alamo308 said:
Yep, I missed the part about "no front rest" in F-TR.
But I must be from San Antonio because I have the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
I love your sense of humor. After initially reading your question, I made a note to spend a little more time to cover the differences (and similarities) between F-Open and F-TR in the class, for the next time. In retrospect I do remember talking about the calibers and the weights but perhaps I did not make the front support differences as clearl as I should have.
As for your question about adjusting sights as opposed to holding off, Damoncali gave a good explanation of his rationale, but allow me to present some of my thoughts.
In Service Rifle and Match Rifle, where you are using peep sights, most shooters will adjust their sights before each shot, if warranted. When I shot such sights I was never good enough to be able to favor one side or the other with the peeps and as my eyesight faded, it was all I could do to try to get a consistent picture of the aiming black in the front sight, let alone favor.
When it comes to riflescopes, the environment changes. At this point, it really becomes a game of what you are comfortable with and what you are used to. When I started in F-class, I was fiddling with my scope windage for virtually every shot. I didn't know better and there were no classes or books or anything. After a few matches and discovering a propensity for winding the scope the wrong way, I came to the realization that holding off during a string was a much better idea. So, I would use my sighters adjusting the windage in my scope and then go from there. That served me fine for a while but I still had to adjust the scope in mid string and the cries of "arghh," and "for crying out loud" were still there when I discovered that I had wound the scope the wrong way and instead of punching the expected 10 or X, I got a 7 the other way.
In many (most) of the big matches, like the Nationals and Worlds, there are only two sighters after the first match and in some cases, even the first match has only two sighters following a blow off period. So what I have been doing for the last several years is to take 4 or 5 sighters on the first string and only 2 on subsequent strings. I use the sighters to guage the wind. There have been many times where my 2 sighters were an 8 and a 9 or two 8s or worse, and the first shot for record was a 10 or an X, without ever touching the scope.
I don't have a problem holding the edge of the black or even the 6 ring, but even I have limits. At last month's Texas Long Range state match, I discovered during the first string that I was holding the edge of the frame more often than not and I even had to hold off the frame a few times. That was too much for my comfort. So for subsequent strings I added 2 MOA on windage and then held between 8 and X for the rest of the match. The wind was always coming from the same direction and I never detected it to go below my need for 2 MOA. In other words, I never needed to hold on the other side of the X. So for that instance, putting in 2MOA on the scope was fine, but I had to monitor the flags constantly, before and after every shot.
Now, a lot of people like to translate the appearance of the flag to a velocity measured in miles per hour and then convert that to MOAs and either click or hold off accordingly. The way I do it is translate the mirage flow or the flag position into rings; "that flag angle looks like an 8-ring to me." This is where I use my sighters to confirm or infirm my suspicions about the wind and its effect on my bullets and go from there. I realize it's not scientific and a lot of it is experience, but it works for me. I know some people do it with lines, but they are more precise than I am.
When the conditions are what I expect, I can shoot very quickly and just make a slight adjustment on the hold for each shot; something I could never do dialing the scope and I would probably dial the wrong way at some point and watch points evaporate.
