- everybody in the first 4 finished
all boards well into the last shooter
no pause (when conditions necessitated).
In all instances when we paused, on my block there was a difference of at least 1½ shooters, several time 2 shooters between the first & last finishing target. On the other hand, when we ran straight through, only a couple of boards with the full complement of 8 shooters finished more than a part of a shooter apart.
In other words, targets tend to level out by the time their full complements of shooters is finished, and the benefit is that you don't waste time during the catch up hiatus.
The vexing issue occurs when shooters don't front or spit the dummy mid shoot. Those targets don't shoot in discipline any more & essentially can't be repaired. When a shooter on one board who complained that he was unable to shoot with his contemporaries, I bit my tongue & didn't ask him to tell me what disciplines were missing so I could pull them out of my arse & patch them in.
Likewise, it's rare that latecomers can be patched in to a correct order (it just could not happen in Townsville) - they go to the bottom of the board - so you just might prefer to check the weather forecasts for the week to help you decide whether to enter in advance or take a ride at the back of the pack.
You're also risking the independence of the promoters. Heck, if it was my Queens, I'd want the largest contingents to finish earliest, so I could get that headache off my lap. The smaller contingents seldom score close, it seems to me.
Wonder how much it would cost to expand our ranges so we could shoot every grade/division in their own unique time slot?
The particular fairness of discipline grading, as I see it, is that lefties don't get to stay together in their own little club any more.
Townsville's experience was both lucky & equable. NQRA squadded by grade or division & rolled over by grade/division. In all but one instance it worked. The shortcoming was that two targets did not have a full row of a particular grade, so when the previous grade went to the bottom of the board, it was necessary for two shooters of the next division down to shoot once with a "foreign" mob & at the next range, with their contemporaries. Not perfection, but they caught back up when their discipline rolled over. On the other hand, with 11 per target, there was a stubby or two between the first & last target finishing, so it really was only the first echelon who shot beside their opponents.