BLAIR ATHOLL
INTERNATIONAL F/TR REPORT
of the youngest competitors in any class and certainly was the youngest F/TR entrant. Nancy confined her activities to coaching in the team matches but participated in all six individuals.
After a generally cold, wet spring and early summer in upland Perthshire, the weather turned round just
some wind running and, as normal at Blair, varied constantly in direction and strength, so wind-reading was rarely simple and often fiendishly difficult.
Individual Matches I’ll concentrate on the team event but I must mention the Scottish Long-Range meeting results. Tim Kidner and T. Rowntree took two Target Rifle matches each, Kenny Macdonald and M. Joyce one, with Kenny’s win at 900 yards memorable in being a true ‘possible’ – 75.15v! In F Class, Scotland’s Les Bacon and the USA’s Tony Robertson were initially well matched but Les pulled ahead and eventually took the class on aggregate by a clear five points, winning every match bar the first.
Looking down Gen Tilt from the 900yd firing point. Note the steep slope and many features that cause swirling winds and strange elevation effects.
in time for the competition with light, primarily southerly winds and temperatures running up to 25 degrees C. The downside of these conditions was the appearance of the dreaded Highland Midge - in force, especially on Friday which saw light breezes at best. Fortunately, wind strength increased over the subsequent days – I’m told 2mph is the vital figure for keeping the nasty little biting beasties at bay. Whilst winds never became really strong, there was always
Looking at F/TR, the Saturday and Sunday individual matches were a learning experience for many, with Nancy Tompkins and Michelle Gallagher in particular showing steadily improving form. However, the two 900 and one 1000 yard Saturday F/TR matches were dominated by home team captain Paul Crosbie. Paul took all three with magnificent consistency, shooting 73s in every one for the day’s aggregate of 219.14v (ex 225.45v), eleven points ahead of Team USA’s Stan Pate, with Michelle Gallagher third.
I had a miserable pair of 900s on Saturday in what many considered the easiest wind conditions of the weekend but only discovered later that I had a seating depth problem with the 90gn Berger BTLRs in my .223 Rem loads that I had considered the ideal bullet for this distance. Switching back to my usual 90gn VLD combination for the final and only 1000 yard match of Day One saw an immediate improvement and rise to third place. Moral - don’t switch from a winning combination!
Sunday saw two 1000 yard matches and one at 900 yard, the emphasis on the longer distance allied to noticeably ‘harder’ winds reducing scores appreciably. Paul Crosbie continued as before in Match 4 (900yd) winning on 72.6v ahead of visitors Sierra Scott, Nancy Tompkins, and Michelle Gallagher on 71s. I took Match 5 at 1000 on 69.3v with the mouse gun by no less than six points over visitors Nancy Tompkins and the very reliable Stan Pate.
Michelle Gallagher sets up at 1,000yd, mum Nancy Tomkins coaches and the US captain Darrel Buell is just visible behind them.
Match 6, another 1000 yard effort, finally produced an American win, Michelle Gallagher on 63.3v just fending off Stan Pate by a V-Bull, Paul Crosbie and Nancy Tompkins one point behind. The Sunday Aggregate produced a US one-two-three with Nancy Tompkins, Stan Pate and Michelle Gallagher on 190s ahead of me and Paul in the high 180s.
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