2017 Florida State

[rowdyb]

I've only ever gotten an email of a pdf. Nothing online.

[S&W686]

On 3/6/2017 at 0:59 PM, cam1 said:

Where are the scores posted? Thanks 

The scores are posted on the IDPA website.

[Tarkeg]

On 3/6/2017 at 2:12 AM, B_RAD said:

I know. Just wondering why he gave it?

 

 

I guess the shooters muzzle was little high and could have been close to be pointed over the berm?  

 

 

 

Bingo. Probably using the "top of the prop wall" reference point.

Edited March 9, 2017 by Tarkeg

[dhb]

I shot the match Saturday and Sunday mornings. Decent range, decent prizes (thanks sponsors!), no big delays, some stages that made you think. If I don't go back, it'll be because of the 2017 rules, not because of the job the match organizers did.

On most of the bays the instructions regarding high muzzles varied. In my first two bays the briefing was that you would be DQed for a high/vertical muzzle (with most of the SOs pointing their fingers straight up as they talked about this). It was the 3rd or 4th bay before the verbal briefing included that muzzles were not to point over the backstop. As the backstop was often 30+ yards away it wouldn't take much of an angle to be pointing over the berms (the berms looked to be about 10 feet high).

It seemed that your muzzle had to be elevated about 45 degrees before a shooter would be cautioned about it. From the gun handling I saw, if this range rule was strictly enforced, 95% of the shooters would have been DQed. The revolver shooter on my squad was DQed for a high muzzle on his first reload but promptly reinstated after the CSO was consulted.

The SOs were quite friendly and pretty efficient when running shooters. I saw no sign that anybody was on a power trip and jumping to DQ competitors. There was one CSO who liked to hear himself loudly exhort squads to patch, even when they were already efficiently patching - that got old fast. The only really bad penalty call I saw was giving a Marksman who forgot to back up twice during a standards stage two PE instead of two FP - it was a huge advantage but they took pity on him.

There were a few seated draws where it would have been easy to sweep your thigh and a fair number of DQs were for that. There were also props to activate that made it easy to sweep your arm if you weren't paying attention to your muzzle direction and a bunch apparently did that. If you usually do matches with simple stages where the 180 is realistically the only way to get DQed, some of these stages would be challenging. If you're used to eating pablum and someone puts a lobster on your dinner plate, you're going to be pushed out of your comfort zone. I got a couple of Procedurals for forgetting to do something immediately after coping with 'risky' draws or prop activations - probably because of my extra focus on safely getting through the tricky parts. If the DQ rate was a lot higher than at many club matches, I'm guessing those club matches have simpler stages and/or officials who are ignoring DQable offences.

The fault lines were white painted lines on the ground with an orange stick delineating the edge of the fault line. If your foot was on the stick, it was a fault. This worked really well and there was none of the "Did his foot touch down on the other side?" that happens when competitors are allowed to stand on the stick. I asked a bunch of competitors and SOs what they thought of it and the reactions were all positive except for one guy who thought it would confuse USPSA shooters.  (I see above that Rowdy didn't like them, but I didn't ask him - nice meeting him BTW)

In most of the stages the fault lines were lined up with the last target in an array. With this setup cover is effectively dead. It was amusing watching people slicing the pie while exposed to closer targets that were fully visible. Time to take tactical pretensions out of this game... On the few stages where the fault lines were lined up on the first target the arrays usually had no more than two targets spread across a very small arc. People were routinely losing their balance while trying to shoot the second target while leaning a lot.

I also chatted with people about 1 SPPD. Nobody was a fan. It encourages very conservative shooting and shooting slower is less fun. Everyone I asked said they were shooting slower than they would in a gun fight. A few said this may be their last big IDPA match as bullseye in a vest isn't entertaining. Looks like the 2017 rules will be good for USPSA/IPSC...

[rowdyb]

if their fault line idea worked there wouldn't have been over 500 PE's issued.

 

and yes, it was of course a pleasure to talk to you as well.

[dhb]

On my squad few of the PEs had anything to do with foot faults. Engagement sequence was the biggest PE generator. 

[Jim Watson]

I talked to an attendee yesterday.  He said there were five FTNs charged. 

[rowdyb]

i think, not know, that the guy who got the FP on my squad was assessed two ftn's on the pad to equal the time penalty for the FP. i could be wrong though.