A Long and Strange Day

Last week I decided to mount a BSA red dot sight onto my High Standard race gun, and see if it would work better in the glare. The C-More has been a real problem, and although I've resolved a lot of the glare problems, there are times when if the sun is just right you just plain can't see through the sight, let alone see the dot.

The BSA seemed to handle the glare quite well, and the variable dot size could prove handy if it was really bright outside. I had mounted the sight and sighted it in several days ago. I took it over to the Blastorama yesterday and figured I'd give it a good try-out before today's hanging plate match.

To my surprise, I couldn't seem to hold a tight group no matter what I tried. I had tightened everything well a couple of days ago, so nothing should be loose or moving around. I grabbed the allen wrenches and went back over everything and found one set screw that locks the adjustments was a full turn loose! I put that particular gun back into the case and figured I'd check it out Saturday night after I got back from the Blastorama.

Saturday night I took the sight apart and discovered a design flaw where a hardened pointed set screw was tightening up against a soft steel post. As the steel post was deformed by the set screw, the set screw would loosen up. I worked on it for several hours re-designing some of the innards but I could see that I was running out of time as midnight was rapidly approaching.

I pulled the BSA sight off and put the C-More back on, and quickly sighted it back in. A quick once over and the High Stadard was ready to go and back in it's case.

Last week I had also mounted a BSA manufactured/Sportsman's Guide branded red dot sight onto KeeWee's Beretta Neos. All night I worried about the sight in my sleep!

I got up earlier than normal and grabbed the Beretta. The design was a little different and it didn't look like there was a problem, but I took a piece of soft towel and grabbed the glass lens between thumb and fingers, and pushed, pulled, and twisted it to see if it was tight. IT WASN'T! It didn't move very far, but it definitely wasn't solidly mounted in place. Having the lens moving around can make it impossible to hit anything. (Watch for a post on BSA red dots soon.)

Off comes the sight and the 42mm. Simmons that she had been using all last year went back on. I sighted it in as fast as I could then scurried back to the house to choke down some oatmeal before heading off to the CWSA hanging plate match.

The weather looked stormy and unpleasant but we drove up there to see if it was cancelled or not. The threatening weather kept a number of shooters away but one thing for sure, the best shooters are usually there, regardless.

Having a smaller number of entries in a way was nice, as there was not such a long wait until your next time to shoot, and we had the match completed before noon. As the day progressed, the weather slowly improved, and the rain stopped falling. As we were wrapping it up ,the sun was starting to break through.

In the picture above (borrowed from KeeWee's Corner) I still have my rain hood up to try and keep dry. Usually the only match pictures I have are pictures of other shooters but KeeWee took some good pictures today, and I thought you'd like to see the unconventional grip and stance I use. Yes, it's strange, but it seems to work for me. What can I say!

As I've explained in previous posts, scoring of a hanging plate match is really simple. You get a total of 72 shots, from 4 different distances. You have approximately one second per shot to shoot the plates. Your score is the total number of plates hit. Several of us have flirted with a perfect 72, but it hasn't happened so far. I managed a personal best of 68 today in the optical sight class. One of these days maybe I'll get the 72!

Iron sight class was a lot worse. Beyond that I don't want to talk about it!!

KeeWee shot a very respectible 5th place in optical sight class.

We all had a good time, didn't get drowned or frozen, and got done early!

The day sure didn't start out that way!

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Here's KeeWee's write up on the match, along with more pictures.