Starting pistol in sports competitions

The starting pistol is a means designed to indicate the beginning of some sports or other contests by means of a blank shot produced from it. The use of such weapons should be fixed in the rules.

To mark the start of the competition, both conventional pistols and specially produced models can be used. An indispensable condition for the use of weapons for signal athletes should be its physical unfitness as a combat.

The starting pistol may misfire. In this regard, the most widely used models with a drum, which are easier to produce a subsequent shot. A starting pistol with a magazine is rarely used.

To fix the time of the beginning of the competition timekeepers operate their instruments. To do this, they are guided by the haze or flash, which appears after the shot is fired. This avoids the possible error, the probability of which arises due to the low speed of sound transmission.

Since the late seventies of the last century, the starting pistol began to be used somewhat differently. Near the positions of athletes are currently located dynamics. They transmit or simulate the sound of a shot.

The development of complexes that allow for the automatic timing was the reason for attempts to replace the weapon with electronic analogs. In Atlanta, at the 1996 Olympics, devices were used to mark the start of the competition, which simulated a flash of a pistol and transmitted the sound of a shot. However, in the year 2000, Sydney returned to the use of conventional weapons. It was then that marked the beginning of the competition. The Vancouver Olympics in 2010 again returned the electronic pistol to the starter, it was used in speed skating.

In the Soviet Union, several models of starting pistols were produced. It was a special gunless weapon with a clip. Drum models were used infrequently, since they were weapons of the Nagan type, which had previously been brought to a non-combatant state.

Goskomport of the USSR gave two starting pistols for sports competitions . These were the revolvers, which had specially welded fastenings for the sensor. This device recorded the beginning of the competition in conjunction with the film photo kit "Omega".

Starting pistol "TT" is produced on the basis of the self-loading pistol "TT" of the model of the thirties of the last century. In the modern signal model, there is no mobile native barrel with an earring. In its place is a fixed tube, which was drowned from the side of the chamber. On both sides this part is propylene. The plug is fixed with a sharpened pin, which must be welded. This is necessary in order to avoid the possibility of drilling a through hole. The trunk does not fire. Flame and powder gases are ejected through special holes located at the top of the casing. On the shutter there are no battle resistant teeth. Thus, this weapon is a system having a freely moving shutter from the short-stroke trunk.