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ronhonda

USPSA Old Bridge 5/22/11

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Maybe start at 10 sharp will help ;)

 

Well if more people volunteered to build stages and more people showed up earlier to build them, that might work.

 

BTW big thanx to KpdPipes for helping me in the morning get my activators to work and build my stage. One of the problems with building interesting stages is getting activators to work reliably, figuring out angles, etc, takes a bit of time. Stages often take 1 or 2 hours to build if they are complex.

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The parking is fine.

If more people (me included) can help set up we can start earlier.

The match was a good one, with a nice mix of challenges.

Great turn out for the day, with a bunch of new shooters.

Stephanie actually made it to the match. (HOA lady could be in question)

Had to DQ someone. (DQ'ed himself, I just had to tell him)

Saw Marlon's mortgage payment, very nice.

All and all a good day, minus the fact that I got home at 715pm.

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Parking can solved rather easily if people start actually parking they way they do in a parking lot, not with 3ft of space on either side. Lets be realistic here, we get that many people almost never. As far as Jim can tell this was the HIGHEST attendance at a USPSA match at Old Bridge since we hosted an Area match a decade or so ago. It is not a common problem. If it becomes a constant then we'll have to change some things to accommodate people.

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We usually get around 90 people one match a year. Usually may or june.

 

To everyone who showed up and helped in the morning, a giant thanks. We were actually done building way earlier than I expected on a number of stages given the complexity of them and the fact we had to make a run for targets. Which let me and a couple others help with squadding after we got done building.

 

Whenever we have to run 7 squads of 10+ with no gaps, things start taking longer. As for starting earlier, we can't start before 9am for shooting. Even doing that, you'd cut down on help a ton. I'm not waking up at 4:30 in the morning to put on a match for anyone, sorry. And that's assuming you only lose about 25% of the helpers to that early a start.

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Any predictions as to whether this level of attendance is going to be the norm or whether it was an anomaly (extra practice before a big match)? The summer hasn't even gotten going yet and we're already packing 10 lbs of doodoo in a 5 lb bag there! lol

 

Great array of courses today: large, small, speed, memory, and the 3-shot count stage all made you exercise differing skills and strategies. Lots of fun fellas!

 

I'll have to learn the palm in a future match; i wasn't sure if it was a RO type duty to score the stage.

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100 yd range could be closed and have cars park there. There must be room for at least 60 cars there alone along both side burms.

 

 

USPSA matches don't pay for the club. Members do. So we try to leave some facilities open for every monthly match.

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Any predictions as to whether this level of attendance is going to be the norm or whether it was an anomaly (extra practice before a big match)? The summer hasn't even gotten going yet and we're already packing 10 lbs of doodoo in a 5 lb bag there!

 

As it gets hotter people start slacking off and rather hang by the pool.

 

Starting at close to 11am. Doesn't help things. I got there are 8:40 to be on time for the 9am new shooters and was told they were going to do it at 9:30 or 10am and it'd take an hour. What?!

 

Did you miss the part where we had 97 shooters to organize and squad? I don't think anyone was expecting that many people. Just getting that many people signed in, squadded (everyone want to shoot with their buddies, but you can't have 30 shooter squads, and then you have people who DONT want to shoot with people they don't like, and then you have to make sure you have enough RO's on each squad, etc), figuring out which squad starts on what stage to make sure the match flows relatively well without extensive backups, etc, etc, these things take time. Stage builders show up at 8am and rarely finish building before 9:30. Then the match directors have to walk the stages and make sure they are safe, correct a target here, fix an activator there, add fault line over there.

 

We could put on a crappier match and start on time. I rather we keep put on a match that gets compared with the nationals or area matches then start 30min earlier.

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Good match, some stages really clicked and when I walked off the line it felt like I had a decent plan and stuck to it.. But other stages my plan went out the window and few times got caught at slide lock and bad angles. Importantly I learned some new tricks and got more confident with activator ports... I use to get really slow in fear of sweep my hand when activating- I got some good tips from guys on my squad, and was able to gain speed. I also was a bit quicker on some 180 traps that I usually would go extra slow to make sure I didn't over step and break 180 rule.

 

Also we had a good squad and everyone helped tape. I doubt anyone likes to tape stages but if we all jump in it's over quick and were back shooting faster. Also I'm glad other guys stayed to break down, we got our stage down pretty quick (even got all the full-sized fence sections from

Stage 3 to the trailer fast)

 

Who uses google sketch for the stage designs? I know I saw pics before I just forget.. I ask because I wanna play around with ideas and didn't know if you had to create each prop/target from scratch before having the library of items to work with.

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Parking can solved rather easily if people start actually parking they way they do in a parking lot, not with 3ft of space on either side. Lets be realistic here, we get that many people almost never. As far as Jim can tell this was the HIGHEST attendance at a USPSA match at Old Bridge since we hosted an Area match a decade or so ago. It is not a common problem. If it becomes a constant then we'll have to change some things to accommodate people.

 

Yeah I noticed that a lot of people parked pretty poorly. I don't know about the numbers going down too much though. More and more people are starting to shoot USPSA and IDPA.

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Def some more parking spaces if cars parked bit differently. On the few long treks to the access road where I parked I noticed at least 4+ spots where cars would fit if the vehicle already there wasn't sideways or whatever.

But then again I doubt anyone expected 97 people in attendance.

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I don't know about the numbers going down too much though. More and more people are starting to shoot USPSA and IDPA.

 

Thats good. You'll never hear me complain about that. We can adapt to more shooters, my guess is that with some changes OB can handle about 120 shooters, and CJ about 90. Beyond that it become an impossibility without dedicated RO's (who would have to shoot on a different day and have lives too, so thats almost a non-starter), more pits (which has issues with permits, building codes, financial), or some form of miracle. However to sustain 100 shooter matches will take shooters actually cooperating to keep the match going and more people learning to RO, run scoring, etc, and extra volunteers to fill in the 20 different jobs that need to get done every morning.

 

Match staff tries very hard to make thing seem easy, but every match takes 5-10 hours of prep BEFORE the day of the match (sometimes more), showing up at 7:30-8am, and we often do not get home until 8pm. And then there is the post match work of scores, classifier submissions, prize checks, reports to the parent club, etc. Don't forget we'd like to shoot the match too and have fun doing it, but half the match is spent running around solving problems.

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Thats good. You'll never hear me complain about that. We can adapt to more shooters, my guess is that with some changes OB can handle about 120 shooters, and CJ about 90. Beyond that it become an impossibility without dedicated RO's (who would have to shoot on a different day and have lives too, so thats almost a non-starter), more pits (which has issues with permits, building codes, financial), or some form of miracle. However to sustain 100 shooter matches will take shooters actually cooperating to keep the match going and more people learning to RO, run scoring, etc, and extra volunteers to fill in the 20 different jobs that need to get done every morning.

 

Match staff tries very hard to make thing seem easy, but every match takes 5-10 hours of prep BEFORE the day of the match (sometimes more), showing up at 7:30-8am, and we often do not get home until 8pm. And then there is the post match work of scores, classifier submissions, prize checks, reports to the parent club, etc. Don't forget we'd like to shoot the match too and have fun doing it, but half the match is spent running around solving problems.

 

As I have stated before in other threads, it is extremely important that the whole squad helps with the stage. people taping, setting steel, brass, etc. You will have roughly 5 people not involved with setting the stage up after someone has finished shooting. The previous shooter, the current shooter, the next shooter, the score keeper, and the RO. Everyone else "should" be helping with the stage, however some, if not most times that is not the case.

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As I have stated before in other threads, it is extremely important that the whole squad helps with the stage. people taping, setting steel, brass, etc. You will have roughly 5 people not involved with setting the stage up after someone has finished shooting. The previous shooter, the current shooter, the next shooter, the score keeper, and the RO. Everyone else "should" be helping with the stage, however some, if not most times that is not the case.

 

 

I agree with that. I have only been to two matches but the only time I don't help with pasting or resetting is the round right before I shoot, and the round immediatly following my shooting the stage because I am busy loading my mags back up.

 

Last match I did notice something that irked me a little bit with the scorekeepers. They were out there scoring while the person was still shooting. I realize they are just trying to keep the match moving but I don't think they should be out there. Especially when over-eager pasters end up pasting targets that haven't been counted yet.

 

A few times I saw the scores almost get messed up because the scorer was just radomly scoring targets with no real system in place. Then they would end up searching for the ones they didn't score. After I noticed this I decided to pay attention more and caught mistakes immediatly. Someone didn't score a no-shoot that was shot, and a target that had 4 holes in it. (Pasters didn't paste). That was literally in the next 5 minutes. I did point out the no-shoot to the dismay of the current shooter. Between that stage and the next 2 I got more involved and corrected approx 10 errors in scoring that I felt happened due to someone not paying enough attention.

 

The people who were scoring were going from left to right and back when they were scoring and missing stuff a lot. In my opinion they should pick either clockwise or counter clockwise and score in a circle. Start on one side and then end on the other. I tried to mention that but I'm the new guy so what do I know? Maybe everyone scores differently.

 

For what it's worth I didn't see any of that the first time I shot in April, just the May match. This was at CJRPC by the way

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I agree with that. I have only been to two matches but the only time I don't help with pasting or resetting is the round right before I shoot, and the round immediatly following my shooting the stage because I am busy loading my mags back up.

 

Last match I did notice something that irked me a little bit with the scorekeepers. They were out there scoring while the person was still shooting. I realize they are just trying to keep the match moving but I don't think they should be out there. Especially when over-eager pasters end up pasting targets that haven't been counted yet.

 

A few times I saw the scores almost get messed up because the scorer was just radomly scoring targets with no real system in place. Then they would end up searching for the ones they didn't score. After I noticed this I decided to pay attention more and caught mistakes immediatly. Someone didn't score a no-shoot that was shot, and a target that had 4 holes in it. (Pasters didn't paste). That was literally in the next 5 minutes. I did point out the no-shoot to the dismay of the current shooter. Between that stage and the next 2 I got more involved and corrected approx 10 errors in scoring that I felt happened due to someone not paying enough attention.

 

The people who were scoring were going from left to right and back when they were scoring and missing stuff a lot. In my opinion they should pick either clockwise or counter clockwise and score in a circle. Start on one side and then end on the other. I tried to mention that but I'm the new guy so what do I know? Maybe everyone scores differently.

 

For what it's worth I didn't see any of that the first time I shot in April, just the May match. This was at CJRPC by the way

Depending on the situation, you can score while the shooter is still shooting. It does help in keeping things moving. But you need to know what you are doing and ask if it is "OK" with the shooter/squad if you can score while shooting.Personally, I will wait by a target that has a mike and/or a no shoot to show the shooter. Also tell the tapers which targets have been scored already. Much eaiser to do with paper score sheets than with the palm pilot.

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Bugs me a tad at times too, especially when a non ro scores, however they can do that. My suggestion, get a buddy to walk with the scorekeeper, or ask politely to ask to have targets scored.

 

As ronny mentioned, when we RO/Score, will leave the mike/noshoot untaped for you to see as a courtesy. Do mistakes happen? Absolutely, help score.

 

Most of all, at Old Bridge, with the palms.

 

For the past few matches, we would go back to back because we were the only RO's, and no one knew how to use the palm pilots to score. But hey, I cant complain, shooting is fun. =)

 

As far as attendance, didnt we have 87 or 92 or something like that late last year?

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As I have stated before in other threads, it is extremely important that the whole squad helps with the stage. people taping, setting steel, brass, etc. You will have roughly 5 people not involved with setting the stage up after someone has finished shooting. The previous shooter, the current shooter, the next shooter, the score keeper, and the RO. Everyone else "should" be helping with the stage, however some, if not most times that is not the case.

 

Actually I think that this is where we can improve things to make things going smoother. With 14 man squads, you have 9 people available to reset. That is an overkill. What ends up happening is that early in the match everyone is all eager to help reset and you have people run up to paste one or two targets or lift up a popper or two. Then 2/3 of the way into the match everyone is tired and moving at slow pace. You really do not need more than 4 people to effectively reset a stage. Just need to come up with a system to establish rotation. This way every shooter would reset for 4 or 5 shooters per stage and have a chance to rest a bit, reload and socialize.

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Who uses google sketch for the stage designs? I know I saw pics before I just forget.. I ask because I wanna play around with ideas and didn't know if you had to create each prop/target from scratch before having the library of items to work with.

 

I use it. You can get all the props by searching the 3d-Warehouse for IPSC, USPSA or IDPA.

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Actually I think that this is where we can improve things to make things going smoother. With 14 man squads, you have 9 people available to reset. That is an overkill. What ends up happening is that early in the match everyone is all eager to help reset and you have people run up to paste one or two targets or lift up a popper or two. Then 2/3 of the way into the match everyone is tired and moving at slow pace. You really do not need more than 4 people to effectively reset a stage. Just need to come up with a system to establish rotation. This way every shooter would reset for 4 or 5 shooters per stage and have a chance to rest a bit, reload and socialize.

 

 

Got a better solution. Lets just say that picnic chairs are not allowed at the stages. This way, people will not be sitting on their butts the entire time while a few on the squad do all the work. =) :superstition:

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Got a better solution. Lets just say that picnic chairs are not allowed at the stages. This way, people will not be sitting on their butts the entire time while a few on the squad do all the work. =) :superstition:

 

Both times I have attended I brought a chair. I don't think I have sat it in it more than 5 minutes tops!

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Got a better solution. Lets just say that picnic chairs are not allowed at the stages. This way, people will not be sitting on their butts the entire time while a few on the squad do all the work. =) :superstition:

 

You think that not sitting down and helping out are synonymous?

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Depending on the people sitting in the chairs. Most help, some don't. But the same can be said to the people without chairs. Regardless, I am/will call people out for not helping. Not fair to me and others if we do all the work while others hang out and wait for their turn to shoot.

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