Halcyon days at Blair Atholl
Attendance for the Scottish Championships at Blair Atholl bounced back to the pre-Covid level of 48, up from 36 or so in the more recent matches, clearly members were keen to gain as many league points as possible and improve their chances of team selection. It was good to see and hear the added buzz of activity around the range, you need a certain critical mass of competitors to create that.
Now before I go any further, what can we say about our human dynamo? Richie is a one-man army who gets more done in a morning than most folk will ever get done in a day. He would be the first to admit that electronic targets aren’t his cup of tea, yet despite that, he threw himself into the preparation and organisation of this match with extraordinary energy and professionalism, it says a lot about his good character we have a great asset there in Richie.
By way of a preamble, it may be worth taking stock of where we are and how we got here. The Association’s set of Silver Mountain targets had endured many a Diggle deluge and a few duckings at Blair, but the October 2023 match at Blair was something else altogether – as near to a monsoon as we’ll get in the UK; two days of intensive heavy rainfall were simply more than our old Silver Mountains could endure, and once the moisture got into them their fate was sealed; delicate microelectronics and cold water don’t get on – only three of our original set of eight have survived.
This necessitated the Association investing in new kit, I was rather anxious about this as Blair relies totally on the use of some form of electronics, but I was aware that Blair and electronics are two subjects that don’t appeal to everyone, so I approached the matter with some trepidation. I needn’t have worried – to my great relief the Committee approved the expenditure on a new system, phew.
It was only then that we learned that our original old Silver Mountain targets were no longer in production and spares were scarce, technology moves on and they had been supplanted by other, newer models. We took that opportunity to look around and our attention was drawn to the Shot Marker system. The PSSA at Diggle had been using this system for a few years and it had worked out well albeit with some locally devised little improvements. Their experience was positive and that encouraged us to follow suit and invest in set of new Shotmarker targets.
There was an anxious wait for the new system to arrive, but thankfully Adam McDonald, the owner of Shotmarker was as good as his word and the new targets arrived as promised in mid-July. Gary used his professional experience to expedite their delivery and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Richie enlisted the services of the PSSA’s resident expert on the Shotmarker; Paul Parkinson who kindly set up the targets on the Diggle frames, checked everything out and gave Richie a crash course on its operation. That gives you just a little flavour of all the trials and tribulations that go on behind the scenes in the Association, we are indebted to Richie and Paul for all their good work.
Without further ado, we turn to the main object of this report; the Scottish Championships.
In a stark contrast to our last visit to the Jubilee range at Blair, this weekend turned out to be simply glorious (albeit with one rather short, sharp shower), we enjoyed a remarkably unusual two consecutive days of the mildest, most benign winds you’re ever likely to see at Blair – it must be some sort of record.
Paul Crosbie very kindly offered to help assemble the target gantry onto which the targets are mounted, he drove up on Thursday to do this, on Friday to help set things up and then again on Saturday & Sunday that was four round trips of 200+ miles each day – now there’s dedication, the league is fortunate in having such selfless, generous members. Mind you, Richie had almost single handed got everything else under control; the frames, gazebos, electronics and all the other gubbins that goes to make a league match successful.
During the Thursday set-up, we were treated to the exhilarating sight of a pair of Paul Binn’s former comrades, hurtling down Glen Tilt at very low altitude skimming the hills it seemed.
Friday Practice
About two dozen members took the opportunity to avail themselves of the free unlimited practice on Friday afternoon, being at about 900+ feet elevation, sight settings would always be a bit different from lowland ranges, but this time it was even more important to get a practice as the targets were adjusted in such a way as to alter the usual 900 zero. The Shotmarker targets had the virtual centre of the V-bull displaced by 1 moa – this was a deliberate ploy to ensure that the white V-bull didn’t get obliterated by the concentrated fall of shot, instead, the mass of shots all fell in the black just under the V-bull, thereby preserving the crucial aiming reference mark.
As an aside, I think for our next League match in October, it may be an idea to displace the virtual centre upwards instead, thereby lifting the bulk of shots nearer twelve o’ clock instead of six, this I feel would lift any errant low shots higher up and away from the West Atholl Kongsberg frames which just peep over the mantlet and are therefore vulnerable to being struck by any exceptionally low shot.
We were relieved that the new Shotmarkers all worked faultlessly during the practice session, we hoped that would continue.
Saturday
Kick-off time at Blair is 9.30, it is a concession to nearby horse owners, but it allows folk to have a leisurely breakfast, when I reached the range at about 8am, I was impressed to see the 900yd parking area already filled with eager shooters. Big Richie had got the hot water boiler up and running and everyone could have their morning tea, coffee and biscuits– how civilised!
Stage 1
We got off to a good start with the bunny detail – there was little to no wind at all, a rare sight at the Jubilee range which can be notoriously difficult, not today though, it was as near to mill pond conditions as you could ever hope for and first into the breech were the F-Open top shooters, as you would expect in such circumstances, the scores were stratospheric. Three shooters didn’t drop a point; Gary Costello Rob Hale and Tom Bindley – what a superb demonstration of what their rifles and ammo are capable of, Gary and Rob equalled on 100.16 – that’s 16 shots into a 5” disc at just over half a mile.
Then just as everything was going swimmingly, in detail two, the gremlins struck; target one simply refused to co-operate while its neighbour, target two showed all shots as a perfectly straight vertical line from 12 to 6. Big Richie and Jim Marsden zoomed down to the butts and solved the problems; thankfully the Association had purchased an entire spare target, so it was substituted, and all was well – hooray! The affected shooters were resquadded to shoot as and where we could, it did cause a delay which was inevitable, but everyone got their shoot in the end.
By mid-morning it was time for the FTR shooters to have their first shots, by that time on any normal day, the wind would have picked up, but not that day, it was just a little more, but not much, it remained remarkably mild and gentle which gave the FTR shooters the same opportunity to see what their rifles were capable of. Julie Bagnall proved to be the best of the bunch, we’ve seen this before from Julie, she is a superbly accurate shooter in such conditions.
| Gary Costello | 100.16 | Julie Bagnall | 97.08 |
| Rob Hale | 100.16 | Kat Balakrishnan | 96.10 |
| Tom Bindley | 100.12 | Asad Wahid | 96.07 |
It is always good to get the first stage of a match over with in gentle conditions, it gives everyone confidence that their rifles and ammo are performing well – provided of course, that everyone has done their homework as there is no hiding place.
Stage 2
As an aside, in the early days I used to name our match stages after local features or places; the “Glen Tilt”, the “River Gary” and “Old Atholl”, it had no other significance other than to impart some flavour of local geography, but over time it just got rationalised away as the stage medals were not named, so it lost any relevance.
Anyway, by Stage 2 we were at the mid-way mark and well into the early afternoon, by now in any normal match at Blair, the wind would be at full strength, but not today, sure there was a tiny bit more, but that’s all just a little – it was enough though to push a bullet from being a 5.0 to a 4.9 The scores clearly reflected that; there was only one person who got a 100 – Steve Rigby with a new FO rifle took that honour, it was good to see him back on the podium, just ahead of his sparring partner Dean Wallace, and David Rollafson in 3rd showing he’s equally at home in FO as FTR. In FTR, it was clear that devious fickle little wind was having an effect; scores were depressed; nevertheless, the most observant FTR competitors were rewarded; the two West Atholl members Paul Crosbie and Paul Binns clearly knew where to look and were closely followed by Diggle stalwart Jim Marsden. For Paul Crosbie, this was the high-water mark of the weekend as shortly afterwards, to his amazement he discovered his barrel was working itself loose!
| Steve Rigby | 100.13 | Paul Crosbie | 93.06 |
| Dean Wallace | 99.07 | Paul Binns | 92.03 |
| David Rollafson | 98.11 | Jim Marsden | 91.07 |
Stage 3
The weekend was dry for the most part, but not entirely – the only rain we experienced was in Stage 3 while the FO guys were shooting – how odd, its usually the FTR shooters who get rained on. The gazebos saved most folk from a soaking but those unlucky individuals who found themselves on the outer edges got rather wet, much to the amusement of our FTR friends who were all squeezed in under a big blue gazebo the Association bought years ago but had lain in storage at Diggle ever since. Richie has it now and we will take it to future league matches to get more use out of it.
Due to the earlier hiccup with targets 1 & 2 and the subsequent need to accommodate the affected shooters, we were running a bit later than expected even allowing for 4 details of the long 2+20 course of fire, it meant we were still shooting later in the afternoon around 5pm. By that time, it is common for the wind to abate slightly as the day cools and this is just what happened, by the time the FTR shooters got down to shoot, the wind – if you could call it that, had receded away to near nothing, this then gave our FTR colleagues the same opportunity that the FO guys had early in the morning; to really show what their rifles and ammo were capable of in near-ideal conditions. In similar fashion, three of them scored a perfect 100; Ryan Goodman, Peter Sheffield and Garryk Campbell it is worth noting Garryk’s v count; just 4 proving that although V-bulls are nice to have, its points that make prizes! The FO guys had shot earlier when there was still just a little wind to contend with and that reflected in their scores; Gary Costello and Steve Rigby earned their second medals of the day, while Robert Douglas held it all together to take the bronze.
| Gary Costello | 98.10 | Ryan Goodman | 100.11 |
| Steve Rigby | 97.09 | Peter Sheffield | 100.11 |
| Robert Douglas | 97.05 | Garryk Campbell | 100.04 |
The Saturday aggregate
It was good to see a mixture of new and old faces in the Saturday aggregate, it was especially heartening to see Jim Marsden up there in pole position leading the entire FTR field, Jim has served a long apprenticeship so it was great to see him putting it all to good use with his brand new rifle by Peter Walker. On the FO side, Gary Costello had stamped his authority on the match, taking two gold medals with a stunning example of the gunsmith’s art; a truly beautiful rifle by Speedy Gonzales.
| Gary Costello | 295.33 | Jim Marsden | 285.25 |
| Steve Rigby | 294.29 | Peter Sheffield | 285.21 |
| Des Parr | 291.19 | Julie Bagnall | 283.19 |
Well, what a day it had been; it was a day for trigger pullers rather than wind readers and I mean no disrespect by that, there was simply so little wind to contend with that it rewarded those who had perfected their shooting technique and had very good accurate rifles and ammo’. Anyone who lacked one of those key factors was left exposed – there’s no hiding place in such conditions.
We left the range as we found it in the morning; in a dead calm.
Sunday
The 9.30 start at Blair has much to commend it, especially if you’re not a morning person, on the other hand, many of our competitors had a long way to travel home so were understandably anxious to get away, for that reason the Sunday stages were just 2+15s – it is surprising how short the 2+15s can seem after the barrel bending 2+20s. Now at this point I should say that not everyone is a fan of those long 2+20 details, especially on electronic targets which tend to promote a very fast style of shooting. Shotmarkers however have the answer; a built-in delay to mimic the time interval that would be created had the targets been manually marked, this short delay of 10 seconds or so made all the difference, it stopped folk machine-gunning the target and enabled the barrels to avoid being overheated. Speaking of delays, I should apologise to Dean Wallace for my tardiness in calling one of his scores; at one time I found myself absent-mindedly gazing at the target waiting for it to be pulled down to be marked…. Oh dear, it must be an age thing.
Stage 4
Sunday dawned bright and beautiful and would you believe it, the wind was still noticeable by its absence. We assembled around the hot water urn with tea, coffee & biscuits – note to self, don’t try to eat biscuits through the midge net. Almost everyone was wearing a midge net, we looked like a large gang of armed bank robbers.
FTR were first to get down and make the most of the ideal conditions. On Sunday, instead of blow offs, we used 3 non-convertible sighters, it is an idea borrowed from one of the Match Rifle competitions. It was then that we had a second hiccup with the Shotmarkers, it seems that an errant wide shot hit the wooden frame with enough force to stun the sensor and dislodge the wire. Richie zoomed down to the butts and in a matter of minutes had replaced the sensor and cable, after that everything returned to normal again. I’m glad to see the Shotmarker does give an indication of where the problem is and the parts are so quickly and easily replaced, it makes life a lot easier and takes a lot of worry off the organisers. Adam McDonald will be at the Euros, so we hope to meet him and discuss how to make full use of all the system’s capabilities.
Although the conditions looked benign, there was just the tiniest little variation in wind that was just enough to push bullets out of the 5 ring, it was very hard to see – frankly impossible I’d say, but there is always someone who seems to have a handle on things, in this case it was Asad Wahid who scored the only 75 out of all the shooters in Stage 4, an excellent achievement, I reckon Asad communes with the Anemoi. Mike Harris and Kat Balakrishnan were not far behind only 1 point off.
By the time FO got a kick of the ball, normally the wind would have picked up, but not today, it was still just that incredibly gentle zephyr like condition with just enough variability to push a shot out to a 4.9 an element of luck is involved of course but none of the FO guys could match Asad. Steve Rigby came closest with 74.11 – an excellent V-count. Behind Steve came yours truly and Phil Shambrook making his debut appearance at Blair Atholl, so congratulations Phil.
| Steve Rigby | 74.11 | Asad Wahid | 75.08 |
| Des Parr | 74.09 | Mike Harris | 74.09 |
| Phil Shambrook | 74.08 | Kat Balakrishnan | 74.07 |
Stage 5
We made good progress with working our way through the details, the Shotmarkers were working superbly, shooters were growing accustomed to them and conditions remained perfect so with everything in alignment we cracked on, aiming for a 2 O’clock finish.
By now there was the appearance of a distinct albeit gentle right wind, I say appearance as in fact, that was deceptive, the right wind seemed to drift up the hillside and at some indeterminate point it slumped back down again, cancelling out the initial impetus from the right. There was a certain amount of ebb and flow to this process and an element of luck was called for in avoiding being hit by the very subtle variations. These nuances caught everyone out and no one managed to score a clean 75, indeed only six shooters managed to get a 74.
Young GarryK Campbell led the FTR field, showing the old boys how to do it, closely followed by Pete Sheffield and Asad Wahid who were having their own tense duel to be the overall winner. In a similar fashion in FO Gary Costello was being closely stalked by Steve Rigby, Gary took the gold medal with an excellent 74.10 and that just clinched it for him, while Brogan O’Shea-Smith took bronze and perhaps the medal for the farthest- travelled shooter?
| Gary Costello | 74.10 | Garryk Campbell | 74.07 |
| Des Parr | 74.09 | Peter Sheffield | 74.06 |
| Brogan O’Shea-Smith | 74.07 | Asad Wahid | 74.06 |
Sunday Aggregate
It was at this point that the generator running the big TV conked out, depriving us all of seeing our names up there in lights, oh well, they say shooting teaches us humility so maybe it was good for us. Asad was the top man on Sunday, dropping just one point, mind you Asad is a top bloke on and off the range, so it was a well deserved gold medal, he and Pete Sheffield were jostling for the pole position in a tense competition all of their own. It was a similar story in the FO camp; Steve Rigby and Gary Costello were right up there, locked in a fierce tussle for every point and every V-bull
| Des Parr | 148.18 | Asad Wahid | 149.14 |
| Steve Rigby | 147.21 | Peter Sheffield | 148.10 |
| Gary Costello | 147.18 | Garryk Campbell | 146.12 |
The Scottish Championship
By an extraordinary coincidence, the top three FTR shooters all had 31 V-bulls, while V’s are nice to have, its points that make prizes and there were just six points between bronze and gold. Pete Sheffield had a good, rock-solid consistent weekend; he was second in both of the daily aggregates and that ensured his victory. Asad was quickly catching up on Sunday but couldn’t quite catch Pete. In third place which I believe is his highest placing in League match came Jim Marsden, who got a resounding cheer from everyone.
In FO, only three points separated the gold and bronze positions, but just look at the V-bull count; Steve Rigby and Gary Costello were way out there in a league of their own; with 50 and 51 V-bulls out of 90 shots! More than half of their shots hitting a CD size disc at over half a mile, what a feat of marksmanship, there can only be one winner though and Gary clinched it with one point and one V, proving that he is our greatest talent and always the man to beat – if you can! Steve is still relatively new to the FO side of things and is campaigning with a new rifle, so he’s off to a very good start indeed and we hope for great things to come. Your humble scribe trailed along in third place.
| Gary Costello | 442.51 | Peter Sheffield | 433.31 |
| Steve Rigby | 441.50 | Asad Wahid | 430.31 |
| Des Parr | 439.37 | Jim Marsden | 427.31 |
Thanks to everyone who pitched in throughout the weekend whenever a task needed doing, “many hands make light work” as they say and it sure does help, thanks in particular to all the gang who went to the butts to dismantle the target gantry, they did the job in twenty minutes! a new record. A very special thanks is due to our dynamic, one-man army of a Chairman; Richie Jones – what an asset he is, may I say thanks to Asad’s generosity we were able to present Richie with a token of our gratitude for all this sterling work.
See you all at the highlight of the F-class calendar; the European Championships!