A father and his teenage son

Also asked for (w.r.t. the DCRA Canadian Championship match) was that F/Farquharson receive full and equal treatment prizelist-wise with F/Open, which was done this year.

Another thing asked for was that F/Restricted (now known as F/TR) be offered in addition to F/Farquharson, which was also done this year.
 
Ian, no I haven't shot that target nor have I got the measurements for the center of it. The dimensions I have are 65mm for the V bull at 300, which is .815MOA. I can only guess that this size is to coincide with the TR shooters needs for a V bull that reduces perfect scores yet encourages them to try. I've seen many 50-7 and 50-8 but never a 50-10 in TR. Again this is just my wild guess, I never investigated the reasoning. Can you or CyaN1de explain to me why someone would be upset enough over the ICFRA target, old or new, to go home? The old DCRA targets were not MOA either, 2.75" [.875moa] for a V bull at 300.

Daniel, looking at a huge flat black object using flat black crosshairs to find the exact center of it takes up a lot of concentration. It absolutely, without any doubt whatsoever causes the shooter to shoot larger groups than his/her potential. A simple white patch in the center is easy to hold on. Without the patch I will hold off up to 1/2 a minute, with it normally less than 1/4 because I want to stay on the white somewhere. I have no excuse not to hold 1/8.
 
The biggest reason behind the competitor going home was his blatant dislike for a .4moa V-Bull which does not match any scope adjustment whatsoever.

I can't determine .1moa @ 300m so it is of no discern to myself.
 
The short range target has a number of fundamental flaws. It is first and foremost a TR target with an accessory patch added to make it an F-Class target. TR shooters using open sights are trying to center a giant black blob in the middle of a huge aperature sight; we F-Class shooters are trying to place a .16MOA black target dot in the middle of a 35mm black circle that is obscured by mirage and black patches.

The patch has a v-bull is only 35mm, which is .4MOA and the "5" ring is very compressed. After only a few shots, the target center completely obliterates with patches, so what is left is an obscured area in which delineation of the V-Bull is almost impossible, plus markers have to take a wild-assed guess as to whether the shot is within the V-bull or not.

Add a bit of mirage into the mix and it is nothing more than an exercise in trying to center a very tiny dot on a huge dark blob.

fclasstarget.jpg


This target was shot during our Winter League. These bullet holes were made by a custom 6BR shooting in overcast conditions in freezing temperatures. The target patches were peeled away to show this exceptional F-Class group, but if you look at 2 o'clock in the 5 ring, the small patch is wider than the 5 ring! a few of these and the target is completely obscured

IMG_0605-1.jpg


This picture shows our provincials at 300M in dead calm conditions. There were plenty of "4's" dropped here by top shooters because the targets were so poorly defined in any sort of mirage. No amount of skill makes up for a crappy target.



The old DCRA target was fine, terrific in fact. It was better proportioned and had a large numeric aiming mark. (DCRA still uses those targets... they VOTED for the small ICFRA target but don't use them...)

The ICFRA medium and long range targets are fine. I would prefer to have a white center, but I can live without.

Both of the shooters that have left F-Class were over 70 years old. These pioneers of our shooting sport (Both good friends of Farky's) enjoyed F-Class because it was a sport within their physical ability. The short range target makes their enjoyment of the sport impossible, and was an affront to all of their enthusiastic support over the years.

My concern is the new shooters with factory equipment. Sorry, but even the best shooter will fight for every point using a factory rifle. Few Remingtons or Savages have the consistent accuracy to compete on equal footing with these new targets, so we are forcing new shooters to invest in expensive custom equipment to keep pace.

I very much want an entry level class to circumvent this, but that is as big a hurdle as changing the target. The governing bodies like to complain about falling enrollment numbers but are unwilling to address the perception of our sport from the eyes of a newcomer.

In BC our sport is healthy and growing. I want to keep it that way.
 
Obtunded,
Sorry I must be overtired and have reread this subject and need to ask for some clarification.If I understand you correctly, points of contention are:
Issue one- the smaller short range targets are unacceptable due to thier quickly becoming obliterated with patches and difficult to resolve for shooter and scorer.
(we ask for new wear faces when this begins to occur)
Issue two-an entry level class.
On one level I would not expect a "newcomer" with his factory rifle to be able to compete on equal footing regardless of the target used and I haven't ever met a newcomer that expected to run at the top scores during thier initial years.
A newcomer is not forced to buy into expensive equipment,but I would imagine would improve his gear as his skill levels develop.
Perhaps what you seek is a classification system similair to TR ?
I see the F Class competitors now being individually recognised in F Open and F T/R classes .Should this be further broken down to a TR style class system.?
In the NSCC Precision matches they had a class for newcomers called Tyro and recognition was given them without further breakdown in classes of shooters as I recall.
I don't think new or experienced shooters are forced but the reality is ,a person will find the level to which they can compete for the time and if they enjoy it will grow into the sport.
The greatest area I feel we can improve our numbers is by having every experienced F shooter "mentor" at least 1 newcomer and ensure that they can at least do the best with what they have,learn some new skills,and have a damn good time.
Let them understand that as a sport this is something they could grow with and even if not on the leaderboard this time, there are ways to get there if they really want to.
Please let me know if we are near on the same page and I understood things.
Thanks
Gord
 
Gord, This issues are obliteration (yes, refacing is fine, but not half-way through a timed relay) which leads very quickly to being further obscured by mirage. Black reticles on black targets with no visible V-Bull borders rather defeats the purpose of having a scope.

Target complexity for new shooters is indeed an issue, and the very fact that the Pow-Wow feels F/TR should be shooting at TR targets speaks to the fact that it is not only new shooters that are vulnerable to this smaller target.

I mentor lots of shooters and have introduced many new shooters to the sport - and continue to do so. If you read the precison rifle forum, we have people honestly preaching that Stevens 200's are precision rifles, or that adding a bipod and a scope converts any rifle to a quarter-minute tack driver. We have younger shooters blowing all they can afford on fancy-looking rifles that will never compete with a purpose built F-Class Rifle.

Instead of telling these people your choice of equipment is no good, why not create an environment where these guys CAN compete? There are FAR more of them than there are of us! If we hold matches that will allow these guys a chance to be successful, they will have far more fun than any experience where they show up and realize their $1500 tacticool rifle isn't capapble of rendering them the early sucess that creates an instant life-long convert. This is why Tac Rifle grows by leaps and bounds.

If we don't creates ranks full of F-Class shooters that enjoy club and provincial matches, the ranks that attend National and international matches will only decline. The fact that Canada - the country that invented F-Class - couldn't even send an F-Open team to Bisley was shameful!
 
The v-bull on the new ICFRA target is a significant improvement over the previous target with the white v-bull centre......whoever thought of the little notches along the inside edge of the v-bull ring is an absolute genius!
 
Team Savage is composed of world-class shooters. There is nothing wrong with the Savage purpose built target rifles at all however, That is not the equipment i'm talking about. While their team rifles may not be bedded, they most certainly are scutinized for tolerances, and we both know shooters that have had very poor success with these rifles off the shelf, only to have Savage replace them with better rifles.

One does not find many 12 F/TR rifles depicted in "Call of Duty IV". The Gen-Y crowd don't spend their money like that.
 
Buying white stickers for the center is a simple solution. Cover the entire .4moa V bull with the white stickers. When a bullet lands on the line, patch it black then white. This problem solved and the center is always white.

The real problem is the scoring method. Changing it so TR guys can't use the target is a very bad idea and this is driving a wedge between shooters and weakening the sport severely. I can go a bit further and say I believe it was intentional. There is no good reason F Class shooters cannot simply use the .4moa center as an X as I mentioned before. The amount of dollars spent on targets would remain the same and a white patch costs as much as a black patch. Markers place the score indicator a notch above the V bull, no shooter will misinterpret that. Everybody wins, well except those that want to separate us.
 
So far I've been mostly considering the issues experienced shooters are facing. New shooters are very different. I can't honestly say what they most often think but what I can say is that they blame themselves too much. I hear so many times their rifle can out shoot them. They just don't realize its usually their equipment letting them down. I've yet to see a factory rifle that doesn't send out a wild flyer now and again and they certainly are not normally great groupers over a whole match. These shooters do not want to shoot against the more notable shooters. I don't have a solution and I haven't seen a great one yet. Perhaps F Tactical will be the answer, it does look good in theory.
 
I'm still trying to figure out where this .4 MOA Vee Bull stuff came from.


B2. The ICFRA International F-Class Target Short Range
B2.1 Details Reserved: In default, a 1/2 minute V-bull within the ICFRA International Match
Target for short range, with the original v-bull counting bull-5 and so on is acceptable.

The F Class rules from the ICFRA website sez 1/2 MOA. So what gives?
Cheers, Glen
 
Inspector said:
I'm still trying to figure out where this .4 MOA Vee Bull stuff came from.


B2. The ICFRA International F-Class Target Short Range
B2.1 Details Reserved: In default, a 1/2 minute V-bull within the ICFRA International Match
Target for short range, with the original v-bull counting bull-5 and so on is acceptable.

The F Class rules from the ICFRA website sez 1/2 MOA. So what gives?
Cheers, Glen
Click to expand...

Notice that it says that this is written as an interim description.

Since those rules were written, the "interim" has passed. The F-Class Committee, which met in Bisley in July 2009, decided on the targets to be used for short and mid-range F-Class shooting. It's decision will soon be presented to ICFRA Council for approval, and then published. In the meantime, I can unofficially tell you that the F-Class V-bull was decided to be half the diameter of the V-bull dimension of the TR target system, which can be found here on pg. T29 (table)

And by the way, while the 300m ICFRA F-Class short range uses a 35mm diameter V-bull and a 70mm diameter 5-ring, don't forget to take into account an additional 7.82mm (.308) effective diameter (since that's how shots are gauged).

So in order to shoot into the 35mm "V", you need to group:

(7.82mm + 35mm) / 25.4 inches per mm / 3.28 (hundreds yards in 300m) / 1.047 (true MOA per inch-per-hundred-yards) = 0.491 true MOA, which is equivalent to a 0.514" group at 100 yards.

The 5-ring is (7.82mm+70mm)/25.4/3.28/1.047 = 0.892 true MOA.

For the purpose of producing plotting diagrams, you might as well call the 300m ICFRA F-Class target V=1/2 MOA, bull-5=0.9 MOA.
 
Rob, separating F-Class shooters from TR shooters is very much a mixed bag. I have strong reservations about it, even though I suspect it is probably best in the end to do the separation.

The system you suggest (have TR and F shoot on the same target, specifically an F-Class centre) would work, but it does introduce possibilities for confusion at a number of different points. It would almost certainly be handle-able at a small match, but more and more "dangerous" at larger matches.

You titled this thread aptly, and you got some really good discussions going. It is difficult to get things right - in fact it's probably impossible, and the best we can do is probably to work on doing the least damage. Not very satisfying.
 
Yes Glen, The dimensions for the .5 MOA were defined as "by default" in ICFRA rules.

However, more than a year before the formal decision was made to finalize its dimensions, someone obviously knew that the dimension was not to be half-MOA, but half TR because they told the BCRA to order 35mm targets and we've been using them since January.
 
Ian it's not that someone "knew" that things were going to be decided a certain way, rather that he took one of the two logical choices (that being either half of the smallest existing ring, or half an MOA), and it turned out that that was what was also decided later by the ICFRA F-Class Committee.

Funnily enough, this decision to use "half diameter" ends up resulting in the effective size of the V-bull scoring ring for the 300m ICFRA F-Class target to be.... half an MOA! (which is actually a pure coincidence).
 
First off, let me say this. I am a new shooter, I do not claim to know what I am talking about and I am not going to say anything very profound to solve the worlds problems. But, as a new shooter I feel I should comment on a few things.

Targets...What is the deal with the changes anyway? I could care less what the dimensions are, if everyone in your class is shooting the same target, what is the problem? I have not shot enough to have a preference of what I shoot at. I'm not very good at this game yet and hell, I'll be honest, I just love to get out and shoot, to shoot targets, and to shoot the sh!t. Instead of making a full on change why not incorporate them into the matches throughout the whole competition? I mean, even though there are different matches throughout the comp. you are still shooting the same distances at the same targets. So, instead of shooting a match that once consisted of 2/10 at a 300m DCRA target and a 2/10 at 500m DCRA why not change that match to use the new ICFRA target? I personally think it would be fun to shoot at different targets throughout the comp. It may be the worst idea yet, and thats fine, I don't really care. Fact of the matter is, I just want to get out and shoot and enjoy the social aspect of it all, whether it be waiting for my relay to go to the line, or at the pub afterwards tellin' lies and making excuses.

F-Tactical - Excellent idea in my opinion. You don't see new, (especially younger) shooters going to the gun store to get a new diopter for their TR rifle. You see them getting something in their budget, whether it is a Savage 10FP, Rem 700 SPS etc.. and go shoot. A lot of these younger guys, including myself, do not have the budget to build a full on precision rifle, nor do we have the experience required to get the most out of one. That is why we need something that lets us get our foot in the door and see what this sport is all about, and be competitive with others in the same situation. Lets face it, who doesn't like to win?

Anyway, as I sit here listening to the sirens blaring down the streets of Edmonton shortly after midnight, I find myself blathering on, maybe some other day something profound will come out...but for now, I'll just keep shooting.
 
Hi Bud, would you like to get a bit more involved with F Class in Alberta? Does your schedule allow you to make it down to Homestead once in a while? I know it's a bit of a trudge but it's worth the drive. There's another free clinic Sept 19 and fullbore practice on the 20th that your more than welcome to attend. Let me know and I'll do everything I can to help you get there.

Cheers, Glen
 
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