I took a trip over to New Castle, PA to work the PA State IDPA championship this weekend. Staff and some competitors shot on Saturday and the rest of the competitors shot on Sunday.
I finished 1st place in ESP Expert which earned me a promotion to ESP Master.
If you have any interest in getting into this kind of sport shooting hit me up.
Warning: Starting practical pistol shooting will make standing in a port shooting at a target that is also stationary very, very boring. It will make you a much better shooter, especially in relation to self defense.
Yes, that isn’t just a risk, it’s 100% going to be the case! My wife mentions it occasionally, too! (Although at my indoor range I qualified to draw from a holster, and depending on the crowd I’m allowed to shoot faster than the typical one shot per second limit. Practicing the FBI qual was probably the most action I’ve experienced in a narrow shooting lane!)
There was a lot of the down-0 that wasn’t going to shoot through to the NT. There was way more than half of it available.
Using a flashlight was optional. I figured there was enough light to run the stage without it. I was running my SP-01 which doesn’t make weight with a light on it so I would have had to use a handheld light.
Activating the strobe was an accident as I reformed my grip after the reload.
The swingers were activated by the 2 pepper poppers which you are exposed to at the start position. You have to engage the poppers first because they are immediately a threat as soon as the timer starts.
IDPA rules say that a target is “fully engaged” when the required number of rounds have been fired at it, regardless of whether the shots hit or miss. Therefore, at the start I fired 2 rounds (one per popper) in their general direction, but (sadly) missed. I was then able to engage all the other paper targets without the swinging non-threats getting in the way.
After I was done with all the paper targets I re-engaged the poppers which was OK because they were still 10 yards from the last shooting position, and then threw a make-up shot at the left cardboard target as I had called a down-3 on that with one of the 2 shots I had already fired at it.
I wonder if it would have made a difference if you had hit the poppers. It looks like the swinger would have calmed down and not blocked the targets by the time you go to them?
The last swinger, sure. There were other NT swingers on earlier targets too. It wouldn’t be too hard to wait for the swingers to get out of the way - they weren’t too fast, but that also means waiting for the to get out of the way. It was quicker to shoot without worrying about them. I would have been quicker if I hadn’t slipped on one of the fault lines.
