I participated in the USPSA match at Marysville today. It was raining as I left home and was still raining as I arrived nearly an hour later. I had checked the weather forecast the night before and it said it would stop raining by 9:00 AM. I had not brought a rain coat. But I hadn’t checked the forecast before I left either. I checked again. The rain was to stop by 9:15. At 9:15 it was still raining..The forecast now said the rain was to stop by 9:45.

The rain tapered to a slight mist by 10:00 and I avoided spending a miserable match in wet clothes. And to my surprise only 36 people showed up for the match. It has been a long time since there were fewer than 100 people have been at the matches I have attended there. I suspect it was the rain that kept most of the people away or perhaps there was a major match someplace that drew them away.

I had practiced some last week but I was very slow compared to what I had been a couple months ago. I just couldn’t consistently get good hits when I would try to shoot fast. I stayed slow for the match. I would rather do poorly because I shot slowly than do poorly because I had tons of misses. A miss is an unforced error.

I still had three misses for the match. One was just barely a miss outside of an A-Zone covered by hard cover on both sides via a highly angled shot taken from a narrow port. Okay, that error is almost forgivable. The other two of those were overlooked steel targets that were some sort of mental block that affected about 25% of our squad.

I think I was the first one to do it and the range officer smirked at my error. The targets were wide open, directly in front of me, as I finished shooting. Later on, I was his R.O. and he did the same exact same thing!

The picture above and the two below are the same stage. It is a run and gun stage. You run down the path, shooting targets on both sides, make a right turn, continue shooting on both sides and then shoot bunch of targets at the very end of the path. For an old guy I can start, run, and stop pretty good. And if I can get close to the targets I can shoot A’s at about 3/4 of my top speed. This was my type of stage. This gave me the Limited Division stage win.

There were 20 targets, 40 rounds minimum, in this stage.

The stage above was the most difficult. On the extreme left there is a vertical sliding panel you open by pulling a rope down with two targets behind it. On the extreme right is a spring loaded door with two targets behind it. In between are a complex setting of steel and paper targets scattered among many obstacles. You must shoot all the targets without going forward of the yellow fault line. As you move from side to side just a foot or two a multitude of targets appear and disappear. It is extremely easy to overlook a target or think you haven’t shot a target and waste time shooting a target more times than needed. I saw one target that had been shot six times by someone when only two shots were required. I saw many, many shooters think they were done and had left one or more targets untouched. Looking at the stage results I see some shooters had four, six, eight, and even 14 misses on this stage. It took me almost 53 seconds to complete this stage but I did it without misses and with good hits (27 As, one B, and five Cs). This put me ahead of some people (in other divisions) who shot it in less than half my time. This also gave me a Limited Division stage win.

This is the stage where the mental block occurred. In the distance there are three steel targets that when fallen reveal a smaller steel target behind them. The act of falling takes time. So I, and many others, shot the big targets first, and continued on to a bunch of other targets behind the barricade to the distant left. We then came back to shoot the moving target just to the right of the steel targets. This mover was activated by one of the steel targets. We shot the moving target and declared ourselves finished without shooting all the small steel targets. I think the mental block was because of the moving target distracting us plus we had already mentally cleared the area when we dropped the big steel targets. I had a decent time but the misses dropped me to fifth out of nine Limited Division shooters.

This was a hallway we entered through the door and then shot targets through windows on either side of the hallway and through two windows at the end of the hallway. See the picture below for a look down the hall.

I thought I did pretty good on the stage until I heard my time. It took me almost 22 seconds for the 32 shots. The Limited Division stage winner did it in under 19 seconds with better hits than me.

This stage is where I had my other miss. Behind the green obstacles in the center is a target similar to the one just visible to the right of the obstacles. I shot it from the diagonal slot in the barricade on the right. I didn’t quite (probably about 1/16th of an inch short) break the black area of the target to claim an A-zone hit. The Texas star on the distant right can be challenging. I saw one shooter (with an Open Class gun!) take close to ten shots to drop the last plate as it swung back and forth through a 180+ degree arc. I managed to knock down all 15 pieces of steel in this stage with one shot each. This saved me one reload and although it seemed slow to me, 40.93 seconds for 37 shots, I completed the stage 3.6 seconds ahead of the next fastest shooter in my division. Even with the miss this gave me the stage win in Limited Division!

This was the classier stage, The Roscoe Rattle. There are two strings to this stage. The first string is to turn, draw, and put six rounds into the center target. The next string is to turn, draw, put six rounds into the left most target, reload, and put six rounds into the right most target. Speed is very important on this stage. There is no problem solving with opportunities to do reloads while you are moving between shooting positions. There is no running. There are no complex shots where I can take advantage of my height to lean around barricades or shoot over obstacles. You just have to shoot fast and not hit the no shoot targets. I sped up my shooting from the previous stages but not nearly enough to make up for the dropped A-zone hits. I had 8 As, 9 Cs, and one D hit in a total of 12.87 seconds. According to the USPSA this is a low C class result (45.9136%, where C class is 40% to 59.9%). But it was good enough for a distant second place Limited Division finish for the stage.

I didn’t didn’t have any clues about how I was doing at the match except for my squad. I knew I was doing okay in my squad but I also knew there were two other squads which had Limited Division shooters. I knew my shooting was below what I knew I could do if I had been practicing more. I left the match feeling sort of blah. Not bad. I hadn’t screwed up too badly. And I knew did fairly good on a couple of the stages. But I had no idea I had won three of the stages. I have never, ever, won even one stage at a Marysville match. I attribute the wins to the poor match turn out.

It turns out, that in addition to winning three stages, I won my division by a good margin! I have not even fantasized about winning my division at this club and this will probably never happen again.

I shot in another ASI match yesterday at Renton Fish and Game Club. I did about the same as I did last time. I came in 5^th out of 69 shooters. I had six seconds of penalties in a five stage match.

I prefer USPSA matches because of the added complexity and problem solving required. But I still have fun with ASI.

Today I participated in a Steel Challenge match at Renton Fish & Game Club. It was a very rainy day and participation was down from normal.

They put up awnings and with rain gear from head to toe I stayed dry. My fingers got a little cold when I was running the scoring tablet or the timer and couldn’t wear my gloves. But I was comfortable enough.

The bays had huge puddles of water in them (or “Almost pond status.”, as Barb described bay 4):

Bay 1.

Bay 2.

Bay 3.

Bay 4.

Bay 5.

Bay 6.

I had a few problems with some of my magazines. Some of the magazines for the Ruger Mark III 22/45 and one of the STI DVC magazines were slow to push the rounds up after the one on top was removed. Two weeks ago I had that problem with the Ruger magazines at Holmes Harbor Rod & Gun Club. I cleaned all the rimfire magazines with an ultrasonic cleaner and lubricated them with a Teflon Non-Stick Dry Film Lubricant. I figured they were all good to go. But they weren’t. And the one STI magazine had the same problem. After the first stage I put all the slow magazines aside and didn’t have any more problems. Those magazine are going to get some special attention from me to make sure they don’t cause problems again.

As I was shooting the match everything felt really slow. I realized the targets were smaller than what we usually have at Holmes Harbor and the spread of the targets was sometimes much larger, but it seemed like I had to really slow down to get consistent hits.

I thought I did okay. I only had one direct competitor in my squad with the centerfire pistol iron sights category. And no competitors with my rim iron sighted gun. Most were shooting open division guns and rifles. So it was a little tough to tell.

Taking into account my equipment problems and things seeming to take longer than they should I was quite surprised to find I won both of my divisions:

I have never won a match, of any type, at Renton before. It guess it was worth it to shoot in the rain when a lot of the competition was smart enough to stay at home and keep warm and dry.

With six stages and four strings of five shots each this means I averaged 0.979 seconds per shot with rimfire and 1.216 seconds per shot with centerfire. Compare this to the typical times at a Holmes Harbor match of 0.637 seconds per shot and 0.770 seconds per shot. Yes, I actually was shooting a lot slower. And by comparing the pictures of the stages you can see why.

I can see this being a valid statement:

While Piper can get away saying this I would never say something like that. I don’t have a cat.

I shot in another Action Shooting International match yesterday. While the game could be described as an extremely simplified version of USPSA the game is scored much differently than USPSA:

ASI matches use the popular “time and penalties” scoring system. The elapsed time from the first shot to last is the shooter’s raw score, plus any applicable penalties. Matches will use the standard IDPA target. (Although USPSA/IPSC targets may be used in a pinch.)

3.1 Each paper target must be shot twice, unless indicated in the written course description. If the shooter fires more shots at the target than needed, only the best-scoring shots will score (typically the best two).

3.2 Shots striking the central scoring zone do not incur a penalty. Shots striking outside the central scoring zone earn time penalties in seconds, according to the following rule:

IDPA Target – “Down Zero” = +0, “Down 1” = +1 second, “Down 3” = +3 seconds.

USPSA/IPSC “Metric” Target – “A” or “B” = +0, “C” = +1 second, “D” = +3 seconds.

USPSA/IPSC “Classic” Target (international) – “A” = +0, “C” = +1 second, “D” = +3 seconds

The IPDA “Down Zero” area is much smaller than the USPSA “A” zone. I typically shoot USPSA targets with splits in the range of 0.20 to 0.50 seconds where a few “C” hits aren’t a big deal. This isn’t the case with ASI matches. First off, I must slow down just because of the much smaller “Down Zero” target area. And then I have to keep in mind that I can easily double the amount of time per shot and still end up with a better score because of the severe penalties of a non perfect hit. My habit, from years of USPSA shooting, is to shoot like I had the USPSA “A” zones and shoot where a few “C” hits don’t matter.

I slowed down a lot and got much better hits. It was not enough because I still had eight seconds of penalties with a seven stage match. But compared to nine seconds for a five stage match last month it was a big improvement. The standing reflected this improvement as I came in fifth out of 75 shooters this time as opposed to ninth out of 58 at the last match.