Chuck Anderson

This would be a fine gun for L10 though

Nope it's for double action or striker fired pistols only

Nope, PX series are all single action which are no go in Production. Did you mean the DX series LDA guns?

There are lots of reasons to avoid the capacity race in Production. Previous shooters investments, legal restrictions, rules stability, and the skills learned from Produciton. Right now there are literally dozens of guns that would be competetive at the top level in Production. The top 16 results from the last couple years do an excellent job showing this. Top shooters with Glock, CZ, Beretta, Sig, Para, Smith & Wesson and different models of each gun. Most folks shoot 9mm in Production but there are also people that shoot .40, .357 Sig, .45 etc. If you open up the capacity restriction you will see the other calibers go away almost completely if you still score minor, just like IPSC. If you go Major/Minor time and again we've seen the advantage of Major. Look to Limited and Single Stack for examples of how the couple extra rounds don't work out to an advantage shooting minor. I would prefer not to take the majority of guns on the Production list and make them obsolete. Also if you allow high caps, what is high cap? Is it the manufacturers spec for the magazine? What you can fit into a factory modified tube? What you can stuff into an unmodified tube? What fits in the box, i.e. IPSC Standard? Who monitors the round count? The RO? Does he have to know the capacity for each and every mag for every gun on the list or do they just have to measure? I'm not making this stuff up. These are all questions that IPSC has had to, and are still dealing with, in Production with high cap mags. They also have issues with approving certain guns with extended base pads, like CZ, Sig and Grand Power. USPSA has really simplified this portion of the division. I shoot Production because I like the challenge of the accuracy, the additional strategy of the reloads and I get to use my favorite platform gun and still be very competetive. I would prefer to avoid any of these suggested changes.

I wouldn't count on it, or any major match, being in Bend for awhile.

Couple notes about the use of the bays. I'm not sure if this was the thought process or not but it's just my experience. If you maximize the space used in the bays by pushing them farther out and making the shots longer, it takes longer to shoot and a lot longer to score. It's also harder on the RO's because they have to walk to each target about 800 times during the week. If you're limited to 45 minutes per stage and under 4 minutes per shooter, clearance time, you're limited on how much walking you can have your staff do to score. As far as the ricochets, I've always thought that was part of the charm of Desert Sportsman. I started shooting at this range for the old SOF and SWAT 3Gun matches. It added that flair of actually being in combat.

Yeah, but that 6" looked like it was using awful skinny mags to me. That gun looked older than some of the other competitors on his squad.

I shot with a bunch of local guys which is a new experience at Nationals for me. Normally it's one or two other guys from home and the rest of the squad I don't know. Looking at their performance in comparison to mine was interesting. Looking at their performance in comparison to home was even more so. At both matches I watched guys that are normally rock solid and consistent making dumb mistakes like not loading the gun or skipping a target, stuff I've never seen them do at home. The guy I'm travelling with also 4 no shoots on the first day of the second match. 2 on each of two stages. He thought he was done for. He came and still managed to win third C. So my lessons leaned at this one are as follows. Don't try to overshoot your ability at Nationals. You're not gonna get to Nats as an A class shooter and suddenly have the ability to keep up with GM's. If you try to keep up with the other guys you're shooting with instead of your game you're gonna crash and burn sooner or later. Don't concern yourself with others. If someone is getting lucky reshoots or not working or shooting faster than you, so what. You're not going to change their behavior, stopobsessing about it and pay attention to what you're doing. If you have a blow up on one day, forget about it. You can't change it so just finish as best you can. Take the 5 minute walkthrough and use it. Keep visualizing once you are done with the walkthrough. I did fewer trial runs this year because it was better to rest my ankle than see the targets one more time. I saw lots if guys not walking through enough and missing setups or reloads or targets.

Video does lie. Or at least the use of it can be very deceptive. For example on this stage. If a competitor/spectator was filming they wouldn't have been able to be at the 180 so the perspective would have been off. The other alternative would be to have a stage camera prepositioned on the 180. Two problems. First why? The 180 couldn't be arbed anyway and are we going to do that for every stage at a match? It'd be like instant replay in sports. If you allow video to come in makes it almost necessary for everyone to have video rolling on all their runs. Like I said at the start though. I've seen video of runs I've watched where the was a clear 180 break but the video made it look like it wasn't. I've also seen the opposite. In this case the stage was laid at an angle to the corner of a berm which might have been a bit unusual for some people. Also having an RO on the 180 line might have been a bit confusing for some newer competitors. It's been pretty standard practice for this rather common type of stage at many Nationals. That position puts him in the best spot to catch any safety issues on the draw.

They did change this stage for the second match by adding a pull bar, sliding weight and an activator box. Yank the bar and the star started moving.

This happened a couple times at the Open/Production. They called it REF and granted a reshoot. There were some shooters that kept banging away and managed to get the star to move enough that it was visible enough to shoot. They did not get reshoots.

Man, check out the L10 results. I swear Dave has some serious points juju going. He won by about 1/2 of a point. And if memory serves this is not the first time he's done that. And look at the competition in Revo this year. Cliff Walsh wins with 6 shooters over 95%. When was the last time, if ever the race was that close in Revo?

Yeah... I looked at the scores last night and saw that Leatham was clean, with only 2 Deltas, no stage finish out of the single digits...and he is still 50 points back from the lead after ~ 10 stages. Bob and Dave...wow!!! This is not a match where 2 Deltas can be considered clean. Vogel and Sevigny have 1 Delta, between the two of them. Haven't been able to watch them all that much but the accuracy out of those two is phenomenal. And there are a lot of tight shots at this match.

Looks like Vogel is beating Sevigny in L10. Only by about 6 points though. That one is gonna be tight. Looks like Puente has a good lead on Tomasie going into the last day of 26 points. Of course all this is based on the preliminaries and who has what stages left to shoot. I'm pretty sure I'm doing this wrong because it looks like Dave Olhasso? is winning Revolver by about 20 points over Walsh, Bagakis and !Miculek?! I must be up too early this morning.

Mine was good within 300 but it was off on the 400 yd (well 418 yd) target there last year. I think I had to aim at the metal plate covering the flasher for that one.

Who is supposed to be watching these hits? The RO is watching the gun. The score keeper is watching for foot faults. Do we need to add another position to the RO staff of Popper Watcher? The previous BOD's as well as the IPSC governing body has worked for years to remove RO discretion from the book. That's why the book is so big. Otherwise section 10 would just be: 10.1 Does something unsafe. By allowing the RO to decide how many shots to consider, or whether they were good hits, or whether it was worth driving down, or whether the shooter hesitated, that brings that discretion back. You create a worse situation where competitor one is stopped after firing 4 fast shots, but competitor two is not stopped after 3 slow ones. Or at the club level where different RO's will work the stage, each will have a different view of what is an out of spec popper.

Short version is the person at the club said it was a done deal and the contract would be signed by the club at their next monthly meeting. Match was announced to everyone and then the same person at the club decided USPSA wasn't paying them enough to host the match. The club demanded a ridiculous amount of money and refused to bargain. (It would likely have worked out to between 20 and 30 thousand dollars). Since there was no way USPSA was going to pay that Albany stepped up and hosted the match, essentially last minute. That's one of the reasons USPSA (and the Pres) won't announce Nats dates or locations until everything is signed and sealed.

Figured this wouldn't take long to pop up. I was on the Arb committee so I see if I can fill in some gaps. First the shooter did not arb the safety violation. In fact she was very up front saying she knew she couldn't arb it because of the safety violation. It was filed because she believed it was an illegal stage under 2.1.4. I'm not gonna retype the rule because I need to get some sleep tonight. We spoke to the shooter, as well as the RO's and CRO on that stage. We also took a look at the stage. For shooters that were at the Open/Prod and not the Lim/L10 match, the stage was the same, but the CRO made a change to the 180 degree line. For the Open/Prod match it was set so that the only the first target on the left could not be engaged from anywhere within the shooting box. For this match they changed the arbitrary 180 degree line. Apparently they heard concerns that ricochets may be landing in other bays. The 180 was changed so that the first target on the right was now breaking the 180 once you rounded the first corner. This target was visible from everywhere in the stage and there was no reference to the 180 other than the cone that was place near the shooting area. This made it very difficult to tell once the shooter started moving within the stage. Admittedly, I've shot a lot of stages where targets could be shot after breaking the 180. However there is normally some indication to the shooter what that is. Whether it is a berm or a more linear stage. After reviewing all the information as well as consulting the RM and DNROI for a couple clarifications about the rules (none of which changed the original opinion held by all the committee members) there was nothing to do other than declare the stage illegal. After that we spent most of our time trying to figure out various ways of not booting the stage from the match. Unfortunately with the match more than half over there was no way to change the stage and have everyone reshoot. A suggestion was proposed to just tell the RO's from that point on to not enforce the 180 degree rule in regards to that target. With half the competitors having shot that stage with the rule in place this didn't seem fair to them in any way. As far as the competitor from the first day, he's still hosed. If he had arb'd it he would likely have been reinstated. Unfortunately Arb decisions aren't retroactive. We tried to figure out a way to get him back in but there's no way to within the rules.

A-ha...You SIR! Have hinted at the crux of the situation.... why are poppers being used to test power factor in the first place? @BritinUSA... I sent you a PM. Not a matter of testing power factor. Poppers hit with Major loads tend to go over faster. Just like Major scores higher points on C and D hits. Shooting Major gives you more of the popper to shoot at. A low hit with a major load will generally knock over a popper calibrated to minor. However a Minor load will not knock it down. Both will knock the popper down with a shot properly delivered to the calibration zone. However Major gives you a bit more wiggle room. USPSA/IPSC have a long history of rewarding power. (It's the V in DVC) As far as this specific design, I have two concerns. First is that it is essentially a plate. It looks like it might be an interesting plate design, but it's not a popper by definition. Second, I've seen Poppers that over time, and it doesn't take much for some, bend and cup. I can't imagine a steel bar that would withstand the forces and not bend very quickly.

I would definitely say that it's an advantage on some stages and a disadvantage on others. I saw several guys on my squad doing silly things based on the last match. For example on Stage 10 it was an unloaded gun start compared to a loaded gun start on this match. One of the shooters on my squad set his gun on the table empty. On a couple of the other stages there are subtly different and better ways to shoot than last match. If you just go with the old plan you might miss out. Overall I think it's a wash.

I know Dave has had issues for years getting high cap (over 19) to work in his 35. I think shooting Lim 10 is just a bit less frustrating than clearing mag related jams. There are a lot of strong competitors shooting L10 this year for sure. That's why I'm hiding in Limited.

No problem, Voigt was joking about it at the meeting. He said a bunch of people were coming up to him and telling him about this three year contract. He's the one who would sign the contract so if he didn't, I'm guessing there isn't one. Tulsa was 3 years but many other locations have been one two years like Bend, OR and Missoula, MT. I'm guessing LV could be a long term venue nothing is guaranteed until the contracts have been signed. Look to the Bend/Albany, OR 2006 Multigun for an example of how that can go bad. I think Vegas is working out great and would love to come back though.

Off the top of my head. And this is certainly not an accounting just educated guesses from past experience. Biggest costs are range rental which I'm guessing would be around 10,000. RO expenses including travel, lodging and per diem for food. Rental of the hotel meeting rooms for awards, registration, and the membership meeting. Tent rentals for the vendor area, rental vehicles like the vans used for back and for around the range. This includes golf carts and the vans for transport between stages. Targets, pasters, new walls built by USPSA, possibly the shade structures, five pallets of bottled water, scoresheets, match booklets, match tshirts, a little bit to flesh out the prize table, oh yeah and plaques for awards. Like I said, I'm sure this is not anywhere inclusive just off the top of my head. Speaking as someone who has had a hand in the production of Area matches and National matches they are not the same.

When was that contract signed exactly? Voigt said at the members meeting that no such contract exists and he is the one who would sign it. He said he thought it was kind of funny the number of people telling him about this non existent contract. That said he was considering one.

I've seen a couple ideas presented to correct this problem. I don't think that any of them except Alan's would work consistently. First there is the idea that an RO can stop a shooter who hits a popper multiple times because of REF. This doesn't account for the fact that I'm betting 90% plus of the shooters at this match shot multiple poppers, multiple times on purpose. This leads to the RO's having to use discretion instead of rules. What about the shooter who hits a popper three times and says it went down slower than the shooter that hit it two times. Is that cause for a reshoot. What if the RO is positive that the shooter is right? Next is the idea of allowing shooters to call for calibrations of poppers that are down. Personally I know many shooters that would take advantage of this rule. Oops, I had a mike and a no shoot. Hey! RO, that popper went down a bit slow, I want a calibration on it, hoping that the RM will hit a bit high. At a match like the Nats where there actually is a designated RM doing nothing else this might not be so horrible. The rules need to apply to club matches and Nationals equally. How many reshoots would you get at your local 6 stage club match from people that just want to improve their scores. I do like the idea of resetting the popper on an actual calibration but that wouldn't have changed anything in this case. If it's shot down by the shooter, there isn't much that can be done without opening the door to all sorts of gaming. I'm definitely not harping on Randi. She made the only logical, and competitive decision she could make in that situation. Good for her for keeping her head. As far as the popper being out of calibration because it took 30 minutes to fix. There is nothing in the rules that allows this to make any difference once it's shot down. If there was would just Randi get a reshoot? What about the competitor who went before her, or the 150 that went before her. Stuff breaks when we shoot at it, or heck even near it. The staff fixing it doesn't change the fact that the current rules, which the RO's have to go by, don't allow them to give her a reshoot. I would love to give the shooter a reshoot. It seems like the fair thing to do. But what about the shooter who finished ahead of Randi. Is it fair to him that the person he beat during the match is given a reshoot that isn't allowed under the rules and beats him? It's not just fairness to the shooter. It's fairness to all the shooters. Giving one a reshoot that is disallowed hurts everyone else. It's all well and good to say that everyone should shoot under the same conditions and that no one would want to beat another shooter based on those circumstances. But should one of the RO's give Dave Sevigny a reshoot because the dust kicked up as he was shooting and he couldn't see as well as Vogel? (hypothetical situation, I have no idea if it happened). I saw it happen to a couple shooters on my squad. The wind kicked up just as the buzzer went off and they could barely see the targets on Stage 12. The rules aren't perfect, they never will be. But I haven't seen anything (again other than Alan's idea) that I can see working.