Jim Norman

Dan, Thank you for the additional info. Is there a weapons form like there was 5 years ago? The only form I've seen on the AMU Site is the waiver. Jim

The communication regarding this match is starting sadly to look a lot like that of the recently canceled Seal Foundation Match. I have sent out a couple questions via emails and after about a week have not received any response. I am starting to think along the lines of should I or shouldn't I? with regards to attending. The squadding looks to be half full, but the site says the match is full, Daniel is not responding to a couple what I think to be important questions, I.E., Where do we get the weapons forms and is there any special information we need to provide for a base pass to drive in. I seem to remember having to show up at the gatehouse during the day a day in advance last time with your weapons forms. I can't remember if we needed advance clearance for vehicles and people. We are essentially unescorted. When I work on bases, I usually have to provide make and model in advance to obtain a gate pass for my vehicle. We have exactly 4 weeks and a wake up from today to first shot. I don't know about the rest, but I need to be on the road two days prior. I am looking forward to this match and I really want to be in on the inaugural match of a new series. I think we all would like regular communications, I don't mean hourly or even daily, but once or twice a week just answer questions with a post here. Don't even need to email, just look at the questions that are asked and post replies for all. Many may have the same questions.

I think the reason that the match was cancelled is a lot like the answer to how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? We may never know!

I still don't see the need to give anyone my money for "membership" so they can dictate to the guys that actually run matches how they have to do things. I run matches like I'd want to shoot. I use the rules that I like and are familiar to most of our local competitors. It works pretty well that way. While I fundamentally agree with Bryan, I think it is worse today than it was when this thread started. While I don't really give a rip which ruleset someone wants to use for scoring, divisions, etc., I do care about the safety aspect. I see so many people running matches that lack the experience and knowledge to do so. Stage designs that are stupid, unsafe, aimed to "trip" up shooters are wrong!. We also have folks cutting and pasting sections of rulebooks to make their "own" ruleset and deleting some aspects of the layered safety approach that has been so successful in practical shooting for more than 30 years. I have seen ADs, NDs, 180 breaks, rounds over the berm...ON VIDEO, often times without a DQ. What I "grew up" with in terms of zero tolerance for safety violations has been watered down so far by some, including 3GN, that I am truly worried someone is going to get killed. We also have WAY too many inexperienced shooters competing in matches that are WAY over their heads. I have had to tell three parents this year that their child could not continue in a match because it was just too much for them. There are a lot of good MDs/RMs out there for sure. But, it takes quality stages, a quality ruleset, and great staff to make a great match. With all the "new" folks shooting and running matches with no understanding of the reasons for some of the elements that have gone into the safety and stage design rules, NO, things should not keep going the way they are, however a governing body is not the best answer either. Mark, QFT. We shot a match earlier this year where there was a target at about 400-450 on a dirt pile, we were told if you miss and we don't see a dust puff on teh pile it is a match DQ! That is SO WRONG! That shot should NEVER have been anywhere near a local match let alone a Major! It is wrong to put a shooter in that position and it could easily, since missing was likely sending a round off the property towards inhabited areas, close the range, cost an injury and gazzilions of dollars! I don't think that you should necessarily have to be a member of an organization to shoot a local match, but if we want a concise, fully vetted rule set, we are going to have to have an organization and that organization will require funds. Those funds can only come from memberships and to some lesser extent, match fees.

You do realize that you are risking a squad's entire match in having the Nook travel? If anything, anything at all happens to that Nook thta somehow renders the data irrecoverable, that squad has no match. If you have each stage keep the Nook on the stage, and the same catastrophe occurs, only that stage is lost and it is lost to all. What part of, I sync all the the Nooks back to a secondary Master device every few minutes did you not understand. If you actually do that, I assume you have wifi that covers your range. most don't and if others follow 'the Nook travels with the squad' method, they are taking a risk. I can only wish we had wifi at the range, I wish we had power, water and a lot of other things there as well.

Be careful if you have a beard! Dumping your rifle might not be so quick and painless!

'Action Designated Marksman', I like that, the descriptive, not the actuality. once we pass 400 yards we are moving away from 'Action' shooting and getting into DM, Sniper and 'Area Denial' shooting. We already post targets that are not realistic targets. If we are shooting on natural terrain and not in pits with limited distances and obstacles a full size Metric Target is realistic, a 10" plate or smaller isn't. Now that said, I like the idea of 4MOA as a MINIMUM target size. It can be seen and hit by most, provided we don't deliberately hide it in the brush. We have recently had on e match that had a single 400+ yard shot and we were all told, if we don't see a dust puff on the berm, it is a match DQ so don't just take a shot to avoid a FTE. Well the FTE penalty was way less than the miss penalty so I don't think more than a very very small percentage of shooters risked the shot. This is WRONG. You should never NEVER be faced with a DQ for attempting a shot that is up set by the match. I am not talking about a ND, or some action on the shooters part, but simply missing the target at a long distance and not hitting a dirt pile. I suppose what I am saying is that IF a shooter has truly zeroed his rifle and has ANY idea of exterior ballistics, OK, let's state that simpler, has any idea of where his gun shoots at 100, 200 , 300 yards he should be OK at the match and not have to make shots deemed DQ-able for a miss.

You do realize that you are risking a squad's entire match in having the Nook travel? If anything, anything at all happens to that Nook thta somehow renders the data irrecoverable, that squad has no match. If you have each stage keep the Nook on the stage, and the same catastrophe occurs, only that stage is lost and it is lost to all.

Kurt wins the round and the match!

Personally I think there is room for shots out to 350+/- in 3-gun. I don't think we need them on every stage or that we need a stage where the shortest shot is 200. If you can run tight shots at 50-100 yards and then closer shots mixed up with challenging pistol and SG shots, that is good. As an example Peacemaker runs a monthly 3Gun, shots range out to near 400 yards, but only one shot, the rest are in under 200 and most are under 100. There is running, there is tight shots, there are stages to figure out the best way to shoot and stages that are straight up do it this way only. If all you have is 100 yards 50 yards and shorter bays, design stages that work there. We've run dozens of 3-gun at our local club where 100 yards is the max, we make up for that with innovative stage designs. Door breaching, vehicles, odd positions, and so on. Matches where you need to be able to hit 600 yards and do it fast and well to win are not 3-gun. There are matches where this is the norm, they are I believe refereed to now as DM matches. You want really long? RockCastle Sniper Challenge in January, 1000 yards, unknown distances.

When one is registered for the match, what additional information is required. I remember from the last series that we have to present a list of firearms with serial numbers and I think the amount of ammo we have with us. Do we need to submit anything for a pass to get onto the base? Or is that taken care of with the application? Thank you

I have not used the 'add walk-on' feature more than once or twice, but it has been an issue. IF and only IF the shooter is entered exactly the same on each Nook does it work well. When it has been used by a squad to add a late arrival, I have had to move the scores manually to Late Shooter A from B>, C, D, E, and F in order to make it right. not too bad for one, but if there area a couple it sucks. I would rather they just record Late Shooter on paper and I'll put him in later.

All the way to South Carolina for the closest Regional to the Northeast! Unless you can travel far this is a must or you aren't in the nationals if you live in the NE. There has to be some place some where somewhat closer, doesn't there? What exactly are the requirements to run a Regional as pertains to the facility?

IMNSHO, what most of us need to do is actually practice SHOOTING. Yes, Stand up, shoot your rifle at small targets sort of like shooting a high-power match or for pistol sort of like a bullseye match, SG? Try trap, Skeet, 5-Stand, Sporting Clays. What we do is not like any of them, but it uses all the skill sets. We just do it from odd positions in shorter times with an elevated heart rate and panting from running too far as out of shape fat old people. You cannot expect to hit a small target standing in the condition you will be in at a 3-gun if you can't do it just standing up, taking your time and shooting. Too many people think building a practice stage and running through it shooting 30-40 rounds, and repeating this half a dozen times is practicing. It isn't. Look at each individual skill set we need, each type of position we need to get into, shoot just a couple rounds, verify your hits, rest, repeat. Also, if you miss, STOP. Practice does not make perfect! Perfect Practice Makes Perfect. If your practice allows you to miss, you will. If you miss, stop, analyze why, repeat the drill. I am not saying you shouldn't practice quick make up shots, that you shouldn't practice using your match saver, or doing an 'Oh-Crap' reload, but you need to perfect your basic shooting if you want to advance your action shooting. How many of us will go to the range and shoot 25 rounds of slow fire at a reduced target on a regular basis? There is not a bullseye shooter worth his salt that would run 40 yards to shoot an A-zone target from 10 yards, he'd hit the target from the line. Not saying we should do that in a match, but our skills should be such that we should be able to. This holds for Rifle, Pistol and SG. For the record, I planned to do all this, I only do a very small part of it due to time constraints. A problem most of us have.

Thanks guys. I'll give the android method a shot. I can sync all to one android, update then sync to the Ipad for further use.

I will admit that I have not read all the posts in all the threads Ran our monthly match yesterday using Ipad as master and NSTs as data gathering devices. Tried to update classifications before posting, report says no changes found when I knew without doubt that there were errors and omissions. I had to check each shooter against the data base and manually update them. Anyone else see this? It has worked in the past. I am running 1.667 on my Ipad

What is the start time????

I find it interesting the match has 19 squads of 12 or 228 slots and so far only 107 people have squadded up. What is every one waiting for?

My refund showed up in today's mail. Looks like it is just a time consuming job. Hopefully we'll get to shoot a match at this location in the future.

And the winner is 4MOA. anything smaller is not a 3gun match, but a DM or Sniper match. Look at the target sizes for the Sniper Challenge at Rockcastle in january. they have some really small targets. For us, with our 180 second time frame this makes sense. 4" at 100 yards, you really ought to be able to hit this. 16" at 400 yards and 20" at 500 that is a full size IPSC Metric target in width plus about 2 inches! And call Carbine or call it Rifle this is what we do. You only have 50 yards? OK, 2" targets maybe be generous and use 4", we do it at 100 yards and you should hear the people moan. Nothing says you can't go larger, just this is about as small as you should go. And yes, I realize this is a slight drift. but stay thirsty for 4MOA and reasonable long shots. with apologies to Dos XX and StlHead

I'm looking forward to updates as well as stage descriptions. If I had to guess, I'd say those are TBD based on the upgrades currently being conducted on the ranges. At least that's what I gather from the AMU Facebook posts. https://www.facebook.com/USAMU1956. I just want to know if that swinging bridge platform will be used this year and if so, how to prep for it. Get a small boat, float it, stand up in it, dance a jig while holding a full to the brim glass of water, repeat until you can do this without falling out.

We do use low ports as in get down on the ground to shoot through low ports at times, HOWEVER we almost exclusively put them at the last shooting position so that getting back up is not required on the clock! If all 'ports' become 'slots' that does change the challenges. This said, ports should be from about 3-6 to 5-0 above the ground, they can be as narrow as you want them, maybe only 3-6 inches, but if you make them 30" high, starting at a reasonable height, no one should ever complain. Shooting weak or wrong handed at the end of a wall is acceptable but every stage and array should not require it, If they do, you are likely going to piss off most of your clients. If you have three tight shots to the left that obviously favor the LH shooter, put in a maximum of three that are tight to the right, now everyone can be equally PO'd. Don't make all your RH shots tight and all but one LH shot loose. Your LH shooters will certainly not be appreciative. Now this said, if it wasn't for USPSA and 3-Gun, how many of us would ever have thought about shooting off the weakside?

So far the squadding page looks to be about half full, but I understand the match has a wait list. What's up? All of a sudden everyone will squad on the last day and be upset they couldn't squad with their buddies? I am looking forward to this even though I'll spend as much time on the road as at the match! For every hour of driving I figure I get to shoot about 30 seconds Should be a fun time, I was fortunate enough to make the last 3 FB3G matches.

I got word that my check was returned to the sender due to an error in zipcode so I expect I will see my refund shortly.