Thursday has brought us close to the end of the Grand, with the two remaining shoots in the Gibson shot this morning, leaving only the Gatineau (2 & 15 @ 900m) tomorrow.
Some interesting “science” is emerging from our experience of 300m on D range: that of the minimal mirage. Today saw our second occasion of left wind indicated but right wind needed in the shelter (low target numbers) or much lower left wind needed (high target numbers). The other coach, who is no stranger to a bit of science in his day job, has suggested that the impact of photons in the bright low morning sun (coming in from 4 o’clock) can be the only reason for this. Perhaps he had been taking some of his own medicine.
Scoring in the 300m and 600x Gibson shoots was pretty healthy, with 24 possibles out of our 40 shoots, including a 50.10 at 600x from the other diarist (Simon Osmond).
John Webster was awarded a new outcome of the “contested unexplained miss” scenario, being a compulsory sighter followed by a single counting shot at 300m, a good couple of hours after his original detail time. A low bull-5 sighter followed by a V recovered his score to 49.8.
David Crispin went clean on the 
Gibson (150.18) and, after some hopeful waiting, emerged as the winner, which takes him to 3rd in the Grand overnight ahead of the final shoot, 2 points behind leader Jim Paton of Canada. Other GBRT in the top 10 include this diarist (4th), David Calvert (9th) and Jon Underwood (10th).
GB entered 2 teams in The Outlander match: selections as announced on Facebook. Shot between non-Canadian national teams, we were able to field a full 16 shooters to help management in their final selection decisions for the international matches of the coming days, beginning with the short range Canada Match tomorrow afternoon.
The 900m detail was something of a coaches’ shoot, ranging from 3 to 8 left called (and perhaps a little more needed) and many sighters taken out of turn. The 600x detail was for the shooters, with wind generally between 1.5 and 2.5 left, but knowing whether & where within that bracket nonetheless proved tricky. Results are not available at the time of diarising.
The Gatineau tomorrow morning is squadded with the leading shooters all firing at 9am, aiming for each to be in a pair with their direct competitor (1st shooting with 2nd, 3rd shooting with 4th, etc). This is intended to make the end of the Grand Aggregate as competitive as possible – we shall see!
Thereafter, we shoot in the first full international match: The Canada Match, shot over 300x, 500x and 600x. Selection has been done this evening and we plan to make live scores available here:
. First info should become available around 7pm UKT on Friday.
Elsewhere in team competitions, the LMRA (Ball, Calvert, Watson & Osmond) beat a team of Vamplew, Vamplew, Mohideen & Westlake by 8 Vs to win the Mayor of Baghdad’s Vase; and 4 of the 5 British teams led the list in the Gillespie.
Thursday finished with a private visit to The Butchery – Stu Young’s latest best friends, having provided the beef filet for our team BBQs.
