Friday July 31, 2009.

The World F-Class championship matches ended yesterday and I just got home after a very long day of travelling.

Left Bisley at 6:00 am in the morning and shared a ride with Brian Otey and Larry Taite. I had 5 large cases and bags coming back. Gave a bunch of brass away to the Netherland team guys as I was overweight on almost every bag. Gave a bunch of things to the Irish fellas and still had to sit on every bag to be able to close them.  Had to pay Air Canada two hundred pounds for excess bags - ouch!  Arrived in Vancouver and took over an hour to get through Canadian customs with the rifle. Then drove to the border, had another hour wait in the line up, plus another 45 mins for US Customs to check my gun and ammo case etc. Glad to be home. After a hot shower and mama's home cooked Halibut curry, thought I would update the blog with some information.

The British team won the World F-Class Open Championship. USA took second and South Africa third. The Brits beat us by 59 points and they were very surprised that we came that close to them. I believe that there were two main factors that worked very well for them. First and foremost was that they had full knowledge of their range and have been practicing on that range fairly regularly as a team for quite some time. Why not? If all the team members lived only a few hours away from the range, it would be foolish not to. Secondly, their 7mm guns were a good wind bucking caliber that when combined with good coaches having coached at that range for many years gave them the results they were after. Someone made the comment to me that the Americans were improving by the day. Unfortunately, we ran out of days and it was game over. Our coaches did an outstanding job under very trying conditions. We beat the previous champs, South Africa, by 40 points.

Our Rutland team that was coached by Nancy Tompkins won the  gold medal.

Final F-Open Results

Gold, GB 3436.230V

Silver, USA 3377.234V

Bronze, S. Africa 3337.188V


Final Rutland Cup results

Gold, USA  1660.107V

Silver, GB 1647.104V

Yankees, 1645.84V


I ended up not having to use Cochrans gun on the last day as we figured out that the elevation on my scope is defective and the coach wanted me to hold off plus he was tapping the scope knob after each change. Managed to get through the second day without dropping any points to elevation at 800 and 900 yards.  However, we all got butchered at 1000 yards. When the wind picks up at Stickledown range it pushes your bullet down. The opposite is true when the wind lets up. Took us several days to figure that out. Again the 7mms are effected less with this anomaly. Tired and can hardly keep my eyes open. Am shocked at the speed difference with my fiber optic internet here at home and the Bisley watch the paint dry internet service.  Another note. I am purposely avoiding using quotes, dashes and apostrophes in my messages as the blog prints question marks instead. Bear with me.