CRC / Beyers Practical Rifle

[MarkCO]

8 person squads is about the minimum for fastest throughput.

[funkymonkey1111]

Hello Cy, thank you, Sandy, and everyone else who organized such a fun match. If you don't mind, I'd like to submit a few suggestions for you to consider. By no means are these complaints, as I have absolutely nothing to complain about. Just a few ideas that I think would help run an even more fun event.

1. Break up into the maximum number of squads allowed by available ROs and scoring tablets. During the last few matches, I got the sense that Sandy prefers to have as few squads as possible even when more ROs are available. On Saturday, we had only 24 shooters, but the match still went on from 9 am to 2:30+ pm. Five and a half hours seems like a really long time for only 24 people to shoot 4 stages. Increasing from 2 to 4 squads would probably cut the match time in half and we would have had a faster, even more fun pace. More shooting, less waiting is good! This will become even more important as the weather turns hot.

2. Start time was listed as 9 am, but first shots were not until a little after 10 (at least on my squad). I think it would be helpful to have a shooters meeting to register, pay, get briefed, and walk through in that order. Instead, there were pauses leaving us to mill around after each pre-match event and then there was yet another meeting to collect the entry fee after the shooters meeting and the walk through.

3. Clarify and make permanent the rule to allow cooling time for rifles before bagging them. This topic seems to always come up for friendly debate at this match. I'd like to scrape the smoking bag goo off my carbine's barrel and keep it off for good.

4. If you're using the tower, don't make the shooter descend or ascend the stairs while carrying a prop such as the ammo can on Saturday. We had both hands occupied with the rifle and can, leaving us ill prepared to grab a railing in case we stumble, trip, or miss a step. A stumbling shooter would have had to dump the can, rifle, or both to grab a railing. It would be good to avoid having a loaded rifle go clanking down a set of stairs.

5. It would be great to use the 200 yard range even more. After all, we're there to shoot RIFLES :-)

Thanks again for all your work, and I'll see you next month!

Could you use a sling going up and down stairs?

[cysoto]

You make some really good points here. Allow me to address them individually...

1. As Mark very well mentioned, 8 shooters is about the minimum we can have on each squad. The reason is that 4 shooters (the main RO, the score keeper, the shooter and the person "on deck") are tipically busy and cannot help with brassing and pasting targets. Another shooter suggested breaking down the squads into three on Saturday and I thought it would have been a good idea. The only reason I chose not to was that the Nooks had already been flashed and it would have taken me another 10 minutes to re-sort everyone and re-flash the Nooks and the match start time was already running late. After the match I asked Sandra to reconsider the number of shooters per squad in future matches. Oh and, by the way, don't call her Sandy; I couldn't tell you why but she ABSOLUTELY HATES being called that.

2. I am not trying to make excuses but we were really short-staffed on this match. Each BOD has assigned tasks and with two of them not showing up, this threw a wrench in the works. I was hoping that first shots happened no later than 9:15am but I was unable to get things going until almost 10am.

3. Brad (the Match Director) touched on this subject in last year's couple of matches. His suggestion was to wrap a towel around the barrel while while the rifle is cased. As you very well mentioned, there has been a lot of issue with this rule and we are trying our best to find the perfect solution to it. I think the problem arose early with 3-Gun shooters wanting to do things one way and the match BOD asking shooters to do it another way. I will address this issue with Brad and figure out what ultimately we need to do to standardize this while following the rulebook.

4. In hindsight, the use of the ammo can to force shooters down the stairs was unnecessary. The two targets that were obscured by the no-shoots would have been enough.

5. In all honesty, the problem that we are having with the 200yd berm is that we are running out of ideas about how to setup challenging stages that do not take a crazy amount to time to shoot. I'd also like to have the chance to shoot even farther than 200yds but this would force us to move to a completely different range.

Thanks for the input. I really appreciate it since this is still a new match and we still need to figure out what is working and what needs to be tweaked.

[cysoto]

Could you use a sling going up and down stairs?

Yes; in fact, there are a couple of shooters who use a sling on every stage.

[Brass]

I'd love to practice using a sling, but I'm afraid that the rifle will flop around and I'll end up DQ'd for breaking the 180 degree rule or for covering a part of myself, such as feet and knees, with the muzzle.

[MarkCO]

In USPSA rules, lower extremities are exempted for self-sweeping. But you still have to keep the muzzle forward of the 180. Takes some practice.

I always suggest folks watch the online videos of what to do, and not to do, then practice it dry-fire at home before doing anything at a match.

[leatherneck448]

Hey folks, I wanted to confirm the May match date (falls on the 6th I believe) with one of you here as it looks like I'll be around for that one.
Couldn't find a hard date on the range website posted.

Thanks,
Kenny

[MarkCO]

Hey folks, I wanted to confirm the May match date (falls on the 6th I believe) with one of you here as it looks like I'll be around for that one.
Couldn't find a hard date on the range website posted.

Thanks,
Kenny

It is on the calendar: http://crci.org/EventSchedule/tabid/2492/Default.aspx

[leatherneck448]

Derp. Don't know how I didn't see that, thanks Mark.
See you guys out there!

-Kenny

[cysoto]

The USPSA Rifle Colorado State Match is happening on July 1 & 2, 2017.
Sign up link: https://practiscore.com/uspsa-rifle-...match/register