Founded in the USA during 1981, the first Steel Challenge saw just 70 shooters step into the shooting boxes of its now famous all steel stages. Since those early days, the number of shooters has grown.
The Steel Challenge was founded out of the love for the shooting sports. The founders wanted a match that was challenging and fun but would also be easily understood by non-shooters who would see the competition and find within themselves a greater desire to join the shooting sports.
The match design called for simple stages, or courses of fire made up of just five steel plates. The steel plates would be of differing sizes and placed at various distances and angles to create a variety of challenges. The shooter would assume his or her position in the shooting box and, upon the beep of the timer, draw their pistol and shoot each plate with the fifth being a stop plate synchronized to the timer.
Each shooter would shoot the stage five times with the slowest time dropped. The score would be the combined time of the best four runs and that time added to the combined times of the other stages for a final match score.
The structure of using the four best runs out of five allowed shooters the opportunity to recover and provided added drama for those watching. explained Mike Dalton.
In NZ the format is the same, your time is your score. He who has the least will win! 5 runs and keep your best 4 to count (Outler limits has 4 runs and keep your best 3) so the scoring couldn't be simpler. All penalties are +3 seconds to your time, the maximum time allowed on a single string is 30 seconds. So you can see in practice exactly what you are capable of. This is markedly different to IPSC, where your score is a percentage of someone else's score.
Speed Shooting as it is known in NZ began in 1987 and has run ever since. The stages run in the states have changed several times & at one stage were changing every year. Today, the stages shot in New Zealand are exactly the same as shot by the Steel Challenge Shooting Association (SCSA) in the USA.
These are Roundabout, Pendulum, Smoke and Hope, Outler Limits, Speed Option, Accelerator, Five to Go and Showdown.
For more information, contact www.pistolnz.org.nz
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