mac86951 said:
my F-AR AR-15 (yes you read that right, its a local sub-set of F-TR
-Mac
Awwh, not that crap again! Well, I'm started my own little interpretation of the game and I call it F-AR for Air Rifle. It's currently limited to 600 yards only, no more, no less. You have to use .177 pellets, factory loaded of course, none of this .22 crap for us hardy competitors. We don't want any advantages here. We use the F-class centers, of course. The rules are simple; you only have one pellet (single load) and you start shooting it downrange from the firing line. After you fire it, you have to walk down to find it, load it again and fire it from where it landed or behind. You can't for example, pick up the pellet and take a step forward and shoot it again. You keep shooting it and then walk forward to retrieve it and shoot it from there, until you hit the target. Then you go back and start over again. If you can't find the pellet within 30 minutes of firing it, it's recorded as a miss. You can shoot it as many times as you want to score but once the pellet has passed the target line, it's dead, finished and the score recorded. The trick is to get all 20 rounds on paper in 20 minutes. You do have unlimited sighters in the first match of the day and 2 non-convertible sighters from that point on.
Now, strategy comes into play here and some people walk all the way to the target and shoot point blank on the X, but others will actually shoot the paper as soon as they feel they are in range and then run back for the next shot. You have to carry your shooting mat, and rear rest throughout the firing of the pellet, but some people have been known to use carts to drag their equipment. We do allow the use of CO2-powered air rifles, but the real competitors use a pump action of varying types.
Some people paint their pellets to make them easy to find, and one enterprising competitor is now using an RF tracker to find his pellets. It's time-consuming fitting the RF transmitter to each pellet and it can get expensive when the battery dies and he can't find it; the battery lasts 12 seconds, but he's working on a Lithium polymer, boosted with hydrogen that will increase that time to 14 seconds, which could be a game changer. Some of his fellow competitors have been objecting to his use of a generator which he keeps in his cart to recharge the battery; the noise and the pollution. So we had to alter the rules to make sure he only starts it, by hand of course, for the time that he needs to charge the battery (40 seconds usually.)
We make up the rules as we go along, so for example we no longer allow steel pellets, so the smart *** with the huge electro magnet in his cart is out of luck. Since not everybody could afford to buy such a device, there was no way we were going to allow it for those who could. Also, don't tell Joe, the guy with the RF locating device I mentioned earlier, but as soon as his battery lasts more that 14 seconds, we are going to change the rules to disallow that technology. It goes against the spirit of the game which is all about marksmanship, and reading the wind. Oh,and keeping track of your pellet and being good at spotting it on the ground.
Pit duty is a total bore and since it takes so long for the pellet to travel to the target, many fall asleep, or go to the restaurant or worse, we frequently have to call for a mark. We had the case at the last match, where one of the guys doing pit duty simply went home without telling anyone. The shooter was pissed because when the pellet finally go to the target, the target would not go down and his scorer had to walk all the way back to the firing line to call for a mark, which never came. This case was extreme, of course. Usually the pit guy is somewhere in the vicinity and will manage to get to the target to pull it down, mark it and raise it back up.
Of course, you want a competent target puller, because there's nothing worse than having to walk all the way back to the firing line to ask for a re-disc after you waited so long for the mark in the first place. The good thing is that it has cut down dramatically on the number of challenges. And also everybody has been getting in better shape for the grueling competition that is F-AR.
If anyone is interested in a set of rules for F-AR, we can put it up on a website or Facebook or something. As I said before, the rules are "evolving," so you will need to update frequently, say before during and after every match.
We are on hiatus for winter because nobody wanted to shoot in the snow, well all except Joe with his RF stuff, but he seems to forget that batteries don't last as long when it's cold. Some of us are considering having a match in February just to see Joe scramble after his $3000 miniaturized RF transmitter before the battery dies in 5 seconds, dragging all his equipment. Did I mention the range of the signal is about 27 inches? We do allow carts, but not sleds.
Mack in Wyoming
