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Whining about scores, electronic scoring, and online squadding, and manpower shortages - CJ edition.

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When will the paper scores be done?

 

The answer to that is the same as always. When we get around to it. We've had a standing order for volunteers for the job, a couple of takers, and none of them have stuck for very long. The reality at this point is that you can get your scores sooner, or you can have a match to shoot at each month. Heck, it's getting hard to have the match given we are losing more manpower than we are gaining. Yes, NJGF have made a huge contribution to helping hands for the morning construction, which is appreciated, but unfortunately we have a bunch of jobs that need doing, and all the new help is pretty much of one kind (morning construction helpers).

 

Manpower issues

 

Stage designers - It's bad. I have nearly zero reliable stage designers at this point. It should improve some as we were down manpower due to surgery, getting married, burn out breaks, etc. However, others are MIA because they have started running other matches, and CJ stage design is what got dropped. The reality is last year I spent most of the year designing 2-3 stages a match for a match with 5 original stages per match. I got two new volunteers to be added to the stage builder list, and got all of one contribution form each of those people since they joined. It's better than nothing, but we are SERIOUSLY short on stage designers. For all you guys who are there each month helping build, you are already doing most of the job. PMing me your email, and spending an hour or so of your down time at home to come up with an idea every month at most, would be a huge help. If you and a buddy car pool, join as a team and take alternating turns. If you don't know how, I'd MUCH, MUCH rather spend 2 hours helping you out each month until you get up to speed than the hour

 

Sign up - We are losing our current sign up people. That means you either wait for me to do it AFTER I finish building stages like the august match, or we need someone for this. This one's harder to fill because we need to know you enough to know you can do the job right, as shortages on the money side come out of the MD's pockets.

 

Autonomous stage builders - Folks I can hand a stage diagram to, and something usable gets built from it. This isn't a big leap from being build help, so if you want to take baby steps to stage design, and you are there every month (or close enough), taking over building my stage will possibly allow me to cover sign up. Even if you are there randomly, but can do this, DOING it early can help us get wrapped up with construction faster.

 

Scoring - IT takes from 3-6 hours a match after the fact. That's 3-6 hours to learn to appreciate that most of the people who attend a match don't spend much time writing anything day to day, or at least writing it without typing it, and also suck at basic addition. The math and penmanship will astound as will the freestyle interpretive form completion. You will also learn that EZ-Winscore was designed by people with zero familiarity with actual data entry and only slightly more with UI design. It's the data entry equivalent of being kicked in the junk for 3-6 hours. We can't even pay someone to do it as match fees are set by the section and consumables, payouts, USPSA's cut and the club's cut leaves us with basically $0 at the end of the year.

 

 

Electronic scoring

 

Well, first we will NOT do palms. They aren't made anymore, and as supplies run out they are getting nearly as expensive as better alternatives. However, better alternatives will set us back about $1200. We are asking the board for money at their September meeting, but they have already complained about buying anything with club money that leaves the range. We'll see how it goes.

 

Second, palm scoring doesn't fix any of our manpower issues. If we go electronic, it basically means I will be doing it, and that means either no stage building for me anymore or starting 1-2 hours later. Electronic scoring really doesn't save a lot of time, it just moves that time to the match prep pile, or takes it out of everyone's time on range day. It does make you stop wanting to kill everyone who can't write or add though, so there is that.

 

 

On line squadding

 

The odds of this happening are near zero. The reality is we have used it for things like the sectional match, and tried to incorporate it with registration for the OB match, and without dedicated ROs for a stage it produces unusable results 100% of the time. You always wind up with squads with no ROs, or very unbalanced squads that we have to fix by hand anyway, or a whole squad of people who don't intend to RO, score, paste, etc. all hanging out together to complain everything is taking too long. Also, to date, none of the solutions we have tried tags who wants to be grouped with who in a reasonable way. For example, the NJGF squad is better than most and got people RO credentials. However it gets big. If I have to split it the way we do it now, I can almost always keep a few of you together if I have to split squads and it takes a couple extra minutes worse case. Online squadding just isn't worth it at the moment, and won't ever be if we are stuck with paper scoring. If you think it is really awesome and want us to reconsider it with electronic scoring there are two things you can do. 1) get your RO credentials so squads with no ROs become and uncommon problem. 2) When we put in place registration, forms, or whatever that has a place to let us know you can run a timer, fill it in.

 

What we owe you, the guy who shows up to shoot and resets and pastes.

 

Not a damn thing. The reality is nobody gets paid, except the club, winners, USPSA, and the guys selling us consumables. You reset and paste so you can get your turn to shoot, PERIOD. I pretty much put in about 10-12 hours a month of my time so you can get your turn to shoot at CJ, and another 4-5 for the old bridge match. Heck, I could show up with the stage designers and the regular helpers, set up a 5 stage match, shoot it, and be home by 3pm while having a blast and wouldn't notice the absence of anyone who doesn't put a little bit of elbow grease into the match. The guys sitting in the parking lot bitching about start times and how long it takes the match to finish are pretty much just obstacles to having a good time. The guys who show up to help regularly are a different matter, but there are only so many hours I can afford to give them.

 

General Advice

 

Bitching about the old bridge people at CJ - Stop it. The people who make the OB match happen are basically the same crowd that makes the CJ match happen. Almost all of them are members of both clubs, and beyond that, 99.9 times out of a hundred the absence of the complainer wouldn't be noticed while the absence of the group they are complaining about would mean there is no match.

 

Asking when the match will start get started - Does it look like we are sitting around? No. Then probably when we are done doing the stuff we are busy doing to get the match set up. You want it started earlier, start volunteering to do some of the above stuff.

 

Don't like the way the match is run? - take it over. I'd love to just shoot and scoot, and I'll even not complain about start times, end times, how long the scores take to get done, and I'll even check the RO box on the sign up sheet. I'm not even picky about who I get squadded with. Heck I might even give you some sympathy when you complain about dealing with the CJ BOD.

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Raz

 

I just wanted to say Thank You for all you and the other guys do so we can have a monthly match. I try to help when i can and now i know i will try to show up early and help set up when i can. Being that I have only shot three matches I dont think i am ready to design stages. When i get the hang of things more i will look into designing stages and let you know

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Matt,

 

I truly feel your pain.

 

Reminds me of an old poster I had as a Kid:

 

There are (3) kinds of people in this World:

 

1. Those that MAKE things happen!

2. Those that WATCH things happen (and **** it's taking too long)!

3. And those that don't have a clue WTF happened!

 

May you eventually be blessed with enough #1's before you pop a stroke! Your entire post is spot-on, and most of it can be applied to any volunteer effort at a Range. I congratulate you in running such a nice & safe Match and hope that as a result from this thread, some of the complainers step-up and accept some responsibility for maintaining THEIR Match.

 

Dave

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I remember when you were riding the quad around last month asking for help to setup stages at CJ (USPSA Classifier). Some of us got off our butts and helped setup and eventually tear-down three stages. I saw PLENTY of people arrive late and leave ASAP, some I know from OBRPC...........

 

Like Rosie said above, you need more of the #1's above. Seems like we have FAR too many of the #2's at these events.

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My son's birth was my "official" excuse; but I had enough of all the above when I was running the IDPA shoots in south jersey. A particularly big issue was the former CRSO and his BS.

I feel your pain.

 

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A Match Director is a thankless job, no doubt about it. You feeling like you are working only so others can shoot and your shooting takes hit becuase of it. Been there, done that. Spent nights stapling tagets to stands so that I would have time to organize everything in the AM. You are in the anger stage of running a match , first its new and interesting, then you get in the groove and know what you are doing, then you get pissed because no one helps or appreciates it, then finally you burn out.... I'm in the burnt out stage. I ran matches were there were more squads then bays and you have to build new stages mid match... it was like herding cats.

 

Here are a few suggestions that worked for me and others. They may or may not work for you. Not criticism to you or anyone else but suggestions that worked for me

 

Make shooters commit at the shooters meeting the month before to build stages. I first got roped in building stages because at a shooters meeting the MD said if I don't have stage builders for next month, you will have 1 target to shoot per stage. If you have 6 stage builders the month before the match and then on match day only 5 show up... you only have 5 stages... everyone will know who didn't follow through.

 

Build simpler stages. You will build them quicker and score them quicker

OB runs into a lot of issue with overly complex stages Multiple inline activators slow everything down. Avoid multiple string classifiers at all cost, they take to long to shoot and even longer to score. Do not let people shoot more than once for the classifier.They back up a match

 

For squading, Take as many targets as there are going to be squads, put the targets on the registration table and have people squad themselves, when I squad is full remove the target from the table. It will get people there earlier so they can squad with their friends, then you put them to work... Plus you don't need to read off the squad list at the shooters meeting. That is just adding time to the match. Don't read off the WSB either. They will be read at the stage. If there is something so complex that it needs to be read to everyone, then that will end up slowing down the match. There is no reason why you should not be shooting 5 min after the 1 minute shooters meeting.

 

Palm scoring adds time at the beiginning. but once you have the shooters name in there, all you have to do is change the division. The initial population can take time, and new shooters will slow it down if you get a lot once in awhile. Harvard sportsmen club in Ma runs very well with palms, registration to first shots is very short. Plus the scores are ready after everything is torn down. You might want to talk to the ARea 7 Northeast sectional director about it, he will have some great tips.

 

I'm going to get back into the stage building etc at OB a little later this year since I have recently joined... right now I would last 5 min if I had to deal with all the crap you are dealing with.

 

good luck

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area 7, I ran indoor matches at a public range, we had to off the range and have the range open for public before 1pm, But they would not let us in before 8:30. It wasn't large but a huge pain the ass. Like I said, more squads then bays, but few bays then stages.

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This thread is funny. But I thought I'd hear things like "damn reloads!" or, "Fugg, I put the wrong spring in!" or "My sights are off!"

 

Ray, you forgot, damn I didn't bring enough ammo!

 

 

Matt, I should have a stage design for the September match, and I might even be able to shoot in the match.

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Ray, you forgot, damn I didn't bring enough ammo!

 

 

Matt, I should have a stage design for the September match, and I might even be able to shoot in the match.

 

Cool that makes two for september then.

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What are the basic parameters for a stage design?

 

Legal USPSA stage, with no major safety issues, that can fit in the pit at CJ. =P I have a habit of making large stages on paper that do not fit exactly.

 

Other points of consideration is making sure the stages flows well and one will not cause major backups elsewhere.

 

come out and will show you.

 

You can also download google sketchup, and in the model warehouse search for USPSA for lots of uspsa shared stages.

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What are the basic parameters for a stage design?

 

For CJ, the pits all have at least 11 yards by 20 yards of usable space. The biggest pit is 13x22 usable for shooting. Also at CJ, rounds can't be shot into the ground because of club rules, so no lay down targets.

 

Other than that, if you are iffy, just submit the stage early, I'll give you feedback on anything obviously problematic.

 

As for the tools, you can look for sketchup tutorials, or you can do the powwerpoint or word doc thing (I find powerpoint to be easier, especially if you are using openoffice instead of microsoft office).

 

here's a zip of the powerpoint templates, a coupel of examples, and within the zip are a couple more zip files of word doc examples and templates.

 

http://bloodimage.co...ng_examples.zip

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There is no original stage.

 

We put up 30+ stages every year at CJ and another 35+ at OB. 75 stages a year, after 10-15 years, and there are no REALLY original stages after a while. Every now and then someone thinks of something really clever and then we integrated in other stages, but don't sweat originality.

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+1 Vlad.

 

Frank... that was my challenge when I started doing stages.. then I realized, almost any idea... was something that I started thinking about, or a stage I shot at a major match, but would of wanted something changed and went on from there.

 

Like the stages that I sent Matt for this month's CJ match.... was a stage where the idea came from an Area 8 stage... however morphed into what we will have.

 

Other times, watching videos of major IPSC matches overseas, and then figure... how can we make it work for us here. The biggest challenge is that relatively all of the pits are the same size... and most of my ideas are for huge huge wide pits. =P Ooops.

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And apparently I can't do math: we do 60 stages and 66, for a total of 126 stages a year assuming we don't cancel any matches besides the x-mass one always canceled at OB. In the 10 years I've been shooting there have been 1260 stages at those two clubs alone, plus rifle/shotgun/3-gun matches, plus away matches, I've shot over 1500 stages. When you have square pits and 4 targets types and physics and rules .. there are only so many stages before you see patterns. That is ok.

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And apparently I can't do math: we do 60 stages and 66, for a total of 126 stages a year assuming we don't cancel any matches besides the x-mass one always canceled at OB. In the 10 years I've been shooting there have been 1260 stages at those two clubs alone, plus rifle/shotgun/3-gun matches, plus away matches, I've shot over 1500 stages. When you have square pits and 4 targets types and physics and rules .. there are only so many stages before you see patterns. That is ok.

 

So you are the guy who cannot add up the A's, B's, C, D's, on the scoresheets? Got it, will take note. =)

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I have no problem helping and can take on the autonomous stage building with ease, I pretty much single handedly built stage one (except for stapeling the cardboard targets to the sticks) after helping build stage 2, and would like to take on some stage design, and get an RO cert. just let me know how I can assist and I will be there if at all possible.

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I am going to take a crack at designing a stage. When it is done how do we get someone to look at it for approval or help with ideas? I am not going to call anyone out but everyone should be taping, painting or helping score each time it's needed, that's just part of the match the same as shooting The only time people shouldn't be doing so is when they are in the hole or on deck. The people that don't do anything know who they are and seem to be the same people weekend after weekend even when TAPERS is yelled 2 feet away from them!!

I was amazed at OBRAMS how everyone that was there helped build stages and they were done fast, its just another way to get to know some more people. If just a few people would get up before the match and help the workload would be spread out and no one would get swamped doing to much. Breaking down the last stage you shoot is the least that one could do. If you shoot first and can't hang afterwards or don't want to just don't make a habit of it and make sure you did your part before and during the match. It is just the right thing to do!!!

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