Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Competitive Shooting Lodi, 2011 F-class Nationals

Lying wind flags are what Lodi is most famous for (after rain and great fish fries). When you can see it at Lodi, mirage beats wind flags everytime in my experience. But I have shot my best score when there was no mirage to see. Just happened to be a more consistent day, and everyone shot well on that day.

And I too, have never seen mirage go down or even slow the vertical enough to seemingly be able to account for the verticals.

Since my bullets are so much higher in the sky than yours, I tend to watch the mirage up higher, at the top of the target or even the top of the number boards as my bullets spend more time up there.

every range has lying flags, its up to the shooter to decide on the given day, which flag is the best to utilize even if its not perfect.

I prefer flags to mirage personally, since mirage is not always visible, and often where I shot, teh wind was much more than 10-15mph often, such that mirage was useless to a point anyway. That way worst case conditions didn't leave me scratching my head as much.

As to not shooting in boils... I"ve said it before and I"ll say it again, I was always told not to also.... and had my butt handed to me a number of times by a former BR competitor...such that I don't ignore the possible of shooting in boils and can ram em down as fast as I can in that condition at times.

I can expect that you think that heat isn't an issue on your barrels. But trust me it may not be as much of a non issue as you think. The ONLY way to know is by a precisely kept data book of shot plots. Not score, but shot plots.

As to trees and winds making issues, certainly... just think if you set off a smoke, think what you'd see, thats how I imagine it as to what I"m going to do.. what will this tree line do, what will that valley do as if smoke were blowing down it.

I've even learned that you can up against a tree line, have reverse wind on than 95% of the otehrs on down the line AND have to add elevation at the same time as teh wind rolls over and pushes down..... or add elevation as it lifts it up...

Oh, we got a chance to see the effects of smoke at Lodi on the first day of the 1000 yard matches....

And I had the "pleasure" of shooting on relay one.

Please don't take my statement to belittle the conditions at all.

I'm simply saying you can't change the conditions, you have to do something about them and if you don't at least try, you are done before you shoot the first shot.

I know what you're saying Jeff. My load usually doesn't give me much vertical, I was left (along with a bunch of other people) trying to figure out where it was comming from. Then I watched the A-Team shoot...

rost, on both Lodi and Raton, the flags will be lying and the mirage will be telling the truth more often than not - if you can see the mirage of course. Raton often has a lot of wind and it may be more than mirage can cope with, but still, mirage is often the best indicator for me even there, and at Lodi, always - if it is visible.

Once I had the opportunity during my sighter string to shoot a few in a boil. Keeping that setting at hand, when the conditions died on us at Lodi that day, leaving us in a prolonged boil, I started shooting and I shot very well. Few others were shooting and those that did shot poorly. I'm a believer in shooting boils now, but like any condition, you need to get some sighters on it.

Brent

FWIW
I saw early on that the wind was difficult to judge. When my wind coach is having trouble, I know I don't have a chance. So I just machine gunned and chased the spotter. Worked pretty well until the last string of the match and I buckeled under the pressure and started trying to read the flags. Oops.

One thing I noticed, I got a chance to spend some serious time looking through a spotting scope during the 1000 yard matches. I could see the mirage running left to right, and then it would stop but there wasn't a boil. The flags didn't show this, but the targets were proof that the wind had let up. It appeared to be cyclic. Either you had 2/3rds of your time with the wind and 1/3rd without or the opposite.

Working with Bryan Litz, he explained to me that with a wind 6mph and higher he doesn't use mirage as a wind speed indicator. He puts more value in the flags. You don't ignore mirage, you're still watching for the wind to either dump or switch direction.

On the morning of the first day of the 1000 yard matches they fired that cannon. There might have been a temprature inversion right at the tree tops. The smoke rose to tree top level, drifted sideways to fill the range and then headed toward the targets. As the smoke hit the hillside it spilled around the hill on the right side and then climbed up the hill. I know they call it a mountain, taint no mountain from what I've seen.

Hello Mr. Gonsel, welcome Dave. It was great seeing you in Lodi.

Denys

Looks like my buddy Bob Pastor got the short end of the stick again.

Expert instead of HM and squaded on the wrong relay.

Bob's reloading room is covered on 3 walls from top to bottom with wood for F-Class and 1000yd BR matches. I personally don't know anyone else who has won as much as him.

I think he could of won it all. Great job Bob!

Not so sure that temp inversion was anything more than normal thermal effect of wind that happens in other than flat terrain every morning and evening.... IE it should be expected to happen.

As to mirage running, but stopping and no boil, I'd be confused to. BUT you have to remember you have 3 parts of where the bullet impacts

1 shooter shot process
2 effects of wind both horizontal and vertical
3 effects of mirage, both horizontal and somewhat vertical.

IE wind and mirage IMHO are TWO SEPERATE corrections. You can retain exactly the same wind, and having been shooting in mirage, if the mirage goes away, you will not remain centered.

As to Bryan Litz, I totally agree... as noted once I learned to TRY to go off flags instead of mirage, my scores crept up greatly. If you go back in history some, you'll note same results of our US Palma team....they had to go back and learn flags because mirage was not always true or available on demand so to speak, at the correct wind speeds.

What relay was Bob squadded on?

Bob came up to Midland for a Midrange match a year or two ago. Leo runs a block time where you shoot one string, take a break and then shoot your second string. Bob whinned about not having enough time to alow for his barrel to cool and then hammers down all fourty two shots in a row...

We haven't seen him since, and he doesn't come up to Cadillac, Grayling or Washtenaw matches either.

The relays varied each day. First day I was on relay 3/4, second day I was on 5/6 and thrid day I was on 1/2. For some reason the listed me as HM, when I am EXP and LR and HM only at MR.

It seemed to me that most everybody jumped relays during the week, but I could be wrong.

the first day was a scramble there was no set relay. However what i am to understand was that squadding was to be done so that the top shooters would compete on the same relay. This didn't appear to be the case. Bob on Tuesday shot a perfect score 450 which should have put him with the top shooters on Wed. in talking with him he was a couple of relays behind the other top competitors. did it affect his scores who knows, i do know that it is a common complaint amongst competitors that there is an unfair advantage when someone shoot on one relay and others shoot on another relay. Remember last year with Derek rogers winning the F class open.

Thanks
Trevor

Part of the problem was paid pullers. They used them as they could to make sure as many people who wanted them had them. They needed more paid pullers but just did not have the resources available to get them

If anyone thinks they had the shaft because of a relay they need to rethink as it was hit and miss all week as to what number relay would be fair and what one would be crummy. Range beat most everyone equally

really shouldn't matter at all what relay you are on, as long as shooters of equal skill are on the same set of relays.

That, IMHO, is about as fair as it can get. And its never fair totally but thats life. I"ve seen HM relays at Perry fire first in horrible wind early in teh day when it should have been the most calm, and a calm come over the range while the MK relays fired.... and sitting there thinking...damn, that would have been a 200 multi X really easy for me.... of course none of the MK we capable of shooting a 200 either..

Its all in a days game. And if you shoot an agg for the championship, its about as level as its going to get... instead of a single match.

agreed but my prospective would be to put the top scores on the same relay to avoid any what ifs.. you know as well as I that Wisconsin for that week had, lets just say S##t weather and in some cases one relay was noticable different then another. advantages or scores could be won or lost because of the extreme weather changes. Mind you no one is ever happy and i have heard guys grip about which end of the relay they were on against so and so.

Trevor

all same class on same relay thats a given and I've never seen it done any other way. Doesn't so much matter if its first or 7th... but same relay.

Anything else is unfair.

The final results are here:

http://www.wi-force.org/2011_Match_Bulletins/110926-30_Lodi_Bulletin.pdf