club. This past weekend was our April Pistol match. As usual it was a blast and here I am doing my review of the match.
We had an RO class out at our range this time around-- congrats to those who participated and good luck on the exam! Anyway, because of the class we only had four stages today, but still definitely a ton of fun.
Stage 1: I designed this stage! Sabumnim helped me quite a bit, especially with making sure it was all good and safe/legal. This was my first stage of the day and as such it went alright but not great. I tend to be somewhat slower on my first stage. I finished 39/54.
Stage 2: This was Doug's stage. I did pretty well on it, I was happy with my time and with my accuracy. Both on this one and the last one I was hesitating too much. For instance, I would hesitate about putting a third shot on a target. I should either shoot and move on, or just move on, sitting there staring at the target is the worst thing to do. I bet I lost at least 3 or 4 seconds that way, maybe more. I finished 32/54.
Stage 3: I could have done this stage more accurately. I pulled two D's on this stage. I think I had three total D's for the match. In Production, I really don't want any, and as few C's as I can manage. Anyway, there were two targets at the back of the bay, and I was transitioning from extremely close to far and I yanked the trigger a couple times. Overall, I was happy with my time and was reasonably smooth, but I need to work on my trigger control. I finished 38/54.
Stage 4: This was the “Towers of Pain” stage. Targets are inside these pillars and when you shoot the popper they fall out. You know, by itself that isn't too hard to shoot-- but we had some technical difficulties with the activation system. I restarted this stage three times. The first time, the popper fell but didn't activate all of the targets. The second time, the popper wouldn't fall. I hit it about three times, center of mass. See... I can't stop myself for equipment malfunction and I didn't want to go on and call for calibration because if it went down in calibration that would mean three whole targets worth of penalties. Eventually they stopped me. The the third and final time around I got through it without error and actually did pretty well! :) I finished 29/55. (Making it my best stage of the day.
Overall, I did pretty mediocre. I mean, I didn't monumentally screw up-- but I also didn't do extremely well on any one stage. We took video, but the video I took got corrupted so I can't go back and really see what I'm doing. (Silly technology!) I think I'm probably losing the most time in new target acquisition and in various kinds of hesitation. On the good side, my draw was faster this time!
Overall I finished: 37/55
In Production: 16/22
We had an RO class out at our range this time around-- congrats to those who participated and good luck on the exam! Anyway, because of the class we only had four stages today, but still definitely a ton of fun.
Stage 1: I designed this stage! Sabumnim helped me quite a bit, especially with making sure it was all good and safe/legal. This was my first stage of the day and as such it went alright but not great. I tend to be somewhat slower on my first stage. I finished 39/54.
Stage 2: This was Doug's stage. I did pretty well on it, I was happy with my time and with my accuracy. Both on this one and the last one I was hesitating too much. For instance, I would hesitate about putting a third shot on a target. I should either shoot and move on, or just move on, sitting there staring at the target is the worst thing to do. I bet I lost at least 3 or 4 seconds that way, maybe more. I finished 32/54.
Stage 3: I could have done this stage more accurately. I pulled two D's on this stage. I think I had three total D's for the match. In Production, I really don't want any, and as few C's as I can manage. Anyway, there were two targets at the back of the bay, and I was transitioning from extremely close to far and I yanked the trigger a couple times. Overall, I was happy with my time and was reasonably smooth, but I need to work on my trigger control. I finished 38/54.
Stage 4: This was the “Towers of Pain” stage. Targets are inside these pillars and when you shoot the popper they fall out. You know, by itself that isn't too hard to shoot-- but we had some technical difficulties with the activation system. I restarted this stage three times. The first time, the popper fell but didn't activate all of the targets. The second time, the popper wouldn't fall. I hit it about three times, center of mass. See... I can't stop myself for equipment malfunction and I didn't want to go on and call for calibration because if it went down in calibration that would mean three whole targets worth of penalties. Eventually they stopped me. The the third and final time around I got through it without error and actually did pretty well! :) I finished 29/55. (Making it my best stage of the day.
Overall, I did pretty mediocre. I mean, I didn't monumentally screw up-- but I also didn't do extremely well on any one stage. We took video, but the video I took got corrupted so I can't go back and really see what I'm doing. (Silly technology!) I think I'm probably losing the most time in new target acquisition and in various kinds of hesitation. On the good side, my draw was faster this time!
Overall I finished: 37/55
In Production: 16/22
Saturday, April 2, 2011
March Multi-Gun
Multi-gun match out at ENGC! It was a beautiful shooting day, and of course lots of fun. We had four stages-- I set up the shotgun one. :) I don't have video right now, but Dan was nice enough to video with is camera so video is forthcoming.
Shotgun Stage Probably my best stage of the day. I reloaded slowly, but that is the nature of the beast with shotgun. I also had some jamming problems and didn't get low enough (thus the shotgun moved me backwards and caused feeding problems). Especially at the end I was shooting pretty quickly.
Pistol Stage Under these rules you only have to shoot each target once-- as long as its an A hit. I think that if I had just shot two on each target I would have done better. I was so worried about betting my A hits that I looked at each target after shot, and it caused me to be really really slow. This was the second stage of the day, so I got another chance on the rife/pistol stage. The stage was simple, really, I just had a hard time breaking old habits-- not reloading after 8 rounds and not shooting two shots on each target.
Rifle/Pistol I did fairly well on this stage-- I decided just to put two shots on every target (both rifle and pistol). Looking back this might not have been the best move. I had a hard time with my rifle sights because I didn't know where precisely they were sighted in, or if we ever did. Ooops! This was actually not exactly necessary-- as my sights seemed to be right on. They're more accurate than I am at any rate. I picked up a couple penalties on this stage on rifle targets, but otherwise did well (if not slow). I also had a hard time seating the magazine because I had loaded too many. Technically my mags are 30 round mags, but they seat poorly if load them all the way up. My mag kept falling out on me. Wasted a lot of time there, but lesson learned.
Rifle/Shotgun I got another chance to do well with the rifle-- and I did well on all the targets except for the four half-size targets about 50(ish) yards. I got four misses and two no-shoots on those. Ugh! On the other hand the rest of the stage went pretty well. I think I only had to make one shot with the shotgun and one shot with the rifle-- so much better!
Overall, I finished 7/10 in my division and 28/36 overall.
Shotgun Stage Probably my best stage of the day. I reloaded slowly, but that is the nature of the beast with shotgun. I also had some jamming problems and didn't get low enough (thus the shotgun moved me backwards and caused feeding problems). Especially at the end I was shooting pretty quickly.
Pistol Stage Under these rules you only have to shoot each target once-- as long as its an A hit. I think that if I had just shot two on each target I would have done better. I was so worried about betting my A hits that I looked at each target after shot, and it caused me to be really really slow. This was the second stage of the day, so I got another chance on the rife/pistol stage. The stage was simple, really, I just had a hard time breaking old habits-- not reloading after 8 rounds and not shooting two shots on each target.
Rifle/Pistol I did fairly well on this stage-- I decided just to put two shots on every target (both rifle and pistol). Looking back this might not have been the best move. I had a hard time with my rifle sights because I didn't know where precisely they were sighted in, or if we ever did. Ooops! This was actually not exactly necessary-- as my sights seemed to be right on. They're more accurate than I am at any rate. I picked up a couple penalties on this stage on rifle targets, but otherwise did well (if not slow). I also had a hard time seating the magazine because I had loaded too many. Technically my mags are 30 round mags, but they seat poorly if load them all the way up. My mag kept falling out on me. Wasted a lot of time there, but lesson learned.
Rifle/Shotgun I got another chance to do well with the rifle-- and I did well on all the targets except for the four half-size targets about 50(ish) yards. I got four misses and two no-shoots on those. Ugh! On the other hand the rest of the stage went pretty well. I think I only had to make one shot with the shotgun and one shot with the rifle-- so much better!
Overall, I finished 7/10 in my division and 28/36 overall.
Monday, March 7, 2011
March Pistol 2011
Well, the March Pistol Match out at ENGC was this weekend. It's finally starting to warm up out there! It's still a bit nippy, but we had a surprising 40 shooters out on the range Sunday. A lot of new faces, and of course the hardcore shooters that will shoot in any weather.
We had four stages and a classifier.
Here is a video of me shooting the match:
Annnnnd, some commentary:
First, you like my shirt there? Goes with the website mighty well, doesn't it? :)
The Good: The good thing was that in general I shot a solid match. I didn't plug any hostages, nor did I gather an Mikes. Overall, I finished about where I would expect to, if not slightly better.
As for the goals that I'm working on, I really tried to keep my weight down for the match. If I stand up high, the recoil rocks my shoulders and makes it more difficult to stay on target. While I was certainly too high in some places, you can see me methodically trying to get low in some places, and I'll call that an improvement.
That was a really solid run for a classifier. I got a 58%-- almost B class. I don't plan to make B class by the end of this year, but by the beginning of the next shooting season I would like to be.
The Bad: My number one time waster at the moment is my draw to first shot. For some reason, when targets are far away, I draw slowly. I also need to generally move faster, but unless I can also reload faster, moving faster will do little good.
My reloads are good given my limitations. My hands are too small for me to hit the mag release with my thumb on my G19. I have to hit it with my off hand before going for a new mag.
My percentages weren't quite what I'd like them to be-- I believe I had 4 or 5 Ds for the day and several C's, but it wasn't too bad.
You know what really killed me today though? All those jams on stage five! It's almost painful to watch, isn't? My gun jams up every 3-5 shots. I took it apart after that stage with the help of Chris and cleaned it a bit and the rest of the match went fine. I also started clamping down harder after that, in case it was simply my grip.
---
Overall, I'm happy with how the match went.
Next match is a 3-Gun in a couple weeks! :)
We had four stages and a classifier.
Here is a video of me shooting the match:
Annnnnd, some commentary:
First, you like my shirt there? Goes with the website mighty well, doesn't it? :)
The Good: The good thing was that in general I shot a solid match. I didn't plug any hostages, nor did I gather an Mikes. Overall, I finished about where I would expect to, if not slightly better.
As for the goals that I'm working on, I really tried to keep my weight down for the match. If I stand up high, the recoil rocks my shoulders and makes it more difficult to stay on target. While I was certainly too high in some places, you can see me methodically trying to get low in some places, and I'll call that an improvement.
That was a really solid run for a classifier. I got a 58%-- almost B class. I don't plan to make B class by the end of this year, but by the beginning of the next shooting season I would like to be.
The Bad: My number one time waster at the moment is my draw to first shot. For some reason, when targets are far away, I draw slowly. I also need to generally move faster, but unless I can also reload faster, moving faster will do little good.
My reloads are good given my limitations. My hands are too small for me to hit the mag release with my thumb on my G19. I have to hit it with my off hand before going for a new mag.
My percentages weren't quite what I'd like them to be-- I believe I had 4 or 5 Ds for the day and several C's, but it wasn't too bad.
You know what really killed me today though? All those jams on stage five! It's almost painful to watch, isn't? My gun jams up every 3-5 shots. I took it apart after that stage with the help of Chris and cleaned it a bit and the rest of the match went fine. I also started clamping down harder after that, in case it was simply my grip.
---
Overall, I'm happy with how the match went.
Next match is a 3-Gun in a couple weeks! :)
February Steel 2011
I unfortunately couldn't attend the January Steel match out with everyone-- I was quite sick that weekend. However! I did make it out to the February Steel match (Feb. 6th). I didn't get any videos, but I do have a couple things to say about it---
I really only did horribly on one stage, and it was a long distance accuracy stage. I just couldn't hit the targets! I really think I zero-ed at least two of my five runs. It cost my some serious overall time and a few places in the standings. Others stages went decently well or pretty good, but that one stage just killed me!
Overall I finished 24th out of 30 shooters. In production I finished 8th out of 9 shooters. It wasn't my best day, but have certainly seen worse.
As always I need to work on long-distance accuracy. Usually, my accuracy is pretty good, but it was cold and I was yanking the trigger a bit. Not enough trigger-prep on my part, besides pulling it a bit off to one side.
I really only did horribly on one stage, and it was a long distance accuracy stage. I just couldn't hit the targets! I really think I zero-ed at least two of my five runs. It cost my some serious overall time and a few places in the standings. Others stages went decently well or pretty good, but that one stage just killed me!
Overall I finished 24th out of 30 shooters. In production I finished 8th out of 9 shooters. It wasn't my best day, but have certainly seen worse.
As always I need to work on long-distance accuracy. Usually, my accuracy is pretty good, but it was cold and I was yanking the trigger a bit. Not enough trigger-prep on my part, besides pulling it a bit off to one side.
January Pistol 2011
Here is the video of the match:
First-- I don't you like the hat? It's my zombie hat and it's very cute.
Anyway, not the best shooting day ever. I racked up some penalties and just plain old didn't shoot well on a couple of those stages there. It was my birthday that day too! D:!
You can see me turn around and look at Sabumnim, my instructor (but also the RO) on Stage 2 there. A steel fell over that wasn't supposed to fall, and I was confused. I shouldn't have stopped, shooters can't stop themselves.
Just not great focus for the day, some silly mistakes. I should have finished above 15th or so on pretty much all of those.
Next time!
First-- I don't you like the hat? It's my zombie hat and it's very cute.
Anyway, not the best shooting day ever. I racked up some penalties and just plain old didn't shoot well on a couple of those stages there. It was my birthday that day too! D:!
You can see me turn around and look at Sabumnim, my instructor (but also the RO) on Stage 2 there. A steel fell over that wasn't supposed to fall, and I was confused. I shouldn't have stopped, shooters can't stop themselves.
Just not great focus for the day, some silly mistakes. I should have finished above 15th or so on pretty much all of those.
Next time!
Monday, January 10, 2011
Goals for 2011
So it's a new year, and that means that it's time to assess my goals from last year, and set new goals for the next year-- both regarding Defensive Tactics and USPSA.
Unfortunately, things haven't changed much since my last goal update. Though, in regards to two of the goals, I have done a little better-- I am better at manipulating a shotgun, though I still need a little help with my AR. I can manipulate it fairly well, but slowly. I need a lot of time to make sure that I am doing things safely and correctly. Also, my transitions (between targets) while not perfect, have gotten a lot better, a lot quicker.
Given my shortcomings in the previous year, perhaps I should make more moderate goals. I think last year, I got a little over zealous.
USPSA Goals:
1. Move to B class in production.
2. Work further on trigger preparation.
3. Speed up movement between shooting positions. (Note: I mean, run instead of walk to new shooting positions, practice getting the gun up faster, transition between targets is different.
4. Write commentary for all matches.
5. Track classifier percentages and blog improvement.
Defensive Tactics Goals:
1. Take a concealed carry class-- since this time next year I will be 21.
2. Acquire a good carry holster and practice with it.
3. Read and write reviews of six defensive tactics or self defense books.
General Goal:
1. Post goal updates every two months to hold myself accountable for meeting these goals. :)
Unfortunately, things haven't changed much since my last goal update. Though, in regards to two of the goals, I have done a little better-- I am better at manipulating a shotgun, though I still need a little help with my AR. I can manipulate it fairly well, but slowly. I need a lot of time to make sure that I am doing things safely and correctly. Also, my transitions (between targets) while not perfect, have gotten a lot better, a lot quicker.
Given my shortcomings in the previous year, perhaps I should make more moderate goals. I think last year, I got a little over zealous.
USPSA Goals:
1. Move to B class in production.
2. Work further on trigger preparation.
3. Speed up movement between shooting positions. (Note: I mean, run instead of walk to new shooting positions, practice getting the gun up faster, transition between targets is different.
4. Write commentary for all matches.
5. Track classifier percentages and blog improvement.
Defensive Tactics Goals:
1. Take a concealed carry class-- since this time next year I will be 21.
2. Acquire a good carry holster and practice with it.
3. Read and write reviews of six defensive tactics or self defense books.
General Goal:
1. Post goal updates every two months to hold myself accountable for meeting these goals. :)
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