Second day of squad training. Today, air rifle in UCDRC.

Was extremely tired still from yesterday. And a minor car problem with lots of oil, smoke and a blown head gasket didn’t help.

Had Barry adjust the buttons on my jacket, but we could only move them a few millimetres because of the rule regarding the distance from the edge of the jacket to the buttons. We could get away with a lot more adjustment if the edge of the jacket could be cut back, but that’s a rather specialised tailoring job.

Couldn’t get the UCD RIKA trainer to calibrate properly for my rifle, which meant that I couldn’t get a decent trace on my hold, but since the pellets wouldn’t stay inside the nine ring (or even the eight ring towards the end), I think it’s fair to say it was poor today.

Nationals are next weekend. At this rate, I’ll be aiming to beat 540. And having to work at it. I hate coming back to shooting after a long break!

First national squad training weekend in some time. Today was smallbore rifle out in DRC.

Shot all day in standing, for the first time in nearly two years. Considering that haitus, and a moderate wind, it wasn’t such a bad result – or at least that’s what Barry thinks. Personally, I hate it when a shot that looked like a ten turns out to be a bad seven because I missed a wind gust or had a positional error. But still, it wasn’t as bad as it might have been.

I do need to buy two new buttplates for standing and kneeling though. While I can adjust the rifle for each position for now, it does put the equipment through more stress than I’d like. But two new buttplates (and some raiser blocks for the sights) will run to a tidy sum 🙁 So that plan’s on hold for now.

Took photos of buttplate positions and other settings, but I need to put together a rifle configuration chart for my shooting diary. I also need a 50m template for groups like I have for 10m Air Rifle, but I need to find a place to get tracing paper in A4 sheets by the ream first.

I should also write up a series of checklists for putting together the rifle and gear for each position, and one for air rifle wouldn’t hurt either.

I must watch my position alignment for standing, Barry noticed it wasn’t very good.

A tip from Ray Kane was to leave the fifth cartridge in the rifle on the three-card system after finishing one target, and use it to dry-fire to set the position for the next target on the card.

Exhausted by the end of the day, with only 100 rounds sent down the range from standing. I must work harder at my physical fitness and endurance.