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Haines Trips To USA
Hi Guys,
Just a short missive about my recent trip to the good ol’ US of A.
What happened? Well, I e-mailed Angus Hobdell a couple of months ago to
see what he was up to. He said he was shooting the area matches in the US ( he
is now resident in Arizona ), and that he was heavily into scuba diving.
That, Dear Reader, was like a red rag to a bull, as anyone who knows anything about me will realise that if I am out of the water for more than a couple of days, my gills start to heal up.
He suggested that we get together for the Florida Invitational practical pistol match, and precede that with a few days diving beforehand in the Keys.
Before long, my dive buddies heard what I was planning, and invited themselves along, even when I said that 4 days of the trip would be taken up with Angus and I doing the match. The only question from the other guys ( all non-shooters ) was “Can we have a go at shooting pistols too?” that got sorted, so that meant we were the famous 5 – Me, Anguish, Woody, Boomer and Matt.
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So, we flew out on Feb. 9th, met up with Angus at Miami
airport, and headed South to the Keys for 6 days of the greatest diving I
have ever done. Wrecks, huge fish, sharks, spear fishing, and glorious
weather to top it off. I’m a PADI instructor too, and Angus wanted to do
his Advanced Open Water course, so we took the opportunity to do that in
the warm, clear Florida water. He passed with flying colours, and he’s
really quite a good diver. I think he is part whale ( you’d know what I
mean if you saw him recently – Belly’s gonna get ya! ).
Anyway, all dived out, our intrepid band made it’s way upstate to Frostproof, a town just South of Orlando, to Frank Garcia’s Universal Shooting Academy, for the 2001 Florida Invitational IPSC match. Two days of the most fun you can have with your clothes on. |
The match was 250+ rounds, and each of the 10 stages was an assault, sorry FIELD course, all superbly thought out and constructed, and everyone had a ball.
Go to their website, www.frankgarciausa.com, to see the match reports and pix of the stages, competitors, range crew and sponsors.
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Angus (left) came 2nd to current World Champion Eric Grauffel in the Open class, and yours truly (right) creaked in 14th in Limited class ( the Yanks’ version of Stock Gun ), and won the Unclassified section ( their version of open grade ). I decided to shoot Limited because it would have been too depressing to have strapped on a race gun, and discovered how crap I had got. |  |
Anyway a great time was had by all, including Woody, Boomer and Matt, who got friendly with the crew on the practice range, and spent 2 days shooting the shit out of a CZ75, a Glock, a custom Browning, and the .40 cal. SPS that Angus had lent me for the match.
We all decided that it would be no hardship to do this all over again, so next Feb. has a firm date in our diaries.
Anyone interested?
Andy Haines Andy.Haines@bigfoot.com