Your first air pistol competition

The smallest match is the club’s own. In Sweden, SPSF’s handbook requires membership of an SPSF club for competitions, and pistolskyttekortet for any match outside the club; a Swedish air pistol match is normally 60 shots in six series of ten, or 40 in four, and the handbook sorts shooters into classes by their badges, so a newcomer without a badge shoots in class L 1 with the bronze and silver shooters. In Germany the DSB’s table runs 20, 40 or 60 shots by class.

Gentler still is a postal, shot on your own range and sent in. The NSRA says its sport was in the main built up on postal competitions, with teams firing on their home ranges, and runs a 10 m air pistol team-of-three league of ten rounds, one a fortnight, with 20 shots per member per round, and an individual competition of two 60-shot courses; every postal shoot is witnessed and the shooter signs each card. In the USA the CMP’s Aces Postal is open to air pistol shooters, junior and adult, four times a year, shot on Orion paper targets the CMP posts to you or on electronic targets.

Entries are each federation’s business. In Sweden you need to be a member of an SPSF club and, for any match outside your own club, to hold pistolskyttekortet from the age the federation sets. In Britain an NSRA competition may ask for NSRA membership. In Germany, from district level up, you start only if your club entered you in time, you were admitted and the fee is paid, and you carry a competition pass to every start. In the USA an Aces entry goes through the CMP’s online Competition Tracker. Whatever the country, the invitation holds the classes, the course of fire, the deadline and the fee, and most first-match questions are answered in it.

Pack from a list. Nick Pye, who coaches Scottish Target Shooting’s pistol development squad, asks his shooters to rank their kit, and names shoes, warm socks, ear defenders, glasses, a water bottle, an airline case and a trigger weight, adding that even slightly cold you will not perform at your best. A start:

• The pistol in its box, with a safety flag in it: SPSF’s rules keep the flag in between the commands to unload and to load, and forbid unpacking the pistol on the range before the command.
• A cylinder filled the night before, inside its date, and the adaptor: a cylinder that runs out mid-match is filled off the line, with the range officer’s permission and on your own time, under the ISSF’s rules and SPSF’s alike.
• The pellets you shoot every week, in the tin you opened last: a match is not the day for a new batch.
• Glasses and the blinder, both allowed in SPSF’s air pistol rules, and hearing protection, which they require; a cap’s peak no longer than 10 cm.
• Your own 500 g trigger weight, to check the trigger before the control does.
• Your papers: the card, your membership, the competition pass where one exists.
• Something to drink and eat, a jumper for a cold hall, and a notebook for the score and the day.

A club match may check nothing; a championship checks the pistol. SPSF’s handbook puts the duty on you: where a check is ordered, have the pistol checked in good time before the match, and hand it over empty with the safety flag in. The controller’s kit, it lists, is a 0.5 kg trigger weight for the air pistol and a 420 × 200 × 50 mm box; its air pistol rules say the same as the ISSF’s, a trigger of at least 500 g applied to the middle of the trigger and a pistol of at most 1 500 g. At ISSF championships an equipment control service is open to every athlete before the competition, the cylinder’s ten-year validity may be checked, and after a qualification round a pistol shooter can be disqualified for shoes, taping, the trigger weight or the pistol’s dimensions and grip. The kit itself, and each rule, is in 10 m air pistol equipment.

The day runs on the ISSF’s clock, which the national rules copy. Athletes are called to the line at least 25 minutes before the start, get 10 minutes to set up their equipment and then 15 minutes of preparation and sighting time, with unlimited sighting shots. Before that time starts you may handle the pistol, dry fire and do holding and aiming exercises on the line, but not fire; the range officer announces 30 seconds before its end and commands its stop, the targets are reset in a pause of about half a minute, and match firing starts on its own command. After that, no further sighting shots: any fired count as misses. SPSF’s rules say it in Swedish, with four sighting cards marked by a diagonal line in the corner and unlimited sighters in the 15 minutes; the DSB’s give 15 minutes of shared preparation time with unlimited sighters before its START; the NSRA’s allow no sighters after the first competition shot.

The sequence

Called to the line at least 25 minutes before the start; 10 minutes to set up; 15 minutes of preparation and sighting time with unlimited sighters, begun with “PREPARATION AND SIGHTING TIME … START”, warned at “30 SECONDS” and ended with “END OF PREPARATION AND SIGHTING … STOP”; about 30 seconds while the targets are reset; then “MATCH FIRING … START”.ISSF General Technical Rules 6.11.1.1 and 6.11.1.2, ISSF Rule Book, Edition 2025 (Second Print 07/2026), effective 1 July 2026

In Swedish

FÖRBEREDELSE- och PROVSKOTTSTID … START; 30 SEKUNDER; SLUT PÅ FÖRBEREDELSE OCH PROVSKOTT … STOPP; TÄVLING START; 10 MINUTER; 5 MINUTER; STOPP, PATRON UR; and after the last series, VISITATION. For each series the range officer announces its number and commands LADDA.SPSF Skjuthandbok, upplaga 21, M.6.2

A shot too early

A shot between the end of sighting and the start of match firing does not count and costs two points off the first competition shot; a shot after STOP is a miss.ISSF General Technical Rules 6.11.1.1 k and 6.11.1.3

Use the sighters for what they are: a zero check from your own stance, as How to sight in an air pistol describes, and a start on the rhythm. Once on the line at an ISSF match, the only people you may talk to are the jury and the range officials, and a coach may only signal; a club match is often looser, so ask before you count on a word from behind the line.

The ISSF match is 60 shots in 75 minutes on electronic targets and 90 on paper, after the 15 minutes of sighters; the range officer calls the time remaining at ten minutes and at five, and shots not fired within the time are scored as misses on the last cards. SPSF’s 60-shot match on paper takes 1 hour 45 minutes in all, preparation and sighters included, and its 40-shot match 1 hour 15; at most two shots go on each card, and the shooters change their own cards under the range officer’s eye. The DSB allows up to five shots a card below its national championship. The card’s rings and how a shot is scored are on the ISSF 10 m air pistol target page.

Three rules for the air pistol in particular. Releasing the air charge before the sighting time starts earns a warning, then a two-point deduction; releasing it during match firing without a hit on the target is a miss, though dry firing without releasing the charge is allowed. The pistol is loaded with one pellet only: if you notice a second, raise your free hand and the range officer supervises the unloading, with no penalty and no extra time. And a malfunction gets no extra time either, in the ISSF’s, SPSF’s and NSRA’s rules; SPSF’s has you keep the pistol pointed downrange, keep your grip and raise your free hand. An interruption of more than three minutes that is not your fault, and not a malfunction, entitles you to the time lost.

Pace yourself by the series. The CMP’s guide says to practise the competition course of fire ahead of time, so that you know what to expect and how to pace your shooting; 60 shots in 75 minutes is a shot every 75 seconds with no rest, so a shooter who has never done the whole course on the clock discovers that in the fourth series. Shoot it at the club first, on the clock.

If there are 200 competitors in a match, rest assured that there are 200 shooters suffering from match pressure, says the US Army Marksmanship Unit’s pistol guide, and tells you where to put your energy instead: into planning and executing the fundamentals correctly. It is common in competition to get nervous and find your hold wobblier than usual, John Rost says in a talk printed by Shooting Sports USA, an NRA journal; his tools are rehearsing your shooting routine in your head, seeing the perfect shot, and progressive relaxation, tightening the muscles of the hand or fingers and then letting them go.

The CMP’s guide gives a beginner the same answer in four lines: know the rules before you shoot, the target, the shots, the time limit and the commands; practise the course of fire; focus on performing the same skills you learned in practice, not on scores or rankings; and expect officials, coaches and parents moving and talking behind the line, because a match is not practice. The USAMU’s guide adds that mental discipline grows from the repeated, successful execution of a completely planned shot, and your preparations and routines will always be the same, and warns not to expect spectacular results the first time you try mental discipline.

And when a shot goes wide, as one will: the next 30 to 50 seconds matter more than the mistake itself, in the words of Anna Janssen, a German rifle shooter quoted in ISSF news. Rest the pistol, muzzle downrange, breathe out, and start the next shot from the top of the routine; what the routine is, shot by shot, is in One-handed pistol stance and Trigger control.

Read the result list the moment it is up, since a scoring protest has a clock on it at a championship, where the ISSF has the preliminary results posted after each relay. Ties in SPSF’s air pistol rules are broken first by the number of inner tens. Then write the day down: the match, the score, one thing that went well and one to work on.

Then give the next match a goal with a badge on it. In Sweden it is Luftpistolmärket: ten-shot series standing without a support hand, five series in a year at each level, and the bronze and silver can be shot for before you are a member, under an official from an SPSF club, so a first season’s matches count. Its levels are on the card’s badge row. In Britain the NSRA’s Proficiency Badge Scheme is open to all, members or not, with minimum qualifying scores for each class in 10 m air pistol, and can be shot concurrently with its postal competitions.

Keep the cards. Shooter scores your practice-match cards from a photo on the phone, the first scans free, and keeps a club match’s typed scores in the same trend per gun, so the badge’s next level has a line under it.

How many sighters do I get in an air pistol match?

As many as you can fire in the 15 minutes of preparation and sighting time, under the ISSF rules and the Swedish and German ones that copy them; once match firing has started, none, and a sighter fired then is scored as a miss.

What do I bring to my first air pistol match?

The pistol in its box with a safety flag, a full cylinder in date, the pellets you train with, glasses and blinder, hearing protection, a 500 g trigger weight, your card and membership, and water and a warm layer. Be there early: the ISSF lets a late athlete shoot, but the clock does not wait.

Do I need a card or licence to enter?

In Sweden SPSF’s handbook asks for club membership, and for pistolskyttekortet at any match outside your own club; NSRA competitions may require membership; a German club enters you. Whether owning an air pistol needs a licence at all is in the licence guides, linked from the getting-started post.