From sscoyote (Steve Hugel), Ernie's teammate:
The shoot started well enuf for us when we got to SATA (Small Arms Training Academy). We sighted in with a bunch of other guys on steel silhouettes out to 700 yds. All was well, and Ern and i were hitting every shot out to these ranges-- as usual Exbal was right on. We were happy campers, and got a # of pleasant, but strange looks and questions from just about everybody there. Then i happened to look down at the team next to us from CA, and one guy was working out a zeroing problem with Exbal on his PDA-- since this guy was applying state of the art technology for long-range shooting i knew we were gonna have some serious competition to deal with. Sure enuf those guys ended up taking 2nd place when all was said and done. BUT-- Ernie let them shoot his rig, and they both made connections on a small silhouette on their 1st attempt-- needless to say they were, at the very least, curious after that.
The competition was divided into 2 medium and long-reange courses, one close range, and obstical course, an egg shoot, and team shoot off (of which the last 2 events were cancelled). The problem was there were 49 teams that needed to shoot, and not enuf time nor range officers to score each team. Consequently, the ranges were also shortened from 6 miles to 2- 2.5 milers.
I'm sure most of u guys know that in any cometitive event it takes some experience to learn the system-- turns out if any other team overtakes the team before them on the long-range courses, they disqualify that team, and u can't finish that particular course. These 2 40+ year olds started 30 minutes ahead of a couple of youngsters, and on the 3rd or 4th station, we noticed the young guys were starting to gain some ground on us. They actually caught us on station 9, but we just elected to cut that station short, and move on to the next 1 so we wouldn't get disqualified. These guys that attend these shoots ARE GOOD-- let me tell u. Once Ern and i started to figure out what we needed to do, we were also jogging from station to statioin, eliminating that particular problem.
Now i'm not sure i should use the "handicap" word here but i'm gonna. At each station there are a certain # of medium and long-range targets to engage. When u arrive at each station the range officer (RO) tells u how many of each (red for medium, and blue for long) targets are spread out before u, and u have to find them and engage them 2X each ASAP to rack up points. Each team has a designated medium range, and long-ranger and they must stick to their assigned roles. Everyone of the other teams had an AR-15 for the medium range work, and let me tell u these guys can use them. As fast as i could load, find the target in the scope and shoot it wasn't even close to being as fast as an AR, especially in the hands of someone that can use it, so i guess u could say we were doing our very best to shoot as quick as possible to attempt to keep up-- which we did quite admirably i thought-- once we figured things out, that is.
Unfortunately we had a little glitch. And this is something that everyone that uses a target-type turret should pay particular attention to, as u defintiely don't wan't this to happen to u-- believe me. At the 1st station on the 1st day, when Ern began to shoot at the long-range targets he was shooting way high, and for the life of us we couldn't figure out why, and concluded that the scope had been bumped or something. Fortunately Ern sort of "nulled" it out after the 1st several stations, and he began making connections at ranges that frankly fascinated me considering he was improvising all the way. The nexy day was the same thing, since there was no place we knew of to check sight-in. We just approximated the # of clicks needed to put his rig on again (which wasn't right). As we progressed in course 2, he was still having similar problems, but when he started to figure the fudge factor he ran 8 consecutive shots on four 8" circles at 585 yards by applying the sighting "fudge" factor. The RO couldn't believe it , and frankly neither coiuld I. He actually made 2 in a row @ 685, and I had to push my eyeballs back in my head after that. That evening in the hotel room we took the turret housing off the turret and voila!-- found the problem. Turns out the turret housing was slipping on the turret itself. The Burris turrets have 2 tiny set screws to hold the housing on the turret body, and they need to screw into the bottom of the turret body groove, BUT they can temporarily tighten on the rounded portion of the groove if the housing is not seated properly, setting up the system for failure-- which is exactly what happened to Ern.-- something to remember, for the turret twisters here.
I'll let Ern fill everybody in on the rest of the shoot-- but when all was tallied we finished 28 out of 49 teams-- not too bad for 2 pistoleros, i don't think.
Steve
The rest of this is from xphunter:
One of the other "Lessons Learned" was the course rules. We knew that for those who completed the course under the time that team was awarded 1 point for each minute under the time for the course. We also "assumed" that for every minute over the time they would deduct 1 point. Were we ever wrong on that deduction. We were not worrying about time other than being caught by the two youngsters catching up on us. We focused on making hits. Because of the scope malfunction which Steve explained I didn't start making consistent hits until about 1/3 of the way through the course. I have never guesstimated so much in my life (Past years of PD shooting & knowing my trajectory helped me here I think). The last half of the course I was hitting real well. I even went for the 250 bonus shot which, if you miss you lose 250 points, and hit it. Problem was is that at the 2 hour mark all scoring stopped, so most of our good shooting never counted and we actually ended up with -250 points for the first day (14 rifle teams also ended up with negative scores on this course. Some were as low as -1640). We didn't know what our first day score was until the third & last morning of the competition. This was probably a good thing in the long run.
I will share some more lessons learned when I have more time.
Lessons Continued:
Speaking of scopes the Burris 3-12 LER Ballistic Plex with Adjustable Objective is an outstanding scope/reticle for LR uses. I was sighted in at 259 yards and my first plex was 310, second plex 410, third plex 500 yards, and the junction of the plex and the vertical crosshair was 600 yards (this figures were good if I was on 12 power). Both Steve and I shot @ 12 power for any LR shooting. I did come-ups from the plex crosshair juncture for distances beyond 600 yards with known clicks to take me to 1000 yards. Both of us used Burris's LER base and Signature rings so we could build 10 minutes into our mounts.
Wednesday afternoon before the shoot, Steve and I went to a ranch where he has permission and we set up a portable steel target and began checking exbal against actual field shooting. We both shot @ 300, 400, 500, and 600 yards. Exbal was right on. We painted the target again after 600 yards and then I shot at 700 yards, 866 yards and at 1000 yards. With 3-4 shots at each distance I had all shots (with the exception of two shots-yes from the 1,000 yard distance) in about 6.5 inches. Both of us were using Lapua brass, H-4350 powder, and 140 grain Hornady A-Max's.
After the first day of almost getting caught by the couple of guys. Steve and I decided that our strategy for the second day would be to jog between each stage. Since the course is really designed to push a bolt rifle and AR team to finish the course, it meant that we would have to jog to make up for the added time it takes to SP's to shoot the same amount of targets. Bike riding through the summer really paid off for both of us here. We would have to slow to a walk before the stage to get our heart rate down to shoot. I would sometimes jog all the way since Steve was the first to shoot (mid-range / AR distances out to 500 yards) and locate the targets, range them while Steve was making his way and getting set-up.
We didn't bring our binocs on the first day because we were under the impression we would be able to locate targets relatively easy with our eyes and the Leica rangefinder. Although it was possible, it took us longer and wasted valuable time. Binocs were used on the second day, but was not needed for the third day in the carbine/handgun course.
Teams that were in the top five in overall score still only walked between stages since they could acquire & fire 5 to 10 times quicker than we could. If the teams would have both been only shooting bolt rifles it would have been easier for us, but we intentionally did this with our specialty pistols just to see how good we could do.
One other thing that we noticed quickly was the dust (forget dust just call it outright dirt) that was all over our rigs. The full profile muzzle brakes are fine for one shot while hunting big game, but we were shooting in areas that had been used over time and was at times seemed like fine dust was everywhere when we were shooting. A solid bottomed brake would be better for this type of competition. Also a sunshade would be great for the scope to keep dust from getting into the lens. Burris does not make one for their LER scopes. I don't think they ever expected anyone to use their scopes in this fashion. I do have a scope sunshade coming from a company that if it works, I will let you guys know. I also hoped to try one Burris's 30mm 6-24 Black Diamond's with the Ballistic Mil-Dot Reticle to see if it would be beneficial in this shoot. Because of backorder's this scope is not here yet for me to try, but will let you know of it's practicality when I have time to wring it out.
More to come
