27-28 Sep 2014 Precision Rifle Clinic CFB Petawawa Debrief Here!

[klatham]

What a weekend!

It's always great getting back to Petawawa, and this weekend was no exception.

It was awesome to see familar faces from the CQB clinic and PLGT Carbine course and meet a bunch of great guys! It seems that you have to travel several hours away to meet your neighbour!

Precision Rifle shooting is a bit outside of my comfort zone so it was a good challenge. The 500 yd match was pretty frustrating and discouraging, not having any DOPE to dial in, and the Field Expedient sighter was not too helpful. The 600yd deliberate was much more enjoyable and gave us some excellent opportunities to practice spotting and actually see the trace/swirl. Having each shot indicated really helped with getting the rifles dialed in and I believe a lot of us don't have many opportunities to shoot past 200yds on a regular basis.

I obviously have some equipment and skill evolution to focus on before next year!

Thanks Barney for another high-value, challenging and ejoyable clinic!

Thanks Chalkriver, Frumpy & the PGC for hosting this event as well as to Chalkriver's daughter for standing sentry!

Thanks to Scott for volunteering your time to run the Butts! The targets ran very smoothly all weekend!

I am looking forward to the next event at CFB Petawawa!

[Mason44]

What a great weekend, most fun you can have with your clothes on!

Big thanks to Barney and the ROs for keeping us on schedule and running a great event. Learned a lot and got to meet some great people. Also thanks to Steve for spotting like a champ and bringing some cool gear to sell, those 2 round holders were extremely useful. Now I want to attend an ORA match.

Managed to snap a few pics between relays:

[Kevin M.]

^^ Nice pics there! My little subcal rifle is even nicely displayed in a few pics!

I'm pretty sure I got that on video while spotting lol

You need to post that haha! It's driving me nuts trying to remember it!

[vviking]

Hey Barney, yer edumacation, it really works!.

A full box into it at 600, and my geriatric 6.5's barrel, it was so sooo hot. Some solid center hits in the shifting wind conditions. Happy shooter.
We were reading the near/far mirage and the dust spouts off the butt's for clues to our wind calls y'see ....
As I was about to pack up and pack it all in ....
Me spotter Avalonthas, he says:
"You arrogant viking dik, you think yer so hot do's ya?, ... then gimee a head shot."

"standby" says shooter.
"hold left ear" says spotter ... "send it".
"Hit. forehead."
"Wholly COW!" says shooter.

"standby"
"hold right ear" ... "send it".
"hit. nose."
"UHHH" ... says shooter

"standby"
"hold dead on" ... "send it"
"hit. cranial nasal sinus"
"WHAAAA?."

"Howsabout one easy kneecap poke at it fer us, last shot, a'fore we go off the line 'n fetch ya yer zimmerframe walker, oldtimer" says Avalonthas, whom, ....
.... by this point in time .. in my eyes at least, .. has become Canada's newly crowned #3 ranked spotter.

"standby"
"Hold left 1 minute ... wait .... 1/2 minute ... 3 inches... send it now."

.... can you believe this chit? ... 'ol Fugly, 100 year old mouser, she kneecapped dat fig 11 from 600 ....

My "aha" moment Barney?.
In order of increasing importance:
-rifle
-scope
-spotting scope
-shooter
-SPOTTER.

Damn, did we ever enjoy this shoot!.
To every one of you'se who volunteered their time and effort to make this shindig happen for us, my heartfelt thanks.

Brett

[thump_rrr]

Awesome weekend, thanks Barney.

Lessons learned: don't bring norinco ammo and an m14 with wood stock. Barney WILL laugh at you.

he wasn't laughing at mine making wristwatch shots at 600:-P but I wasn't using Norinco Plinko ammo either.

Thanks to Barney, Chalk river , Frumpy, and anyone else I forgot to mention for putting together another awesome weekend.

[pierre427]

Here's some of my notes about the clinic.

I think there were a few folks that went into it thinking that the clinic was to teach them how to shoot. If they didn't already have ballistic calculations done up for their rifle AND ammo, they probably didn't get as much out of it as the rest. This isn't a dig against them, just a note for anyone signing up next year: Chrony your ammo and run the numbers through iSnipe or Ballistic, and then print that out.

As far as non-rifle gear, I didn't have any major "fails", but it was a really good opportunity on day 1 to get an idea of what other people are using, and Barney's walkthrough of what he packs was valuable. I ordered a bunch of stuff from LA Police Gear yesterday such as a 511 pack and a few MOLLE pouches - including the first aid pouch. I already had the NCStar shooting mat / rifle case that I ordered from Wolverine Supplies (and it's a really great deal at around 100$). I'll be beefing up the rifle case with one or two MOLLE mag pouches. I'm also going to order one of those 2 round velcro holders, and just ordered a 10 round mag.

I never shot beyond 200y before Sunday, and I was very impressed with the fact that my rifle was doing quite well even up to 600y. My rifle is:

Rem 700 SPS Varmint in .308, 26" factory barrel
AICS chassis from Wolverine
ATRS 20 MOA rail
Tactical bolt knob from ATRS
Harris bipod
Accu-Shot BT08-QK Monopod from Wolverine (used on one relay)
Sightron SIII 10-50x LRFCH with a LRMOA reticle from Mystic Precision
(dialed to 20x for 100-200y, ~32x for 500y, 50x for 600y)
Jewell trigger with a ~10-12 ounce trigger pull

Ammo:

Berger 185gr VLD
40gr IMR4895
Standard COAL ~2.805
Seated with Redding seater
Lapua brass
Chrono vel 2500fps +- 15fps
Worked out the ballistic table on iPad app called Ballistic

I plan or installing a new barrel on the rifle as the one I'm using is around 4 years old, and I have a Hart on the way; it's also going to get a Defcon 1 muzzle brake this winter at the same time as the barrel. But honestly the factory barrel shot quite well even with 3000+ rounds through it. Maybe not better than 0.75 MOA, but any shots outside of that are shooter error. After that's done I'm going to leave the rifle alone, because from this clinic I know that there's really nothing else I need to do besides practice, practice, practice.

The course of fire was lots of fun, obviously most of us don't get an opportunity to shoot anything except for static targets on our home ranges. Even hauling the targets up and down in the butts was a learning experience as far as watching how the shooter was acquiring, adjusting and grouping.

The way the course was run, the RSOs, local club exec, Barney, all of you guys did a great job. Also thanks to the club exec's daughter for acting as range sentry.

[TacticalTeacher]

Pierre :

Thanks for the kind words. I greatly appreciate them.

Many thanks for all this feedback. I was just so happy to realize all the joy you shooters and spotters experienced from shooting many many and many more booolits at the 600 yard mound. I was trying to get more experience downrange within the time parameters we had. So much productive learning practice was happening. On all levels everyone was maximizing this grand learning opportunity to the max by shooting faster.

I got a kick out of Ariel's discovery of the trace through Steven693 Precisions old school 25x spotting scope. He was yelling to me that he could see all the booolits from KLathams barrel with the current light conditions. He was declaring that this was his AHA moment and he saw the light ; so to speak.

Then Pomlt3 was reporting back to me that he never had so much fun shooting prone especially at this distance. I am honored to be part of all that experience.

I am honored to be facilitator do all this learning. Every single one of us learned a shztload of information in many different and varying ways. I am most thankful to be part of this experience.

Gotta go to bed now. Thanks all of you guys!

Cheers

Barney.

[chalkriver]

It was a great weekend of shooting and got to do it along side some really nice people .
There were a lot of nice firearms and some really good shooting that weekend as well.
Thanks Scott for helping out and running the butts all day .
Thanks again Barney for putting together another very informative and fun clinic .
Hope to see everyone back in Petawawa shooting again soon .

A few more pics

[Kevin M.]

Here we go... some more pics from the weekend!



Box test, I was far left, and my buddy was 2nd from the left... not to shabby!


Target butts.


Dinner after the first day.


A perfect morning, the last of the mist burning off.


From what I have seen, quite possibly the best shooting of the entire weekend... was done by Vviking and his beloved 'fugly' 6.5 Swedish Mauser. This was from the 300 meter snap shoot. Pretty frickin amazing to get a group like that with only 3 second exposures...


Took us forever to take this photo, some guy was busy keeping the butts running so smoothly that we couldn't stop for a selfie for hours... what has the world come to??


MAN DOWN!!! The ISIS marked target got me!!! Thank goodness first aid packs were handy and well stocked... may not have pulled through...


The guys had too much fun marking up our target...


Great weekend guys!

[693 Precision]

Thanks to everyone who made this clinic possible and for letting me come up, meet new people, sell some gear and hopefully help out a few of you. It was an awesome weekend!

And my aha moment was when I tried the 500 yard snap with an AR10 with no dope for that range. (also my first time shooting an AR, I only have bolt guns right now)

Aha 1. There is no bolt handle to grab after a shot.
Aha 2. 5 rounds goes quick
Aha 3. You have to change mags after those 5 rounds or it doesn't go bang (used to 10 rounds and no reload)
Aha 4. When you miss and exposure and change mags then forget to release the bolt it still doesn't go bang and Barney starts laughing at you and yells "load faster, shoot better"
Aha 5. A dud round after all this adds to the shenanigans
Aha 6. You can triple tap a target at 500 with an AR10 while Barney laughs at you (I want to try with my bolt gun now)

Thanks again for having me and buying some gear from me. Very much appreciated and it was great to meet everyone.
-Steve