The last warm up shoot before the Grand, T’ilton, began with our first shoot on range D, offering 300m only. The firing point was blessed with the thickest carpet this diarist has seen, with a lot of overnight moisture “promising” good mirage in the clear, bright and warm conditions. Unfortunately, mirage was pretty scarce and the team was surprised to need around a minute of right wind in conditions which appeared barely off calm.
Fu Yung earned an early wallypop for having left on his 3-right wind setting from last night’s long range shoot and then adding a wind call before firing his first sighter. At least the 300m target has the largest angular size to be able to net the resulting shots, and following a mere 4 sighters Fu was able to continue his 8 to count without further issue.
His was not among the good crop of 50s at 300m, which set us up for the second half of the Tilton, at 600x in the late morning. This was held on the far left A range, which has rather less shelter, notwithstanding the berm on either side. A-range has flags and they were at least properly off the poles and, therefore, able to corroborate mirage around 1.5 to 2 right. A similar number of 50s (c.13) resulted in GB making 8 full scores of 100, topped by David Calvert and Chris Haley on 100.14.
The aggregate of the pre-Grand shoots, the Champlain, saw David Calvert, Simon Osmond and Olay Russell top the GB scoresheet with 347 ex 350, DC in the lead (at 7th) with 41 Vs to the others’ 40 and 32 respectively.
The afternoon had us return to range D for the opening shoot of the Grand, at 300m, followed by 500x on range A to make up the MacDougall. Range D was, once again, the land of impaired mirage, which tricked one or two of the team into firing on Zero, which was a mistake. 
The Captain employed a bit of wishful hearing, and “a avance au point de terre” rather “en avance” of the instruction and was ordered off the point for at least 15 seconds before the call forward was given.
The wind had gentled off by the time most of the team shot at 500x, down to between 1/4 and 1 right based mainly on mirage, which was also pretty thin, compared with this morning at 600x. The flags loitered with intent to go through Zero, but this was never quite needed. The team made 7 scores of 100 this afternoon, including a close bunch at the top of the list: Olay & the other diarist with 12 Vs, the other coach & the armourer each on 13, Nigel on 14 and this diarist on 15, making it to 6th overall.
Clean on the day were Olay (200.21), the other diarist (200.22) and Nigel (200.27 – not bad out of 40 counting shots).
We are told that the flags were changed overnight, from light nylon to, perhaps, lead on D range and lycra on A range.
Today’s diary closes to the sound of the Athelings visiting the GB hotel for pizza, pool & pop. This diarist took the quinine & quinoa option.
