Designing stages/club director. Help or hurt your game

[Maximis228]

1 minute ago, CHA-LEE said:

I found that morning of match stage setup goes best when you have one dedicated stage designer per stage setting up their own stage. Doing it this way optimizes the setup time because they already know what the intent of their stage is and how it should look. That way they can simply get it done without second guessing anything.

 

If you are designing all of the stages then trying to let others setup your stage on their own, it can lead to some pretty inconsistent results, setup delays and also cause a lot of stress the morning of the match.

 

 

This is why sketch up is needed more places. It gives a perfect diagram of how things should be layed out. You can screenshot multiple angles to make it easy on the set up crew. It is literally color by number at that point.

[CHA-LEE]

1 minute ago, Maximis228 said:

 

This is why sketch up is needed more places. It gives a perfect diagram of how things should be layed out. You can screenshot multiple angles to make it easy on the set up crew. It is literally color by number at that point.

 

Or let the stage designers burn their own gray matter and time on how they want to configure their own stage.

[B_RAD]

Right now my club starts shooting at 9:00 am. We're kicking around the idea of pushing that back to 10:00.  We set up the night before. Which as other have said how that sucks having to make 2 trips. We talked about setting up the morning of but some folks mentioned it would ware them out and wouldn't make for the best match. Thats partly becuase our props, mainly wall post, have to have nails driven thru the ground. As do the fault lines, and this Ozark ground sucks.  I've seen other clubs using buckets with cement and pvc pipes. They just move the buckets over to the side of the bay when done. I dont know if that will work at this club because the owner is kinda weird about stuff. 

 

If anyone has ways of using supports for walls that don't require nails I'd love to know. 

 

Really like to not use nails at all but dont see a way around it for fault lines. 

Edited October 5, 2017 by B_RAD

[DukeEB]

In the northwest section of area 1, all of our clubs start at 10.  Match setup is done the day before.

Most of the clubs are fairly close to each other though.  The 10 am start is nice.

We do use concrete with pvc for walls, but fault lines and shooting boxes still have to be nailed in.

 

[CrashDodson]

23 minutes ago, B_RAD said:

Right now my club starts shooting at 9:00 am. We're kicking around the idea of pushing that back to 10:00.  We set up the night before. Which as other have said how that sucks having to make 2 trips. We talked about setting up the morning of but some folks mentioned it would ware them out and wouldn't make for the best match. Thats partly becuase our props, mainly wall post, have to have nails driven thru the ground. As do the fault lines, and this Ozark ground sucks.  I've seen other clubs using buckets with cement and pvc pipes. They just move the buckets over to the side of the bay when done. I dont know if that will work at this club because the owner is kinda weird about stuff. 

 

If anyone has ways of using supports for walls that don't require nails I'd love to know. 

 

Really like to not use nails at all but dont see a way around it for fault lines. 

Our range surface is caliche.  We started using lag bolts with portable impact drills....but after a half dozen matches the bolts get damaged, dissapear, stolen and they are expensive.  I have gone back to nails/spikes.  Im looking into getting some of the hammer bar things they used at nationals.  We built all new walls with feet that are made of plate/flat bar that is two feet long.  We have bad wind here in west texas and unless the wind is really bad 40MPH+ our walls dont require nails.  We use 1/2x1/2 square tubing and snow fence.  We stake down any fault lines (2x2 boards) that might get stepped on/kicked.  

[CHA-LEE]

If the ground is hard, get shorter nails. Unless you are expecting gale force winds you don't need to go bonkers in securing the props to the ground. From my experience, there is no getting around the sucky job of securing props to the ground with nails. Pounding nails sucks but its also not that horrible of a job if you have 4 - 5 guys doing it on each stage.

 

Here in Colorado we have an unofficial courtesy that you shouldn't walk the stage until its done being setup. If a competitor get there before the stage is done being setup its very easy for them to pitch in and get the stage finalized so they can walk it.

 

I have been in situations where "Consumers" are sitting in their car watching me setup a stage all by myself with no help volunteered. In those few instances I have walked over to them and told them to quit being lazy fu@%'s and help me setup the stage. This not so gentle reminder usually snaps them into action.

[JAFO]

56 minutes ago, CHA-LEE said:

I have been in situations where "Consumers" are sitting in their car watching me setup a stage all by myself with no help volunteered. In those few instances I have walked over to them and told them to quit being lazy fu@%'s and help me setup the stage. This not so gentle reminder usually snaps them into action.

Cheers to you, sir!!  

[JAFO]

2 hours ago, CrashDodson said:

At our range we have these massive sun shade things in the bays.  They are held up by large steel posts.  I build the stage then on the ground have to figure out how to avoid shooting these dang posts and keeping steel out from under the canopy.

 

My old club had overhead baffles on two bays held up by steel posts.  I made templates of each bay in Sketchup, sizing each one appropriately and including the posts where necessary.  Using the 3D viewer allowed me to get a much better idea on shoot-throughs into those damn posts.  It wasn't perfect, but it helped a lot.

[zzt]

B_Rad, one of the clubs I shoot at uses GT Targets Heavy Duty H-Bases to hold walls up.  They do not nail them to the ground.  I've never seen one fall over, or even waiver in the wind.  The wall frame is 2x4 and the wall 'covering' is something that looks a lot like SF Standard Duty snow fence material.  These bases were originally for Steel Challenge target posts, but work great for walls.

[rowdyb]

A couple of places I've been the person running the match doesn't squad, but just shoots through at their own timing as needed. So they can answer questions and deal with issues buzzing around on a golf cart or whatever. And then shoot stages at their convenience during the match. MD rolls up, watches a shooter or two, jumps in and shoots then scoots. They don't have to tape or reset or RO.  Just trouble shoot, glad hand with people and shoot stages when it works out for them.

 

I also am a big fan of same day set up. (though is seems to be split 50/50 the places i shoot whether they do it same day or day before) I was talking with the guy here who took over my local club's USPSA match and him askign what I thought would make things "better" and my reply was, "Find 6 people you can trust to take a diagram of a stage and a pile of supplies at the end of a bay and have a stage built in an hour. That will make your life better more than anything else in my opinion. No need to have people come out on Saturday morning to set up for a Sunday morning match. If you have a good set up crew you can get there at 7 and be totally ready to shoot by 9."

 

To me, it seems people naturally gravitate towards being the Practiscore guy, or the match sign up table guy or the stage designer guy. But getting 6 people to be good at putting paper into reality seems to be the trick. Especially if there are only one or two people doing the stage designing. Or if people are designing/building somethign off the top of their head, right then in the moment because no stages or not enough stages were submitted ahead of time.

 

To me, the Linea de Fuego club in San Diego area really just does an amazing job. Heck they even post the sketch up video animations of the stages along with the image. Same morning set up, free match PLUS a cut of the "gate" for set up/tear down crew. Not sure if it's a numbers or demographics thing but when 80-100 people show up to your twice monthly match finding 10 people to be consistent, knowledgeable volunteers seems to accomplish-able.

Edited October 6, 2017 by rowdyb

[MacLethal]

I started taking over the MD/stage designer tasks at the end of last year at my club. At the beginning, it really messed my game up, people asking questions about this or that, calibrations, stage brief questioning, etc. I was helping setup and tear down too. During the match, I wasn’t able to get focused and shoot well. After a few matches I got into the rhythm of things and have had no real issues performing well. I’ve also been blessed with a lot of help and am able to assign tasks to different people if things are needed throughout the match.
Being stage designer and writing briefs has made me a better shooter I would say for sure. Spending the time on the computer and then translating that to a constructed stage is fun to me, plus if it needs to be a more difficult shooting position somewhere or a tighter shot to challenge people I’m getting that down and we have had lots of compliments on our stages this season and our numbers have risen as a result.


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[MemphisMechanic]

On 10/5/2017 at 4:13 PM, CHA-LEE said:

I found that morning of match stage setup goes best when you have one dedicated stage designer per stage setting up their own stage. Doing it this way optimizes the setup time because they already know what the intent of their stage is and how it should look. That way they can simply get it done without second guessing anything.

 

If you are designing all of the stages then trying to let others setup your stage on their own, it can lead to some pretty inconsistent results, setup delays and also cause a lot of stress the morning of the match.

 

This. Our MD is in the clubhouse setting up squads and taking payments while 10 or so of us design stages on the fly. Well, I usually have mine all sketched out but many of the other guys pull theirs out of their posterior orifice on the spot.

 

Part of delegating means not being a perfectionist: trust your good shooters to give the guy who only sets up “one way to shoot it” 8-8-8-8 stages through four ports a really hard time. Let him do his thing, and learn to set up better stages.

 

”Stage setup at 8am, walkthrough and shooting begins as soon as stage setup is complete so come help out if you want an early start!” will get more people out to help set up.

 

Offer to help them design a good stage the first few times after they’ve brought some steel or walls out onto the bay if need be, at first. Eventually you’ll have 3-4 guys skilled at stage design whom you can ask to help a new guy not set up an illegal stage. Or which features a dozen 45yd shots on mini-poppers during a hard lean.

 

If you have to set up 6 stages in the hours or evening before a match on your own? You WILL quickly burn out.

Edited October 7, 2017 by MemphisMechanic

[rustychev]

I open the gate at 6:45 and start building my stage at 8:30 if I'm not dune I turn it over to someone and open registration/check-in.  At 9:00 on the dot I close registration and sink the nooks.  shooting will start when stages are done.  Before we did this with about 6 of us built 5 stages and did all the registration and got burnt out.  Now your there by 9 or you don't shoot and its hard to do walk thru when the stages aren't done so people help set up now.

 

We still have a few who show up at 8:55 but not many.  Most show up by 8 and help.  They have learned that if they want fun stages we need help.  no help means a lot of small stages with few walls and few targets.