In truth, there are no significant differences between the Evil Oregon Star and the Texas Star, except that the Evil Star provides serious penalties for missing the plates.
Those of you who say the original post have already postulated the problems inherent in the design, and you have been proved right in many of your cautionary notes.
The lessons provided by the experience have been carefully noted, and the designer ("Evil Bill") was kind enough to stop by during the match and discuss them with me.
Early in the match ... while the second squad was shooting that stage, Bill mentioned:
"Yes, we're getting a lot of splatter from both the angle-iron on the part of the arm that holds the plate, and it's tearing up the paper targets in the background. We're also seeing a lot of hits on the two rods (leading from the axle to the plate) and that also tears up the cardboard IPSC targets. So far, we haven't had any problems with the plates hitting the cardboard. They're dropping clean to the ground. As for the weight (the blue-painted cylinder that initiates the movement), I never thought it would be a problem and it isn't."
By the time we got to that stage ... we were the fourth squad to shoot it, Bill's evaluation had changed significantly. Note that there were about 70 shooters distributed into six squads in this Club Match, so he had a lot of information from which to draw his conclusions. The product of this testing is an entire new design, which Bill was able to evolve while he was watching other people shoot the stage.
"There are two big problems with this target. First, we're getting way too much splatter from the rounds which hit the supporting arms. I'm going to take off the angle-iron and replace it with a mild steel plate. This should cause the bullets to bounce off instead of splattering the target. In fact, I'm going to weld this plate the length of the supporting arms so the bullets don't hit the rods, either. Most misses which hit the support arms should not hit the targets behind them."
"Second, I was wrong about the way the plates drop. I solid center-hit from a major-power bullet can push the plates back so they hit the targets behind them. This is tearing up the cardboard. I'm going to move the (windmill array, which supports the cardboard targets) back another foot. This will keep the plates from hitting them, and may reduce the effect of 'splatter', too."
Bill said he will re-engineer the target so he has the new (version 2.0) design ready for the May match. If he says so, it will happen.
He also said that if anyone wants to build a similar target, they can "EM" (E-Mail) him and he will send them the parts list.
(You can email him here: billmarrs at verizon dot net ... replace the "at" with "@" and the "dot" with ".")
You can also reach Evil Bill by sending an email to me, at the address shown at the bottom of this page, and I will forward your mail to him. But I really hope you contact him directly!
He said that before he realized that it required an extensive re-design, so if you are inclined to build your own Evil Oregon Star, you may email him but don't be surprised if it takes him a while to evolve an updated parts list. This is a project in development, and sometimes it takes a lot of field testing before the best design is available. (Bill didn't say that; I said that.)
I plan to provide three articles based on the Evil Oregon Star.
Evil 00: Presenting The Evil Oregon Star
This features a video of the Match Walk-through, including comments from the competitors (note especially the "Quote Of The Day". Also, there is a short vignette when the squad I was in walked through the stage, and a third part where the squad is taping targets, replacing plates and setting up the initiating mechanism on the star.
Evil 01: Geeks Bane - The Evil Oregon Star Stage
This is a short video showing the entire stage in which the Evil Oregon Star is only another target array. It provides a perspective for those who wonder how important the Star might be compared to the other targets. In the actual event, you may decide that this is not the part of the stage which slows the shooter down.
Evil Oregon Star 2: The Movie
That would be THIS article. I've included a (YouTube) video which suggests that some people can get past this stage without many more problems than would be presented with just a Texas Star. Others may find that the Evil Oregon Star is ... I hesitate to say "more intimidating", but at least "more confusing" than the Texas Star.
Now that you've read the preamble, here's how ten competitors fared on The Evil Oregon Star.
Note that this video is also available as a 15mb download from Jerry the Geek's Shooting Gallery. The other videos presented in part 1 and part 2 are also available there.
These videos, and accompanying still photos, may not be available for a couple of days due to the delay in editing and publishing them.
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