Start hereFive minutes to your first timed string

You do not have to read this book to use the app. This page gets you timing; everything after it explains why, and what else there is.

Which kind of shooter are you?

This manual covers two apps, four kinds of device and a website. Almost nobody needs all of it. Find yourself below and skip the rest — you can always come back.

Before you beginHow to use this manual

Shot Clock runs on four different kinds of device and a website, and not every feature exists everywhere. Rather than write five manuals, this one book covers all of it and tells you, at the top of every section, exactly where that feature lives.

The coloured tags

Every section starts with a row of tags. They mean “this feature exists here”:

Where iPhone and Android behave identically — which is most of the time, on purpose — this manual just says “the phone app”. Where they genuinely differ, it says so.

The boxes

How things are written

Settings › Mode

A path through menus. Each › means “then choose”.

Start

A physical button, or an on-screen button you press.

90.60.30.3

A session string — Shot Clock’s shorthand for a piece of timing. Section 19 teaches you to read these.

appSetNotes

Something technical you will never need to type. Safe to skip.

Section 1What Shot Clock does — and what it doesn’t

Shot Clock is a par timer for target shooting. You tell it which course of fire you are shooting; it counts the time for you and makes a noise at the moments that matter — the start of the string, the warnings partway through, and the end.

It has been running on Garmin watches since 2019. Version 2.0 is the biggest release since then.

The one thing to understand first

That limitation is deliberate, and it is what makes the app useful in the places a microphone-based timer struggles: on a line with fifteen other shooters, behind hearing protection, at 300 metres, or inside a match where the official schedule — not your performance — is what has to be timed exactly.

What it actually gives you

And because all of that rests on a programmable interval timer you are already wearing, plenty of people end up using it away from the range as well — draw practice, training sets, or a genuinely excellent egg. Section 20 shows you how to build your own.

The other half: Shot Clock Diary

Shot Clock deliberately does one job. Everything around the shooting — what you shot, in what conditions, what you scored, how you are progressing, and what the spectators see — lives in a second app, Shot Clock Diary.

Separate download, separate purchase, its own data — and it stands on its own. That is the last you will hear about it until Part VII, which covers it in full. If you only want a timer, skip that part; nothing before it depends on Diary.

Section 2Where Shot Clock lives

The same product exists in three forms. You do not need all three — plenty of people use only one — but they are built to work together, and knowing which one does what will save you a lot of hunting through menus.

Which one should I use?

Section 3What you have to buy

There are five possible purchases across the two apps, and every one of them is genuinely independent. Buying one never gives you another. Most people buy one or two of these and never think about the rest.

What is free

• The phone app’s editors. Sequences, DOPE Cards and Notes — and syncing them to a watch you already own — cost nothing. If you bought the Garmin app, the phone app is simply a much nicer way to configure it.
• The Web Portal. Free, no account, no sign-up.
• Joining somebody else’s squad. If a Match Official wants to drive your timer over RangeLink, you can join for free. Only the person running the squad needs to have bought Match Official Mode.

Trying before you buy

The Garmin store carries two listings of the watch app: a free trial listing that runs for 30 days from the day you first open it, and a paid listing you buy up front. They behave identically. When the trial runs out, the app stops at a splash screen instead of the watch face.

Section 4The words this manual uses

Shot Clock organises time in four nested levels. Almost every confusing screen in the app makes sense the moment these four are clear, so it is worth two minutes.

Family

A group of related matches — ISSF, Service, WA/PPC, NPA, Precision Rifle, Action Match, Bullseye, Custom Times. Turning a family off hides all of its matches at once.

Match

One event inside a family, e.g. Rapid Fire or WA1500. You enable the matches you actually shoot; everything else stays out of your way.

Sequence

One stage you can select and start — 5×3, 165 sec, 20 sec. This is the thing you scroll through on the watch face.

Session

One continuous block of time inside a sequence. A simple sequence has one session; a duelling sequence has many, running back to back automatically.

String

Shooter’s word for one run of a sequence. Not an app term — but it is what the workout log calls each one.

Session string

The written shorthand for a sequence’s timing, like 90.60.30.3. Section 19 teaches you to read and write these.

DOPE card

“Data On Previous Engagement” — your own table of elevation and wind corrections at different distances.

Active device

On the phone, the one watch (or the phone itself) that your edits currently belong to. Section 8 explains why this matters more than it sounds like it should.

Match Official

The person running the shoot. Also the name of the app mode they switch into. Older screens and some clubs call this the Range Officer or RO.

MASTER / SLAVE

In squad sync, the one device driving the clock (MASTER) and the devices following it (SLAVEs).

Callsign

A two-word name your device picks for itself — “Silent Falcon” — used so a Match Official can identify you in a squad list.

Bay

One firing position at a range.

Squad

The group of shooters on the line together. Depending on the discipline your club may call it a shooting detail, a relay or a squad — this manual says squad throughout and means whichever yours uses.

Section 5Setting up on a Garmin watch

Shot Clock is a Connect IQ app. It installs the same way any other Garmin watch app does — through the Garmin Connect Mobile app on your phone, not on the watch itself.

1. Install Garmin Connect Mobile and pair your watch. If your watch already syncs steps and workouts to your phone, this is done.
2. Open the Connect IQ Store. It lives inside Garmin Connect Mobile on some phones and is a separate app on others. Search it for Shot Clock.
3. Choose the trial or the paid listing. Two listings exist (Section 3). They behave identically and the free one stops after 30 days — but they are separate apps that share no data, so if you think you will buy, read Section 3 before you start building anything in the trial.
4. Install to your watch and wait. The transfer happens over Bluetooth on Garmin’s schedule and can take a few minutes. The app appears in your watch’s app list — not on the watch face.
5. Open Shot Clock on the watch. The first screen you see is the main screen: a big number, the name of a sequence, and a ring of small setting indicators around the edge.
   
   To reach the app’s own menu from here, press and hold the UP button — marked MENU on some models. On touchscreen watches you can instead swipe up from the bottom of the screen. Everything in the table below lives behind that one press.

Two places Garmin settings live

This trips up almost everybody, so it is worth being blunt about it. There are two completely different settings screens for the Garmin app.

Section 6Setting up on an Apple Watch

The Apple Watch app comes with the iPhone app. There is no separate purchase and no pairing step inside Shot Clock itself — Apple’s own Watch app handles all of it.

1. Install Shot Clock on your iPhone from the App Store.
2. Open the Watch app on your iPhone and scroll to Available Apps. Tap Install next to Shot Clock. If you have automatic app install turned on, it may already be there.
3. Open Shot Clock on the watch. You get the same main screen the Garmin app has: a large number, the sequence name, and swipe navigation.
   
   Swipe right from that screen to open the app’s menu — that is where Select Matches, Notes, Portal and the settings live.
4. Allow the permission prompts. The watch app asks for Health access the first time you run a countdown. Section 17 explains exactly why a timer needs it — the short version is that it is the only way Apple lets an app keep the screen awake through a stage.

Section 7Setting up the phone app

The phone app has two jobs, and it is worth knowing which one you are using it for, because the answer changes what you should set up first.

The layout, in one picture

First-run checklist

1. Install and open the app. You land on the Sequences tab.
2. Grant Bluetooth permission when asked. On Android this is called “Nearby devices”. Without it, squad sync and hardware control cannot work at all. You can decline if you will never use them.
3. Pick your active device. Tap the Settings gear on the bottom bar. The top row shows a device name and a coloured dot. Tap it and choose from the list — your Apple Watch, a Garmin watch, or the phone itself. Section 8 explains this properly. Do this before you edit anything.
4. Enable the matches you shoot. On the Sequences tab, switch on the families and matches you actually use. Everything else stays hidden, so scrolling through sequences on the line stays short.
5. Tap Save. Nothing you have changed has reached a watch yet. Section 23 explains why, and why that is a good thing.

Recommended setup for best performance

A handful of settings live outside Shot Clock entirely — in the watch's own system settings, or in a permission prompt — and getting them right up front is the difference between the app working and it working well on a live line. Nothing below is required; every one of these has a working default.

Section 8Choosing your active device

This is the one idea in the phone app that is worth understanding properly, because getting it wrong looks like data loss even though nothing has been lost.

The phone keeps one working copy of your Sequences, DOPE Cards and Notes at a time — the copy belonging to whichever device is currently active. It is not a shared library that gets pushed everywhere. If you own a Garmin and an Apple Watch, they each have their own set, and switching between them swaps the editors over completely.

Where to see it, and where to change it

• To see it: the small status line at the very bottom of the screen, under the tab icons. A green dot means connected, red means not, and “Connecting…” means a sync is running. The device name is next to it.
• To change it: Settings › the top row. Tap it and pick from “Switch to which device?”.
• To add a Garmin watch: the same list. Pair a Garmin Watch at the bottom of it is the only way in — there is no “Add device” button anywhere else. It hands off to Garmin Connect Mobile.

“This Phone” — the device with no watch

If you have no watch, or want a set of sequences that never leaves your pocket, choose This Phone. It behaves exactly like a watch as far as the editors are concerned, except it is always connected and nothing is ever transmitted.

Section 9Your first countdown

Everything below happens on the device itself. You do not need to have configured anything yet — a fresh install can run a countdown in about fifteen seconds.

On a watch

1. Open Shot Clock. The main screen shows one big number — that is the length of the currently selected sequence — with the match name above it and a stage label below.
2. Swipe up or down (or press the Up/Down buttons) to change sequence. The number changes as you scroll. Stop on something short, like a 5 or a 20, for your first try.
3. Press Select — the big button — or tap the screen. You hear/feel the start alert, the display switches to the running countdown, and the number starts falling.
4. Let it run out. At zero you get the stop alert and the timer resets itself, ready to go again.
5. Press Select again mid-run to stop early. Press Back to return to the main screen — that also resets the clock.

On a phone

1. Tap the Timer icon on the bottom bar. The app goes full-screen and black. The bottom bar and the editor tabs disappear entirely — this is a distraction-free mode of its own.
2. Swipe up or down to choose a sequence. Same list as the watch.
3. Press and hold to start. Not a tap — a deliberate press of about two-thirds of a second. The screen flashes green when it takes.
4. Press and hold again to stop, and the screen flashes red.

Section 10Anatomy of the screens

There are only two screens that matter: the one you look at before a string, and the one you look at during it. They are the same on every device, give or take the shape of the screen.

The main screen (before the string)

The running screen (during the string)

The same two screens, on the watch itself

The symbols around the edge (Apple Watch)

The Apple Watch main screen shows your settings around the edges as small symbols rather than words, so they stay readable without crowding the number in the middle. Each has ON or OFF beside it — white when on, red when off.

The symbols on the left and right edges are turned on their sides to match the text beside them, so each edge reads in a single direction.

The phone timer screen, specifically

Tapping the Timer icon on the phone’s bottom bar opens a full-screen mode of its own. A few things about it are worth knowing before you are standing on a line trying to find them:

Top-row icons

Sound, vibration and Competition Mode indicators. They are status only — tapping them does nothing.

The gear icon

Next to those icons. This opens a second, separate settings screen specific to the Timer — not the same one behind the bottom bar’s gear. Almost everything in Sections 13–15 lives here, along with squad sync and hardware. Section 43 lays out which settings are on which screen.

Swipe up / down

Change sequence, exactly as on the watch.

Swipe left

Your active DOPE card, readable mid-string. Swipe back to return.

Colour flash

Green fills the screen on start, red on stop. It is there so that in bright sunlight, with ear defenders on, you still know the press registered.

Rotation

The live screens rotate with the phone, so you can lay it on its side on a bench or a tripod. Menu screens stay portrait on purpose.

Section 11Starting and stopping

There are four ways to start a countdown, and three separate guards against starting one by accident. Which ones you want depends entirely on what you shoot.

The wrist-roll gesture

Turn on Menu › Controls › Use Gestures (Garmin) or the equivalent watch setting, and a quick flick of the wrist out and back, twice, starts the timer. You will feel three short confirmation clicks when it is recognised.

Sensitivity has three levels — Low, Medium, High — and tapping the setting cycles through Off → Low → Medium → High → Off. Start on Medium.

The four accident guards

Double-tap guard

Menu › Controls › Touch Guard on both Garmin and Apple Watch. Requires two quick taps rather than one before the timer will start or stop. On Garmin it only appears when touch is enabled; on Apple Watch you can scope it to Start only, Stop only, both, or off.

Press-and-hold

Built in on the phone; not optional there.

Screen lock

Apple Watch only. While a run is in progress, a small padlock badge appears. Long-press it to lock and unlock. Locking blocks the start/stop gesture but deliberately leaves swiping alone — it protects against an accidental stop, not against changing screens.

Auto-Lock While Running

Apple Watch only. Menu › Controls › Auto-Lock While Running. A stronger, automatic version of the screen lock above — it engages the moment a stage starts and clears the moment it resets, ignoring every gesture except a long-press on the lock icon, rather than waiting for you to lock it yourself.

Stopping, resuming and resetting

• Stop: the same press that started it. The clock holds where it is, silently — see the note below.
• Resume: press again. It carries on from where it stopped.
• Reset: press Back (watch) or swipe back to the main screen. Backing out always resets — the clock will never be sitting half-finished when you return to it.
• Finished naturally: at the end of the last session the app fires the stop alert and resets itself. You do not have to do anything.

Section 12Choosing what to run

Out of the box, only a handful of matches are enabled. That is on purpose: the scroll list on the main screen contains every sequence from every enabled match, and you want it short.

Enabling matches

1. Open Select Matches.
   Garmin: Menu › Select Matches
   Apple Watch: Menu › Select Matches
   Phone: the Sequences tab, or Timer › gear › Select Matches
2. Pick a family first. ISSF, Service, WA/PPC, NPA, Precision Rifle, Action Match, Bullseye, Custom Times. A green dot marks a family that is switched on.
3. Then tick the individual matches inside it. This is a multi-select list — tick as many as you like.
4. Back out. The main screen’s scroll list is rebuilt immediately.

Selecting a sequence on the line

Swipe up/down, or press Up/Down. The list wraps around, so scrolling past the end brings you back to the start. Your position is remembered when you close the app, so the sequence you shot last is still there next time.

Pick the last one by mistake and you stand there for over a minute wondering why nothing has happened. Pick the first one when you expected the third and you get no warning before the stage ends. 5x3 has the same problem in a nastier form: ISSF and Service run it with seven-second turn-aways, NPA Super Magnum with five-second ones. Same three characters on screen, different rhythm.

Section 13Reading the display

Count Direction

Menu › Display & Alerts › Count Direction — Down (the default) or Up. Down shows the seconds remaining; Up shows the seconds elapsed. It changes only what you see; the alerts fire at exactly the same moments either way.

Display Timer In

Menu › Display & Alerts › Display Timer In — Seconds (the default) or Minutes. Seconds shows 165; Minutes shows 2:45. For long precision-rifle or bullseye stages, Minutes is much easier to read at a glance; for anything under a minute, Seconds is better.

Time Slice — the coloured sweep

Time Slice draws a coloured wedge behind the number that grows or shrinks as time passes. It is a peripheral-vision cue: you can tell roughly how much time is left without focusing on the digits at all.

The backlight

While a countdown is running, Shot Clock takes the screen over. It does not time out and drop dark part-way through your stage, and you never have to flick your wrist to read it.

On watches with an AMOLED screen it does something more considered than simply sitting at full brightness. Between events the display holds at a low, readable level; as each warning time approaches it ramps smoothly up to full, then eases back down once the moment has passed. It does the same at every change of phase, and climbs steadily to full brightness through the last ten seconds of a stage.

The screen is therefore brightest at the moments you are most likely to look at it, and dim in between, which is what makes it practical to leave lit for a 165-second stage. Stages of ten seconds or less stay at full brightness throughout.

On other watches the backlight comes on when the countdown starts and stays on until it ends.

On an iPhone the screen is held awake for as long as a sequence is in progress — including while it is paused part-way through — and normal auto-lock returns once the clock is reset. On Android the phone's own display timeout still applies, so if you are propping the phone on a bench for a long stage, set a generous screen timeout in Android's own display settings first.

Section 14Plus Mode and Komacha

Plus Mode — a run-up before the clock

Menu › Controls › Plus Mode adds a fixed lead-in of 1 to 15 seconds in front of every sequence you start. You press Start, the lead-in counts down in blue, and only then does the real course of fire begin.

The point is to give you time to get your attention back on the match after pressing the button — to mount the rifle, settle a grip, or simply stop looking at your wrist. Seven seconds is the common choice because it matches the standard turning-target interval, but any value works for any purpose.

Komacha — getting back in sync with the targets

Plus Mode has a second job, and it is the one that will save you a match: it gives you a way to recover when you press Start at the wrong moment.

On a turning-target course you are supposed to press Start as the targets turn, so that your lead-in runs out exactly as they come round to face. Miss that moment by four seconds and your watch is four seconds out for the rest of the course of fire — every alert lands late, and no amount of stopping and restarting fixes it without losing your place.

While the lead-in is still counting, press the Up button (or swipe down). The lead-in ends there and then, and the next phase begins from that instant. So you wait for the targets to move, press Up at the moment they do, and your watch is back in step with the line.

Section 15Sound, vibration and haptics

There are three separate alert moments — start, progress and stop — and three independent ways of delivering them. You will almost certainly want a different combination indoors than outdoors.

Sound

Vibration

Garmin offers four settings — Off, Start only, Stop only, Start and stop — cycled by tapping. Phones and Apple Watch simply switch it on or off.

Use Haptics

A separate Garmin setting that gives a small click on menu button presses. It has nothing to do with the timer alerts; it is about the feel of navigating the app. Turn it off if you find it noisy.

Section 16Multi-stage courses of fire

Many courses of fire are not one block of time. Duelling stages alternate between firing and turned-away. ISSF stages have a load period, then an away period, then the string. Shot Clock runs all of these as one sequence, unattended.

Pause markers — when the app should wait for you

Some courses of fire need a genuine human gap in the middle: “make ready… stand by… go”. A sequence can include a pause, and when the countdown reaches it the timer stops, shows the next stage’s time, and waits. Press Start again when you are ready and it carries on.

In the timing language (Section 19) a pause is written as a session whose value is 0.

Section 17Recording a session as a workout

Both watch platforms can log your shooting as a recorded activity — with heart rate — so it shows up alongside your runs and rides.

Garmin

Menu › Other Systems › Track Activity. Switch it on and the watch records a normal Garmin activity, with heart rate, for as long as the app is open. When you switch it off, if there is data to keep, the watch asks whether to save it. The result appears in Garmin Connect like any other activity.

Apple Watch

The Apple Watch behaves differently for a reason worth knowing: watchOS gives apps no way to keep the screen awake on their own. The only mechanism Apple provides that keeps a display visible and an app running through a whole stage is the same one the built-in Workout app uses.

So on Apple Watch, a workout session is always running while your countdown is running — that is what stops the watch face taking over halfway through your string. The Track Activity setting controls only whether the resulting session is saved to Health afterwards or quietly thrown away.

Section 18The Sequences editor

The Sequences tab does two jobs: it decides which matches appear in your scroll list, and it lets you change the actual timing of any sequence in the library.

Turning things on and off

The top level is a list of families, each with a toggle. A green dot marks a family that is on. Tapping a family’s row — not its toggle — opens the matches inside it, each with its own toggle.

Changing a sequence’s timing

Tap through to an individual match and then tap a sequence. You get an editor containing the raw timing text and — this is the useful part — a “What this means” panel underneath that translates it into plain English as you type.

Getting back to factory

Timer › gear › Reset Time Sequences on the phone, or Menu › More › Manage Customisations › Reset on Garmin.

Section 19The timing language

Every sequence’s timing is one line of text. It looks cryptic at first and then becomes obvious — there are only five things to learn, and most sequences use one or two of them. This section is the complete reference.

Rule 1 — a full stop separates the time from its warnings

The first number is how long the phase lasts. Every number after it is a moment where an alert fires, counted in seconds remaining.

Rule 2 — a colon starts a new phase

Phases run back to back automatically, with a start alert at each handover. 90.60.30.3:60.30.3 is ninety seconds with three warnings, then straight into sixty seconds with two.

Rule 3 — a minus sign means “not shooting”

A negative phase is a non-shooting period — a load phase, a turn-away, a rest. The digits turn blue instead of white, so you can tell at a glance that you should not be firing.

That is the only thing the minus sign changes. The phase still runs for the number of seconds you wrote, and it still counts in whatever direction your Count Direction setting says — the sign is a label, not a direction.

-7 is a seven-second turn-away. -60 is a sixty-second load period.

Rule 4 — the special characters

Rule 5 — a warning must be smaller than its phase

You cannot alert at 90 seconds remaining inside a 60-second phase. The editor will tell you so.

Read these and you can read anything

Section 20Custom Time sequences

Ten slots that belong entirely to you. Each one has its own timing, its own big display text, and its own stage label, and none of them will ever be overwritten by an update to the built-in library.

Why the app ships with an egg timer

Two slots arrive pre-loaded with something that looks like a joke: a hard-boiled egg at #420 and a soft-boiled one at #300. They are half a joke. They are also the point.

Underneath the match library, Shot Clock is a programmable interval timer that you already wear, that alerts you without you looking at it, and that works with gloves on. Nothing about that is specific to shooting. The eggs are there to give you permission to use it for anything you time repeatedly — and once you have written one, it is one swipe away forever.

Things worth putting in a slot

Section 21DOPE Cards

A DOPE card — “Data On Previous Engagement” — is your own table of corrections: how much elevation and how much wind hold you need at each distance. Shot Clock keeps them on your wrist so you can check a number mid-stage instead of doing arithmetic under time pressure.

How a card is put together

Editing on the phone

Switch card

Tap a card’s tab.

Rename a card

Tap the tab that is already active. The same tap means “switch” on an inactive tab and “rename” on the active one.

Rename or delete

Long-press any tab for a menu with both.

Reorder cards

Turn on Edit mode, then drag by the handle that appears.

Wind columns

The small, unlabelled wind icon above the table. Only active in Edit mode. Add, rename, reorder or remove a bracket there — it is separate from editing the numbers inside them.

Target symbol

Tap the coloured square in the Target column to choose a shape, a colour and (for text-only targets) a short label.

Reading a card on the watch

There are two ways to look at the same data, and you choose which with DOPE Card Settings › View.

Focus ViewOne target at a time, in four big quadrants — distance, the live countdown, elevation and wind. Built to be read in a hurry.

The settings menuSelect Card, Sort Order, View and Wind Bracket. Reached with the Menu button while a card is open.

Stage View is the other mode: up to five targets at once as a roster, each showing its symbol, distance, elevation and the currently selected wind bracket. Swipe left and right to change wind bracket; swipe up and down to scroll the list. A fresh install starts in Stage View.

Getting to a card without losing your countdown

• Double-tap the Down button, or double-swipe down, from either the main screen or a running countdown.
• Swipe left from the same two screens.
• Menu › View DOPE Card at any time.

The countdown keeps running while you are looking. Pressing Select on the DOPE screen starts and stops the timer exactly as it would on the timer screen, and the screen flashes green or red so you get the same confirmation.

Sort Order

DOPE Card Settings › Sort Order — List Order (as you typed them in) or Distance Order (nearest first). Switching between them never rearranges your actual data; List Order always comes back exactly as entered.

Section 22Notes

Twenty short pieces of free text you can read on your wrist. Match rules, a stage plan, your zero, the club’s cease-fire procedure — anything you would otherwise write on tape and stick to a rifle.

On the phone

Notes work exactly like DOPE Cards: a strip of tabs across the top, one per note. Tap to switch, tap the active tab to rename, long-press for rename and delete, Edit mode to drag them into order.

Next to the note editor is a Watch Font Size stepper. It is easy to miss because it is not in Settings — and it applies to every note at once, not just the one you are editing.

On the watch

Menu › View Notes lists your notes by title. Open one and scroll with Up/Down. When you reach the bottom of a note, the next press moves to the next note — so you can read straight through all twenty without going back to the list.

Section 23Saving and syncing

Everything you type into the three editor tabs is a draft. Nothing reaches a watch until you press Save, and Save pushes all three tabs together in one go.

Why Save might be greyed out

• Nothing has changed — there is nothing to save.
• The watch has not finished its first sync. The phone pulls the watch’s current content down before it lets you edit, so that it never overwrites something you cannot see. A full pull takes roughly 15 to 20 seconds on a Garmin.
• Something is invalid — the editor will say what.

If a Save does not reach the watch

A banner appears with a Retry button. Use it rather than redoing the edit — your draft is intact either way.

Apple Watch

Nothing to do. The iPhone and Apple Watch are already paired by the system; edits you save simply appear. There is no connection screen and no button.

Section 24Backup & Restore

Settings › Backup & Restore keeps a snapshot of your Sequences, DOPE Cards and Notes. It is also — slightly unexpectedly — the tool for copying one device’s whole setup onto another.

How it works

• One saved snapshot per device type: one for Garmin, one for Apple Watch, one for the phone itself. Each appears as its own row with its own Restore button.
• It is not a version history. Backing up again replaces that device type’s previous snapshot.
• Restore loads into a draft. It never overwrites your live data directly — you review it and press Save yourself, exactly as with any other edit.
• Export Backup to File… and Import Backup from File… do the same thing through a shareable file, which is how you move a setup to a second phone or hand it to somebody else.

Garmin’s own backup Being retired

While it is still there: it saves your edited sequences, your Custom Times, which match families are switched on, and — where present — your DOPE cards and notes. Its one real advantage is that it needs no phone app at all.

It files each backup against an identifier that is unique to this app on this particular watch. Restoring works when both halves match, and only then, so in practice it does exactly one job: it brings your content back after you uninstall and reinstall the same app on the same watch.

Section 25What the Portal is for

Typing a table of ballistic corrections on a watch bezel is miserable. The Portal exists so you can do it on a real keyboard instead, and then send the result to your watch — without needing a phone at all.

Section 26Getting in with a code

There is no username and no password. Your watch generates a six-digit code, you type that code into the website, and for the next half hour that code is your key.

Step 2The watch shows your code.

1. On the watch, open the Portal.
   Garmin: Menu › Other Systems › Open Portal
   Apple Watch: Menu › Other Systems › Portal
   You can also reach it from inside DOPE Cards or Notes, via Edit Cards / Edit Notes — which has the small advantage that the website opens straight onto the right tab.
2. Read the six digits off the watch.
3. Go to https://shotclock.au/portal on any phone, tablet or computer and type them in.
4. Edit. Your watch’s current content is already loaded.

Section 27Editing in the browser

Three tabs, matching the three things a watch holds. Most of it is drag-and-type obvious; this section covers the parts that are not.

DOPE Cards

• The tabs across the top are your cards. + adds one; clicking a card’s name renames it.
• The ⠿ handle means “drag me”. On a tab it reorders cards; on a row it reorders entries. Nothing labels it — anywhere you see ⠿ in the Portal, you can press and drag.
• Click the coloured square in the Target column to pick a symbol, a colour, and — for text-only targets — a short label.
• Wind bracket headings are editable text. There is no rename button; you click the heading itself and type. + and ✕ beside them add and remove wind columns, one to five per card.
• Numbers carry their own direction. A minus sign means DOWN for elevation and LEFT for windage. No sign means UP or RIGHT. There is no separate direction control to set.

Time Sequences

• Click any sequence in the grid to open it.
• The “What this means” box under the timer value translates your text into plain English as you type. Use it. It is the fastest way to be sure a sequence does what you think.
• Help opens the full syntax reference — the same rules as Section 19 of this manual.

Notes

• Drag the ⠿ handle in the notes list to reorder.
• The panel on the right is a live preview of how the note will actually look on your watch, including the font size slider above it. If a note is going to be unreadable, you will see it here first.
• Counters under each field show how much room is left: 20 characters for a title, 250 for a body.

Section 28Getting your changes back onto the watch

Section 29Limits, languages and timeouts

The session expires

A Portal session times out after 30 minutes of inactivity. Before it goes, a warning banner appears — click Stay active to keep working. If it does expire you are returned to the code entry screen, and that code will not work again: back out on the watch and open the Portal once more for a fresh one.

Language and theme

A language selector sits next to the light/dark theme toggle in the top corner. The Portal is available in English, German, Swedish and Romanian, and it starts in whatever language your watch is set to. Changing it here does not change your watch.

The limits, in one place

What is stored, and where

Everything you create lives on your own devices, with two exceptions.

• The Portal. Your sequences, notes and DOPE cards are copied to the server while you have them open in a browser, and deleted a short time after you finish — which is why an expired session takes an unsaved edit with it.
• The watch's own backup (Section 24). This one deliberately keeps a copy of that watch's configuration on the server, anonymously, so that you can restore it later. It is also the feature being retired — the phone app's Backup & Restore keeps its snapshot on your own phone instead.

Section 30Match Official Mode

Settings › Mode switches the whole app between Individual and Match Official. It is not a preference — it changes what the app is for, and several things move at once.

Section 31RangeLink — one clock for the whole squad

RangeLink lets one Match Official’s phone start and stop the shot clock for a whole squad or shooting detail at once, over Bluetooth. No internet, no shared Wi-Fi, no router, nothing to configure on the range.

Signing a shooter up

1. The shooter opens Slave Mode on their own device. Timer › gear › Slave Mode. Their screen shows a QR code.
2. The Match Official scans it from the same row on their own phone — which in Match Official Mode reads Master Mode.
3. Keep scanning. The scanner deliberately stays open after a successful scan, because you are usually signing up a whole squad in one go. Tap Done when you have finished the list.
4. Check the list. Everybody you have registered appears under their own two-word callsign, listed alphabetically. Swipe one off to drop that shooter without disturbing anybody else.

Callsigns

Your device picks its own two-word callsign — “Silent Falcon”, “Amber Otter” — before it has ever met a Match Official, so it is a name you will actually recognise being called across a firing line. If two shooters in one squad happen to land on the same one, the Match Official’s phone quietly renames the second.

Running the squad

• Every Start, Stop, Resume and Reset the Match Official presses fires on every device at once.
• Changing sequence on the Match Official’s phone previews on everyone else’s, even a sequence a particular shooter does not have enabled locally — and their own browsing position is put back exactly where it was afterwards.
• A shooter’s screen goes grey with a “Controlled by the Match Official” banner while they are being driven.
• Each shooter’s own sound and vibration preferences still apply. The Match Official broadcasts the timing; each device decides how to announce it.

Leaving and ending

A shooter’s device also releases itself automatically if it stops hearing from the Match Official for about six seconds — a flat battery, a phone in a pocket, or somebody simply walking out of range all look the same from the shooter’s side, and all resolve the same way.

Who can join

Apple Watch cannot broadcast — watchOS gives apps no way to do it. Garmin support for the current RangeLink design is not finished; a Garmin watch is a timer in its own right in the meantime.

Section 32Competition Mode

A single switch for sanctioned matches, where a shot timer’s networking and noise may be against the rules.

Turning it on:

• Locks Sound off. The setting shows “Off (Locked)” and cannot be changed until you turn Competition Mode off again.
• Stops this app’s wireless features. Any RangeLink session ends, and squad registration is refused from both sides.
• Is refused in Match Official Mode, and switching into Match Official Mode turns it off. A Match Official needs sound and RangeLink to work.

Section 33Target Timer — driving real targets

The Target Timer is a physical Target Timer you wire into a range’s turning targets and horn. Once connected, the same Start and Stop you already press turns real targets — with no separate “fire the target” button anywhere.

Two different connections, in two different places

This is the part that confuses people. Configuring a Target Timer does not make it usable in a match, and pairing it for a match does not let you configure it. They are separate, on purpose.

Both live inside Match Official Mode. If you have not bought it, or your phone is currently in Individual mode, neither entry appears at all — a Target Timer is Match Official equipment, so there is nothing useful either one could do for you. Switch the phone to Match Official Mode and both come back.

Channel roles

Each of the six channels is one of three things:

Target

Driven to face or away as the sequence dictates. A reset always returns every target channel to facing.

Horn

Pulsed for a set number of milliseconds at scheduled moments.

Unused

Switched off and left off.

A Target Timer leaves the factory with channels 1–5 as targets and channel 6 as the horn. Re-tasking it — “channel 6 becomes a sixth target”, “shorten the horn to half a second” — is a configuration change, from a phone.

Resting position

Resting State, on the same screen, decides whether a target channel is switched on or off when nothing is running. That is the position your targets sit in between strings, at the end of every sequence, after a Reset, and from the moment the Target Timer is powered on.

Which setting is correct is not a preference — it depends on how your target mechanism is wired. Pick whichever one leaves the targets facing the shooter at rest, and check it against the hardware in front of you. It applies to Target channels only; horns and unused channels always rest off.

Wi-Fi and firmware

• Wi-Fi on the Target Timer is used only for firmware updates. It is never used to control anything.
• “Use Current Wi-Fi” fills in the network name from whatever your phone is on, but it can never fill in the password — iOS does not let any app read a stored Wi-Fi password back out. You will always type that part yourself.
• Leaving the password field blank and saving keeps whatever password the Target Timer already has. It does not clear it.
• A firmware update replaces the software only. Your device name, channel roles and Wi-Fi details all survive it.

Arming: the Target Timer will not move until you say so

A Target Timer turns real steel. On the Garmin and Apple Watch apps it therefore will not move at all until you deliberately arm the watch — and firing uses that permission up, so each run needs arming again.

Armed, a red TARGET TURNER ARMED banner sits across the middle of the screen. No banner means the watch will still time the stage perfectly — it simply will not drive the targets, which makes it a useful dry run.

Section 34Range Clock — wall displays

Range Clock is a separate free app you install on a spare phone or tablet, mount on a wall, and never touch again. It shows the time of day, optionally rotates through event notices, and switches automatically to a live match countdown the moment a Match Official starts a stage.

Pairing and groups

Reachable from the Timer screen and from Settings. Scan, pair, and the display joins your list. If you run more than one, you can organise them into Groups — “Range 1”, “Pistol bays”, whatever suits.

Keeping their clocks together

Inside a group, one display automatically becomes the group’s timekeeper — marked with a small clock icon on its row — and the others follow it rather than your phone.

Digital Signage

Between matches, a display can rotate through event cards you write: event name, stage, range label, who is staffing it, a start and end time, and your own colours. Each card carries a real date and disappears on its own once it is over.

Commissioning a new display

Setting up a brand-new display is done entirely from your phone — name, club branding, group membership, operating hours.

Section 35Meet Shot Clock Diary

If you can drive Shot Clock you already know how Diary behaves — same conventions, same layout language, same match catalogue. Here is what it adds.

How the two apps relate

The one switch that changes everything

Like Shot Clock, Diary has a Settings › Mode switch with Individual and Match Official. It is not a preference; it changes what the tabs are.

Switching is instant, with no confirmation and nothing to save first — anything in progress saves itself before the switch takes effect. Switching back restores your Diary exactly as it was.

What it costs

Diary’s Match Official purchase is separate from Shot Clock’s. They are different apps with different stores’ billing behind them.

Section 36The Diary — your session journal

One entry per range session. Everything saves as you type — there is no Save button to remember and nothing to lose by backing out.

When and where

Date & range type

Indoor or outdoor.

Location

Type it, or use Find Nearby Range — a venue search built specifically for shooting ranges rather than general points of interest. It translates non-English venue names, so a club whose name is not in English still turns up.

Map thumbnail

Appears under Location once there are real coordinates behind it — from picking a range, or simply from typing a place name and pausing. If it cannot find what you typed, the map disappears rather than showing you the wrong place. It is included in the exported PDF.

Temperature

Type it, or fetch it. The app looks up the weather for the date the entry is set to, not for right now — diary entries are usually written up afterwards.

Weather details

Once fetched, a button opens the full historical report: temperature range, wind and conditions across an hourly window around your session.

What you shot with

Firearm, ammunition, load data and rounds fired. Names you type are remembered as suggestions for next time, and each picker has a Manage… option:

• Tap a saved name to rename it — and every past entry that used it updates too. Fixing “Glock19” to “Glock 19 Gen 5” does not fork your history in half.
• Swipe to remove a name from the suggestion list. Past entries keep exactly what they had.

How it went

Mindset records mood, energy and hydration on a 1–5 scale — three taps, and over a season they turn out to correlate with results more than most people expect.

Reflection is three proper rich-text fields — General Comments, What Went Well, What Didn’t Go Well — plus a short Key Takeaway and a free-text score field.

The Attachments panel

Photos, canvases and linked scores live together in one collapsible panel, closed by default so a quick entry stays quick.

Photos and video

• Attach several at once, from the camera or your library. Tap a thumbnail for a full-screen viewer.
• The viewer has a real annotation tool: freehand drawing with adjustable colour and width, a highlighter, an eraser, and undo/redo. Draw straight onto a photo of your target to mark a group or call out a flyer.
• Pinch to zoom — your annotations stay lined up with the image.
• This one screen rotates to landscape for a bigger canvas, even though the rest of the app stays portrait.
• Rename a photo or video and that name is what appears everywhere afterwards, including the PDF. You can then refer to it from a reflection field — “see [Group 3]”.

Canvases

A blank page to sketch on, rather than drawing on top of a photo — a target diagram, a range sketch, a wind call. Same drawing tools. Each canvas shows a real preview of what you drew on its tile, not a generic icon, and press-and-hold renames or deletes it. Canvases are included in the PDF.

Linked scores

Attach saved scorecards to a diary entry — ideal for a multi-day event where every day’s card belongs to one journal entry. Tap a linked session and it opens in the real Score screen, not a stripped-down preview. Delete the session later and the entry shows a “Removed Score” placeholder with an option to unlink, rather than breaking.

Only solo scorecards can be linked; Multi-Bay sessions belong to other shooters’ records.

Finding things again

• Search across every entry.
• Sort and filter by location, firearm, ammunition, match or range type — and the filters stack, so “outdoor + .308 + Bisley” is one query.
• With an entry open, swipe left and right to page through the rest of your current filtered list.
• Swipe to delete, or multi-select several entries for batch actions.
• Export one entry or a whole batch as a PDF, or print it directly — photos, annotations, maps and all your written fields included. Section 41 covers where it can go from there.

Section 37Score — running a scorecard

A real scorecard for a real course of fire, on a keypad designed for scoring rather than a spreadsheet pretending to be one.

History is the resting state

Open the Score tab with nothing in progress and you land on Score History — a list of every session, with match name, date and time, and small icons where you filled in a location or event.

• The + button lives here, not on the scoring screen. Tap it to pick a match and start a genuinely fresh session; whatever was open saves itself first.
• Tap any row to resume scoring it.
• Search by name, location or event; sort newest or oldest first; filter to one match.
• Once a card is open, the back chevron at the top left is how you return to History. It autosaves on the way out.

Entering shots

Each card is set to one scoring mode or the other — a property of the card, not something that changes shot to shot.

Boxes lock themselves — the red border

Scores you have already entered protect themselves. Twenty seconds after your last entry anywhere on the card, every filled box locks, and tapping one will not overwrite it.

This exists because the most expensive mistake in scoring is a stray tap landing on a settled score — and the moment it is most likely to happen is when you are moving between bays with the phone in your hand. Locking is what stops a brush of the thumb quietly rewriting somebody's result.

Unlocking

Press and hold any red box. That unlocks every box on the card — not just the one you held — for a fresh twenty seconds, which is long enough to make a correction without fighting the lock for each box in turn. When the twenty seconds lapse, everything locks again on its own.

Sighting shots

On a course of fire that includes them, sighters are entered exactly like any other shot but roll up into their own separate subtotal, completely isolated from your real running total. You can see how they went; they never touch the result.

Malfunctions — AM and NAM

Where a course of fire supports it, two extra keys appear:

NAM

Non-Allowable Malfunction — the shooter’s own fault, or otherwise not qualifying. A permanent zero, no reshoot. Kept distinct from a plain miss purely so the record shows why it was a zero.

AM

Allowable Malfunction — a genuine equipment failure confirmed by the official. Each AM marks one shot still owed in the makeup round and unlocks one enterable box in that string’s makeup row.

Session details

Every card has its own date, location and event name, under the toolbar’s … menu. Location behaves exactly like Diary’s, including Find Nearby Range and the map thumbnail that ends up in the PDF.

Statistics and trends

• Per session: shot count, average, highest, standard deviation, X-rate and miss-rate — broken out per phase of the course of fire, so Precision and Rapid Fire are scored separately rather than blurred together. Plus a frequency chart and a progression chart.
• Across sessions: every saved solo session under the same match name pulled into one view, filterable by time range or location. This is where you find out whether you are actually getting better.
• In the PDF: the score grid side by side with its statistics, plus a plain-English “How to Read This Report” page.

What a score card is made of

Before you build one, it helps to know how the built-in cards are put together, because a custom card uses exactly the same pieces.

A card is a stack of rows. Most rows start with a label — a series number, a stage name, a total's name — and everything after the label is a run of boxes. Some boxes you type into; others the app fills in for you.

The boxes

Building your own card

From the + menu, open Custom › New Custom Definition. You are laying out the same rows and boxes described above, and a live preview shows them as real scoring boxes as you go rather than as text.

1. Add boxes with the keypad. Each tap appends one box to the row you are working on, using the codes in the table above.
2. Name the row. Tap its label — or the placeholder dash if it has none — and type. A row whose label is the only thing on it becomes a section heading.
3. Add more rows as you go, or long-press a row's label for Insert Row Above / Insert Row Below to put one in a specific place.
4. Finish with your totals. A subtotal at the end of each series, a total at the end of each stage, and a grand total at the foot of the card.

Correcting as you build

• Replace a box: tap it to select it — the next keypad tap overwrites it and moves the selection along, so you can fix a run without re-tapping each one.
• Insert a box: tap the gap between two boxes to drop a cursor there. New boxes land in the gap instead of at the end.
• Delete: long-press a box to remove it. Each row has its own delete icon for the whole row.
• Nothing needs saving — the card is written as you build it, so there is no Save button and no way to abandon a half-made edit.

Editing a card you already made

Saved cards appear under + › Custom, ready to score. To change one, open Manage Templates… from that same menu:

Tap the name

Reopens the card in the editor, exactly as you left it. Every tool above still applies — add rows, insert boxes, retitle stages.

Pencil icon

Renames it, without opening the editor.

Bin icon

Deletes it.

Export

Export PDF and Export CSV sit next to each other on the same menu. The PDF is the printable report; the CSV is one row per string, for a spreadsheet. Both hand off to your phone's own share sheet — Section 41.

Section 38Multi-Bay — scoring a whole relay

In Match Official mode the Score tab becomes a Multi-Bay scoring screen: one device, many shooters, up to fifty bays.

Match History

One row per match event, not per bay — match name, date, bay count. Tap to resume at whichever bay you left off on. Each row has its own export button, so you can share a finished match’s PDF without reopening it.

Bay ranges — the important idea

A match line can have fifty bays, but one official standing at one part of the line is realistically scoring a handful. So each official sets their own assigned bay range — a Start Bay and an End Bay — and swiping cycles within just that band.

• A new match defaults to bays 1–10. Adjust it from the toolbar’s Bay Range settings to match your actual section of the line.
• The range is a hard fence. Swiping off either edge wraps straight to the other edge — there is no swiping past it, and no way to jump directly to a bay number. If you need a bay outside your band, widen the range first.
• Session details — date, location, event — are shared across the whole match, not set per bay.
• Scores you have already entered lock themselves after twenty seconds, so swiping between bays with the phone in your hand cannot overwrite a settled result. Press and hold a red-bordered box to unlock (Section 37).

Exporting a match

A Match PDF is a full roster table (one row per bay or competitor) followed by a statistics page per bay and one shared explainer page. An “Include Statistics in PDF” toggle in the same menu turns the per-shooter pages off if you just want the roster. The CSV is one row per bay, with the same columns as the roster table. Club scoring-system exports are on the way here too — see Section 37. If you are streaming the match live, the spectator link offers its own downloads as well, including a sheet laid out for an official scorer (Section 40).

Section 39Match Report — the day’s log

A lightweight incident log kept alongside a Multi-Bay match: disciplinary matters, safety concerns, equipment failures, or simply a note about how the day went.

It is deliberately simpler than a formal ISSF Range Incident Report — no serial numbers, no signature chain. This is one official running a club match on their own phone, not a jury process.

Logging an entry

Tap +. Six categories, each with its own coloured icon in the list and on the PDF:

• Bay is a dropdown scoped to that match’s assigned range, plus “None” — an entry does not have to belong to one competitor. A range-wide power cut belongs to nobody.
• Competitor name is free text and optional.
• Details is the write-up and is required — Save stays disabled until there is something in it.
• Applicable Rules and Action Taken are optional on purpose. You often will not know the rule number in the moment; come back and fill it in later.
• Log entries mid-match, alongside active scoring. They are separate tabs, not exclusive states.

Time defaults to the moment you started the entry, and can be changed — tap it to pick a date and then a time. Useful when you are writing an incident up afterwards rather than as it happens.

Where it ends up

Every entry appears as its own Match Report section on that match’s exported PDF, after the statistics pages, newest first — and it prints even with “Include Statistics in PDF” turned off. There is also a share icon on the tab itself that exports just the report: match name, date, location and every entry, for when somebody needs the incident log on its own.

Section 40Live Scoring — a public scoreboard

Broadcast a Multi-Bay match’s roster — names, per-stage scores and running totals — to anyone watching in a browser, updating as you enter shots. Nothing for them to install, and nothing they can change.

Turning it on

1. From the Multi-Bay screen’s … menu, tap Live Scoring.
2. Switch on Stream Live Scores.
3. Choose a Destination (below).
4. Share the link.

A Timeout setting (5–240 minutes, 30 by default) turns streaming off by itself after that long without a successful update, so it does not keep quietly retrying once you have closed the match or lost signal. If it lapses, switch it back on.

The three destinations

The first time a browser connects to a local server it will warn that the connection is not private. That is expected — click through once and most browsers remember.

Your spectator link

With shotclock.au selected, your device is given a permanent two-word callsign — two words, in the style of “Steady Falcon” — and a link built from it. Unlike a match callsign this one is generated for you, so there is nothing to type and nothing to agree with anybody:

https://shotclock.au/livescores/wooden-teapot

The callsign names your device, not one particular match — so the same link keeps working all day as you finish one match and start the next. Send it once in the morning.

Combining several ranges into one board

Choose Match as the destination instead, and every device that enters the same Match Callsign is combined onto one shared, ranked scoreboard — regardless of how far apart those devices physically are.

Match Callsign

A fresh name, chosen by the organiser, for this one event. Every site types the identical one. The board shows how many sites are attached, so if you expected four and see three, somebody mistyped it — and if it is higher than you expected, somebody outside your event is using the same name.

It is a two-word name in the same style as a device callsign, but yours will be specific to your event — this manual deliberately does not print a usable one, for the reason set out below.

You do not have to type the match- part. If you were only given the back half, type that and the prefix is added for you. The field shows you what it will actually send as you type, so you can see it happen rather than discover later that your site never joined the group.

Location

A short label — “Hobart” — identifying your site on the combined board, since bay numbers repeat across sites. Falls back to your device callsign if left blank.

Ranking

By average score per shot fired, not total. Sites rarely start and finish together, and average is what stays fair while some are still mid-match. A competitor needs a full series’ worth of shots before they are ranked at all, so two lucky early shots cannot put somebody falsely on top.

Memory

The Match Callsign is remembered for 12 hours, so a phone restart mid-event does not mean retyping it. It is shown on the Match screen with a one-tap clear.

Watching a combined match

The combined board has its own address, built from the match callsign rather than from any one device:

https://shotclock.au/livescores/match-paper-kettle

Open that in any browser to watch every attached site at once. Share and Copy buttons sit under the Match Callsign field so you can send the finished link straight to competitors and spectators without typing it out — and since it is built from the callsign, every site can hand out the identical link.

What else that link can do

The address you hand out is not only a scoreboard. Adding a little to the end of it gives you a printable results table, or the results as a file — no login, no separate admin page, and it works on a match callsign and a single device's callsign alike.

So a full example, for the results secretary rather than the spectators:

https://shotclock.au/livescores/match-paper-kettle?view=results

Section 41Sharing, printing and backing up

Everything you record can leave the app three ways: shared, printed, or bundled into a backup file. The first two use your phone's own machinery, so they reach wherever your phone already reaches.

Sharing

Anywhere you see Export PDF, Export CSV or a share icon — a diary entry, a batch of entries, a scorecard, a whole match, a Match Report, a Live Scoring link — what happens next is your phone's standard share sheet. We do not put a list of destinations in front of you; we hand the finished file to the operating system and let it offer everything it knows about.

In practice that means the file can go, without any of it being a Shot Clock feature:

• straight into an email to your match secretary;
• to WhatsApp, Messages, Signal or whatever your club uses;
• into iCloud Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox or Files;
• to another phone by AirDrop or Nearby Share;
• anywhere else you have installed that accepts a document.

Printing

Print hands the same document to your phone's own print system — AirPrint on iPhone, the print service on Android. Any printer your phone can already reach will appear, including one shared over your club's Wi-Fi.

Worth knowing for match day: a Match PDF is laid out for printing, not just for reading on a phone. A roster table, then a statistics page per bay, then the Match Report if you logged anything. Printed at the end of a match it is a complete paper record without anybody retyping a card.

Backing up

One file containing everything: diary entries, equipment lists, every solo and Multi-Bay scorecard, custom templates, Match Report entries, and every attached photo and video. Settings › Backup & Restore.

Backup

Writes one file and hands it to your phone’s normal share sheet — save it to iCloud Drive, Google Drive, local storage, or anywhere else that sheet offers.

Restore

Opens a file picker to choose a backup you made earlier.

Section 42Menu maps

Where everything actually is. If you are hunting for a setting, start here rather than tapping through.

Garmin watch

Apple Watch

The phone app — two separate settings screens

This is the single most common source of “I cannot find that setting”. There genuinely are two, and they hold different things.

Shot Clock Diary

The Web Portal

Section 43Every setting, and where it lives

One table for the whole of Shot Clock. “Timer settings” means the gear icon inside the Timer screen; “App settings” means the gear on the bottom bar.

Section 44The built-in match library

Every course of fire that ships with the app, with the sequences each one offers. Sequences marked +60s Load include the ISSF load-and-away preamble; the plain versions are the same string without it.

Section 45Troubleshooting

Section 46Glossary

Active device

The one watch — or the phone itself — that the phone app’s editors currently belong to.

AM

Allowable Malfunction. A genuine equipment failure, entitling a makeup shot. Diary only.

Bay

One firing position on a range.

Squad

The shooters on the line together — a shooting detail or relay in some disciplines. Used interchangeably in this manual.

Callsign

A two-word name a device picks for itself — “Silent Falcon” — used to identify it in a squad or on a scoreboard.

Competition Mode

A lockdown switch for sanctioned matches: sound off, this app’s wireless features off.

Course of fire

The prescribed sequence of shooting for a match. What Shot Clock calls a sequence.

DOPE

Data On Previous Engagement — your own elevation and wind corrections at each distance.

Family

A group of related matches: ISSF, Service, WA/PPC, NPA, Precision Rifle, Action Match, Bullseye, Custom Times.

Focus View

The DOPE display that shows one target at a time in four large quadrants.

Komacha

Ending an opening lead-in early so the next phase starts from that instant — the way you re-sync a watch to the targets after a late Start. Named after Peter Komacha (Section 14).

Match

One event within a family.

Match Official

The person running the shoot; also the app mode they switch into. Some clubs say Range Officer or RO.

MASTER

The device driving a RangeLink squad.

Multi-Bay

Diary’s mode for scoring a whole relay from one device.

NAM

Non-Allowable Malfunction. A permanent zero with no reshoot. Diary only.

PAR timer

A timer that runs a fixed, known schedule and signals its boundaries — as opposed to one that listens for shots.

Plus Mode

A configurable 1–15 second lead-in before a sequence starts.

Portal

shotclock.au/portal — the browser editor for watch content.

Progress alert

A warning that fires partway through a phase, at a time the course of fire defines.

RangeLink

Bluetooth squad sync: one phone runs the clock for everybody.

Range Clock

A wall-mounted display product, driven remotely from a Match Official’s phone.

Sequence

One selectable, startable stage.

Session

One continuous block of time inside a sequence.

Session string

The written shorthand for a sequence’s timing, e.g. 90.60.30.3.

Sighting shots

Practice shots recorded but never counted toward a score.

SLAVE

A device following a RangeLink MASTER.

Stage View

The DOPE display that shows up to five targets at once as a roster.

String

One run of a sequence.

Target Timer

The physical Target Timer that turns targets and sounds a horn.

Time Slice

The coloured sweep behind the countdown showing time remaining.

X

A shot inside the ten ring. Same ten points, counted separately as a tiebreaker.

Section 47Quick reference card

Everything worth knowing on the line, on one page. Print it, or keep it on a phone.

Shot Clock and Shot Clock Diary are made by Dugong Technologies.
Questions, corrections and feature requests: [email protected] · shotclock.au