I believe Earl Liebetrau was the match director and he certainly is the one who drove the use of electronic targets. He is a hell of a guy and absolutely has been interested in feedback. I gave him the suggestion for a 7 second delay at Raton last year and was happy to see it implemented....well at least they attempted to implement it...gotta get the technical details fixed. Greg, you are one of the top shooters in the country and many of us want your input. Please DO contact Earl with your concerns, they certainly mirror mine. I know plenty of top shooters who are not enthralled with E-targets..as they are currently implemented. So, here's a suggestion: Get the problems fixed and stop dog piling on people when they express legitimate concerns or suggestions for improvement. As the current reigning F-TR champion in several states, I think Greg's opinion holds plenty of weight.
Most of the shooters I know simply want a competition that is conducted in a fair fashion that allows the best shooters to be identified. This thread has documented plenty of gaps that need to be addressed in that regard and my hope is the match directors are willing and ready to make the needed changes.
I don't know about that...I've enjoyed a modest amount of success, but that's a much different thing than competing in National level matches. Frankly, the use of e-targets is one of the major things that kept me from attending Nationals this year. I totally understand that e-targets are going to be the future at many venues, whether I or anyone like it or not. Further, I absolutely believe that the vast majority of hiccups that surfaced in their use during FCNCs at Lodi will be resolved.
This technology, by virtue of increasing match pace, can clearly allow venues with a much smaller total number of firing points to host large events such as FCNCs. However, when a large number of competitors combined with the use of e-targets at a smaller venue necessitates 6 (or more) relays, it lengthens the shooting day back to what it was the old way, or even longer, which seems somewhat counter-productive to me. It also increases the possibility that squadding in the context of significantly changing conditions during the course of a long day can potentially affect the outcome of the match.
This will likely need to be taken into consideration in the future and it may become necessary to squad shooters in a manner that may differ from how it has typically been done in the past. For example, in a 3 -day (individual) match with 6 total relays, one approach would be to have every shooter squadded once in each of the Relay 1/2, Relay 3/4, and Relay 5/6 groups, regardless of their scores or relative position on the match leaderboard. That way, everyone would have to shoot at fairly similar times during the day one time during the match, which seems about as fair to me as it can be made. That is certainly no guarantee that Relay 1/2 (for example) would have relatively benign conditions on all 3 days; we simply can't control that. However, in many venues the clear trend is for the wind conditions to generally pick up through the late afternoon. For someone that was primarily squadded in Relay3/4 and/or 5/6, that would generally be considered to be a disadvantage over the course of a typical match. Even though here may be matches with conditions that don't fit the average trend, over the long haul, if every shooter is squadded once (each) on an early, middle, and late relay, regardless of their position on the leaderboard, I think the chances that they will shoot in fairly comparable conditions over the course of the whole match will be improved. I can imagine that might not sit well with some people, but if the use of e-targets at large matches held at ranges with a limited number of firing points continues to require very long shooting days, I don't see any other way to do it.
Scott, can you PM me if you happen to have Earl's contact info? Forgive my ignorance, but I don't have his contact info.
