ISSF Equipment Control

Cass

Mod Note: Split out from the 2012 ISSF European 10m Airgun Championships thread to keep that one on-topic

Sparks wrote: »

..........having gotten through Equipment Control (Paul had some small issue with his belt, but that passed after a bit of trimming); ..........

Seen that being done a couple of times. I used to complain about having to weigh the rifle for an FTR shoot, but when LC showed me the testing for the jacket, trousers, etc. Well i complain no more.

Will they get in an practice before the weekend or are they "happy" to rest up?

Sparks

Ezridax wrote: »

Seen that being done a couple of times. I used to complain about having to weigh the rifle for an FTR shoot, but when LC showed me the testing for the jacket, trousers, etc. Well i complain no more.

It can be a right pain, but there are some timesavers - there's a specific template to test the rifle dimensions which cuts that test down from five minutes to about 20 seconds; and once your kit passes EC in an ISSF-organised match, you get permanently-attached tags that then usually act as a wave-through for other matches.
But yeah, EC can be a right pain

It wasn't me!

I thought EC tags were good for the current Olympic cycle only?

Sparks

It wasn't me! wrote: »

I thought EC tags were good for the current Olympic cycle only?

Pretty much, but at smaller matches the view is generally that if they passed at a World Cup or similar event, then they're good. By the time the tag's invalid anyway, the jackets and trousers and so on will have gotten far less stiff as they break in (the serious competitors on the international circuit would be going through a new suit every two to three years with the canvas suits - not sure how long the synthetics last, though I'd say longer, that was a much-cited selling point for some of them so if the ISSF don't ban them in the new post-2012 rules, the market may change in interesting ways...)

Sparks

Sparks wrote: »

But yeah, EC can be a right pain

Took me a while to find it, but here's the queue from just a Junior international match (this is in Bisley in 2005):



And if you think it wouldn't be fun to be in that queue, you should try being the poor git who got tapped on the shoulder and drafted in to help run EC that day!



Poor bastard

It wasn't me!

Still hoping to get mine tagged this year, so would mean getting it redone next year I guess.

Sparks

It would for any of the World Cup series or that level of match, but for things like Intershoot, or that level of match in smallbore, odds are that they'd just glance at the tag and wave you through; unless of course, the post-2012 rule changes are absolutely enormous.

Cass

Sparks wrote: »

Poor bastard

Sucker ...................

When asked "Are you busy" the immediate response is "HELL YES". Then run.:D

Sparks

It's not like I didn't try Ezri, but a certain coach was standing there grinning and shoving me forward, the bastard

Cass

Like the films you see where one lad in a queue is not paying attention when someone asks for a volunteer, and everyone else steps back.:)

The first time i seen the rig was at the midlands. Was looking at this table for ages wondering why the had a "shelf" so close to the actual table top.

Eventually curisoity got the better of me, and i asked. Think it was IRLconor, It wasn't me that showed me what it was. Then LC done a trial run for me.

Never realised why they were so fussy about the "rigidness" of the suit then Sean let my try. I can see now how a "stiff" jacket can almost hold your position for you. I presume thats what the testing is to prevent.

If you haven't already guessed i have less than no clue about the specifics of the shooting hence all the questions.

Sparks

Ezridax wrote: »

Like the films you see where one lad in a queue is not paying attention when someone asks for a volunteer, and everyone else steps back.:)

It was more like that joke about the two lads trying to outrun the lion and one shooting the other in the foot

Never realised why they were so fussy about the "rigidness" of the suit then Sean let my try. I can see now how a "stiff" jacket can almost hold your position for you. I presume thats what the testing is to prevent.

Exactly. The suit is needed to prevent chronic injuries by distributing the weight of the rifles across the body and stabilising the hips so that they don't swing too far too fast, tearing muscles; but at the same time, you can't have a suit that's too stiff or it wouldn't be a competitive sport, it'd be competitive tailoring

Just for reference for the non-ISSF shooters, the normal NRA high-power jackets or the creedmoor jackets or any of the fullbore jackets used for shooting off a sling, would fail the ISSF tests because they're too stiff and have too many fasteners and are too tight (the ISSF jackets must be loose-fitting and there are rules and tests to determine how loose is loose enough).

And people do occasionally try it on - you had some chinese shooters being spotted in EC a few years back having blowtorches played across the knees of their trousers, being bodily lifted up and into them for the EC tests (which involved having to sit down on a chair with the trousers all done up and closed to test for flexibility - which the blowtorching allowed because canvas gets more flexible with increased temperature), and then being bodily hauled out of them and having icepacks applied to their knees immediately afterwards. Those, and similar incidents at two or three matches, led to large changes in the testing procedures and some changes in the rules; those changes are still being worked out, but it's a constant debate to find the right balance point between supporting enough to prevent injury and not supporting too much so that the shooter gains an unfair advantage.

Cass

Sparks wrote: »

.............having blowtorches played across the knees of their trousers, being bodily lifted up and into them for the EC tests (which involved having to sit down on a chair with the trousers all done up and closed to test for flexibility - which the blowtorching allowed because canvas gets more flexible with increased temperature), and then being bodily hauled out of them and having icepacks applied to their knees immediately afterwards............

Holy crap.

So it'd be like a full body cast? Perfect posture, repeatability, etc with little "effort" by the shooter him/herself?

Sparks

Not quite that extreme - and in the blowtorch case, it would have just meant more support to the legs and hips - but that's the general idea. It's just over the border into cheating and it got stomped on pretty hard pretty quickly.

There was an actual bodyshell cheat as well - there's a rubberised pad on the seat of the trousers - the idea is that in kneeling, it gives your heel a bit of grip on the trousers instead of sliding around on the canvas - and one manufacturer in particular had built up that pad and cut it in such a way that it flared out away from your behind, providing a kind of shelf that the jacket would then catch on when you leaned backwards to take the weight of the rifle - thus giving you a bodyshell from shoulders to heels, especially if the canvas was stiff. That's been stomped on as well, but it does show why the rulebook for ISSF is a bit over an inch thick. With the amount of money and national pride riding on the World Cups and Olympics and the like, you have to keep an eye on the rules, the tests, the folk who try to walk right up to the line drawn by those rules and tests, and review things on a continual basis because the pressure on them to push just that bit too much is rather high - for example, one international shooter I know of missed a medal in an international match a few years ago because he caught a cold a few days before the match and while he made it to the finals while sick as a dog, he didn't medal. That cost him the guts of €20,000 in grants in his home country, which was about the national average wage for his country at the time...

Mind you, the ISSF have gone a bit far of late by changing the rules extensively mid-Olympic-cycle, in my opinion - right now you have some folks qualifying for the games under the old rules and some under the new and that's just broken.

Cass

Jesus.

Makes the rules for fullbore (F-Class) look "lax".:)

I mean other than rules on bipods, weight, and the back bag plus a few about how they can and cannot operate there isn't really that much in it.

One thing i did like was the butt hooks. Asked the lads how they hold such a heavy rifle up for so long. They gave me a rifle with no butt hook. It got heavy quick enough. Then they attached the butt hook. Instead of holding up the rifle it immensely helped in the hold by making the "holding" arm act like a fulcrum.

Sparks

Thing is though - you're still holding up that rifle. You're standing there, no support, the rifle's only in contact with you. So what the hook does is not so much let you hold it, so much as reduce the amount of torque it puts on your trigger hand.

It's logically the same as allowing a rifle shooter to keep the buttplate in their shoulder when shooting instead of having them hold the rifle out away from them like a pistol...



...which frankly would be silly, dangerous and wouldn't tell you very much about someone's sporting abilities!

Cass

Sparks wrote: »

So what the hook does is not so much let you hold it, so much as reduce the amount of torque it puts on your trigger hand.!

Sorry, my point exactly, just better explained.

I still was upporting the rifle, and the weight. As you said though it "freed up" my trigger hand.