Week three

Well I am in the writing mood so I might as well stick with it. See that paper that was due on Tuesday I just finished it. I know nice and late right. That wasn’t my intention. My intention was to aim for success. And I was on Monday when I wrote the first seven eights of my essay. Given the nature of my job all employees eat lunch alone and I was working a double so I had written most of my essay there at work and then saved it to my folder on the hard drive at work. Which wasn’t realized till 11:00 am when I went to type up the conclusion and print it out before my 10 min. drive to school. Work is over an hour trip there and back. Leaving me no time to finish the conclusion and print it out. MAJOR SUCK. So I had no essay for essay workshop day; therefore didn’t go. But I used the extra time to further revise the essay and add some sources to it. So yea, my late essay is nice and solid though so maybe that’s something, IDK.

Speaking of writing essays and aiming for success I would like to offer a great resource for everyone in the class. http://www.easybib.com/ It is a fantastic website for all courses that you have to site sources for. It helps you put together Bibliography in MLA style, MLA style is the style of bibliographies that all courses at DVC are supposed to use, but it offers other styles if you need them as well. If you were able to set up your blog and you are capable of looking up things in a book then you are plenty qualified to use this website. You put in your source type and it asks you different things about it, like author, publication date, ect. Filling these out is as easy as filling out fields on a website like name, DOB, email, ect. Then you put in other sources. It takes the fields and creates a properly formatted Bibliography entry with the right order and punctuation. It takes all your sources and puts them in order. Then you can download it as a Microsoft word file or view it as a web page and copy and paste it. Again it is a great resource.

I am getting better at shooting as well. I went to the Wednesday night 50 ft indoor shoot again and it went well. Improvement from last time was definitely notable. Last time out of a 100 points possible a relay, like a round, I shot an average of 69.8. This week I shot a average of 81.9. 12.1 points of improvement. By NRA standards this weeks shooting was done at a Bar 1 level. That is one level below the sharpshooter level. If the score is raised by 9.6 points it will be at the sharpshooter level and I will qualify for NRA competition, if I can find one. I stumbled across a free file filled with targets of all shapes and sizes, this includes the targets needed to practice shooting for the 50ft indoor range. Now I can practice when ever I find the time. No longer will I be confined to Wednesday night shoots. Bonus! I should be up to match level in no time.

Progress was made on finding an NRA competition as well. The guy who runs the shoot was out this week because he was at a shooting competition. He is a nice guy so I am sure that if I shoot him an email he will be happy to point me the right direction. No pun intended.

more progress

Not only was last week went well in aiming for success in shooting but it went really well in aiming for success with academics as well. The class presentation in English class went well. My group had a little trouble all getting on the same page earlier on but ultimately we where successful in our presentation, full credit successful. Prof. Ryan said we set the bar rather high, which is a little ironic as our group, at least in part, chose to go first as to gain the little leeway that the first group to go gets. My motivation in going first was simply to get it done and out of the way so that I could focus more on my essays during the rest of the semester. It will be nice to not have that looming over my head for the rest of the semester.

It was a rather interesting topic, Spider-man India. It is interesting how this foreign country has adopted the Spider-man character. And it’s probably just a personal quark but I love when something a seemingly insignificant can be used so well to illustrate such a significant point as the global social and economic theater.

As for my other class, Non-western Societies has begun to move forward again. Understand, last week both classes were canceled. Class was up and running as usual this week, as it turns out he had some unforeseen medical issues arise.

I am excited about my shooting as I put in an order to Cabella’s last week. I purchased based on my experience from last week. I got a match spring, hammer and sear kit that will take my trigger pull down to two and a half pounds. I also got the two ten round clips I wanted. Now the mail will be checked every day for the next three to six business days, that it when the shipment should arrive. One might find it odd that the spring, hammer and sear kit is what is replace changes the trigger pull but I can explain that. The way a gun fires, in a simple manor, is that the gunpowder charge is ignited by a primmer flash. The primmer flash is set off by off as the firing pin smashes into it, which is propelled by the hammer. The hammer gets its force from the hammer spring. Before this process is set in motion the hammer spring sits compressed against the back of the hammer. The hammer rests against the sear which is the only thing that stops it from flying forward. This is much like a mouse trap set to go. The trigger knocks the sear out from holding the hammer back. By altering the way the sear and hammer meet less effort would be needed to knock it out. The springs that are replaced return the sear and trigger into proper position after a shot is fired so they are ready to go for the next shot. Most of these are weighted for the safety of inexperienced shooters; however as an experienced shooter I am confident with a lighter weighted trigger. Last Wednesday was bust at the range as I couldn’t focus. There were two kids shooting next to me and I shot horribly. I did however manage to grab a NRA pistol shooting pamphlet. After the method of scoring is deciphered I can see how my shooting stacks up. Somehow the lower your score the better; perhaps the score is the points you missed out on, I don’t know still working on that.

Wednesday night shoot

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Went shooting on Wednesday, much to my dismay it was not a competition, but all is not lost as practice makes perfect and I learned few things. The above photos are my targets from the shoot. The top photo is my best shoot free hand and the bottom is my best target shoot from a bi-pod. The bottom target is 4 points out of a hundred short of a perfect score.

It was ten volleys of ten rounds. I was not planning on going but decided to go just before it started. The fist five volleys I shot from a bi-pod to make get used to shooting at closer range as my gun was not sighted in for it. I made due, aiming a little low and to the left. I would have preferred to adjust my sight but it was a very fast pace.

An awareness of the pace of the event is something I will definitely take away from the experience. Keeping pace with the other shooters was a challenge as I often found myself struggling to load my gun in time. One of the volleys I even failed to get all ten of shots off. This was due mostly to my gun jamming. But constantly striving to load up in time was no help. Over all I was fairly tensed about trying to keep up.

Accuracy in shooting comes from a number of different factors. One of these factors is a steady hand. The less relaxed I am the worse my hand shakes. So to better myself as a shooter I need to work on relieving tension during shoots. There isn’t much I can I do about my gun my gun jamming as it was fully cleaned before the shoot; however I will able to better deal with the overall pace of the matches by purchasing a couple of additional 10 round clips. That would set my total count up to five allowing me to load up all before hand and then load up again during the halftime break.

Recently I have been debating on purchasing an upgrade to gun, something to improve my accuracy. Already having a sight that cost twice my gun it would have to help me steady my shot. In my experience, steadying the gun is the main issue that holds cost most shooters steadying the gun. For a while I was debating a front pistol grip. When a camera is mounted on a helicopter it is mounted with a soft mount as apposed to a solid mount as there will inevitability be shaking in the helicopter and the soft mount won’t transfer the shaking to the camera shot. This got me thinking if I did spend the money on the front grip it would only transfer more of my shake to the gun and ultimately through my shots. Furthermore when shooting I realized that I shot better with a light grip then a solid grip. My trigger is stiff in that it takes eight pounds of pressure to pull the trigger. While applying this to pull the trigger my aim is thrown off the most. So rather then spend my money on a front grip I will be spending my money on a lighter pull trigger. Normally a match trigger is only a two and a half pound lighter.

So from the trial run of the shooting match I learned that getting used to a match pace is something I will need to practice on and that I will be buying a couple of clips and a match trigger set. I am happy with how well I am shooting as I out shot the guy that ran the competition. That’s a feather in my hat.

Setting the stage

This blog was going to be about all areas I am aiming for success, school, work and competitive shooting, however anything interesting that happens at work is held in confidence. So, this blog will be about my efforts for success in school and competitive shooting. Don't let the idea of a gun scare you, my gun amounts to little more then a remote whole puncher. Yes it does have the potential to do more it lives its life putting wholes in peaces of paper. Its a Ruger 10-22 Charger. I am incredibly good shot and am moving forward, as much as I can, with heading into the competitive ream of shooting. I have been shooting since I was about twelve on and off but since I purchased my gun about a year ago I have been shooting rather consistently. I average 300 rounds a month which will go up as I recently joined the gun club across the street from my house. As for my academic background I graduated from Central Bucks School District South High School and then started at Delaware Valley College full time as a Criminal Justice Major. I switched over to being a Secondary Education Major for a little bit. Then after a couple semesters switched back to Criminal Justice. Needless to say that set me back academically along with some trouble passing En II. Since then I have switched to a part time student in order to work on my resume and so I could have a little more time to focus on the few classes I take at a time. Currently that entail En II and Non-western Society. More background information on this blogger can be found on Facebook [note: I have been told my picture resembles a grapefruit with a smily face drawn on it]. In short this blog this will be insight to my life with the school and the range as presented with an an interesting presentation.