AusVarmint

The stand alone FClass Champs are currently being held in T'Ville. This is a two day event with the first one being the shorts at 300, 500 and 600 M.Today is the longs at 600, 700, 800 and 900 M. Progressive scores so far are....
FS
Jim Blomfield 179
Tony Z 176
Arthur Simpson 176

FO
Peter Burg 293
Peter Smith 291
Peter Webber 290

This is my first ever FS match and the Savage FTR is a work in progress and has now just got past the 150 round mark. Not bad for a gun i have owned for over a year.
Altered the seating depth to be 10 thou in the lands and upped the powder charge to something i won't post here, and the final range netted a 60. Very good for a factory offering i thought.
Me old mate Blomfield is knocking the centre out of the target with his 223 and Arthur is on my case aswell, so today at the longs is going to be interesting. There were four 60s' shot yesterday, one at 500 and three at 600. No shootoffs. No-one wants a shootoff unless it is for the aggregate. Shootoffs for a range wastes time, barrels and ammo. You Vics can ponder that for a while.
Will post more tonight.

Tony Z.

Sounds like a tight run event.
You seem to have a lot of Peters in F Open,is that a NQ requirement to compete?
I also love the shoot off comment.It certainly raises the opinons on the F class site.
Best of luck with the longs.
Macca

Back early from the range and just about to head back to the workshop again like lastnight for another nightshift to clear the huge amount of machine jobs mounting up. Nothing like boring holes in Bisalloy in the still of night while everyone is fast asleep. Just love it.

Anyay, FS is run and won by Jimmy Blomfield with an outstanding display at 900 M to put up a 57 to finish on a 410 agg. I could have won it with a 60 at 900, but would have had to buy up all the 6s of neighbours if they got one. In my dreams. Lots of work on elevation to be done here with the Savage. I ended up behind Jim on 400 neat after 7 ranges and am pleased with the outcome for a first time outing with the Savage FTR.
As i was driving out the gate, the FO boys were shooting off for the long range and grand aggs. Peter Smith and Peter Burg were tied up for the grand at 653 each. In the 20 or so years of knowing Peter Smith, i have never seen such a despondant look on his face. No-one since 300 has come within cooee of a 100 possible and the whole bunch looked ready to pack up and head home. With the 3 day OPM coming up, some very wild and hot weather has been forecast for the weekend. It is 5 days into winter, everyone has got sunburn and the temperature range is 14 to 15 overnight, topping out to 28-29 during the day. The humidity at 8 am this morning was 85%. Mirage is the worst i have seen in a winter period in 20 plus years of shooting on this range. All this adds up to FO discarding 8 scores in the sighters at their peril. Townsville range on days like today can be a real bitch that can make great rifles look like pieces of crap.
FO was a mix of calibers as usual, with most being a six mil of sorts. A couple of 6.5s and 7 mils. The weekend should be a little different with the FO ranks swelling from the 9 to about 15, myself included in this with my 7 mm. FS looks like heading to over 20 from the 15 that have shot the past two days.
As the weekend eventuates, i will post photos that i have taken aswell as some sort of equipment list.

Tony Z.

hi Tony
have you caught up on all the workshop jobs yet ??
what about your own dozen or so projects !!!
O K where have you hidden the rest of F-class shoot results
we were all wanting to see the report and pics of the event
you should know that all the sleep a young bloke needs is
a couple of hours a day including a few cat-naps at smoko etc etc
i could be up in townsville next week or so i will come and see you
john mc

Did the savage look at home on the mound?, would have been a few custom jobs worrying about a factory gun showing them up.

Sorry guys, i bailed out of FO for the weekend shoot. Rifle shot vertical real bad with the only possibility being the different powder batch. I hope. Will test this weekend to find the culprit.
As for the scores, i have absolutely no idea who did what. All i know is that rather than the numbers increasing for the weekend match, they did decrease for FO. Not sure about FS, but the FB numbers were way way down.
As for the Savage in FS earlier in the week, it held its own and with just under 200 rounds through the barrel now, i can look forward to doing some more load developement. As i said 900 m was a worry, but that could have been the shooter to. Most likely as at 800 m the Savage shot an equal range winning score, but got counted out by Arthur Simpson. Without a doubt, a fixed 12x Leupold was retrospectively not the best choice of scope for the weekend because i could have used every bit of a 42x Nightforce at times, rather than having it sit home collecting dust.
FClass is so competitive now, that going underprepared into either FO or FS is foolhardy. My next match will be Townsville in June 2009 so i have no excuses for being underprepared.

Tony Z.

John Mac, none of the actions, any of them, are completed yet. Aquiring the right steels is so hard at the moment that any future plans are at a standstill, but i have found a very good source of 7075 for Stolle style inserted actions if i was into that sort of thing. Fine for sheep shooting, but not for 1K.
Customs had their yearly unclaimed and confiscated auction the other day. Picked up a couple of stainless Lawtons fitted with Jewels real cheap. Almost scrap value actually. Seems some-one screwed up the paper work real real bad trying to sneak in a couple of extras Would you like one in time for Rocky? So many actions, so many barrels, so little time. John, can a No4 303 barrel fit into a Lawton action? I need a scrubber to shoot some porkers. What about i shorten the chamber and call it a 303 BR?
RAOTFLMFAO.

hi Tony yes to all questions

i'm sure you could turn up an adapter to suit smelly barrel
they are in the post at the moment
all fees paid and cleared by customs -- but a bit late for rocky - will have to shoot
the 7 x 47 L - also for townsville just not going to be rushed into anything by
anybody -- like you there is always next year .
john mc

Hi Tony we had a great parcel turn up at the LGS had a bag full of jewels and timney triggers and scope mounting rails and a heap of ss pipes and bolts for all the stuff to bolt onto - the night shift wont be too happy with the workload -- will let you know how it all goes

john mc

Well guys i did the powder test and the photo is self explanitory. Two groups on the left are with the newer batch of 09 i have, and the group on the far right is with some of the little i have of an older batch. The first two goups were fired with a very short interval with just a slight increase in wind speed for the second. The far right group was fired after the barrel had cooled a bit.
Cartridge was my 7/9.3x62 using 210s and 162 Amax pills with a velocity of around 3100 fps(with the older 2209 and the newer batch looks to be slightly faster). Range was 500m.
The combined vertical of the first two groups is 5.7 inches, way too much for a 10 ring hold on an FO target. The far right group is 1.72 inches wide and 1.27 inches high and is what i have come to expect with this cartridge.

Tony Z.

Hey TZ, I just bought the last of the 4350 powder batch that was available...... may be able to part with some at the right price

Albow,

Is that 4350 the stuff in the rusty tins that you need to open with multi-grips. Seems to shoot OK once you use a screwdriver to get the lumps out of it hey TZ

KY