This weekend just gone was the North Herts Rifles' Inter-Site Competition. The club, despite its name, was founded by a thoroughly good bloke, who I won't name unless he appears on here, who works at MBDA Systems and so most of the membership is drawn from MBDA's various sites across the country. The founder, being ex-Brunel University, got in touch with Brunel Uni Target Shooting Club and asked if they wouldn't mind providing some markers.
Being right before the start of the university year, they were a bit short on students. So yours truly, complete with reluctant other half (who's heard me banging on about how wonderful Bisley is and was finally persuaded to come and see what it's all about) stepped in to help out. Come Friday night we set off to Bisley, detouring round the corner to pick up some very welcome fish'n'chips and stretched our feet out in a friend's caravan.
Saturday morning dawned bitterly cold with lots of ground frost, thanks to the clear night. After breakfast at the LMRA we toddled off to the middle of Century butts, via the 300yds carpark to drop off some shooters. Is the tunnel next to the clay range ever opened nowadays, or have the shotgunners' activities completely closed off that access tunnel?
First half of the day was given over to zeroing and training. Most of the firers were novices, shooting under 1-to-1 tuition. Down in the butts we had two targets, two inexperienced markers and yours truly in charge. We started a little shakily after the safety briefing ("wear ear defenders at all times, stay under the mantlet, don't poke things over the mantlet, don't play silly buggers with the target") but I soon had them running the targets smoothly, with a helping hand from me to shift the frames up and down, while keeping an eye on the value panel! The shooting was a bit variable, as expected, but all went well.
About halfway through the morning I noticed patches peeling off the target faces (we were tearing the issued circles into half to conserve our limited stock) so I went hunting for a bucket of paste. I found something that looked like paste, complete with brush and splodged it onto the target. Disaster! It was filthy axle grease and all the patches started falling off as the grease dribbled down the target! sign01 Luckily the butts supervisor was passing by and I asked him if he had any paste handy. He had a squint at the target, looked at my handiwork and said "Give us five minutes..." I radioed up to ask for a stand-down after the firer had finished.
The supervisor returned with a couple of new target faces and a bucket of actual paste. He pasted the board and then put the new face on, but back to front ... I looked at him and he said, "There's method in the madness, just wait and see." As soon as he'd stuck it on he peeled it off, complete, reversed it and pasted it on the right way round. It stuck on perfectly without a single wrinkle. Excellent! We got the target back into action and I got the second one stood down for five minutes so we could re-face that one as well.
After the lunchtime pause (complete with beef in black bean sauce from the L&M - yum!) we got back down the butts a few minutes late to find total chaos. We had three targets this time and were squadded to the right of a half-dozen targets booked by a large club or association. One of their targets had broken down and the butts supervisor wanted to move us up one target so the association had a continuous row of targets. Our shooters had already set up and had no intention of moving, but communicating this over the choppy radio was rather difficult. After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing we got going about 20 minutes late.
This time the shooters had been trained, and my two trainee markers were competent enough to "go solo" so we got on with it. Marking at 500 was marginally easier than 300 and didn't run down our stock of white patches quite as fast! It was at this point that I remembered how important it is to stand your marker down when you're changing firer, or won't be shooting for a while. Marking targets is a strenuous job, both physically and mentally from the repetitiveness of it. Gazing at the stopbutt waiting for a splash that won't happen for ages makes your brain shut down, so when it does happen you don't notice. Shooters - stand your markers down whenever you can. A little extra button pressing at your end will give you faster and more accurate marking.
We also witnessed the work of the NRA markers next to us first hand. I'm going to be honest, I wasn't impressed. OK, they were all mates and fairly chatty - that's human nature, and one or two Message 4s were inevitable I guess. What isn't human nature is things like "Wait 5 seconds after they fire before you pull it down, see if they say anything" and "Go on, wait 10 seconds, maybe they'll get fed up and let us go early". My other half, who was stationed directly beside them, told me their conversation focused the use of various illegal substances at various illegal gatherings. She also said they none-too-subtly tried propositioning her, in none too pleasant terms either. Annoyingly I was working more or less constantly so didn't have a chance to have a one way conversation with them about that. I was also very unimpressed at the (non radio'd) response to the "Message 10 with thanks and compliments" they received at the end of the day: "Yeah,
off you ****ing ." I suppose, with the shortage of markers, the NRA has to take whatever dregs it can get. I didn't see any of their marking up close but the guys at the firing point seemed happy enough with it, despite the lack of speed.
The last time I marked for a full day was probably in 2007 and I have to ask, what on earth's happened to the target frames on Century? I know money is tight in the NRA, but the state of the frames on butt 15 have to be experienced to be believed. I'm a grown man and it was all I could do to get some of them moving. How my girlfriend managed it, and how the schoolkids who work as NRA markers do it, gawd only knows. I can only guess that sand and other gunk has thoroughly penetrated the pulleys, rollers and chains, making them ten times heavier to move than they should be. If anyone from the NRA reads this, drop a butt at a time out of use on Century and give the frames some heavy maintenance. Please!
While I'm at it, the Corex board backing the target faces was slightly oversize compared to the wooden frame on all the targets we marked during the weekend. This meant that, as we pushed the frames back up after patching out, our wrists kept catching on the sharp edge of the plastic. After a full day's marking you ended up looking like you were trying to end it all, from all the cuts and bruising to your wrists. Not good from any point of view. In a similar vein, would it be practical to get some wooden wedges and fix the frames into position? I swapped targets with one of my newbies after his loose frame kept swaying in the breeze and dropping the value panel past his head.
Saturday night was curry night at the Old Sergeants' Mess. The company was good, the staff fantastic and the curry was delicious! A definite thumbs-up from me and my girlfriend for the food and facilities there (especially the honesty box-based tea bar, very welcome after coming in from a cold shift). I can thoroughly recommend the other TEA as well! :cheers: In addition, the "relics" over the bar are well worth a close look. All is not what it seems, shall we say...
Sunday morning's shoot was service rifle. From the butts point of view this was much easier - 2 spotted sighters, then 10 rounds deliberate, with number of hits radioed back. Radio comms were a bit more challenging this time. I do appreciate working with people who've been on service ranges as it really does help to speak the same language. Another point that became apparent was the need to acknowledge radio messages promptly as soon as received. Our radio was a bit dodgy and we did lose comms at one point, but luckily the mobile phone network came to our rescue. Note for the future though, I must buy a pair of PMRs!
Unfortunately the hitherto good weather broke on us, and down came the heavens. It wasn't too bad in the butts but everything got very much slower at the firing point. I managed to escape and pop a few rounds down myself with my pride and joy (my 1943 Maltby No.4 which I rebuilt from a rusty old receiver) but only really succeeded in soaking my shirt on the sopping wet firing point.
As the lunchtime hooter went off we packed up and went back to the OSM for tea (and TEA) and medals, before striking camp and dispersing home. I am happy to report that out of five Message 4s received over the weekend, three were down to firer error and one was during our Saturday morning training phase, and the sole Message 3 came through directly after we started again at 600 on a new target with different scoring rings. Best of all, my girlfriend enjoyed it (except for the horrendous aches and pains induced by moving the frames for 8 hours on Saturday, and the rain) and is up for coming along to shoot sometime. :goodjob:
