13 minute read
FRESH PRINCE OF ACTION AIR
THE
OF ACTION AIR
STEWBACCA CONTINUES HIS TAIWANESE JOURNEY INTO ACTION AIR AND FINDS THE RECENT ENFORCED HIATUS HAS ACTUALLY HAD SOME POSITIVE BENEFITS.
With the infamy of 2020 finally over and some semblance of normality on the horizon for the rest of the world, Taiwan has had less disruption given the control of the situation. Thus, we started 2021 with greater optimism and gusto, having seen off the end of last year with some competitions missed out on due to COVID worry related cancellations earlier in the year. Thankfully, our first competition this year in March was unperturbed and the whole year is looking good for a variety of upcoming shoots.
So, having spent much of the tail end of last year getting to grips using my ASG/KJ Works CZ75 Shadow 2 and dialling in my movements and sight usage (even switching over to using black ammunition like many Action Air practitioners here, as this forces you to use your irons properly instead of allowing you to “follow your own tracer” with more visible white ammunition), as well as working on my speed and consistency of movement and reloading, I have managed to greatly close the gap between myself and my teammates and wider peers in terms of overall performance and confidence, both in training and competition.
Given the better situation and plans for 2021, the Shooter Centre Cup that we ended last year with is back in force at my home field where I train alongside my Setup Practical Project Team (SPPT) teammates. This year there will be three competitions held at our training centre, in March, July and November and the scores across all of them will be aggregated for those who complete all three. This will provide an annual competition aspect alongside the individual shoots and their first through third places in each of the Open, Standard and Production divisions, so we have a further incentive to keep up the effort.
March the 7th rolled around just after the Chinese New Year break over here in Taiwan, where we take a full week off work to enjoy the changing phase of the moon and stuff ourselves senseless with a wide array of delicious local cuisine. Coming back an arguably portlier competitor and then managing to temporarily bugger my ankle up somehow, as well as having to catch up on airsoft related work, it turned out that I entered the competition somewhat “cold” as I hadn’t completed a practise session for about three weeks. Normally I practise near religiously every Tuesday on my day off the teaching job, so I felt like I might be a bit sluggish or end up missing a beat before I got onto the stages.
Once again due to the indoor and upstairs space we train in, the number of competitors was limited to
trouble in terms of confidently and consistently cycling my Shadow 2 with greater force and noise and lasting a good seventy rounds or so per capsule. With my new equipment squared away and feeling reasonably well practised overall, I dragged myself out of bed early on the Sunday morning to join the first squad run through of stages one to three, before the second squad came along after we had finished our runs to do the same while squad one went for an extended lunch as per our last shoot, due to the forty at sign number of competitors and limited space.up, with a total of Bleary eyed and once again doing the first three thirty three showing up on the stages in reverse order, I began on the third stage day; twelve for Open, thirteen in Standard which featured another similar heavily obstructed and eight in Production divisions running and gunning setup as the last shoot. This time, with two large against each other and the clock. Three of the ladies wooden wall panels set further back from the parallel were running against each other in Standard division lateral fault lines, we were limited to moving sideways for a single top spot medal within the category within from the starting point in the centre. Six and just the one lady in production, who is a past window cut-outs in both of the two large wooden champion and really gives us all a run for our money. panels around 20cm square in an upper and lower
On the lead up to competition, particularly around row allowed for shooting through it to get at the Christmas and early New Year, the temperature did targets hidden behind, with some gymnastics required actually drop to what the Taiwanese would consider once again from yours truly given my gangly nature frigid, while I find it quite comfortable. This is the only compared to locals.time of year that you might possibly find any issues With four paper targets, one of which was at the running a GBB system and, given the heft and full rear and obscured from the left side as well as having metal construction of my Shadow 2, I encountered a no shoot covering most of its lower portion, plus these issues during training, much to my chagrin three steel poppers and the electronic ending (as any followers of my Instagram and Youtube gong, the stage required a videos will be aware of), with my gassing minimum of out magazines, failures to feed and fire and colourful language that followed!
Many of my teammates and peers have invested in electronic milk bottle warmers (intended for new parents) to dump their magazines in and bring up their temperature, while I tried out the Warchief electronic heating double magazine pouch. Although this is perhaps better suited to skirmishers carrying it on their person for the occasions you need a side arm rather than hardcore Action Air shooters mag dumping for hours on end. 12 shots With my continued frustration I resorted to purchasing -and some in-deptha couple of CO2 capsule-powered magazines and planning given the sheer awkwardness ofa fifty-capsule box of the inert and more consistent all the target presentations. Planning is still somewhatpropellant to go with them. These gave me much less of a weak point for me… I’ll spend a while working “THE NUMBER OF COMPETITORS WAS LIMITED TO FORTY AT SIGN UP, WITH A TOTAL OF THIRTY THREE SHOWING UP ON THE DAY; TWELVE FOR OPEN, THIRTEEN IN STANDARD AND EIGHT IN PRODUCTION DIVISIONS RUNNING AND GUNNING AGAINST EACH OTHER AND THE CLOCK. ”
out my particular lines of sight given my awkward proportions compared to other competitors, get my ideas clear in my head, then swiftly forget all that as soon as I hear the beep and just start blasting! I work a lot better against more accessible open targets, but where’s the fun or challenge in that, eh?
As a result this was again probably my worst performance, slow, dawdling, forgetting how to line up on poppers and changing my ideas mid-run due to struggling to get sights on the paper. Just under twenty-five seconds, nine alphas, three charlies, six totally missed shots, twenty rounds and one badly timed reload later and I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. Oh well, onwards and upwards.
...OR DOWNWARDS!
Stage two was performed in a seated position throughout, so my knees could take a bit of a rest -having just buggered them somewhat with all the squatting to get eyes on paper in stage three! This was a short but extremely dynamic and fun stage that I loved drilling through. Chris Leung, James Zhou and his son (who run the shooting centre and plan the stages) always have some great ideas for fun dynamic target presentations and this competition and stage were to be no different!
Sat in the chair at the rear of the stage, with the pistol in condition two on the stool in front, the competitor has to yank two lanyard-bearing batons on the “Go” buzzer to release the grenade-pin style retainers of the three target systems. This let loose two low-level independent swinging targets that rotated back and forth, in and out of cover, as well as one large bar up high that carried twin paper targets and swung back and forth either side of a central obstruction (which also served as a backstop to the ending plate).
I was the dry run test subject for our group and then also ended up immediately going hot as the first competitor. Yanking the lanyards clean out in my usual Garth-like fashion, I quickly grabbed my Shadow 2 and cycled the slide before letting loose a fourteen shot barrage in short order, missing twice and overkilling one of the targets to make sure I scored some good hits! Just over six seconds later I’d managed to get six alphas, two charlies and a delta in my excited flurry of firing. I guess I’m more used to moving targets from skirmishing!
Up last for me in the morning session was stage one, the longest of the three at the far left of the room like the last shoot and this was again an entertaining presentation. An entirely walled off stage with three access windows forward left, centre and right allowing engagement of targets with various obstructions to force you to use all three. Furthermore, they began covered by drop down blinds with the same grenade pin style yank batons… the catch being they were stringed up all over the stage, so that the baton next to one window released the blind on a different one! Having been briefed and witnessed the combination of which baton released which blind, everyone followed the same right to left run, releasing all of them before engaging left to right back toward the start.
The targets consisted of seven papers, with two of them having no shoot obstructions to their lower sections, as well as four steel poppers and the ending plate. A nineteen shot minimum required me to plan a reload at least once. As it was, I nailed the forward left window in short order with clean double taps and all alphas on the three papers presented there, before running back right to the centre window and laying down another double alpha double tap on the no shoot obscured low target, taking the popper to its left in a single shot and emptying four shots into the furthest target away to ensure I scored double alpha on that aside with make-up shots for the two charlies that I also landed on it. A quick and slick reload and on to the right window near the start point and I single shot dropped the three steel poppers in a rapid fashion (that surprised even myself) before getting the only charlie of the run on the no shoot obscured lower target. Another double alpha on the far-left paper and hitting the ending after my only miss of the run on the first shot at it. Just under eighteen seconds, eighteen alphas, one charlie, twenty two rounds and one reload.
I was really chuffed with that and got a “good shooting” from the RO and a round of applause from the rest of the squad, so I finished the morning on a high note feeling much better about my performance, planning, movement, reloading and accuracy, retiring
with the rest of squad one for an extended lunch while squad two came in and did their thing.
In the early afternoon we reconvened to find out what the fourth and final stage had in store for us. Once again, we were not disappointed. Eleven paper targets, with two no shoot obstructions, nine steel poppers, one ending plate and a minimum of thirty two rounds, so I’d have to reload at least twice given the fifteen round magazine limitations of production.
The shooter started at the rear right of the stage with a pistol case held in their support hand, forcing them to draw and fire from condition one upon the first bay, consisting of two paper and two popper targets behind vertical prison bars to obstruct your shooting. This was followed by a quick dash far left and dumping the gun case in a box, allowing you to go to a two-handed grip as you took on the left-hand bay of a close-up right-hand paper and long shot left paper with a popper at its base. Moving back to the centre and downrange while performing my first reload, there was a single paper and popper to the left, then a quick sweep right to take on a no shoot obstructed high paper and another paper behind a smaller prison bar window and a single popper. Then it was off again to the left for a very low paper behind cover, two poppers shot through a gap in cover and a high and far right paper half obstructed by a wall -which is where it all came undone for me on an otherwise excellent run! I totally forgot that rearmost target and failed to engage it, getting two misses and a procedural penalty which quite possibly lost me third place overall. I finished off the rear right bay with another reload, a few misses on steel before flooring the final popper and hitting the last two paper targets and the ending steel.
THIRTY SECONDS LATER
Thirty seconds, twenty-nine alphas, one charlie, six missed shots, thirty-eight rounds, two reloads and that paper failure to engage double miss and penalty that scuppered an otherwise excellent run. I felt like I’d cheated myself pretty stupidly at the point when the RO pointed out the clean paper, most displeased in my own daftness but I guess everyone has bad moments. At least by and large it wasn’t a bad day and not as much of a total mess up as the final stage on my first competition a little under a year before, where I failed to engage a bunch of paper targets and totally screwed the pooch.
Despite that somewhat disheartening final hurdle faceplant I otherwise felt like I had acquitted myself very well and was really happy with my improved marksmanship and speed, when I did shoot, I shot very fast and very well compared to my beginnings a little over a year ago at my first Action Air sessions.
Onwards and upwards, despite the penalties I still managed to take fourth place of eight, a place higher than last time even with the mess up, so I could possibly have wrestled third place from “Patty” Huang Pei Shan, who took first place at the last competition. We seemed to do well in the opposite stages from each other and balanced out our performance and accuracy fairly closely, so I’m enjoying facing off against her each time and pushing myself to do better. Squad two returned from lunch to finish off their day’s shooting and I stayed to film and photograph them all and my teammates in open division running the final stage.
The awards ceremony then followed after the tabulation and posting of results, with the Open division having Liu Jia Yu in third, Ke Pei Chen in second and Hou Bo Xian taking first. Standard division featured Zheng Jia Hua in third, Yu Yu Chen in second and Tsai Yu Qi taking first. Finally, my production division saw “Patty” Haung Pei Shan in third just ahead of me, Liu Yu Xi in second and first place taken by Huang Wei Li. The three ladies of Standard division were bested by Xin Pin Du, who took the single medal available for their sub division.
Once again I’d like to thank everyone involved in organising the competition, as well as the teams and competitors who turned out in force to make it a great day and a close match, with Taipei Focus Action Shooters (TFAS), Team Spring Rain (SR) and my own Setup Project Practical Team (SPPT) coming together at the shooting centre to enjoy good sportsmanship and a jovial environment as always. Now I have to try and better myself and keep pushing up the ranks where I can. AA
