Nik Habicht

The only way I could see that being called a miss, based on description, would be if the bullet first caused a full diameter hit on hardcover or no-shoot, before striking the target. As to the stage question - ~ 15 years ago my squad, and possibly one or two others ran out of daylight on a Saturday afternoon at a Major match - pretty sure it was the Mid-Atlantic Sectional. We were given the option of returning the next morning to finish the match. I didn't make it back the next day - electrical gremlins caused the engine in my 1990 Chevy Caprice ex-cop car to stop running. Oh, that had to make it 2002, because I bought the Tahoe a couple of months later. Others on my squad, managed to finish the match, while I took a towtruck home.... Anyway - if the match is still in progress and scheduled to continue the next day, then asking competitors to return the next day is legit. Ideally this eventuality is recognized early enough, that you can prioritize getting non-locals with travel concerns through the match first. But really that situation shouldn't occur....

Grumpy, friend of mine, who's smarter than me, and has been a mechanic for most of his adult life, endorses the Acura MDX. AAMOF, after a loaded dump truck rear-ended his wife's MDX, they replaced it with another one. They're both solid. My guess is the LX570 is out, since it's Parttime 4WD? What about the GX? It's fulltime 4WD.....

The matches that handled this best, had you start on the longer stage, and the second stage was usually an eight round speed shoot from a box. That speed shoot could be as simple as four paper, or as complicated as four pieces of steel with dual movers.....

That reminds me of the 2003 Factory Gun Nationals, where a lot of people were asking WTF is Matt Mink? He was a B class shooter at the time, and finished the match in 3rd, IIRC behind Sevigny, posting a Master Level score. I believe that got him the promotion to M - but it was 15 years ago, so maybe I'm foggy on a detail or two....

Other fun tidbits - since grip strength is largely derived from strong forearms, Farmer's Carry is also worth spending some time on.....

Guns are either loaded or not. Competitor inserts mag into gun, then proceeds to cock the hammer and dryfire a number of times. There's nothing in 10.5.9 to prohibit that. Now, if he has his finger on the trigger while inserting the mag, racking the slide, dropping the mag to top off, etc - then yes, you're looking at match DQ under 10.5.9....

I don't know that I'd be watching a competitor "like a hawk" because of this - anytime the gun is out of the holster, I'm focused on what the shooter is doing. Worst case scenario, the shooter launches a round, which sails harmlessly downrange and probably into a target. RO says "Stop, unload and show clear, etc." and processes the DQ. It's not like I can prevent the discharge if the competitor makes a mistake....

Yeah, but in forum years, you're older than dirt, Vince. ? How many of us are left that even remember this thread, from it's origination? I still remember seeing a picture of the barber pole - I think the frame was lying in Kyle's window, along with a Pact Mk. IV timer.....

East Coast. We have these things called traffic lights, speed enforcement, idiots driving under the limit in the left lane with the blinker on, traffic congestion, etc....... In Wyoming I imagine that's a 45 minute ride ay 85-90?

1050 or not? I had that quandary once, after moving from a pair of SDBs to a 650. When I was seriously practicing and competing and shooting 20-25,000 rounds a year of 9mm alone, the 1050 made sense. I bought one, fought with it for a few months, and once I finally got it tweaked to reliably prime, and to swage without cracking shellplates, it was the smoothest loading sessions I ever experienced. When I decided to consolidate calibers for pistol competition to one, I decided on 9mm in large part because the 1050 did that so perfectly and easily.

York has a bay with 4 berms - think a room with a six foot wide doorway located in a corner. When they were running USPSA, they used dual 180s, parallel to 2 of the four berms intersecting at 90 degrees. That created a 270 degree area that was in play, and a 90 degree area within the pit that was DQ territory. It wasn't hard to officiate a stage in that bay....

Here's one other concern -- the sport is supposed to test the competitor and the gear. So, switching because a gun breaks, sure. Switching to a special gun and load to shoot the long range standards, and then switching back to shoot hoser stages -- that'd be something different.

What Touji said, you need a slower shutter speed on the camera to capture that. 1/30th or 1/15th should work..... If you're worried about holding it steady, try to shoot 4-6 pictures in continuous, the center images should be sharper because you're not pushing the shutter button down or releasing it.... Bracing your elbows on a table, or other solid service can also help you hold the camera steady....

Having lived in NJ, and now not living in NJ -- I'm not moving to Massachusetts. I'd sooner deal with a two hour commute, or drive the spouse to and from the commuter rail line in MA every day.

Nope. If the competitor never fires a round at the final piece of steel, he never engaged the last target, therefore the box on barrel penalties are off the table. He takes a miss penalty for the steel, and that's it..... ....and you can't really write your way out of it, without violating freestyle..... A good test for the scorekeeping: Shooters fires a single round and experiences a jam that takes more than two minutes to clear. You need to score the stage, so you record the time, any hit, and misses and FTE penalties for anything not engaged. You can't assess penalties for not moving boxes to barrels, because the shooter hadn't yet engaged his final target.

If it says prior to engaging last target, and all targets have been engaged before the box hits the barrel, then there's really no way to shoot your way out of the penalty, right? You'd need one target available, that's never been shot at..... Were I designing a stage like that, I'd try to give competitors options - and one of the options might be taking the penalty......

Not necessarily - I've dropped the mag, realized a popper was still standing, and dropped it with the chambered round. (Don't do this boys and girls, it's a surefire way to tank a blown stage even more. That round probably dropped my HF by 2 points, and cost me 20 match points or so.....) However the bit about the gun firing after the shooter's hand slipped off the slide, that might be the deciding factor in whether or not the competitor is DQ'd for having a finger on the trigger while unloading....

I've never laughed harder than when I watched a sword slice through a candle and plunge a room into darkness. My mind immediately leapt to "practice with your weakhand, until you have two strong hands...."

It's be pretty easy to schedule...... 1/2 day squads shoot 1-4 in the morning and the second relay shoots 5-8 in the afternoon Full day Saturday squads start on 5-8, shoot 1-4 after lunch Sunday Saturday's second relay comes back on 1-4, and the first relay comes back in the afternoon for 5-8 Sunday one day shooters do the same thing that Saturday's did on Saturday..... It's been done for pistol matches; should be adaptable to 3 gun....

iTunes? There are some gaps, unless they skipped some numbers....

I do that. Also because I use ten round mags in Production.... :-)

I'm with the Sarge - and I was at Production Nationals when competitors were moved to Open for loading with an 11 round mag -- before that rule change took effect. (Yep - around the turn of the millenium, there was no "after the start signal" exemption.)

Not an expert but had two kids who worked as installers - looking at the top proposal, they would have both groaned at the idea of air return only happening upstairs in the hallway. When we retrofitted the current house, they made sure that all supplies terminated from the ceiling near outside walls, and that the house contained multiple hot air returns both downstairs and upstairs. They also balanced the output (cold air) with the returns intake (hot air).

I was never able to clock a difference in reload speed between a stand alone first pouch and the first pouch on the Belt-Feed. So for any kind of a standards stage, it was a wash for me..... On field courses, I wasn't trying for standing reloads, so there was plenty of time to get to the next mag, because I was moving.... I did notice a difference in pulling the mag from the 1 or 3 position as opposed to pulling from the 2 or 4 position -- but only in practice. Never noticed it on a field course..... For production it solved my problem - in not putting the single pouches at the 5 and 6 position too far back. (Actually since I'm a one platform/belt/holster kind of guy, that means I also shot it in Limited and Open and it worked much the same there.) That said, if I was running a different gun for any of the high-cap divisions, I'd probably set up a separate belt with maybe 3-4 single pouches.

I can't tell from the photograph if there's definitive evidence of a bullet strike to the front of the target, or to the rear of the target. If I were to find such evidence, It would score as a hit in whichever zone it fell.