15 minute read
ACTION AIR: TAIWAN LEVEL 1
TESTING METTLE, WINNING MEDALS!
“C19... HIT! YOU SUNK MY BATTLESHIP!! ...ALONG WITH OUR HOPES AND DREAMS”, AN EPITHET NO DOUBT EVERYONE CAN RELATE TO AS OF LATE, AND DESPITE TAIWAN BEING POSSIBLY THE LEAST AFFECTED LITTLE ISLAND NATION AMONG ALL OF THIS MESS, STEWBACCA AND HIS FELLOW SHOOTERS NONETHELESS WERE EVENTUALLY HIT BY SEMI-STRICT LOCKDOWNS DUE TO LOCAL SPREAD OF THE BLIGHT. BUT EVENTUALLY THERE WAS LIGHT, AND PERFORMANCES TO BE INSPIRED BY!
As a result of the almost-inevitable restrictions my fellow shooters and I in Taiwan lost out on a number of competitions, and had to put training on hiatus, albeit only for a few months compared to everyone else’s no doubt longer suffering. As a result the second Shooting Centre Shooters Cup which was intended for July/ August was cancelled, as was the PengHu islands competition; thankfully I managed to salvage a getaway trip from that anyway and covered PengHu Arms Factory while I was on the islands, right before lockdown back in mid May 2021.
With all this considered, despite getting off relatively lightly here, there were still casualties beyond the lost time; it would appear that the largest Northern IPSC team, Taipei Focus Action Shooters or TFAS that are usually based in Action Bunker have, at least for the foreseeable future, ceased training as a result of the closures and the impact upon their classes due to having greater
numbers. Thankfully, at least, some of their members have broken away to form smaller individual squads in the aftermath of such a serious hit to the local shooting community.
Team Yamars emerged and began training in the shooting centre our own team SPPT calls home, on the other nights of the week when our team isn’t training there. This no doubt has been good for Chris and James and the centre itself having also been hit by closures and lost revenue and training; it’s good to see them joining us training there, as once again we keep building that longer table.
Despite a few months away from running and gunning, the cancellations of competitions seems to have at least given individual competitors and teams the time to focus on honing their skills and cut their teeth while they awaited things to take off once again. Clearly the smaller group attending this time had been sharpening their skills and some of the shooters and their capabilities observed were outstanding, with many sounding like they were running burst fire guns on some of the stages!
I am, thankfully, also glad to have had a shift in circumstances this academic year; having transferred to a Linkou branch of my cram school, which is closer to both my home on the West side of Taipei, as well as the shooting centre, thus allowing me to recommence training on Friday nights (albeit it arriving a little late and just in time for stage practise) and this really seems to have helped my skills on live paper and popper stages rather than just drilling on steel targets which tends to be our Tuesday night remit.
Clearly this uptake in attendance and doubling of time behind a pistol every week has paid off, given the apparent improvements and results, although it has added to my workload in terms of video editing, although I now await yet another replacement GoPro and unfortunately only have third person footage of my own stages for this competition.
COMP READY
So it was, on Sunday the 21st of November the twenty competitors, half of the normal amount of attendees, which illustrates how hard we actually were hit, assembled at the Shooting Centre in Sanchong and began our preparations for a five stage level 1 TPSA IPSC competition. As per usual we had three short to mid-length stages laid out by Chris and James alongside each other, and along the length of the training room for the morning section. Having only half the previous number of shooters at least made logistics a little easier; all of us would do Stage 1 first and get it out of the way… literally allowing us to clear the barriers and targets out from the entrance end of the room and make more space for queuing and planning the second and third short stages.
Stage 1 comprised a Condition One start, and a maximum score of 110 points; seven paper targets,
two with no shoot obstructions, eight poppers and the ending plate, all distributed across three bays in a trident formation similar to the previous competition’s first stage, but this time it was shorter front to back, and there was just the one pull toggle activator which dropped a single blind obstructing the ending plate on the right bay, as well as partially obstructing the paper target beneath it when released.
Shooters had to plan around either engaging that target first, and then returning to the toggle to release the blind and reveal the ending plate above, or pull it from the get go and risk a lower score on the paper or have to take a knee to get eyes on the A-Zone. The vast majority of shooters elected for the latter option, given the reduced movement it required, myself included, although I had to get down and low from my usual shooting position as a result. The only takeaway was one of the ROs taking me to one side to caution me on my muzzle sweep as I got very close to the ‘180’ as I moved to the right, but managed to avoid a DQ thankfully, my arms are long, and the fault lines are tight for my big feet at times… I do what I can with what I have and try to remain as safe as possible, but always bear these things in mind.
I felt really good about my performance on this stage… I was running and gunning like a man possessed and barely missed a beat, stringing pretty seamlessly across popper transitions in each bay and managed to almost shoot it clean with the exception of a single C hit… ironically on the closest and least obstructed target! Nonetheless, I was very happy by my speed, movement and marksmanship, given my past trend of totally screwing the pooch on the first stage; perhaps waking up earlier than necessary and drinking that coffee helped! 17:77 seconds, 22 Alphas, 1 Charlie. A suspiciously good start!
Next up we split into two squads of ten each and alternated on Stages 2 and 3. Our squad took to Stage 2 first; for once I went through all the stages in
number order, and this was a short stage comprising a Condition Two start, with a max score of 50 points; only 5 paper targets and the ending plate, with no poppers or no-shoots. Sounds easy? The catch was that these five targets were distributed behind the dreaded wall of narrow windows that messed up my Stage 3 start last competition, with all the squatting and searching through windows to find targets. At least this time the targets had no further obstructions behind the wall itself, but there were prison bars at an angle and some hard cover panels in front of the wall.
I managed to shoot this stage effectively clean although with the fourth slowest time of 16.74; however my marksmanship made up for the time spent with all alphas on 11 shots, but I had to reload and do some make up shots to do this with a lot of squatting and crab shuffling, lifting and weaving to find all the target presentations through the narrow ports in the wall. For once I seemed to have managed to stick largely to my stage plan and not totally screw things up! I saw a lot of fellow competitors hitting the bars and portal frames, even missing the ending plate and not realising at first, which obviously added greatly to their times as they then had to re-engage to finish for score. Again, I was surprised at how well this went for me, albeit some of the engagements and movements could have been less sloppy, but it seems we were all struggling with it, and damn, my knees and back and such!
On to Stage 3! Another fun first outing of the moving targets for the day; this was a fairly simple stage in theory, but lots of us struggled with the uncomfortable shooting positions at either side of the cover in front of the desk we started behind. This was just 4 paper targets, 2 stationery no shoots, 2 poppers (one each side of the bay at the far rear down little corridors created by the cover panels), and the ending plate. The trick being that all four of the paper targets were on a single swinging bar in top and bottom staggered pairs, swinging behind the stationary no shoots, with the activator being a toggle hanging above the start table where our Condition 3 beginning comprised the empty pistol and first magazine set on the table outside two boundary lines. Most players loaded and made ready on the start buzzer, went to the left and took out the lone popper there, then yanked the activator on the way to the right side before drilling the popper there and the four moving targets.
Thankfully it seemed like most people managed to avoid the no shoot targets, although there were many people being lambasted with ‘are you playing
wargames?’ for their peppering of the targets in a panic! Personally I split the difference on this, with a relatively slow time of 14.66 (only four were slower than me) and I got 5 Alphas, 5 Charlies and 1 Delta, with some flurried shots and a bad stage plan that saw me attempting to get the left pair of swinging papers around the left side of the stage; most others just shot everything from the right and a more comfortable position. A lesson in listening to your squad leaders.
With that we broke for a long lunch and the stages were reset while we took some time to reflect, relax and refuel; once again it was a surprisingly hot day for ‘winter’ in Taiwan, and despite threats of ‘Arctic’ temperature drops it was 28 degrees outside... so we ended up feeling overly full and sluggish over lunch!
ONWARDS, EVER ONWARDS!
Back at it and for a change we had two long stages after lunch. With fewer competitors Chris and James had managed to plan a quick switch around between stages 4 and 5, recycling some of the target presentations rapidly to allow us to squeeze in an extra stage at the end. Stage 4 was a symmetrical stage with two front bays either side of a corridor with a Y shaped split at the far end that had three papers either side, the ending plate in the middle, and a single popper beneath this that was largely obstructed from the starting point midway along the corridor. It was also the activator for two of the targets at the far end; these were non-disappearing swinging papers on the outside edges of the two forks of the Y shape. 12 paper targets - 4 with no shoot obstructions in the front bays, 7 poppers and the end plate.
Luckily I have the height advantage, so from a Condition 2 start I racked a round and sent it straight to the activator popper I could just see the top of from the start point, that meant the swingers had all the time I was spending dealing with the front left and right bays to slow down and become easier targets. Again I was making a start to the afternoon like a man on fire again, running, drilling targets, speed reloading and making good shots in a near frenzied manner. 36 seconds dead, 24 alphas, 8 charlies. Pretty happy with that, six people slower and only three players managed to beat my number of alphas, and some of those lost out with more deltas on the longer or no-shoot obstructed targets.
With all of us finished up on this one there was a brief break as the final stage was organised. Stage 5 was a no-shoot heavy, long range, minimal movement affair, with the shooter very much ‘on rails’ and limited to lateral movement to the left and right shooting points and the central corridor. We started in Condition 2, facing the crowd and having to psyche ourselves up by yelling ‘I wanna hit ten (targets)’ in Chinese before the buzzer was pressed! Most turned and went left first, focusing on the targets there before sweeping the two no-shoot obstructed left and right targets in the small corridor and finishing up on the right. I decided to do things my own way, turning and immediately drilling the right of the two close targets, shifting my weight right and hitting the left target, then taking out the left furthest target through the corridor, and moving right to get the four targets on that side, then finishing on the left. 22.74 seconds, 16 Alphas, 5 Charlies… and two no-shoots I literally just clipped on the outer edges with both rounds not even breaking the outermost perforated Delta zone edge.
Sad times; I managed to drill out the A-hole right next to one of them, but again I shouldn’t play it so risky on such long shots! Nonetheless I was exceptionally happy with my performance, no failures to engage or neutralise this time, and a much smoother experience overall. The increased practise and longer break since our last competition seem to have helped a lot.
TEA AND MEDALS!
With all that done we broke down the stages and tidied up as the ROs processed the final scores ready for the presentation. Clarence Lai and his wife Katherine had also decided to come along and get involved with the local community once again, having just visited the grand opening of VFC’s new IDPA shooting club at their Pentagon Service Centre just down the road in Xinzhuang, a few MRT stops South.
Clarence was introducing himself and some of his latest products and efforts, as well as raffling off an array of his custom springs, feed lips, new APlus collaboration hop rubbers and even one each of his gun stands and standard division test boxes. I’d also like to thank Clarence for letting me try out some of
his products in my Shadow 2, which no doubt helped me along recently and I look forward to seeing and testing more of his components soon!
So, the results! There were presentations for the stages done on the day, as well as one for overall results from the year’s shooting centre cup; there were originally intended to be three aggregated competitions, but in the end only two could be held. For the day’s stages, the Open Division had seven competitors, with Bear Jan (leader of team Spring Rain) taking first place, and well deserved judging by his burn downs on some of the stages. Jacky Hou of Team Yamars took second and our own Rex Chen of SPPT took third. Standard Division had five shooters, with Cai YuQi of Team Yamars taking first place, Lai YuChen of Spring Rain taking second and our own Dan DingXuan of SPPT taking third.
And for the production division, I managed to climb two places! Out of another round of eight shooters I suddenly placed second overall, beaten to the punch by Zhou Tingyu of Team Yamars, and followed very closely in third by Huang TianYu, also of Team Yamars. Much to my surprise, I assure you, judging by the level of play from everyone I was a little shocked I had set myself that far ahead.
Overall for the year; Production Division third place was taken by Jack Pu of Spring Rain, I once again took 2nd place overall, and was once again beaten to first by Zhou TingYu of Team Yamars. For the Standard Division, Dan DingXuan of SPPT once again took third, Lai YuChen of Spring Rain took second, and Cai YuQi of Team Yamars took first place, in the open division our own Rex Chen took third place, Jacky Hou of Team Yamars took second, and again Bear Jan of Spring Rain took first place.
Everyone as usual showed excellent sportsmanship and support for each other, and particularly me, always being welcoming despite the continuing language barriers at some times but we’re all working on that, and other more far reaching plans! I’d like to once again thank the RO’s for doing a sterling job, and all the competitors for turning out and really raising the bar. Now I have to fight even harder, it seems! Congratulations once again to everyone who took part and excelled! AA
