..... and a Busy Weekend it Was!

Saturday:

Saturday morning I was off to the CWSA range for a Steel Challenge type match. It was so foggy on the way to the range that it was difficult to see the road at times!

I entered three classes, Centerfire Open, Revolver Open, and Rimfire Open. The first stage was "Showdown", not one of my favorites, but I shot reasonable times. Unfortunately with the revolver I missed one plate on one run and then got the stop plate, then had to come back for the missed plate, resulting in 8 seconds of penalties. I thought I had hit it, but apparently I missed, that happens! That was my throw-out run, but I had messed up one other run, and combining that with another 5 seconds of penalties for starting from the allowed "Low Ready" position instead of a holster, I was more or less destined to be down near the bottom overall with the revolver.

LouG was shooting faster than I've seen him shoot in the Revolver class, and was nipping on Al's heels. When Al had to shoot a seventh shot with his revolver he incurred a three second penalty, and Lou took the win! I told Lou I was going to go hack his site so we wouldn't have to listen to him gloating! By the time he got home Blogger had crashed and he couldn't get in.

(He still thinks I had something to do with it. I don't think I'll tell him any different.........)

Rimfire Open went much better, with my times right behind "Evil AL" who has one the Rimfire Open class at every steel match this year. Then I moved over to the second stage, "smoke and Hope", one of my favorites. My Rimfire Open times were only slightly slower than Al's, and since we were only shooting two stages today, that put me in a solid second place. With the revolver I shot a lot better on this stage, but only good enough to pull up to somewhere around 4th. or 5th. overall. Considering the hole I dug for myself on the first stage, I figure I was fortunate to have salvaged that much!

For Centerfire Open I was shooting my Taurus PT92 9mm. Econo Race Gun, and each match it's getting more competitive. My combined times for my four fastest runs was around 12 seconds, which works out to roughly 3 seconds per run! My fastest run was 2.77 seconds. Sure, the really fast guys at the nationals are in the 2 second range, but for me, that's really rockin' ! The no holster penalty added another 1.25 seconds to every run though, so I ended up third or fourth, I forget.

Do I want to spend another perhaps $300 dollars to get set up with "holsters" for my revolver and the 9mm.? I don't know. What they call holsters are basically high tech belt mounted gun racks, and they don't even look like holsters.

Sunday:

Back to CWSA for a rimfire hanging plate match. The turn out was small, but the weather was really nice, sunny skies after a bit of morning fog, but a pleasant Fall day!

Rimfire hanging plates is a fun sort of a match, with no long waits between shooting. The matches go quickly, even with a good turn out we're often finished in time for lunch. I managed to redeem myself against Al and Lou, taking both Iron sight and Optical sight classes, with Al in second and Lou in third, or something like that.

Hanging plates matches are as much of a social event as a shooting match, and no one takes the matches too seriously, so we all have a lot of fun at it!

After the match KeeWee and I went to Oak Harbor to pick up some food, buy a cheap shelf unit for the reloading bench, and hit the Dollar store.

Then back to Completely castle for a late lunch.

........ and then I took a nap!