13th GKS match

January brought another trip to Quickborn in Germany, and my 2nd level III match in Classic Division. This time, there were other competitors in Classic!

Stages and Gear

I worked as one of the Range Officers at the match, and shot all stages on a speed ticket, the Quickborn way. The stages were mostly uncomplicated.

A couple of stages were ment to have moving targets, but the movement was disabled due to technical problems, and they were shot in a static position. A few stages had low ports, but not too many.

One stage had you picking up the gun and the magazines needed, and I chose to put one magazine in a pouch, which cost me a bit of time. I’ll need to add a magnet eventually.

An interesting stage (see picture above) had a rope attached to your strong hand wrist, picking your gun up off a table. You could shoot 4 targets freestyle, but then had to take a few steps and shoot weak hand on two targets.

My gear ran flawlessly, the SIG Sauer 1911 is still a pleasure to shoot, and I was happy about using my 5187 Safariland holster, since one of the stages had you facing and moving up range. I just ran to the first shooting position, turned down range, drew the gun, loaded it up and commenced shooting. No need to even think about unlocking a holster. I’m beginning to form the opinion that using magazine pouches with the bullets facing forward is less of a big deal than I initially thought, even after using pouches with bullets facing out for more than a decade, and considering that to have superior ergonomics.

Results

I achieved a major goal at this match, and shot it without any misses or penalty hits, and only 1 D hit. This is the first time I’ve achieved this at a level III match, since I started keeping track of it. Some of this was certainly due to the stage design, but some of it was due to mental and visual patience when breaking the shots.

During the match, I had a feeling of performing well, but didn’t push hard.

While there were not sufficient competitors in Classic for IPSC recognition and a Presidents Medal, I won the match by a convincing margin, winning all 12 stages with a 16% margin to the 2nd place finisher.

If I had chosen to shoot my singlestack in Standard division I would have finished in 9th place at 74% – great motivation for further improvement.

The stages below 70% were all short courses with low times, where I performed a reload and the competitors in Standard did not.

Overall, I’m happy with my performance at this point in time.