A Free App to Help With Dry Fire (IPSC Shot Timer)

If you follow the Triangle Tactical Facebook page, you may have seen a post recently about how I am getting back into a dry fire routine after falling off the wagon for a few months. One reason that a lot of people don’t do constructive dry fire practice, is that most shooters (myself included) don’t own a shot timer. Having a timer, with a ‘Par Time’ function is crucial to constructive practice.

As I mentioned above, I don’t own a timer. I should, but I just haven’t thrown down the $130 for a nice timer, when I could buy ammo or gear with that money instead. However, I’ve found a solution, and a free one at that!

If you have an Android Phone, head over to the Google Play store, and search for “IPSC Shot Timer”. There are a lot of other shot timers in the Play store, but IPSC Shot Timer is the best one I’ve found.

Once downloaded, you will open the App, and see this:

To set the timer up for dry fire, hit the menu button on your phone, and then click settings.

You will then see the following screen:

Hit the drop-down menu, and you can select “Par Time”:

After selecting the Par Time function, you will be presented with a screen that has a bunch of sliders that do different things. Below are the settings that I have been using:

Here’s a rundown of the settings:

• Threshold: This setting is used for live fire, it adjusts how loud something needs to be to trip the timer. Since were dry firing, you can leave this one alone.
• Random Start: The random start setting is somewhat important. As competitive shooters, we become pretty trained in hearing “Shooter indicates ready, stand by!” 2 second pause, and BEEP! I’ve become pretty reliant on that two second pause before the beep, so I’ve been playing with the random start a little to help me wait for the beep, and break me of anticipating it after 2 seconds.
• Minimum: This slider gives you a minimum percentage of the random start before the buzzer will beep. On the 40% setting I have set above, the buzzer will alarm anywhere from 2.4 to 6 seconds from when I activate the timer.
• Echo Delay: This is another setting for live fire, that may be helpful if you are using this app in an indoor range or somewhere that you might get some echo coming off of the backstop.

Lastly, you can go back to the home page of the app, and set the par time for your drill.

If you need ideas for some drills, check out Ben Stoegers website and have a look at his 15 minute dry fire program. I believe Ben Stoeger has a dry fire book out now if that is more your speed, and you can also check out Steve Anderson’s dry fire book at AndersonShooting.com.

Competitive shooting season is here, what are you doing to improve this season?