Month: June 2016

I´ve started two weeks ago with a practice session with a club mate. Everything went fine, except the fact, that I couldn`t get a JP Carrier running jamless. No big deal, I switched back to my milled and enlightened standard carrier. Gun worked, everything fine. But then, in the next session some days later, the gun stopped to repeat. Found at home a broken gas ring.

A call to DAR and two days later, I had a full carrier maintenance kit in the mail and I could change the broken ring. Awesome Service!

So far, so good. On this weekend (one week before Nationals), I went to PBurg, to check the setting and zero the gun also on 300m. At Pburg, I had to find out, that I still had a manual action rifle… took off the handguard and found a broken gas block! Sh…

At home again, I took off the comp to detach the gasblock and found by incident, that also the comp was broken! A quarter of the fist baffle was missing completely! Holy sh. Not, what you need just one week before nationals! (btw – the replacement of Seekins is already on the way to me – their Service is also very  good!)

So this week got a bit hectic. Organizing parts (again, perfect service by DAR), getting help by friends (thanks Dirk and Markus for the rifle and the comps), putting together the rifle, etc.

Friday (you remember – one day before the match) I went to the local range to get the gas block adjusted and the rifle at least zeroed on 50m. Short version – I wasn’t able to get the beast running properly. So I took the borrowed gun, mounted my spare Kahles K16i (on my STI I have a new K15i in between) and zeroed the DAR on 50m. Additionally, I measured the velocity of the Geco 63grs .223 load also with the DAR Rifle to be able to calculate zero points on 200m and 300m with IStrelok (Ballistic Iphone App).
So I went to the nationals with a borrowed gun, zeroed on 50m…
That was pretty exciting – starting on a stage with 5 Poppers on 200m distance. Short version – gun worked flawlessly, poppers fell – great! Also the other 200m stages went nice and I shot decent times and good hits! The last exciter was the 300m stage – but also here, the POI was exactly there where it was calculated – 8A, 2C – good time! Awesome!!
In the second day, we had all the hoser stages between 3 and 50m. Also here, I was good on speed and had nice hits. No Miss, just a handfull of Deltas and times always with the top shooters in our squad! The only drawback, I had at our final stage – a 40rnds stage where 4×10 rounds was the best way. Unfortunately, my Magpul mags seems to be no longer reliable – two times, I had a empty chamber after 8rnds. The last two have been tilted…That cost me valuable points. But who cares after an awesome match after all this hassle with broken parts!
Finally, I finished on a more than perfect 3rd place national and 4th international. And with the team Kahles, we won the match!
Now, I´m even more excited and I can’t await to get my own DAR finally!

DM Rifle 2016 Results

DM Rifle 2016 Stage Results

But one after the other – after the successful start into the season with the win of the Ghost Masters LIII, I was very motivated for the next challenge. The Munich Open is always a match with a lot of very challenging stages and so was this one also. I had a very good match with a lot of nearly perfect runs with good times and solid hits and was able to win seven of the 20 stages. But unfortunately, I also had three or four totally screwed ones. This time, that were one or two screwed too much – Gerald from Austria shot clean and beat my by 2,35%. How far away we both have been can be seen by the distance to the third place – third had 84,97%. That was a tough challenge…as always, when we two are shooting the same match. Next time, it will be the Europeans….

Munich Open 2016 Results Munich Open 2016 Stageresults

Only two weeks later, I travelled to the Netherlands to shoot the European Steelchallenge. One of my favorite matches in the year. Unfortunately, I have no time and opportunity to practice for that kind of match. Because of that, I decided to start also in Division Standard Pistol with my Standard Revolver to use this as a practice run. So I started my match on Sunday morning in Standard Pistol. It worked quite nice and I finsihed with 86.xx. Could have been a bit better but I had to take a mike on five to go which cost me three seconds penalty. But who cares, I was focused on Standard and Open Revolver. After Standard Pistol, I shot a secod run with my 929, now as Standard Revolver. It went a bit better as the first one but not as good as last year. 85.xx was a second slower than 2015. But I was quite happy with that. Finally I started with the 627 Open Revo – this run was very nice and I improved my last years time by 3 seconds to 78.xx

When it came to the price giving ceremony, I was VERY surprised when they called my name for Standard Pistol podium – 3rd place with the wheelgun! Awesome! But it even went better – I won also both Revolver divisions. And finally – even Standard Team was a victory for the team “Steel Monkeys” with Werner and Frants! Two Revolvers, three starts – four medals! What a blast!

2016_European_Steel_Challenge_results 2016_European_Steel_Challenge_stageresults

Motivated by that result, I shot the third match in this row – the Infinity Open. Always one of the highlights in my calendar. As last year, I shot the match together with the Team Infinity guys – that was just perfect – besides having lots of fun together by kidding each other, these guys are all shooting a very fast gun which rocked me to do it just the same. The stage this year have been filled with challenges. Nearly everywhere, there was a bobbing or swinging target Sometimes plates, sometimes paper targets. What I liked most, was the fact, that also at this match (like the Munich Open some weeks before), the long courses were designed that you had to have fast feets – the last years, there was a trend towards more static, long distance and precision shooting, in between, it seems, that “running and gunning” and the need for a physical fitness is coming back again. I like! In the end, I made it again and finished by a comfortable lead of 10% 😀

2016_Infinity_Open_results 2016_Infinity_Open_stageresults

Now it´s time for a break of Revolver shooting – IPSC Rifle nationals are the next match on my schedule! Stay tuned!