Pretty crummy match from my score’s point of view 🙁
Not so hot from the rest of the technical point of view either. I didn’t have my shot plan down and practised, so when I went to get into my position, I was slightly out somehow, and couldn’t track it down. The hold was far too large for a decent score, and it was very fustrating overall. Still, I suppose I should have expected this to be a possibility for the first match with the new setup. I’ll chalk it up to experience and work on what went wrong. So it’s paperwork time again, documenting the rifle’s setup (moved the buttplate from 2.5 to 3 for the match in UCD, by the way, as the targets were a tad high), documenting my shot plan and match plans, and so on. *sigh* Who was it that said target shooting didn’t involve writing? 😀
Some other images from the match:
Marc Smyth and myself shooting air pistol at the end of the Open in an informal DURC internal match with UCD’s new P40 pistols.
Nice pistols, but far too expensive for beginners in my honest opinion, at nearly a grand a pistol. I’ll stick to the Baikal I’ve ordered. Have to go see the local Garda and give him a heads-up on that, let him know there’ll be an application going in in the next few weeks.
Have to say, the stalls UCD have set up for safety are an excellent idea. Haven’t given them the acid test of shooting at them, but I suspect (from similar experiments in TCD) that they’d hold up quite well. Presumably UCD have already carried out those experiments. The trigger on one was a bit light though – it felt like 1-200 grams, instead of the regulation 500! Naughty, naughty 😀
Liam Spillane shooting. Excellent technical form, note especially the upright head position allowing the inner ears to function like they evolved to. Something to try to get people to emulate, at least in the basic principles (Liam uses hefty raiser blocks to allow him to use this position).
Mike Burke shooting. This is an example of what happens when your rifle isn’t set up right. Mike needs raiser blocks (he’s since had them added to his rifle) and because he didn’t have them here, his head has to go right over to the rifle to see through the sights, which throws the rest of the position totally out of whack. There’s even a risk here of chronic back problems if you shoot like that habitually. (Happily, we’ve since fixed Mike’s rifle and his position to something much more sane and his shooting’s improved enormously as a result as well).
Iain Nash shooting. Excellent upright head position; not so hot on the back, though the rest isn’t too bad. But that bend looks far too severe. Something to experiment with in the run-up to the Intervarsities next March/April.