Southern Utah Pistol & Revolver

Here is an interesting set of quick video tips that should help almost any shooter do a bit better next match.  I’m not sure who the shooter is in the video.

I noticed a link to a Todd Jarrett video in the Leatham video just posted.   Of particular interest, to me, was this segment when Todd ran forwards UP RANGE without breaking the 180:

Wow – slick.  I’d recommend practicing that dry quite a bunch before trying it in a match. Fast, but a DQ is just a slip away.

The entire video is below. These are stages from the 2006 Florida Open.  One thing to note is that Todd moves in quick SMALL steps through stages. This is fast to run and also helps speed up the presentation and first shot after movement.

Watch Rob Leatham shoot this short course:

Note that he didn’t wait for the swingers, nor did he chase them. He shot them at their transition point, and at that point shooting them is pretty much like shooting a still target.

His sequence was this:

Shoot the back plate, then the activating poppers, then back to the first swinger just in time for it to reach its lull point, then to the other swinger at its lull point and finally the final plate.

Most course designers will give you other things to shoot while waiting for a swinger to hit the turn around point (where it is largely still).  How much you bite off is up to your risk reward calculation.

You should know how long it will take a timer from activation to lull point. Then you can sort out what else you will shoot before aiming at the lull point to shoot it when it is moving the least.

SFC Travis Tomasie on shooting on the move:

He makes it look easy. His tips:

• bend your knees
• small steps
• feet in direction of travel – shoulders square to target
• focus on sights even harder than normal
• if you can’t hit A zone or steel 80% stand still

He doesn’t mention it, but other instructors suggest moving the gun in closer. The longer your stretch the more impacts during movement leverage out to your gun. Bringing it close (but don’t get smacked by the slide) steadies it out quite a bit.

I used these techniques, including moving the gun in closer, in a recent steel match in Las Vegas and was pleased with how many steels I nailed on the first shot while “on the go”.

Brian, Daniel Evans, and I made a field trip to Las Vegas today to examine how they run the Steel Challenge.   Of particular interest was how their targets are put together.

Here is a typical Steel Challenge stage, in this case “5 to Go”.

Continue reading “One way to build Steel Challenge targets”

As many of you know, I hate the way EZWinScore handles squad assignment. Most of you aren’t where you can see the computer screen, but my grimace as I repeatedly try to move shooters around probably sends a clear message.

Fortunately, my squadding torture ends next match.  Rod Cassidy, author of the StageScore scoring software we use on the Palms, told me how to set squads on the Palm. He says his club in Albuquerque never do it in EZWinscore.

Here is how… First, from the main menu:

Choose “View Competitors/Squad”

Down in the bottom right of the next screen is a “Move to Squad’, pull it down and pick a squad. Pretty simple (-:

So as you take your Palm over to your stage, you just look at who you are shooting with, move them in, and you are good to go. If somebody needs to move squads, just move them. Easy.   And to accommodate late arrivals I will add walkin blank shooters in squad 99 automatically. Just move one in if somebody joins you after shooting has started.

As an aside, Rod is also working on adding backup of each score to an SD card as it is entered. This is a feature I’ve discussed with him over the last few weeks as a means to avoid using thermal printers, or hand written summaries, as backups in case of a Palm disaster.  Printers are hard to find and are expensive, so their need is an investment keeping clubs from using the Palms for scoring.    We should be able to test this feature at our first February match.  As someone who runs a software company, I really appreciate that Rod’s attentiveness to customer requests is a rare treat in the industry.

The nut of it is that, if all goes to plan we will have 12 Palms, with SD card backups, ready to score the Dixie Open in March.   This will mean regular updates on the scoring as the match happens and immediate results when over.  That should make for happy shooters (-: