June match

Sign up for the June 8th USPSA pistol match at York is beginning now. Be sure to use the email yorksignup@gmail.com not my personal email. Send your name, USPSA #, division and anyone else you would like to be squadded with.

This match will be a 9 stage, 158 round match with one classifier, and a bunch of mover and some tougher stuff than usual. It will be a great warm-up for the big matches coming up this summer.

This match also has a carbine option. You may elect to shoot a pistol caliber carbine instead of a pistol. We will use the same stages, but there will be a an alternate start position for carbine shooters. This will not effect the pistol match in any way.

Area 8 video

Videos from Area 8 can be found on YouTube. I have posted a bunch and plan on posting a few more in the next couple days. They are all of people on my squad. I wish I would have been able to get some others. I know Kirk and Greg had really good matches too. The results if you are interested are at the USPSA webpage.

Poll results and Area 8

The poll is closed and the results are in. I think all we can really figure from the choices made is that the majority of shooters agree with what we've been doing for the last couple years as far as our pistol matches go. That being said, I've already got our next match ready to go. It will be 8 stages for 150 rounds as designed by GM Paul Mason. He has some old-school stuff in store for you. Does anyone remember fixed time standards? Think 6 second strings.

Expect some Area 8 stuff in the next day or two. We had a bunch of York guys do quite well, and I've got a ton of video which I will be posting to YouTube. I'll put the link here when it's ready.

FUNSHOOT PICS and stuff

So here it is Saturday morning at 7:20a. I'm pullin into the IKES wonderin how I am gonig to get it all together without Mark to help run the show. I've been up here this week doing prep work, and I've allready eliminated a 2 stage pit, am willing to cut out another, and hope I can find enough squad leaders. I don't even have the shack opened up, and in pulls Ian and Steve. We get things opened up and Steve proceeds to change all the cardboard on pit 2 (it realy needed it). Ian throws his back into it and we get the pin table up, and the closet unloaded for supplies, and head to the back. Meanwhile, Chet and Bernie show, and Chet gets a crew, and proceedes to do a wonderful job of getting Pit 1 setup with Clays and pins. Clyde and a few others show for the finishing touches, and we are ready by 9:00 am! Thanks guys! I really needed the help, and I got it. It makes the work I put into these shoots so much more rewarding. It also reminds me, as it should you as well, how much an integral part of the funshoots Mark is. If I didn't have his help, I am not sure how I could do it. It has been said before, and will be again, we have the best group of shooters here at the IKES you're likely to find anywhere.

That being said, here are just a few pics of things the rest of you missed.

Chet and his gang got bored, so they started drilling clays,...for the JULY shoot!


Food of the month is back!

Inspired, no, spawned, by Mark C., the lolipop tree generated it's fair share of groans, but it couldn't have been too bad, 26 shooters sent over 100 tootsies to their maker! I keep trying to make this shoot harder, and you guys still manage to to keep the scores high!

The plinkin cans didn't work out so well. Seems soda cans aren't what they were when last I plinked at 'em, the .22's went right thru, without knockin 'em over, and the wind created more than one corus of laughter, as it felled them all with one gust. If you liked this stage, save me steel soup cans and we will do it again.

Here is Mike A., a very capable young shooter, sizing up the claybirds. Remember, kids under 18 are only $5. I bet one day he kicks daddy Daves ....

All in all a good day. We had 4 new shooters, who enjoyed the day, and hopefully will be back. It slowed my squad a bit, causing some backups, but no one really seemed to care.

On a personal note, I got to play with my toy, which was of interest to many. However, I was the only one to show with something weird (figures), and the general feel I got was the folks like steel, and hate counting IPSC targets. So steel it is, no more weird gun days. It turns out, that as the day progressed, my BSA red dot scope shifted high and right, to the point that I just quit, and took a DNF for equipment failure (I figured it couldn't handle the kick of the .30 carbine cartridge). After the match, a fellow squad mate wanted to play with it, and returned a consistantly better target than I was shooting. Hmmm, was the scope shifting, or was I....

The lesson here? It's a poor musician, who blames his instrument... Make sure your game is on, before blaming the hardware. I think some investigative range time is in order.

Results will be posted at http://yorkiwlaipsc.org/matches08.htm in a day or two.

Remember, no funshoot in June, sorry 'bout that. See you all in July!

g

Range Closure

Please be advised that all of Izaak Walton's ranges will be closed Saturday, May 31st until at least 3:00pm for the Youth Field Day. Basically, the whole club is shut down. We can't even work during the event.

Therefore, the set-up for the June match will be on Sunday, June 1st at 11:00am.

Have a nice Memeorial Day weekend and good luck to all of those at the Area 8 championship this weekend.

FUNSHOOT!!! YEA!!!

This Saturday MAy 24th.

Setup 8:30, registration at 9:30, noise at 10:00ish.

No caliber restrictions, if it fits in a pistol that holds 6 rounds or more, you can shoot it.

Be there

g

Dedicated or just plain dumb?

Some guys will do anything to prepare for a big match. Some of us chose to practice in the rain today. Most guys won't even shoot a match in the rain. Does that make us more dedicated or just plain dumb? Paul N. was obviously having a great time.
Ben was still getting it done in the rain.
Mark doesn't need sights. After about an hour and a half in the rain we decided we had enough and called it a day. Not long after I got home the sun came out. Doesn't that figure?

Team 3 gun video

My team shooting pit 4 at the team 3 gun wash-out last weekend is posted on YouTube. Click on this link to see it. Look for more videos by me on that page under "More From:hkbrt".

More pics from team 3 gun

Guys preparing for the 3 rifle relay on the house pit.
Kevin running all out to tag Bill L. on the three pistol relay.
Three guys on the line waiting for the beep on a team free-for-all.

This stuff is a lot of fun. If you haven't tried it you really should.

Important new poll

Ammo and gas costs are effecting all of us, and that's partly the reason for the new poll. This subject comes up once in a while, and it has come up again.

Would our match be better if it were a little smaller? Some say that our match is too much of a good thing. I know some of the older guys think our monthly USPSA match has gotten to be an endurance event. I also know some people drive extreme distances because we run a section match every month. I can see both sides of the coin. I'm there to shoot, but on the other hand I really enjoy Southern Chester which is only 5 stages and 115 rounds or so.

I want your opinion. What is the perfect size for a monthly USPSA pistol match at Izaak Walton?

A funny thing happened at the match today....

Well, when I left work at 2:30am the stars were out so I felt pretty good about our chances for having the match. At 8:00am when I got up it didn't look so good. I called Dan and told him to drag his feet and have everyone hold fast for a decision upon my arrival. When I got to the club it was still raining and no one was too thrilled about the prospect of shooting in the rain except for JT. I think he might be some kind of masochist. Anyway, a lot of people had driven a long distance to shoot so we decided we were going to cancel the match and shoot some steel from under cover. So we set up 40 pieces of steel on the rifle range. Paul S. always busts his butt for us. Here's the picture to prove it. Then we decided we needed some shotgun stuff on pit 1. Then, a lot of the shooters left....
...and it quit raining! So we decided to set up the back 4 pits and shoot the match!!! Here's Ben shooting first in our team relay on Pit 4.
Rob B. shooting in Pit 6. 36 people stuck it out and were rewarded with no rain to speak of. We shot 6 stages amazingly without bags. It sprinkled just the slightest bit towards the end of the day. But don't look for results. We left the scoresheets in the stat shack and just shot for fun. And I think everyone did have a great time. Thanks to all that stayed and sorry to all those who left. We did the best we could with the hand that was dealt us.

Comp problem

Gun part in need of Viagra! One of our guys had a little comp problem while shooting his AR-15 the other day. Apparently the threads were not straight on either the rifle or the comp (probably the latter). He was not injured and the rifle is probably OK too. The comp will need some minor adjustment.

You can take 3 things from this:
1. Always wear your safety glasses even when shooting long guns.
2. Stuff happens. It could have happened to any of us. We all trust threads.
3. Threads must be straight when putting on a comp. This can be checked by eyeball looking through the bore, or by using a rod. There is probably an even better way.

Using live ammo to check concentricity is not my first choice, but apparently it does show you what you need to know.

"Perfect practice"

I have been reading the book "Perfect practice" by Saul Kirsch. It is excellent. I'm not sure if I really learned anything new, but I am reminded of so much that I had forgotten. Basically, it is a collection of practice drills with some useful tips in the beginning of every chapter. The drills are mostly simple ones that stress the fundamentals of our sport: accuracy, the draw, the reload, movement and transitions. He will tell you as any master or GM will that practicing these basic skills is where it's at.

This book was money well spent. Get yourself a copy.

May match set-up

The set up for the May match went extremely well. We had 19 guys and excellent weather on our side. The back 4 stages are ready to roll and they look very simple, until you add in the fact that there are three guys shooting at the same time on two of them, and three guys are shooting the other two stages as a relay. Sometimes the ones that look simplest bite you when you try to go too fast. Me addressing some of the troops.
We ran out of staples so we'll be having volunteers hold the targets in position while people shoot. It requires a lot of really dedicated people to do that.

Speaking of dedication: Is there another club in all of USPSA that consistently gets 18 or more people out to set up details? I'll bet there isn't. Thanks guys!

PSA stages

Russell F. sent me some pictures of the PSA stages. I chose these two to post because they are representative of the types of stages they do there. If you like steel be sure to sign up for that match early next year. It fills up quickly. This was stage 2. It ate people alive with the small plates.
This was stage 5 and the much larger steel on this one made it a lot easier and way faster. Ben smoked this one in about 21 seconds. I barely got him. Keep in mind at this match you can never have more than 10 rounds in the gun, and we shot iron sights.