Out of Town Match-- AZ Service Rifle St.Champ.

 This weekend was the AZ Service Rifle State Championship.  I thought it was time to dig out my trusty AR Service Rifle and have some fun. I hadn't shot a leg match in a long while, and since those usually great matches, I decided to make that my Sunday match choice.  I probably should have shot the Sat. 80 shot champ match as the scores in the Master class where I am classified not really high and I would have had a good chance for a class win.  However I wanted to shoot a smallbore 1600 on Sat so that didn't work out.  I did have a good (for me) score in the SB match (1584-85x) so I was happy about that.  Note: on the first target (50 yd) Nancy Tompkins shot a 200-20x so I knew that the pressure was off for the day.

   The Sunday Leg match started out a little cold in the morning, but by the start the temp was a balmy 65 Deg, and the wind was a light breeze and worth nothing on the sights.  Not having practiced with the Service Rifle for a half a year showed up right away in the Standing match where I was a little wobbly and only scored a 92 and was very happy with that.  Sitting Rapid was also weak and I dropped 4 out low right.  Then we went back to the 300 and the wheels fell off. The targets came up, and I dropped into position as best I could and racked the charging handle to load the first rd, and found it would not move. I pulled and pulled and it was stuck forward --- jambed tight.  Nothing would get that bolt back, so I was put on the aliby relay while a NG armorer was cking it out.  Someone handed me a gun and I shot with that.  That gun must have had 200 yd zeros on in so my ragged group ended up in the 8 ring and I lost 21 pts.  Oh, well, I just came for fun anyways.   Off to the 600 with my "repaired" rifle,  I would shoot for personal satisfaction.  I called the first shot a high 10, but the target stayed down for at least a minute, then came up a miss on target at 12:00.  What is that?  I know it was a good shot, so I pondered and then dropped 5 clicks to fire again.  I didn't want another miss out the top.  Of course you know what happened  -- it was a 7 at 6:00.  I came back up to what I started with and drilled an X followed by the best string of fire I ever shot with the service rifle at 600, finishing with a 183-6x including the miss and that 7 on the first two shots.

AZ Service scores

  Daniel Rodrigues won with a 484, while 2 legs were given out with scores of 474, and 468.
  I figure I lost about 23 pts due to rifle problems and add that to my 450 final score, I thought I had shot pretty good, but scored poorly.  Oh, well. As Steve Merritt said later -- "The Service Rifle giveth and the Service Rifle taketh away".
  All in all it was a good day.  I didn't win, but I had fun and that's what counts.
Thanks to Mid Thompkins for running a great match.