Totes and Cat5

 We borrowed a members horse trailer to move the ranges to the shooting venue. M portable ranges are built out of 3/4 steel tubing that assembles very quickly.  From a bare floor, I can have a 6-target competition range assembled in about an hour.  The targets are wired for scoring, and the footprint of my range is 40' X 24.  I normally carry a dozen CAT5 cables, 75' long for each range. It is amazing how much stuff is needed to move a range from one spot to another.  Steel tubing, backdrop material, tables chairs, timers, targets, extension cords, ladders, tape, paper, computers, printers.  I can fill a 16' horse trailer and we did.

Three days of shooting, then break it all down and stuff it back in the trailer. No matter how carefully I plan, when it is time to leave, at some point we are simply throwing stuff into boxes and loading on the trailer.  That's where we were Sunday afternoon.  Monday and Tuesday turned into a weather disaster, and the past two days were spent unloading the trailer, sorting boxes and putting stuff away.

The club member cane by yesterday afternoon and got his horse trailer.  It's out of the shop now, and I an start putting together my home range. I spent a goodly portion of yesterday in inventory, straightening out tangled CAT5 cable.  Interestingly, I only lost one and it was shot in half.  I could put a connector on each end, and have two short cables, but Amazon sells it cheap, and my time is worth something, so that is a decision I'll make soon.

Putting on a major match is a huge hassle, and generally I vow to never do it again.  But, a week later, I'm already thinking about next year. There is a small subset of people in the organization who put on these matches.  I talked with a few of then this week, from Texas, Florida, Georgia and Kentucky. the main topic of conversation is how longer we will be able to continue to host major events.  The actuarial tables are not kid to any of us.

We'll see what happens next year.