I shot the Rangemaster (Memphis) Polite Society match in August and the Rangemaster Tactical Conference the previous February which was kind of a kickoff for the Polite Society. I have also shot some Tactical stages at Steel City as Ron Holland develops a P.S. program at Steel City, Birmingham. Marty Hayes is running them in Seattle; I don't know who all else.
Polite Society shooting is not IDPA (or IPSC) it just uses some IDPA procedures for convenient administration . It has fewer rules, but those are strict.
The three second rule applies like so:
You may only expose yourself from behind cover to Threat targets for a maximum of three seconds at a time. You should still make proper use of cover and not expose any more of yourself than necessary to engage the threat. You may have as many exposures of three seconds or less as you need to neutralize all the threat targets. You will be scored your actual exposure time from the restart buzzer to your last shot if under three seconds. You may take a peek from behind cover to locate threats without firing, but will be charged three seconds. You may not reappear at the same location twice in a row. You score the total time for all exposures, of course. You gotta be quick to get more than one threat per three second exposure.
If you are on the move, the three second limit does not apply, go as far as you can as long as you are shooting all the way. But the clock is running. In most stages you can move from cover to cover without shooting but will be charged three seconds.
A target un-neutralized or a exposure over three seconds gets you a ten second "failure to live" penalty. Hitting a Non-threat draws a twenty second penalty.
Except in Standards, reloads behind cover are off the clock.
My and others's description of that August match are at
http://www.1911forum.com/forums/sho...id=24862&highlight=Polite+Society+Rangemaster
Steel City is holding a Polite Society Match on February 8, 2003, two weeks before the one at Rangemaster.
Official match notices for those are at:
http://www.scssa.org/idpa/polite_society.htm
http://www.rangemaster.com