Well, I was back looking like a fool with my camera on my head, but I wasn't the only one this match. I forgot and left the waterproof back on this time, so the sound is a little more muffled than before.
The weather was great; started out a little cool but became really nice shortly after the match started. I didn't shoot a great match, but I had a great time. Really enjoyed shooting with the Cenla guys, some good friends, and a couple of forum regulars. A special thanks to Will_M for pulling significant duty behind the timer RO'ing.
Our squad started on Stage 3, the dreaded (to some, anyway) classifier. This one was a classic skills test that has been a part of USPSA pretty much since its inception. "El Presidente" (stage diagram available
here) was developed by Jeff Cooper in the 1970's and published in the January/February 1979 issue of American Handgunner magazine. 30+ years later, it is still a popular benchmark, since it requires both a draw and a reload, and requires good transitions and control. In the early days, a time of 10 seconds was considered good. Top shooters today are sub 4 seconds. I was first up in our squad and was about a half second off of my personal best. 4.88 seconds and decent points was enough for my only stage win of the day, however. The angle of the sun caused a little difficulty with the smoke, even though I was shooting jacketed bullets:
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Forum member mhead came up shortly thereafter. This 7.86 second run was good enough for 4th Production (out of 24):
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Stage 4 was one that I ripped off, err "designed". I borrowed the basic layout from a stage at the first Nationals I ever attended. This version was pretty heavily modified though. Although I was pretty happy with how it turned out, designing it definitely didn't give me an edge shooting it. My run was fast but several penalties knocked me down to 4th Limited (out of 17):
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I also got video of mhead on this one. This was good enough for 7th Production:
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Stage 5 had a lot of potential for disaster with penalty targets scattered all around. I was fast again and managed to avoid the no-shoots, but I still pulled a miss which left me in 2nd and cost me a stage win:
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Forum member Will_M was 2nd Open on Stage 5 (shooting a Limited gun, no less) with this run. It would have been 3rd Limited had he signed up in that division:
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Stage 1 was another of my designs. What can I say, if you don't like the stages, let me know and I will take it into consideration for future submissions. Better yet, submit some of your own! John is almost always looking for stage ideas. I thought this one was fun and liked the concept, but it was a bit of a "hoser" stage. Nevertheless, there were some areas that could cause problems if you weren't careful, so it wasn't about all out speed. I proved this fact by again being fast, nearly 3 seconds faster than anyone else in the match, but not penalty free. This was 3rd place Limited:
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mhead had a nice run on Stage 1 and came in 3rd Production:
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Our final stop, Stage 2, was an interesting stage. I looked at reloading once, after the second array of targets (16 shots), but there wasn't much room to make the reload, so I considered doing two reloads, once after the first array (8 shots), and once after the third array (16 shots, leaving 8 to finish the stage). Not settling on a mental plan can cause problems, and it did for me here. I forget to reload completely and ran the gun dry. Embarassing, but it happens. 2nd place Limited:
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Will_M had a nice run and was 2nd Open again. In Limited, this would have been good enough for 3rd place:
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That's enough of my long-winded match recap. Hope to see everyone in March.