What can be as lovely as a day in June? 200-yard rapid scores coming up.
Your three-minute Prep Period begins when your targets appear …
The Wailing Wall
Saturday could not have been a better day to hold a High Power Match, and in spite of things like the Fort Wayne Air Show, roofs that had to be laid, lawn work that was long overdue and coaching kids’ softball games – eighteen shooters showed up to enjoy the day.
Unlike our usual High Power days, the weather co-operated marvelously. A high, thin overcast kept things from getting too warm and the wind consistently stayed at our backs; from 6- o’clock to 7-o’clock all day. The first round went downrange at 8:55 – we actually started early.
As the Range Officer, I want to commend all the shooters for doing a fantastic job all day long. Everything went smoothly on the line – if we had been making a movie about how to run a match, you guys would have been perfect as examples. The pits ran just like someone had written a script. Targets came up and went down at exactly the right times, excesses and insufficients were called promptly and resolved immediately. Scorers kept track of exactly how many rounds the shooters fired. People moved from pits to line and back quickly and I called the last “Cease Fire – The Line Has Finished Early” at 1:55. That’s an 80-round Match in five hours!
Our Stat Office, Mike and Glenna Grannis kept all of the scores tallied as the match went on and the Wailing Wall was posted and money given out promptly.
And, we had a visitor of note shoot with us Saturday- we welcomed Pete Yarbro who came down from around the South Bend area to shoot with us. He is not a stranger to us – but it’s been a while since he made it down here. Pete has a number of national awards and it is always good to see him back at Fort Wayne Rifle and Revolver.
Here is how things turned out:
Match 1: Offhand Jim Schieltz 194-3X (Lima Sabers)
Match 2: Sitting Rapid Mark Walters 200-5X (Double Clean – way to go Mark!)
Match 3: Prone Rapid Mike King 198-7X
The Prone Rapid fire stage turned out to be a bit of a scoring challenge. Two shooters, Mike King (our newest unofficial Distinguished Shooter) and John Halter (our newest Grand Senior) tied with 198-7X scores. We had to go back to the highest last string to break the tie, and Mike’s 100 clean topped John’s 98. But, John cleaned the first string and Mike had a 98 ….
Match 4: Prone Slow Mike King 198-7X
For the day – the Aggregate:
First: Jim Schieltz 784-18X
Second: Mike King 782-28X
Third: Mark Richard 769-18X (Welcome back Mark)
Watch for an announcement of a fun match on June 22. Our next High Power Match will be July 13, another 50/80 Match. Put it on your calendar and I hope to see you there.