Photos thread (Target Shooting)

Sparks

Okay, latest idea. Two photos threads, one for hunting and one for target shooting (mainly 'cos I'm squeamish ). And maybe a word or two about the photo as well. Have fun...

Sparks

The ten-shot finals in the 2004 10m Air Rifle National Championships.



And the spectators watching. Always a good sign, that



The last detail in the qualifications rounds. The other details (six in total held over the weekend) were almost all as full, another good sign.

Sparks

Why you shouldn't always judge a book by the cover

Wilkinstown Target Shooting Club's range from the outside:


And from the inside (taken during a break in a training session):

That's just the upstairs range section - downstairs there's a prep area, storerooms, changing rooms for men and women and so on.

That five-bull target you can see between lanes 2 and 3 is a falling-plate target that WTSC, UCDRC and DURC are experimenting with this year for their less competitive, more recreational shooters:

They're a good bit of fun, have inserts to make the size of the hole in the target smaller (down to the equivalent of a 10.5), and the sight picture is pretty much ISSF-standard, so you can use them for the first twenty warm-up shots in training easily enough.

Sparks

Ten-shot finals during the 2004 50m Prone Free Rifle National Championships in Comber last year.

And these, which show why Comber is still the most photogenic range in Ireland, as well as one of the best for smallbore rifle shooting.
The firing points seen from the top of the berm:


The front of the range:

Sparks

Shooting at the UCD Open last November.



New software was being tried out for the ten-shot finals with the electronic target scoring machine. It worked fairly well, I thought:

Sparks

Contents of my shooting kitbag at an air rifle competition.



Left to right, a shooting cardigan (the ribbing in the shoulder prevents getting a fold of cloth underneath the buttplate); shooting boots (still in their storage clamps); shooting jacket and trousers; toolbox with spare parts and tools and so forth; shooting glove; Anschutz 2002CA air rifle; hex key; multitool; pellet box; shooting glasses in their case; sights box (the white styrofoam box under the rifle); rifle stand.

Obviously, beginners don't need all of that stuff! (Rifle, jacket, glove, glasses if you need them to focus on the foresight of the rifle. That -and a hex key or two - is about it for basics).

Rovi

Sparks wrote:

Contents of my shooting kitbag at an air rifle competition.

<snip vaguely disturbing image of Sparks' bondage equipment collection>

I always suspected there was something weird about target shooters


Everybody knows that REAL shooters dress like this-


or if you want to look particularly stylish-

Sparks

Problem with that gear Rovi, is that it'd take forever for them to find whoever won the olympics if you used it...

CrowdedHouse

CQ Sparks.....well I think those pics might have killed any fleeting interest I had in target shooting !.........and I used to think my US Postal cycling gear was OTT

Rovi

Sparks wrote:

Problem with that gear Rovi, is that it'd take forever for them to find whoever won the olympics if you used it...

Well, the Pythons reckoned Hide-and-Seek was a viable Olympic sport years ago-
http://orangecow.org/pythonet/sketches/olympic1.htm

Would a Ghillie Suit be considered 'cheating'???

Sparks

Ei2JC wrote:

CQ Sparks.....well I think those pics might have killed any fleeting interest I had in target shooting !.........and I used to think my US Postal cycling gear was OTT

*lol*
Relax 2JC, that collection of gear is pretty much for the national squad level really. Your average shooter in DURC would use the club jacket, a glove, the rifle and a tin of pellets. That'd be about it. To be honest, I've seen people shooting tin cans with more gear

Rovi

Go on then Sparks, tell us (non-target shooters) what all that kit is for.
I realise that a lot of sports develop ‘odd’ equipment as the sport evolves, but some of that stuff is downright weird!

Boots???
What do special boots do for you?

And that jacket looks pretty restrictive, or is that the whole point?

I see funny hats with ‘blinkers’ on them, and that’s no ordinary glove either!


And I haven’t seen so many headbands since John McEnroe was at his umpire chewing best!


.

Sparks

Rovi wrote:

Go on then Sparks, tell us (non-target shooters) what all that kit is for.

Right so...

Boots???
What do special boots do for you?

Flat soles. Normal shoes roll up at the toe to let you walk more easily - these don't, to help you stand more steadily.

And that jacket looks pretty restrictive, or is that the whole point?

It's not meant to be restrictive, but it is - it's primary purpose is to support the lower spine in the offhand (standing) position, and to distribute the weight when prone via the sling. (ISSF rifles are heavy - that air rifle is 6kg and the smallbore rifle is 8kg. Given the offhand stance and the weight, doctors call it an offset asymmetric loading, it's not a good idea to lift it without some stabilising of the spine - like weightlifting belts in the gym).

The trousers also give support to the lower spine, though frankly you could get the same effect if you cut them off above the knee. Time was that the jacket was much longer, you see, but when they shortened it, trousers were allowed so you didn't get chronic back problems developing.

I see funny hats with ‘blinkers’ on them, and that’s no ordinary glove either!

Well, the glove looks odd because of the "top grip" on the back of it, but other than that, it's not that specialised. You could shoot just as well with a regular thick pair of gloves if you could prevent the rifle slipping about on them. I don't wear the funny hats myself, though I have one - they're just blinders on the sides of the glasses so that people wandering about don't distract you. I've not had too big a problem with that, though.

And I haven’t seen so many headbands since John McEnroe was at his umpire chewing best!

Well, I just use the one But it holds my shooting glasses firmly in place so they don't slip down my nose, and it keeps my forehead warm on cold days

The rifle stand is to rest the rifle on when reloading between shots (for a match, you're looking at maybe up to a hundred shots depending on how many sighters you take and whether you make the finals), not everyone uses one. Many just put the rifle down on the bench.

The pellet box just holds the pellets in a grid so they're easy to grasp and easy to count in case you shoot one too few or too many shots during the match.

The toolbox is just earplugs, cleaning dodads, an adapter valve for filling the tank on the rifle off a scuba tank, a wrench for removing the adapter valve off the tank afterwards while swearing, and other assorted tools like a leatherman clone, some hex keys and so on.

The earplugs (in that little white plastic container) both to help you concentrate by blocking off the noise from spectators and other competitors, and to protect hearing; the stopwatch to track how much time remains in the competition; water to stay hydrated; and the glasses' frames look so odd so that you can put the lens between your eye and the peep sights and ensure that the lens is at a right angle to your line of sight instead of being twisted. Think of Dennis Taylor's glasses for snooker and you see what I mean.
Anything else you're wondering about?

Sparks

Some attempts at a through-the-sights photo with an ISSF air rifle (sight picture is about the same for smallbore):







(Finally, a half-decent one! Wouldn't pull the trigger on it, mind, it'd be a low eight at best, but it does show the general idea - line up all the circles and squeeze the trigger. Complex stuff, this sport )

Sparks

The new Feinwerkbau P700 air rifle that seems to be the most popular top-of-the-line model at the moment:



And in use with a RIKA trainer by Ryan Lynn, one of the Juniors from Wilkinstown. Note the little cylinder slung under the barrel near the muzzle, that's the sensor that detects where the rifle's pointed at on the target and the point of aim is then shown on the screen behind him. If it was a better photo, you could see the point of aim's path as a line on the screen in two colours - one for before the shot, and one for afterwards. It's a great training tool, shows what your hold looks like and what your follow-through is like.

Sparks

The new electronic target scoring machine I mentioned above. Neat gadget, just feed in the target at any orientation and it scores it and prints the score on the card and also feeds it off to a PC if you have one. Handles 10m air rifle (single bull cards as well as five and ten bull strips) and smallbore rifle if you were shooting one shot per target:



In use at the Wilkinstown open last october:



And a look at what it produces for each shooter:



(Not one of my better shoots, by the way, that's about ten to fifteen points too low )

CrowdedHouse

Thanks Sparks........very interesting............as they might have said on Star Trek : it's shooting Jim,but not as we know it !

Sparks

It's a bit different from other kinds of shooting alright 2JC, but then again, every other kind of shooting is different from every other kind as well
I mean, Silhouette looks different from Biathlon which looks different from Tetrathlon which looks different from Sporter which looks different from Trap which looks different from Skeet which looks different from DTL which looks different from..... well, you get the idea

Sparks

Speaking of Trap (or Trench, I tend to get confused), here's Derek Burnett in Athens:



(Love the ear defenders )

Sparks

And speaking of Athens, some Olympic/World Cup standard ranges.
First off, the one in Athens:



That's the finals hall,



And that's the air rifle hall. Each firing point's got an electronic target, a monitor on the bench to shot the shooter the score and where the shot landed, a scoreboard overhead and another monitor overhead showing the spectators where the shot landed, all in real-time as it happens. And there's usually a ranking screen at either end of the hall showing who's in the lead as the match progresses. And you can see the bank of printers that print off a record of the shooter's match for the coaches in the foreground.



Here's the air rifle hall in Shanghai, used for World Cups - electric target changers rather than electronic targets, but still very, very nice



And this is the Sydney smallbore range. Again, all electronic targets and so on. And outside the frame to the left, there's a large seating area for spectators.

Zakalwe

Great pictures! The RIKA trainer is very interesting. I'd love for someone to be able to see what I can and tell me what I'm doing wrong.


Why the yellow 2002CA and not the very cool looking blue? Of course I'd give my left testicle for a pink one with green polkadots.

Sparks

Well, the yellow and black looked much cooler in the anschutz tent
(Plus, I'm not sure they actually had the blue available when I got mine).

I'll see if I can find a photo of a RIKA trace and post it up here later.

Rovi

WOW!

Thanks for all the info Sparks, lots of interesting stuff there.
There's more to this Olympic carry on than I thought

I doubt you'll ever see me in one of those jackets though, unless they make them for the 'fuller figure'


However………………………………
I still contend that these shooting outfits are perfectly fine-






Also…………………………..
Who wrote that target plotting software?-


It wasn’t this guy, was it???-




.

Sparks

Rovi wrote:

There's more to this Olympic carry on than I thought

Surprising in a way that it's not more widely known, but I suppose our individual communities are somewhat insular.

I doubt you'll ever see me in one of those jackets though, unless they make them for the 'fuller figure'

They make them big enough for me, don't they?
(Actually, my problem is that mine was a custom-made one and I've since lost a lot of weight Which is good in some ways and pesky in others since it no longer fits me properly...)

However………………………………
I still contend that these shooting outfits are perfectly fine-

Well, you'd stand out on the range, no denying that

Also…………………………..
Who wrote that target plotting software?-

That's what happens when the stupid user-unfriendly POS software dumps out and loses all the scores for all the match twice on the first day and the operator gets fustrated with re-entering all the scores
(Happily, with the scoring machine, a full sixty-shot match takes approximately ninety seconds to score, sixty if it's on five-bull strips).

jaycee

I still contend that these shooting outfits are perfectly fine

What outfits ..?


Oh hang on...I think I see it ...

Nooo ..just a tree in the building ,

:eek: Who just fired ..?

Sparks

Right, couldn't find a Rika trace so I made one. You can download the software and play with some records of matches by top german shooters here (2.8Mb file, runs on windows, it's initially set for german, but can be changed to english, the instructions are here). Definitely do so because you don't really get a feel for this from static screenshots - and there are several other screens of statistical information about the match in there too.



The red line is the point of aim before the shot, the yellow circle is the shot, and the purple is after the shot. That's off an air rifle target, by the way, and the central circle (the one the shot is just clipping at it's bottom) in real life is about a millimetre across. Nice hold on that shot, no? (Sonja Pfeilschiefter is one of Germany's top air rifle shooters).

joePC

Maybe a little off but anyways...

Sparks

joePC wrote:

Maybe a little off but anyways...

*lol*

Rovi

WOAH!

Good thing I've got a 21" monitor!

Am I right in thinking that the yellow circle isn't a true representation of the pellet calibre?

I make it approx. 11mm, which if the yellow bit IS to scale, would mean she was using something like .44 Remington Magnum or .44-40 Winchester, or maybe even .416 Rigby.



Perhaps they should put a tiny picture of a charging rhino on the targets

.

Sparks

Rovi wrote:

WOAH!
Good thing I've got a 21" monitor!
Am I right in thinking that the yellow circle isn't a true representation of the pellet calibre?

Yes, the pellet's normally 4.5mm in diameter, and that inside ring (the one just inside the 8), is 5.5mm in diameter. I zoomed in before taking the screenshot to show the trace more clearly.

Barry Aldwell

joePC wrote:

"Whoa, I like totally don't have a clue about firearms, I'm just holding this to look cool, dude!"

Zakalwe

Barry Aldwell wrote:

"Whoa, I like totally don't have a clue about firearms, I'm just holding this to look cool, dude!"

Indeed. I don't know what that thing is, but he's not pointing it at a target and he's got his finger inside the trigger guard.

Barry Aldwell

Zakalwe wrote:

Indeed. I don't know what that thing is, but he's not pointing it at a target and he's got his finger inside the trigger guard.

It's an M60. It's having his finger inside the trigger guard that gives him away, his point of aim isn't particularly important once he isn't pointing it at someone's head, and he knows (as in has checked personally) that the weapon is safe and unloaded

macnas

The hammer toes look kinda dangerous too

Sparks

Was over in Bisley this weekend and got some photos, so here they are. There's got to be a person or two out there that's not seen the place yet
(and for those who don't know, Bisley Camp is the site of the UK's National Rifle Association and National Smallbore Rifle Association's headquarters and main ranges. It hosts a lot of competitions, most famously Bisley Week in August - a full week of fullbore and smallbore rifle competitions).

Bunhill Lodge. Most of the accomodations in the camp are like this - small chalet-type accomodations, military in nature, usually somewhat basic but clean and relatively comfortable. There's a lot of caravans on site as well, and when it gets really busy, the tents make an appearance in force as well!



One of the smaller outdoor ranges (the 600yd century range). This was taken from the outdoor picnic table at the Artists Rifle Club lodge, which is next door to the Bunhill lodge above. So you could sit there eating your breakfast watching a hundred or so shooters blasting away with fullbores



This is the Lord Roberts Center from the back as you approach it. The concrete wall encloses the 50m ISSF range (80 firing points, all suis ascor electronic targets).



And from the front:



The air rifle range upstairs in the Lord Roberts, with suis ascor targets. There are three of these rooms, but it's really just one long room with partition walls. There is a problem with the floor, alas, between girders it vibrates up and down by up to 5mm in each direction



There are partitions up and electric target changers for training purposes - for ISSF training you don't always shoot at a normal target, sometimes it's a vertical line, sometimes a horizontal one, sometimes a blank target, etc.



However, to pay bills, some of the air rifle range has been temporarily converted to be an indoor roller hockey rink!



And the NSRA headquarters main offices. Beats our setup - the NTSA gets run from people's kitchens, bedrooms, home offices, whereever we can find space, and we sure don't have all that much in the way of office equipment!




And one of the new stiffness gauges being used to check a shooting jacket in the judges' course I was on. The new 2005 ISSF rules are coming down hard on Equipment Control for competitions, because the rules were being pushed rather hard by some shooters up to the Athens Games, so the rules and their enforcement is being pushed harder back to keep the playing field even.

Sparks

Some photos from the UCD Open last year.











That last one is the software from the electronic target scorer that's a few posts back. As each shot in the final is shot and scored (ten-shot finals are shot one shot at a time, and are scored before the next shot is taken, just to crank up the pressure ), the scores are put up graphically for the spectators to get a better idea of how the final is going.

Sparks

And what's a photos thread without photos of rifles? Two Walthers for you, firstly the current top-of-the-line air rifle:



And the top-of-the-line smallbore rifle:

Zakalwe

Lovely Feinwerkbau 700 ALU in the first two pictures there Sparks.

Sparks

Zakalwe wrote:

Lovely Feinwerkbau 700 ALU in the first two pictures there Sparks.

Yup. Not mine, sadly
This one's mine:

Zakalwe

Sparks wrote:

Yup. Not mine, sadly

What's wrong with your 2002 CA? If you don't want it........

Sparks

Zakalwe wrote:

What's wrong with your 2002 CA? If you don't want it........

Nothing wrong with it, but the 700's got a cantable foreend which would make for a more stable position for me. Plus it's newer and shinier

Sparks

You know, there's this theory that it's only the last inch or so of the barrel of an air pistol that makes any difference to its accuracy. There was apparently a bit of debate about this, and finally to settle it, Anschutz tried this little experiment:



And yes, it shoots straight and as accurately as normal air pistols :cool:

Rovi

Erm.........................................

ignoring Herr Anschutz's hat( :eek: ), what are we looking at here???

Is the golden bit in his right hand the CO2 (or whatever) reservoir and is the narrow black bar/tube around it the barrel?

.

Sparks

Rovi wrote:

Erm.........................................
ignoring Herr Anschutz's hat( :eek: ), what are we looking at here???

That hat actually belongs to Scott Pilkington (of www.pilkguns.com, who runs www.targettalk.org, a US version of this forum), but we're looking at the barrel of the air pistol he's holding.

Is the golden bit in his right hand the CO2 (or whatever) reservoir and is the narrow black bar/tube around it the barrel?

Yup, exactly. A full 360 degree spiral around the compressed air tank. And it shoots as straight as the conventional air pistols. It's a neat way to prove your point though

Sparks

Fun from a few years ago (2000 if I remember correctly) in East Antrim Rifle Club, shooting air pistol. (Not very well, I might add, but 'twas fun nonetheless).

And .22 pistol as well:

Sparks

Three photos from the Munich World Cup in 2001:

A rather badly composited panorama of the range/hotel complex from the entrance:



The air rifle finals hall - notice the electronic scoring and the monitors above each shooter fed by a camera focussed on the shooter's face!



And one of the Irish National Squad being measured for a shooting jacket by Mouche with their new measuring, er, harness

Sparks

One of DURC's ex-Captains doing some 100 yard shooting at Comber:



The target, zoomed in a bit (you can't quite tell, but it was raining and the card was flapping in the breeze, and the sod shooting still won the match...)

Sparks

Photos from InterShoot are up here and here for those interested.

Rovi

Sparks wrote:

Photos from InterShoot

Ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhh................................................
http://www.intershoot.nl/index_files/AUT_0224.html

<joey from friends>
"How YOU doin'?"
</joey from friends>



Perhaps there's more to this target lark than I first suspected


.

Sparks

Well, I suppose, but personally I thought the Swedish women's Air Rifle team was more, erm, aesthetic. Mind you, I've heard the lady shooters have similar thoughts regarding the Italian and French men's teams, so what's saucy for the gander, etc, etc...

Rovi

Well, if it's Swedish shooters you want, take a look here



.