Interesting! Someone looked at the upcoming weather report for Mormon Lake, AZ and learned that cold temps, with rain and snow were forecast for today’s match. A plaintive call to the club secretary (that would be me) resulted in a last-minute scheduling change to BASF in Phoenix. Mercifully, the range was available.

Hmmmmm…….turns out that the temps in Mormon Lake today started in the low 30° range with rain and snow showers. They had 4” – 5” of snow on Friday and another 2” – 3” on Saturday. The first snow of the year would have put a real damper on today’s festivities had the match been up there.

So, today, driving to Ben Avery range, it was raining. Figures. Upon arriving, the temps were in the low 50° range and the wind was blowing emphatically……but no snow. Things were looking up.
Range conditions today were bright, but with heavy cloud cover, temps in the low 60° area, during the match, with humidity levels between 69% down to 42%, and the rain stopped. The wind played games with us all morning averaging in the 5 to 7 mph range with gusts into the low teens and coming at us from the NE to SE.
What that means is that the wind cascaded over the saddle in the hillside which is the impact area at the north of the complex, and swirled about the pistol silhouette range where we shoot.

This might be a bit wordy, but explains the conditions in which we shot today.

Winds were going in one direction at the target and the opposite direction at the firing line. Putting this in perspective, when picking up the reset string for the targets, it looked like a lazy “S” when looking downrange. Fun stuff. But it wasn’t snowing!

 

Twelve guys showed up today, with all but Wayne wearing some form of jacket or sweatshirt against the wind and the chill, but definitely ready to do battle with the steel critters.
With the wind playing games, there were a few choice utterances describing the shooters discontent when a miss occurred, but it was still fun. We had Four classes contested today; One in open pcp, one in open piston, two in WFTF pcp, and the rest in hunter pcp. The one tied score was broken by the shooter who had the longest string of hits, before their first miss, finished on top.

 

Upon completion of the match, the pit crew did their usual phenomenal job of collecting targets/blocks/clamps/strings in record time. All targets shot today were given to “Q” for his always fantastic job of repainting, so we have fresh targets for each match. Thank you to all who assisted, and all who decided to shoot with the short-notice relocation venue announcement.
Sorry, no camera on site today, but Van did take a few pics for the record.

 

Next match will be Saturday, November 16 at the pistol silhouette range at BASF.
We have quite of few of our members who will be assisting with the WFTF world championships that same week/weekend, but we will still have a match for those who don’t shoot WFTF. C’mon out and enjoy.
Respectfully submitted,
Mark Kauffman
Secretary, Airgunners of Arizona, Inc.