Our rules basically state that they don’t exist; yet, matches wouldn’t go very far without them. People complain about their cost, after all, you buy nice ones that are mostly straight, mostly dimensioned appropriately, we seem to never have quite enough of them to start with and then people cut them up and shoot them to pieces. Alas, they are the unsung heroes of our sport; I give you, the lowly target stick.
[Read more…] about Unsung Hero: The Target StickWhat really matters?
Recently I have been looking at some sports that are similar to USPSA/SCSA in that they have a very large amateur component run at a local level and a smaller professional component at a state, regional, national and world level. Many of those sports face some of the same challenges we do so it can be interesting to see how they have solved those problems. One of those ventures is a return to almost 40 years ago for me, archery. I put up the bow when I headed to college and haven’t really paid any attention to it since.
[Read more…] about What really matters?Interference
It happens to all Range Officers now and then. Something you weren’t prepared for happens and you, someone, or something, somehow interferes with the competitor and you wind up having to offer them a reshoot. Note I said “offer them” a reshoot. Recall that interference is the only optional reshoot in our sport.
[Read more…] about InterferenceWhen to Take Your RO Seminar
A question we get now and then from newer shooters revolves around when they should take the NROI Level 1, or “RO” seminar. The answer is pretty straightforward, “As soon as you can!” although there are a few qualifications and nuances you might want to consider.
[Read more…] about When to Take Your RO SeminarLet’s Get Retro – Part IIIc: – Shoot House
Shoot House type stages can be a lot of fun to run as staff, or they can be a nightmare. Traditionally, they are designed with generally anterograde movement combined with a fair bit of lateral movement. Sometimes they are totally enclosed leading to subdued light situations, sometimes they are just a whole lot of walls without a roof. Either way, they are a staple of our sport. Now and then you run into one that has at least a portion requiring retrograde movement due to movement down a passage to engage targets, and then having to reverse course to move to the next targets. There are, of course, several interesting variations on this.
[Read more…] about Let’s Get Retro – Part IIIc: – Shoot HouseRevisiting Freestyle
At a recent class a couple students approached me during a break because they were confused by the concept of freestyle as I had explained it during the lecture. Apparently a lot of the stages they shoot at their local matches are designed with and rely on heavy use of the 1.1.5.1 exemption from Freestyle (1.1.5) even to the extent of applying it to Long courses…which 1.1.5.1 explicitly forbids. Most of the stages they see involve boxes and the only time there is true freestyle occurs in larger contiguous shooting areas. Thus, they had come to associate freestyle with larger shooting areas and thought that shooting boxes precluded freestyle entirely.
[Read more…] about Revisiting FreestyleLet’s Get Retro – Part IIIb: U-Turn Stage
Let’s Get back to our discussion of Retrograde stage design. In this installment, we will examine a typical U-Turn type stage. There are myriad ways to design these types of stages and we are only going to look at a single example here but the concepts we will discuss can be applied to most of these variants.
[Read more…] about Let’s Get Retro – Part IIIb: U-Turn StageFixing Floppy USPSA Targets
I forget where I first heard about the concept of using small bamboo skewers to support the floppy upper scoring zone on USPSA cardboard targets so it isn’t possible for me to give credit where credit is due. For whomever first thought this one up, thank you!
[Read more…] about Fixing Floppy USPSA Targets