Field Target Match - Southeast PA in Fairless Hills, PA - Sunday 11/18/2018

See you guys on the 18th.

Thank you to all who came and shot with us.  The weather was not 70 degrees and sunny but not bad for this time of year.  Larry will work up an official match report as time permits.

Have a great Thanksgiving.

Rick B.

Thanks Rich, Larry, Jim, and anyone else involved in the Falls shoots. Another great time.

Match Report Falls Twp. Rifle and Pistol Assn. in SE PA 11/18/18

The Falls Township Rifle and Pistol Association located in Southeastern PA held the fourth and final Field Target match of our 2018 season on Sunday, 11/18/18.   We played host to about a dozen shooters from all around the greater Philadelphia metro area, Southern NJ and upstate Pennsylvania. The surprise mid- November snow storm on Thursday a few days prior to match day, which did not really have any lingering effect on us locally, may have understandably prevented many of our more far traveling regular attendees from making the trip.  We did have some concern that the snow cover would persist until Sunday but temps in the mid 40 with lots of sunshine on Friday and Saturday cleared things up.  While the temperatures were a bit chilly during early morning sight in and practice time, the match time conditions were mostly cloudy and cool, temps in the mid-40s with infrequent light breezes from the northeast under six miles per hour.

The course of fire that awaited the entrants had the 30 targets for the 60-shot rifle match arranged in 10 lanes set out along the club’s lakeside 3D archery grounds.  The rifle course was set to include a 40-shot pistol course within the rifle course using the 2 closest targets within each lane.  Special Pistol Only targets were required in some lanes if the rifle targets were out of pistol range, i.e. beyond 35 yards. On the rifle course the average distance was 31.3 yards and the kill zones averaged 1.2 inches to yield a difficulty rating of 28.1 Troyer.  There were 9 targets set out beyond 40 yards but 7 were under 20 yards. The pistol course had an average kill zone size of 1.0 inches and an average distance of 18.6 yards for an unweighted Troyer difficulty of 20.6 with the Pistol multiplier of 1.575 raising the difficulty to 32.49.  The course was set up on lanes we’ve used previously but we looked for new target locations and seldom used targets from the club’s inventory to keep things fresh.  One example of such a seldom used target was a Jim Bob Vulture flag target from the early days of Field Target donated by one of our areas earliest field target shooters, George Hamilton.  With the flag target, not only does the face fall back when the kill zone is hit but additionally a 1.75 “by 9” blaze orange metal flag rises up.  The one target failure during the match was not due to the age of the target but rather the errant shot which shattered the plastic carabiner that secured the reset string to the target face. A quick cold line while the string was re-attached put things back in order.

Everyone had plenty of time to check their zeros and get in some practice on the target rich environment of the sight in range set up on the club’s dedicated air gun range which was recently upgraded by the addition of a set of Tom Ryan fabricated and donated re-bar distance markers every five yards along the berm side.  With air gun trajectories being notoriously loopy knowing the distance to the target is vital when one is trying to determine if the gun is” on.”  Shortly before the scheduled match start time Match Director Rich Bassett gathered everyone into the Archery Clubhouse for a brief safety and rules meeting.  That task completed, he then gave out the squadding arrangements and starting lane assignments and then sent everyone out to enjoy the course.

When shooting was completed in the early afternoon Brian Van Liew posted the Match High Score of 55/60 taking first place in the consolidated WFTF / Open Division, PCP/Piston Combined.  Mike Harris’s 48/60 was good for second place behind Brian in the division by virtue of a tiebreaker over Rich Bassett’s same raw score.   In the Hunter division Tom Ryan led the field with 49/60 followed by Travis Escue scoring a 45/60 ahead of three shooters tied at 44 (Greg Dipple, Doug Bruestle and Craig Evans).   Scott Whitlock was truly in a class by himself choosing to shoot the entire match offhand and posting a more than respectable score of 24/60 especially when one realizes that by electing to stand for all his shots Scott raised the difficulty rating from 28.1 to 47.2 on the Troyer difficulty scale.  In the Pistol Class Craig Evans secured a first place finish with his 30/40 score.  There will be a full list of the entrants scores and gear posted at the end of the report.  Once the November match award were presented, Match Director Rich Bassett announced the Club Championship winners which are the three shooters who post the highest aggregate score for the season.  The key to winning the championship is to shoot well and not miss any matches during the season.  For our 2018 Field Target Season, Tom Ryan took third place with a total of 149 points, Mike Harris came in second with 183 points and Brian Van Liew finished first with 216 points.   

Thanks to the FTRPA archers for access to the lanes and all who took the time and spent the funds to come to the match.    A special thanks to all those, especially Scott Whitlock and Doug Bruestle along with Ron Deal (who didn’t even shoot the match), who helped with the tear down and pack away of all the targets, strings and other match gear.  Please try to join us for our next Field Target match when we resume in the spring, Sunday May 19, 2019

Larry Bowne

For the

Field Target Committee at FTRPA

For anyone interested here is a copy of the course layout plan attached.

Larry Bowne for

The Field Target Committee at FTRPA

Thanks to FTRPA, and everyone's hard work for an enjoyable year. Already looking forward to next year.

  Tom

Thanks for the match report including the detailed course info.

"...Troyer difficulty of 20.6 with the Pistol multiplier of 1.75 raising the difficulty to 36.1..."

FYI: The pistol multiplier is 1.575 for AAFTA matches.

Thanks for the heads up.

I 've edited the text of the match report and corrected the attached spreadsheet.

Larry Bowne for the

Field Target Committee at FTRPA

Mea culpa for the single cold line.   Another fine course  at FTRPA.  Thanks to Rich, Jim and Larry for dedication and creativity to make sure we Shooter’s have fun and are challenged in the process. Happy Thanksgiving to all.  

Craig 

by the way, it was not easy to hit that carabiner!