Is TR actually behind Open, anymore?

[Steve Blair]

Once you start down that road, it will be a never-ending succession of new rules and restrictions in a futile attempt to "make things even", when in reality they have never been, and never will be, equal.

The lure of "spec racers" has ruined NASCAR and Indy Car. Let's hope F-Class never goes down that road.

 

[XTR]

F-TR Is darn close to spec racing now without the rules to make it so. At 1000 yards most shooters, I venture to say over 90%, are running:
200 grain Bergers in the mid-2600s
30 inch barrels Plus or minus an inch or two.
Nightforce or Vortex scopes.
Varget, N150, N140, or H4895
small primer brass.
Jewel or BnA triggers
Phoenix or SEB bipods.

The biggest variation is stock choice and that’s personal.

Seriously, I don’t know of another discipline that is this tightly matched. There’s more variation in bullets in service rifle. (with the exception of Palma matches running 155s.)

Granted to compete at a high level you need a purpose built rifle, but the guys competing in Service rifle are slinging up purpose built rifles, some of which weigh almost as much as my F-TR rig. Competition of any kind always eventually requires equipment specialized for the purpose.

And in F-open something close to 60% at the SWN last yr are running a variation of the 284 with 180ish bullets.

F class is anything but an equipment race, you just need the right equipment. Other than primers lately, nothing is unobtainable, there is no secret high dollar sauce here.


Get a competitive rifle, load what everyone else is loading, read wind, win matches.

 

[davidjoe]

Many great points last couple of days. I enjoy being my own D.O.D. searching out combinations. There’s hardware and there’s software, the “software” being my wind reading, level of motivation, and physical comfort and focus sufficient to never think, let’s just hurry up and finish this string.

That aspect of shooting can overcome small hardware handicaps, in average and high wind. In no wind, the truth is none of us are relying on wind calling skills. Hamilton could certainly beat some drivers with a very slightly slower and looser car. The worst of the 20 could move up with Hamilton’s Mercedes. There is convergence and overlap. F1 team Mercedes both outspends (by 100’s of $M) others and is regarded to have the best driver in his generation.

This weekend, we saw some very good 1000 yard LR finishes with, maybe not because, a newish, very fine, high(est) BC bullet was on the line. For myself, I do know it made a difference in wedging between those two particular shooters in the 1,000 yard two day V2 Finale agg., and two of the four guys using that bullet soundly beat me, and the higher, just about all the others, and in the main agg, all, as well.

Still a major hardware game, but that’s not to say that a good 1/4 of the rifles on the line could not win, because I think that decent sized fraction could. Just a quality rifle goes a long way. I have seen malfunction substitutions work fine at the very top, and also been the stranger to a rifle and it’s not a major impediment to buckle down and shoot a stranger’s, when a great gun. I’d say more like only 5% of the shooters at a big match have, on those days, the wind skills at peak, to realistically win, and then, of that select group, half of those will by luck of draw have a weather hurdle, and then yes, finally wind reading alone decides that top end shake out.

While XTR is likely right on about .284’s constituting 60% of Open with their milder barrel and powder consumption, they aren’t close to 60% of the top 10 finishers anymore, at multi-day LR. (No issue there, as going to “win” is fine, but if that’s the only acceptable outcome, a short lived activity - and when .284 places high, tip hat.) Everyone kept their .284’s, and still uses them at times, especially midrange, but It seems to me that for big wind the 300 WSM is the up-level choice of the .284’s guys that pursued pure accuracy, and the 7 saum variants are the up-level choice of the .284’s guys that pushed BC.

 

[JayBeeYou]

Still a major hardware game, but that’s not to say that a good 1/4 of the rifles on the line could not win, because I think that decent sized fraction could. [/QUOTE]

When at a strong club like Bayou or a regional or national level match I can look at the FTR line and in my opinion way more than 25% of the guns on the line can win if pointed in the right direction. There is a certain level of capable equipment, well described by XTR that all the serious competitors have all currently leveled out at. As an example, last relay of TSRA MR a year or two back RandyL's gun went down midstring. I finished early and had extra ammo. I brought it down the line to him, told him where I had my windage at. He finished out cleaning rest of relay and finishing top 3. His equipment was so similar to mine it was almost seamless to transition in mid string. I would of bet at least half if not more of the guns on the line could have performed similarly if they were pressed into service.

 

[XTR]

Similar story, at the FCNC last yr my rifle was shooting like poop. After the first long range team match it was obvious I was hurting the team. I borrowed a teammates rifle and we finished second in the last match and 3rd overall.

 

[Ringostar]

Ok David, You witnessed something out of the ordinary on Sunday. I showed up with a completely untested load. I was under a rush to get ready, and came up with an excess of a powder. I used a friends load with that powder, and just ran with it. A 284 in the winds and had the second highest score for the first match. The case separation in the 3rd match really hurt me, but rushing through my rounds for score. I still ended up 9th for the day. Luck, maybe. But the rifle didn’t shoot very well at 600 on Saturday

 

[D-4297]

From my own observation ; being in the sport but a few years , the gap between TR and Open is gradually closing . But it will always be there . For all the basic reasons that have already been listed , and others that haven't . As of yet . Open will always have a slight advantage over TR . Nobody has figured out how to counter the laws of physics yet , though we all make our best efforts at it . From the gunsmith , to the loading bench , to the line . If it were easy , everybody would be doing it . But it's not easy , and every single one of us knows it . That's why we all do it . A great football coach once stated a single phrase . "On any given Sunday , it is possible for any team to beat any other team" . The same applies to this discussion . On any given Sunday , it is possible for a TR shooter to beat a Open shooter . And this will always be the case .

 

[INTJ]

Interesting discussion. I am not an F-Class shooter. I shoot LR BR and I see a interesting parallel. There are three equally important factors in LR BR for small groups and high scores: a well tuned load, picking the right conditions, and being consistent in shooting technique. Those three things are WAY more important than whether you are shooting a 17 lb light gun or a 30-70 lb heavy gun.

Well tuned light guns that are shot well routinely beat heavy guns at 600 and 1000 yds in the heavy gun class. The light guns are almost always a little 6mm shooting a sub .550 BC bullet. The heavy guns vary but frequently shoot .7ish BC bullets.

I think the difference between F-TR and F-Open is similar. A well tuned F-TR rifle, shot consistently with the right call on conditions, isn't at so much of a disadvantage as it might first appear.

 

[davidjoe]

@Laurie posted in 2011 on an old thread that came up below in the related subject suggestions. There was an interesting discussion back then about how TR had slipped away from practical shelf-type rifles. England can be brutally windy, that hasn’t changed.

“What constantly staggers me is how far F/TR standards have risen each and every season for the last few years. I can remember a GB league round at windy old Diggle in the English Pennine Hills in what must be only around 2007 or 2008 where even with 30" barrel rifles, F/TR people finished the last match (1,000yd) of the weekend in despair after running out of scope windage adjustment, having received multiple complete misses, not even sure where some shots had gone.”

LESLEY (he got banned from the site last year) but he does appear on the TSRA perpetual trophy, wrote that now you need a custom gun to win. Might win with factory but “odds are against it.” Imagine! To win... it’s getting hard to recall even seeing factory rifles on the line.

“I have been shootinf F/TR since it started. And yes it has evolved to the point where i believe you need a custom gun to win. Just like any other game people play to win. Who want to drive for hours and spend money on a room 4 to 5 days away from home and not have a chance to win. Not saying you cant win with a factory gun but the odds are against it.”

 

[XTR]

I’ve only been playing for about 10 yrs now but I have commented in the past that the scores that would have put you on the podium at the FCNC in ‘11 might Not get you in the top half today. Remember, Phil Kelly didn’t shoot the first National Record 200 (200-5x) until 2012.

How many of us have shot cleans at this point. It hadn’t been done before then, at least not in a registered match.

There was a time when Danny Biggs was about the only F class shooter who had made HM shooting F-TR. There are a fair number of us who have gotten there these days.

Jim won the FCNC at least once, if not twice as an EX, though he may have been a MA on the second one.

For certain the level of performance has gone up.

If you really want to dig into the past scores and how it’s changed look here at https://usfcnc.net/. Scott somehow pulled this all together in the last couple of yrs. It’s a pretty awesome archive.

 

[davidjoe]

XTR, now that I read that, I’m pretty convinced that when I first met Mark Walker at Bayou about 2010 or 11, he had come back from the 2020’s. That would explain a lot.

 

[Laurie]

“What constantly staggers me is how far F/TR standards have risen each and every season for the last few years. I can remember a GB league round at windy old Diggle in the English Pennine Hills in what must be only around 2007 or 2008 where even with 30" barrel rifles, F/TR people finished the last match (1,000yd) of the weekend in despair after running out of scope windage adjustment, having received multiple complete misses, not even sure where some shots had gone.”

Ha! Ha! Back then we reckoned in Diggle club matches that if you could only keep it in the 4-ring (9 to US prone shooters), you'd get a good place in a match at the longer distances, sometimes even win. With a number within that 2-MOA grouping falling into the 5-ring and one or two in the V, you'd invariably do well. Today's 1,000 yard FTR scores range from the low to mid 80s on really difficult days up to the mid to high 90s in decent conditions. Nobody shooting FTR has cleaned it yet at 1K AFAIK.

In my days of doing GB league rounds, I only ever once saw a winning stage FTR score at 1,000 beat F-Open and that was at Diggle as it happens. That was former FCWC Champion Russell Simmonds at his peak, but it was also the Diggle luck of the draw on the wind conditions you get on any individual relay. I can't remember the scores, but they were very high, somewhere around 98 or 99 with a good V count. After the weekend's four matches, the top aggregates were still very close but two or three points in Open's favour.

I can tell the weather conditions over GB league round weekends just from the scores emailed out on the Sunday evenings, no need to wait for the subsequent write-ups on the GB F-Class Assoc website. If the winds at Blair, Bisley or Diggle are mild and fairly steady, there will be only five or six points, sometimes less, between the two classes winners' aggregate scores for the four to six matches involved. Aggregate V-counts always run well in F-Open's favour though. If it was a 'rough' weekend, that aggregate difference rises to 20 to 30 points with a very much larger difference in Vs too.

 

[1911mag]

The winners are already the shooters that can best read the conditions and hit their target, regardless of the bullet weight they are using. The reason for that is that all things are never ever "equal", no matter how hard one might like them to be. The shooter that works harder at becoming a proficient wind reader has an advantage. The shooter that spends hours/days/weeks at the reloading bench and out at the range fine-tuning a load has an advantage. The shooter that can afford a high-end custom rifle/scope has an advantage as compared to most off-the-shelf rifles. Trying to compensate and "level the playing field" by inventing restrictions such as limiting bullet weight does not work. It never has, and there are plenty of examples in other sports that demonstrate this.

I have won a lot of F-TR matches using my .223 Rem with 90 VLDs against shooters using 200 gr .308 Win bullets, which enjoy a decided ballistic advantage. Why? I did a better job of reading the conditions that they did. I have also been soundly beaten by shooters using 185 Juggernauts when I was using a very solid load with a much higher BC 200 gr bullet. Why? They paid better attention to the conditions than I did. I have also used uber-high BC monolithic solid bullets in F-TR matches and finished rather poorly, even though they should have provided a huge advantage in terms of external ballistics. Why? Because in my hands they could not be loaded with the same accuracy and precision as conventional lead core bullets. The laws of physics, as well as the motivation, work ethic, and innate skills a shooter brings to the table are far better deciding factors for the outcomes of matches than imposed bullet weight restrictions. Once you start down that road, it will be a never-ending succession of new rules and restrictions in a futile attempt to "make things even", when in reality they have never been, and never will be, equal.

This has been very interesting thread and many good points. Starting with a Remington 700 HS stock Bartlein barrel and 90VLD’s for first 3 years FTR. I learned reading the wind, patience, and gun handling. Took over 1000 rounds to learn my set up. Then it all clicked at my first Sierra Cup match. Shot my first clean in individual and again in team. Hard work and time put in pays off. Still comes down to the guy pulling the trigger at the end of the day. A wise man told me “trust your gun” and that is in my head every match since then.