beltjones

I think this is a good decision if for no other reason than someone other than our President will get to be the MD of the match. Hopefully it's Ken Nelson. I'm sure this will bring out the apologists, but to have our President (which is an elected and salaried position) take a week off from his duties of MDing Production Nationals is nothing short of a gross dereliction of duty. We don't have stages approved. We don't have squadding available. There hasn't been a shooter's packet sent out in either paper or electronic format. The registration information is nonexistent. The only reason we have an actual round count is that someone OTHER than the MD released it. With so little settled with so little time before the match it's quite unbelievable that the MD would take a week's vacation to shoot a couple of matches just for fun. Oh, and by the way, this isn't a volunteer MD like many matches, we actually pay him to MD nationals matches. It's a joke.

Now that is A+ level trolling. Other trolls, take note.

I don't think anyone is arguing that reshoots weren't warranted, the point is the shooters were allowed to opt in to getting a reshoot. If they couldn't determine who was affected they should have made the whole squad reshoot. Simply asking "who was affected?" (With the obvious implication that reshoots would be given) is giving shooters the option to reshoot. Shooters who were not affected but had a good run may have opted into the reshoot, and shooters who weren't affected but who didn't have a good run may have opted in as well. That's not fair to the rest of the competitors, and it's a situation the rule is meant to avoid.

I spoke to a person who received a reshoot, and that person said the squad was asked who was affected, and everyone who raised his or her hand was given a reshoot. So whether those people who raised their hand were ordered to reshoot or not, the fact is the shooters were allowed to opt into the reshoot.

You make some valid points, and when you promote or RM a major match I trust you will handle it differently. If you were shooting limited nats, I trust you will protest the alleged actions. I'm ok with that. I wasn't working that stage and don't know the skinny, but having worked with experienced rangemasters, I feel pretty confident that they used their experience and judgement in the way that worked best for all parties concerned and for the sport. I believe that an experienced rangemaster has the tools to be given a little more latitude on the rules than an RO or CRO. You can't anticipate every possible situation. Yeah, as long as the person making the decision is sufficiently high up in the organization they should be able to make up the rules as they go. Don't like it? go to RM school and run it your way. How does that make any sense? You're saying if someone goes to RM school then they get latitude with how they apply the rules? You don't see this as a problem?

You make some valid points, and when you promote or RM a major match I trust you will handle it differently. If you were shooting limited nats, I trust you will protest the alleged actions. I'm ok with that. I wasn't working that stage and don't know the skinny, but having worked with experienced rangemasters, I feel pretty confident that they used their experience and judgement in the way that worked best for all parties concerned and for the sport. I believe that an experienced rangemaster has the tools to be given a little more latitude on the rules than an RO or CRO. You can't anticipate every possible situation. Yeah, as long as the person making the decision is sufficiently high up in the organization they should be able to make up the rules as they go.

You have repeated this a few times, and to me it doesn't make sense. So Production isn't a valid championship unless the Limited guys shoot the match? Or is the Limited Championship this year not valid because Max didn't shoot it? Or how about this: Any division of any match where Eric Graufel doesn't compete is a sham because the best in the world wasn't there to legitimize it. No, the way it works is, shooters sign up for the division they want to shoot, conceivably the one they think they have the best shot at winning. The best Limited shooters will compete against the best Limited shooters, and so on and so forth. That's not watering down, that's allowing shooters to self-select where their strengths best match the shooting challenge. Now, if you wanted to argue that finishing 16th in this year's Limited match is more impressive than finishing 16th in years past, I would agree with that. But that doesn't mean that Nils's first championship is any less valid than his most recent one, nor will it be for whomever wins next year.

Let me grab some popcorn...

Utah. About an hour from Las Vegas.

+1. They're cheaper, too.

But that rule applies if they have to make changes to a course of fire mid-match. In this case we're talking about an activator that wasn't reset properly. That's a REF, which is a mandatory reshoot. Anyway, you're right that even if that rule applied, it would still be a mandatory reshoot.

I don't see how that applies in this circumstance.

I think 3-Gun is interesting in that it disproves a big thing thought to be essential to attracting new members. "Shoot the gun you brought" or "Shoot what you carry" or, basically, the idea that we need to lower the cost of participation to attract new members has been blown out of the water by 3-Gun. Heck, that idea has been blown out of the water by Production Division in USPSA, which is the only division with an arms race, and it's the fastest growing division by far. 3-Gun of course requires investment in a dedicated pistol, shotgun, and carbine - not to mention a crap load of range bags and some kind of cart to haul it all around - and their membership is exploding. I think there are a few reasons. One, USPSA relies almost exclusively on local clubs to do all of the marketing to new shooters, while the head office only deals with existing members. That's a mistake. The other reasons are all immediately evident when comparing any major 3-Gun event to USPSA Multi-Gun Nationals. My understanding is that Multi-Gun Nats attracts fewer shooters, has a worse prize table, and has less media coverage than pretty much any 3-Gun Nation event or even most outlaw matches. My "solution" isn't to make Multi-Gun Nats better. If I were in charge I would study why Multi-Gun Nats is so bad (comparatively), and apply those fixes to USPSA as a whole. No one is going to do that, though, while they're still struggling with getting squadding ready for a nationals event that is only 3 weeks away, and they can't figure out why the membership is annoyed that they put off a classification update until after another nationals is over.

In the DFW area, definitely. If a 3-Gun match is on the same weekend as a USPSA match the USPSA match is sparsely attended to say the least. I think it comes down to the 3-Gun matches putting out a better product, with better organizational support (surprisingly, considering how many outlaw matches there are), and better media reach. Basically, 3-gun is pulling away the existing shooters and grabbing the pool of new shooters at the same time. It's not a good trend.

Dude, the SRT does nothing to shorten the reset. I'm not even sure why it's called that. Pretty much all it does is shorten pre-travel. The thing that shortens reset between your Pro-Tek and the Shadow is the absence of a firing pin block in the Shadow. You could easily tell if your gun has a "short reset" disconnector in it by diassembling the gun and looking at the disconnector pinned to the hammer. Here is a picture of both disconnectors. http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=176252&p=1952727

Here's my Shadow trigger. You can see how much of the pretravel is removed. Mink did this one. http://s95.photobucket.com/user/beltjones1/media/9EA1EE8E-F5EC-4482-A696-EFA79A11E1BC-913-000000CA5D0D5401_zps4416fc6c.mp4.html

I have two Shadows. One I got worked over from Mink (www.automaticaccuracy.net), and the other was worked over by our own Stuart Wong. In my opinion they are the two best guys to work on a Shadow. My Shadow from Mink has the short reset trigger mod, and that one is my match gun. The other is a backup, but it's very capable obviously. What prompted the switch ultimately was my old G34 just stopped being reliable. I couldn't go a major match without a malfunction for pretty much all of 2012. I finally got it worked out before Nats, but by then my mind had been made up to switch. I have an 11 lb recoil and 13 lb hammer spring. DA is 5.5 lbs and SA is 1.75. The DA pull is no big deal. It hardly takes any time to get used to it. The only time it has been an issue in recent memory was when I pulled a DA weak hand shot into the C zone on a classifier. To practice it I just dryfired a lot. I have the new CZ Custom "arched" grips. They're ok. They're not actually arched, which is a bummer. I don't have big hands, but I like a fat grip so I can get behind it more. Different people like different things, though if you like the Glock grip the thick aluminum grips from CZ Custom will be very close. Put some grip tape on them (on the whole thing, not just those dumb cutouts) and you will be fine. I don't notice a difference in recoil. I think with a minor round, a few ounces on the gun here and there don't make much of a difference in recoil. Mostly the recoil is determined by the shooter. I have the factory curved trigger. It's fine. I've tried both, I don't think it makes much of a difference. Overall I would say they are pretty close in terms of performance, but of course the CZ is better. The CZ is more accurate and has a better trigger, but ultimately it's up to the shooter to make it all work. I think if you're expecting to buy one and see immediate improvement you're going to be minorly disappointed. Some other benefits are a more stable sight picture when shooting on the move, no more malfunctions when I grip too high on the Glock and it cuts my hand open, and for me the ergos are better with respect to the CZ controls. I'm definitely still happy I switched. The Glock is fine, but the CZ is better, though it's not a magic ticket to a GM card or anything.

Hey sorry it took so long to get back to this. Here are a few (poorly done) videos showing the trigger pull. As a reference, this pistol is a CZ75 Shadow Target Custom from CZC and has the short reset trigger in it. The only other mod is it has an 11.5lb hammer spring vs the 13lb that I believe comes with it. DA pull is a hair over six pounds and SA is about 3lb 3oz. DA pull: SA pull and pretravel: I will say there is no weight on that pretravel. You know it's there, but it's nothing until you get to the sear and then it's about 3lbs then hammer down. Have you ever played with anyone else's Shadow that had a short reset trigger mod? Because I would bet $20 that yours doesn't have one. That looks perfectly stock to me.

I went from G34 to a Shadow. What would you like to know?

It doesn't look like they are. I'm not complaining, just letting you know. Thanks for all you do.

I sent Paul an email about it, but if anyone has his phone number he would probably appreciate a heads up about it.

There is also going to be a diamond awarded for most points down. I'm not sure how they'll do that in an all steel match, but whatever.

Thanks Paul. Does anyone have a sense of why the powers that be are undercommunicating to such a degree? If they have an agreement for ammo shipments, why not let us know? It could be as simple as an email to registrants, or of course they could have someone update the website. And how about an exact round count for those who are shipping ammo? If Troy can answer a presumably emailed question from Paul, why can't he just email all the registrants with the answer? Obviously Paul isn't the only one who wants to know, right? I get that people are busy, but it's pretty obvious that either the match organizers are disorganized, or they are organized, but have severely de-prioritized Production Nationals. I think the fact that our elected president is shooting back to back nationals while the rest of us wait for stages and squadding information - and even have to rely on third hand info on such things as where to ship ammo - speaks volumes about priorities.

I think Paul does more for the sport than most of the elected leaders. Thanks man!

That doesn't really make sense. Wouldn't they have to do this regardless of when the most recent update was run?