indoor action pistol

[another okie]

I shoot in a bullseye league. Next week is the last week for a while, and some of the shooters asked me to set up some IDPA / IPSC style stages to show them what it's like. I would welcome some suggestions that would be practical.

There are no range props, just eight lanes with motorized targets and large cardboard backers. I do have a box of IDPA cardboard targets and another box of USPSA paper targets I use for practice, so I can use those.

I need to avoid sharp shooting angles, either sideways or up and down, and probably need to keep the round count down to 18 or less.

 

[HSMITH]

I shoot a winter set of indoor USPSA 'style' matches. Just set up some basic stages with target stands and shooting boxes. What the local guys do is put out 10-15 papers and a few steel poppers. The whole array of all targets is the field course and then one or two banks of targets will be used as a short course, then the other bank or two of targets as another short course. Think 'left side is stage two, right side is stage three. Three 'stages' with one set-up. You can move things around pretty quickly and do it again for a 6 stage 'match' pretty easily.

BEWARE of steel targets indoors, the splatter will follow walls, cieling and floors back toward you. Keep the shooters and spectators toward the center of the bay when a steel target is being shot. GOOD eye protection is MANDATORY, and long sleeve shirts should be encouraged.

 

[motorep]

Indoor range floors can be very slippery, check before you've got people losing their footing while moving between shooting positions. As far as props go, simple vision barriers work well indoors, the only limit is your imagination.

 

[frankt]

We shoot an indoor IDPA type match every week. We use homemade wood target stands and IDPA targets,threat and no shoot.

Yes, we limit to 18 rounds and everything has to be shot downrange only. Muzzle control is extremely important.

We have three plastic trash cans that we use for kneeling behind. We also have a light weight Bianchi barricade. We use a trash can with a board on it for a desk sometimes. We also hang black plastic from the target cables,with clothes pins,to make corridors or we hang them cross ways and cut windows in them.

We do box drills and Bill drills,El presidentes and shoot while advancing or retreating. We do stages weak hand only or low light with flashlights.



You will be surprised at what you can come up with. Just stress safety,over and over.

 

[bofe954]

I shot in an indoor league briefly. They would hang snow fence (you could use plastic tarps, whatever) from the ceiling to make walls. They'd use sand filled bukets to anchor the corners of the tarp to the floor or to help create turns.

You would typically start facing downrange on the left side of the bay. In front of you would be a "wall". You would run to the right to get beyond the wall and targets would be in lanes created by other fake walls. They would have 3-4 targets per lane to increase round count.

They never utilized the ranges target hangers. They always used stands.

There ended up being a lot of debate about how clean the air was because we were essentially standing halfway down range of where the range was designed to have shooters stand.

 

[flip]

ask the shooters that are interested; who runs the local IDPA/USPSA matches. talk to that person about what you are interested in doing. there are some specific things that you need to be aware of indoors as compared to outdoors.
1 outdoors you have the 180 degree rule. indoors it is much narrower due to lack of a safe back stop. also you cannot point the gun as high as you could indoors due low ceilings that are usually indoors.
2 floors usually get very slippery indoors ( think was mentioned in a previous post). this represents a real saftey concern if you are running with a loaded weapon and slip with your finger in the trigger guard.
3 if people shoot lead, range gets very smokey quickly
4 having a qulified RO on hand to keep everyone safe.

these are just a few of the things that come to mind off the top of my head. i am not sure if you shoot USPSA/IDPA, but you may want to give it a try to see what is expected of you (this might also be the place where you can talk to the person that runs the matches). if there is a place that holds indoor matches all the more better.

flip

 

[Navy joe]

I shoot IDPA at a pretty organized indoor club. You need to get some portable bullet traps made. Theirs are 2x8 frames on casters supporting a steel box with a thick rubber cover and filled with tire chips. Of course, that is a long range plan, hard to make in a week. You can do movers using the lane controls. With some extra cable and a few cheap pulleys you can rig a mover that traverses the entire backstop. Tarps hung from the cables with binder clips will make good vision barriers. You can run an El Pres really easy, or do a multi-string standard.

A good standard one is draw and fire one at 3 yds, draw and fire 2 at 5, draw and fire 2 body 1 head at 7. Easy to set(1 target), easy to understand, puts a fair amount of time pressure down on new shooters not used to that buzzer.

 

[another okie]

Some good suggestions. I would not have thought of the slippery floor. I also like the reminder that the 180 needs to be narrower.

I am a safety officer for IDPA and also am ranked in two classes for IPSC, so I'm experienced at both of those. This is a one-time thing, so I'll probably use a little of both types. A regular indoor action pistol league might be possible, though that had never occurred to me. The closest clubs are all IPSC, so I want to show these bulls-eye shooters how much fun IPSC type shooting is and encourage them to go to the local matches.