Great Plains and Iowa Sectional 2008, and Rock-Your-Glock July 2008...

Starting with the Great Plains and Iowa Sectional, some commentary:

Basic statistics:

• Shooting started at 9am.
  
• We finished up at about 7pm.
  
• The total time I spent shooting (during that 10 hours) was: 3 minutes, 27 seconds. In other words, I was actually shooting for 0.576% of the time during my shooting day. Another way of putting it is that I drove 7 hours (round trip), spent the night in a hotel, and was at the range boiling in the sun for 10 hours---to shoot for 207.29 seconds.
  
• In those 207.29 seconds, I shot at least 242 rounds. (Probably more, since I missed a few times. However, it is known that I shot at least 242 rounds.) This gives a minimum rate of 1.17 rounds per second. Included were 7 draws, numerous transitions, and lots and lots and lots of movement. (Including one time where we had to run to the gun in the first place.) Did I mention lots of movement? Thus, we can safely assume that my actual rate of fire was rather faster.
  
• In the end, I shot 73.14% A-zone hits, no B (no head shots at all!), 23.97% C, 2.48% D, and 0.41% M. (One miss out of the whole thing. And only 6 Ds. WAAAAAY too many C shots, though.)
  
• Out of the eight stages, I had the highest hit factor in Production division in 5 of them. For the other three, I had one 2nd and two 3rd place finishes.

Overall, I was happy with how I shot, other than one stage. Certain stages I could have done better on—shot faster or more accurately—but in general, I was satisfied with how I did. Too many C hits, and some things a little slow—but overall, I was happy with my performance in the match.

Except on stage 8—the one with the teeter-totter platform we had to stand on. Oddly enough, the balance part wasn't the problem. (Julie was watching and said my movement looked smooth and balanced. In the video, my movement looks slow to me, but I don't ever sm tentative.) The problem was, in the middle of the stage I added an extra reload for some reason. And then almost immediately after, I had to reload again, because the next view (before further movement) had quite a few targets. The extra reload cost me time, of course, but it also messed up my thinking (apparently) because my accuracy dropped sharply right after, and I managed my one miss of the match. And right after that, a D hit. (I had two D hits for that stage---fully one third of the total D hits for the entire match.)

So the stage was slow, and included poor accuracy. Definitely my worst stage of the match. In all other stages I was in the top 20 (or less) out of everyone (75 shooters) but on this stage---33 out of 75. Yeek.

However, overall the match went very well. I won Production division. :) Overall, I placed 23rd out of 75---this includes 1 grandmaster, 8 masters, 5 A-class, and 20 B-class people. (Most of whom are shooting in divisions that have equipment built more for speed than the equipment in my division.)

In Production division, second place had 96.17% of my score, and third place had 93.73%. Fourth had 76.83%, and it went down from there. :) I actually scored higher than a master-class shooter in this match!





Glock match:

I tried something different this time---in addition to shooting my Glock 34 in the regular division and my Glock 26 in Subcompact, I also shot in the revolver division.

I'll wait a moment until you stop laughing.

No, seriously. I thought I'd try revolver also. After all, I have a Taurus .357magnum that I can shoot .38spl out of, and it is ported—very easy revolver to shoot. So, I packed my revolver this time also, and tried it out. And yes, the results were funny.

The problem is that I (as of last match) have now won the amateur/stock division three times---which means I got kicked to the master/open division. So now I'm shooting against the master class people, and the people who are shooting open-class guns.

So don't expect me to win anytime soon, ok?

So, I shot my Glock 34 in the regular division, and the M and 5-to-25 went pretty well---not my best ever, but about normal. And then I went to the plates, and racked up my best times ever. My worst run was 4.33 seconds, and my best run was all the way down to 3.05 seconds! My total time for four runs were 14.29 s, so things went really well. I was thrilled!

Then Dennis went and ran a time of less than 12 seconds for his four run total. Sheesh.

I was still happy, though—my times are going down nicely. Ended up third behind Dennis---who took both first and second with almost equivalent times (about 5 seconds faster than my times) using both a Glock 17L and a Glock 26 (using 17-size magazines).

For the subcompact, I again left one plate. Drat! If I had taken less than half a second to AIM and drop that plate, I would have won subcompact. As it was, I lost to Dennis (again) and took second.

Revolver---well. Hmm. I haven't shot revolver in a LONG time, and I've never shot revolver in a competition before. That being said, the M and the 5-to-25 went pretty well for a first time. And then came the plates, and I just started laughing. One thing to note here is that my revolver has adjustable sights, but I don't believe I've ever actually sighted it in at any distance. I should probably do that before the next match, because I left 7 plates standing---70 seconds worth of penalty points. Needless to say, I was NOT in the running for 1st place for revolver.

Maybe next time.



Next up---AREA 3. Practicing reloading, slow aimed dry fire, and my draw. Won't probably have time to get to the range for live fire practice more than once or twice—so mostly at-home dry fire practice. Slow, careful movement, plus occasional speed work.

We'll see how it goes.

My Sights WERE off!

Unfortunately, not by more than about 4 inches when shot from a rest. Considering I was shooting a good 18 inches off, I'd say that it was my fault after all, not the firearm.

Drat. It would have been so much easier to simply move the rear sight, instead of actually having to practice shooting more accurately. [sigh]

So, that's what I did today. Practiced some accuracy at 25 and 40 yards, then practiced shooting one-handed, both strong and weak hand.

This is probably the last range time I'm going to get before the RYG match on Saturday and the Great Plains Sectional match on Sunday. I'll try to get some careful dryfire and reloading practice done, but I won't have time to get to the range for the rest of the week.

Matter of fact, I hope I have enough time to reload all the ammo I'm going to need for the weekend. Speaking of which, I'd better get to work on that.

July Pistol Match, and preparing for the Great Plains Sectional...

Well, today was the July pistol match, and I should say right off the bat that I didn't win today. [sigh] I was second, with a score of 97.32%, so I was close---but I made stupid mistakes on two of the four stages, and had I simply only made one set of mistakes I would have won.

But two was too much.

Here's the video:

...and you can see the obvious mistakes on stage one. My paper targets were fine. Could have used a couple more A-zone hits, but overall just fine. But I didn't let myself settle down and AIM for the plate rack. Incredibly annoying since I've been practicing the plate rack lately, and my average time is now down to a little less than four seconds. Had I even relaxed and shot it in 5, I still would have had more than enough points to win.

I do think I have a sights problem, though---again on the long shots, they went left. That was that one miss on the distance targets in stage 4. Not only a little. Quite a bit. The miss was on the right target--and the left target had all of the extra shots I put out there--so my extras on the right target went all the way over to the left target! And I really did slow down and aim this time. This week I'm going to the range and trying some distance shots to see what is going on. I'm thinking that my sights are indeed off to the left, but not very much---just enough so that at longer distances, it gives me problems. At near distances, it isn't mattering enough to make a difference.

Or maybe my distance shooting is just bad. Always a possibility! I'll let you know after some range time this week.

Speaking of---the Great Plains Sectional Match is this coming Sunday, so that should be interesting. Don't know how many Production class folks are going to be there, but it should be interesting. The stages look pretty interesting--a couple are downright devious.

Still working on my reloading, and that distance aiming. We'll see how it goes.

Oh--and I'm shooting/working the Rock-Your-Glock match this Saturday, too. So more videos and commentary will be forthcoming after the weekend. (And hopefully some good results from practice this week!)