TargetTalk

F. Paul in Denver wrote:TomF,

Here in Denver we have a winter international league. Both standard air and 5 shot rapid air are part of the program which also include CF, sport pistol, standard pistol, rapid fire, military rapid fire, APand free pistol.

Paul

Paul,

With that much shooting going on there, I should move to Denver! ;-)

Stan

j-team wrote:You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

By promoting the 5 shot air pistol matches you are just speeding up the demise of cartridge semi auto events from th olympic program.

Look what happened to 50m running target.

I would argue that if the two new 5-shot AP courses of fire increased the total number of ISSF pistol shooters on the face of this planet (with the replacement of cartridge RF with air RF at the Olympics), then that would be a net gain for this little shooting community.

Personally, I think anything that increases the number of ISSF shooters is a good thing for the sport, long-term. Correct me if I'm wrong, isn't the ISSF in existence to support more than one match every four years?

Stan

j-team wrote:You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

By promoting the 5 shot air pistol matches you are just speeding up the demise of cartridge semi auto events from th olympic program.

Look what happened to 50m running target.

Right bud, look around, if the fact that there are very few actual rapid fire ranges around isn't enough to kill Rapid Fire. I'm sure it's going to be our fault that we shoot rapid air. By the way as for the Olympics, if powers that be had their way there would be no shooting, clinging to a sport that is shot very little really is not going to change their minds.

I can see both sides of this issue. As I understand it, one of the major reasons why the ISSF has downplayed RF Air is to keep RF cartridge strong. The fact that it is not popular in the United States is not a measure of its popularity in Europe.

On the other hand, RF Air has a lot of potential. However, I think the current rules hurt its potential. I believe that one of the drivers MUST be to have a target system that is compact, light, and cheap enough for the average shooter to own his personal unit, AND be able to take it to a major competition. Kind of like fencing scoring gear - a lot of clubs have only one or two sets, so everybody brings everything they have to the big tournaments to get a lot of strips functioning.

I think that a falling plate system is the right answer - but with only three plates, and timing of 6, 4, and 2 seconds. Falling plates mean fast scoring, and a three-plate system would only be ~30 inches long. Small enough to stuff into the trunk of your car.

That being said, I think that a lot more can be done with RF cartridge. There are provisional rules for running matches with a shot timer - but with the cost of shot timers, I would recommend rewriting ALL the rules to make the shot timer method the standard. And I would seriously consider speeding up the match by having scoring only after each half-course. We don't guess which shot was late, we just apply a fixed penalty for a late shot. I think it would work well.

Or we could just deep-six RF cartridge and substitute SP instead (horrible, yes, but eminently practical).

It looks like a fun event , that would be interesting to watch . Seems a shame not to put those fine LP5's and 50's to work . I feel interested enuff to have ordered a Rika LP5 unit for donation to our club . ( ISSF politics aside)

It would be nice to have a reduced scale 6M version , thus spicing up basement ranges everywhere .

Chris