TargetTalk

Received this in my inbox from the NRA this morning:

Dear Junior Sectional Sponsor,

Thank you for your continued support of the Rifle Indoor National Championships. We sincerely appreciate your time and efforts given to the junior competitors.
Please read the attached program carefully, changes for 2017 including moving to a decibel scoring system for all Rifle Sectionals. At least for 2017, if you do not have access to an electronic scoring system, you will need to fire all shots on Orion Targets and send the targets to NRA for scoring. More information will be fourth coming in the next few weeks. As in previous years, you may submit your application online or with the attached paper copy.

And in the match program:

Changes for 2017
1. Targets capable of decimal scoring will be used for ALL National Indoor Championship
Tournaments (sectionals). Any target system other than Orion requires prior approval from the
Match Director (Damian Allen) and the use of the Orion Results Center to collate scores.
2. At least for this year, any clubs that do not have access to the required electronic scoring
targets/systems MAY with prior approval (Dian Bullock) send in their fired ORION TARGETS
for Orion scoring at NRA.

Once again, the NRA is making sudden changes to the match operations without any input from, or regards to the affect it has on, local match operators and competitors.

I operate my matches on a shoe string budget. I cannot afford to purchase electronic targets for both smallbore and air (about $5k per position), let alone an Orion target scoring system. Orion targets are twice as expensive as regular targets. A change like this will likely result in fewer matches being held and as a result, a drop in participation.

bdutton wrote:Received this in my inbox from the NRA this morning:

Dear Junior Sectional Sponsor,
Please read the attached program carefully, changes for 2017 including moving to a decibel scoring system for all Rifle Sectionals.

So now whoever has the loudest rifle wins?? The NRA sure can be weird...

Don't know if you were there, but Damian did this at the NRA 3-P Airgun Championship a few years ago. THEN I had to recompile the results in integer to see if anyone broke a record.

Some may say that NRA is "getting out in front of the curve" ... my view was that he was confused between CMP 3-P and International Air scoring. Did it really say "decibel"? If so ... I'll double down on my opinion.

Wonder if they'll make us do that at the Collegiate Sectionals too?

Hopefully someone can get them to change their minds.
There is no need for decimal scoring in 3P. Looking at all the ties in junior standing AR, I guess I can kind of see it, but they need to develop a better phase in plan if they want to do it.
Sectional participation isn't that great to begin with, although it's much better on the junior side than the open side. This is going to drive more clubs out of hosting matches. My club cancelled its junior sectional last year because we couldn't get enough kids. Even with the option of buying Orion targets and sending them in, we probably just won't even try this year.
The message says 'all rifle sectionals.' Does this include conventional? For starters, I don't see an A-17 target listed on Orion's website. I also don't think there is any decimal scoring system for the A-17 or any other conventional target.
I'm curious if they are going to try this on the open side, too. My club also runs an open conventional 4P every year and I doubt it will happen if we have to do this. My closest metric position and air rifle sectionals are over 3 hours away, and I doubt that club will make the switch either, so this may mean no sectionals for me this year.

As for 'decibel' scoring, that just fits right in with the online registration emails I got back from the 'rilfe' national championships the last few years.

Dan P wrote:Hopefully someone can get them to change their minds.
There is no need for decimal scoring in 3P. Looking at all the ties in junior standing AR, I guess I can kind of see it, but they need to develop a better phase in plan if they want to do it.
Sectional participation isn't that great to begin with, although it's much better on the junior side than the open side. This is going to drive more clubs out of hosting matches. My club cancelled its junior sectional last year because we couldn't get enough kids. Even with the option of buying Orion targets and sending them in, we probably just won't even try this year.
The message says 'all rifle sectionals.' Does this include conventional? For starters, I don't see an A-17 target listed on Orion's website. I also don't think there is any decimal scoring system for the A-17 or any other conventional target.
I'm curious if they are going to try this on the open side, too. My club also runs an open conventional 4P every year and I doubt it will happen if we have to do this. My closest metric position and air rifle sectionals are over 3 hours away, and I doubt that club will make the switch either, so this may mean no sectionals for me this year.

As for 'decibel' scoring, that just fits right in with the online registration emails I got back from the 'rilfe' national championships the last few years.

Correct.. I know of no A-17 version of the Orion target system. To me, this looks like the NRA is trying to make it easier on their staff (understandable) to not have to manually score targets and did not think through the decision of moving to all electronic scoring.

This is another in a long string of miss steps made by the competitions division which has caused a lot of angst among the core competitive shooters and match directors.

Orion's equivalent of the A-17 is their "12 Bull Gallery League Target". It has been out about 2 years.

PaulB wrote:Orion's equivalent of the A-17 is their "12 Bull Gallery League Target". It has been out about 2 years.

I see it now. I can't tell if it has the white rings or not. Or does that matter since it's computer scored?

Their site says that it can do decimal scoring for the A-17. However, there is nothing in the NRA rulebook that defines decimal scoring for any target. At least USA Shooting has it defined for the air rifle and USA50 targets. If someone were to shoot a match on an electronic target, would the decimal scoring for an electronic A-17 match up with the decimal scoring on an Orion A-17? Would it even be the same for different electronic scoring systems?

Here's my (outsider's) take: PATHETIC.

No national organisation should make a change that requires purchase of equipment or change in targets without popular grassroots support.

Quite frankly they're being supremely lazy. And the sudden move to a single supplier raises questions of ethics. Did anyone benefit from the decision?

Fact of the matter is that there are other digital scoring systems that can use different targets. Instead of forcing all locals into a position of having to spend money, the role of a national federation should be to help local groups move up in terms of equipment and scoring.

The only reason the Orion software forces you to use Orion targets is because Orion makes their money by selling the software and selling the targets. The NRA should keep their existing targets and develop a method to scan and score those.

The Android/iOS app that scores by photo accepts most of the standard targets. So why not use that?

National federations should work to make changes as easy as possible. And that should mean they take the time and effort to change existing practice as little as possible and only change what is absolutely necessary for safety reasons and only change for technical reasons after all the criteria and investigation has been made abundantly clear to all members.