Weekend Update
I had a full and very tiring weekend filled to the brim with manly and masculine activities including shooting, cutting steel, and lots of welding.
On Saturday, I went to the weekly USPSA practice event and shot a little bit. My draws and reloads aren't getting better, which is a bit frustrating, but I shot the practice stage about as well as it could be shot by me. I've been working on my ability to shoot on the move and this was the first time that I was able to put it into practice. It wasn't actually that hard to learn. I was able to engage some paper targets at about 5-7 yards while on the move and getting good hits. In the practice event, one has the opportunity to go through the stage several times and try different things. I initially tried to speed things up and missed a lot as a result.
Someone gave me a bit of advice that was actually useful. Many people shooting competitively will tell you that smooth is fast and folks are always quick to give advice to take a stage smoothly, but this isn't something that is immediately obvious how to do. After trying to shoot a stage really fast, one gentlemen told me that I needed to shoot more smoothly, but he was actually able to elaborate on his advice. He explained that my front sight was bobbing around way too much and that I needed to simply let it settle down before I broke the shot. This made perfect sense and was simple to implement. The results were also immediate. I initially shot the stage in 22s. When I tried to speed things up, I could only get my time down in the 20-21 second range, only getting into the 19s once. After taking his advice, I was able to shoot the stage twice at under 18.5s each time through.
I was pleased with the results of the day even though my performance on the component skills hadn't improved much. What I did lament was the lack of competition. There is another guy that normally comes to this event that shoots in Production division atleast as well as I can. It's nice to have someone around that can provide a basis for comparison. Of the group that was shooting this stage, most were running it in around 30s. There were a couple of folks shooting Open division guns including the guy that gave me the advice. He ran it in 15s and the other one ran it in 18s. I had to reload three times and they didn't have to reload at all. Though I don't think I lost much time on the reloads as they were all done while moving between arrays. There was one reload that might have cost me a second if I could've skipped it.
The coolest thing about shooting this weekend was that I'm really starting to *see* the sights the way I should, both before the shot and after it breaks. I started really watching my sight alignment when I was setting up shots, and getting a feel for how to settle the gun down when it's necessary. I'm also starting to be able to call my shots. That is, knowing exactly where the shot went and whether it was a good hit. In the way that I ran the course of fire, one could run up to a foot fault and engage a mini-popper at about 15 yards. I chose to save time by simply taking a step out of the box so that the entire first array was visible and then shoot the mini at about 20 yards. I was able to draw, take one step and then hit the mini in approximately two seconds. On my last run through, I got the hit, knew it and transitioned to the next targets. I didn't wait for the gong, and I didn't look to see if the steel fell. After running the stage, I discovered that the steel didn't fall. That wouldn't be a good thing in a match, but it was a good thing for me, because I knew I wasn't waiting on confirmation to move on to the next targets. Several folks told me that I had hit it, so it was either a low hit, or simply an uncalibrated and unstaked popper, which is common in practice.
I did check my reaction times with a timer set on random and holding the gun at ready on the target. From the buzzer to the first shot was around .25s on average. This is something that I'm going to need to work on.
After shooting, I joined a friend of mine and helped him work on a trailer that we're building for Field Day. For those of you that aren't ham geeks, that's an event where amateur radio operators go out into the field and practice their operating skills. It is a competition where people try to get as many contacts as possible. I've been doing this in the Black Rock Desert for a couple of years and will be doing it again this year. A friend of mine found a telescoping 60' tower about a year and a half ago at his neighbor's house. She said that if we could take it down (it came with the house) then we could have it. Getting it down was a pain, but we did eventually and then decided to mount it to a trailer for portable operation. The end result will look something like this:
We cut most of the steel last weekend except for the few mitered ends that would be necessary. Most of the day Saturday was spent finishing those off. I chose to use 2x6x.125" wall hollow steel tubing because it has a higher X-axis modulus than the more common 2x4x.250" tubing and weighs a bit less as well. It's also much stiffer than the 2x4 channel which is also popular for trailer construction. Unfortunately, we discovered a downside to using 6" tubing. It was too large to be mitered properly in the cutoff saw that we were using. Fortunately we were able to jury-rig something using a 10" miter saw and a metal cutoff blade. That poor saw didn't fare too well, but it made most of the cut which we then finished using either a hacksaw or a cutoff wheel in an angle grinder. Following that, a little judicious grinding squared things right up.
On Sunday we laid out the steel and began to tack weld it in place. This went slow initially as we didn't really have a good point of reference for measurement. We're using my friend's driveway which is neither flat nor level. Once we got the outside rails all tacked up, our diligence proved to be worthwhile as the frame came out to within .0625" of an inch across diagonals. The rest of the steel went together pretty quickly except for the weird tail section that we finished the following day.
The next day was oppresively hot, so we didn't get much done during the day. The tail section did eventually get laid out and tacked. We did a final check on everything and then I proceeded with the finish welding. I got half of it done before we broke for dinner, which suited me just fine as the late afternoon wind was annoying me. It blows away the shielding gas on MIG welds and creates porosity in the weld bead, so one either has to have something to screen out the wind or simply wait for the wind to die down. We didn't have any proper screens, so I was left simply waiting on the wind. Following dinner, it started getting dark, so the wind was less of an issue at that point. I completed the rest of the finish welds on the box frame and learned the value of wearing the proper attire at the same time. I was wearing a T-shirt, so my arms are slightly burnt from the UV radiation of the arc and I was welding while sitting down with my legs crossed. I wasn't wearing proper work boots, so weld splatter would land on my feet and ankles. I've got a couple of nice holes in my Vans today and also matching burn holes in either ankle, just over the bone. At some point, I gave up and stuck one foot under my leg and covered the other ankle with a welding glove.
All the top and and vertical welds were finished at that point, so we chose to flip the frame over to weld the bottom. MIG welding doesn't lend itself well to overhead welding, which isn't fun anyway. The frame weighed about 600Lbs, so it wasn't too difficult for us to flip. There were thirty toes between the three of us afterwards, so I'd say that it went well. I think I'm going to head over this evening and finish up all the bottom welding. Field Day is June 26/27, so it's going to take some significant effort to get this completed in time.
The best part about this whole process is the fact that I went to some effort to design the thing and even created a set of prints for it, which I promptly lost. At this point, we're simply building the thing from memory and some rudimentary sketches that I made on a memo pad. There will be plenty of photos from Field Day, so if it fails in a spectacular sort of way, I'll be sure to share.
On Saturday, I went to the weekly USPSA practice event and shot a little bit. My draws and reloads aren't getting better, which is a bit frustrating, but I shot the practice stage about as well as it could be shot by me. I've been working on my ability to shoot on the move and this was the first time that I was able to put it into practice. It wasn't actually that hard to learn. I was able to engage some paper targets at about 5-7 yards while on the move and getting good hits. In the practice event, one has the opportunity to go through the stage several times and try different things. I initially tried to speed things up and missed a lot as a result.
Someone gave me a bit of advice that was actually useful. Many people shooting competitively will tell you that smooth is fast and folks are always quick to give advice to take a stage smoothly, but this isn't something that is immediately obvious how to do. After trying to shoot a stage really fast, one gentlemen told me that I needed to shoot more smoothly, but he was actually able to elaborate on his advice. He explained that my front sight was bobbing around way too much and that I needed to simply let it settle down before I broke the shot. This made perfect sense and was simple to implement. The results were also immediate. I initially shot the stage in 22s. When I tried to speed things up, I could only get my time down in the 20-21 second range, only getting into the 19s once. After taking his advice, I was able to shoot the stage twice at under 18.5s each time through.
I was pleased with the results of the day even though my performance on the component skills hadn't improved much. What I did lament was the lack of competition. There is another guy that normally comes to this event that shoots in Production division atleast as well as I can. It's nice to have someone around that can provide a basis for comparison. Of the group that was shooting this stage, most were running it in around 30s. There were a couple of folks shooting Open division guns including the guy that gave me the advice. He ran it in 15s and the other one ran it in 18s. I had to reload three times and they didn't have to reload at all. Though I don't think I lost much time on the reloads as they were all done while moving between arrays. There was one reload that might have cost me a second if I could've skipped it.
The coolest thing about shooting this weekend was that I'm really starting to *see* the sights the way I should, both before the shot and after it breaks. I started really watching my sight alignment when I was setting up shots, and getting a feel for how to settle the gun down when it's necessary. I'm also starting to be able to call my shots. That is, knowing exactly where the shot went and whether it was a good hit. In the way that I ran the course of fire, one could run up to a foot fault and engage a mini-popper at about 15 yards. I chose to save time by simply taking a step out of the box so that the entire first array was visible and then shoot the mini at about 20 yards. I was able to draw, take one step and then hit the mini in approximately two seconds. On my last run through, I got the hit, knew it and transitioned to the next targets. I didn't wait for the gong, and I didn't look to see if the steel fell. After running the stage, I discovered that the steel didn't fall. That wouldn't be a good thing in a match, but it was a good thing for me, because I knew I wasn't waiting on confirmation to move on to the next targets. Several folks told me that I had hit it, so it was either a low hit, or simply an uncalibrated and unstaked popper, which is common in practice.
I did check my reaction times with a timer set on random and holding the gun at ready on the target. From the buzzer to the first shot was around .25s on average. This is something that I'm going to need to work on.
After shooting, I joined a friend of mine and helped him work on a trailer that we're building for Field Day. For those of you that aren't ham geeks, that's an event where amateur radio operators go out into the field and practice their operating skills. It is a competition where people try to get as many contacts as possible. I've been doing this in the Black Rock Desert for a couple of years and will be doing it again this year. A friend of mine found a telescoping 60' tower about a year and a half ago at his neighbor's house. She said that if we could take it down (it came with the house) then we could have it. Getting it down was a pain, but we did eventually and then decided to mount it to a trailer for portable operation. The end result will look something like this:
We cut most of the steel last weekend except for the few mitered ends that would be necessary. Most of the day Saturday was spent finishing those off. I chose to use 2x6x.125" wall hollow steel tubing because it has a higher X-axis modulus than the more common 2x4x.250" tubing and weighs a bit less as well. It's also much stiffer than the 2x4 channel which is also popular for trailer construction. Unfortunately, we discovered a downside to using 6" tubing. It was too large to be mitered properly in the cutoff saw that we were using. Fortunately we were able to jury-rig something using a 10" miter saw and a metal cutoff blade. That poor saw didn't fare too well, but it made most of the cut which we then finished using either a hacksaw or a cutoff wheel in an angle grinder. Following that, a little judicious grinding squared things right up.
On Sunday we laid out the steel and began to tack weld it in place. This went slow initially as we didn't really have a good point of reference for measurement. We're using my friend's driveway which is neither flat nor level. Once we got the outside rails all tacked up, our diligence proved to be worthwhile as the frame came out to within .0625" of an inch across diagonals. The rest of the steel went together pretty quickly except for the weird tail section that we finished the following day.
The next day was oppresively hot, so we didn't get much done during the day. The tail section did eventually get laid out and tacked. We did a final check on everything and then I proceeded with the finish welding. I got half of it done before we broke for dinner, which suited me just fine as the late afternoon wind was annoying me. It blows away the shielding gas on MIG welds and creates porosity in the weld bead, so one either has to have something to screen out the wind or simply wait for the wind to die down. We didn't have any proper screens, so I was left simply waiting on the wind. Following dinner, it started getting dark, so the wind was less of an issue at that point. I completed the rest of the finish welds on the box frame and learned the value of wearing the proper attire at the same time. I was wearing a T-shirt, so my arms are slightly burnt from the UV radiation of the arc and I was welding while sitting down with my legs crossed. I wasn't wearing proper work boots, so weld splatter would land on my feet and ankles. I've got a couple of nice holes in my Vans today and also matching burn holes in either ankle, just over the bone. At some point, I gave up and stuck one foot under my leg and covered the other ankle with a welding glove.
All the top and and vertical welds were finished at that point, so we chose to flip the frame over to weld the bottom. MIG welding doesn't lend itself well to overhead welding, which isn't fun anyway. The frame weighed about 600Lbs, so it wasn't too difficult for us to flip. There were thirty toes between the three of us afterwards, so I'd say that it went well. I think I'm going to head over this evening and finish up all the bottom welding. Field Day is June 26/27, so it's going to take some significant effort to get this completed in time.
The best part about this whole process is the fact that I went to some effort to design the thing and even created a set of prints for it, which I promptly lost. At this point, we're simply building the thing from memory and some rudimentary sketches that I made on a memo pad. There will be plenty of photos from Field Day, so if it fails in a spectacular sort of way, I'll be sure to share.