I should probably explain that when we got engaged 18 months ago, herself got a nice diamond ring, and I got new sights for my air rifle; it’s just taken a while to get them all sorted out! But after a few emails with Intershoot.co.uk and some fast shipping, this was waiting for me in the office mail room this afternoon 🙂

A few minutes with a sharp knife later, and here’s what was inside:

So why new sights? Well, my original smallbore rifle sights went missing (which is a kick in the teeth at a few hundred euros for the set), and I was already having trouble with my air rifle sights in that I couldn’t look over the top of the sights to pre-aim during the shot routine. So the plan became simple – move the air rifle sights to the smallbore rifle and get new sights that I could look over for the air rifle. The choice came down in the end to only a few sets – the Centra 10-50:

the Centra spy:

or the MEC free sight:

In the end, after looking at all three (and sighting through the MEC and the Spy – thanks Jozef, by the way), I chose the MEC. The 10-50’s crossbar would block the line of sight I wanted, the windage adjustment knob on the Spy would do the same thing . The MEC seemed perfect.

The MEC comes in it’s own handly little plastic briefcase type affair (suitably branded by Intershoot 😀 ). It’s a handy little thing, though I think I’ll be recutting the foam in the rifle’s Peli case to store it there instead, long-term.

The foam in the case is just a bit too deformable for my paranoia after my original snappy disaster, I guess. Likewise for the new iris and foresight.

The Centra Tiny iris was a bit of a no-brainer. No point buying a small rearsight and then sticking a giant iris behind it, and the one thing I learnt from the large complicated iris I had for the old smallbore sights was that you don’t use most of what’s in them and the more stuff that’s there, the less room you have when getting your head, your shooting frames, the iris and the sights all into position. Smaller’s better in this case. And the Tiny even has a color filter, so there’s nothing lost in terms of functionality.

The Centra Duo Glass foresight was a similarly easy choice. I’m sick of carrying a box of foresight elements and having to swap stuff in and out to change foresight size (which you have to do depending on range and lighting in air rifle). I was once advised that it was just another group of settings to have to remember, but to be honest, I have to worry about the foresight settings anyway, so I might as well make it easy on myself when changing them. This is the M22 model with the 3.8<->5.8 range of size adjustment (I’ve never shot lower than 3.8 standing, and I don’t think you should – for prone, yeah, you can take it down to 3.2 on a wierd day, but when standing, I only rarely go down to 4.0, and usually I’ll train at 5.0 and compete at 4.4-4.6 depending on lighting). M22 is a step up in foresight size – I’ve been shooting on an M18 model for a few years now, but I saw the M22 on a few rifles and thought it gave me a better sight picture. Time will tell, but that’s the only real gamble with this choice.

So what about the MEC rearsight itself?

It’s small. Tiny in fact. That’s the first thing you notice. The second thing you notice when you pick it up is how light it is compared to other rearsights, and it’s only then that you realise just how solid it is. This is all-metal construction. No plastic, nothing flimsy here. It has the feel of a very, very solid piece of precision engineering. I was slightly disappointed that it doesn’t cant at the obvious place, but I can live with that.

It’s not as shiny as it looks. The final finish in most places isn’t grimy or anything, but it definitely looks unpolished. I don’t think that’s a bad thing – the Anschutz Precise stock is very highly polished and to be honest, I’m not sure it adds anything. It might even be a problem – last thing you need close to your eyes when you’re trying to aim in bright light is a shiny reflective surface.

It’s also a few steps up in terms of precision – with a standard 80cm sight base, MEC say you’ll get 18 clicks to take you from a 10.0 at 9 0’clock to a 10.0 at 3 o’clock. That’s pretty darn impressive. My old sights manage about 10-12 clicks for that, and the old ones on the 600 series Feinwerkbaus in DURC can only stretch to maybe 4-6 for that. It’s probably overkill, but it’s still quite impressive.

The Tiny iris fits beautifully, you really can tell it’s designed to fit:

It is a very nice sight picture, you have to admit. I wonder if the alignment of the Tiny’s color filter selection wheel will be of any significance? If so, it can be moved slightly I think, so I could tweak it; but first let’s see what happens.

Speaking of sight pictures, the view through the Centra Duo Glass:

Very nice.

Overall then, some very, very nice pieces of kit, and as soon as my cheekpiece rebuild is complete (and more on that later), I’m look forward to breaking them in on the range 🙂

So it just remains to say to Herself Indoors, thank you very much my love, they’re wonderful!

Two 30-shot matches shot since the last post, with a few good patches the second time where things went right because of me, rather than while I was there to watch, if you follow me. The score was higher too – 254/300 the second time vs 249/300 the time before, but there’s more information in the groups than in the score. Comparing the composite of the six cards shot the last time:

with the composite of the six shot this time:

It looks like the grouping is starting to tighten a little across the horizontal axis, but hasn’t yet started to do so in the vertical axis. Oh well. Good enough to be getting on with and entering the UCESSA air pistol postal this winter…

Raw cards after the break

Continue reading “Slow improvement” →

Spreading the word because this is precisely the sort of thing that gives you hope for the future of the administration of the shooting sports in Ireland:

Meeting Invitation to members of the NASRPC

The end of the first year under the new firearms licensing system has passed and so it may be a good time to look at what has been achieved and what remains to be done.

Throughout the past period I have striven to foster dialogue and co-operation between the main stakeholders in the shooting sports. There have been some notable successes in this regard of which we can be justifiably proud and will stand for a long time as reminders of what can be achieved by working openly and honestly together.

To those who were open minded and far sighted enough to lay aside perceived petty differences in pursuit of furthering our respective sports I express my deep appreciation and gratitude. No other strategy except mutual support will bring us the excellence and respect for our sport that we all should aspire to.

Unfortunately, not everyone apparently feels the same and while differences of opinion in the path to take are acceptable, the countless instances of ongoing misinformation and rumours that circulate throughout the shooting community serve only those who would seek to divide and plant dissention and ill feeling. The motivation of such people is a mystery to me.

One of the most disheartening, damaging and recurring aspects of these stories and tall tales is that even when disproven satisfactorily around a committee table, even when proof is offered and accepted as to their invalidity, quite often the message never circulates through the wider community and the falsehoods and misunderstandings continue to breed mistrust.

Quite often this is not anyone’s fault, volunteer committees give of their time freely and often at great personal expense in terms of both time and money. Often, having satisfied themselves that there is no substance to a particular rumour the matter rests there, apparently dealt with while in the wider shooting community all that continues to circulate is the original misinformation.

As responsible adults we have a duty to seek the truth so that we can move forward fully aware of the lessons of the past and with a clear view of the road ahead.

With this in mind and in a further effort to address the fears and concerns and indeed any and all tall tales that may be about, I am inviting all NASRPC members to contact their NASRPC Secretary Michael Tope, by email or letter and to express their concerns on any matter to him in writing.

I will leave it to Michael to collate and list each item and then to forward them to me.

I will hold a meeting for all those who have expressed their concerns in this manner on any matter, any rumour they have heard, any supposed fact that causes them unease, any case in which they think they have been treated unfairly by their shooting representatives, even any story they have heard of any ‘Deal’ that has been done to disadvantage them.

I am offering to hear them all, to answer them all and to once and for all end the cancer of mistrust that eats away at our will to work together.

I am placing this notice of invitation on the NRAI website, the MNSCI website, the SSAI website the shooting forum of boards.ie and I am requesting that the committee of the NASRPC place it on their website also. I am sure they will welcome this opportunity for clarity too.

We can only move forward and grow if we work from the basis of truth and reality. Tall tales and horror stories are for children.

Below is a list of the various websites mentioned above.

www.nrai.ie
www.nationalshootingcentre.ie
www.ssai.ie
shooting.boards.ie
www.nasrpc.ie

I urge any NASRPC member with any concerns as to how they are represented by the shooting organisations to take this opportunity to have their issues or any they have heard of, aired and dealt with.

I repeat that in the spirit of transparency all communication should be in writing or by email to the Secretary of your own organisation NASRPC, Michael Tope… In case some new rumour grows that I have personally selected the queries to answer.

A meeting will be held in the near future and all who submitted concerns will have them addressed on the day.

Yours in Sport,

Joe Costello
(SSAI – Chairman, NRAI – Vice Chairman)

So finally got back to the range last week for the first time since before the wedding. Wound up coaching for most of the night though, so only got to put in one card of my own before heading home:

Not bad, but Continue reading “First day back on the range…” →