2023 Competition Schedule

[alfsauve]

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. 

[Rastus]

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.

[alfsauve]

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. 

[Rastus]

Congratulations!  Absolutely Super!!! 

I am envious!

And yes, I wish you could share this with Les.  Perchance he has an open heaven to see.....

[alfsauve]

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.

[Sponsor]

[Rastus]

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.

[MikeBjerum]

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.

[Rastus]

Good point Mike. 

[alfsauve]

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.

[alfsauve]

You can look up your friends, family and celebs here:

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