QRA QUEENS - Live online on Hexta website

[DaveMc]

I have to say how much I enjoyed this queens. It was well run and the ets were closer to flawless than manual marking for sure. Having everyone watching around the world in realtime added a whole new dimension to it. Whatever the rules in any competition the best will rise to the top and I thought it was an excellent outcome to have two different approaches excel. All highly skilled and experienced shooters.

[AlanF]

Congrats to all winners.

In F-Open while it wasn't as big a field as some recent ones at Belmont, it was nevertheless a very strong one, and Mike can be proud of his first Queens win. What a great thing to happen at this stage in his coaching career.

The Hextas were a real hit - excellent software for real time viewing and stats. If the info remains available indefinitely, it will be extremely useful for performance analysis. Reliability of the targets was very good, although not perfect. But I didn't hear of any shooters being seriously disadvantaged. There were spare targets available when problems occured, and the "ET Assistants" were always handy in case of user or other errors at the console end. The QRA has raised the bar in terms of managing an ET Queens - they put in the work and the resources to keep all bases covered.

On the subject of fast shooting on ETs, time will tell whether its use becomes widespread, and how much of a game changer it will be. I remain concerned that if it does take off, then it will reduce the importance of wind-reading, and replace it with the need for skills that hadn't previously been required.

Well, I'm off to get some shut-eye. Left the Queens after the presentation and arrived home in Gippsland 26 hours later, so have some sleep to catch up on.

Alan

[Gerard]

The additional advantage of using the Hex system is that we can now review our shot placement and stats online. Thats a bit of a revelation for me as I had thought I was shooting too slow, when in fact on many ranges I finished with over 12mins remaining. The other thing is that we can look at waterline (or not in some of my cases!). Would be fantastic if one day the Hex guys add features to supplement our post mortem of the events, for example for each target a 'replay' feature of the shots arriving and a windage direction and strength indicator on the video too. That way we get to relive our shoot from a stress free armchair

That was a fantastic experience and great to meet several of you in person!

[DaveMc]

Could just put a video camera on tripod behind mound and get someone to record - then playback. At least now you don't have to have one of the target as well. - Gotta work out some way of recording elevation and windage adjustments too to truly get the picture though. I tried to jot mine down from memory after each shoot but no doubt missed a click here or there.

[Tim N]

Maybe 2 cameras, one with a view of the flags and the other on the scope?
Then one of the kids to edit

[BATattack]

congratulations Mike on a good win against a quality field!

[bartman007]

More interesting was when a disinterested party advised me that the posted score for a leader board shooter did not agree with the check scorer's board. As the results were being streamed straight off the Hexta system into the results database (scorecards were only being used as needed for sanity checks), I was able to explain the circumstance to stats & have the error corrected on the spot - my explanation corresponded with the shots recorded to that shooter for that match. It was one of those not totally unexpected scorer errors where they accidentally disclaimed only one of the two sighters. Incidentally, that error required the mutual misreading of the PC by two scorers & the shooter, his monitor.

John, I suspect this was referring to my score on the last 900 yards. Just so everyone is aware, I was very thankful that you allowed me to fire a testing shot at the target. Most people wouldn't be aware, that my preceding 2 shooters failed to get a hit on the target (1 shooter had his turret out by 1 turn). You will see that I fired that testing shot, then 5+ minutes later I had my first real sighter. I deliberately took my time to settle myself prior to firing 900 yards, as I lacked the preparation time that we normally experience whilst the previous shooter is competing.

As for the electronic score being different to my card, I was told by my scorers that it would be rectified, so having signed the score card (which was correct) I retired from the mound.

My opinion of ET's has only been bolstered by the great experience at QRA Queens. The QRA had the foresight to employ ET Assist people, to assist all shooters, those computer literate and those not.

[bartman007]

Thanks everyone for the kind words.

It was a great event, with great competitors, great weather, great targets, and great organisation.

I hope to be back at Belmont in 2018.

[johnk]

I don't remember. It might have been you. There was a good flow under the bridge that last day.

On the other hand, we were grateful that you fired that gratis shot for us. It's a bitch convincing most shooters that they're sometimes dickheads reading wind, eh Mark (not that he was involved in this specific instance)?