I've shot the Double Tap Championship 4 times now, and the match has never failed to be a fun and challenging experience. It didn't hurt that I had one of the best performances of my career, too. The theme this year was "Indiana Jones", and was a 13 stage, 348 round contest that was mostly more straight up than most matches. Sure, there were the usual Robert Porter embellishments, based on the match theme - but the majority of the stages had very little in the way of "carnival factor" to them this year.
The biggest individual challenge this year? The weather! More on that in the rest of the article on the DR Performance Shooting website... First, here's the match video...
Showing posts with label Video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Video. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Match Report: 2009 Double Tap Championship
Thursday, March 19, 2009
2008 - the year in review
Looking back, I think I could've at least partially predicted my 2008 season. Coming out of a pretty good 2007 season, I achieved a life long goal... making Grand Master in USPSA's Open division. It was the culmination of a lot of investment (hard work, money, mental energy, you name it). Achieving that goal comes pretty easily to some folks, less easily to others. My improvement was gradual, but actually hitting that milestone felt pretty big to me. And... I didn't have a strong sense of what came next. I knew that put me in a position to be a little stagnant - I was OK with that, and gave myself permission to simply enjoy the achievement, without too much pressure to go beat the world in the next season.
So, I went out into the 2008 season with a goal to attend more major matches, and to really learn what it was going to take for me to win at the upper levels of this sport. The lessons - some big, some subtle - were many. I had a few failures along the way, but countered with a few successes. The matches - and the season as a whole - were something of a roller coaster.
Hit the DR Performance Shooting main site for some thoughts on how the season went...
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Match Report: 2008 Area 2 Championship
Phoenix in November is a beautiful thing, no doubt about it. The Area 2 Championship (aka, the Rio Salado Desert Classic) has a strong reputation for being a quality match with a superb prize table. This was my first year attending the match, and I can tell you that, for the most part, it lived up to the hype. First, the vid - then hit the DR Performance Shooting site for the rest!
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Into the Breach...
Still wondering how fitness is important to this shooting sport? At the 2008 Area 1 Championship, we got a solid demonstration of why having a broad, general, inclusive fitness program is an important part of any well rounded shooting program.
Stage designer Chuck Anderson threw us a curve ball on stage 9 in the form of a Breaching Technologies, Inc. Ram Breaching Door. Check out the vid - a few comments follow on the DR Performance Shooting main site...
Match Report: 2008 Area 1 Championship
Held in late June, near Portland, OR, the 2008 Area 1 Championship was hot... damn hot... and full of the types of stages that really demanded you exercise the "Diligentia" aspect of the sport (that's accuracy, of course).
Several folks asked about adding in some video commentary and descriptions of the stages, so that they could what in the heck I'm shooting at in the videos - I tried to that here. If you like it - or don't - let me know ;) Also, I didn't shoot video of Stage 8, which was the standards. Its kind of a visually boring stage, so hopefully you're not really missing anything... Anyhow - here's the vid, and commentary is on the DR Performance Shooting main site!
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Match Report: 2008 USPSA Area 6 Championship
Another road trip, another big match! Area 6 is known for putting on a high quality championship match, and this year did not disappoint. The match was full of testy, challenging stages that bit back if you didn't pay attention. It was everything you expect an Area match to be, in the end.
Here's the video - visit the DR Performance Shooting site to read the rest!
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Match Report: 2008 Double Tap Championship
The last weekend in March, March 28-30, marked the 4th annual Double Tap Championship held at the Double Tap Ranch in Wichita Falls, TX. The DTC is generally considered to be the exact polar opposite of the Florida Open match. Whereas the Florida Open contains solely "Classic" style targets (with no upper A/B zone - that's the "head"), and generally has a lot of long shots on wide open targets. This leads to hit factors normally in the 6-8 range, meaning its a relatively slow match where points really count more than speed. The DTC, on the other hand, is completely "Metric" targets, features few long shots, and is generally up close, in your face, run-and-gun, hose fest type stuff. Any loss of speed kills on these high adrenaline stages, any little hesitation or conservative moments will bleed you of match points quickly.
Here's my video - hit the DR Performance Shooting site for the rest of the article!
Friday, February 22, 2008
Match Report: Alpha-Mike 2/17/2008
Last Sunday I shot the Alpha-Mike match in Bulverde, TX. It took me a bit to get the video finished - I didn't have the scores on hand, and then had to go out of town for a funeral. I prefer to get these things up while they're still fresh in my head, but, as the prophet Jagger said... You can't always get what you want ;)
Ok - I won high overall at this match, and Open division. There were a total of 53 shooters, which is the biggest attendance at an Alpha-Mike match that I can recall seeing, though its probably not the biggest they've had. Nice turnout, though. Here's the video, and comments will follow...
The thing that always strikes me about Alpha-Mike is the setup... These guys generally can't get on the range until something like 0830 the morning of the match, which means that match setup is done on a very compressed time frame. Somehow they manage to get a full match set up and running in an hour and a half. Very impressive.
A few notes on the video... That last split on the first stage is an .11. The second split on the second stage is a .10. On the second one, I had trigger freeze, and then relaxed off the trigger and grip, which allowed the gun to rock on the 2nd shot and cause a 2nd actuation of the trigger... I didn't call either shot, unfortunately, and so the 4th shot on the target was required... The target (at 12 yards or so) had 2 As and 2 Cs - funnily enough, the two As were the 2nd and 3rd shots - the .10 split - as I called the other two shots as Cs....
On the third stage, that's definitely me jumping the clock, not a weird video artifact. You can see I reacted to the sound of shooting in the next bay over. That caused me some pause, as I partially expected Roy would stop me for creeping. My first shot was a 1.13, so it obviously affected my draw a bit - Roy figured that evened things out...
The classifier, Can You Count, is merciless in its punishment for tension. My second string was a 3.09 - a GM run, not quite 100%. The first one, though, was wracked with tension - a trigger freeze and a blown reload. The draws were sharp, however - a .78 and an .84. I'll take those ;)
The last stage was interesting - that last shot cost me .75 seconds. I'd called a hit on the target, and then visually saw there was no hit, so I made it up (to my benefit, thankfully). But, I walked away from the stage wondering what the heck had happened - I called a solid A on the target and it wasn't there. The video clearly shows the reason.... Hear the "tink", and see the wall rock? That last target was at a hard angle, and I wasn't quite fully as far into the doorway as I needed to be - I just barely edged the corner of the wall, and it spun the bullet off to who knows where...
All in all, a good match. I'm already seeing improvement from the work I've done since the Florida Open...
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Match Report: 2008 Florida Open
Wow, what an intense match. The 2008 Florida Open was shot over the weekend of February 8-10 at the Universal Shooting Academy, in Frostproof, FL. Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, this match is the traditional season opener, and is known for its trademark stages where there aren't any no-shoots or hardcover targets, but the shots are generally long and sneaky difficult. This year was no different - in fact, there were a great many shots longer than 20 yards that really required a lot of focus to nail down correctly.
The end result is a match that can really leave you feeling beaten up as you're shooting it - until you go look at the results. You feel like you're shooting slow and sloppy, because you're either dropping points like a sieve, or you're taking forever and a day to break shots to insure A-zone hits. But you go look at the results and see that its not just you - everyone in the match is having that feeling, too, and seeing those results on their scoresheets, too. A strong mental game helps in this situation - you keep shooting your game, and just do your job.
In the end, I placed 5th, being edged out of 4th by Lesgar "Speedy" Murdock, from Jamaica, by about 80 match points. Lesgar is a nice guy who shot a great match. We were both a long way out of third place. Anyhow - here's the videos of my shooting - commentary, where appropriate, follows...
For more commentary on the 2008 Florida Open, hit the DR Performance Shooting main site!
Monday, February 4, 2008
ALSPPC USPSA match - 2/2/2008
Well, sorry folks, no video on this one. I got the range and found my camcorder battery totally flat... D'oh.
That's OK, though - not much to show you this time. I didn't really connect with my performance on Saturday. I could make excuses, etc, but heck, its not worth lying to either of us. Just wasn't a good match.
However - I got about 500 sharp rounds of practice in following the match, and honed in on a preferred setup on the new gun, and cleaned up many of the errors I made in the match. This is key - as I walked away from the day with positive thoughts and experiences in mind, and greater confidence than the match results would have given me...
Altering my sleep schedule is certainly at least partially responsible - for the Florida Open, I have to wake up about 4:30 Central time! Lack of sleep plays heck on my mental focus, unfortunately. But, I want and need to learn how to deal with that scenario, so... practice afterwards allowed me to focus with that sort of concentration level...
Anyhow - congrats on your match win, Don Hardy!
Monday, January 28, 2008
Creative Dry Fire - Field Courses!
I'm not one of those folks who can stand and do 10 million draws in a row. I get bored, lose focus, and start working bad habits, instead of refining technique. Its just one part of my mental temperament. Here's one of the ways I keep things more interesting - note that I left a couple of key points out when I shot the vid, so check out the comments following it...
For the comments, hit the DR Performance Shooting main site!
CTRP - January 18th, 2008 - USPSA Match
This was the first match with the new gun, and the first monthly match of the year in Waco. Arthur Brown runs a fine match! I won this match, even with some difficulties. Here's the video - comments follow...
Here we see one example of why its not a good idea to take new equipment to a big match. Obviously, this was just a local match - I use local level matches as match practice, so its an appropriate venue to try out new equipment. I have a tendency to push the gun into my left hand when indexing the gun, or when moving from right to left, and this causes me to bump the mag button and drop magazines. For most folks, the answer is to not use a mag release button. In my case, my short thumbs require me to shift the gun around a lot to reach the mag release, especially on a wide body STI frame. So, I've developed a method of building a guard around the mag button using JB Weld that works like a champ. In practice, I hadn't caused the problem with my new Open gun, yet - but it showed right up in a match situation. Needless to say, I've built the mag button guard on the new gun, now, and the problem is resolved satisfactorily.
The weather was pretty chilly - good training for the Florida Open coming up in a week and a half. I'm not sure anyone had a good match, in the end - there were lots of misses and no-shoots being hit, mental errors, etc. Even with the two dropped mags, and a rather stinky classifier, I still won the match by 25%. On the plus side, the new gun times well in the real world, and runs sharp, and I started getting dialed in on the gun well during the match.
The courses were a bit different, compared to what we've been used to at Waco. For starters, the "house" that usually dominated stage 2 is gone in preparation for the Texas Open. There were quite a number of partial and/or long shots in the match, which worked out to be good training for Florida, as well. Many times in the past, the Waco match has a lot of closer, wide open targets, but not this time. Between Arthur's stage designs and the weather, this became a very challenging match!
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Get Back To Your Plan
How many times have you been mid-stage, and something goes a little wrong? You do what you need to do to correct it, and move on - but now you're improvising, off your original plan, and somehow things go from a little bad, to a lot worse? You look around and think "Where am I? And why am I in this handbasket?"
Head over to the DR Performance Shooting site to see the video and read the article!
Sunday, January 6, 2008
ALSPPC 1/5/08 USPSA Match
Not a bad little match for the first foray of the year. The weather around La Grange, TX started off overcast and a bit cool, but warmed to the mid-70s and cleared to partly cloudy skies by 11:00am. I won the Open division in the match, and was High Overall. Here's the video - my comments follow....
This was the typical 5 stage local match. My squad started on Stage 5, so that's where the video starts. As you can see, the stage was a short little 27 round "field" course - if a 3' square shooting box for the shooting area counts as a "field course". It was really more of a big speed shoot, and had the high hit factor you'd expect. I was down 7 points here, which puts me just shy of 95% of points. The footwork was a bit goofy, and I ended up out of position moving into the last array - thus the foot shuffle, but the last set of targets was through a 4"x8" port that was positioned about 5' away from the box, so you had to angle yourself around to see all the targets. The only real mistake here was the 2nd to the last shot on the middle array - a little trigger freeze here, and I broke the 2nd shot on the last target off to the right. I had to make that one up, and then move on - that always costs time.
From there to stage 1. I had to wait 7 or 8 minutes, and had 3 false starts on the stage as targets downrange kept blowing over in the wind that kicked up as the sky cleared. Even so, I had a decent run, excepting my 3 to the last shot, which went over a headshot target at the end - I called it, but didn't make it up for reasons I can't really explain. I was happy with how I got the gun up and ready for the 2nd array, moved hard into the third, and took the Texas start 1 for 1, without the luxury of shooting it in an optimal pattern...
Stage 2 was the classifier, 99-12 Take Your Choice. The 100% hit factor for this one appears to be an 11 - so my 11.3772 is enough for a 103% run there. Unfortunately, the club doesn't own a Bianchi Barricade prop, so the box was a bit wider on each side, and one could see over the top of the barricade (though shooting that way wasn't really a good option for me). This might have made the lean to the inside targets a bit easier, but probably isn't enough to scream about.
Stage 3 really could only be shot one way - you could make some choices on the outside arrays, but nothing too incredible. The plates you hear are 6" squares - I chose to pin up at the beginning and hammer the near target, then take the plates, and sweep the last two as I departed. I took two extra shots here - without them, I'd have been sub-7 seconds on this stage. As it is, this was another high hit factor run.
Stage 4 was the only stage I made any real large mistakes on in the match. My name was pulled first, and I didn't really get comfortable with the stage before I began - definitely a mental error, and one I've recognized in my game, but not fully corrected, yet. C'est la vie. Better to do this in a local match. The middle array is 1 Pepper Popper and 9 US poppers, and I basically hosed at it, not really calling shots, and in the end, ran the gun dry and had to do a standing reload. A tough break, too - the only shot in that array that I fully remember calling was on the first target I shot in the middle - but it didn't go over. It subsequently passed calibration, so I had a miss... to go with another miss on the right side that resulted from - foolishly - trying to make up time lost in the middle. I know better, of course.... Interestingly, another of those same US Poppers (the kind with the funky L-hinge that sometimes have issues...) did not fall when center punched with a 230gr .45 bullet at Major power factor.... so I don't feel so bad about my missed popper... Those targets have sat in a trailer for two years with no use, and this is only their second match, so they could probably use a little TLC in the form of some lube...
Fun match, and a good way to open the season. Hard to tell I literally hadn't shot the gun in over a month (since the last ALSPPC match), isn't it??? ;)
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