The firing point set up for training

Back out to WTSC last night for more training with Matt. The foot position has been thrown away and redone from scratch, and the emphasis on the position has now switched to getting the rifle balance sorted, and bringing the CofG back towards me as much as possible. The supporting hand setup is still causing grief, however – we tried several different shapes for the hand but most were either too painful to hold or were unstable because they were too much of a stretch. We have two possibles at the end of last night; the same two we had the last time as well. I’ll have to spend the next few days dry-firing for a half-hour or so a night outside the gear, just to get used to the position and setup. (Pretty standard for target shooting to do this, really). Then back to WTSC on Sunday for more range time with Matt & Geoff.

The rifle’s starting to look distinctly odd to me now 😀

That white stuff on the pistol grip in the last image is plastic wood. There’s an ISSF rule that says that you can’t have an anatomically shaped pistol grip for air rifle; but that plastic wood is just in a straightforward curve, it’s not anatomically shaped (ie, it doesn’t have finger grooves and that sort of thing). Checked with the chairman of the ISSF rifle technical committee on this, no less 😀

Anyway, I’ll probably spray it black before the next match, just to avoid the 20 minutes spent arguing with a Range Officer right before a match. So even when the rebuild is done, it won’t be done, if you follow me. Also, if you look, you can see a small spirit level mounted forward of the breech on the rifle; that’s not legal for competition in air rifle (it is for smallbore free rifle) but there’ s no rule against using it for training, and with these raiser blocks, the rifle has become quite sensitive to cant, as you’d imagine, so it’s important to train accurately, and it helps for that.