First time using Scatt
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First time using Scatt
Rover and I shot this AM. Doug Carney attached his Scatt to Rovers Morini CM pistol. Wow what an eye opener. It was fun and informative. Now I want one. Is there another product that does the same at a lower price? Were not training for the olympics, just want to get better.
Re: First time using Scatt
SCATT has a couple different models at varying price points. The SCATT Basic lists for $750.
https://scattusa.com/collections/scatt- ... ire-system
There is a company called "Trace" that makes a trainer, and I think the SCATT Basic was introduced to compete with them. They have a new version out, and I think it's priced about the same as the SCATT: https://www.traceshooting.com/. At one time, Creedmoor Sports sold them in the US, but they don't seem to list them on their web site any more.
The bottom of the price range is the MantisX, for under $150: https://mantisx.com/products/mantisx
The impression I have is that the Mantis isn't nearly as precise as the SCATT or Trace. The SCATT Basic & Trace use a camera to follow the motion of the target black. I think the Mantis just uses accelerometers to track the motion of the pistol.
I've looked, but I have found any good independent reviews comparing the 3 systems.
https://scattusa.com/collections/scatt- ... ire-system
There is a company called "Trace" that makes a trainer, and I think the SCATT Basic was introduced to compete with them. They have a new version out, and I think it's priced about the same as the SCATT: https://www.traceshooting.com/. At one time, Creedmoor Sports sold them in the US, but they don't seem to list them on their web site any more.
The bottom of the price range is the MantisX, for under $150: https://mantisx.com/products/mantisx
The impression I have is that the Mantis isn't nearly as precise as the SCATT or Trace. The SCATT Basic & Trace use a camera to follow the motion of the target black. I think the Mantis just uses accelerometers to track the motion of the pistol.
I've looked, but I have found any good independent reviews comparing the 3 systems.
Re: First time using Scatt
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Why SCATT ? ... Dry fire on a target will teach you all you want to know .
But I concede , there is a definite pleasure in playing with expensive sophisticated 'toys' .
Why SCATT ? ... Dry fire on a target will teach you all you want to know .
But I concede , there is a definite pleasure in playing with expensive sophisticated 'toys' .
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David Levene
- Posts: 5617
- Joined: Mon Mar 01, 2004 12:49 pm
- Location: Ruislip, UK
Re: First time using Scatt
I totally disagree.
Scatt gives you impirical evidence of the results of your training and any technique or equipment changes.
All that dry firing on a target will give you is the impression that it"s "a bit better" or "a bit worse". Scatt, or other similar QUALITY trainers will give you evidence.
Re: First time using Scatt
David Levene wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2019 6:39 amI totally disagree.
Scatt gives you impirical evidence of the results of your training and any technique or equipment changes.
All that dry firing on a target will give you is the impression that it"s "a bit better" or "a bit worse". Scatt, or other similar QUALITY trainers will give you evidence.
I concede that if one is looking for 'documented evidence' or publishing one's efforts , then SCATT or other expensive QUALITY training aids would be the way to go .
Personally , I would be willing to pay a n y price for a contraption that will give me " unwavering" confidence and belief in myself as I raise my pistol to the target , a time when self doubt and lingering anxieties loom their ugly head from the depths of my psyche to sabotage my perfectly set up shot !!
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Re: First time using Scatt
Having used a Noptel system to coach students for years, an electronic trainer is very likely to do just what you ask.
What I typically see is that the "hold" of most shooters is far better than their groups. The reason they don't shoot groups the size of their hold is due to poor trigger control. They spend too much time waiting for things to be perfect, and then either their hold opens up because they are tiring, or they force the shot off.
Once you see A) how good your hold actually is, and B) when there is a period of "minimum wobble", you can work on improving your trigger control so the shot reliably breaks during that period, without disturbing the sight alignment.
Having confidence in your hold is much easier to achieve when you can see it time & again on the screen. Seeing the pistol lurching off in some direction at the last minute will clearly show when you are anticipating or being too aggressive with the trigger. It's still up to you to train to fix the mistakes, but there's no way to lie to yourself the way people often do with dry firing.
What I typically see is that the "hold" of most shooters is far better than their groups. The reason they don't shoot groups the size of their hold is due to poor trigger control. They spend too much time waiting for things to be perfect, and then either their hold opens up because they are tiring, or they force the shot off.
Once you see A) how good your hold actually is, and B) when there is a period of "minimum wobble", you can work on improving your trigger control so the shot reliably breaks during that period, without disturbing the sight alignment.
Having confidence in your hold is much easier to achieve when you can see it time & again on the screen. Seeing the pistol lurching off in some direction at the last minute will clearly show when you are anticipating or being too aggressive with the trigger. It's still up to you to train to fix the mistakes, but there's no way to lie to yourself the way people often do with dry firing.
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thirdwheel
- Posts: 203
- Joined: Sat Feb 08, 2014 2:16 pm
- Location: England
Re: First time using Scatt
The scatt and other quality electronic are fantastic bits of kit for serious improvement of technique and as mentioned above the building of confidence in your hold. As you will know there are no golden bullets to make you shoot better and to improve but these allow you to look at what you do and what you change and build up a picture of what is working and what is not working for you. They have all been around for some time now and real secondhand bargains do pop up now and again so don't be put off by the very high cost new, a pal bought a fully working RIKA system not long ago for £100 and it works really well. My coach has nearly brained me with mine as I do analyse and change stuff rather too much but I'm now heeding his sage words and just shooting, but I do hook up to the scatt a couple of times a week to get feeback when dry firing at home.
Re: First time using Scatt
I’ll add my 2 cents, and mini review of MantisX, albeit from a beginner perspective.
I also strongly disagree that such systems provide no benefit over dry firing. At least not for me. But I suspect there may be no “one size fits all” answer. It has to do with what an individual can perceive relative to what the machine can, and whether the difference is interpretable/useful. And although I am an inexperienced shooter, I know as a professor and someone who was fortunate enough to train with several Olympic medalists in another sport (Taekwondo), that how a beginner and expert learn and what information they can perceive or interpret is very different. In Taekwondo, an Olympic level athlete could literally jump in the air spin around and hit any part of my body they want before I could move. That wasn’t because they were faster than me, but because they perceived all the errors that I was unaware of. I know that because the blow always landed “like magic” when I was off balance, moving in the wrong direction or had let my guard down, and because I had several years experience and could do exactly the same thing to beginners, who had no clue that I could see their attack coming because of all the extraneous movements they were making.
That brings me to MantisX. Briefly, as a beginner with no access to a coach or interaction with other shooters, I think it was the best $150 I ever spent. One of my pet peeves is that the more experienced posters on this forum often advise beginners that dry firing will cure any problem. But, in my first year, I found dry firing almost useless. After a few months, I could keep most of my shots in the black, but was plagued by “WTF” fliers (e.g. 5s) that seemed to come out of nowhere. When I dry fired, I could see that the sights weren’t perfectly still, but had no way to judge what was a significant movement, and it seemed to be consistent from shot to shot. Even when live firing, I couldn’t perceive any difference in movement between a 5 and a 10, and therefore couldn’t figure out the source of error. I can now, but at the time I just couldn’t see a difference and, in any case, trying to relate the wiggling of my sights to a particular type of error was like trying to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics without a reference (i.e Rosetta stone). MantisX allowed me to do that.
As Gwhite mentioned, Mantis-X is an accelerometer-based system (connected by bluetooth to a mobile device app). I wouldn’t call it “imprecise”, but rather “inaccurate”, which is different. It basically detects your point of aim relative to where you are aiming when the trigger breaks, and it seems to be very good at that. It provides a Scatt-like multicolor trace showing the trajectory of where you are pointing before, during, and after the trigger breaks. It can evaluate the stability of your hold and follow-through and detect triggering errors. But it is “inaccurate” because, without a camera, it can’t determine where you are pointing relative to the target.
In addition to the detailed trace, the MantisX app also provides an overall numerical score, bar graphs to compare the stability of hold and follow through, a cumulative graph showing the direction and magnitude of your triggering errors, and suggestions as to the potential source of errors (thumbing or too much trigger finger, tightening grip while pulling trigger, wrist breaking down, etc.…). I found the numerical score only roughly correlated with my actual score because, of course, it considers a shot with stable hold and follow-through and no triggering errors “perfect” whether it is aimed at a 10 or an 8. The other diagnostics however seem pretty helpful. As others have mentioned above, it told me that my hold and follow-through were fairly consistent, but that I was making a variety of different triggering errors. If it predicted that I was pulling shots in a certain direction, that’s indeed where the shots were going. Although I couldn’t tell the difference between what I was doing when shooting a 10 or a 5, it certainly could and having realtime feedback for each shot helped me to recognize the difference and “calibrate” my perception. The suggested errors, although generic, gave me something to focus on and often turned out to be correct.
Now, after shooting for a little more than a year I can, to some extent, call my shots and get more out of dry firing. But I still find MantisX useful because while I can usually tell what I did wrong when shooting a flier, I’m still working on the difference between 10 and 8, and hoping to get some clues. Related to that, I also have run into the accuracy limitation of the system. I switched to a sub-six hold a few months ago, and it does seem to have helped shrink my groupings. However, I think it has also come with or revealed some aiming errors. For example, I may shoot a group of 9s and 10s on one target, then shoot a similar size group on the very next target, but centered on the 8 ring, below the 10. MantisX doesn’t detect a particular error (e.g. pulling down), in the second case. So I assume, by process of elimination, that it must be an aiming error, and maybe a Scatt system would provide more information. But I’m not sure that extra information is worth the huge price difference.
I also strongly disagree that such systems provide no benefit over dry firing. At least not for me. But I suspect there may be no “one size fits all” answer. It has to do with what an individual can perceive relative to what the machine can, and whether the difference is interpretable/useful. And although I am an inexperienced shooter, I know as a professor and someone who was fortunate enough to train with several Olympic medalists in another sport (Taekwondo), that how a beginner and expert learn and what information they can perceive or interpret is very different. In Taekwondo, an Olympic level athlete could literally jump in the air spin around and hit any part of my body they want before I could move. That wasn’t because they were faster than me, but because they perceived all the errors that I was unaware of. I know that because the blow always landed “like magic” when I was off balance, moving in the wrong direction or had let my guard down, and because I had several years experience and could do exactly the same thing to beginners, who had no clue that I could see their attack coming because of all the extraneous movements they were making.
That brings me to MantisX. Briefly, as a beginner with no access to a coach or interaction with other shooters, I think it was the best $150 I ever spent. One of my pet peeves is that the more experienced posters on this forum often advise beginners that dry firing will cure any problem. But, in my first year, I found dry firing almost useless. After a few months, I could keep most of my shots in the black, but was plagued by “WTF” fliers (e.g. 5s) that seemed to come out of nowhere. When I dry fired, I could see that the sights weren’t perfectly still, but had no way to judge what was a significant movement, and it seemed to be consistent from shot to shot. Even when live firing, I couldn’t perceive any difference in movement between a 5 and a 10, and therefore couldn’t figure out the source of error. I can now, but at the time I just couldn’t see a difference and, in any case, trying to relate the wiggling of my sights to a particular type of error was like trying to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics without a reference (i.e Rosetta stone). MantisX allowed me to do that.
As Gwhite mentioned, Mantis-X is an accelerometer-based system (connected by bluetooth to a mobile device app). I wouldn’t call it “imprecise”, but rather “inaccurate”, which is different. It basically detects your point of aim relative to where you are aiming when the trigger breaks, and it seems to be very good at that. It provides a Scatt-like multicolor trace showing the trajectory of where you are pointing before, during, and after the trigger breaks. It can evaluate the stability of your hold and follow-through and detect triggering errors. But it is “inaccurate” because, without a camera, it can’t determine where you are pointing relative to the target.
In addition to the detailed trace, the MantisX app also provides an overall numerical score, bar graphs to compare the stability of hold and follow through, a cumulative graph showing the direction and magnitude of your triggering errors, and suggestions as to the potential source of errors (thumbing or too much trigger finger, tightening grip while pulling trigger, wrist breaking down, etc.…). I found the numerical score only roughly correlated with my actual score because, of course, it considers a shot with stable hold and follow-through and no triggering errors “perfect” whether it is aimed at a 10 or an 8. The other diagnostics however seem pretty helpful. As others have mentioned above, it told me that my hold and follow-through were fairly consistent, but that I was making a variety of different triggering errors. If it predicted that I was pulling shots in a certain direction, that’s indeed where the shots were going. Although I couldn’t tell the difference between what I was doing when shooting a 10 or a 5, it certainly could and having realtime feedback for each shot helped me to recognize the difference and “calibrate” my perception. The suggested errors, although generic, gave me something to focus on and often turned out to be correct.
Now, after shooting for a little more than a year I can, to some extent, call my shots and get more out of dry firing. But I still find MantisX useful because while I can usually tell what I did wrong when shooting a flier, I’m still working on the difference between 10 and 8, and hoping to get some clues. Related to that, I also have run into the accuracy limitation of the system. I switched to a sub-six hold a few months ago, and it does seem to have helped shrink my groupings. However, I think it has also come with or revealed some aiming errors. For example, I may shoot a group of 9s and 10s on one target, then shoot a similar size group on the very next target, but centered on the 8 ring, below the 10. MantisX doesn’t detect a particular error (e.g. pulling down), in the second case. So I assume, by process of elimination, that it must be an aiming error, and maybe a Scatt system would provide more information. But I’m not sure that extra information is worth the huge price difference.
Re: First time using Scatt
An important reason for the pistol to 'lurch off ' in some direction at the last minute or being too aggressive with the trigger could be mainly because one is subliminally anxious about the possibility of a bad shot .Gwhite wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2019 8:47 am
Having used a Noptel system to coach students for years, an electronic trainer is very likely to do just what you ask.
Having confidence in your hold is much easier to achieve when you can see it time & again on the screen. Seeing the pistol lurching off in some direction at the last minute will clearly show when you are anticipating or being too aggressive with the trigger.
I have a suspicion that top shooters are never in doubt that they will execute a good shot . As they raise their pistol and settle into a hold with minum arc of movement (( extremely minimum one should imagine ! ) as they ease off the shot , fear of a bad shot or flier never crosses their minds.
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Re: First time using Scatt
I made a short video some time ago to show the small things you may detect using SCATT or similar systems: https://www.instagram.com/p/BawzSjjlZR0/
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thirdwheel
- Posts: 203
- Joined: Sat Feb 08, 2014 2:16 pm
- Location: England
Re: First time using Scatt
Elmas
Yes expecting a 10 and the confidence that goes with it is correct, but so is not thinking "trigger" but "aim" and letting the trigger go to the subconscious mind and letting it do it's thing and "follow through" and follow through is not just limply pointing the thing at the target but aiming it as hard as you were before and during the release. I used to go "sight blind" when I pulled the trigger and it took a while to just let my subconscious do it and believe in it. The scatt rubbed my nose in it as it was as plain as day what was going on especially the carp follow through.
Yes expecting a 10 and the confidence that goes with it is correct, but so is not thinking "trigger" but "aim" and letting the trigger go to the subconscious mind and letting it do it's thing and "follow through" and follow through is not just limply pointing the thing at the target but aiming it as hard as you were before and during the release. I used to go "sight blind" when I pulled the trigger and it took a while to just let my subconscious do it and believe in it. The scatt rubbed my nose in it as it was as plain as day what was going on especially the carp follow through.