Today I participated in my first F Class event. It is at my local range and they do it every month. I have been getting the itch to compete and this was first thing that popped up. I arrived with more questions than answers and that pretty much how the day went. Before I get into that though, I want to talk about how I approach new things, particularly shooting events.
If you have not picked up on it yet, I am big on visualization. I tend to mentally rehearse enough that I do not usually go blank at the beep like people joke about. There is a problem with that though when you are doing new events in that you do not know how they do business and expectations, so it makes it hard to visualize. Next, its always at a new range. So, you cannot think about the wind and where it changes. You do not know that after 1 in the afternoon the wind starts whipping down the road at the 500 line like on the 1000-yard bay at the Arena.
So, my first day of a new match I am paying attention to the range, the competitors, who is doing well, who is getting whooped. I look at set ups and I look for the people who are performing well and not just spending. That usually results in a less than stellar finish on day one. After that though, I can learn all that and perform better the next time. Now, once I have shot that style of match a few times all I need to learn is the range. Reading about it on the errornet is always different than reality because people are not looking for and writing about what I want to know.
All I really knew today was a target size and a location. I didn’t know what class I was in, what the best plan of attack on shooting 20 rounds in 25 minutes was, or really anything beyond the X ring was Half a minute and the 10 ring was a minute.
To add on, I fired the Defender 69 grain SMK. I zeroed and sent 150 rounds down range trying to get an average for group size. I had a muzzle velocity but nothing more than 200-yard data. As most of you know, every ballistic calculator you use, you get different data. The Kestrel Ballistic 5700 said one number, AB said another, and Strelock had yet one more. I decided to use the Kestrel because I want to use it more and it is a newer toy.
All this combined left me with the only expectation for the day being confirming 600-yard data with 120 rounds of scored fire. I did turn on the Mantis to get a feel of how I was shooting without target effects. It caught most of the hits so it will be enough to data mine.
Tomorrow though, should be a different story.
Ash