GSAC 1000 Yd Benchrest - 10 December 17

[Panda]

After a later start than usual (well, a 30 minute lie-in)…..it is winter after all ; I headed over to the range at Gelston not knowing what to expect. It could be low sun in the face, frozen sand causing difficulty spotting splash or snow on the back-stop obliterating splash altogether. What did I see? The only band of fog in a 360 degree panorama sitting over the target area! Surely, with all the other problems we face running a competition in December we weren’t going to be fogged off? The quick answer was no, the fog lifted very quickly, and before most of the competitors arrived. That just left the frozen backstop covered by snow to deal with and we weren’t going to be beaten by that. Some judicious rake work by the guys setting up the targets soon saw the sand uncovered and broken up enough to hopefully allow our trusty spotter (devon flighter on here) to get the guys on target.

With the majority of the league placings already spoken for no matter what the permutations of any dropped round(s), we use a best of system to count depending on the number of actual rounds held but I’ll come back to that at the end of the report, and the prevailing weather conditions it was no surprise we were well down on numbers. However, yet again we had several new faces joining us either to shoot or to have a look at the range, with some never having shot past 600 yards before the usual look of trepidation crossed faces but everyone that shot got on target and as is almost the norm are hooked on long range shooting already. Gents, I hope you enjoyed your time with us and we look forward to seeing you again in the New Year.

As we only had 3 regular league competitors actually shooting (onslow52, devon flighter, myself were present to ensure the range could be run along with Lewis who had is rifle just in case he had to defend is place in Light Gun depending on who actually turned up) I won’t give a full report, sorry No I deer, no racing commentary this month . Suffice to say that in Light Gun Geoff took advantage of the situation to leapfrog 2 places in the final table and in Factory Sporter Peter cemented 4^th place in what had been a 3-way battle.

So, without further ado as they say, time to reveal the winners of our 2017 competition.

Light Gun (best 6 from 10 to count)

1^st        Darrel Mcilreavy         57pts

2^nd        David Rankin              53pts

3^rd        Lewis McIlreavy         44pts

 

Heavy Gun (best 6 from 10 to count)

1^st       Mally Johnston            55pts

2^nd =    Les Prior, Tony Lenton & Geordie Hunter                 20pts

 

Factory Sporter (best 5 from 8 to count)

1^st        David Leslie                48pts

2^nd        Ed Walker                   45 pts

3^rd       Davie Sharp                43 pts

 

Now, coming back to that dropped points system I mentioned near the beginning of my diatribe. The UKBRA use a best 4 from 6 system as they shoot both a 600 and 1000yd competition through the year, allowing for people to miss a couple of rounds due to illness, work etc. Their system was adopted by us but since we have a longer season it was agreed to use a 4 from 6, 5 from 8 or 6 from 10 count as we sometimes lost a couple of rounds due to weather so this would give us the leeway of losing rounds and still give competitors some dropped rounds for personal reason. It wasn’t a great way, especially if we got all 10 rounds in, effectively throwing 40% of your results away, and the intrinsic cost involved if you attended all 10 rounds. Therefore, after a bit of discussion with the members, from next year it will now be 7 from 10, 6 from 9 and 5 from 8 to count, still allowing for dropped and missed rounds but giving the competitor better value for money across the season.    

 Finally, congratulations and thank you to everyone that took part in our competition over the year. If memory serves me correctly we had had 38 competitors participate this season and almost broke the 200 mark for range use. I’d like to thank Darrel & Tom particularly, along with numerous other GSAC members, without whom this facility wouldn’t exist to allow like-minded people to come together to get the mickey taken out of them on a monthly basis.

 

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from myself and the GSAC 1000yd organising team.

 

10/12/17 Results

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wb8zwnckfdcenn0/Gelston 20171210.xlsx?dl=0

2017 League Table

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bqd7myd7x74tq1r/Gelston League 20171210.xlsx?dl=0

 

A final finally, this time from me. May I ask, and we’re not fishing for compliments here, is there is enough interest in the reports that myself and Tony previously have done to post on UKV to warrant the continuation of them? We are not trained reporters by a long way and it tends to take a few hours to compile them which added to the time collating the results into spreadsheets can take up another couple of evenings of our time. If you, the readers, enjoying reading about the exploits at Gelston then we can continue, however if you’d just prefer to see a post of the results then that can be done instead. It’s entirely up to you.

[The Gun Pimp]

Dave (Panda) good write-up and well done to all for another successful year of 1000 yard benchrest shooting.

We look forward to visiting you again in 2018.

[onslow52]

Thanks for another write up David (and Tony) it was a fun filled season.

[25dynod]

look forward to the write ups so keep them coming dave/tony.

[Borisserge]

Keep up the great work  on the write ups Dave/Tony, always a pleasure to read.

Reading the write ups may also be enough of a carrot to encourage more to turn up and enjoy the challenge of shooting at 1000 yards.

 

Looking forward to next year!

[Pinkfoot]

David, your scribblings are an integral part of each event - cessation cannot be an option!

 

[No i deer]

There goes Niki Louda......

There goes Niki even Louder....