Oh, and BTW. I was happy to see you this past weekend. I wished we had spent more time visiting. Will you be going to the Nationals?
E-Targets for F-Class
- Thread starter Down South
- Start date
I did shoot the TSRA match this weekend also and was curious to see how these electric targets functioned being as my range will be eventually using them. I found them very easy to use. I’ve shot on hexa targets many times in the past and they functioned well although they have missed shots in the past but I think that was a maintenance issue that eventually was resolved.
I think the targets functioned well for the most part. There was 1 shot that registered but didn’t post a score so the person took another shot. There was also 1 crossfire that was claimed. I really didn’t have any problems all weekend. The system seemed a little slow to pick up the shot before it registered the shot and then the 7 second delay would start. So it seemed like the delay was actually a little more than 7 seconds because of the lag in the system but that could have been because so many devices were logged on at one time. I’m a slow sling shooter anyway. I think there were more user error problems than actual problems with the targets and the system. The match was run great and they had enough people on the line to resolve problems quickly.
I know some people questioned the accuracy of these target and heard some comments about bad shots this weekend that they didn’t call. I had a couple 8’s this weekend too but they were bad wind calls, conditions changed before I got the shot off or just a bad shot. It is easy to blame the e-target for a bad shot. So now we have something else to blame when we make a bad shot. Lol.
I really don’t care either way if I shoot on electronic targets or if I pull targets, I just like to shoot. Shooting is for fun anyway and for friendly competition, we are not getting rich from our hobby.
I think Adam has a good product at a reasonable price. I don’t know if he originally developed the product for the intended use for matches or if it was intended to be used as a means of practice. Although, the targets have have taken off and great for him and his business. I wish him great success.
Barry
I think the targets functioned well for the most part. There was 1 shot that registered but didn’t post a score so the person took another shot. There was also 1 crossfire that was claimed. I really didn’t have any problems all weekend. The system seemed a little slow to pick up the shot before it registered the shot and then the 7 second delay would start. So it seemed like the delay was actually a little more than 7 seconds because of the lag in the system but that could have been because so many devices were logged on at one time. I’m a slow sling shooter anyway. I think there were more user error problems than actual problems with the targets and the system. The match was run great and they had enough people on the line to resolve problems quickly.
I know some people questioned the accuracy of these target and heard some comments about bad shots this weekend that they didn’t call. I had a couple 8’s this weekend too but they were bad wind calls, conditions changed before I got the shot off or just a bad shot. It is easy to blame the e-target for a bad shot. So now we have something else to blame when we make a bad shot. Lol.
I really don’t care either way if I shoot on electronic targets or if I pull targets, I just like to shoot. Shooting is for fun anyway and for friendly competition, we are not getting rich from our hobby.
I think Adam has a good product at a reasonable price. I don’t know if he originally developed the product for the intended use for matches or if it was intended to be used as a means of practice. Although, the targets have have taken off and great for him and his business. I wish him great success.
Barry
It was good to see everyone! Shooting and attempting to visit "off the shooting line" makes it difficult to visit with everybody. I wish I could have spent more time with everyone>>>you just can't.. No Sir, no Nationals for me. Some matches are TOO BIG (population wise) for me.. When the population gets much past 100, crowded conditions set in.. So, Bayou is about my limit! At the BSWN I will shoot only the 600 yard event.
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As has been stated, Strange Things happen on paper targets too.
I'm sure I'm not the only one to ever see a shooters paper target come up with a 7 on it and the shooters says. a 7,,,, nfw, redisk target number xx
The target goes down into the pits and comes back up with the shot in the same spot.
The scorer writes it down and the shooter hisses.
Later after the match you may still here the shooter saying... I know I didn't shoot a 7.
We can be funny breeds at times...
E targets will surely always be the blame for some for years to come.
I'm sure I'm not the only one to ever see a shooters paper target come up with a 7 on it and the shooters says. a 7,,,, nfw, redisk target number xx
The target goes down into the pits and comes back up with the shot in the same spot.
The scorer writes it down and the shooter hisses.
Later after the match you may still here the shooter saying... I know I didn't shoot a 7.
We can be funny breeds at times...
E targets will surely always be the blame for some for years to come.
You mean like this target, puller pulled the target to soon, as I am a fast shooter, I knew the shot was not a 7 and I complained to my scorer but nothing happen, so I took the 7. later to find out from the puller next to him that he knew that the puller pulled to soon, if only the original puller would have owned up to it , I would have been happy, as we all make mistakes.
That is a bummer. Sorry to hear you had to take a 7 because of it.
Another great example for the E target resistant / apprehensive that human pullers aren't perfect.
Also a good illustration of paper targets being installed with wrinkles and not 100% perfect as well.
I was more referring the the cases where the shooter actually did shoot a 7 but just doesn't want to admit it to themselves, to anyone else or take the 7 for record when they actually shot a 7...
We screw up, not every bullet is made perfect and mother nature can play some crazy tricks while we are on the gun breaking the shot. 7's happen to even the best shooters from time to time.
Some of the best shooters react to 9's like most treat 7's, or 8's...
I know I didn't shoot that 9 dammit, I don't care what that puller marked or that ET scored..... lol
G-
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Barry, an excellent synopsis. I think one thing people forget is that it takes 1.5 seconds for the bullet to get downrange. At that point, the target detects the bullet and the sensor hub sends a signal back to the AP which then registers the shot with the corresponding data. Then there's the communication to the client to display the target and so on. I suspect the power of the tablet or smartphone may have some influence on how quickly everything is updated on the screen. I was using my Samsung Note 8 during the weekend and that's definitely more powerful than the tablets we passed out. But I do not know if that has any influence on the perceived reaction time. All new things to check, test and see if we can do differently to enhance.
Doug Beach
Silver $$ Contributor
With both manual and e-targets, I occasionally make a noticeable error in shot execution, and get an X anyway. I’m sure this happens to everyone, yet I never hear anyone protest that the X should have been a 9, or a 7....
I have lost count of the time when I made the shot and immediately realized that I had messed up, voiced that epiphany with a single muffled word and yet still have the target come up with a 10 or better.
The only event that outnumbers those shots are the ones where I felt it was a great shot, and then watched it come up a 9 or worse.
Sigh.
There is intentional periodicity to the Wifi refreshes which may seem like a delay but it is taken into account within the 7 seconds. For example, it may take a few seconds for the screen to show you a shot is coming but then the delay might be already half over. I timed a few shots at 9.0 to 9.5 seconds from bang to display. With flight time plus about 0.5 seconds for transmission and reception, this makes sense. There's still possibility of a delay beyond that for various reasons (RF collisions, weak Wifi signal to the tablet) but for the most part it should be consistent.
In FTR with my bipod by the time I was back on the gun, on my target, reloaded, check mirage, the shot was there. There may have been a delay but there certainly was no waiting. I don't think a delay of 0, 7, or 10 would have made any difference in the way I shot, and I shot fast and slow depending on conditions.
ShotMarker is designed to be both a large match and personal system. It is a streamlined personal experience that scales up to 250 targets and 250 people with no special hardware or software.
As for wild 8's, that doesn't happen. At most an error on an otherwise proper shot would be about an inch. For a shot to be recorded way, way off, it would not be consistent in yaw, pitch, and velocity with other shots in the string and it would have triggered a warning. Shots with measurement warnings should be ignored. Shots without warnings should be accepted.
I personally checked a few wild shots that came out of my barrel, and in every case, they were real. I knew, I just had to see it myself. I know the feeling.
As for missing shots, we had a lot of crossfires not claimed, but also shots missed due to interference. It happens. Also the construction of the frames played a role. There was a significant amount of solid wood within the sensor area on these frames, plus the use of a thick and rigid type of coroplast, which caused issues more so on shots not near the center.
With manual targets, scorekeepers know the rules and protocols by heart and the process is routine. In this match, there were things happening that most scorekeepers had never seen before. Sometimes this caused a delay while the RO was called over, who may or may not know what to do, and sometimes the scorekeeper improvised. Almost every relay I had to stop focusing on the wind and help someone with something around me. I will write a guide to explain what the protocol is when certain things happen.
In time it will become routine. I'm sure of it, because the protocols are not any more complicated than they already are with manual targets. They're just new.
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Just wanted to add that from my perspective the match was a huge success. I couldn't be happier. It wasn't supposed to perfect. I wasn't there a week early preparing, and this wasn't a test of the system. Bayou has been shooting on ShotMarker for months, and this was their match. I was there to shoot, and help out as needed. The system worked great and I had a great time, as did Gord Holloway and Ken Kyle who flew down with me (to shoot!).
I noticed the same....sometimes shots seemed to take a while to appear to be registered by the sensor hub but when it did register, the score appeared simultaneously and right at 7 sec. from the time the shot would have impacted the target.
Robin
Adam
Thanks for the explanation on how the system works. You are right as to it’s a learning curve for shooters that haven’t shot on them before. It gets easier as you get use to shooting on the e-targets. It was the same way at another range I shoot at that has had e-targets for about 3 years now. It started out with some issues That needed to be addressed and resolving them as they come up. Everything runs smoother now. Especially since most shooters are use to shooting on them and can resolve the issues that come up on there own.
It seemed like Saturday there were more problems and shooters calling for help and Sunday as shooters were more accustomed to the system there were less shooters calling for help from what I could see on the line. It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks but they will eventually learn.
Barry
Rope2horns
Norm Harrold
This was my first match on electronic targets of any kind....I personally had zero issues with the Shot Marker system, other than not hitting the button correctly when going for score and forgetting to enter my initials to verify my score...those hiccups were caused by ME and nothing relating the system itself...both issues were resolved quickly.
I had a great time, thought the system worked great, and the match was ran excellent!!
I had a great time, thought the system worked great, and the match was ran excellent!!
Adam,
Could you discuss these two items in more detail? An error of 1" being discussed by a manufacturer is not something I have seen. You seem to be transparent about your equipment, which is really a great thing.
What is meant by "a significant amount of solid wood"? Do you mean they used larger lumber than needed?
While I am pushing my luck, would you address the notion expressed by a few that the acoustic center can move on its own?
What about the need to align the acoustic centers on all targets in a match? There was a recent post that stated that it wasn't necessary.
Good questions but,,,
Should only take Adam about an hour to type up a response to those questions alone.
And then 10 - 100 more hours debating / defending / explaining it in the coming days - weeks no matter what info he shares.
He would probably need to hire people to build product to fill his backorders of customers waiting for delivery of his systems while he's doing all that.
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George nailed it. This could be an opening for 60 pages. However I’m sitting in an airport with nothing else to do, so I will very carefully
reply...
I do hire people
What I meant specifically was that a freak issue that moves the reported shot by more
than an inch would almost necessarily trigger a software warning. That’s not to say how common such an error is, what might cause it, or if it even matters. Those are questions for another 30 pages. To be addressed with statistics, not opinion. However, today I’m simply saying there is a warning system in place that is carefully tuned to take the guesswork of a weird measurement out of the equation. If it says it’s a good shot, it’s a good shot. Of course there are exceptions, but they will be exceptionally rare. Certainly more rare than comparable issues with pullers. My goal with the warning system is to provide the user a level of confidence that the shots on score can be trusted, which may not be apparent unless you know a bit more about how the system works. Every shot has a measurement of yaw, pitch, velocity, and quality, and the patterns and consistency of these can provide proof that a shot is real, as bad measurements are usually obviously so. Use the sensor monitor and you will see.
Some of the frames had some wood inside of the sensor area, inset of the edges and corners. This causes problems when the bullet hits it, either a shot appearing with a warning (to be ignored) or a missed shot entirely. The system is intended to be used with a soft material inside of the sensor area that won’t transmit impact shock to the sensors. A couple layers of 1/4” coroplast or cardboard is generally fine, but wood is too hard.
The only way the acoustic center would move is if the frame geometry changes. The sensors would have to be twisted, crooked, or in different places. Waiting 6 hours or 6 days between shots doesn’t change anything, but taking a frame down and putting it back up
in a different carrier wedging it differently so that it’s twisted differently, might.
Calibration is overrated. I realized near the end of the weekend that my windage was off by 1/2 moa due to my scope being canted. Only by comparing with multiple shooters over three days could I quantify it. It seemed in line with my teammates during the team matches but by Sunday I had figured out something wasn’t right. That’s essentially 5 inches I was “out of calibration” and it didn’t really bother me. Just because the mirage and the flags say zero doesn’t mean the average range wind is really zero. There could easily be 1/4 moa of range wind one way or the other that we can’t see, and we just account for that in how we make adjustments. When you get unlimited sighters and stay on the same target all day at 1000 yards, it’s really a best case scenario for not needing accurate calibration.
Locally we shoot FClass at 300 quite often and switch targets every relay. In this case calibration starts to matter, and the move to 8 sensors was in large part to solve the problem of keeping calibration correct day to day, since the system can account for shooter/target orientation changes. Now, you can fire one shot, calibrate from it, and never look back.
Adam
reply...
I do hire people
What I meant specifically was that a freak issue that moves the reported shot by more
than an inch would almost necessarily trigger a software warning. That’s not to say how common such an error is, what might cause it, or if it even matters. Those are questions for another 30 pages. To be addressed with statistics, not opinion. However, today I’m simply saying there is a warning system in place that is carefully tuned to take the guesswork of a weird measurement out of the equation. If it says it’s a good shot, it’s a good shot. Of course there are exceptions, but they will be exceptionally rare. Certainly more rare than comparable issues with pullers. My goal with the warning system is to provide the user a level of confidence that the shots on score can be trusted, which may not be apparent unless you know a bit more about how the system works. Every shot has a measurement of yaw, pitch, velocity, and quality, and the patterns and consistency of these can provide proof that a shot is real, as bad measurements are usually obviously so. Use the sensor monitor and you will see.
Some of the frames had some wood inside of the sensor area, inset of the edges and corners. This causes problems when the bullet hits it, either a shot appearing with a warning (to be ignored) or a missed shot entirely. The system is intended to be used with a soft material inside of the sensor area that won’t transmit impact shock to the sensors. A couple layers of 1/4” coroplast or cardboard is generally fine, but wood is too hard.
The only way the acoustic center would move is if the frame geometry changes. The sensors would have to be twisted, crooked, or in different places. Waiting 6 hours or 6 days between shots doesn’t change anything, but taking a frame down and putting it back up
in a different carrier wedging it differently so that it’s twisted differently, might.
Calibration is overrated. I realized near the end of the weekend that my windage was off by 1/2 moa due to my scope being canted. Only by comparing with multiple shooters over three days could I quantify it. It seemed in line with my teammates during the team matches but by Sunday I had figured out something wasn’t right. That’s essentially 5 inches I was “out of calibration” and it didn’t really bother me. Just because the mirage and the flags say zero doesn’t mean the average range wind is really zero. There could easily be 1/4 moa of range wind one way or the other that we can’t see, and we just account for that in how we make adjustments. When you get unlimited sighters and stay on the same target all day at 1000 yards, it’s really a best case scenario for not needing accurate calibration.
Locally we shoot FClass at 300 quite often and switch targets every relay. In this case calibration starts to matter, and the move to 8 sensors was in large part to solve the problem of keeping calibration correct day to day, since the system can account for shooter/target orientation changes. Now, you can fire one shot, calibrate from it, and never look back.
Adam
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