Part 2
Many of you asked “what is F Class” after part 1. Well, the answer is I still do not know. The rules are vague, yet oddly specific on some things. It is NRA and weird. The match I shot was a club level event and while they were cool, just like any group, you gotta earn your way into the know.
What I can tell you is it is good shooting. Regardless of what you bring, the X is half minute. The 10 ring is one minute. But wait there’s more!!!
I learned some things today; I did not learn yesterday (part of that earn your way in) so here is the basic course of fire for this event.
Target is at 600 yards, bullseye type.
For the first Match (what we know as stages) you have 25 minutes to shoot sighters and twenty rounds. For this one, sighters are unlimited but the longer you spend on those, the less time you have for score. The line is hot for 25 min. No more, no less. But… you can only single load. Didn’t know that yesterday. The next two matches are 22 minutes with 2 sighters and 20 rounds, again single load. You are prone and I shot the class that allowed bipod and rear bag. But not any rear bag since it can have ears on it.
What you end up with is having to do 60 individual shots over a 20-minute period all the way back to load. For this one, you even had to write down your score. The wind invariably changes over the course of 20 minutes. The only advice I was given was shoot when the wind conditions match what you zeroed in which while solid advice, left a lot to be desired.
I spent last night doing visualization and data mining the Mantis scores. Mantis confirmed what I was feeling yesterday on some shots. On several shots I felt loose on the rifle and felt the bag collapsing under recoil. The meant that the stock was dropping. Those shots I felt that floated high. Looking at the mantis, I found several shots with excessive muzzle rise on recoil. Did I mention that the 10 ring is only a minute? Anyway, I made sure I was really tight and built my position lower so the bag would be more compressed without having a bunch of squeeze needed.
My overnight prep produced good results and I went from a 526 to a 590 out of 600 points. 51 of 60 rounds went into the 10 ring. 26 went into the X ring. The winner today shot 600 and 30X.
F Class is not a go fast match. It is strictly precision across a 20 min span of environmental effects. You must move through your entire shot process 60+ times per day. For the weekend I fired 140 rounds under match conditions. I do recommend finding a match local to you or get the targets and run the course of fire. The punishment in score for shooting a 2- or 3-minute group is insurmountable. Running the shot process under that scoring is valuable as well.
Shoot fast, Shoot far Ash