IDPA Thursday Night

I shot generally better tonight. Still lots of room for improvement, but I didn't choke anywhere, even with *two* squib reshoots...

I have counted it up as 60 shots in the match, though that does not account for makeup shots. I had three misses and seven down 1's. I believe the key was consciously shooting slower.

The procedurals on Stage 1 were a stop in the open while engaged and a break cover, Stage 2, it  was breaking tactical sequence, and on Stage 4, it was another cover break.

The biggest problem was two different squibs on Stage 1. The first time through, I did fairly well, shooting methodically, then the squib was on either the last target or next to last. Time at that point was 24.4x seconds. It appears to have been a cartridge with no powder. The bullet was barely into the rifling. I loaded up tried again. ANOTHER SQUIB! Much earlier in the course of fire. This time, it cleared the barrel, better safe than exploded. So, having learned my lesson, I shot the rest of the match with factory ammo, which I was pleased to have brought with me. When I finally got to finish Stage 1, my raw time was 39.62.

Several good pieces of advice were received tonight. One I knew about, but was still doing wrong is positioning behind cover. In my first match, I got right up on the cover, which makes it tough to move around. Tonight, I tried to make sure I was an arms length behind the cover, particularly on Stage 4 with two Bianchi barriers, but I failed to account for leaning forward in stance, so I still had to step back and lift the muzzle to clear the barrier. Lift too high and it's a safety issue. And I'm going to keep breaking from cover with my feet until I do it enough that my stance narrows. I just take a big step, set my weight and, oops, too wide....

In the submitted scores, I was last for ESP division, 3rd from last overall. I think a better indicator of my progress will be the spread to the next better score. In ESP, the next higher score was a full 30 seconds better, but interestingly enough, that shooters penalties were similar. His raw time was 30 seconds better.