Need help with 5 stand

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total disaster

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Our club is looking to add 5 stand but only a few have shot it. As of now throwers would have to be battery and I'm going to inquire about long range releases. What brand throwers / place to buy? Also any tips/ advice welcomed.

Thanks

Justin
 
We use Promatic traps at our club for skeet and 5 stand. The 2 machines for skeet run off 120v and all the rest run off batteries.
 
Have a look at Atlas Traps, the AT400 works very well and have seen clubs throw the 250 without problems. The 12 channel wireless remotes on ebay work well for the cost.
 
Our club utilized 5 old Winchester/Western single stack skeet machines. Battery powered throwers can add add whole different dimensions of issues in our climate, the batteries have to be stored somewhere warm and charged before each use, they aren't light to lug around, a week like we've this past one, you could be into issues with running out/low on power while still shooting depending on usage. In Moncton, we do not yet have a wireless set-up on our 5-stand, although that appears to a project we plan to tackle in the spring.
 
Our club will start shooting in march power isn't really in the thoughts as we will have to run poles and about 5 grand to get to 5 stand field. Maybe down the road but for now we just want to get decent starter course at price we can handle and enjoy. Thanks for all the advice and suggestions will be looking at all angles.

Thanks

Justin
 
Once you get them adjusted Materelli traps work ok in warm weather but are very slow to #### in colder temperatures and sometimes just quit for no apparent reason. Their big advantage was the 400 target carousel which they have now apparently discontinued and they are a bit cheaper than Promatic. Also, it was possible to put more elevation and cant on these compared to the older Promatics. Matarellis are over complex and don't work well if the light spring is backed off to throw slow targets.

You can't beat Promatic. They work well in all kinds of temperatures and it is possible to put lots of elevation and cant on the Ranger AA and the new Matrix series. They also have a large variety of machines which you can't get from Materelli and most others. Also very simple in design so little to go wrong, in fact we haven't had to adjust the Ranger machines for years.

Batteries are not an issue. They do not have to be stored in a warm place and do not need to be charged before use. We charge ours late in the fall and that usually gets us thru the winter without recharging however we do not shoot every weekend in the winter. Promatic specs 5000 targets on a full charged battery. If you are contemplating solar panels to keep these charged, 15 watt is min, best to go a bit higher.

On wireless controllers, stay away from the Long Range Lite series. It has very limited range and the key FOB is a piece of junk and won't last. We have some RF Solutions controllers which work well up to about 250m and cost about $175 for a tx/rx pair. The problem with these is that you cannot throw true pairs as these units all work on the same frequency and use a coding technique to select the proper receiver. Also, sometimes one receiver will lock up and keep throwing targets if two transmitters are activated at about the same time. This can waste a lot of targets.

Long Range make another series of controllers which we may try next time we order. They cost about twice what the RF Solutions unit costs but operate on different frequencies so should eliminate some of those problems.
 
Really like the specs on the promatic traps! Not sure we can afford all of them but that will be talked about at out next meeting. Where is cheapest place to buy traps? All info u gather here will be presented to club to move forth with.

Thanks a lot

Justin
 
total disaster said:
Really like the specs on the promatic traps! Not sure we can afford all of them but that will be talked about at out next meeting. Where is cheapest place to buy traps? All info u gather here will be presented to club to move forth with.

Thanks a lot

Justin
Click to expand...

Montreal Skeet Club (Elie Zarife) used to import these. Not sure if he still does. You can also order direct from Promatic in USA. Don't forget duty, shipping, exchange, brokerage fees and provincial sales tax in your budget. You can start an interesting 5-stand with just 3 machines, say 3 singles plus a double at each station. This will give you 3 doubles combinations you can work with.
 
salter said:
Montreal Skeet Club (Elie Zarife) used to import these. Not sure if he still does. You can also order direct from Promatic in USA. Don't forget duty, shipping, exchange, brokerage fees and provincial sales tax in your budget. You can start an interesting 5-stand with just 3 machines, say 3 singles plus a double at each station. This will give you 3 doubles combinations you can work with.
Click to expand...

This is good advice. Buy quality traps a few at a time rather than cheaper machines in greater numbers.
 
after talking to some members we will most likely be getting 4 single stacks one rabbit and one carousel (for long crossers or incomer) this will give us a few throwers for cheaper to get started. Im thinking we don't need a tower to start with. We order targets threw Lawry's so may go with what throwers he stocks (unless we find deals else where). nota fan of atlas too much I seen them have some issue with target drop. I have no experience with bowman throwers but they look interesting also

Thanks everyone keep the advice coming Im taking it all in and nothing in my mind is set in stone

Justin
 
We have a 5 stand that currently has 14 machines on it. We have a mixture of old Winchester trap machine, old single stack skeet, carousel Auto Sporter and carousel Promatics. The Auto Sporters and Promatics are 12v and we use solar panels with deep cycle batteries on some and 120v trickle chargers on the ones that have power close.

If you are unsure of your final layout, 12v machines are nice so that you can easily move them around and try them from different locations. We have had pretty good look with our batteries until this last year. We replaced about 10 batteries at ~$125 / battery. These things happen.

We have gotten some pretty good deals buying used machines from larger clubs that are upgrading. That might be something that you want to look into. A machine that a commercial range feels has outlived its usefulness can certainly still have a lot of life for a small club.

We run wired control to all of our machines. It is a bit of a pain but is certainly a lot cheaper than running wireless on everything. Where we can, we install more than one machine in close proximity to make it easier for running control wires.

The more machines that you have in your layout, the smaller that the capacity of the individual machines needs to be.

At 125 birds per squad/14 machines=9 birds /machine if thrown evenly. Our smallest single stack machine holds 90 birds, so that is 10 rounds with no filling.

We have no experience with the MEC machines but I believe that those machines are being designed by people that used to work at Promatic. To me that makes them appealing.
 
Some good advice from Snort.
We also have machines from several manufacturers. Nice to stick to one if you can. Each manufacturer seems to have its own peculiarities so it takes a bit of time to get to know each type. In regards to batteries, we have quite a selection. We have had good luck with Kirkland (Costco) and they are the cheapest. Worst by far was Trojan, they did not last and were the most expensive. (batteries that is, not condoms) Time will tell but the Ac Delco and Magnacharge seem ok.

We are also wired with plug and play connectors. These can give you grief as the machines use rather low currents and the connectors seem to corrode over time when exposed outdoors.
 
Elie does not import Promatic. Bob Meisner at Galt Sportsman has the line for Canada. It is the best machine used world wide. It is the only company that supplies machines for the World FITASC and many continental shoots. It is the only machines that will throw unbroken targets in an 8 inch rain fall!

Henry
 
Take a look at bowman traps. Lawry is the distributor or you can order them direct from the UK. Our club has two 400 target skeet machines, one 300 target sporting machine and we just bought 2 single stack supermatch ones in the fall and they are a great little machine with a really fast cocking time. The rest of our 5 stand is made up of single stack winchesters and one winchester converted to a 500 target turret from western retro, which has really worked well for us. Our rabbit trap is an atlas single stack...it works well, but the build quality is nothing like the bowmans. We have got great service from bowman and the traps have been anvil reliable, even at -33!! Our 5 stand has 9 traps and we use long range wireless releases and the MT4300 controller. The Bowman is a virtually similar machine to a promatic, and they make them with low temp synthetic lubricated bearings for cold weather applications. They are far more reliable in cold weather than any other trap we own. The super match one (80 targets can be had for 1200, and a supermatch 6 (300 targets ) is about 2600. We have got great service from long range as well. We fubared a receiver from out own stupidity, and they fixed it free of charge inside a week.
 
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