Gun Club expansion question

bulletman · Mar 24, 2016

Couple questions regarding my gun club expansion...

My gun club came to me asking what we needed for bays to go back being affiliated with USPSA, and get started in 3 gun nation. We have a really nice club and they are always looking for ways to make it better. Uspsa came to a halt after the I think 2009 IL sectional. The chairman did some bad things and uspsa at our club came to a stop. Laster year myself and another guy wanted to start it back up. We're doing a lot of small fun matches. Turn out is 25-40 Shooters. We are hampered by the cowboy town we shoot in. They built a cowboy town and a 10x20 car port in front of the town. So our bays are fairly shallow. We haven't went uspsa affiliated yet.

So back to what I'm asking. We have been talking to the board about some new bays. They are really interested and wanting more info. It sounds like it'll be 5 bays if they do it. They are asking what size of bays and they are thinking 10-12' burns I'm sure they will settle. How wide and how long would the bays need to be for 3 gun and uspsa. We will shoot the uspsa in the same bays. I'm only asking incase they can't swing the long bays. Think 20 yards wide by 100 yards long and 5 bays will be OK? If the bid on dirt moving is to much. What should I say is the minimum we would need to do some rifle and 3 gun in there. 60-75 yards and shoot scaled down targets or what do you think?

Does anyone have the program that they use to design stages that could post a pic of a empty Bay in a decent size 20x70 or 20x100? Also can one be made to show 5 bays 20x100 side by side like what it would look like when done? If anyone could make something like that and be willing to share the pic with me it would be appreciated. They want me to do a sketch and get them Bay sizes so we can get bids. Right next to it is a 185 yard range like 30 yards wide. We use it for bench rest. So in a match I can always use this Bay as well.

I appreciate you guys taking the time to read this. Just trying to get sizes and a sketch before next month's meeting. Then hopefully we can move forward with the project. Our club has been around since 1923 and it's a good one. We held the first couple single stack nationals before it moved to Pasa. I hope our club continues to grow and expand. I believe this will be great for Northern Illinois. www.milanrifle.club is where it's at if you're kinda wondering what we have to offer as well. - Chris Dyer

Wall · Mar 24, 2016

12' berms won't be tall enough. The nra has a guide for forming berms. You wouldn't need all of the bays to be 100yds deep, just 1 maybe 2 for "long range" stages. You can work with 20yds wide but wider would be better.

Raford · Mar 24, 2016

The NRA is a great resource for this kind of information. They have a book called "The Range Resource Book" that includes specific information on building berms. Cost is approximately $80.00, but full of important information about building safe gun ranges and competition bays. They also have personnel that will advise you and or help with building your range for a nominal fee.

General rule of thumb is that a berm will be twice as wide at the bottom as it is tall ( 16' tall will be approximately 32' at the base(plus width of top)). That also means that a 20 yard brem is actually occupying almost 57yards in total width. If the openings are side by side then the next bay would share half of the width of the adjoining berm, but just realize that it takes a lot of footage to build several berms in a line.

I believe the NRA has a lot of good information online to help you with the planning and bidding information to get you started down the path of estimating costs to build whatever you design. Good luck!

bulletman · Mar 24, 2016

Sounds good guys. I'll check them out. I'm sure the club will try to get a grant like normal when they have a big project.

Wall you say I only need a couple long ones. What would you suggest the other lengths should be? Should we do say two long ones, couple say wider but shorter? Any suggestions on Bay size? I believe we have 34 acres of the club that's untouched that were going to build these bays on. Yes we will try to let the side by side bays share the berm.

When the practical Shooters are not using the bays it will be open to all members as just another place to shoot. But for competition we will also let our junior pistol team use it for yssf or steel challenge shooting.

I can't wait to see what we come up with. Would be good to get to shoot 3 gun at our home club.

Thanks for the info guys

Wall · Mar 24, 2016

I would opt for more Bays instead of longer bays, but that's just me. I'm thinking for a uspsa match, you'll want to run maybe 7 stages. 3gun, maybe 5-6 stages with 1 or 2 of them using a long bay. The rest would be in a regular sized pistol type bay. If you have the space, make them as big as you can but definitely get as many as you can. You can always set a small stage in a big bay but you can't do the opposite.

bulletman · Mar 24, 2016

Wall what do you call a pistol Bay for size? Or if you were having it built what would the sizes be of say the 6 bays. Trying to get as much input and peoples suggestions on sizes so when I go to the board they have a good idea of what we want.

wgm2011 · Mar 24, 2016

For several years, I was the Stage Coordinator for the Space City match and the Texas Open match. Both were USPSA Level 2 matches.

Going from memory, the smallest bays were about 65' deep by 70' wide. (We did have one bay at Space City that was less than 35' wide but that really restricted what we could do with a stage.)

Ideally, the bigger the better. Both matches were then held at ranges that had bays that varied in size. The deeper bays allowed some forward movement while still keeping a safe (USPSA minimum) distance from all steel. The wider the bay, the more lateral movement could be incorporated into a stage.

We always tried to keep the stage at least 10' to 15' shorter than the actual bay depth. That way shooting at the farthest uprange point in the stage a moderate break of the 180 still kept the muzzle pointed at a side berm and not towards other bays.

You now have a maximum of 40 shooters attend a match. Increase that to say 60 shooters and you probably want to break that down into 6 squads. So a minimum of six bays would be nice.

One of the local 3GN matches had more than enough fairly large pistol bays (max depth around 85') and a single rifle bay that went to 200 yards.

Good luck on the renovations.

Brandon Deem · Mar 24, 2016

You could also use Google Earth. Put in the address for other ranges that run matches like you want. There is a measure tool on the satellite images.

Wall · Mar 24, 2016

Wall what do you call a pistol Bay for size? Or if you were having it built what would the sizes be of say the 6 bays. Trying to get as much input and peoples suggestions on sizes so when I go to the board they have a good idea of what we want.

I would think that 25yd w x 25yd d would make a pretty nice bay.
If you make them too deep, you'll be wasting a lot of space that could be used for more bays.
You're going to want to design stages so that all rounds contact the berms.
100yds is pretty far for pistol, so you'd be setting stages within 20yds of the back of the bay for USPSA & pistol 3gun stages.
Pretty much wasting 80yds every time that could house a couple more bays.

dennishoddy · Mar 25, 2016

This pic is of our range in Ponca City Ok. 4 pistol, 50 yd, 100yd and a 200/300 yd bay, all designed to NRA range specifications.
The pistol bays are 25 and 35 yds deep. We have a rimfire fun match that shoots out to 35 yds, but 25 yds deep is plenty for USPSA. I'm not a 3gunner, so those longer bays may be great for that.
We run 8 USPSA stages on those 4 bays.
Our stage designer puts in a full course, and then a speed shoot for the next stage using the same setup.
You can go to google earth and get a better pic of our range by looking at the "find us" tab in this link.
http://poncarpc.org/RPC-find.html

Here is a copy of a photograph. A better one is on the website and google earth.

View attachment 11176

Burk Cornelius · Mar 25, 2016

Tony is like the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe of USPSA

But seriously, you will get better use out of more smaller-ish bays that one big bay.

Tech · Mar 25, 2016

Brandon Deem said:
You could also use Google Earth. Put in the address for other ranges that run matches like you want. There is a measure tool on the satellite images.

Boom! We have a goddamn genius here!^^^^