The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Upcoming Events => Topic started by: alfsauve on January 03, 2023, 11:34:21 AM
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My friend and fellow Steel Challenge Club 13 member, Mark Hu (and yes when he's the first shooter on a stage we all shout Hu's On First) has set our primary goals for us. Now mind you we probably won't win, or place or even show, but we'll be there, rubbing elbows with the pros. Or at least the semi-pros. Or some very good amateurs.
IDPA WORLD (once every 4 years it comes to the US) is at CMP --- check
STEEL CHALLENGE WORLD (every other year in the US) is at CMP --- check
To get into IDPA I need tiered matches so I'm planning on:
GA State - River Bend Gun Club (GA)
TN State - Soddy Daisy, TN
Double Trouble - Belton, SC (actually it's 2 matches in one day)
Rolling on the River - Valdosta, GA
All but the latter are within 2hours drive.
Also ICORE Southern Regional at JM's range in LA. IRC is too far away this year.
Not planning on any USPSA matches this year.
LET THE GAMES BEGIN and MAY THE ODDS BE EVER IN ALL OUR FAVOR
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No USPSA?
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Too much else going on. I stand some chance of placing in IDPA, or at least moving up to Expert. USPSA times have gotten pretty much out of reach for me. Though I like shooting it because it helps me break questionable habits ingrained by IDPA.
If the GA State USPSA match is local I'll probably go to it. Depends on schedule.
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Belton Double Trouble 2023 IDPA Match. Day match from Noon to 4pm. Night match from 7:45pm to midnight. 18 stages total.
1st Place Revolver Sharp Shooter.
Man was I tired. And then drove back to Atlanta arriving home at 2:30am
My Olight Baton 3 worked like a champ for the night match. And let me tell you, shooting AND scoring in the dark is a challenge. Finding the your magazines/speedloaders/moonclips a real challenge. No, before you ask, there were no lights on the range. Spooky at times.
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For those wondering. The Belton (SC) match uses the same courses of fire for the night match as the day. I couldn't imagine trying to shoot a totally new COF in the dark.
Which brings up an interesting question. Does it take longer to shoot the stages in the dark. An advantage is of course we all knew the courses of fire and had "practiced" them with the day match. So for my area coordinator, I did an analysis. Many shooters changed divisions from day to night to use weapon mounted lights. I only used data on the people who shot in the same division, of course and who completed all 18 stages.
So here's a chart showing the percentage increase of the Night scores over the Day scores. There were 4 shooters who had lower scores at night (and one with an almost 0% change), but on average shooting at night add about 15% to the scores. This ignores any fatigue factor and we did have several drop out before they finished that night from fatique.
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WORLD SPEED SHOOTING CHAMPIONSHIP
ME! There! Two Division, ISR and PCCI. Great time. Great group of people. I should have kept track but I think I came close to meeting people from all 50 states. Alaska was the furthest away.
Won my Classification in both divisions, even beat some A and B shooters.
Weird thing about PCCI. It's top heavy in Grand Masters. 15 GMs, 5 Masters, 4-As, 1-B and 1-C. I beat the B and one of the A shooters. And in the process I got moved to B classification. I don't think they do "bumps" like in USPSA and IDAP because every stage is a classifier, so you either got it or you don't.
With ISR it's more normal distro. There was Michael Poggie, GM, then 4-As, 3-Bs, 2-Cs and 1-D. I was high C finishing ahead of 1-B and 1-A as well as the D shooter. My goal was to beat Annette Aysen from ICORE, but my lack of practice really showed.
Sadly, it'll be November/December before I get back to SC unless GA ICORE has to cancel. They're the same weekends. From now until October I need to work on IDPA and ICORE to get ready for World IDPA and IRC.
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Only the local ICORE match….. BUT
For those who don’t know ICORE has very few rules regarding stage design. It has to be safe of course, but compared to the pages of rules in IDPA & USPSA it’s almost anything goes.
This past weekend, 5 paper, 3 - 6” plates, 9 pepper poppers, 6 - 8” plates AND a Texas Star.
If that wasn’t fun enough we shot it a second time with the following rules.
Paper - free style
Steel on the left side of the firing lane - left hand only
Steel on the right side -right hand only
Star….. Strong hand only
We all just went to the line and did it. All 14 shooters. I think the most extra shots anybody used on the star was 3. Collectively we all went home and then it hit us. We just shot the Star one handed. Nothing IDPA or USPSA can throw at us will ever be intimidating.
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That's a good accomplishment shooting one handed.
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Now try it with a single action revolver like we do in Cowboy action shooting (Duelist)
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0-dawn thirty Miss Kitty and I are off to visit with Jerry at his range near Shreveport. Southern Reginal ICORE Championship, brought to you by Ruger. 8 stages +Chrono.
I’ve become such a gamer, I’ve put a drop-offset on my CT holster. I’m one of the highest class shooters in Classic Division, assuming Jerry doesn’t suddenly decide to shoot. If I buckle down and take this seriously, I could take home the hardware. Wow! Just wow!
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0-dawn thirty Miss Kitty and I are off to visit with Jerry at his range near Shreveport. Southern Reginal ICORE Championship, brought to you by Ruger. 8 stages +Chrono.
I’ve become such a gamer, I’ve put a drop-offset on my CT holster. I’m one of the highest class shooters in Classic Division, assuming Jerry doesn’t suddenly decide to shoot. If I buckle down and take this seriously, I could take home the hardware. Wow! Just wow!
Good luck!
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Best wishes and success to you!!
Keep us posted!
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What? No updates?
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It's a very long drive. 10 hours including lunch and gas over, but managed to do it in 9:15 coming back with one less stop. My butt still feels it. We'll never do a 9+ hour trip again, that we learned
Shreveport is very interesting. The casinos (6 I think) probably promised large prosperity but several were closed and I wasn't seeing any great wealth around town. We saw among other sad sites like an abandoned large minor-league, or college sized, baseball park. However we had a good social time there. We ate at the Blind Tiger right downtown and had the most excellent Cajun and low country cooking. We also ate at Orlandeaux's Café a most interesting establishment on Cross Lake in NW part of town. Basically fried shrimp and catfish, but very well done and we had a delightful time with the staff and other diners.
Oh, SHOOTING!
First, you know it, but until you visit Shootout Lane it really doesn't sink in. Yes it's Jerry's, and Clark Custom's, private range. Yes they live right there. You pass the houses on the way in. Right on US80, 12mi out of Shreveport, which makes it very convenient. It isn't owned/run by a club, but built to support the Clark and Miculek families practice and business, so it is a little different from other ranges. Jerry did not compete but came to the awards ceremony for a few minutes and thanked us for coming.
Second, this regional was put on mainly by the ICORE staff themselves, not by any local club. They did a marvelous job. It was very hot and we finished before the major storms passed through. 4 guns given away and because the costs were low, they took the left over entry fee money and returned it to the shooters!!! I won a box of .45 Bullets.
I probably shot the best I've ever done, though I didn't finish very high. 5/6 in Classic and 36/42 overall. It was a tight race in Classic. I was only 45 seconds off the leader! 10 seconds off 3rd place. I even won one stage. Had problems with my ammo and was irritated but powered on through. I might have finished one or two places higher though. Here's how I finished.
Classic 5 6 6 5 5 4 1 3
Overall 31 38 37 38 35 31 8 33
Yep I was hitting on all cylinders in stage 7. One stage had black X rings which counted for -1 seconds on your time. 6 freestyle, 6 strong hand, 6 weak hand. I laid 9 shots in the X ring. Cool.
Okay, now on to World IDPA. I'm have 8 points and first round cutoff, just announced, was in the 9s, so I'm waitlisted but should get in. I'm flexible so I can wait until the day before to go (Talladega).
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I think you certainly shot well. What was the problem/issue with the ammo and do you think if it had cooperated that you would have gone up in the standings some?
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It all started when a piece of debris got in my expansion die which led to long sad tail of a sequence of horrible problems and mistakes, down to my seating die.
So basically I ended up with a batch of .38spl that was just a hair too big to easily "plunk" on chamber check. I used a very crude roller to get the rounds back to where they would check okay.
Now here's the rub. I have a spare cylinder that I use for chamber checking. Safer and easier to handle than using one on the gun. EXCEPT, it appears there's slight difference between the chamber sizes on that cylinder and my ICORE gun. So I had about 1 sticky round per stage that I had to take time to manually press home. Plus about 5 times the round would stick in the cylinder on extraction and I'd have to "slap" the cylinder rod with the palm of my support hand. I have two holes in my hand because of this. So yes it easily added up to enough time I could have made 3rd place.
I think I have all the dies clean out, repaired and in proper adjustment. It's rather a delicate balance between the expansion die and the seating/crimp die and I somehow got both way out of whack. Am going to try a taper crimp die. I might forgo the power cop and separate seating and crimping.
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Alf, what press are you loading on? I use a Dillon 650 and seat and crimp separately using a Lee factory crimp die. I have these for all my pistol caliber. They resize the cartridge while crimping. Highly recommend them.
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Thank you Majer. I have such a Frankenstein of dies. My sizer is a Dillion, the expansion is a Redding, Hornady powder measure, RCBS powder cop and a Hornady roll crimp/seater. I use Hornady LnL AP so I have 5 stations. Am looking at the taper crimp dies now and may go with the Lee. Got to look at my .357 dies set and my "spare" parts. I might have one already just forgot about it.
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<snip> So yes it easily added up to enough time I could have made 3rd place. <snip>
Not to mention the added stress the issue caused. That alone can account for the lower score.
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USPSA GA STATE match is cancelled. Scheduled for the end of Sep, the range owner decided to back out. This is a privately owned range and the clubs that operate there pay rental for the use. I don't know what contractual agreements were in place, but for the USPSA club to sue would mean certain end of use of the range going forward. This range has done this before. I showed up for a match there once and they had double booked the range.
There's really not enough time for another club to pick this up, clear the calendar, make all the plans, etc. So my club, River Bend, has evidently picked up some of the sponsors and prizes and will have them available at their regular monthly match this month. $20 entry fee, couple of thousand in prizes to be given away. Instead of their normal 7 stages they've added 2 more and increased the squads to 9. And are providing lunch. This is NOT a sanctioned USPSA State match, but it'll be the closest thing to it this year. Sounds like a good old time.
I wasn't going to shot USPSA much, if at all, but have decided to join in the fun. Revolver Cult, err... I mean Division, wish me luck.
And I've become such a gamer. Put the drop-offset on my ICORE holster, but USPSA is a little stricter about "drop" so I can't use the Comp-Tac offset. But of course, when you're a hammer everything's a nail. I printed a 1" offset block for my Comp-Tac. A trivial design but probably a challenge for some. Love my 3D printer.
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Whew! What a day. Just a "local" match with 121 competitors and 9 full length "long" courses. No classifiers or drills. 13 Competitors per squad. Weather was tolerable, not exceptionaly hot but hot. LUNCH was served about 5pm. And there were many prizes. In fact so many that everybody who didn't leave early got a prize. Me a $40 gift certificate to Shooters Connection. Of note KC Esubio and Jessie Harrison shot with us. KC was trying out the provisional Limited Optics class for which even he's not classified. One squad, several ahead of mine, went full FUBAR and clogged up the works. My squad probably spent 45 minutes just waiting to start on each of the last 3 stages. That certainly didn't help.
My holster did great. I'd never paid attention to others but I'm thinking some of them I saw are a little excessively spaced. Revolvers have more leeway, at ~3" offset while I think most semi-auto divisions are limited to just over 1". So I was good, rule-wise and it did make drawing very easy. BUT I'm still very slow shooter. I finished 4/5 in Revolvers and 105 overall. I was 12th most accurate with no Misses, Penalties or No-Shoots. Now get this, #1 Revolver shooter shot right after me in the line up on my squad, and on most stages I had to explain the stage plan to him, which he followed. Good, fast shooter, but not good at stage planning. I don't mind sharing my plan with competitors, but I think I'll let Chris figure out his own plans next match.
That's it for USPSA for this year. World IDPA, ICORE and Steel Challenge for the rest of the year.
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The FUBAR group is enough to make me throw more shots so having no misses and other bad things is pretty dang good in my book. 13 on a squad is a bit much in my book...I hate standing around.
However, since I'm not shooting because of too much to do now I would prefer to stand every now and then on the range.
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I shot World IDPA yesterday. It won't be over until Saturday but as of this morning I'm leading Rev SharpShooter! Won't hold up.
<wish Les were here>
Very difficult match. Lots of very tight shots. Lots of Non-Threats BEHIND targets. Some very unique stages. Pneumatic movers that self reset and did multiple presentations. All electronically activated. Shoot house (like a garage) where many racked up the points-down by shooting Non-threats instead of targets. Lots of fun props also. I joined a unique club by not hitting any Non-threats.
I'm still amazed at shooters who come to a match like this and don't have some of the basics down. Reloading while you have 1 in the chamber, for example. Also having guns/mags where the mags don't fall free on their own. At the stage with the shovel, the start require you hold the shovel in your strong hand, but no specific. Everyone took a step forward as they drew so the idea was to have the shovel fall behind you. Many shooters took the extra time to "throw" the shovel. Hey I may not be fast, but I can game these things like no body's business. I even played a little mind game with the shovel. Standing it on it's point, barely holding it upright with two fingers, I let go and tried to draw before the handle hit the ground.
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Congratulations! Absolutely Super!!!
I am envious!
And yes, I wish you could share this with Les. Perchance he has an open heaven to see.....
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Results are in.
Wow. Out of 385 shooters 15 were DQd. That's 4%. The low light stage had you running "180" (from one side of the bay to the other half of it in a tunnel and the tendency, as it would be in real life, was to point the gun straight ahead, The Scoring SO positioned himself at the far end of the tunnel and I'd say with about 1/4 of the shooters he was warning "muzzle". I suspect several DQs came from here.
Me? I shoot slow. 15/18 Revolver. 4th in my Classification (Sharp Shooter). It was tight in SS. My final time was 609.63 and 3rd place was just 11 points lower (<2%).
I'm happy about two things about my shooting. First I didn't hit any Non-Threats. Only 100 out of the 385 competitors can say that. Given the very tight shooting arraignments it was a challenge not to hit them. Secondly, My Points Down were relatively low. Granted the Masters have even lower PDs and fast times, but overall, I like the accuracy of my shooting. (At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.)
Very neat being there. I actually got to see and say hi to a lot of the other shooters who came on Thursday to scope out the stages for Sat/Sun. Met shooters from 3 other continents. I guess the marketing budgets just aren't there for a lot of vendors. Wilson Combat, of course had a whole bay right in the middle of the match. Beretta, who was the main sponsor had the other bay and gave away special gifts to everyone shooting a Beretta. But then there were only 3 other vendors, HD Gold as always, a hearing protection vendor and a small custom PCC maker. There were lots of sponsors but I guess the return on setting up at a match aren't worth the cost.
Now to work on CCP for Valdosta's Sheepdog match in December, then start planning my attack on Bianchi.
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That's pretty stinking good in my book. Much better than I could do.
Bianchi has a name and should have plenty of vendors. Although with 385 shooters that ain't no chunk change...maybe next year.
What big names were there? One of the pics looked like it was Rob Leatham.
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Wow. Out of 385 shooters 15 were DQd. That's 4%. The low light stage had you running "180" (from one side of the bay to the other half of it in a tunnel and the tendency, as it would be in real life, was to point the gun straight ahead, The Scoring SO positioned himself at the far end of the tunnel and I'd say with about 1/4 of the shooters he was warning "muzzle". I suspect several DQs came from here.
When I took the USPSA RO training we were taught that this is a flawed stage. It should have been caught in design or in run throughs and revised. The idea of the design is to challenge, and not create safety issues.
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Good point Mike.
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When I took the USPSA RO training we were taught that this is a flawed stage. It should have been caught in design or in run throughs and revised. The idea of the design is to challenge, and not create safety issues.
It was vetted during staff day and it was determined that it shouldn't be any more an issue than any stage where you move laterally from one side to the other. The only difference was 25' of your path was covered. BTB, you could run in front (up-range of the garage). The tunnel was 6' wide, so what possessed some people to not keep their gun down range is a mystery. Only Revolvers, BUG and CDP would have been doing reloads during the run.
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You can look up your friends, family and celebs here:
https://practiscore.com/results/new/8e21b22c-b949-457c-a869-0a21d8d1e0d7 (https://practiscore.com/results/new/8e21b22c-b949-457c-a869-0a21d8d1e0d7)
Not sure who all the current "big names" are anymore. Here's some that I saw while scanning the list.
Rob Lathem finished 4th in CDP
Mike Seeklander 2nd in ESP
Randi Rogers 4th in ESP (1st lady)
Williams, Jalise 9th ESP
Williams, Justine 1st PCC (1st lady)
Jonasson, Nils 1st SSP
Echavez Racaza, Simon Joseph 2nd SSP
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IDPA had a photographer who's mission was to capture every shooter in action. I love the picture she took of me reloading. Quite a well done stop action.
Gun in weak hand with rock star grip. Indent still on thumb from ejecting spent rounds. Brass falling cleanly away. Strong hand pulling out next speed loader.
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That's it for 2023. I did a year in review.
Two highlights of course was World Speed Shoot, World IDPA & Southern Region ICORE at Shootout Lane.