It's the small fee's being cumulative that I'm not necessarily tracking I see as being the initial hurdles. Also getting a second person to help as an RO or match director.
Anyone with tips on being a MD and RO specific to these two sports I'd appreciate it. I ran ranges while active duty and have spent a lot of time, money and effort on growing as a shooter like most here but this will be a newer undertaking for me.
There’s a pretty good thread on here somewhere talking about tips and methods that many use.
Your sanctioning organization (NRL/PRS) will make a difference as to how you’ll format your stages and even the way you set up props, etc. Match styles vary according to who is running them too.
Other than that, A few things that matter to me as an MD:
- safety. This needs to be stressed at the beginning of every match, no matter how seasoned or regular your attendees are. Safety is everybody’s responsibility and laying down the ground rules each time keeps this in their minds.
- target sizes. I prefer to have a decent balance is target sizes in any given stage. This means that I prefer that even a beginner not zero too many stages. Hits are important for newer shooters or else they could quickly lose interest. At the same time, I want the top shooters to be challenged during the stage.
- stage/cof difficulty. Similar to the above statement about target sizes. That said, stage difficulty will vary and this is good too. A balance between movement and target difficulty is always a goal.
- stage movement. I try and consider that some people are less mobile and agile as the top shooters. Having knee issues myself sometimes, I want that at least one stage takes this into account .
- scoring. If you can afford it as a club, make sure to buy some tablets for scoring and learn how to tie them into PractiScore. I consider this very important these days. As a side note to this, I often compare scores for all shooters at each stage to try and keep a balance to the stages. I look out for and prefer to change any stage that is either cleaned by too many shooters or zeroed by too many shooters. I like to see total scores are that in the 30-90+% range of all available points.
- variety. This is a constant concern for me, especially since our range is limited to a single firing line. Finding new and interesting, sometimes fun ways to mix it up is a constant.
All of that you probably already know and consider, but I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to lay it out there.