webbo

What if I just toss a small twig at him and he thinks it was me?

Will do

Ok, I found the part where Jay already said they have showers.

Can anyone tell me if they have showers anywhere at the range? Fees for tent camping?

I'm getting my weak-hand thumb all calloused in preperation.

So I had another match on Sunday. We had right around 70 shooters. It went way better than the last match. The last shot was fired somewhere around 4:40, last month it was right about 7:00. What I did different: We moved the start time up an hour, though we got about a 30 minute late start due to last minute setup and lack of available staff for registration. I added a stage while keeping the round count real close to what it's been in the past. This allowed for 5 squads instead of 4. I made a conscience effort to keep the locations of staged and grounded guns convenient for fluidity and clearing. I also made a conscience effort to keep reset fairly simple, less far away paper, more steel. I used fewer activated targets. There were some backups, nothing like before. My squad had to wait for about 4 shooters the whole day, and we probably only made the squad behind us wait for 6 shooters in all stages combined. It was not that perfect for all the squads, but thanks to some quick thinking by a few shooters, shooting a vacant stage as time provided, it smoothed out real nice like. Even with an electric running man target with 2 switches, there were few problems. I will end up adding a time out as needed. I had shooters at over 250 seconds on our long range stage, and that is too long. I'm trying to work out the math per shooter stuff but it has yet to make sense to me. I shoot the same way, I couldn't tell you what how fast I can shoot a bill drill, but when it's fast, I can feel it. Hell I don't even own a timer. The best part of all this is, I don't think the stages suffered at all. It was difficult, fast, and fun. Also, we are getting money for better targets each month. It's only going to get better. Just don't tell people, or they will bring their friends....

I have not advertised free match entries, though I do give them. I want to keep this sport for everyone. The best help I get is from college students who have to share at least one gun for the match. The guys with the nightforces and the SV's generally don't have an issue with the $20 entry fee. I don't think I'll ever be able to make all the stages take the same amount of time, but I'll give it my best. We do pre-load sg's. I run mostly 2 gun stages but there are 3 gun stages every now and then. In my opinion, one gun stages are for one gun matches.

With the grounding of on safe guns, I've done away with abandoning on tables with non-noteworthy exceptions. I should have more handgun dump bins before our next shoot and -so far- the barrels secured to the ground are working quite well for long guns. What do you have in mind for gun racks? The cowboys have gads of gun racks but they are all muzzle up racks. I am planning on going over a "2nd RO" clearing grounded guns during the shooters meeting, as long as it suits the stage. As far as shooters needing to see the targets, I couldn't agree with you more Brian. If you want to see your targets, you need to keep up with the RO, the RO does not have to wait for you.

I have been giving free match entries to those that help with set up the day before. But I have not been advertising this. Either way it seems the first few shoots I get awesome help, and the rest of the year it is me and my right hand man. In any case, set up is not the problem. Smoothing out the match is.

I currently shoot a rifle that costs -a lot- more than my truck. I am not going to price people out of the game, I'd have to stop shooting. I am working on stage ideas that will reduce the amount of reset time, but most of my targets are paper so there will be target pasting involved. I am new to grounding on safe, live guns also. I know I can get squads to clear these more efficiently, but I need the gun to be grounded in a convenient location, which I'm getting figured out. Jay, new shooters are one of the biggest slow downs I've got. They are also the best thing out there for our sport. I greatly appreciate any help and input you have on the matter. Because the last match went so long I'm not sure I'm going to get the same turnout this month. I can still implement changes to speed it up. I'll let you all know how it goes.

+1 Raysracer I loaded 1000 .45's on a friends 650 and bought one a couple weeks later. It was my first press, and i don't regret it.

This is my third summer running a monthly 3 gun shoot. I like doing it..? When I started, I'd get 35-45 shooters. One shoot had just about 60 shooters. Yesterday we came real close to 80. 80 shooters with about 15 being new shooters. At least 15 people who were not shooting approached me and asked how do I get into this. I only see this getting bigger. Combine that with crazy March heat and you get some unhappy people and a very, very long day. This is not as much fun for anyone. I want to fix this. I can't fix the weather but I can make the match run smoother. I generally run 4 stages with a round count of ~45 per gun for the day. With this many shooters this backs up like crazy. I'm at a club where I could easily add stages, provided I get set up help. I'm thinking I should throw in two more short stages as a buffer. The round count would go up, but would this speed things up? If I went to 8 stages with 5 squads I bet it would run pretty smooth but I do not have the support to get that done. Nor do I have the desire to run a match the size of a state sectional every month. I also got the suggestion of breaking the squads into 2. Thus having 8 squads for 4 stages. If the next stage is vacant I'm all for this (which it may be with 6 stages). However this has never made much sense to me when you can't get to the next stage anyway. It might feel faster. But is it? I need ideas.

It wasn't too long. I do think the brass was poorly sized, or it was just a bad piece of brass. I did run several of the cases through the chamber checker and they check out fine. It is a different bullet than I've used, I'll put a caliper up to it to check the diameter. I still think it was bad brass.

Thank you all for the well wishes. I'll give a next day update. The bullet was recovered right where I was standing several hours after I left the range. Looks like it hit the ejection port on the way out, or it was pinched in the ejection port causing the cartridge to fire. If you look at the line in the grease in the second picture you can see where the case was touching the slide. At least that's what I think this is. The gun, thankfully, appears to be fine. I cannot find any cracks or bulges. I might put a new ejector in because I'm a little scared of it now. Probably not though. I'm lazy. My finger is healing nicely.

Please do use this to teach others, that's why I posted it. In truth it's kind of embarrassing, because I had been taught this too. Unfortunately for me I ignored it. CCI, not that it matters all that much. I think an impact like that would have ignited just about any primer.