Good morning Laurie'
May I ask your opinion on these E targets vs the paper targets?
Are they in your experience more reliable and definitive than the conventional method?
I have no doubt that there will always be some controversial questions about scoring, how do your clubs in the U.K. arrive at the final Talley for the event or what method is established for settlement of disputes?
I'm curious as to the sportsmanship displayed by your fellow shooters.
I have no experience with E targets only paper versions at our local events we score our own than turn in the target for a second opinion, the event director measures if needed. We congratulate the winners 'shake hands and carry on.
Regards
SPJ
Oh dear, I'm really not qualified to talk on this subject, so don't expect any technical insights. I'll try to give an overview on our perspectives of the subject in the wider sense instead.
The first thing that US and Australian (but not Canadian) forum members must understand about UK prone / deliberate shooting is that in the marked targets disciplines we don't string shoot. In major comps, it's two on the mound shooting alternately, in club shoots three shooters sharing a lane and taking shots in sequence is common. We also have the 45 second rule - when the marked target reappears, the competitor whose turn now falls has a mere 45 seconds to record the previous shot's score on his/her partner's scorecard, check the wind flags etc, and take the shot. Because of the inbuilt delays in this system and opportunities for condition changes, nearly all serious shooters use a wind plot sheet too with shots marked on a target representation and estimated / actual wind values in MOA recorded either in a graph (for actual) or in columns of figures for both. So, although shooting is in one sense slow, there is a great deal to pack into the time between it being one's turn to shoot.
This system makes for very slow shooting / long relays by US standards and has a major impact on target marking methods and standards. We have many excellent (human) markers here whether competitors doing their turn in the butts or as paid markers, but partly down to culture / history, partly the crude 19th century design target frames installed in most ranges, marking is slow by American standards and often very variable in its responses, and a set of slow markers - especially those inattentive individuals who serially miss seeing the shot and have to be given a 'Message 4' (check target for fall of shot) - not only sees you last off the firing line, but impacts on the shooting rhythm and ultimately scores.
We have four marking systems in use here:
1) the standard club level system, also applying to some major TR and F comps - the traditional method used by shooters everywhere, the field split with half on the firing line, half in the butts, swapping roles midway.
2) paid or organiser supplied markers. This really only applies to the GB NRA's National Shooting Centre at Bisley south of London now where all marking on the two main prone ranges (Century - up to 600 yards) and Stickledown (800-1,200 yards) and their 150 targets is done by NRA recruited, trained, and employed markers, a mix of part and full timers and mostly youngsters of both sexes. At their best, they are superb; but as with any human activity, there is great variability and loud are the complaints from many shooters after a frustrating day of passing Message Fours and Fives (check target for fall of shot / recheck the score value given). Major competitions (like the annual TR 'Imperial' and F-Class European Championship events) get the cream of the markers, so forum members who attend the 'Imperial' or who came here for the F-Class World Championships in 2009 see the system at its very best .... and it is
really good at that.
It also used to be common for 'Terrys' (members of the Territorial Army regiments. ie part-time reservists like the US National Guards) or teenage Army cadets to provide marking for major comps held on military ranges. With the rundown of our armed forces and with target shooting now entirely disregarded as providing any useful military skills by the UK military hierarchies, this has now disappeared from civilian matches. The marking tended to be extremely variable anyway especially when done by cadets depending on their briefing, experience and discipline/leadership.
3) Electronic bullseye targets as per the subject of this thread on a very few civilian ranges, the best known being Blair Atholl in Scotland where shooting is from 300M to 1,225 yards all using six e-targets, the Kongsberg closed-chamber type, hard-wired between the targets and each of the nine firing points.
E-target use - as in the USA - is now expanding rapidly with new suppliers also providing kit, and a move from hard wired communications to wifi systems. As I mentioned earlier, the GB NRA installed 11 Intarso targets split into two groups on the long-range Stickledown last August and they have been intensively used. They have proven to be exceptionally reliable and very popular especially with clubs or individuals booking a single target or small number of lanes where their continuous availability unaffected by the day to day fluctuations in the number of warm bodies available as paid markers and ability to hire by the hour is a boon.
4) military systems (E.T.R. ranges) with snap and falling targets etc but using lifelike ('Advancing Hun') human form targets. These are widely used by civilian shooters for CSR (Civilian Service Rifle); Tactical (like PRS) and Practical Rifle competitions on some ranges. Not applicable to this debate, so we'll ignore them. (This as well as force reductions is another reason for the loss of reservists and cadets as markers - few British soldiers whether regular or part-time have any experience nowadays of operating traditional targets and marking/scoring bullseye rings - their shooting is entirely on ETR silhouettes.)
Taking #2) the Bisley professional marker system, this is steadily moving towards non-viability. The number of people willing to undertake the job has been slowly shrinking for years, whilst the pay rates needed to attract them steadily increase in real terms. I don't know if marking standards have risen, slipped or whatever at Bisley recently but, large prestigious comps aside, the number of complaints from the paying customers (clubs arranging comps and individuals / groups hiring a lane or two) about value for money, poor performance and lack of booking capacity have increased a lot. With this model, competitor marking isn't an option - no paid marker available on a requested date, or his failing to turn up on the day = no booking or no shooting.
Our NRA was regularly on its financial uppers some years back and is now being much more efficiently run as a business with revenue from the Bisley campus being increased in numerous ways. Range capacity / availability are crucial to success. E-targets are really pretty essential to the business model as breakdowns aside range availability and hence revenue are no longer linked to marker numbers / day to day availability - particularly valuable for midweek bookings when many casual staff are at their day jobs or in school/college.
Range demand is rising too from both professional and recreational shooters. Encouraging this and increasing NRA membership is as important here to the future of shooting (and the NRA as an organisation) as it is in the US or anywhere else. It's moreover important too to the continued right to own firearms for target shooting in the UK - there are anti-gun ownership politicians, pressure groups and individuals who would love to see this type of shooting decline to the point where the government could remove target shooting as a 'good reason' for ownership in the firearms licensing system we have and remove access to our MoD ranges due to declining attendances. The Gun Control Network - a strange shadowy creepy organization that was at the height of its influence after the Dunblane massacre but is now discredited by everybody as a bunch of cranks except by the British Broadcasting Corporation and some other media/political outfits wanting anti-gun ownership quotes or spokespeople - gleefully predicted not too many years ago that keeping pressure up on the subject would see 'gun ownership wither on the vine' as the shooting sports were in terminal decline. How wrong they were and still are! So range capacity and ease of booking / use are key factors in gun ownership surviving at all here, never mind the success of say F-Class as a discipline.
I'm sure too that there are many covetous eyes on Bisley and some other sites - it's a huge area situated in the most heavily populated part of the UK, only 20 odd miles outside London, and with a motorway and major airport close by. If no longer required for shooting sports, the land has to be resold (at its original price!) to HM Government
The traditional competitor based system (#1) is also under pressure. In one sense, it can carry on indefinitely - and will for many disciplines at club level - but it limits range capacity for clubs seeing growth. My home club runs two combined TR/F meetings a month over 300 to 1,000 yards, and when I first shot F-Class, 20 entrants was a typical Sunday turnout, sometimes only half that number for Saturday fixtures. Today, 35-45 is the norm on either day and although we've increased firing point lengths and almost doubled the number of targets (10 targets in use = 25-30 shooters on the line), we're finding it increasingly difficult to run a day's shootings with a single relay either side of a lunch break. At 600 yards and shorter, competitors can access the range house before and after shooting, but for long-range comps people are stuck out on an exposed hillside sometimes in dreadful weather for lengthy periods waiting their turn to get on the points or having shot waiting maybe an hour or more as a second relay is sets up, shoots, and has rifles cleared / declared safe for people to walk forwards. We shoot all year round too and the northern English mid-winter day is short (often near dark by 3.45 pm) as a well as damp and miserable, so there are serious time and light constraints.
Clubs such as WARC at Blair Atholl and Huddersfield RC at Brockholes bought Kongsberg targets to increase capacity, their ranges being six and two targets respectively. This has transformed the situation at both, Blair now housing the annual Scottish RA Long Range Championships meeting instead of using the increasingly unsatisfactory military Barry Buddon Ranges on the Angus coast. Brockholes with only two lanes has increased range use and membership while comps that took all Sunday to shoot are finished by lunch making the range available to other shooters in the afternoon. This is the main reason why my club is looking at the SMT targets - five targets will let us run F comps with 50 or more entrants on a regular basis. The recent GB F-Class round saw a relay of 10 competitors take around 20 minutes, half that needed with manual marking.
On the technical standards side the main issue has been breakdowns with the closed chamber / rubber membrane models. Clubs bought them, had teething problems that were sorted, and then shot for several years with everyone delighted. Then ... the breakdowns started and confidence was severely shaken. Also, every poor shot (and at Blair getting a really poor shot is as easy as falling off the proverbial log) and competitors refuse to accept a 5 or V becoming a poor 2 or even way out 1 on its successor as a wind reading failure - it's those damned unreliable targets is the shout! Planned maintenance on a rigorous scientific / statistical basis as the NRA / Intarso are doing at Bisley is essential in my view - this is in the long term much more important than whether shots are reported to within a whatever number of millimetres standard.
On this aspect, I'll finish by one observation on the human v electronic reliability / accuracy issue that hasn't been given as much prominence in the thread as I'd expect on a US forum - small calibre holes, as in shooting 223 Rem. When back in 2010-12 I was the only UK national level FTR shooter using the 223 in long distance matches and doing reasonably well with it too, I lost count of the number of 'misses' I was given on manually marked targets as the face became heavily patched. Sometimes the hole was found on a second look but not always. My first important regional match where I shot the mouse gun was a 400/500/600 three-stage affair on a military range in a primarily sling shooting event. To save money, the organisers modified a set of standard 2-MOA targets with new centres, and only did one of each - so they became steadily more heavily patched to a ridiculous extent. My last shot in the 600 yard match on the last relay of the day was a 'Miss' which in the prevailing light winds and generally excellent no-mirage conditions I just couldn't believe short of in-flight bullet failure. Speaking to the marker whom I know well afterwards, he told me it was in the target and it was a good shot. As one of the most skilled markers I know, this lifelong TR competitor watches the sand backstop like a hawk for the bullet splash to know when to pull the target - he saw the splash and it was exactly where it should have been for a good shot - but despite the entire butts crew looking, no hole was found. In contrast, I never had the least worry in Blair Atholl GB rounds with e-targets - if I hit the target, it was at the very least marked.
I have a skill imposed delay regardless
