Griz

I don't think USPSA shooters have any big advantage on Top Shot. Most of the challenges are more about accuracy than speed and movement, and you can't miss fast enough to win on Top Shot!

Squadding for this game isn't like USPSA where you shoot with a group all day. You get a time to be at a stage and you show up a little bit before that time to shoot. On the plates, barricades and practical you will shoot with a couple other people (more than likely different for each one) and then you are done. You only have to be at the range for a short period of time if you want. Chris And in the past you had an advantage if you had a low competitor number because you would be in the left lane and not get hit by brass if a bottom-feeder was in the lane beside you. They also usually squadded big names together, but it sounds like that is changing which will be cool for the average Joe... Lot of pressure if some guy you have watched on TV in the next lane though.

I am heavy and unfit and my knees are very prone to some kind of inflammation that the docs have not figured out yet... Anyway, landing on my knees would leave me crippled for weeks, so I just dive forward to the matt. I land on my weak hand and the gun butt and absorb a lot of energy by flexing my toes. I think my knees are in contact with the ground at about the same time as my hands, but most of my weight is on my hands and toes, there is absolutely no impact on my knees. The gravel that shoots out behind me helps dissipate some of the energy of the fall and makes the RO respect my "personal space". It's not graceful and I waste a little time because I have to shove the gun forward from the landing position to the shooting position, but I get down pretty quickly for a lard-ass. I can go prone at 15 yards and have plenty of time left, but I find it is not worth the effort.

My Action Pistol Open gun is a 686+ with a barrel from Clark, it will do under 1" at 50 yards off of a benchrest. I can keep it in the X-ring from the prone position as long as I remember to put the dot on the X-ring before I pull the trigger. When this gun was new, it was shooting 6" groups at 50 yards. It turned out to have an over-torqued barrel that resulted in a constriction where the barrel was threaded into the frame. I could feel this constriction when running a rod through the bore. My Metallic gun is an old 8-3/8" 686 that a swapped a 7 shot cylinder onto. It is capable of keeping them in the X-ring at 50 yards when I'm not on the clock. I don't know how well it would do with a scope.

I don't care whether we get an “Excellence in Competition Medal" or not, and I don't care if we can grab the barricade or shoot Open Modified or not. I'm just pointing out that the rules say one thing and the NRA does something else... How hard can it be to change the rulebook to match what is actually done??? Also, I don't see any valid reason to run the national match by different rules than every other match. Just change the rule book to match the way things are done at the Bianchi Cup and it will make the sport a tiny bit less confusing and frustrating to prospective new shooters.

The progress on Production class rules is fantastic. However, I recently sent a new shooter the link to the rules to answer an equipment question and got back a question about Open Modified... This tells me that the rule book as a whole needs some attention. I just skimmed through a couple of sections and noticed a couple of things. Open Modified is back? I have not received or heard of anyone receiving this medal and certificates... I don't see any mention of the extra restrictions for Metallic/Production that were on the bulletin board at the Bianchi Cup last year, so is "grasping" the barricade allowed again at the Bianchi Cup like it is everywhere else? Also, from nearly 2 years ago:

My Buckmarks malfunction with FP-10 also... It's too heavy. They run fine with Rem-oil.

I watched Al measure the steel as 1/4" angle 2"x2".... Of course there have been too many beers since then to remember clearly, but that's the steel I ordered when the memory was much fresher. One "mistake" we made in Bedford is that we added diagonal braces so that our barricades are rock solid. The ones in Columbia are just stuck into concrete with no bracing so they bounce around compared to ours... One thing that is really key is how square and centered the barricades are relative to the targets. You have to be able to deal with the luck of the draw on that since each lane is going to be a little different.

65 guns PER DAY... Do the math!

I use a Lee autodisk on low-quantity stuff (the hopper is kind of small). It works fine and is as accurate as the Dillon.

The great thing about the newer Aimpoints is that they run 4-8 years on one battery even if you never turn them off.

The hammer block has to be there in Open, Metallic and Production. The lock is not a safety device, it is a political device.

You never kicked me out for showing up wearing a SpeedSec and a DeSantis Nemesis Please don't frisk me next time

Technically there is no rule that I can see against multiple holsters... You just can't use the extras, they would just be there for looks

I had to challenge 3 out of the 6 sets of targets I turned in, but didn't really see it as a problem. They were just trying to knock out the targets as fast as possible. I don't think the scoring staff had much experience though because they missed obvious doubles and did not seem to know how to use scoring templates. It was no big deal though because each time I politely challenged the target, an experienced staff member took a look at it and in about 30 seconds had corrected the error. It wouldn't be a bad idea though to do away with the $10 fee for asking for a second look at a target and to make it clear to newcomers that challenging a target is not an insult. If an experienced referee takes a look and there is still a disagreement, then the $10 fee would be more appropriate. My point is that the goal should not be to grow the Bianchi Cup, the goal should be to grow NRA Action Pistol at the local level. Even if the ultimate goal is to increase attendance at the Bianchi Cup, that would happen organically and be more sustainable as the number of AP shooters and local venues grew.

I don't actually believe that either. The seeming lack of interest at HQ in the sport of NRA AP outside of the Bianchi Cup is what prompted that bitter, hyperbolic comment. The rules committee doesn't even show interest in fixing problems in the rules and the Bianchi Cup itself runs by it's own set of rules, many unwritten, and I am totally mystified as to why the AP Rules can't just be changed to match the way they want the Cup to be run... It just appears to an outsider as if all that the NRA cares about is the Cup and turns it's attention elsewhere for most of the year. I'm starting to think that the main problem is that it is an intimidating sport... You cannot make up misses, you don't get alibis. If you are a serious competitor in other sports, you probably don't have many guns in your safe that will meet the equipment rules. The high round count probably scares off some folks too... I know I've tried to get people to come out and their eyes bug out when I say they need 200 rounds for the match... I guess there are not any fixes for most of those problems other than watering it down unacceptably. My solution would be to introduce the sport to as many shooters as possible and try to get that ~5% of each club interested in more. The real trick is finding that .1% that are masochistic enough to be match directors.

The reason that I think a "road show" would grow the sport and by extension, the Cup, is that there are big areas of the country with no NRA AP at all. The shooters there don't know it exists, as far as they know that "Bianchi Cup" they see for a couple of minutes once a year on SSUSA is some one-off match between the elite sponsored shooters. A GSSF-like circuit would expose those motivated shooters at local matches to our sport and some of them would really like it and want another taste badly enough to set up their own match at their home range. I've already seen this happen when an old college buddy of mine came to visit and shot our local match. He liked it so much that he went home and set up his own match. He would never have been able to do it without support from me and the other experienced shooters at my club though, he was constantly calling and complaining that information was next to impossible to get out of the NRA... If just a handful of new clubs started shooting AP, imagine the ripple effects on neighboring clubs and all of the organic interest that would create in the Bianchi Cup. The keys are getting the right people interested in the sport and then making it *easy* for them to set up their own local match.

Due to lack of sleep and recovering from 2 weeks away from my home and family, I will not comment on this post, other then say, some people would probably want us to shoot for them as well. This is the rudest post I have personally seen on here yet. Good luck to you all! Tom... I apologize. I should not have posted that. You've been very rude to me in the past and I should not have let my personal feelings corrupt a post that was intended to open a constructive discussion.

If the NRA was really interested in growing AP (and the Bianchi Cup), they should take a bottom up approach instead of the current top-down approach. Do everything possible to promote local matches. Take a page from Glock's marketing efforts and run a NRA AP circuit. Get sponsors to outfit a trailer with a couple of plate racks, some portable barricades and a portable mover. I can see it now, "The MidwayUSA AP tour" featuring the Safariland Barricades, the Sig-Saer Mover, the S&W plates and the Universal Gold and Bullion Practical. (See, I even remembered those logos from last week... instead of just 200 people, the sponsors could reach thousands of serious shooters). Make information on setting up a match more readily available... (example, how do you build a barricade? How do you build a mover?) Maybe even line up "official" sources of the required range equipment. The NRA could use some of their clout to help line up sponsors for State and Regional championships, maybe even offer NRA staff to help run championships. The NRA could provide timely positive reinforcement to shooters in the form of official acknowledgment of distinguished points, national records, etc. [edited out disrespectful comments)

Al is shooting what he calls a "snub nosed" 686. The barrel is a stubby 6 inches I predict that if someone claims the 1900 prize it will be with a 686.

Don't forget that if the weather is wet, the guys with optics will be wishing they had iron sights. It really sucks to have to pick one red dot out of a dozen...

Bring 4 safety pins (and some spares) to stick your number on your back.

Does anyone here use phase-change cool vests? If so, what are the best brands and sources?

The description of the Shadow Target sounds like a "Custom Shop" pistol to me, which means it is not legal for NRA AP Production... Shoot it cocked and locked in Metallic.

I noticed in the rule book that there is a production rimfire class and was thinking about what guns would qualify. The most popular 2 on earth, Ruger Mark II/III and Browning Buckmark are out since they are single action only.... I guess some of the tacticool plinkers (Sig Mosquito, Walther P22, etc) would be legal, but I can't see those being used for serious competition. A 617 is the best solution that I can think of. Any others?