IVC
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Posts posted by IVC
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1 hour ago, horhey232 said:
I wanted to try to get a Production C win. I am now the only D class Production shooter. There are 4 U shooters but I can not shoot unclassified since I am classified.
You can still get a Production C win and beat all the other C shooters. The match might not recognize you as such, but all the C shooters certainly will...
Classes as "competition brackets" are silly, particularly at the lower levels where it's a matter of how your classifiers are ordered and how often you shoot them. Classes are also particularly silly at the higher levels where you're a good shooter competing against guys who are also good shooters and there is nothing inherently wrong with you that would handicap your performance. In fact, it appears that classes as competition brackets are pretty silly overall...
Use your class as a tracker of your own progress, to see how well you're doing and improving. Use your skill to beat all the guys who are below your skill level or who are inconsistent due to trying too hard/fast. You can have a great goal of beating all C level shooters at your upcoming match. Work on that and post back how you did!
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50 minutes ago, StealthyBlagga said:
The "crown/grease ring" test is an objective way for the RO to resolve both questions, and has served me well over the years.
Your intent is good, but if we are going into minutiae, it is not an objective test.
If it was an objective test, the rules would specify it as the method for determining score. The rule book doesn't. It's only mentioned as an example. Using it as the definitive factor is neither objective nor consistent with the rules. As an RO you have to determine whether it was the bullet fired at the target that caused the hole, even if the bullet hit a barrel or some other stage prop and continued to strike the target.
There is still the unanswered question of whether you believe that a bullet deflected off of a partial hit on a barrel should count. This is regardless of how you (or I) determine whether it was the bullet that perforated the target or something else. So, does a partial hit on a barrel with significant deflection, in your opinion, count for score on the target(s) down-range?
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I'm not even close to that level, but...
Two quick observations: (1) anyone who ever got better did it because he wanted to do things he couldn't do at the time and decided to practice and work on getting to the goal, and (2) concept of intra-class competition is silly to begin with, we all compete against everyone in the same division.
So, having a goal of getting the GM card is a good goal and will make anyone not just a better shooter, but a much better shooter. Grandbagging shouldn't be a derogatory term (or even a concept) and the only problem I have with sandbagging is when there is a prize table and it's done for material gain. So what if an A or a B shooter beats a bunch of GMs? The guy clearly performed at the certain level, had the appropriate accuracy, movement, transitions, etc. It's simply a good shooter beating some other good shooters. There is no Cinderella story here - a guy who is classified as B beats a bunch of top guys, gets bumped to GM. He was a GM to begin with, performing at the GM level, not a random B guy who got lucky...
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On 8/6/2020 at 11:31 AM, Joe4d said:
I noticed mags on the ground while u were still seating.
Short class with Todd Jarrett playing games, saying I "should" be able to seat the reload before the empty hits the ground. He then proceeds to do it repeatedly without effort. Made me hang my head and cry. I mean its freaky,, he doesnt even look like he is trying. he can be talking to you,, and pull it off.There is no real trick to this, except maybe to understand that the reload is a variable speed exercise, going "as fast as you can - medium/fast - as fast as you can."
There is usually way too much lollygagging in the initial pulling of the gun in and getting support hand on the magazine. If you get this part down, you can also be talking to people and doing it fast because it doesn't require visual inputs. You simply react quickly and move your hands with your fast twitch muscles. The time a magazine falls from 5 feet to the ground (on Earth, obviously) is 0.55 seconds. Your hands will be slightly above that, so we are talking closer to 0.6 seconds. That's a long time to do a (variant of) Burkett reload...
Seating magazine before the old one falls down is like a timer - it just tells you that you moved the hands fast enough in the initial "as fast as you can" part of the reload and that you didn't mess up the insertion.
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31 minutes ago, motosapiens said:
If you get a partial hit metal that's in front of paper (popper in front of no-shoot, or metal no-shoot in front of paper target), you can get all sorts of mayhem on the paper target behind,...
We had at least once or twice a situation where the steel was angled such that there was a "spray zone" - if you stood in one place to watch the stage, you'd get all sorts of flying jackets and splatter. It was even labeled as "splatter zone, don't stand here." The sign worked well for those who could read... the rest of us got pelted first, then realized there was a sign trying to tell us something.
The point is that both metal targets and some rocky backstops can generate a lot of flying debris. We have all pulled out small pieces of jackets out of our skin...
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21 minutes ago, StealthyBlagga said:
In practice the distinction is made by the RO based on the nature of the hole in the target; a deflection (your choice of words, not mine) has a crown/grease ring/arc and thus can be scored, whereas a ricochet presents as a larger-than-caliber hole without any crown/grease ring/arc visible.
This is not true - read rules 9.1.5.3, 9.1.5.4, 9.1.6.1, 9.1.6.2, 9.1.6.3, 9.1.6.4, etc.
Rule 9.1.6.3 is very clear about what happens when a bullet hits hard cover: "If a bullet strikes partially within hard cover and continues on to strike the scoring area of a cardboard target, the hit on that cardboard target will count for score or penalty, as the case may be." It is very clear that a bullet can "continue on to strike..." and it's not a ricochet, even if it gets deflected, alters its path or tumbles. As long as it's the same bullet it counts.
It has nothing to do with rule 9.5.5 which deals with determining whether a hole was made by the bullet fired at the target, or something that came from somewhere else. If it's the bullet that was fired at the target, the scoring is controlled by the above rules in section 9.1. If it's something else, such as ricochet or splatter (from another target), then it doesn't count.
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4 hours ago, StealthyBlagga said:
If something ricochets off a hard range surface (ground, wall, barrel, whatever) it is, by this definition, a "ricochet" and - per rule 9.5.5 and the above article - should not be scored unless the RO has evidence that allows him to use an overlay to score the hit.
Since there is no definition of "ricochet" in the rules, we have to go off of what would normally be understood to be a non-scoring ricochet - a bullet on a different target, going through it, hitting a rock behind and deflecting into completely unrelated target; or, bullet hitting a metal target, disintegrating and fragments hitting another target.
A bullet that is deflected by a barrel is not a ricochet any more than a bullet deflected by a no-shoot paper target is a ricochet. In both cases the path of the bullet is affected, even if very slightly, and in both cases the bullet can tumble when hitting the final target. In fact, there is nothing that prevents any tumbling bullet from scoring. A bullet that is deflected by a barrel and hits the target is just that - a bullet that hit the target. As such, it counts for score or penalty based on what it hit (both on the target and on the hard cover). (Side issue: 10.4.2.2 talks about deflection in terms of DQ; hitting a prop and continuing downrange is considered a deflection, not ricochet.)
Are you saying that the hole in the OP was made by another bullet from another target?
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13 hours ago, BentAero said:
OK, I'll bite. What's a grease ring? I've never heard that term before...
It's the slight dirt mark going around the bullet hole.
I believe the term "grease ring" is an anachronism, from the time most bullets were greased lead and shot from the single action revolvers. Modern bullets will still leave a mark, but it's no longer grease.
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14 hours ago, Alleycatdad said:
There was quite a bit of insistence from a non-RO taper that the hit should not score because of the missing grease ring, and this did indeed end up being the call.
At level 1 matches there is quite a bit of this, but it's expected and (sort of) allowed by the rules. Appendix A1 5-9 states that L1 matches do not have to have certified officials (only "recommended"), so you'll end up with everyone and their uncle being the acting RO. It doesn't excuse them from not knowing the rules or using wrong procedures (following the USPSA rules is mandatory at L1 matches), but it (sort of) explains why these things happen.
Personally, I'm much more ticked off with "range is safe" or "shooter ready" than these more complicated scoring calls...
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The RO got it wrong.
Grease ring has nothing to do with scoring, at least not in the context the RO used it. Rule 9.5.5 talks about grease ring, but in the context of determining that a hole was created by the bullet and not by the fragments (ricochet or splatter). There are several rules that provide "for example" sections where, for some reason, some ROs believe it's a complete and exclusive list. This would likely be in that category - believing that grease ring is required for scoring.
But there is more wrong with the call. The first is that the RO has to see the hit on the barrel. Normally, barrel would be "patched" (painted or marked) for any hit on it, so the RO would have to determine there is a new hole in it. Alternatively, he would at least have to see the barrel move if it's not patched. However, there is a more important consideration - partial hits. A partial hit on any hard cover counts for score or penalty down range. Hitting a barrel doesn't necessarily mean that the hit won't count. It must be a full diameter hit through the barrel before the hit doesn't count. Without being able to point the exact hole in the barrel, the RO cannot determine whether it is a partial hit and the break would always go to the shooter. It's not even a break, it's how the scoring works.
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I'll add a slightly different perspective...
It's great to have a technique as long as you understand there's no the technique. There isn't a single technique, only a set of principles that dictate how to find what works for you in order to accomplish a measurable goal. Shooting one handed is like shooting free style in that you will have to learn the "why" not just the "how" because you will not be shooting from your preferred position most of the time and you will have to understand which parts of your "technique" are important in order to get good hits in suboptimal situations, not merely how to execute good one handed combat shooting from your preferred position.
For example, how many videos talk about the free style stance and to "put your foot about 6 inches behind the other foot" and alike, only to forget to mention that in a match you will have no such luxury? You will have to understand the relationship between your upper body and your lower body so that you can create the most stable platform you can achieve under the match circumstances, which might be while moving, while leaning hard, while shifting weight aggressively in order to navigate barriers without moving your feet, etc.
Precision one handed shooting with no hard time limit, i.e., Olympic Pistol, has a very well established technique that works well for the goal of very high accuracy, no recoil control considerations and no time pressure (even in timed events, there is no bonus for going faster, so it is still a "what can I do within this amount of time" consideration, and not the "I need to be faster and accept some accuracy loss" deal). So, that technique won't work well in USPSA because the goal doesn't take into account the two core requirements of action shooting: multiple shots and time limit.
Long story short, one handed shooting is similar to free style - learn to pull that trigger without disturbing the sights, learn how much wobble each hand will produce based on different ways you hold the gun, learn how much wobble you can accept at different distances and then know when you have to do bullseye "trigger press" (too much wobble, usually weak hand on hard targets) and when you can do the fast trigger pull as soon as you see your sights settle. A good exercise is to do the trigger pull drill where you have the gun on the target and on beep you try to pull the trigger as fast as you can without missing. Know your limits for trigger pull on WHO/SHO and that's your one handed shooting...
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Roughly speaking, the difference is that you choose to fire two shots so on the second shot you count on your grip to return the gun to the original position AND (this is very important) you recognize the second sight picture even if you didn't use it to make the decision to shoot off of it. If you skip the latter part, then it's what an inexperienced shooter would do by having one sight picture, squeezing the trigger twice and having no idea where the second shot went.
I don't know to what degree there is a consensus about the second shot on a sub-20 splits, but the way I see it is that there is no time to make the decision based on the second sight picture, even if it is critical to acquire it (if nothing else, because all the shooting is about seeing the sights at all times). The decisions is made based on your knowledge where the gun will be, which is a relatively simple "feel" matter, so you know that your sights will be in the vicinity of the good shot and you just confirm that on the second shot, possibly firing a make-up if you didn't see what you needed to see.
I don't believe there is enough time for the full thought process of seeing the picture, saying "that's good enough, I'll take it," then firing the shot. If it were all about decision making after you see the sights return, you could pick up any gun and shoot a Bill drill without obtaining the feel for it by shooting it a few times. This would be because if there is no predictive component about where the gun will be, it doesn't matter whether you are or aren't familiar with the gun.
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3 hours ago, Dranoel said:
Stop watching the sights, it is not telling you anything more than you already know. If the sights are returning to the original point of aim, that's all you need to know. I don't care if the sights go up and do a figure 8 as long as they return to original point of aim. From the time the gun goes "BANG" til you're ready for it to go "BANG" again, the sights are meaningless.
True, but there is a big caveat... Not watching the sights and not being able to see the sights during recoil are fundamentally different concepts.
You have to be at the level where you can see the sights in recoil before you choose not to watch them in recoil. The progress with sights is usually: (1) can't see the sights at the moment a shot is fired, (2) sees the sights when the shot is fired, (3) sees the sights in recoil at some point, (4) sees the sights during recoil (blur, detected as motion), (5) chooses which parts of this information to use for efficient shooting. It's awfully easy to confuse stage (2) with stage (5) because in both cases it's only about the sights being on target.
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On 8/3/2020 at 2:01 PM, Blackstone45 said:
Shot some more doubles on Saturday. I used a bit more forward lean stance-wise, and made a conscious effort to crush more with my support hand and loosen a bit with my dominant hand. Couldn't measure splits because I was on a line with 5 other shooters, but at 10m, I was making consistent A-zone hits with at least 0.30 splits.
That sounds pretty good, especially if you are really consistent as in you can see and guarantee the second shot, not merely squeezing the trigger and counting on your grip to produce the consistent second shot. (Important: we are not discussing predictive vs. reactive shooting and how it works on short splits, merely what you see on that second shot.) So, if you see the sights on the second shot and can call it as bad/good, then you're where you need to be, maybe just need to be a tad faster, say around .25, but you didn't measure so you might already be there.
Just remember that even if you bring that split at that distance to, say, 0.20, you are saving 0.10 per split which is only one second on 10 targets (and these are very fast splits at 10 yards). Unless you're within that 1 second of the top guys in the world, splits are not your primary concern.
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It's like anything else - if there is no reason to go slow while you reload, it's wasted time. Same as if you draw your gun slowly because the target is difficult.
What's preventing your legs from moving while you're doing something with the upper body? Is the movement affecting operation of your hands, e.g., making it "too bumpy" ? If so, you're likely better of going full speed and using more time for the reload than either of the options you're considering. As long as you complete the reload by the time you are setting into the new position you haven't wasted any time.
So, instead of going slow to have a very fast and precise reload, then going fast to the next position, go fast all the time and do a slow "bumpy" reload. The end result in the former case is that it *feels* like you're fast because you're doing two very fast things (fast reload, then fast movement), but it's not efficient because you're doing them sequentially. If you move fast and have the reload completed by the time you're in the new position, you didn't waste any time no matter how slow and fumbly the reload felt.
Of course, the details will be in how much time you have between positions and your own time measurements of different ways to move in practice.
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Wow, that looks fun! Like the claw in those games where you try to pull your prize out... Your prize is that you walked away unharmed.
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I had made a Power Point slide that I would sometimes use to explain the role of training and how the typical timing of a draw works (can be used for anything), so when you mentioned "front loading" in the video, it reminded me of this slide. Hope you don't mind me dropping it off here even if it might be slightly off topic...
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5 hours ago, MemphisMechanic said:
The lack of ability to call the FTSA is on me at this point.
Agreed. And we are discussing a bizarre scenario in the first place, where the person fires two less shots on the array for no obvious reason, which would be an unusual and stupid thing to do voluntarily because it guarantees at least two mikes. The extra FTSA is just the icing on that cake.
But it's an interesting discussion because Murphy says weird things will happen, so having an idea about how to deal with it is a good thing...
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59 minutes ago, DKorn said:
I could absolutely see scenarios if the targets are very close together (like stacked targets overlapping with a no shoot between them, or targets shoulder to shoulder) where a hit on one target could very easily have been aimed at another target. I’ve done it, sometimes due to a really bad trigger pull yanking the shot low or left, sometimes due to transitioning between targets and firing early or late (which would normally be a mike, but if the targets were close together I could see clipping another target), and once because my optic lost zero midway through a stage and started shooting way to the right.Did you fire two less shots than required?
The scenario would be that you had 4 targets, you fired 6 shots, ran dry and chose not to shoot the remaining 2 shots... You would claim that you chose to engage two of four targets with a single shot (for no apparent reason) AND that you missed one of them only to hit the other with the extra shot, so you ended up with 4A, 2M and no FTSA... If you fired 8 shots, then it's pretty clear.
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The sights must slow down, stop, then start moving in the opposite direction. If you're seeing this, you are way ahead of the curve since that's all you need to diagnose and improve your shooting. Also, what your sights are doing is not a problem. They must do it - slow down, stop, reverse.
At a glance, you don't have a problem. What are your splits?
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On 7/13/2020 at 10:02 AM, Tango said:
I shoot matches (CO) where I am the most accurate in the entire match. I also shoot matches where my time is on par with open GM's, but accuracy suffers (misses, no shoots, steel left standing). In both cases my match performance is about the same (70% to 80% of the winner, typically a PPC or CO GM).
Did you see the misses? Did you call the shots?
Get away from chasing time and start chasing hits. Not in a way an IDPA guy would understand this, but in a way that a USPSA GM would understand it - get your vision to dictate speed, then increase that speed so you can see sooner and you can call shots off of less. Having almost the same time while hitting 70-80% is your sign. You won't improve your accuracy by more hosing and hoping it lands in the scoring areas. Instead, get to the same 70%-80% performance by matching their points, then work on seeing sooner, not going faster. This will bring you to the level you're looking for where you are fast, not shooting fast.
We all started by chasing time. That's the most visual aspect of the game. It's also the easiest trap to fall into, especially since you have to push the pace and you have to cross the boundary of what you see and can do if you want to get better. However, this is your practice, where you're learning to shoot sooner and where you become better, not your actual level of shooting. A match is your test, where you shoot at your level, whatever it is, then you go home and work on improving that level.
Easier said than done, I know. I'm working on all of that too. I'm almost certain the top guys are working on it as well...
On 7/13/2020 at 10:02 AM, Tango said:I am trying to make gains, which is why I am pushing speed. I want to shoot at my top speed, and still get acceptable hits.
As Rowdy said above, welcome to the club. We have member jackets...
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On 7/13/2020 at 10:46 AM, Tango said:
very cool, however i almost never live fire train. something for dry fire?
You have to force your vision to dictate speed, so the only thing you can do in dry fire is to create conflict between timer and your pace. Let me try to explain.
One live fire drill I do often with a few rounds, usually cold, then when I have a round or two left in the magazine between drills. Draw on a 55 yard steel (belongs to the range) and make sure I get the hit. Not the specific time, but get the hit. If I mess it up, if my vision is blurry or rushed, if I cannot settle the sights or cannot recognize the sight picture quickly (rushing, tension), I do NOT fire (yet) and let the timer run until I can guarantee the hit. So, I get 1.5 seconds when I do it right, and 2.0 - 2.1 when I mess it up. The extra time seems like an eternity on messed up draws and I have this urge to send a "hoper" to meet the good draw time, the mentality from hero/zero classifiers when you have nothing to lose (if you're chasing classification, not for match standing, obviously). Yet, the drill is about forcing the vision to dictate time and not the other way around.
In dry fire, which is what you're looking to do, it's a bit trickier because you would have to be very disciplined to achieve the same effect. However, you say you're an A class, so you should be able to do it. Start with a very hard target, where you cannot just wing it, get a bit tired, shift your body position around to less than ideal, try slightly different draw stroke, mess with your routine, BUT then force a good shot regardless of timer. Force yourself to be at peace to hear the timer and blown par time in exchange for knowing that you fired the clean shot. Force yourself to recognize (as in observe) the difference between timer-driven and vision-driven shooting. You want to be able to tune out the time pressure as a constraint for your shooting. It has to be vision-driven (as others pointed out above).
Then, do what you must do for practicing "changing gears" - set up a mix of easy and hard targets and start shooting them in this mode where you guarantee hits. The overall time doesn't matter (initially), what matters is that you remove the pressure of time and pull the trigger as soon as you see what you need to see (and no sooner). You have to train your brain to use the sight picture to shoot, not the timer, tempo or rhythm. You will speed up automatically not because you think you should go faster on easy targets, but simply because you see them sooner. The feeling should be that you're shooting a bunch of hard targets but on some of them the gun just settles sooner (the easy ones) - in reality, it settles enough to hit them, but the feel should be "oh, I transitioned really well on this target and was able to shoot it sooner," not "I tried to move the gun faster because I was going to an easy target." Speaking of which, gun moves almost the same speed regardless of the target difficulty, much like you draw almost the same speed regardless of how difficult the target is. The reason I say "almost" is that towards the end things change a bit based on how settled the gun must be in its final position, but the core of the movement is the same.
It's something that works for me, so just wanted to share it. It might or might not work for you, obviously.
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5 hours ago, DKorn said:
Here’s one to ponder - what call would you make if a shooter moves to a position with 4 closely spaced paper targets and fires 6 shots? Let’s say that due to the close spacing, you are unable to tell from the angle of the shooter’s body or gun which target is being engaged on any given shot. I know what I would say but I’d like to hear what others would do.
A quick add-on thought...
If he hit three targets with two rounds each and he only fired 6 shots, then it IS a FTSA on the last target. Saying that he engaged the last target, missed, and hit the A zone on the nearby target is not something he could try to sell at arbitration. At least not with a straight face. I guess it always comes down to the details of the particular situation...
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1 hour ago, ima45dv8 said:
Per the glossary, if no bullet passes completely through the barrel, then the competitor did NOT shoot at it. A squib in the barrel is not a shot in this instance.
This is great insight - I wasn't aware of this definition in the Glossary (look under "Shot") so I would say that if the gun went "bang" it was a shot. But it's not if it's a squib... Very interesting.
Classification Question
in USPSA/IPSC Rules
Posted
It didn't. Win the C class as a D shooter and get even more bragging rights...
In reality, your most likely concern after the match will be that you tried too hard and ended up performing below your level, not that you went as a D. If you think you have the skill to win the C class and you made it your goal (it's a nice and measurable goal), make sure you perform at your peak level and not "give up" the victory to someone else because you were trying to go faster than you could. If you shot well and didn't end up on top of C, that's good too - it's your homework for the next match.