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Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 1,463 Likes: 2
Campfire Regular
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Campfire Regular
Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 1,463 Likes: 2 |
I posted this on the AR sub forum...but I thought I'd post it here as well because Bill would occasionally put out an article in Precision Shooting describing what he was up to. I should run this on the Optics forum as well because he was an early advocate of the Tasco Super Sniper (today known as the SWFA SS scopes), running them to good effect in the 1990's in Canadian F-Class Matches).
I just found out that Bill Wylde passed away in April. For those on this sub board, Bill Wylde designed the Wylde Chamber in the 1980's as a hybrid chamber to shoot military ball ammo as accurately as possible out of an AR-15/M16. He did it with an eye toward the day when the military would produce 5.56 Match Ammo (that portion would take 30 years to catch up). Today his chamber is ubiquitous with any AR built with even half an eye toward accuracy.
I enjoyed talking on the phone with Bill over the years. I and a few others called him Grandpa Yoda because he was an incessant thinker/tinkerer/experimenter that quietly pioneered more than a few shooting innovations that we take for granted today. He was one of the first to build AR Service Rifles with under the handguard float tubes (of course with his chamber). In the lore of AR's, he shot one of his AR15's in a registered Bench Rest Match, and did well enough that the organizations banned autoloaders soon after.
He also pioneered the Tube Gun (he initially called it the "Funny Gun") that was later to be made by MAK, Eliseo and others.
Once I asked him how much he made in royalties from his Wylde Chamber...he told me he didn't make a dime. It was his gift to the shooting world (and there really isn't a way to enforce a copyright on a cartridge or chamber design as Rick Jamison found out). I'd like to think that he had a measure of satisfaction seeing his name on near every flavor of AR being produced today.
RIP Grandpa Yoda. We are fortunate you chose shooting to apply your genius!
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Joined: May 2011
Posts: 15,907
Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 15,907 |
A loss indeed. RIP Mr. Wylde.
There are 2 rules to success:
1. Never tell everything that you know.
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Joined: Sep 2008
Posts: 5,734
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Sep 2008
Posts: 5,734 |
A thoughtful tribute to Mr. Wylde. Thank you ChrisF!!
"Camping places fix themselves in your mind as if you had spent long periods of your life in them.
You will remember a curve of your wagon track in the grass of the plain like the features of a friend."
Isak Dinesen
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Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 451
Campfire Member
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Campfire Member
Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 451 |
May his memory be eternal. I might have to dig up my stash of Precision Shooting magazines and reread his old articles.
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