What
a portentous phrase in the title, “Mastering FITASC”! That is the wonderful
thing about this discipline if you ask me, it can’t truly be mastered. Sure there
have been many 100 straights in Skeet and Trap, and occasionally sporting clays
but I have never heard of a 100 straight in FITASC. Congratulations to anyone who has done it and please accept my
apologies, but… I still say it can’t be done consistently. That is why the first part of the title is
“Challenge”!! When it comes to this discipline called FITASC, all I can tell
you is how the game is played and then send you out with knowledge and
hopefully proper respect for the game. After that, the challenge is all yours.
In the April Issue I explained
the old style (OS) format of FITASC which is commonly available for practice,
and is sometimes used as the tournament format here in the US, especially as a
side event. However there is a new
style (NS) format which I believe was created due to the growth of this sport
seeing as it allows many more participants to shoot at the same time and
consequently many more to participate on a given weekend. Let me explain.
In
case you missed the article on Old Style last month I will briefly recap.
FITASC is always shot in 25 target layouts or parcours. The old style format
presents all 25 targets on each layout from the same group of machines, usually
4 or more. That means that although the shooters move around from peg 1 to peg
2 to peg 3 changing the angles of the birds, only those six shooters can shoot
on Parcours 1 at that time. The advantages to the OS layout is that it doesn’t
require a huge area like a spread out sporting clays course and it offers great
variety while only using four or five traps.
Now
the New Style also offers 25 bird layouts but it typically breaks them into 4
completely different shooting stations with each station using its own set of
traps. Instead of the usual 4 or 5 singles and two pairs on each peg in OS, new
style usually offers 4 or 5 singles and one pair per station, and each station
has its own set of 3 or more machines.
This is what allows for many more participants. For example, using the
old style format, a 200 bird event such as the World Championship held over 4
days with 6 shooters per squad could only have a maximum of 48 people shooting
at one time and those groups taking up an entire 45 minute time period.
Assuming everyone would shoot 2 layouts per day, the maximum number of
participants would be 288. The new style allows the same 8 parcours to be
broken into 4 stations each, totaling 32 groups of six people shooting at mostly
the same time and changing every 15 minutes. I say “mostly the same time”
because everyone still starts on station one of the given parcours but as the
first group of 6 people moves to station 2, a new group of six can start the
same parcours on station one. It takes
the individual shooter a bit longer to shoot a parcours this way, about an hour
each, but many more people get through it in an hour. Consequently all major
FITASC events are using it now.
That
brings me to the advantages and disadvantages of NS FITASC. The obvious
advantage is the huge increase in the number of people able to participate in
an event. But an added bonus is the even greater target presentation variety
provided by the use of so many more machines as well as more stations providing
additional geographic diversity. All in all it is an improvement to the game.
Phew,
that sounded confusing from this end but I hope it made sense to you. Please
feel free to write and ask any questions you like and we will do our best to
answer them. Next month should be even more interesting as we try to cover the
many rules of FITASC that also serve to keep the game interesting as well as
very civilized. We hope that we have
piqued your interest and that you go out and try this fun game that so aptly
simulates live game shooting. As a matter of fact, we hope to see you there!
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