Got Ports?

[ErikW]

Building a stage with ports? Do this:

Take your saw and expand your port all the way to the ground. Now expand it all the way to the top of your wall. Admire the beauty of a design that neither penalizes nor favors a certain body type.

For your next port, put your saw away. Take one wall and move it near another wall. Leave a gap. That's your port.

These are just the first steps in my 12 step program to eliminate ports from practical shooting.

[Carlos]

An elegant solution but it takes all the fun out of:

1) Watching the novice open gunners line up the dot right on the A zone only to launch the bullet through the wall just below the port and

2) watching the novice Limited/L10/Production shooters get too close to the top of the port and cause a malfunction or better yet, send the front sight or at least the fiber optic flying

Besides, we need low ports to challenge really tall & really inflexible people like me (I need something to bitch about don't I? )

On a serious note, I do like some of the really narrow ports formed between two walls. A little over .45" is fine by me. Regards,

C.

[ErikW]

I do like some of the really narrow ports formed between two walls

Ah, I see you suffer from narrow port syndrome. This affliction requires immediate treatment. Narrow ports prevent shooting on the move and inhibit shooting while coming in and going out of the port position. If you can't walk through it, it's too narrow.

[Nik Habicht]

I'll add this one: If you feel the need to use ports, make sure the ports can't be approached by people, i.e. they're out of bounds acting as vision barriers. Consider having a four or five foot wide port in a section of fence to allow targets to become visible as a shooter moves past. This can give you some options for setting a couple of paper and an array of poppers, all to be shot on the move......

[ErikW]

A barrel sitting right there at the port works well to prevent people from going in to the port and is fair to all but the smallest kids.

[Nik Habicht]

A barrel sitting right there at the port works well to prevent people from going in to the port and is fair to all but the smallest kids.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Nope ---- I'm talking about walls that are 5 to 15 yards outside of the Freefire zone.......

[LPatterson]

Erik I think you might want to pass on this years Area 1 or the sub is going to scramble your mind. Not only are there ports to shoot through but ones to climb through. Oops I just noticed the match is full of them but I hope you have fun anyway.

[Ron Ankeny]

By my count, there are no fewer than 20 ports at this year's Area One match. It will be interesting to see how they accomodate everyone from short to tall.

Early on in my prop building career, I made a lot of walls with ports. Now when I build walls the ports either go top to bottom or they are on a long diagonal that will accomodate about any height shooter. Walls and vision barriers are a lot more fun than ports.

Sometimes it seems to me that most ports are nothing more than an expensive substitute for a box on the ground with the bonus that us tall shooters need to scrunch down. Heck we might as well go back to boxes.

[old shooter]

Thanks Eric.

Just how many ports have you seen over the years that were too high?

I am getting to old to squat for a port, and don't ever remember standing on my toes to fire a shot....

Mike