How Do You Go About Starting Up A Local Steel Challenge Match?

[Fireant]

The title says it all. We are tired one of the other local shooting sports and would like to start another.

Thanks.

[Scooter]

Obviously you need to get money to buy all the appropriate steel plates. The local club here has just enough to do 4 Steel Challenge stages. We shoot 4 then rearrange the plates to shoot the last 4 stages.

[Tom Mainus]

Depends on how picky you are with your targets. One of the guys at our club is an ironworker and we got all of our steel from the dumpsters on his jobs. It may not be official size and shape but it was free and it works. Keep the yardage the same and just shoot a little bigger or smaller target depending on what you have available. Try to get started on the cheap and buy better targets as you get established.

Tom

[Fireant]

We have the steel covered. I guess I need info on how to keep the scores and maybe the procedures for running the courses.

[shred]

Wel,, you're 90% of the way there if you've got the steel

Scoring is total time, plus time for misses and proceedurals (3 sec ea). Traditional SC is 5 runs, drop one, except on Outer Limits, where it's 4 runs, drop one. The stages are on their web site. I strongly suggest signing your club up to be a SCSA club if you use their stages. If you ask nicely, they'd probably even send a rulebook, all 5 pages of it (well, it's more than that, but not a lot..)

[JD45]

Although getting enough cash for targets is usually the hardest part when that much steel is involved, you don't have that worry.

From what I see at our local match, the most difficult job is promoting the match. Even no-prize monthly matches need shooters to make it all worthwhile.

If you can figure out how to draw people into the sport, please let me know. I certainly haven't had any earth-shattering ideas.

[shred]

One good thing to have a low-ready .22 class (without all the gamey SC starts if you can manage it)-- it really helps with beginners and new shooters. I know a few people that got into steel with a .22, moved to a centerfire, then on to IPSC & IDPA; It's a natural progression of complexity.

Another is to likewise encourage the match as something new shooters can get into with less investment, less experience, and pretty much any equipment you can cram 6+ rounds into.

Set up and tear down are pretty easy (pre-mark the ground for the popular stages if you can) and consumables are cheap.

Still local steel matches seem to draw about 10-20% less shooters than IPSC matches. I bet if we could figure out a workable class system to go with the open/limited/idpa/revo categories, that would help some too. It ought to be pretty easy to grab the top times from the past few years SC and come up with a reasonable '100%' for each stage. Hmm.. maybe I'll run that by the Mikes..

If you have a PC & printer at the range, I can send you my steel scoring spreadsheet. If not, print up multi-shooter scoresheets for every stage and leave them there-- nothing like seeing how your competition on another squad did to ramp the pressure a little.

[EricW]

A little organization goes a long way. I stole all the good ideas I have for my match from a neighboring club.

I went a little overboard. I print up match-specific scoresheets with the stages labeled in the order that we'll be shooting them. Scoring instructions are posted at the top of the sheet. The liability waiver is on the back of the sheet.

The clipboards have built in calculators, so the scorekeeper can total times while steel is being painted. If you only have a 20 or so shooters, you can easily have final results via calculator before anyone leaves the range.

I have a spreadsheet that pretty much makes scoresheet generation automatic. The only thing I have yet to figure out is how to automatically have it parse out the divisions into separate scoring sections. I'm then able to print to a PDF which is only about 7K in size which I then distribute via email. It only takes about 30 mins to input and distribute scores once the initial spreadsheet setup is done.

For easy stage setup, I placed colored survey whiskers on each bay. I then have a cross reference sheet so that I know which color corresponds to which stage on which bay. On match day, I staple the stage diagram to the bay table and note the color codes on the setup sheet. This makes life easy enough that we're able to setup and shoot 3 stages, then switch and shoot 3 more in less time that it takes to set up six and shoot them sequentially. You burn a lot of match time with squads shuttling from one end of the range to another. We could easily set up an 8 stage match and run 30+ shooters with first shot at 10:00 am and have all the steel put away by 3:00 pm.

Other nice things to have are canopies on each bay. I plan to buy a couple more here soon. They're a godsend when the weather turns foul or the sun really starts blazing.

And tarps. This is one thing I need to get up to speed on. Brass tarps really make the 38 super shooters happy. I'd like to get the prefab nylon tarps with the sewn-in weights, but they're something like 80 bucks each. Plastic tarps and rocks will have to work for now.

[shred]

The only thing I have yet to figure out is how to automatically have it parse out the divisions into separate scoring sections.

I wrote a macro for Sort, By division, then by Total Time, and hooked it to an Excel button. Then discovered the antique version of Excel at the range doesn't like buttons.

And tarps. This is one thing I need to get up to speed on. Brass tarps really make the 38 super shooters happy. I'd like to get the prefab nylon tarps with the sewn-in weights, but they're something like 80 bucks each. Plastic tarps and rocks will have to work for now.

Look into shade cloth netting, available at garden store-type places. The latest plastic kind at HD and Lowes isn't as good as the older rubberized stuff, but it still works well and beats tarps a number of ways. Or wait until my brass-catching-cart article appears in Front Sight.. Good brass-catching is relatively easy at Steel matches, and welcomed by most shooters.

[EricW]

This is the kind of format I would like to have the spreadsheet automatically generate. I know that I can have one, big list and sort it out by divisions within the list, but breaking out the divisions looks better and seems more professional to me.

Oh, and other little things can help make a match more pleasant. Like free water. If I do an 8 stage "super" match someday, I might charge a bit more and bring in lunch for people or something.

SpokaneSpeedSteel_Scores_8_13_06.pdf

[shred]

This is the kind of format I would like to have the spreadsheet automatically generate. I know that I can have one, big list and sort it out by divisions within the list, but breaking out the divisions looks better and seems more professional to me.

Looks nice. I've done that sort of thing with some somewhat ugly hackery-- in later versions of Excel, I'll make a 'results' tab, then fill it with code like so:

IF(Main!C$10 = "Open","",Main!C11)

That will return a blank for an Open shooter (assuming division is kept in Main!C10 for that shooter), and whatever's in Main!C11 if not. Set up an array of these for the names/divisions/stages & sort it to compact the blanks. There's probably a cleverer way to do it, but this is where I stopped experimenting when it worked.

I need to remember to bring a steel gun next time I come to Spokane.

[Knee Deep]

Check us out at

www.griffinsteelmatch.com

you can get an idea on set up and score/division

we even have it so a center fire pistol can shoot in a Novice division and not have to draw

from holster, works good for new shooters wanting to try it out.

[Fireant]

I'll try and get up your way sometime Knee Deep. If only you were not 4.5 hours away. I have a conference in Atlanta and hopfully it falls during your match weekend. Thanks for all the tips. Keep them coming.

[Steelshooter3]

Fireant - Our steel match is different than the traditional steel challenge but we have alot of fun and it's more social than competitive. We have 5 bays that we are allowed to use steel in so our matches consists normally of 5 stages. Sometimes we'll throw in a one-time pass stage as a tie-breaker (think Texas Star). We design our own stages and they change each month with the exception of one stage. That one stage is our standard stage and is the same each month for a year. Once a year, we have a championship match that is a shoot-off format.

The original match director's intent was to have a fun match that would allow beginners to compete and get hammer time with what they have. We have 5 catergories you can shoot in: Stock (Autoloaders), Revolver, Carry (Auto - 4" barrel, Revolver - 3" barrel or less), Open ( .22 & Optical sighted hanguns) & Draw. All catergories with the exception of Draw Class are started at the low ready. We discourage Draw Class with new shooters until we can determine their familiarity with their firearms. We allow shooters to shoot multiple catergories. Score is by total time. Five passes at each stage, throw out the worst, & and total. There is an overall match winner and top 3 in each category if their is enough competitors in the class. Certificates and scrip (usable for reduced match fees) are given to the winners and if you shoot multiple categories you only place in the highest achieved. MD has an excel program that puts all the times in order. He emails the rest of us once he has had a chance to check the score sheets. He uses different color sheets for each category to help distinguish them apart.

Depending on your bay size & amount/variety of steel will determin what you can do. Hope this will give you some ideas.

[Flexmoney]

http://www.pcsirange.com/html/divisions.html#asp