More practice with the 1885 and the .22lr insert. This is practice for a silhouette match that uses .22lr and iron sights to shoot 3/8 scale rams at 75 yards. Today's work went really well. I shot paper Rams at 75 yards and wound up with a 36/40. The record at the clubs that run this match is 39/40. More than 50% of the time a 36 will win the match.  So I am VERY happy.

I did some practice yesterday on the rimram target with the 1885 and Crossno insert. I felt really good about a 13/15 with it. If I had had more time I would have continued. I finished with 11 in a row.

This is a local match, iron sights and single shots using the cowbow sized ram at 75 yards. While the distances are modest and the targets fairly large. You fire your 10 shots on a shared point and in shooter order left to right, so there is the pressure of other shooters waiting on you.

Yesterday, I was able to just bring the rifle up and break the shot in a few seconds. I think the 1.5 month break after highpower did me some good. My previous high with these targets and iron sights was 10/15.

Well the season is over.

Camp Perry had it's good points and bad points. I was able to shoot my highest scores yet in President's 100 and the leg match. But the weren't high enough to make the cuts.

I've taken August and now Sept off. But I am ready to start training again. The winter training plan will be a combination of dryfire, airgun, and smallbore silhouette matches. It's also time to get out the longbow and flintlock. Bow season starts in 3 weeks.

Yesterday I had a really good match at Rivanna Rifle and Pistol Club. It was a beautiful day and I shot my highest match score ever. It was a 459-9x of 500.

Individual scores were 180-1x standing, 93-2x sitting, 93-3x rapid fire prone, and 93-3x slowfire prone. I made some mistakes, but still managed to turn in a solid performance.

This afternoon I went out to do some practice with the rimfire upper (primarily sitting and rapid prone, but I shot a standing string as well). My scores were 90-2x standing, 94-3x sitting, 96-4x sitting, and 95-3x rapid fire prone. I did not shoot a slowfire prone today.

My positions are solid, my hold is improving, I am more picky in sight picture, and more important, my new glasses let me focus on the front sight. It's a good feeling to have things come together and I feel like I am closing in on Master classification. After a year and a half I finally picked up an NRA scorebook so that I can have a temp classification. I think that I have something like 320 shots in at the NRA over almost 2 years and still no initial classification.

A new day.

Another new high. But it came with a major asterick. I started a 20 shot stage with a score that made me unhappy. I pulled off a new high to shoot my average.

Standing: 82-0, 98-2

Rapid Prone(2-6): 75 of 80

Today's Practice:

Standing: 91-1x, 94-3x

Sitting: 95-2x

All shot with new glasses, both eyes open using a paper blinder in sweatband.

One of the things that has really helped my shooting in the past few weeks is the realization that the glasses that I was using basically gave me 20/20 distance vision. The problem with that is that I was not able to keep focus on the front sight. I began testing a  week and a half ago with +1.5 diopter readers. That worked. I also ordered a set of sports glasses from Zenni Optical with the left lens for distance and the right for the hyperfocal distance of an AR (about 40 inches or so). With good eyesight (like I used to have) this would be +.75 diopter  with my current situation it is +1.5 diopter. I need .75 for distance and an additional .75 for hyperfocal for the front sight on a 20inch barrel.

With almost 2 weeks of testing I am shooting better than ever. It's funny how being able to REALLY focus on the front sight lets you shoot well. But front sight focus is not one of the fundementals of marksmanship for nothing.

I've been doing a lot of practice on High Power this past week or so. I've shot several reduced Slow Fire scores in the 90's with one that could have been a possible (97-5 followed by a 96-5). I have also turned in some good offhand scores with a new high score of 95-3x, sitting (new stage high of 187-9x) and rapid fire prone practice (new stage high of 189-5x). I am knocking at the door of master or shooting Master at least a portion of the time for everything but standing (which is a solid 92.5 average).

It's High Power Season. I'm still shooting some silhouette matches (and will be shooting 2  this weekend). But most of my energy has been directed toward High Power. I have made some headway.

1. I now have a functional sitting position that works and finally gives me higher scores than standing. I'm mostly in the mid-90's in practice. And my match scores have ranged from 90-93.

2. I have a new personal high for offhand. Last week in the Creedmoor Cup I fired a 10 shot string of 95 in offhand. That was a good feeling. My average is still around 90, but it is moving up.

3. I am also working on some solutions to some slowfire prone issues. The weird thing is that my 200 yard work with the 22lr, has shown me that I can shoot slowfire. But I am working to solve some vision issues during that final stage of the match. Last week I experienced a double bull with one on top of the other. You can imagine how well that string of fire went. On second thought, don't imagine. I made some changes, shot yesterday and the vision issue was MUCH better. The funny thing is the day before the problem, I has an appt. with the eye doc and got a clean bill of health although my right eye had gone down to 20/25. These issues have made it difficult for me to score well in 20 shot strings. I can run 5 or so 10's and x's and then wind up with a few wide shots.

Here is a mod I made to my coat that comes from Nancy Tompkins. The straps pull the neck down so that it doesn't press against the back of my head in prone. It did seem to help. I should probably spend more time shooting prone without the scope.

A lot to cover.

First off I have continued practicing for the 200 yard rimfire matches. Two weeks ago while doing some ammo testing, I shot a 10 shot  1.5 moa (3 inch group) at 200 with the .22 using Remington White Box ammunition. This was shot prone with sling and no external support or shooting coat. That was fun.

Last weekend and most of this week I was out of action with gout or pseudo gout in my knee. I felt much better today. I wanted to get a zero with my Service Rifle since I had put in a new front sight (.072). I got the rifle zeroed after 3 shots or so and then shot a 6 shot 1 moa group (sling, prone, shooting coat). The other four though were a problem that made me question myself. the were individually something like a 2.5 MOA group. As I was packing my rifle I discovered that my rear aperature was very loose. I didn't even think of checking it while shooting. I will need to add that to my prep time or pre-prep list.

The good news is that I am shooting slowfire prone better than ever before with both the rimfire and the centerfire. This is really good news for me.

New Airgun

I have ordered an FWB 300S. This will be my new practice air rifle and I will use it for shooting postal Airgun matches. I need to send the Crossman practice upper off to have the valve replaced (it is leaking air into the chamber).

For more information about the 300S, see the article below.

http://airgun-academy.pyramydair.com/blog/2012/02/fwb-300s-vintage-target-air-rifle-part-1/

Training Journal Week 3

Friday: off
Saturday: Zero's for rimram rifle (.22lr liner in 1885 .45-70), incomplete. Shoot 20 shot .22LR match at 200 yards with bolt rifle. Targets 3 and 3.5 MOA steel plates. 12-20 final score 2nd place. Scope lacked the elevation adjustment to shoot at 200, wound up using Mildots and a hold of 1 mildot. 4/10 of 7 inch target, 8/10 of 6 inch target.
Sunday: .22 ammo testing at 50 yards.Shot Remington White Box Target, Eley Club Xtra and CCI STD Velocity. Best results were white box with 2moa groups, prone, no sling, no support.
Monday:Daisy 853 Indoors. Iron sights 10m Rifle target. It was hard to get in the groove. I kept noticing the trigger being different between shots.
Tuesday: Dryfire using Scatt system. Only 2 shots out of 9 ring. Most shots felt good. This is my main reason for shooting silhouette (to improve Highpower Offhand). 

Training Journal Week 2

Friday: Off
Saturday: Outdoors.10m airgun. Later actual distance work on chickens, pigs and Rams.. Results posted tonight. Only got in 25 yard practice due to time. Results were 17/40 (4 chickens, 7 pigs, 2 Turkeys, 4 Rams). Note that the 4 Chickens were in the second 5 shots.
Sunday: Off. Working with other shooters, spotting for them, and helping with zeros.
Monday: Indoor Airgun. Iron Sights at 10m16/40 (3 chicken, 6 pig, 1 Turkey, 6 Ram) on the silhouette, but some really good practice on the NMAR SR target.
Tuesday:Indoor Airgun. Iron sights at 10m 15/40 (4 chicken, 6 pig, 3 turkey, 2 Ram)
Wednesday: Install .22lr liner in BPCR, install sights, zero and group shoot. Looks capable of excellent groups with Eley Club Xtra (from 2003).
Thursday: Airgun, indoors Iron sights SR target.

There are some really good training and practice ideas at http://www.riflesilhouette.com/instructions/practice.html

There are scaled targets, descriptions of matches, advice on equipment, and training advice.


Another good site for silhouette is http://durant7.blogspot.com/

Tonight's training will be shot indoors with silhouette targets reduced for 10 meter practice with the air gun. I will be using a surplus Daisy 853 with iron sights purchased last year at the National matches in Ohio. Here is a copy of the targets.

Results 13/40 and 18/40. See training journal post for specifics. The executive summary is that I shot my best yet for a full match. And I did it with Irons. I will be competing in an Airgun Postal League and these are my first two tries.

Pigs at 60 Meters.

Training journal Week 1:
Friday: obtain zeroes and test fire at standard ranges
Saturday: Match 15/60, Return to train on chickens 6/10 and pigs 6/10. Shooting at 12X.
Sunday: Chicken practice and dryfire (6/10) modify support grip to shoot off of fist with glove. Seems more stable in dryfire at 100m
Monday: Shoot off fist 6/10 Chickens (20X) and Rams 6/10 (20X). Happy with stability. Fine tune 100m zero. Airgun dryfire at home.
Tuesday: Off. Clean rifle.
Wednesday: Airgun practice. 10 warm-up shots followed by 2-40 shot matches at 10m. Scores 13/40 (3 Chickens, 5 pigs, 2 turkeys and 3 Rams) and 18/40 ( Five Chicken, 6 pigs, 3 Turkeys, and 4 Rams).
Thursday: Blank page groups indoors with the .22. First 5 shots were under 3/4 inch at 25. 3 were in 1/3 of and inch. I need to keep working on this until I do it consistently and the only thing keeping me from that is focus (the mental kind rather than the front sight kind).
.

Who is Mike

Just getting in to silhouette as a means to help with High Power. Starting my second full year of Highpower. I will use this blog to document my HP and Silhouette training and matches.

My first smallbore Silhouette match really pointed out the complexity of shooting small targets at fairly close distances. The 100m ram is smaller than the 100 yard SR target and definitely much harder to score well on.

My first match I started with Rams and finished with Turkeys. The results were humbling but also exciting. I find myself dry firing more now than I have previously as well as working on other aspects of offhand.


Chickens: 3
Pigs: 7
Turkeys: 3
Rams: 2
Score: 15/60