Blackwater Day 2

Another day of shooters. 

Pictures and video to follow when I get home, but sun rise out here is nice.

For all the issues with following the course of fire, and using cove, I had no unsafe gun handling on my range.  All the shooters were very consciouse of muzzle control.  This was especialy critical given the number of doors to be opened.

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Black Water IDPA

Observations from the first day of competition at the 2010 Blackwater IDPA Shoot house Shootout:

This is the second year I've worked the match, and its interesting to see the varying styles of the SOs and the shooters.

Watching the shooters try to take cover in close quarters forces them to either move back to avoid crowding the cover, or expose to much of thier bodies.

the shooters are very good at diferentiating between shoot and noshoot targets.  But the extra queues (flashing lights on the frame) and opening doors cause confusion, or were outright missed.  Presumably because its not part of thier usual mind set.

The supprising thing to me was the number of folks supprised by thier guns running dry.  When the slide locks open they stand like a duck in thunder, or dont notice and try to pull the trigger harder.

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Weekend Shooting

This weekend was the GOAL.org Cup IDPA competition. Jon Green and the guys from Metro West Tactical put together an excellent 8 stage, 120 round count, competition. I know some of the work that went into this, and it was not a small undertaking.

Personally I won my my class in my division, despite my best efforts not to.

Here is video and analysis of a couple of my stages.

Notice the speed of the first 6 shots. Those were all down Zero points (meaning 'perfect' hits, in an 8" circle on the IDPA target), the speed is hardly amazing in the grand scheme of things, but good for me. The next three are at a much longer range, and correspondingly slower. Then a reload, and three more shots at a target you can't see. All of this is about the right pace, and I need to work on my reloads to get better speed.

Now I move to the other side of the stage, for 2 more targets. I put the gun in my left hand now, to make shooting from the left side of cover easier. However the range is too far for this technique, and as a result the shots get much, much, slower. While my reload is okay, but not great, the gun fails to fully go into battery (probably my error, not a gun problem) so I have to clear that before continuing. The result is a score 1o to 15 seconds seconds off the pace.


This stage is an example of how it should look. The first 6 shots are at two targets, engaged Mozambique style: two body shots, one head shot. Tactically this is for shooting some one wearing concealed armor who fails to stop when shot twice in the chest. For IDPA its a way to burn ammo and force a reload (by requiring a minimum of 12 shots all divisions must reload at least once, and no one is required to reload twice). Notice the difference in temp between the body shots (8" circle) and the head shots (5" square, with no room for misses). Even at the top of the game there is a tempo change, but its much much faster all around.

Then a reload with retention on the move to cover, this gives me enough ammo in the gun that I wont have to reload while laying on my belly. It may not save very much time, but it reduces variability because I don't have any risk of having my reload blocked by my vest.

Next is a miss, then one hit to make the target fall, and 2 hits on paper. Repeat on the other side of the car(but with out the miss). As a 1911 operations point the safety did go on while I was switching sides.

Finally note the SO's caution in how he has me kneel up and clear the gun. Safety first.

That was my Sunday, how was your weekend?

AE