Star Crossed

The last weekend of October, 2006, we attended a "Points Match" at the Dundee range.

I'm a bit late in posting this, but I've been busy. Mostly, I've been procrastinating. But never mind that.

The match was the usual Barsoom wet dream, with weird stages which we've come to expect and love. Because it was October, however, there were concerns about rain. Consequently, the stages were designed to be stable and quick even if the weather turned rainy.

We lucked out. No rain on match day, so the Misery Quotient was WAY low. In fact, we had a great time with cool days, little or no wind, and you never had to worry about getting the target pasters to stick on damp cardboard. We didn't even have to bag the cardboard targets, to protect them from the rain.

Barsoom had been surfing the internet (again!) in search of 'interesting' stage designs, and this time he found a doozy.

You set up a Texas Star, and 12 yards or so uprange of it you set up a cafeteria table. There are four IPSC targets downrange of the table, and four 10" plates just a little closer than the Texas Star.

There's a starting box uprange of the table, extending under the table downrange, and far enough uprange for a big man to lay prone.

There are two X's marked on the table, shoulder-length apart and approximately centered on the table.

Start position: standing in the box with palms on the X's.
Procedure: At the start signal, draw and engage all targets. IPSC targets must be engaged 'over the table', steel targets must be engaged 'under the table'. Seventeen (17) rounds, 85 points.

Note that the bottom of the cafeteria table is about 3' (or less) above the ground, so a kneeling position makes it very difficult to engage the Texas Star plates if they are at the top of the frame. Generally speaking, you want to engage Star plates from top to bottom, to keep it from spinning. This means you need to assume a low shooting position, either sitting or prone.

Just to make it completely clear, I've posted a lot of photos and videos on Jerry The Geeks Video Shooting Gallery.


It was immediately obvious to us that the key factor SHOULD be the amount of time required to assume the low shooting position, since we were required to start standing. As I filmed various competitors shooting the stage, I noticed that there was a wide variety of techniques used to change positions ... ranging from Airborne Norm, who simply tucked his heels under his butt and dropped, to Big Dawg who assumed a full prone position. Well, there was a trade-off involved between a quick assumption of the secondary shooting position and having a stable shooting position.

(Norm later admitted that he lost a little time on the stage because when he hit the ground the pain was so intense that he couldn't even think about shooting for a moment. I didn't notice any significant hesitation; you might, when you download the 3mb video.)

SWMBO attempted to use the edge of the table to carefully lower herself to a sitting position. Unfortunately, she lost an acrylic fingernail in the process, but it certainly didn't slow her down.

I had major problems quite unrelated to the change of position. The battery on my C-more was run down a lot more than had been apparent during the 'load-and-make-ready' sight check, and it degraded dramatically as I shot. I eventually resorted to almost point shooting techniques, which worked more as a matter of luck than of skill. Since I took almost twice as long as most competitors to complete the stage, my scores weren't very good. I'm sure there's a lesson to be learned, and you may figure it out when you watch that video.

I've resisted the temptation to provide links to every individual video, because I want to encourage you to go to the video gallery and select the more interesting clips there.

However, I could NOT resist the temptation to create a video montage of the individual squad members moving to the low-port position. The diversity of techniques was too interesting. You can see a high-quality (6mb) copy of that video here, or you can just watch the low-quality / fast download version which I posted on You Tube.



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