HORNADY A-MAX – Issue resolved

After recent scares about the classification of Hornady A-Max bullets as prohibited, BASC can confirm otherwise.

GB Palma Team Win

Congratulations to the GB Palma Team winning the 2011 Palma Match in Australia

Bisley Autumn Meeting

The Autumn Match Rifle Meeting run by the English Eight and the Irish has always been regarded as an opportunity for experimentation, and it was in that spirit that a motley collection of Scots gathered on the weekend of 24/25 September. In contrast to the icy blasts of last year's event conditions were good; warm and dry with a light but somewhat fickle wind for the most part, only gaining real strength for the final 1200 yard stage.

Whilst a useful amount of intelligence regarding positions, shooting technique and ammunition design was acquired. Scottish impact on the prize lists was limited. Restricted in fact to Mike B-H's third place in the Sunday shoot. Overall the leading Scot was our Captain, closely pursued by David Hossack. For those interested in the details, full scores are posted on www.englishviii.org.uk. It will be seen that Rob Lygoe of England finished off a successful year by winning this meeting in addition to the combined spring meeting and the Hopton. Maybe there is life in the supine position yet.

In the past, in accord with the traditionally experimental nature of the meeting, the use of match rifles of unrestricted calibre was encouraged with a trophy available for the highest score overall, regardless of calibre. Due to apparent reduced interest this has been discontinued, (surely contrary to the trophy presenters' intention?), and consequently the official list fails to record the excellent score of 222 made by Thibault Lury using the Captain's Any Rifle in the Saturday shoot. Sadly lack of ammunition prevented him from attempting to improve this score on Sunday. The unavailability of the Club rifle with which he had originally intended to shoot the meeting is a mystery as yet unresolved.

Update: After but a brief hiatus the 'missing' scores have now been restored to the official English VIII record. Perhaps a reminder to the wider world that the Any Rifle is still alive and kicking?

NRC of S Autumn Meeting Full Results

Click image to start slideshow

On the Friday 9th September 8 members congregated in Edinburgh to hand over the Elcho shield to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh for display. This is the third year in a row that the Right Honourable George Grubb has entertained us but the first time we had met his equally charming wife sporting the Lady Provost's chain of office. It was a very pleasant way to spend a morning in the rain of Edinburgh for those members en-route to Blair Atholl.

The club held its annual open autumn meeting at Blair Atholl over the weekend 10/11th September. The weather was dismal - heroically dismal with almost continuous rain. However, thanks to the WARC gazebos, shooting did take place with only a minor reduction in the advertised program from 100 to 95 shots per person and with the largest entry for a few years.

The early leaders were father and son Whitby with the only two possibles at 1,000x. Angus McLeod, on leave from sunnier climes, then produced a stunning possible at 1,100x before Hamish Hunter produced one of his best shoots for some time to win the 1,200x stage. On Sunday it was the turn of Mark Crichton Maitland (98@1,100) and some of the Elcho captains to shine including Allan Campbell-Smith (97 at 1,200x) whilst current captain Mike Baillie-Hamilton counted out his immediate predecessor Colin Hayes for the Sunday aggregate. Your correspondent wrongfully thought Mark Haszlakiewicz had top scored at 1,100x but he was unable to repeat his fine Saturday score of 98 due to a dodgy trigger. Astute readers will note that no one person gets more than one mention amongst all this. Indeed the result was remarkably open and it was not obvious till the end that Colin Hayes had pulled out a three point lead overall to take the Maxwell and Sandeman trophies. Simon Whitby was high visitor for the Brown Tankard and Hamish Hunter won the Brodie trophy for the 1,200x aggregate. Mark Crichton Maitland had kindly donated a new trophy for the highest Match Rifle Tyro and promptly won this himself.

The meeting was not without problems and may have seen the first result spoiled by a faulty electronic target on this range. Angus McLeod, veteran of the Delhi games fiasco, suffered a dismal final shoot along with three others with several difficult to explain shots which saw him fall from a two point lead to five points in arrears. Afterwards it was apparent that the soundbox on this particular target had suffered impact damage. The generally excellent targets are perhaps the victims of their own popularity because a very large number of shots have gone through them in four years and the centres are suffering damage which WARC are only just learning how to deal with. Also the range access road has suffered due to heavy timber lorry traffic and two cars suffered expensive cracks to their sumps. At least four competitors managed to shoot on the wrong target including this correspondent. I apologise for the lack of photographic colour to this report. It could however be accurately substituted by a single panoramic view made using Photoshop and a uniform 18% mid grey which is what the range looked like for most of the weekend. Despite all that and largely due to the gazebos the weekend was generally much enjoyed. As usual our thanks go to Tim Kidner for organising everything including a particularly fine dinner in the Atholl Arms. Special thanks also go to Jim Bell and Peter Burbridge who did a disproportionate share of the target setting up and taking down.

Yet Another Scotland Success!

The NRC of S extends is congratulations to our fellow Scottish TR shooters who have retained the 'National'. It is to be noted that many of the Scotland shooters participated in both the 'Elcho' and 'National' successes. Full Results

Scotland retains the 'ELCHO' International Shield for the third consecutive year!

A highly successful if somewhat tense win by just three points for a third consecutive win, first time since 1930, 1931 and 1932. Team Captain Mike B-H selected three past Captains in his his winning team. Probably a record.

Full Results

A full slide show of the Elcho proceedings is available here

We also won the FW Jones team match with our "H" team.  Individual Scottish successes were a little thinner on the ground with Mike B-H winning the last event, the Albert, Mike Barlow picking up the Councillors 1000x aggregate with a flawless 250 ex 250 and Jim McAllister and Will Meldrum winning the Match Rifle Pairs.  M B-H won our Gold Cross concurrent with the Hopton whilst Will Meldrum and Mike Barlow, coincidentally shooting together, were tied for the Silver Cross until the very last shot for which Will had a bull to Mike's inner.

NRC of S Spring Meeting Results

Congratulations to the winners and my thanks to everyone who helped with setting up the range, firing point and gazebos. I think we were fortunate with the weather -- wind conditions on Monday with wind speeds 70 - 100mph would have prevented any shooting at all!

Bisley Spring Meeting

The combined English, Scottish and Welsh match rifle clubs Spring meeting was held at Bisley in conditions which varied from the totally benign at 1,000x on Saturday 7th May to the the totally bemusing at 1,200x on Sunday 8th May. Runaway winner was Rob Lygoe of England. Top Scot and hence winner of our Eight Cup was Tim Kidner closely followed by Mike Baillie-Hamilton and Mike Barlow. Encouragingly for Scotland we had three new members competing who had either never fired this meeting or only fired it several years ago.

Full results

THE MARKSMAN'S MECCA

Match Rifle Shooting at Bisley 19th July 1923

Pathe News film showing match rifle shooting at Bisley in 1923 -- almost certainly part of the Hopton competition -- which may be of interest to some members.
The film shows shooting in the back position at 1100yards on Stickledown, followed by a short section of the army marking in the butts, though this is on Century range.