F T/R Competition MR/LR matches in Oak Ridge this weekend (3-10/11)

Re: MR/LR matches in Oak Ridge this weekend (3-10/11)

Ouch, wind today was just evil. Someone said that wind from the east his the worst here, I'm not sure that's true but it was brutal today. I saw lots of 9s and more 8s than I want to admit.

It was still fun, more tomorrow at 600.
 
Re: MR/LR matches in Oak Ridge this weekend (3-10/11)

Shooting at 600 yesterday was as eye opener. I shot a lot of 1000 matches last year but I've never done a 600. I never would have believed that the winds we had could mess with your score that much. My scores were pretty bad but it was great practice.


Winds were light, but variable and switchy, I don't think I ever dialed more than 3/4 either way, but I dialed both ways. It was a great mirage reading clinic. Having a good no wind zero was very helpful.


I did work out one technique issue with my rear bag in the first match and eliminated my vertical variation. That said, I was talking with a friend and he pointed out that at 1000 the wind had such huge effect that it's sometimes hard to appreciate how well your gun works, but at 600 you really can see how well it shoots.
 
Re: MR/LR matches in Oak Ridge this weekend (3-10/11)

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: usftr</div><div class="ubbcode-body">XTR-

Tell me what went wrong with the rear bag and how did you solve it? What kind of rear bag are you using? </div></div>

Last year I was shooting most of the yr with an couple of different bags and a Harris bipod. I was squeezing the bags to get my sight alignment. This yr I've gotten one of the new Sinclair v3 adjustable TR bipods and I'm using big Edgewood bag (the one with the handle). As I got into the first match the stock settled and I was going back to what I used to do, I started squeezing the front of the bag, and started getting vertical flyers. I know I'm not supposed to be shooting 9s out the top, I had some problems Saturday at 1000 too, but we had lots of funky wind and everyone was complaining about vertical.

Like I said above, one of the things I like about 600 is it's easier to separate shooter problems from wind problems.

I thought it over after the first match and realized what I was doing. In the last two matches I started resettling the stock on the bag when the POA was too high to adjust by sliding the stock fore and aft a little. The last two matches I was pretty close holding X-ring elevation. I shot 7-X the last match even though I only scored a 189, the two 8s that I tossed killed me. All day long I lost a couple of points that I blame on having two different load batches to shoot. I thought this was going to be 15 shot matches and found out at the last minute that it was 20s. I only had 63 rounds loaded, so I loaded up some rounds for sighters the morning of the match. The bullets that I was shooting for score were hitting a solid .25moa higher than the sighters, that cost me a couple of points off the start every time. (didn't figure it really was a pattern till it happened 3 times
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)

I should have taken the time to load another 10 rounds so I'd have had enough to shoot one whole match from the same load but I was rushing and didn't. Lesson learned.