No IDPA club in my area but there is USPSA, and they sure get puzzled with a revolver shooter, especially when it comes to reloads and clearing the gun. I have had several RO's think I am breaking the 180 plane when I am no where even close and demonstrated to the Match Director. He then told the RO's that there is NO PROBLEM.
As I am usually the only revolver shooter there, they don't seem to know how to handle it.
Anyway, have fun and be safe!
I was in the room the night that the first IPSC/Canada rulebook was written down on paper (to later be printed) around August 05 or 06 1980 in a basement in Calgary, Canada. A lot of stuff was covered that night because up until that time there were only the 47 rules in "Cooper on Handguns" to go with. One of the things covered was revolver reloading. There were a lot more revolvers used in IPSC in the early days than there are now, and they still competed equally against semi-autos and it was taken as a given that good course design would make everything more or less competitive. I realize that the incident in question happened in an IDPA match and not an IPSC match, but practical shooting is practical shooting (just as common sense is common sense).
I do NOT have a copy of that first rulebook here with me (although back in Canada in my sister's garage I have a copy signed by myself, Todd Birch, Murray Gardner and Ken Kulach, three of us being Provincial Coordinators with Gardner being the Grand Poobah at the time). However, I think I recall correctly that the ONLY exception allowed to breaking the 180 degree rule was while reloading a revolver whose cylinder was open. Obviously, gravity works best in one's favor during a revolver reload if the gun is pointed pretty much straight skywards during the ejection stroke and straight downwards during the "let them puppies fall in without stickin' up a bit" stroke.
Over the years, I have ended up in several "range debates" about what breaking the 180 means, but how on God's Green Earth a revolver with it's cylinder opened during a well-executed reload stroke becomes a sudden danger to Public Safety is beyond me. I was actually THERE when the rule was first written in Canadian IPSC and I KNOW what the spirit of the rule was meant to be. I have been told a few times (almost always by little Demi-God R.O.'s) that there is no "leeway for opinion" in the rules. Perhaps so. But one can only hope that common sense might prevail sometimes, you know?
A few years back, Murray Gardner, his wife and I spent a fun week in Puerto Vallharta talking about IPSC and drinking little pink drinks with small beach umbrellas or paper-mache palm trees in them, and I asked Gardner what the current IPSC rules were. He stated that one CANNOT break 180. No exceptions. I pointed out that, to the best of my memory, there WAS an exception in the original rulebook.
"Maybe," he said, "but I don't remember it. Maybe it's an exception that YOU YOURSELF instigated in Manitoba and have just carried on with."
I must concede that point as possible as I do not have a Rulebook #1 here to check. However, one thing we did agree on: almost all IPSC revolver competition these days is with moonclipped guns. It is NOT so critical unloading and loading moonclips that the gun be straight up/straight down as it is with speedloaders (especially non-spring-activated loaders). But it still helps.
Here in Mexico as we work towards getting a decent NRA Action Pistol program up and running, when hosting training clinics to the interested (most of whom armed with some form of .38 Special revolver that is NOT going to be moonclipped) I tell them what the rule IS now, and that IN MY OWN HUMBLE OPINION that it would be permissible for any R.O. to allow an exception to the 180 while a revolver is being reloaded provided it points either straight up or straight down WHILE THE CYLINDER IS OPEN. Obviously, turning around and painting the audience like Huckleberry in Police Academy would be a
BAD thing.
There will be people who will disagree with this, of course, which is their right. However, as I stated, I don't think that executing a proper reload stroke with a revolver whose cylinder is open is a big threat to Public Safety. And it isn't rocket science to educate the R.O.'s to allow it. AND it's something that actually works in a true "practical" sense. Failure to understand that point might indicate (for want of a good counter-argument) a failure to understand what practical shooting is all about in the first place.
