MikeBurgess

As much as we tell ourselves that we are not shooting in the overall everyone looks at how they finish in the overall results. That being the case shooters tend to gravitate towards the divisions that are easiest to shoot higher hit factors with. look at the participation numbers between Open, Co, PCC, Limited and compare them to the participation numbers for Production, L10, SS and Revo. you will see they are not even in the same ball park. Production seems to be the sweet spot for shooters looking for a bigger challenge than the high cap divisions, could be because it has a critical mass of shooters making it feel competitive, could be its relatively low cost of entry, could be popular pro shooters shoot it, could be all 3 or something else but we seem to have none of the above. We have low turnout, high equipment cost, and no big names consistently competing (sorry Michael P) Lots goes into why people choose one division over another I seriously doubt any changes to the Revolver division rules, short of not requiring using a revolver, will do much if anything to raise participation in USPSA. Look at Co for a quick example, the division was lobbied for as Production Optics and was original tried for a year as a 10 round division with almost no participation, when the mag limit was changed to 140mm how many can you fit participation grew quite rapidly. So production was good, but production with a optic did nothing, then with the change to production with optic and all the bullets you can fit massive growth happened. this leads to the question what makes someone think that adding a optic to revolver division would work better than adding a optic to a production gun did?

Classifying higher in revolver doesn't mean it's not hard it means it's not graded on the same scale, just like limited and open and every other division. Actually the revo HHF have been messed up for a while and the new ones have super low HHF one one of them I have a score that was averaged into the top 10 to set the HHF and I have a Mike on it, shot it again at a match Saturday with another Mike and shot 90% or so again. Hit factor is the game anything that raises the hit factor you can shoot makes it easier anything that lowers it makes it harder. Revos seem to shoot the lowest hit factor per skill level of any division thus they are harder to shoot in our game. I'm beating this to death because "its hard " is what I hear when trying to talk guys into it. Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

I disagree that the patient is dying. Locally we get 3 to 5 Revo a match. after years of 0 to 2. If revo went optic I would have to get an optic to be competative, fir me that's probably fine, but like the perceived need to run a 2011 in limited or a steel framed DA in production everyone would feel the need a optic to play revo, and looking at ICORE open is less popular than iron sights by a bunch (limited, l6, classic) so while you may attract a few I'm am pretty sure you would loose more Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

But adding optics to Revo means anyone that currently shoots it will need to buy more stuff. Our local ICORE match runs between 12 and 25 shooters with 1 to 3 open shooters, is possibly gaining some of that 1 to 3 worth alienating the rest? Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

in a game scored by hit factor anything that make you slower is making the game harder, harder does not mean one cant hit a target in this game it means not scoring as many points as fast. As an example at the last nationals the Revo world champ shot 65.97% of the Limited champion. with a highest stage score of 74% on a standard (6 reload 6, 2 strings) that says to me that revo is about 34% harder than limited.

Jake thank you for this info, it is grate to have actual participation numbers like that. on average a revo shooter shot 3.35 matches in revo for the year thats not a great number, I only shot 7 so I cant complain too much (it makes me sad that L10 has over twice the participation of revo)

How is that a problem? I actually think that is one of the best parts of USPSA, solve the problems the way that suits your desires best. We have a local shooter that is a high level defensive shooting instructor and takes his craft seriously, he shoots Limited minor with a duplicate of his carry gun and holster from concealment reloads and all, he is very good and would make GM with a race rig but shoots high Master with a carry rig.

I do love shooting my 66 though, its my favorite revo to shoot and to finish well at the local ICORE matches is a chalange.

I guess what i meant by cost not being a issue is, even if you could be competetive in some new division with a 6 shot speed loader gun you may all ready own I don't think many would see that as enough enticement to go buy 6-8 speed loaders and holders and a decent holster just to shoot what would now be by far the slowest division. I agree its not "harder" to shoot a revo but the general belief among shooters is that it is harder, and unfortunately beliefs trump facts.

got it that makes sense. AKA only for true masochists

I think the easiest way is to set the tablet to allow walk-ons then if a shooter wants to reshoot afther they bungle their first run they can hit add a walk on at the bottom of their squad list then add themselves (auto populate makes this super easy) then they can run the shooter and score them on the tablet right away without having to even leave the squad list for the stage. we have tablets dedicated to each stage so this makes for a super clean system as the shooters name only apears twice on one tablet and only after they already shot the classifier under their initial entry so the reshoot is easy to keep segregated. if the tablets travel with the squads then I would probaby set up a separate tablet for the classifier and have them add themselves to that tablet. I would probably on that tablet move myself to a empty squad and have the tablet set to that squad that way when shooters go to reshoot they can add a walk on to that squad and score themselves without fear of them scoring themselves under their original entry.

no USPSA revolver is like ICORE Limited. (oddly I believe the largest ICORE division)

I'm trying to wrap my brain around this idea. Are you suggesting we split revolver division into 3 separate even smaller divisions? so Open Revo, Limited Revo, Classic Revo or Are you suggesting make an optics and comps Open division and then having something more like category recognition for Limited and Classic configurations? Either option has some issues in my opinion. The first one splits up the smallest by far USPSA division and I highly doubt adds more than a couple new shooters. (lets face it sjhooting a classic 6 shot speed loader revo in a USPSA match take a special kind of person that is likely already shooting a revo in USPSA, anyone concerned enough about how they finish to not shoot a 6 shooter at a match are also probably not going to want to be first of 1 in revo classic as opposed to first of 1 in revo as it is, open revo may tempt a shooter or two to play occasional but with Open and CO most will probably stay their for their optics needs. The second option is better but still bad, it makes revo into open revo once again makeing the few of us that shoot a revo upgrade our gear to be competitive, outside of a very large stand alone match having enough revos show up in another configuration to get some sort of category recognition is super unlikely. My personal opinion is shooting a revo is hard enough on its own to stop most shooters from trying. its not a cost thing its not a division equipment thing its a its hard thing. So unless hard is their thing recruitment will be hard period.

It was only 85 yards but who's counting. I really like mixing it up with stages stages like that. we did a 50yd turtle target, bill drill, 30 seconds fixed time stage once (fixed time is great for keeping the lower class shooters from zeroing a stage) it is interesting to see how people deal with things out side the ordinary, as I recall out of 90ish shooters we only had one perfect score.

for non bottle neck cases its just like any other taper crimp die just with the addition of a size ring.

if its the linked CZ 26 round mag its actually about 175mm long so way over for limited and quite a bit over for Open

Another thing that gets missed by some on fast splits is you have to decide to fire the second shot before the first one has happened. This doesn't mean you are not aiming and are not seeing the sights it just means you have committed to firing that second (or more) shot and are using the sights to confirm what you expected to happen, happened. So to put it another way its aim fire, fire while confirming with the sights that the shots when were you intended. Basically aiming and trigger press are two separate programs that run side by side not one then the other.

I'm steeling this

oops double tap

Also when you run short brass like short colts the bullet has quite a jump to make in the cylinder from the brass to the chamber throat (on short colts there is .525+ from moth of brass to chamber throat) some people have lower accuracy shooting short colts out of 357 cylinders, some of that is bullet specific but it can be a issue. that said I've shot 20k+ short colts in my 627 and its still more accurate than I am, but I know off a bench I can get smaller groups with 38 Special brass but for the game we play its a non issue for me.

I think the part many are missing is they assume buying a performance center gun means its a race ready gun, and its not its just a regular Smith with the same chance of problems. you just described taking a PC gun and feeling the need to re-crown and re-cut the forcing cone, do a full trigger job and chamfer the cylinder. Or put another way as far as a competition gun goes they did about half the build correctly or good enough. and to be clear I do not think having a sub 12lb trigger is a personal preference thing, how far under 12lb is the preference part. So I maintain that buying a PC Smith is still a Kit gun proposition either you are your smith will be performing some amount of work on the gun before it is ready to actually compete with. most of the work required is easy to do yourself if you want to learn but it still needs to be done. There is quite a bit of difference between buying a STI for Limited and shooting competitions with A 4lb ish factory trigger and buying a 627 or 929 and competing with A 12lb factory trigger the 4lb one can be better but it will make very little difference in your scores the 12lb one will make a pretty big difference in your scores especially for a new revo shooter.

I think the idea of having a class or subset for speedloader 6 shooters is a dead end, ICORE has Classic and it is the lowest participation division in a tiny sport. I firmly believe that MOST shooters will not shoot a revo at a USPSA match because it is hard slow by comparison to an auto. So the question from a marketing perspective is how do you convince people to make it hard on themselves? last year I competed in Revo and Open I figured either hard or easy no half measures.

From my experience I would say yes you are a minority in being able to shoot a revo as well as anything else. I can shoot a revo reasonably well, but its still not the same as an auto. For example, about the best I can do is a .2 split with a revo and that's hard for me, but with an auto I can hit .15s no problem. Revo reloads are low 2s auto reloads are low 1s so capacity aside for me shooting a revo is just takes longer.

We need to remember that shooting a revo fast and accurately is hard and by nature most people want easy, see the rise of PCC (rifle at a pistol match unlimited ammo), CO (low recoil and a dot) , the forever dominance of Limited (major scoring lots of bullets) and Open divisions you will see that they account for the vast majority of USPSA shooters. Low cap shooters in general are the minority and we probably already have most of those shooters that are willing to play the game the hard way. I think our best hope as a division is in stand alone or companion matches ICORE on the local level or like the IRC or WSRC, etc on the major match level. The other place we can get a few more shooters is at Steel Challenge because the capacity issue is much less relevant.

Making a comp is reasonably easy and with some "adult" supervision as you put it would be a good learning project on a lathe and mill. I do think a BIG comp on a 500 would work pretty well. I"m thinking it would tame the recoil from "Oh my god that' insane" to "well that's unpleasant"