12 February 2006

Range Report

Shot at Wichita Falls today. Damn cold at the start, and very, very windy. 5 fun run and gun stages and the classifier. Dan, the Pimp and I made the trek to the range, leaving at oh dark thirty, grabbing something to eat and getting to the range by about 9:45.

Stage 1 - start kneeling, "praying for a good run", get to your gun, shoot four targets through the port, then haul ass to engage two more arrays of 4 around the corner. A few of us got to reshoot this stage - what we thought were ports turned out to not be so. No biggie - more shooting is good shooting. Here's some pics of Dan and I:



Stage 2 had us starting in a box of our choice (on either the left or right side of the stage) and engage 3 paper, one popper, and then a mirror image (almost) on the opposite side. Advance into a narrowing hallway, and engage 1 paper in the middle of the bay, 1 paper on either side of the bay, and a popper next to the outside paper targets.

Stage 3 was a longish hallway type stage. Start with hands on the table, engage 4 poppers about 15m downrange, and one paper target. Advance down the hallway and two ports on the left with two paper each, then a quick step to the right with 3 paper, then about 5m down the hallway there were 4 more paper, and at the end of the hallway a paper covered partially with a no shoot and then "around" the corner a low paper target. Here's the Pimp and I at work on this stage:



Stage 4 seemed to have some bad karma. Start with your unloaded gun on the table with mag next to it. Engage 3 paper through the port, then 4 small pieces of steel in between the starting port and the door we had to run to about 10m away. Open the door, engage 3 paper targets IN the doorway, and then haul ass to the final position to engage 4 paper targets 10-12m away through a window. My camera crapped out of batteries so no more pics.... I got ultra lucky here. I wasn't paying attention to the COF and didn't hear the part about not engaging the steel through the first port. And did. At the last shooting position, my pistol decided to crap out on me (thanks to very cold conditions, very windy conditions blowing the ultra fine dust EVERYWHERE, and my pistol not being quite broken in yet after the hard chrome job...) But anyway - I earned two procedurals and the mother of all jams which cost me 20 seconds. How do I know it cost me 20 seconds you ask??? Well, that's because it turns out most of our squad, myself included, started in the wrong spot and had to reshoot! C'est la vie!

Stage 5 was a repeat of a stage last month, with a slight twist at the end. 4 big ports in a row, made of barrels. Behind each port at about 1m were arrays of 4 shoot targets with a no shoot covering 2 of them. At the end of the wall, you then got to engage a Texas Star. Fun, down and dirty stage.

Stage 6 was the classifier. 3 targets, two strings. String 1 at 15m had you shoot the 3 targets, reload then re-engage with strong hand only. String 2 at 10m had you shoot the 3 targets, reload, then re-engage with weak hand only. Gun issues for me again on the strong hand part; I think I was limp wristing with a combination of just general gun grunge. Got all my hits though, and even though the first string cost me about 10 seconds more than it should have, I still finished 5th on the stage thanks to good hits and reloads.

Wound up 3rd overall, not too shabby, Dan finished 10th with his new limited setup, and the Pimp finished well in open - having a lot of dirty gun issues himself.

The elements were pretty tough - the wind was brutal and I still haven't removed all the dust from my mouth and ears. Very very cold this morning, but hey, any day at the range is better than a day NOT at the range!

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