Bunchies95 Posted January 22, 2013 Share Posted January 22, 2013 Should USPSA impose a maximum time rule? There already is a 2 minute limit should a gun malfunction. But theorertically, one can take take 119 seconds to fix a malfunction, take a couple of shots, then another 119 seconds, etc (I doubt that will ever happen). I am more thinking of when a shooter takes a painfully long time to shoot a stage. I try and design my stages so that they take no more than 60 seconds for some of the slower shooters to complete, but every once in a while one ends up being much harder than I intended it to be. Where a B-M shooter will finish in 20-40 seconds, a D shooter may take 120+. I am starting to see that this usually happens when there is distant steel or occasionally a texas star where the newer/slower shooters refuse to move on until the steel is down. Distant paper will just see two shots thrown at it with no knowledge of the miss(es). I think such a rule would not make much of an impact but could potentially keep the stages moving should an abnormally difficult/slow stage crop up. A possible wording of the rule could be as follows: "There is a maximum time limit of XXX seconds per course of fire. Should a competitor be actively completing the course of fire at the time limit, the Range Officer will terminate the course of fire. The course of fire will be scored as shot including all applicable misses and penalties. Time will be recorded as the maximum time or last shot fired, whichever is less." I think 150-180 seconds would be a good maximum time limit. This will allow someone to fix their gun and finish the course of fire to salvage some points or stop someone from taking an abnormally long time to finish a stage. Good stage design will keep a match flowing better than any rule will, but this would at least provide a backstop for any oversights that may occur. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe4d Posted January 22, 2013 Share Posted January 22, 2013 a fix for a nonexistent problem ? I think maybe a handful of times in all my years shooting has this been an issue. Usually with a brand new shooter. I just dont think its a problem that needs addressing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sperman Posted January 22, 2013 Share Posted January 22, 2013 What problem are we trying to solve? I think it is demoralizing enough for a new shooter who has to shoot a stage that is so difficult that it takes them 2 or 3 minutes. They might not come back if they don't even get to finish the course of fire. There was a stage recently at a local match that had 2 plate racks and a texas star. All from approximately 15 yards. Many shooters ran out of ammo and were unable to complete the course of fire. Was this a shooter problem or a stage design problem? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrumpyOne Posted January 22, 2013 Share Posted January 22, 2013 How about we just get everyone not involved in the COF to tape and reset.. That will speed things up. Having a time limit will not be conducive for older or handicapped shooters.... And could be considered discrimination... An elegant solution to a non-existent problem. The match will take as long as it takes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarge Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 If you are designing stages that take a Master class shooter 40 seconds you are looking in the wrong place for a solution. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaxshooter Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 We have two shooters that come to mind that are old and shoot revolvers with speed loaders. It takes them both a very long time to shoot but both enjoy shooting. Just because they can't shoot the stage in a time that a B-GM shooter does should we stop them? I don't think so, they paid the same price to shoot as everyone else and they deserve to finish the stages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yoshidaex Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 (edited) How about we just get everyone not involved in the COF to tape and reset.. That will speed things up. Having a time limit will not be conducive for older or handicapped shooters.... And could be considered discrimination... An elegant solution to a non-existent problem. The match will take as long as it takes. This. We have a shooter thats confined to a wheel chair. He does his best and in my book he can take as long as he wants to finish the COF. From the lighter side of things, the ones that are taking the longest to finish the stage are getting their moneys worth. Edited January 23, 2013 by yoshidaex Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poppa Bear Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 I look at it as a non issue. 99 times out of 100 they will run out of ammo before they run out of "time". We have shooters that will finish a course in 20 seconds followed by shooters that need 60 seconds to complete. The slow shooters are very accurate and will likely never get past a D classification, but they are having fun and enjoy the challenge of shooting the course. We have never called time on a broken gun. Either it is broken and we spend several minutes getting it cleared so it can leave the range, or it is cleared quickly but the shooter wants to go back to the safety area to fix it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EkuJustice Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 I say no max time. The pistol stages shouldn't take that long for a master to complete I agree most will run out of ammo before time. For 3 gun it's a good thing as guys will often waste forever shooting long steel they have no chance of hitting and go way over on time if they didn't have max time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nik Habicht Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 I try and design my stages so that they take no more than 60 seconds for some of the slower shooters to complete, but every once in a while one ends up being much harder than I intended it to be. Where a B-M shooter will finish in 20-40 seconds, a D shooter may take 120+. I am starting to see that this usually happens when there is distant steel or occasionally a texas star where the newer/slower shooters refuse to move on until the steel is down. Distant paper will just see two shots thrown at it with no knowledge of the miss(es). If your doing this -- designing so that a master needs 40 seconds to shoot the stage -- and the other stage designers aren't, I'm surprised that a match director hasn't told you to knock it off. MDs know that stages need to be roughly balanced in terms of clearance time. If you can turn that around in a 3-4 minute average, then it should work. If you can't -- well then the problem isn't the occasional D shooter..... If you're designing a whole match this way -- I hope that stage reset time is measured in seconds. Otherwise, you'll be there for a long time..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CZinSC Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 How about we just get everyone not involved in the COF to tape and reset.. That will speed things up. Having a time limit will not be conducive for older or handicapped shooters.... And could be considered discrimination... An elegant solution to a non-existent problem. The match will take as long as it takes. +1 to what Grumpy said. The OP, while I'm sure you are suggesting this so that everyone has an overall good match experience, what you in essence are doing is punishing and possibly demoralizing the competitors that take too long. How about we punish and demoralize those competitors that don't paste and reset steel or help RO or score? Yes, it's a volunteer sport and no one is REQUIRED to do any of that in order to compete. However, the same thing goes for the flip side. Nothing in the rules says I have to RO, score, or set steel/paste for someone that doesn't do any work!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a matt Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 Agreed CZInSC, solid point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickyH Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 well said CZinSC. there should not be a time limit because someone's not able to finish stages as fast as others. But there should be something saying if you're too lazy to help you shouldn't be able to shot.some people think stages get put up by fairies and get run by people that get paid because they think they don't have to help set up tear down or do anything and that is not right to the people that volunteer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Norman Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 No stage should take your slowest shooter more than around 2 minutes and that should be rare. Most 3-Gun matches run a 180 second max time. Keep in mind those stages often require shooting all three guns from a number of very odd positions and those positions could be a fair distance apart. Couple this with rifle targets to 300 yards and one can see where a limit might be required. If we design stages for Pistol matches properly we should never approach any limit that we would ever reasonably set effectively rendering the limit moot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbear Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 i wouldnt think a max time would be good especially for new shooters as they might feel rushed and that might cause them to do something unsafe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lifeislarge Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 What's this B-GM shit? I know plenty of C's and D's that can fly through a COF, myself included. Might not hit that much but fast, hell yeah!!! When I shoot slow for accuracy, I'm still only ten seconds longer than the B shooters. I enjoy watching the veterans of the sport coming out to shoot every weekend, it proves to me that this truly is a lifetime endeavor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JWeber Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 I truly believe this is a universal sport, young and old can shoot. I am glad some older guys come out. We all hopefully will be those guys some day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Norman Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 Someday? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whitedog Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 At our new shooter talk every month I always end it with the volunteer talk. Let them know in a polite way how it works. Try and nip it in the bud right off, before the " panda" syndrome kicks in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roe14 Posted January 31, 2013 Share Posted January 31, 2013 +1 to CZinSC. New or slower shooters are not usually the issue. It's the ones that ONLY shoot, and do nothing else, that causes slow downs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allfat Posted February 4, 2013 Share Posted February 4, 2013 A couple weeks ago one of the monthly local club matches decided to do a Pro-Am style match. This means the stages are all steel, they all have par times, and only 10 rounds in a magazine, no matter what kind of gun you were shooting. Personally, I did not care for it because if you made one small mistake, you just didn't get close to finishing. Usually, if I botch a reload, I just get a larger time, but not getting to finish a stage is demoralizing, especially when you can't finish any of them all day. A lot of people felt that way and I don't think it was a smart move switching to that from the regularly scheduled USPSA match. On another note, it was funny watching guys with their big sticks loaded to 10 rounds getting taken by surprise by reloads so often. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ac4wordplay Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 A couple weeks ago one of the monthly local club matches decided to do a Pro-Am style match. This means the stages are all steel, they all have par times, and only 10 rounds in a magazine, no matter what kind of gun you were shooting. Personally, I did not care for it because if you made one small mistake, you just didn't get close to finishing. Usually, if I botch a reload, I just get a larger time, but not getting to finish a stage is demoralizing, especially when you can't finish any of them all day. A lot of people felt that way and I don't think it was a smart move switching to that from the regularly scheduled USPSA match. On another note, it was funny watching guys with their big sticks loaded to 10 rounds getting taken by surprise by reloads so often. We just did that at a local club too. (Maybe it's the same club? Or, maybe not.) I skipped that match, but heard mixed, mostly mediocre reviews. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sperman Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 I would love to shoot the Pro-Am. It looks like a lot of fun. But since I'm a mid-B shooter, I feel like I would engage about half the targets on each stage. That does take some of the fun out of it for me, and will keep me away until I can be more competitive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Norman Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 Guys, you are mixing Apples and go-karts here. USPSA is NOT Pro-Am Steel. Pro-Am is set up with a par time that supposedly no one or only the very best of the very best can get all the targets down in. Part of the attrraction is the presure. The scoring is simple, number of targets down. More targets down means better placement, most down means a win. No need to calulate anything. Just total the targets. USPSA has hit factor scoring except for Fixed Time Standards. You can't know who is ahead until all the shooters have shot. Yes, you can compare HF with your buddy, but you won't know where you stand until the last scores are in. Maximum time makes Pro-Am what it is and it is FUN. HF makes USPSA what it is and it is FUN. DIfferent kinds of fun, different stressors to a point, but both a re fun and have their place in the shooting world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ac4wordplay Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 Guys, you are mixing Apples and go-karts here. USPSA is NOT Pro-Am Steel. Pro-Am is set up with a par time that supposedly no one or only the very best of the very best can get all the targets down in. Part of the attrraction is the presure. The scoring is simple, number of targets down. More targets down means better placement, most down means a win. No need to calulate anything. Just total the targets. USPSA has hit factor scoring except for Fixed Time Standards. You can't know who is ahead until all the shooters have shot. Yes, you can compare HF with your buddy, but you won't know where you stand until the last scores are in. Maximum time makes Pro-Am what it is and it is FUN. HF makes USPSA what it is and it is FUN. DIfferent kinds of fun, different stressors to a point, but both a re fun and have their place in the shooting world. I can only speak for myself, but I certainly didn't confuse the two. A local club with a long-standing, regularly scheduled (monthly) USPSA match, decided to use their regularly scheduled USPSA date to hold a Pro-Am style match instead (just for one match). IIRC, quite a few people arrived expecting the usual USPSA match, were a bit surprised and some were probably disappointed too. I agree that they each have appealing aspects that are somewhat different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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