Some of you guys are still unbelievers!

1m at 100 sounds worse than it is. I bet some of you would be shocked given the chance. Of course finding a safe 100m range is another problem alltogether. My suggestion (cue broken record noises) is one of these:



At say... 45m? The metal circle scores double. Anyone who haven't read through the Federacio Balear de Tir de Fona's webpages (lately) should really do so. Lots of photos from organised competition, as well as good records from past events. A perfectly reasonable accuracy standard, and one that the tennis-ball types can play too.

Matthias

I like the story but guess one could get out of it easier just asking "Got any skins?", with luck they'd laugh and not feel endangered if you seemed to approve, even if one didn't, it's got to be better getting stoned than stoning someone else and being killed or becoming a murderer.  Trees with smaller diameters than a metre one can hit, bark skinning branch braking hard, a high enough percentage of shots to make it meaningful at that range.  So you are not wasting your time training at medium range, if you have the luxury of a target at that take it.  But that is assuming one uses a casting style in the vertical plane and don't care to much how high one hits. it'd be a hard shot for horizontal casting styles.  The converse is of course true for horizontal targets.  Getting left/right accuracy with horizontal casts and high low with vertical ones may be the accuracy grail of target slinging.  So, as in the pic above a traditional circular target is a good idea. and if it is a meter across that would be great for the confidence, feels better to get a few central hits and a few on the edge than a few hits and some close misses even if it is the same really.  As to a standard how about thinking in terms of angles?   If hitting a target at 30 meters means keeping the shot trajectory within a triangle ( slinger at one point and each side of the target at the others ) of X degrees then double the size of the target for sixty meters so the angle of accuracy is the same.  This would make it easy to compare how well one did at different ranges.  If one doesn't mind shooting at squares instead of circles and some messing about setting up it could be easy to arrange:  stick poles in the ground to mark the sides and tie ribbons marking the top and bottom of the gap one is aiming at.  Not quite as much fun scoring goals as hitting hard targets but on the plus side shooting through gaps eliminates the danger of rebounds from accidental high power shots at short range targets.

i already posted an accuracy standard idea, which was shot to pieces by people who were determinded to find a problem to every solution. here it is again. the original idea was as follows

1. we have 3 standard targets at 10 metres, trash-can   (end on) football, and coke-can. 
ten shots at each, and results are given 
10/10/10 for ten hits on all three, or 7/3/0 or whatever you score.  any sling and any projectile can be used. 

2. distance is achieved with a sling of any material, in proprtion to the size of the slinger so it is not longer than arm-span of the shooter. the glande is a standard weight, eg a golf-ball, tennis ball, 4 ounce fishing weight - it doesn't matter as long as it's agreed. i suggest a golf-ball.
(NB this standard glande weight was later rejected as stones could be used)   

3. scoring is obtained by adding the target hits, plus the distance divided by 100 and rounded up to the nearest tenth.

4. example - i shoot a 7/4/1 and 146 metres. Tint shoots a 7/5/2 and 300 metres.  he scores 16.0 i score 13.5. 
along comes Techstuf with an incredible sling, and shoots 400 metres and 6/5/1 - he also gets a 16. by this means, expertise in distance adds less to the overall score than accuracy, so that strong men or skilled craftsmen with exotic materials can be competed against by old men like me, or girls and youths, on a more equal footing. 

5. the beauty of this system is that we can tell at a glance how skilled someone is, by a small line of figures. by saying that i'm a 7/3/0 and 100m or whatever it happens to be, everyone here will know exactly how skilled or unskilled i am.   for instance "he's a 8/7/5 320m" or "i'm  a novice, 3/0/0 75m" 
AND we can convert the combined accuracy/distance into a points system and compete!


NB this was later refined slightly thanks to ideas and objections from other forum members - for instance we couldn't agree on a standard glande - or even a standard trash can, coke can, or football, (the medium sized target was originally a sheet of newspaper, but differences in tabloid and broadsheet sizes vary from country to country! )      

so now we have 

1. large target not exceeeding 1/4 sq metre 

2. meduim target, standard soccer ball 

3. small target, upright drinks can not exceeding 500mls

4. distance = freestyle with stone. must be a stone!

5. the same sling  must be used for target and distance. 

6. score by adding number of hits on large medium and 
    small target, plus distance in metres/100            

7. range to targets is 10 metres. 

NB description easily understood by other slingers, as described. 
eg 10/7/2/125 (or whatever it happens to be) 
-which gives a points score of 20.3 

NOTE; the distance has been divided by 100 and added to the target score to give an overall points value


sv

Hi SV,

I have never seen your proposed standard before but it looks really good! The only thing I am not sure of is large target at 1/4 sq.m. Do you mean 25cm x 25cm or a circle of 56cm diameter(which has an area of 0.25 sq.m) Maybe an idea to define all targets by actual dimensions as well as what they are.

Anyway I'm going to give it a go as soon as my ego recovers from the bruising it took yesterday! What difference does it make if not everybody likes it. We (generally) live in democracies, we're supposed to be different! I'll post my SV score.

Hi Dravonk,

Your encouraging comment is going a long way to help my recovery. Just remember, if the sling wears out, or you just need another one don't hesitate to ask.

SV, maybe you would like one too?



Regards,      Aussieslinger

True that this system can be abused, as can any system that relies on the honour of the competitor, but why should anyone cheat? After all it's ony friendly fun, we're not competing for mega prize money.

Aussieslinger

Aussie wrote on Feb 11^th, 2007 at 4:09am:


Point taken, aussieslinger - but I was just trying to make the point that for a small target like a drinks can it makes quite a difference whether you use a golf ball or a tennis ball. Not that I'm likely to 'trouble the scorers' with a drinks can at 10m with either of those projectiles at present.

Look the length of the sling, height or religion or favourite chewing gum of the competitor is irrelevant.

You have a range and a target - the competitor uses whatever sling, ammo abd style they feel most accurate with.
Why complicate things unnecessarily. The ultimate end is to get an object to a certain point using a sling - anything else is pointlessly complicated.