putting on a good match, stage flow

[bigbrowndog]

When stages are laid out to conform to the available bay or terrain, care needs to be given to allow

timely flow and reset of the stage. Consider not only that the competitor has to walk 50yds

downrange to stage a gun and then back, and then 50yds past the staged gun to engage targets and

back to clear the stage, but that your RO gets to do it for every competitor. Also if your ROs choose to

not reset the stage until all guns are cleared, you must know this in order to realistically calculate for

competitor to competitor reset or there will be a bottleneck on that stage. It is easy for oversights such

as these to occur, but once it does throwing more bodies at the problem generally just creates more

problems. When dealing with a terrain format, consideration should also be given to travel time from

stage to stage. When possible clustering of stages and squads to those particular areas can shorten

travel time. The trend in multigun is to have more and more 3 gun stages and yet no concern is given

for realistic turnaround time. Staging 3 guns takes more time than most people think, even in a

shooting bay format, in a terrain format you can generally add 2 or more minutes per competitor simply

due to the longer distances travelled, and those times can increase as the day and match wears on.

Reset time can be shortened by using dump barrels or tables that can keep muzzles pointed in a safe

direction and by utilizing a 3 gun stage that has little competitor movement. When deciding on where a

stage will go especially in a terrain format, consider access to the stage in all kinds of weather, snow or

rain, also consider competitor movement in the stage. Will it be safe after a good rain? Will paths be

clearly discernable after snow? Could you have easily placed the stage elsewhere and had it be an all

weather stage? Do you have at least 50% of your stages set up to be all weather stages? The last item

could save your match. Incorporate short, medium, and long COF into your match, this allows

everyones strengths to come into play. My opinion of short, medium and long COF, differs from the

normal pistol stages only due to the differences in magazine capacity for the rifle.

For me short is 6-15rds., and medium is 16-32rds., and long is 33-45rds. there really is no need for more

rounds in a COF than 45rds., because many competitors will use more than the minimum rounds

anyway. By utilizing S,M, and L COF you should easily be able to have 50% all weather stages. Another

way of accomplishing an all weather stage is to have all weather targets, steel and clays do this nicely.

Target types to follow,..............thanks

Edited June 2, 2010 by bigbrowndog