Evil Star 1.1

Memorial Day Weekend was a busy time here in Geekistan.

Saturday, we shot a Club Match at Dundee, where we were treated to Evil Bill's New and Improved Evil Star (Version 1.1 -- more on this later).

Sunday, we went to a BBQ at the home of Randomly Hittin' Witten and his charming wife, Donna. Many of The usual Suspects were there, including AJ and KJ who have been so busy riding their new Harley that they just haven't had time to get to the range for matches. AJ, however, did show up for the Saturday match and I regret that I was unable to include his Evil Star run in the attached video. Perhaps I can feature him in his own video later on, which would be worthwhile if only because he did a fine job on the stage regardless of his lack of recent practice.

Monday SWMBO and I went to my mother's house in Springfield and worked in her garden. Her sprinkler system is on the fritz, but my brother-in-law John fixed that before we got there. We spent a couple of hours doing basic gardening (weeding, and trimming & spraying her Rose Garden) until we ran out of steam.

On to the Evil Star.

Last month, Evil Bill introduced his Evil Star at the Dundee Club Match. There were a few problems with the design, mostly because:

1. The plates, when hit solidly, would sometimes fall back far enough to strike the backing IPSC targets. This didn't often slow the rotation of the array, but it did some physical damage to the cardboard targets.
2. There was a lot of 'splatter' on the backing targets due to fragmentation of bullets which hit the plate-supporting arms. These supports were 1/2" (or smaller) rods, and any rounds which hit them tended to tear up the cardboard.

Evil Bill built a longer pivot rod to support the backing targets another foot further from the plates. And he also built a facing plate for the plate-supporting arms, so bullets which might have hit the rods and fragmented tended to bounce off the trapezoidal flat surface, instead.

We did experience one problem. The springs which hold the plates in place on the support arms are flimsy, weak material. Over time, they tend to wear out. We were the last squad to shoot this stage, and we found that the weakest springs tended to fall off the support arms. We were able to find and re-install the springs, but this reveals a design flaw in the original Texas Star.

Personally, I recommend Bobby Wright's "Five Point Surprise" as a viable alternative to this target design. The springs are much more robust, and many of the parts can replaced by a trip to you friendly local Ace Hardware Man.

Still the Evil Star proved to be a challenging and interesting target. Here's how it looked when real people were shooting real bullets:




(This video is also available directly from YouTube, here.)