EVENT ACTION AIR TAIWAN
THE HAND YOU’RE DEALT!
ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER CHALLENGE! 2022 IS ALREADY… A COMPLICATED YEAR THUS FAR, FOR MANY PEOPLE AND FOR MANY REASONS. FOR STEWBACCA IT’S ALREADY OFF TO A VERY BUSY START IN TERMS OF A MENAGERIE OF SPINNING PLATES OF INTERESTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES, TRYING HIS BEST TO MAKE TIME FOR ALL THE THINGS HE WANTS TO DO AND ALL THOSE HE HAS TO!
W
ork-work has been throwing some curveballs at me to juggle and I’m just churning through my final contract before I can apply for permanent residency here in Taiwan and be less beholden to my present day job and more capable of spending time on the stuff I enjoy doing, namely designing, testing and writing about airsoft guns and accessories, and training in competitive shooting to put my skill sets to use. So having made those excuses for my own lacklustre performance compared to my overall second place last year… how was the first Shooting Centre Shooting Cup of this year? As with last year we will have three competitions on home turf that my team, Setup Practical Project Team, and Team Yamars, share our training ground in West Taipei, with separate prizes for each individual competition heat, and an overall score aggregated from the heats combined, with further heats planned for August and November time as per last year. In terms of my own training I’d had an entire month of missed sessions due to short term private lessons running late into the evenings; Chinese New Year shutdowns and design work during my Tuesdays
off eat into my training times in general, all of which means I tend to only make Friday sessions to practise stages without focusing on the speed and accuracy drill training we usually cover on Tuesday sessions. So, going into the competition I felt somewhat underprepared and didn’t ‘snap into it’ like last time where I heard the buzzer and went ‘man possessed’ with the high speed target drilling of targets. Nonetheless, it’s all a great learning experience, and many of my compatriots from my own team and others had similar feelings of lacking in their skills or performances, with some just having bad days or situational things like equipment failures or fumbling reloads which ate into otherwise excellent stage times and runs. Regardless of my malaise and others, we all seemed to be getting back into the swing of things after a somewhat dire year in 2021 due to COVID cancellations of one of the three heats, as well as the Penghu island shoot and other competitions elsewhere in Taiwan. Indeed it seems as of late the Shooting Centre Cup has been the only game in town! All that said, on Sunday March the 13th we all rose fairly early into a very bright and sunny
“IN TERMS OF MY OWN TRAINING I’D HAD AN ENTIRE MONTH OF MISSED SESSIONS DUE TO SHORT TERM PRIVATE LESSONS RUNNING LATE INTO THE EVENINGS; CHINESE NEW YEAR SHUTDOWNS AND DESIGN WORK DURING MY TUESDAYS OFF EAT INTO MY TRAINING TIMES IN GENERAL” 86
MAY 2022
