shred

"Memory" stages are dumb at majors (especially IPSC matches where you only get 4 minute walkthroughs), as are 'sequence' stages with complicated activator sequences because by Day 2 everybody knows what the best plan is, while most of the Day 1 shooters get screwed.

I've used the V1s interchangeably and there's little difference at USPSA distances.

EzSteel software never was. We used hand calculators and then Excel once we got fancy with spiffy macros to auto-delete the worst string and put 30s in not-shot strings because sometimes we'd have shooters run low on ammo and only shoot 4 strings per stage. That was not uncommon. At the Steel Challenge in 2005 (way before USPSA bought it), you got DNFs for not shooting at all, 120s for not shooting a stage (Glenn Higdon's gun broke IIRC, but there's no way to tell from this page) @Koppi might remember why he DNF'ed 19 years ago.

Decade and a half maybe But I was digging through some old match books yesterday and the 2006 Open/Production nationals had two stages with prone or very-low ports. 2006 Area 1 (Stages mostly by Tom Chambers!) had bed starts, a moneybag that had to be carried and a dummy-drag. 2006 Gator match a toilet start and shooting from inside a car. Double-Tap 2006 had swinging ports and barrel stacks to push over. 2004 East Texas Section had a gate to climb over (or run around a longer wall) All of them had gun-in-box starts, table starts and multiple doors. Most of them had one or more Texas stars as well.

Yeah, what seemed cool to a bunch of 20-somethings seemed less so to a bunch of 40-somethings. Then the ez-button rules for PCC came along and killed off the rest of it.

We did that exact thing for decades before Practiscore was ever a twinkle in Ken's eye. I've been shooting, RO-ing, MD-ing and Scorekeeping Steel Challenge matches since the early 1990s. At some point I think you have to make an executive decision, tell USPSA what it is and if they object they can propose something else..

It's what everybody does (even RMs at L3s ). Somebody leaves halfway through the match, they get 30s for every string they didn't shoot. The rulebook says in Section 9 that any strings where the shooter didn't hit the stop plate are 30 seconds. It does not say in that section that the shooter must actually shoot that string. ergo, 30 seconds for every string not shot.

"Memory" stages are likewise nearly always crappy stage design.

It's probably because most of the time it's obvious the running is thrown into a stage for no reason except the MD or stage designer is better at running than shooting.

Because everyone just gives DNFs 30 seconds per string and drives on. You didn't hit the stop plate, you get 30 seconds for that string.

As someone that was shooting then, "30-yard sprints." were very rarely seen. You'd have Rhodesian walls and gates to climb or jump over and doors and windows and tubes and low ports, shooting out of cars and stuff to drag or carry (you know, "Practical"), but sprinting distances for no reason? Not so much.

The only IPSC stage I ever beat Grauffel on in Open heads-up had 3 separate prone positions on it...

Hell, I can react faster than .3 and I'm an old geezer. Most people are in the .20s or high teens for RT.

50 yard shots and/or standards used to be expected at any L3 match 20 years ago, as were low ports and/or prone and dragging/carrying things to make you shoot one-handed.

Why even bother with even having the 'sprint to avoid a hard shot' part? If the fast runners can't shoot accurately, that's a weakness in their game and they deserve to get hammered for it. This is after all, a shooting sport. People that want to run a marathon and shoot a couple dozen rounds can shoot run-n-gun or Combat Ninja Games if they like flipping tractor tires in between shots.

Production-15 has been a thing for what, a month and a half now? In winter. Seems a little premature to claim the sky is or isn't falling.

Best practice for an RO with a beep-on-release timer (PACT?) is to learn to tap the go button on any timer when ROing somebody else.

See above: recoil is not the reason for more points for Major. Cooper well knew double-stack major guns were available, he even made a few (see: Bren 10, SuperCooper, etc) and BHPs were easily available. He and his buddies that had actually shot people felt from experience in various wars & LE, that .45 ACP worked better for that than 9, so they designed a testing ground for equipment and tactics where .45 ACP got more points for peripheral hits than 9 did. Cooper's Practical Pistol Competition, 1974

FWIW, I talked to a few Top Shot competitors way back when... there's a lot more going on than gets filmed, and hand somebody a crappy-triggered 1911 or Beretta they've never shot before and it's not too surprising they can't run it like their race guns. The people that did well on the show were the ones that went by the range every week and rented something different out of the rental case.

Time for my annual reminder that Major has NOTHING TO DO WITH RECOIL. It's about power-on-target, and always has been since Jeff Cooper created it. You can argue that LE's are concluding 9mm is "as effective", but A- they don't shoot 125PF and B- a lot of that is to improve the hits and qualification scores among lightly-trained officers. If they could get equivalent hits with .40 or 10mmm or .45 more than a few would switch back..

You have prescription glasses? Maybe looking through a different part of them.

I reload my 9 major brass all the time. Toss it if it cracks or doesn't pass the hundo anymore.

Ted was the guy to beat at the local clubs when I started as it was around then that he won Standard for the first time at the Bisley World Shoot. Most of the time he shot a CZ in .40 with shaved basepads to fit the IPSC box. I was happy to have twice his time on a stage and he was the reason my first 'race' holster was a Hellweg. He did love the man-on-man-shootoff format and kept it alive around San Antonio for decades with AASA (it's still a going thing). One of my special plaques is this one, because I had to beat Ted to get it. One of my favorite memories with Ted was when NicTaylor and I talked with him for a while one evening while winding down after the Paper and Iron match in Midland TX.

Look into "Clear Path" digital servos. You can get an out of the box solution to motor controls and power supplies. Won't cost that much less than a Mark 7 (which uses them) for one-off parts though.

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