[JRWnTN]

Any recommendations for a reliable timer for IDPA-type events?
I'm looking at the Pocket Pro and PACT Club II. Thanks in advance.

 

[Charlie Petty]

I've used most of the timers around and really have nothing to gripe about any of them. I routinely used PACT Mk IV for both timer and chrono functions but the club timer was just fine too.

 

[Dean Speir]

Been a PACT kinda guy m'self for almost 20 years! They build excellent (and full-featured) instruments, and I've rarely had any problems with their products… while they don't stand up too well to the miscellaneous parabellum round in their innards, the only complaint I've ever had was related to the effects of noonday "sun glint" and ambient radar on the chrono readings… and I actually had to learn about that from Oehler. (After literally years of bitching to Ronin Colman about the "high noon" problems, when I reported what "Doc" Oehler had mentioned, he said, "Waalll damn, Dean, you never told me that you were next to a freaking airport!!! Of course radar will play havoc with your results")

The timers, however, are indesputably "da bomb!"

 

[Guest]

I constanly hear about how "there's no timer at a fight

but what such guys really mean is that they don't want to know how slow they really are. If they knew, they'd have to work at getting faster, and that just ain't in the cards.

 

[JRWnTN]

Thanks for the responses and advice.

Jumpy,
You're probably right about some folks not wanting to know how slow they are, but sometimes the near opposite occurs. I've seen shooters who were so smooth and efficient in their movements that they seemed to be moving quite slow. Without a timer, I don't think an observer really appreciates how fast some folks can draw, empty a magazine, reload and fire again.

 

[Fernando Coelho]

Dean - there was that one time that your chrono readings were way off, but it wasn't the chrono or the local radar. It was the result of trying to chrono .40 S&W out of a .45 ACP. :shock:
I know, the magazines looked the same and .40 and .45 are pretty close :wink:

(I got a feeling I'm going to pay for this one.)

 

[Dean Speir]

You're probably right about some folks not wanting to know how slow they are, but sometimes the near opposite occurs. I've seen shooters who were so smooth and efficient in their movements that they seemed to be moving quite slow. Without a timer, I don't think an observer really appreciates how fast some folks can draw, empty a magazine, reload and fire again.

Thanks for the perfect set up…

Robbie Barrkman, known to Tim, CeePee and m'self, back in the days when he ran a dental technicians' lab in RSA, was a pretty active "combat shooter," which is what we called it back then. He and some of his chums went up to Saltzburg, Austria for the first "official" World Shoot… the very first having been held in 1975 in Zurich, Switzerland prior to the Columbia Conference and the founding of IPSC.

The winner of that first event had been a lawman out of the SWPL by the name of Chapman who had stood up to his top seeding by dropping only one point throughout the entire match. Naturally, Robby and friends were interested to see what they were going to be up against. They followed Ray down into some sort of natural rock formation… the way it was described to me made it sound almost like an amphitheater… to watch him practice the day before the match started.

Afterward, they decided that he was nothing special… he sure hadn't looked all that fast, but they all acknowledged that he sure was smooth and hadn't wasted any moves. Then the one member of the RSA group who had actually clocked his drills, revealed the times he'd turned in, and they tromped up out of the practice pit wondering how they were going to beat him.

Ray didn't repeat… a guy named Jan Foss narrowly edged him… but he still gave a superb accounting of himself, and continued to do so 'til he hung up his competition rig in '79.

Dean - there was that one time that your chrono readings were way off, but it wasn't the chrono or the local radar. It was the result of trying to chrono .40 S&W out of a .45 ACP.
I know, the magazines looked the same and .40 and .45 are pretty close.

Ziff-Davis' Flying Magazine, half-a-century ago, used to have a monthly reader-authored feature entitled "I Learned About That From Flying." My Dad contributed to that column, the last time as a result of an event I remember quite vividly, since I was in the second seat two times in succession when we were trying to get out of Detroit City Airport but the engine on our Bellanca CruiseMaster kept taking a dump… a little alarming 100-200 feet off the group with that h-u-g-e gasoline tank right there in the middle of the aerodrome. What we learned, and it meant tearing the heads off the Lycoming engine twice and almost ruining the engine on the family Packard as we tracked it to the fuel supply, was that AvFuel didn't "sit" well… something in the cracking process caused it to get "gummy" after a two months sitting in the wing tanks if a stored aircraft.

So, I have sorta carried on that tradition, with a number of irregular features here and there which, I guess, could be lumped under a generic heading of "I Learned About That From Shooting," sharing with others my first-hand experiences in screwing up this 'n' that, from putting a 115-grain FMJ through my PACT Pro Chronograph, to the dangers of shooting a .40 S&W out of a 10mm pistol where the round is headspacing from a single extractor, to not carefully segregating loose rounds after a range outing so that we don't inadvertently pop a .40 S&W into a .45 ACP magazine… it feeds jus' fine but the muzzle velocity sucks and accuracy is non-existent.

And the reason I can get ribbed by people about it, is because I'm not reticent about 'fessing up to such foibles and gaffes.

(I got a feeling I'm going to pay for this one.)

O, to be sure… never doubt that for an instant, Patron.

 

[Richard Jefferies]

Dean, didn't you and your Dad check the fuel by draining some into a Coke bottle from the sumps? It seems that would have showed the gumminess of the fuel.

Now I know why they tell you not to leave fuel in your lawn equipment if it's not going to be in use for a long period of time.