As I mentioned three days ago, I did get some videos of the latest club match. Some of them embarassing, some of them funny, some of them must curious. (All videos are 3mb to 5mb in size. Clicking on the video links should bring up Windows Media Player in a new window.)
These may not be of interest to everyone, but the selection does provide a look at what a club match is like. Most telling is the commeraderie, and the friendly atmosphere.
(Incidentally, not all of the videos are presented in this article. I have seven of the videos yet to be edited and loaded, which I'll present in a separate article Feb11 ARPC Match Pix 2.)
The videos are best justified as showing that it can be Winter in Oregon and STILL be warm, dry and sunny. Since the weatherman will have his revenge on us this weekend (freezing temperatures, wind, and snow mixed with rain is forcast for the Sunday match) I'm glad I have this record to look back at.
The lineup of 17 videos can be taken in haphazard order by clicking on the link at the top of this page. For those who know the Columbia Cascade Section members, and especially for those who were there, I'll try to organize them a bit better and provide a directory here. The videos are presented in the same sequence here as in the Gallery, but I've linked directly to the files here so you don't have to make a separate step through the website to see them.
I don't have the score sheet handy, and the actual names of the stages doesn't really matter, so I've assigned arbitrary names to each stage.
The Bobber Stage:
This was the first stage of the day for our squad. Facing a wall, there are double IPSC targets on both sides. Moving downrange, maneuvering around a couple of inconveniently placed barrels, there are mirror arrays on the left and right sides: three static IPSC targets, and a 'bobbing' IPSC target which is initiated by hitting a Pepper Popper. It's possible to hit the Pepper Poppers from the starting box, and our two exampler competitors both used that to their advantage, as the bobbers slowed down to an easy-to-hit cyclic rate in ten seconds or less.Fred started shooting IPSC a couple of years ago, and spent quite a while being very deliberate in his approach. This year he has exhibited more confidence and more aggressiveness. He has always been an excellent shot, but now he is hitting the targets much more quickly. We were all glad to see him turn in an exceptional performance at this match, and I wish I had more film of him so he could see how good he looked.
SWMBO took on the same stage, using approximately the same strategy, but using an Open gun. She benefits from much more experience and is prettier, too!
The Classifier Stage:
As I mentioned before, we were tested on TAKE 'EM DOWN CM03-03, an 11-round Comstock classifier stage which presents a mix of IPSC targets (two 2-target arrays, with no-shoot targets between each pair) engaged from behind a Bianchi barricade, and then three Pepper Poppers engaged from behind another Bianchi barricade. It's a hoser stage, with a kicker: the penalty targets!Geek pain -- I missed the far-right IPSC target and hit the penalty target instead. I had 41 points out of 55 possible, but with 40 penalty points subtracted from that score I ended up with ONE point. I had a good time (in both senses of the expression) and it looks good on the video because you can't see the penalty hits on the film. One other shooter on the squad, Doug S., had got double no-shoots on an earlier stage, so I'm seen yelling to him "I did it for you, Doug!" Then you see Doug walking downrange to tape the targets, thanking me for my thoughtfulness. "No mission too difficult; no sacrifice too great" where your pals are concerned.
No, they didn't believe me, either.
Walt, "The Shooter Formerly Known As The Revolver Guy", had JUST given up his revolver (for the time being) and bought a Limited-class auto-pistol in .38 Super caliber from Fred. It's not clear how much Walt had shot the new gun before the match, but (as is not uncommon) he was starting out with a mish-mash of ammunition from various sources. He started out using some 20-year old Egyptian military ammunition, and it just wasn't working for him. By the time we got around to the Classifier stage, he had dumped about half of it on the ground and finally got his snoot into a box of 'the good stuff'. You'll hear some cheering at the end of this video, because this was one of the very few stages where he managed to make the entire run without a malfunction.The Poker Stage:
The start position was "gun on the table, elbows on the table". It looked like a social situation to me. There were 4 IPSC targets in front of the table, with a lot of hard-cover and some ugly white stuff. Around the corner to the far left were a few more IPSC targets, then you had to run back half-way, turn another corner and snake down-range to engage the last three ISPC targets. Lots of places to lose time, but it was essentially a Hoser stage with many temptations to go faster than you could shoot accurately.Big Dawg started us off with a demonstration of just how quickly a big man can move when he really wants to. He lost 20 pounds over the winter, and is working on another 20 pounds. At this rate, he'll be so tiny by next winter that he'll have to stay on the porch.
The Geek run wasn't as bad as I had feared. At least I got my shots and didn't hit any penalty targets.
And The Shipster turned in his usual smooth, no-errors performance. It's fun to watch him shoot, because every time he comes out he gets a little better. He should be bumping up a class before the year is over, if he keeps working at it.
There was an interesting rules question on this run: The Range Officer is suppose to make sure that every competitor starts with protective glasses and hearing protection, but who watches to make sure that the RO has HER ears on?
The it was Walt's turn. He's still experimenting with odd-lot ammo at this point in the match, and I moved in closely to see just what was happening to cause the jams. I thought it might be that his recoil spring was too light for the load, and perhaps the slide wasn't returning to battery, but that isn't apparent from the good view I had. Sometimes the hammer would drop but the round wouldn't go off; sometimes the hammer wouldn't even drop, which means he had to rack the slide for the next shot. You might run through this sequence a few times, perhaps you can spot something I couldn't. Let me know if you do, please. (I cut the film short after Walt moved away from the 2nd array.)
The Steel Stage:
This was a nice 'field course' with three Pepper Poppers ... left, right, and center ... that must be engaged from the starting box. Moving downrange, there are targets left and right which are placed so you almost MUST stop to engage them to keep from breaking the 180. We did, in fact, have one DQ in our squad because the shooter over-ran the array, then backed up to engage it, and lacked just one step from having moved far enough back that he could legally engage the uprange target in the array. SWMBO had to DQ him, and later reported that it was one of the hardest things she has ever had to do. She has been a certified Range Officer for several years, works as an RO at almost every club match she attends, and has worked two USPSA National Matches, but this is the first time she ever had to DQ anyone. It helped that the competitor realized what he had done as soon as he took the shots, and he was just standing there waiting for the inevitable.Big Dawg is the first example, and you'll see him move past the first target array before he realized he has gone too far. He DOES back up far enough to engage them safely.
The next shooter is Fish. He has two Open guns, and a Limited gun, but everything seems to be in the shop this week. Here you see how a good L10 shooter handles the confusing target arrays. I've often told him that he should give up the Open guns and shoot his Kimber all the time, but he just smiles and shakes his head. I know he has too much fun shooting Open to give it up. In Part 2, you'll see how he feels about the L10 gun at the end of a good match.
The ZigZag Stage:
No still photos available for this stage, and only one Video.
The Geek may not be pretty, but it's the only record of what this stage looks like. You can't see much of the stage, because of the extensive use of "Visquine" (SP?) as vision barriers. I'll be glad when all the vision barriers are Orange Snow-Fence, because you can see what's going on when you look at the film.
The stage forces you away from the starting position (centered on the bay, facing uprange) to engage a couple of targets around the corner on the left. Then run right past the end of the vision barrier, where you can see an array of IPSC targets. Moving left along the 2nd vision barrier, there's a large port where you can engage one, two or three IPSC targets far downrange. Finally, move back to the left and engage a mixed array of IPSC and steel targets around the end of the vision barrier.
You can go fact, or you can go slow. And you can pour a lot of rounds downrange at the last array if you choose to leave the far-left 'far downrange' target until you get closer to it instead of engaging it through the mid-range port.
That pretty much wraps up the first 5 stages. The last stage, "The Wall", will be exclusively featured in Part 2.
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