March 18th, 19th & 20th, 2016

 

ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS

 

Great 3 days of shooting.  Results at bottom of page.  This is our yearly regional championship. Henceforth called the Phoenix Invitational. This year we hosted Benchrest silhouette, benchrest 25m, 50y and 100m over the span of three days. The most perfect time of year is now, and it showed! We had competitors travel thousands of miles to compete. The farthest competitor was Rail from Hawaii, what a trip!

The silhouette match started on Friday. It lasted until around noon. We had some great times with the new custom silhouette contraption that keeps the targets attached. We had some pop offs but otherwise a success. Also during the match, we came across a beautiful garter snake lurking in the weeds behind the targets. Check it out in the picture gallery. Afterward, we opened up the range for practice, and chrono testing with the new Lab Radar Doppler chronograph. Needless to say, there were some serious competitors getting ready. We put the finishing touches on the new wailing wall with the help of Garrett and Kerry.

 

Saturday came quickly. Competitors showed up early to get good seats. We unveiled the yearly silent auction items. The featured item was the Omega compressor that was donated by Airguns of Arizona. It was a fierce battle but it was taken home with a gracious donation to the club. We started the morning with chronograph testing. We tried something new. instead of having stationary chronograph station, we decided to move the chronograph and scale from bench to bench. This proved a better option since all the shooters were set up and all ready, and much more time efficient. Once the testing was complete, the 25m match was next. All the targets were set up and pre made the night before by Andy Picard. Cole Sorrenson then stepped in to do the scoring for the day and not shoot. Tip o the hat to him for that. After all the testing was done we handed out all the swag booty. AoA donated rifle socks to everyone. We custom printed Phoenix Invitational t-shirts that were included with the entry fee. Every shooter received both the socks and the shirts... dang near a whole wardrobe! The shirts were sponsored by Antony Turchetta, the owner of Penchetta, a new airgun retailer here in the Phoenix area that has been very gracious to our club.

The first match was the 25m. The winds were gentle and near perfect with some great scores to show. After the 25m, lunch was served my Monica Hartsog with her unique Nacho beef Dorito thingie. What a unique idea for hungry shooters. The yummy factor was way up there with how quickly it was devoured. We included the complimentary lunch in the entry fee.

We were able to get all the targets posted and their shot analysis on the wailing wall before lunch. No challenges or corrections, just some classification changes due to some clerical errors. Next we kicked out the 50 yard match. Great times!

Then the 100m. After some confusion on what benches and targets correlated, it went off without a hitch. It sure is easy to confuse your neighbors target at that distance. By this time, the marathon of shooting was sure taking effect on everyone. Exhaustion began settling in. But it was mot certainly a happy kind of tired. One of accomplishment, and success. Thanks to Mark for taking some tanks home to fill for some shooters.

 

Sunday rolled around, and we were off and running. Kip from AoA came out and brought the air compressor to fill up everyone’s tanks. All matches again went off without a glitch. Big thanks goes out to Andy Picard and Paul Biedler for their help in scoring, setting up and other event tasks. It was decided we will double their salary, effective immediately. Monica came out again serving pulled pork sandwiches. What a hit! The day wrapped up with the awards ceremony. There were some great scores. A new record score in 50y.

Fierce and great competition. Strong showing by Team Raw in the overall 100m and Silo, but real a powerhouse demonstration by Team Thomas coming out strong taking both the overall 25m and the 50y matches. Team AoA had a good show in in Extreme Silo, and precision 100m with the high X-count. Nothing but strong hard competition, with outstanding sportsmanship.

 

Big thank you goes out to Dave for all his work behind the scenes running Silo and the 100. Cheers amigo.

 

Proud to say, another world class match in the books.