Practical Pistol @ Ballymena

Bananaman

I was at a Practical Pistol shoot in Ballymena Rifle and Pistol Club today.

I'd like to say thanks to everyone from the Ballymena Club who put on a great event.

A very interesting and challenging competition. Six stages with paper and steel targets, moving targets, partial targets. Standing, kneeling and seated shooting. Two handed and both strong and weak hand only shooting.

The minimum rounds was ~150 but I think everyone used ~200.
The stages put the manners on everyone and I doubt if anyone went home without at least one miss - I know I had at least four.


One of the more interesting stages was where you had to continually press one of the three buttons on the stage to reset a 6 second timer on exposing targets.
If the timer ran down, all targets turned edge on and you had to go to one of the buttons and press it to expose the targets again and reset the timer. None of the buttons were reachable from any of the available shooting positions.

There were at least six or eight rounds required from each shooting position allowing for 6 seonds for you to move between positions, possibly reload and engage between 3 and 4 targets with a minimum of 2 rounds each. Truly challenging.

If you timed it right you pressed the button between shooting positions, engaged all targets available from that position and presses the next button while moving to the next shooting position. However, if you timed your moves wrong, or timed your reloads wrong you ended up at a shooting position and all targets were edge on.

Well done to Ballymena and I look forward to future shoots.

B'Man

Sparks

Is the ballymena club related to the East Antrim Rifle and Pistol Club at all?

Bananaman

Sparks,

I don't know. There are a good few Pistol and Rifle Clubs in Antrim.

I've shot Practical Pistol in both Ballymena RPC and Kells RPC in Antrim.

Both fantastic facilities. Very hospitable clubs.

B'Man

Sounds like a good day was had by all!

B'Man, do you have any photos of the event that you could post?

Bananaman

I didn't have a camera with me but I'm sure we'll get some in due course.

Kareir

This may be a silly question, but what exactly is Practical Pistol?
I've heard it's a pistol-assault course style thing?

Thanks a lot,
_Kar.

Bananaman

Kareir,

Think about it for a second and ask yourself - Does that not sound like a stupid description of a sport? How could we ever afford to get Bruce Willis and Arnie to come over and give us instruction.

Back to reality for a second.

Practical Pistol is a form of what is known as Dynamic Shooting where the competitor may be required to engage targets from more than one position during the detail. The targets themselves may also be moving.

The IPSC (International Practical Shooting Confederation) and it's Irish regional body IPSA (Irish Practical Shooting Association) govern the sport.

The competitors target score is divided by the time it took them to complete the detail to get their overall score or "Hit Factor". This means you not only need to be accurate but also fast. There are a number of divisions which cater for all of the huge range of pistols available worldwide today. 9mm is the smallest calibre allowed in this sport. This all leads to the IPSC motto: DVC - Diligentia, Vis, Celeritas (Accuracy, Power, Speed).

Safety is the primary focus of the rules of this class of competition so to partake in this sport in Ireland you must be trained in the safety aspects and pass a number of tests to get your "competition license". You need to compete on a regular basis to keep this license. If it lapses you are required to do it again.

This year Ireland achieved the status of "Most Improved Nation" in the world of Practical Pistol.

You can get full information at:

http://www.ipscireland.org
http://www.ipsc.org

B'Man

Kareir

It does indeed, B'man.

I was following wikipedia:
"Practical shooting is a sport which challenges an individual's ability to shoot rapidly and accurately with a full power handgun, rifle, and/or shotgun. To do this, shooters take on obstacle-laden shooting courses"

In retrospect, i'm unsure whether Practical Shooting = Practical Pistol.

_Kar.

Bananaman

That wikipedia explanation is correct.
It does not, however, insinuate that anyone is "assaulting" anything.

Practical Pistol is a subset of Practical Shooting.

In Ireland, to date, there has only been competition in Practical Pistol.

I'm sure, in the fullness of time, we will see the other practical shooting disciplines competed in here in Ireland also.

B'Man

Bananaman

It should be noted that there is a distinction between IPSC and IPDA shooting.

IPDA is a form of competion competed in the United States. As you would expect, they have slightly different rules to the rest of the world.

IPSC defines the rules under which Practical Pistol operates.

I only say this as IPDA gets many hits when you search for "Practical Shooting"

B'Man

Kareir

Thanks for that.
i used the word "assault" in place of "obstacle" as i've always heard an obstacle course called an assault course and vise versa.
And yes, "Assault" does insinuate attacking, probably not the best image to protray for a sport that requires 9mm Handguns, with Ireland the way it is.


_Kar.