Fort Wayne Rifle and Revolver Club

FEBRUARY 2021 FWRR NEWSLETTER

FWRR Club Meeting

Assuming that the Allen County COVID 19 status is not Red, the next club meeting will be held on February 2^nd.  Meeting Place:  New Haven Community Center.  Time: 6:00 – 7:30 p.m. (The building must be vacated by 8:00 p.m.)  Venue Restrictions: No Alcohol or firearms on the premises.  Please try to attend as a quorum is required to conduct club business.  Attendees are asked to wear masks and to observe social distancing protocol. If the meeting must be canceled, a cancellation notice will be placed on the club’s website.

Agenda: Club election and standard meeting format.   Clean-up Day activities will be addressed under the heading New Business. Please feel free to bring up ideas for work that you would like to see accomplished or started on Clean-up Day.

Election Ballot

President: Jim Sweeney (present)

Vice President: Matt Hice (present, acting VP) and Dean Drews

Secretary:  Mike Miller (present)

Treasurer:  Marty Didion (present)

Director:  Jim Johnston, Gary Walker, and Tim Wunderlich

Program Manager:  Ryan Brammer (present)

Safety Officer:  Larry Beardsley (present)

Nominations will be accepted from the floor.  Thanks to Committee Head, John Halter, and the Range Officers (ROs) who assisted him with putting together the ballot.

Events Schedule

Ryan Brammer (Program Manager) is preparing the 2021 Events Schedule. When completed, the schedule will be posted on the club’s website and copies will be mailed to those persons who have elected to receive the newsletter via USPS.

2021 Dues

Dues must be received on or before March 31^st to avoid a late fee or possible membership termination.  Dues received with postmark dates after March 1^st  but before March 31^st are subject to a $25.00 late fee.  After March 31^st, delinquency will result in membership termination.  Terminated members must reapply for membership and pay the new-member initiation fee if they desire reinstatement.  If personal hardship prevents timely payment, contact a club officer who may arrange for dues to be waived or payment to be deferred.

Newsletter Editor

The club is still seeking a volunteer to serve as Newsletter Editor.  The editor is responsible for collecting inputs from club officers and ROs, preparing the newsletter, and distributing it via email or USPS (per member preference) two weeks prior to club meetings. Interested members may contact Marty Didion (martindidion4@gmail.com) to volunteer and/or to receive additional information.

Clean-up Day

Clean-up Day is tentatively scheduled for April 24^th.  Refer to the 2021 Events Schedule for date confirmation. 

Foot Bridge

Through the efforts of Greg Peck, we have received steel trusses and bracing for a new foot bridge over the ditch on the 25/50/100 yard portion of the range.  Thanks go to Nucor (and Kian Dolsen of Nucor) for the donation of the trusses,  bracing, and assembly hardware.  The plan is to fabricate and begin installing the bridge on Clean-up Day, conditions permitting.

See the reverse side for more news.

Pistol Bay Work

Work to raise the height of the wing berms in the Pistol Bays by approximately four feet has been completed.  Thanks go to Matt Hice for coordinating the activity and to Ted Smeltzer and his son for helping with seeding and strawing.

Junior Program

After several attempts over the past 30 years or more to get youth involved in the shooting sports on an ongoing basis, it appears that Larry Beardsley may be succeeding in achieving that objective.  Larry has three juniors, who have parental support, interested in High Power competition.   Donations for the Junior Program were casually solicited from members over the last several months.  The response has been outstanding.  So far, over $2500.00 has been pledged.  The funds will be used to purchase two entry-grade rifles and optics, ammunition, components, and other essentials. Members interested making donations of funds , equipment, ammunition or ammunition components  may contact Larry Beardsley at fwrrhpdirector@aol.com.  Larry wishes to thank members (too numerous to list) who have donated brass to the program.  Special thanks to new member Mark Richard for his donation of a large quantity of M193 LC ammunition.

Mowing Crew

Thanks go to the members who served on the mowing crew during the past year. Anyone interested in becoming a member of the mowing crew should contact Marty Didion (martindidion4@gmail.com) to be placed on the 2021 Mowing Schedule.  A mowing schedule will be posted on the club website sometime in March.  Typically, mowing is performed on Wednesdays. Dates may vary due to weather conditions and grass growth rates.

2020 New Members

The following individuals  became FWRR members in 2020:  Scott Davis, Anthony DiVita, Aaron Holdgreve, Patrick Jessup, Rick Jones, Mark Richard, Steve Vinson, and Austin Wunderlich.

Caution Note

Be aware of the slip/fall hazard posed by icy conditions at the range.  Known icy spots include the slope at the north end of the building on the 25/50/100 yard portion of the range and the concrete at the north end of the 100/200 yard covered firing line.

Sale Items

M1A for Sale:  Gingher-built rifle.  All USGI parts.  Match sights. Single-lugged receiver. Douglas barrel.  Laminated, glass-bedded stock.  Very good price.  Contact Tom Easley at gunner@artelco.net or (419) 393-4206.

Brass for Sale:  Lake City, 5.56/.223 brass, mixed dates, believed to be once fired, $50.00/1000. Contact Darrell Fish at dwtroll@yahoo.com or (260) 615-1046.

Junior Program Load Development

As we move forward toward a summer of Junior shooting, we are working to overcome the problems of not being to able to get the “good stuff” to load ammunition for the program.

As I’ve noted earlier, we have been able to find components, but they are not what are generally considered for “Match Loads”.  We have Russian primers, not CCI Match,  Remington 7 1/2 Bench rests or even WSR, but they are generally considered to be pretty good.  We are using military cases; LC, WCC and a few TW.  Most have several reloadings behind them, so we will need to watch for neck splits. 

Our bullets are Sierra 69-grain Match Kings.  For some reason they come up as available at suppliers and when I get an email notification, I grab some.  Natchez Shooting supply had 100-quantity boxes one day.  The next day they were gone but they had 500-piece boxes.  You bet your hat I grabbed some both days – we are pretty good to go on bullets.

The biggest unknown has been propellant.  I was able to buy two 8-pound jugs of WC-842 surplus pull-down powder in a parking lot at a convenience store way out  in the country south of Warsaw.  It wasn’t a midnight drug sale, but it did feel weird!  Surplus powder is a big unknown, it is a mix of powder lots from surplus ammunition that has to be demilitarized and cannot be sold as complete rounds.  It has to be characterized one jug at a time.

Just after New Year’s Day, Aaron Kohler and I did pressure tests to see just what this powder looked like.  We started at 20 grains which chronographed as way too slow and went up to a load that was a bit too hot – we pierced the primer.  But, we found that the sweet spot was between about 22.4 grains and 23.8 grains.

The next step was an accuracy test to find if there was a real sweet spot and if our components were compatible when we put them together.  I loaded six rounds at 0.2 grain increments from 22.4 to 23.8 grains.  The test protocol would be that Mike Grannis would shoot half from a match gun and I would shoot the others from my stubby barreled service rifle.  We would shoot on the Silver Mountain electronic targets and use the circle tool to record group size – easy/peezy.  We chronographed the service rifle for muzzle velocity and used the Silver Mountain system to get target velocity for both rifles.

The quick answer – we have components to make some pretty good loads.  Mike was shooting his Match rifle with a 20X scope and I was shooting the Senior Chief at 4X, so it would be expected that Mike would shoot tighter groups that I would, he actually shot groups about half the diameter I shot. But, in both cases we found that in the short barreled service rifle and the long barreled match rifle, groups were as tight as either one of us thought we were able to shoot.

The picture shows the 100-yard target we were shooting with a Shoot-n-See center.  Mike’s aim point was at 12 o’clock on the center and I was hitting at 6 o’clock on the edge of the black.  We chewed it up pretty well for a couple of old guys with runny noses and watery eyes on a chilly, breezy afternoon.

I am attaching a graph with a lot of data on it – look at it and I think you can see the same sweet spot I see.  Once we get our new rifles I am going to run one more test at 22.8, 23.0 and 23.2 grains of powder for a load.  I suspect that about a  23.0 grain load is going to give us the capability to shoot about half-inch groups off the bench.  That makes the shooter the limiting factor – exactly what we are looking for.

Now, we wait for rifles!

Winter Offhand Match

January 9, 2021

The shooters were ready for the 2021 season to get underway this morning.  By the time I arrived at the range at 7:55, folks were already there getting ready to go. The gate was open, the lights were on and the 25 and 50 yard target stands were taken down.  It was a good morning, a bit chilly – it’s January in Indiana after all – but the lack of wind made it a lot nicer than it could have been.  There were cold fingers and couple of drippy noses, but not too bad.

We had to do some target patching, but things went quickly and by 8:30 we had twelve shooters ready for the first relay.  We had our safety briefing and by 8:35 the first relay was under way.  There were four shooters who had to wait for the second relay and we had one Junior shooter. Marshall, who only wanted to shoot 20-rounds for his inaugural match, so five shooters made up the second relay.

We repeated the process, and on the second string of the second relay, we had another Junior who wanted to try his hand as well, so Zion was the fifth shooter on Relay 2, String 2.

It’s always good to get the group together.  I’ve learned that High Power shooters make their excuses early so that if something doesn’t go well – they have a reason to explain it.  One of the Masters of this Mark Richard – I poke fun at him with all the respect in the world. 

He had his list ready; it was cold.  His joints hurt, he had a crick in his neck and in his back.  He was unsteady and rocking around like he was on the deck of a ship, and that was why he was going to shoot such an awful score for the day.  Of course he took the top spot with a 194-13X.  I wonder what he would shoot on a day when he felt good?

Mike King took second place for the day with a 369-6X and Robert Davis closed out the top three with a 364-4X, good shooting guys!  For the winter season so far, Mark Richard leads the group with a two match aggregate of 773-24X.  Mike King follows with 755-10X and Mark Walters is third with 736-6X.

After the match I had a class session with our Junior shooter where we went over the basics of shooting from the sitting position.  It was a good session with an apt student.

Several other really good things happened on Saturday that I need to mention.  We had a donation of old shooting gear; leather coats, canvas coats, lightweight jackets and the like.  I had put them out for folks to take for a donation to the Junior Program.  At the end of Saturday, everything was gone and the Junior program was $106 better off.

We needed brass for Junior ammunition and several people brought me bags of brass.  Thank you to everyone who donated to the cause.  I have sorted through the donations and I have about 1500 LC, WCC and TW cases I am sending to a commercial brass processor to get them cleaned, deprimed, decrimped, sized and trimmed.

One more Thank You; Mark Richard donated a can of M193 LC ammunition (about 500-rounds) to be used for Junior practice.  This will be a great help and will ease the burden on our limited supply of components for match ammunition.

Upcoming events: 

The FWRR Club February meeting will be on February 2.  It will be held at the New Haven Community Center, behind McDonalds on Highway 930 (30) just west of New Haven.  This will be an election of officers meeting, so try to attend.  Just a social note; no guns, beer or smoking is allowed in the Community Center, so we need to be on our best behavior.

Our next match will be the second Saturday in February, February 13.  I will not be running the match that day.  My wife has decided we need to make our annual trip to Florida, so I regret having to be in all of that warm weather while you guys enjoy February in Indiana. I’ll think about you.

Be safe, stay well.