So Joe talked about it at the beginning of the month. I did as Ry suggested and put some extra effort into the video this time around. It isn’t professional quality by any means though my skills are improving. It was new unfamiliar software and there were tons of little features I wanted to play with. I’m getting better with Adobe Premiere, next is After Effects.
So let me start off with a rehash of what we did and why we did it.
Last January a reader on Joe’s blog commented about the LAPD qualification being exceptional and that since they have to qualify every month it’s stringent.
Joe and I weren’t able to find a detailed description however she did and linked us to it. Joe then set about making stages. You can find the stages here and here. At this point we had everything we needed to run “a bunch of beer guzzling, uneducated hillbillies“, many of them were the same as before, through the course and see how they did.
Now Joe noted earlier that we had a 90% pass rate for those who scored above 60% and he’s right. We did have a 90% pass rate at that score level, which is for qualifying in the dark.
Three people were just under the 70% mark, which is the LAPD pass requirement for daylight. There however is another difference I couldn’t easily cover in the video. You see the LAPD uses automatic turning targets for their qualification course. For them it is impossible to have a scoring hit after the time limit is exceeded.
We didn’t have that option, instead we had to fall back on USPSA rules and penalties for shooting a fixed time course of fire. What this means is that any shot fired after the second buzzer carries with it a penalty of -10 points. Note the highest possible score for a single shot is 5 points. So if you make up that shot the best you can do is be down 5 points if you hit an A.
This becomes a serious issue with single shot strings because most likely you will only fire one shot after the buzzer. You have no extra shots to even out the debt and you just continue to decrease the score. To give you an idea of how quickly this adds up, 5 penalties will result in a failing score. So if you have trouble with the 2 shots in 2 seconds and are right on the edge, there’s three penalties. Couple that with 4 misses on top of that and congrats you have failed. It doesn’t even need to be full misses, just the aggregate non Alpha hits can add up and shove you under, especially if you’re shooting a minor caliber instead of major.
I know that at least 2 of the three failures had penalties for exceeding time limits, I would need to get the raw score sheets to see exactly how many there were for each shooter. Though I suspect given their scores, if you change the penalty to -5 from -10, IE subtract just the best possible hit and just turn that shot into a mike, the three in the 60% region would most likely pass.
I think this quote from Tam puts it better than I could.
Yup, that’s about how I felt about the LAPD course after I shot it. Next on the list though is shooting the bonus course. I’m not sure exactly when I’ll be able to do that but I’ll draw up the stages and may do it over a couple matches. Doing it all in a single match makes for a lot of “standards” and much less puzzle solving.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.