17 minute read
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!
Work-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
morning (- somewhat of a trend I have found, for our competition days) and I’m always sweating by the time I even get to the shooting centre as every time it seems to coincide with a searing weekend! Functioning as usual on a mix of caffeine, M&Ms and adrenaline, I signed in around 09:00 and we began prepping our equipment, donning our belt rigs, pistols and loading & gassing up magazines, as well as our individual shooter number cards.
With this competition, as with the tail end of last year, we had reduced numbers to around 20 shooters total following earlier competitions where two groups of that size had to be dealt with, so again we managed to fit everyone into one sitting so to speak, albeit still split into two squads to undertake medium stage 1 and short stages 2 and 3 in the now typical format of the morning half of the shoot, arranged in three bays along the length of the upstairs training room.
WALKING THE PLANK
Squad one,- with my team SPPT, and Team Spring Rain visiting from their training ground in central Taipei, as well as a handful of independent shooters, took on Stage 1 first. This was the longest of the first three stages; six papers, one with a no-shoot obstruction, five poppers, and the ending plate. Seventeen shots total, 85 points available, and starting in condition one, mag in and a BB chambered, on-safe but ready to rock on the draw!
All sounds simple enough right? James Zhou, who along with the centre owner and operator Chris Leung is responsible for hosting and planning the event, had warned me on our final practice session the Friday night before that none of the stages were particularly long range, but nonetheless were not easy by any measure. Always a foreboding omen… Stage 1 involved ‘walking the plank’ during any movement; with an inverted Y arrangement of quadruple laterally stacked wooden batons tie-wrapped together in composite planks end to end, and shooting had to be done from a stationary position anywhere along these, with procedural errors and penalties for every instance of the shooter’s feet touching the floor… this took me back to the old ‘shark infested custard’ command tasks of my cadet days, but with shooting and balance alongside a time constraint thrown in.
I started off fairly well, straddling the neck of the inverted Y and taking out the paper and twin poppers on the left quite slickly, then moving right with my fire taking out the central popper in the rear bay at the foot of the Y, and on to twin papers in the centre right, then having to crab shuffle my huge canoe feet carefully along the planks to get the twin poppers and single papers visible from the far right position, before cheesing it back the way I came and damn near falling into the rear bay to engage the rear right hand paper, and sweeping left to the final no-shoot obstructed paper and ending plate next to it. 17.36 seconds, 16 alphas, one charlie. Very happy with the marksmanship aspect of things, but I was just slow and shaky; I was admittedly, the first shooter called on to undertake it, so I guess I was showing people how not to do it as such? Sharp shooting, but slow moving, only 3 of the 21 shooters were slower than me. At least I shot well and didn’t get DQ’d, I guess!
THE HAND YOU’RE DEALT
Stage 3 was next for us, as the remaining members of squad 2 filtered through Stage 2 before moving to Stage 1 we’d just vacated. This was one of the typically fun and interesting creations of James & Chris; four papers, three no-shoot obstructions, two poppers, and the ending plate. Ten shots total, 50 points available, and starting in condition one with the shooter beginning seated at a table, gun stored within either the left or right bounding boxes taped onto the table, with a handful of playing cards taped together as a prop in hand, elbows off the table. When the starting buzzer goes, you angrily and indignantly throw your cards on the table (but don’t let them hit the floor, that’s a procedural error!) grab your gun and get to work, standing and moving into the stage if you so choose, I myself worked from the rear of the table given my height advantage.
To the left was a high paper target, a low paper target obstructed by a no-shoot, with two poppers on the floor in the middle rear of the stage, the left of which activated a left-right sliding non-disappearing target on a trolley, with a further low no-shoot obstructed paper on the right centre and a far right no-shoot which the moving target came to rest partially obstructed behind, should you miss it during transit. This one was a very rapid and enjoyable stage with many of the competitors jockeying for the most ridiculously rapid shootout time, with ‘Tom Lau the machine gun from Macau’ laying down everything
in a hair over 4 seconds! My own time was a more modest 6.32 seconds, but again all clean aside from a single Charlie, which was not on the moving target, strangely enough.. I really seem to drill A-Zones better when the targets are trying to run away, perhaps a holdover from all those years spent skirmishing! That felt fast at the time, but I was second from last overall on speed it seems; again, the competition is increasingly stiff especially with some people having a penchant for moving around divisions between competitions, or the attendees varying from time to time. I think I lucked out with an easy time last time somehow, or I just haven’t been putting in enough time to shave off the precious seconds with all my focus on chasing perfection in terms of tight groups and accuracy.
TAKE A KNEE!
Stage 2, shot third by us, was undoubtedly the slowest and worst performance of the day for me, as it was just deliberately awkward given my height and difficulty with my knees. Four papers, two with no-shoot obstructions, two poppers, and the ending plate; ten shots total, 50 points available, and starting in condition three. Starting on a wooden plate to the right centre of the bay, the shooter had to run rearwards and left to behind a table where their pistol was stowed inside a closed clamshell box; you had to retrieve and load it, as well as bust open twin swing open doors above this table to get sights on the targets in the main bay behind. However the noshoot obstructed swinging target on the mid-right of the main bay was activated by a dropping popper on the right outside of the bay within a short and narrow window, with a further popper and high paper target on the right of the main bay, but most awkwardly, a further front centre paper which was only “WHEN THE STARTING BUZZER GOES, YOU ANGRILY AND INDIGNANTLY THROW YOUR CARDS ON THE TABLE (BUT DON’T LET THEM HIT THE FLOOR, THAT’S A PROCEDURAL ERROR!) GRAB YOUR GUN AND GET TO WORK, STANDING AND MOVING INTO THE STAGE IF YOU SO CHOOSE, I MYSELF WORKED FROM THE REAR OF THE TABLE GIVEN MY HEIGHT ADVANTAGE.”
accessible by getting down and sighting under the table through a shooting window there, hence my snail pace getting on my knees and accurately letting off two rounds into this paper target before shooting the activator popper on the right outside, as well as the high paper at the rear right and standing up to clear everything in the main bay before swinging out right to get the ending plate! 14.04 seconds, 8 alphas, one charlie and one miss/ failure to neutralise; that happened to a few people on the left obscured popper and Tom even got a reshoot after a calibration shot. I should have piped up and asked for the same previously during my turn I suppose, but I hadn’t thought about it at the time as such; I guess I got JJ Racazza’d eh? 6th out of 9 production division shooters on this stage, not the slowest at least, and would have been higher on points if it wasn’t for the popper fail. Such is life.
With everyone cycled through the first three stages we took our customary midsession lunch break and went across the road for Italian food before chilling out with ice creams and energy drinks in the 7-11 nearby while the guys re-set the shooting centre for the fourth stage after lunch.
KILLING HOUSE
We returned after a good feeding feeling somewhat more at ease having digested both lunch and our performance and problems in the stages beforehand. The fourth and longest stage was the now typical monstrosity that filled the entire running floor of the shooting centre. For this competition it was a ‘killing house’ style multi-bay run-around with a rectangular ring of fault lines to run within, around the central main bays section, as well as cutting through in front of the separate rear bay at the far end.
Twelve papers, two with no-shoot obstructions, eight poppers, and the ending plate. Thirty two shots total, 160 points available, and starting in condition
one. The shooter began on a wooden plate outside the centre rear of the ring of fault lines, and had to step into the lines before firing, as well as informing the range officers whether they’re going clockwise or counterclockwise around the course to enable them to plan their movements accordingly.
I went immediately left before running the course counter-clockwise, with the dreaded prison bars covering twin paper targets in the front centre, as well as mirrored side bays left and right with high, noshoot obstructed medium and swinging papers, the latter being activated by poppers next to each. The trick being that some of these papers were accessible more closely by gaps in the barricades down either side, but more importantly diagonal poppers on each side that forced you to stop and at least engage them if not some of the papers, depending on the shooter’s choice.
The rear bay comprised two pairs of diagonally accessible papers on opposite corners, as well as four poppers in a line underneath a tent of barricades that were only accessible by once again taking a knee and shooting through a low port. After this the shooter had to return up the other side of the course and get that final diagonal popper and any papers they hadn’t already, as well as the end plate; I thankfully could get this from the side bay due to my longer reach, some had to run all the way back to the front bay to get eyes on it, so finally, my height and gangliness was useful again. Once again they called me up first to tackle this, so I set the mood I guess, 33.11 seconds felt fast at the time, but again I ended up sliding down the pack as everyone else got their attempts in; I did shoot fairly clean again, 24 alphas, 5 charlies, one miss (those damned prison bars getting in the way of my BBs!) and one no-shoot (those damned civilians getting in the way of my BBs!), but at least I made up for the no shoot with a further alpha as I saw my hit and realised I had to take a further shot to avoid additional miss penalties.
GONE SIDEWAYS!
So, with everyone cycling through the fourth stage we once again broke down the barricades and targets and they were rearranged to the fifth and final stage of the competition. Again this was to be a reasonably short stage, both in terms of physical shooting distance and the time spent on it, with the stage comprising parallel fault lines left to right to move
within, only allowing for sideways progression through the stage, with four large barricades at the front providing three separate shooting windows between them to engage the targets through before moving to the next, with some wide transitions required to ensure all targets hidden around the stage were engaged.
Nine papers, two with no-shoot obstructions, five poppers, and the ending plate. Twenty three shots total, 115 points available, and starting in condition three. The shooter began on a wooden plate in the centre rear of the fault lines, before choosing a direction to head whilst initially drawing and loading to minimise time and movement.
This was at least a relatively simple affair and my gangly arms and legs had no bearing on my performance as such thanks to the lack of physical obstacles and minimal movement during the shooting! 20.82 seconds, 11 alphas, 7 charlies, so a bit of a mixed bag in terms of shots on paper, but nothing terrible happened at least; my speed put me around a third from the bottom of the overall pack, and actually 4th out of the 9 in production division, my best performance of the day, having spent the other 5 stages in 2nd, 3rd or 4th from the bottom of my division.
With everyone wrapped up on that we broke down all the barricades and targets and tidied the place up ready for the finalisation of the results and their announcement. In the production division, the previous champion Zhou TingYu of Team Yamars ended up taking 3rd place, with Spring Rain’s ‘Bear’ Jan DengXiong taking second place having decided to run in our division this time instead of open (he had a bit of a bad reload in the first stage that scuppered and otherwise great run); he took champion in open last year, but running a stock Glock with production division 15 round magazines! The championship this round was secured by his Spring Rain teammate Zheng JiaHua who I’ve recently seen has been working on his fitness as well as his shooting a lot, judging by his social media feeds, so clearly his hard work has clearly paid off! I should probably follow suit…
Standard division saw our own Dan DingXuan of SPPT take 3rd place, with recent newcomer from Hong Kong Cheng JiXiu taking second place and Tsai YuQi of Team Yamars taking the championship; a sterling performance from them all and some very fast shooting in their division indeed. Du HsinPin, also of Team Yamars, once again flew the flag for fast shooters of the fairer sex adeptly, taking ladies standard champion.
Finally for open division; our own team leader ‘Mars’ Liu HanLin took 3rd place, Team Yamars’ ‘Jacky’ Hou BoXian took 2nd place, while ‘Tom’ Lau JiaYu took the championship spot; I’ve nicknamed him “the machine gun from Macau” as a result of his ridiculous trigger speed that makes it sound like he’s running full auto! He at least has youth on his side and remains fast on his feet; an excellent performance and that reshoot was clearly justifiable and ensured his deserved success!
Congratulations once again to all the champions and runners up from each division, and many thanks as always to the excellent and good natured range officer team from Taiwan Practical Shooting Association who always keep things moving forward safely, effectively and in a well humoured manner. Now I guess I need to take the time to finally detail strip, clean out, refinish and re-assemble my muchabused KJWorks CZ75 Shadow 2 and install all the goodies Clarence Lai of CLPD has gifted me to try out; maybe a fresh look for that, and the apparently pending new SPPT team uniforms, will encourage me to get my backside in a higher gear again! All that of course will be the subject of maintenance videos and photos as well as no doubt a RELOADED article about the upgrades made available by Clarence following my feedback and gripes about the stock Shadow 2.
Until next time, fellow shooters! AA
