beltjones

At least for 13-05 they used the HHF from nationals. I imagine they did the same with the rest of them as well.

I'll go email my AD. The last two things I asked him to bring up at a BOD meeting were rejected. I might as well go for three...

Hmm. So wouldn't those people who practiced that particular classifier more be 'd-baggs'? You're confusing me now. I can't tell if you are angry at people that practice or just want better goals to practice towards. All of your posts are classic examples of bad logical and argumentative techniques. If you're not begging the question you're setting up strawmen and attacking them, or throwing red herrings all over the place. It doesn't bother me if you think that. It also doesn't bother me if y'all would rather stress about the classification process than about shooting and match results. Clearly there at least 5 or 6 people that agree with you and think this is a big deal, so maybe I'm just obtuse. I'm married, so I'm used to being wrong. Bam, another straw man! You can't help it! Bam, another person getting all offended when someone has a different opinion. You can't help it. don't have a cow, man. p.s. that's not a straw man. It is a straw man. You misrepresented the opposition's position by saying they cared more about the classifier system than about shooting and match results. You could have easily addressed some of their points, but you chose to go all "cable news" and use cheap debate tactics rather than address issues brought up by others. Even your "getting all offended when someone has a different opinion" thing is a logical fallacy.

Hmm. So wouldn't those people who practiced that particular classifier more be 'd-baggs'? You're confusing me now. I can't tell if you are angry at people that practice or just want better goals to practice towards. All of your posts are classic examples of bad logical and argumentative techniques. If you're not begging the question you're setting up strawmen and attacking them, or throwing red herrings all over the place. It doesn't bother me if you think that. It also doesn't bother me if y'all would rather stress about the classification process than about shooting and match results. Clearly there at least 5 or 6 people that agree with you and think this is a big deal, so maybe I'm just obtuse. I'm married, so I'm used to being wrong. Bam, another straw man! You can't help it!

Hmm. So wouldn't those people who practiced that particular classifier more be 'd-baggs'? You're confusing me now. I can't tell if you are angry at people that practice or just want better goals to practice towards. All of your posts are classic examples of bad logical and argumentative techniques. If you're not begging the question you're setting up strawmen and attacking them, or throwing red herrings all over the place.

No problem with tinkering. I think we all get that. But why is the length of the reset part of the learning curve?

Did you ever think that trying to catch the reset is what's slowing you down in the first place?

Practice more. It's not the reset that is slowing you down.

Bullets are easy enough to get these days, and primers pop up with some regularity. Powder Valley received a bunch of CCI primers the other day, and 3 million Winchesters just today. They even relaxed the order limitations on primers from what I understand. Powder, however, is still really scarce. Does anyone have any insight into when it will be available again?

No, I don't really see a problem with that (but if you can actually explain the problem, maybe I'll see) because the 'rank' doesn't really matter. You don't get a prize or money or chicks or guaranteed entry to an area match because of it. IMHO, the classification system serves 3 purposes (none of which are that big a deal compared to match results); first, it allows people to sort of keep track of their improvement (insofar as the classification represents general shooting skill). Second, it allows you to roughly gauge your performance against people you don't know. I don't really care about the class of the local guys I shoot against locally because I know how good they are, but if I travel somewhere else, seeing the shooter's classes in the results gives me a better idea of how I performed that day. Last (and least important imho), it allows MD's to hand out self-esteem awards to people who would probably never get trophies otherwise, and some people are motivated by trophies and trinkets rather than intrinsic performance. So while I see that there could be some miniscule benefits to tweaking the system, I don't really see why some folks are getting so wrapped around the axle about it instead of practicing shooting or designing stages or putting on matches or running for section coordinator or otherwise behaving more constructively. The $3/match activity fee seems pretty cheap to me to have someone else organize an entire sport with rules, championships, classification, etc.... Seems like a better system than some other sports where you have to join an organization to even participate once a year. This way the people who shoot the most matches pay the most to support the organization they benefit from. Makes sense to me. So help me understand, why should someone care how the HHF is determined as long as it appears to be roughly accurate? What competitive unfairness is occurring because of the current system? What bad consequences is it currrently having for the sport, or for individuals? Why is it important? You're begging the question when you say "it appears to be roughly accurate." In many cases it's not accurate at all, hence the request by some for more transparency. Why don't you get that? Because except for 'can you count', I haven't seen many example of where it's not accurate (but I'm interested, if you'll post some). I personally think the problem with 'can you count' is that it's just not hard enough to provide reasonable separation between levels of shooters. It doesn't *seem* to me that it's the hhf causing the problem, but the lack of actual aiming required. (btw, if you're a B or C that practices draws and bill drills/trigger speed, that classifier will probably help your classification). I think it would be reasonable to look at how representative classifiers are, and get rid of the ones that are not doing a good job. I think that has less to do with HHF than with the distribution of scores in generals, i.e., are most people shooting about what they're shooting on other classifiers and in matches most of the time? So if there are classifiers that suck, lets focus on them, and not muddy water how HHF is calculated. That's fair. However, I would argue that the first step to determining which classifiers suck is to see what the true HHF is/should be, and then determining why it doesn't accurately gauge individual performance. There is another issue related to the above, and that is, how do they determine what an "A" class performance is on a classifier? It's one thing to assign a HHF, it's another thing entirely to figure out how the other scores apply to each sub-class. All of the scores for each classifier should be a bell curve of a sort, but each classifier should have it's own bell curve, if the statistics are being used correctly. The above may sound complicated, but it's a simple matter of data management. If USPSA has the data, then determining all of the above is about a 5 minute exercise per classifier, at most.

No, I don't really see a problem with that (but if you can actually explain the problem, maybe I'll see) because the 'rank' doesn't really matter. You don't get a prize or money or chicks or guaranteed entry to an area match because of it. IMHO, the classification system serves 3 purposes (none of which are that big a deal compared to match results); first, it allows people to sort of keep track of their improvement (insofar as the classification represents general shooting skill). Second, it allows you to roughly gauge your performance against people you don't know. I don't really care about the class of the local guys I shoot against locally because I know how good they are, but if I travel somewhere else, seeing the shooter's classes in the results gives me a better idea of how I performed that day. Last (and least important imho), it allows MD's to hand out self-esteem awards to people who would probably never get trophies otherwise, and some people are motivated by trophies and trinkets rather than intrinsic performance. So while I see that there could be some miniscule benefits to tweaking the system, I don't really see why some folks are getting so wrapped around the axle about it instead of practicing shooting or designing stages or putting on matches or running for section coordinator or otherwise behaving more constructively. The $3/match activity fee seems pretty cheap to me to have someone else organize an entire sport with rules, championships, classification, etc.... Seems like a better system than some other sports where you have to join an organization to even participate once a year. This way the people who shoot the most matches pay the most to support the organization they benefit from. Makes sense to me. So help me understand, why should someone care how the HHF is determined as long as it appears to be roughly accurate? What competitive unfairness is occurring because of the current system? What bad consequences is it currrently having for the sport, or for individuals? Why is it important? You're begging the question when you say "it appears to be roughly accurate." In many cases it's not accurate at all, hence the request by some for more transparency. Why don't you get that?

I don't have a problem with multiple processes to determine a HHF. To me, it makes sense to use the HHF from Nationals for new classifiers (provided they were actually shot as-constructed at Nationals, which isn't the case with some of the 13 classifiers). It also makes sense to periodically update the HHFs using relevant data obtained from actual shooter performance. What bothers me is I don't think they're using statistically valid techniques. They really shouldn't be using the mean of the top performances - it should be the median. They also should be forthcoming about what the top performances have been. If they take the median of the top "n" performances on a given classifier, why not publish those top "n" performances and update them every few years? The systems seems to work reasonably well, but there are some classifiers that, from a HHF perspective, are just garbage in some divisions. For example, if you show up with your production rig to your local match and see that "Can you Count" is set up, you just know that it's not going to help your overall classification percentage. That's a failing on the part of HQ, in my opinion.

On the guns I've handled there is no difference in external dimension between the small frame and large frame.

Brandon, who is banned, says "Thanks. Break yo' self."

Yeah, it's only a 15 gr difference, so maybe there won't be a noticeable difference in feel.

Yeah, I don't need a particular PF as long as it will knock down steel plates and doesn't give horrible accuracy. I'll give it a try and let you guys know how it works out.

I want a minor .40 load for certain steel matches, and I was wondering if this will work, or if anyone has any experience with a similar idea. My major load is the following: 180gr PD FMJ 5.3 gr. N320 1.200" OAL That gets me about 950fps out of an SVI AET barrel. What if I keep everything the same, but just swap for a 165 gr. PD FMJ bullet? What can I expect?

+1.

Regardless, change it to "most M's" and the facts don't change. The greatest revo shooter in America couldn't beat most Ms shooting Production guns. The point is not what class of Production shooter Jerry can beat, the point is he couldn't possibly win a major match in Production shooting a revolver, because a revolver is not anywhere close to being a competitive Production gun. So who cares how you define the rules for revolvers within Production when no one is going to get an advantage in Production by shooting a revolver.

If there is one thing not worrying about when it comes to Production division, it's revolvers. I'm 99% sure that when they conceived production division - and it was meant to be a "beginner" division - they were envisioning guys coming to matches with 7 or 8 shot S&Ws and being frustrated that they couldn't use them in Revo division. "Let them shoot Production," they said. I know a lot of people still thing Production is for beginners, but the fact remains that any conversation regarding revolvers in Production division is irrelevant because a) no one shoots a revolver in Production; and put a comped revolver with a red dot in Jerry's hands and he will still lose to most A class Production shooters because even the best revolver in the world isn't as competitive as a box stock G34.

13-04: If they're using the hit factor from 2012 Nationals it's going to be messed up because the stage as constructed at Nats is different from the classifier diagram.

13-02: Instead of providing measurements from the center line for each target, they offer the following: "Space targets 1/2 target width towards center line each target, and face to shooter to avoid shoot-throughs." I get the "fact to shooter" thing, but if anyone can interpret the first part of that note I would appreciate it.

if the status quo is working great and it's a waste of effort to change it that could be spent on something productive (practicing, lobbying for rule changes that would actually affect competition, etc....), then yeah, I guess I support the status quo. I'm a big fan of fixing problems. Not sure this qualifies. Seems to me that most any method of picking a HHF that results in people generally shooting their classification is hunky-dory, as long as it's the same for every shooter for a given classifier. Genius, that's the point of the thread. If the HHFs are not valid on a given stage, then peoe aren't shooting their classification on that classifier.

Why are you 'trying to reach a HHF'? Do they give prizes and cash for that now? How exactly does it affect you if the HHF is a percent or two different either way? Does it change your match finish (overall, or in your division?) Does it change your skill level? I guess maybe I don't care about classifiers that much. They're handy as a sort of rough guesstimate of my progress, and handy as a sort of rough guesstimate of the skill-level of other shooters that I don't personally know, but until they start giving cash bonuses or 6-packs of Lagunitas IPA for getting to a certain HHF, I guess I won't worry about it beyond that. Good luck on your quest, however. You're my favorite schill for the status quo. I actually don't think the HHF would change for this stage if max shot it as written in the official description, but it is still a valid argument that there are plenty of misapplied HHFs across the many classifieds, and the process for determining them should be revisited. Getting something right is always a good enough reason to undertake an endeavor.

My hunch is that if you poled the GMs - especially the super squad GMs - the answer would be that you have to be able to do both and use each technique depending on the circumstances of the stage.