One of the 'good' surprises was the extent to which the range had been improved during the past six months. Due to the purchase of more land on the North end of the range, there is now room for competitors to park 'nose in' rather than the parallel parking which was mandatory before this summer. Also, the USPSA match this month was staged completely on the East side of the North Range, which allowed parking in a large field. And some kind soul even cut stair-steps in the middle of the 5-bay segment, which allowed competitors to choose to ascend to the raised level of the new bays without necessarily walking all the way to either access ramp.
Our squad started on Stage 5 ("Fort Apache"), a Comstock field-course which required the competitor to not only start with an unloaded pistol on one of two barrels, and all reloads to be pre-staged on the barrels ... but also mandated engaging most targets through cruciform ports which were 2" wide on each form of the cross-shaped port.This caused some problems, which were not immediately obvious.
Most of the early shooters recognized that rounds which passed through the "impenetrable" vision barrier counted as misses. But in the actual event, it was virtually impossible to perceive that the pistol was not aligned with the cruciform port. As a result, targets were often engaged with the sight-line through the open port, but the muzzle of the pistol was significantly aligned below the cross-arm of the port.
I was the Range Officer for the first several shooters on my squad, so I was unable to take pictures of the ports as they were degraded by 'bad hits'.
The first shooter put six or seven shots through the vision barrier.
The second shooter also put several shots thru the vision barrier, as did the next 2 or three shooters.
We taped the holes between shooters, but we discovered that many of the guns ... especially Open-class guns with their Compensators ... tended to blow away the tape concealing earlier bullet holes.
Even if the pistols were correctly aligned through the port, the side-blast usually blew the tape off the earlier bullet holes.
Eventually, it became a challenge to the memory of the Range Officer whether he could remember which bullet holes were new, and which had been the result of impact of previous shooters.
Then the Hobo Brasser shot the stage and was penalized for "impenetrable hits". He (rightly) protested the penalties, because he had fired more than the minimum number of rounds necessary to legally engage all the targets. After some discussion, I ruled that he was correct and he was required to reshoot the stage because "it is impossible to score the state".
Finally, someone with his compensated pistol blew away the lower 2" of the left arm of a crucifrm porthole. We attempted to reconstruct the original profile of the port by placing tape over the gigantic hole, but the next shooter blasted that tape away with his second shot. Who could determine where the shot went when the structure of the port was essentially destroyed?
At this point, I turned to the stage designer (for the second time) and declared that "this stage is unacceptable, because it is impossible to score accurately and consistently."
Since only 4 competitors had shot the stage, it was possible to reshoot these shooters ... after the ports were re-cut so that a diamond-shape (about 8" on a side) replaced the cruciform port.
As it happens, a further modification was found to be advisable; because compensators tend to degrade shooting ports, tin-foil was added to the upper two edges of the ports, to prevent a dramatic change to the configuration of the ports.
Ultimately, including the time needed to effect the stage modifications and to allow the first four competitors to reshoot the stage, it took us (a squad of only 9 people) more than an hour to complete the stage. On this stage, the average time was about 30 seconds; which illustrates the reason why a stage which should have taken less than a half-hour to complete actually required twice the time.
Lessons learned:
When designing or constructing a stage, it's important to consider how the props can deteriorate during the normal usage of the stage. Ports which excessively restrict the passage of bullets which miss the legal port may be subject to protest by shooters who realize that it is exceedingly difficult to consistently and fairly determine which shots were un-legally aimed at legal targets through a port which is subject to deconstruction.
Finally, it is well to realize that a shot through a needlessly constrictive port, and which knocks down a steel target even though the round passes though a vision barrier, is immediate cause for a re-shoot because of Range Equipment Failure.
UPDATE: 14-SEP-2009
Response to comment:
"So. Whose bright idea was it to make ports needlessly constricted in the first place? "
Oh dear, this is my fault because I made the stage sound too horrible for words. In the event, it was a good stage. It's just that one element was added to test the shooters' ability to shoot through a very restricted port, and the experiment failed.
This was a club match, which means it had no effect of shooter rankings. There was no prize table, no rewards other than "bragging rights", and historically this venue has served to try out new twists on the run-of-the-mill stage designs such as "Underwater Submarine", which the commenter mentioned.
The stage designer wanted to try out a new twist, and it didn't ... quite ... work. Nothing more or less than that was intended, and it's notable that the stage designer took the time to watch the first squad shoot the stage. When it was obvious that the design wasn't feasible, he modified the stage props so that it worked, and we only had to reshoot four competitors to prove that the new stage construction worked.
Let me put this in some perspective.
I am very critical of stage designs, and although I was leery of the restricted ports I made no protest until a couple of shooters had tested it and we found it to be unusable. When it was ultimately proven to be unusable, the problem was fixed and we completed the stage before the next squad caught up with us.
Perhaps I made it sound more egregious than it deserved, but over-all the stage design was good. It allowed us to wring out the new design element, and we all learned from it.
Thats all it amounted to, and if I made it sound as if there was a lack of responsibility involved, that was my fault. I do tend to dramatize events, for readability, and in this situation I should have been more responsible in the original version of this article.
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