Eric Gambill Shooting Log

[Airic]

Had a good laugh during my dryfire today. My transitions were spot on, it was almost robotic to the A zone. I thought to myself...."Man, the gun is stopping on a dime today". That's when I looked down and saw a dime on the floor in front of me. Found it kinda funny.

I made the decision to shoot more IDPA matches this year. I am going to shoot a regional and try to get into Nationals if I can. This has caused a little bit of a training dilemma for me. I have never done two sports in one year. I will be doing a lot more USPSA than IDPA. How do I treat dryfire and livefire? I start out with USPSA, then IDPA two weeks later then USPSA two weeks after that (majors). I'll figure it out I guess.

As a side note: I signed on with X-Treme bullets shooting team. They are now my sole sponsor. Due to the agreement with them I had to leave The Shooter's Source team. It also means I wont be able participate in the contingency program this year either. I wish all who participate good luck, its pretty much the best thing going on with any shooting forum out there.

 

[Airic]

Not sure what to make of this, got it last night on my Facebook:

I kinda think I just got confused for Eric Grauffel lol

 

[Airic]

Video from yesterdays match is up. I felt pretty good about this performance. The mistakes I made were minimal. While I was shooting the last stage in the video, Melody Line, I called "mike, mike" on a couple of the targets. When I took those shots my sight alignment was crap. The front sight was way over in the left side of the notch and I just knew I threw them. They ended up being charlies and I had a good laugh. I guess its not a huge problem to call shots bad and they end up being good.

http://youtu.be/fvK-uPwQQpY

 

[45recoil]

Nicely done EG. Congrats on your nee sponsorship....and did Seth comb his hair differently? Lol

 

[Airic]

Its 2.5 weeks until my first major of the year The Cowtown Classic. I'm working my way through my dryfire matrix everyday. I do 2 gunhandling drills one day and 2 movement based drills the next. I have made some small improvements here and there.

I noticed the other day that I have a lot of problems moving laterally (parrallel to the targets) and shooting. It has always felt weird to me and I can never seem to find a way I like to do it. Give me a little angle towards or away from the targets and the problems go away.

I'm still struggling to consistently get my reloads under one second in dryfire. In live fire they are really bad, like 1.3-1.5 secs most of the time. I spent a little time breaking down the process today to see if I can identify where I'm losing time. Its definatley not a speed issue....I can do burkett loads in .6s so I'm losing almost a second from the time the mag enters the magwell to when I finally fire a shot. While I was playing around it occurred to me that it might have something to do with being left handed. I never like to make excuses about equipment issues but now that I have looked at it it seems i'm losing my time because I need to shift my strong hand grip, press the button with my trigger finger, re adjust my grip, get my finger back on the trigger then sight pic and fire the shot. I just wonder if I can pick up some speed if I had a reversible mag catch. I'm going to try to get a hold of a Gen4 Glock and do some experiments.

Live fire practice has been patchy. I havent been able to consistently get out to the range on a weekly basis. I got a little over 200 rounds of practice last weekend and I can tell my shot calling has suffered. I set some pretty tight targets in the 15-30 yd range and I was throwing a lot of shots. Hopefully I can get that cleaned up in the next two weeks.

 

[Airic]

So what happens when your dryfire area has a slick concrete floor, you use 1in PVC shooting boxes and your lead foot comes down right on the box during an entry drill?

You end up staring at the ceiling from the ground....

 

[Airic]

Live fire today. Ran a edit/entry drill and the dot drill.

The exit/entry was a 8ft wall with a 3yd and 5yd open target. My intent was to really push the shooting while moving out of and into a position. I was running the drill with all alphas in the 2.7s range. Got some interesting numbers from the timer. My draws to the 3yd target where averaging .75 and .88 for the second alpha. I was making it to the third shot (4yd transition) in 1.1s avg. I felt pretty smooth in my movement even though I was pushing hard. The key to the quickest times was alway getting the gun on the third target after the move and shooting as soon as it was available.

The dot drill is pure genius. If your having accuracy issues this drill is for you. I learned so much about my visual patience (lack of) today. I ran it at 5 yds (6 shots, 5s par time). This drill eats ammo but it is worth it. My first runs were in the 3.6 range with 1 or 2 outside the dot. If you pay attention to the timer it's amazing what you will learn about how much time you have to make an accurate shot.

Match tomm at ITPSC, think I'll set a goal of 93% of the points.

 

[drmitchgibson]

I'm still struggling to consistently get my reloads under one second in dryfire. In live fire they are really bad, like 1.3-1.5 secs most of the time. I spent a little time breaking down the process today to see if I can identify where I'm losing time. Its definatley not a speed issue....I can do burkett loads in .6s so I'm losing almost a second from the time the mag enters the magwell to when I finally fire a shot. While I was playing around it occurred to me that it might have something to do with being left handed. I never like to make excuses about equipment issues but now that I have looked at it it seems i'm losing my time because I need to shift my strong hand grip, press the button with my trigger finger, re adjust my grip, get my finger back on the trigger then sight pic and fire the shot. I just wonder if I can pick up some speed if I had a reversible mag catch. I'm going to try to get a hold of a Gen4 Glock and do some experiments.

When I did the TDSA course, Marshall Luton (lefty) said he used his middle finger to press the mag release. Have you tried that? Every once in a rarealmostnever I do a weak hand mag change, and I use my middle finger to press the button. Seems meritorious. There are some vids of him on Youtube doing it, and it looks fast.

 

[Airic]

When I did the TDSA course, Marshall Luton (lefty) said he used his middle finger to press the mag release. Have you tried that? Every once in a rarealmostnever I do a weak hand mag change, and I use my middle finger to press the button. Seems meritorious. There are some vids of him on Youtube doing it, and it looks fast.

I've explored that option, my fingers just doesnt bend that well for that and I still end up shifting my grip a lot. I'm going to play around with it again and see what I can come up with.

 

[Airic]

For some reason I decided to hammer the gas pedal today at the match. I was shooting way out of my comfort zone, or at least it felt like it. Seth and I seem to really push when we shoot our match at ITPSC. We make a lot of mistakes and have a lot of misses. We get to the majors and things calm down. I had 2 misses over 18 stages at Production nationals but I come home and shoot a 5 stage match and have 5 misses lol

I actually felt good about the match today, just knew I was pushing the shot calling a little too fast. Had one hiccup where I got my finger stuck between the mag pouch and the belt on one stage and it cost me probably 2.5 seconds but I've never had that happen before so I think it was a freak thing.

Had a great time today. Was glad to see some Boomer Shooters come down and shoot with us. Got my butt kicked by Micah Rowe!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3KFhF2KWQM&feature=share&list=UUjRIo1mEUZo-IZE1EscMsdQ

 

[Airic]

I'm pretty much on schedule with my pre-major dryfire matrix. I'll have at least one more live fire session before cowtown but I'd really like to squeeze in two. My last session was really productive. I hit the dot drills hard again working on my accuracy at speed. Before I went to the range I printed the dot drill targets and made a mistake by running them portrait instead of landscape. Ended up with 1 1/4 inch dots instead of 2 inchers. I reprinted but took the mistake targets with me anyway and shot some rounds at them, they were pretty tough. The second half of the session was shooting on the move. I worked lateral and angled movement on some open targets. My shot calling felt real good and I focused on getting my points as opposed to moving fast.

I'm going to keep on with the dots this week as I feel like its really improving me. After evaluating the posted stages from Cowtown I feel like I'll hit the entry/exit drills really hard also. It just doesnt look like there is a whole lot of opportunity to shoot on the move but a lot of "get into and out of" positions. I also need to do a little bit of SHO work, I noticed they changed the stages a little and one of them will involve some SHO shooting.

As a side note, I had some leftover thoughts from one of my dryfire sessions last week that I didnt get around to posting. I was running the entry/exit drills and I started experimenting a little. I wanted to see what the difference on the timer was between getting your body moving early during the shooting and just standing flat footed. The way I tested was to set a par time to make it past a fault line about 5 yards away. I had 3 open targets at 10 yards. I started out the strings the way I would normally practice these drills....by getting my body moving towards the other position while shooting. I'm talking slight movement in the shoulders, hips and knees here, not any foot movement. I just get my momentum going while I shoot the targets. I then ran the strings standing completley still and exploding out of the position as soon as I fired my last shot.

I found it to be about .2s faster on average to get your momentum moving during the shooting. Even when I was restricting myself to only counting the all alpha runs for both ways it was still faster. I knew it would be, but I had never taken the time to actually confirm it in practice. I guess the moral of the story is: Play around with things in practice, confirm what you think you know. That way you dont have to worry about it.

 

[Airic]

It's here. Time to get to work. The Cowtown Classic!

 

[Airic]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whrws8hEotk&list=UUjRIo1mEUZo-IZE1EscMsdQ

Heres the first person vid from Cowtown Classic. I had a pretty rough match. I ended up 11th overall and left felt like I should have placed in the top 5. During the match I had two reshoots due to Range equipment failure. One on stage one due to a paper target blowing off the sticks and another on stage 10 due to a plate turning sideways instead of falling. That ran me into my reserve ammo, which was leftover ammo from Production Nats (the same ammo that caused jams for me)....its caused more jams for me again. I didnt realize where that ammo was from until after the match. Add that to the fact that I was having problems hitting steel and I lost a lot of match points.

I want to do a little match point break down because it helps me understand how much I lose for certian mistakes. Maybe it'll help someone else also:

Heres the final standings:

As you can see, there was almost exactly 3% of the match points (or 46 points) between the first place M and I. Thats a pretty tight race and every little mistake means places on the final standing. On Stage one, I had a jam that I calculated costed me around 2 seconds and a mike on a close target. That equates to about 25 match points lost on that stage. On stage two, I had problems hitting the steel which cost me about 6 seconds on my stage time. That was roughly another 25 match points. That means that those two mistakes alone cost me 5th place overall and first Master. 25 or 50 match points doesnt sound like a lot when there are over 1400 points available in the match, but it adds up quick...and means your losing places overall.

I had a couple more issues. On one stage I shot dry and had to leave a piece of steel standing, I also had a jam on that stage. Another stage one of my mags came out of my final mag pouch as I jumped down from a platform and caused me to have to pick one up from the ground and finish out the stage, ran dry and left a mike. I tried to stop hard on the moving platform on stage 11 and fell off the platform, costing me a lot of time. Overall, I just didnt have a good performance.

On the good side: I shot well on the move and felt like I entered/exited positions well. My reloads felt pretty good. I felt like my stage plans were pretty good on every stage but one. I was reminded of why I dont shoot 12 stage matches in one day. Its just a beat down. By the end of the day I was really feeling like I just wanted it over with.

I learned some things. I have some more stuff to work on. The Double Tap Championship is up next and its going to be my most competitive match this year. Time to get back to work.

 

[SpaceFlunky]

I dont know you or have ever spoken with you but I have thoroughly enjoyed reading thru this thread. Hope to shoot with you one day soon!

 

[Robaire Pullicar]

Looks like you had some good runs at cowtown! You killed it on the stage with multiple doors. Very nice transitions!

 

[Airic]

I dont know you or have ever spoken with you but I have thoroughly enjoyed reading thru this thread. Hope to shoot with you one day soon!

Hopefully I'll make it up to the OKC area to shoot this year. If I do I'll post it on here

Looks like you had some good runs at cowtown! You killed it on the stage with multiple doors. Very nice transitions!

Thanks, now to figure out how to kill it on every run...lol

 

[Airic]

http://youtu.be/rjK6LGossL4

Third person vid

 

[Airic]

Shot IDPA at ITPSC yesterday. Had a really accuracte day. Won HOA for the match. Looks like I'll be going up the Badlands match in Tulsa in June. My first IDPA major since 2007.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J43UJ79bs4&list=UUjRIo1mEUZo-IZE1EscMsdQ&feature=share

I also finally have my new load worked out for production division. I got my 165gr X-Treme bullets in and they shoot like a dream. I love this load and it felt really good at the IDPA match. It worked out to be:

9mm 165gr X-Treme RN Bullet
2.6gr of Titegroup
Mixed Brass
Winchester SPP
1.140 OAL

I think its a keeper! Accuracy reports to come but I'll tell you when I was chronoing I was hitting baseball sized dirt clods on the berm at 35yds.

 

[drmitchgibson]

What happened to the CZ?

 

[Airic]

The absolute truth is I didnt give it enough time. I trained with it for 3 months and was happy with it but I was having huge issues on speed reloads. I also was afraid that it would break (slide stop) or something due to how much I shoot. I can fix a glock, I can maintenence a glock. I opened up the CZ and it was like reading greek.

It was way more accuracte than my glock. Had a way better trigger. Recoiled softer. I just didnt give it enough time.

On the positive side, Seth Martin is shooting it now and is shooting the best scores I have ever seen him shoot. He'll probably make Master in production with that gun soon.