Dmitri conquers Mt Barker 2014 OPM!
Early Friday morning, 21st February around 6am, Mark Buchanan, Dmitri Kazakov (Roseville RC) and Ted Boreham (Gosford RC) departed from Sydney for the long 1400km drive to Mt. Barker Rifle Club for their No2 DRA Open Prize Meeting which was not incident free.
Ted was “unsuccessfully” breathalysed by our “Friends in blue” just north of the Vic border. Following that everything went smoothly until we pulled into Tooleybuc Pub for dinner at about 8pm. We had another 400km to go.
After dinner we decided to leave, however somebody entered the pub and joyfully, looking forward to the entertainment, announced that the trailer in front of the pub had a flat tyre and that all the service stations had already closed as it was Friday afternoon, and everyone from the service and petrol stations were already in the pubs!
Someone made a call to the “nearest” service station (10km away), and we slowly start rolling in that direction. On the way one truck overtook us. When we stopped in his driveway we asked the driver if he had some air. We were lucky and he pumped up our tyre (it was a valve problem) and we continued the trip.
However our adventure was not finished yet. We called our pre-booked lodging in Murray Bridge to inform them about our problem and that we would be late. We asked them to leave the keys somewhere but they refused to do so. The fact that we were going to stay on the street did not bother them much!
While we were looking for a place to stay overnight, we received a call from the hotel.
They offered the accommodation if we will pay an extra $94. This sounded OK and so we agreed. Only after we checked out they sent us the invoice, and we realized that it was $94 per day. This brought total cost to $700!
The next day we enjoyed the Club working bee in preparation for the OPM. At the end of the day we were shooting 600y to check the targets functionality. The weather was excellent but the wind was patchy and unpredictable, therefore the shooting was a bit tricky.
The OPM starts with very nice weather with little wind.
Dmitri & Mark shot a practice’s at 600 yards on the Sat afternoon. Five targets were configured for accuracy testing of the HEX Systems which had all concerned very interested in the outcome.
The special stable paper was attached to each target following a single stage on each face.
Each shot hole on each target was measured for the x & y co-ordinates and compared to the Log file generated with the electronically generated coordinates. The results were then tabulated and taken to the range the next morning for all to see. The results speak for themselves! Approximately a 1mm variance !!!!
Sunday morning and 61 shooters prepared for the first of 3 x 600 yards matches. The targets were shaded by large gum trees to the right which the sunlight randomly scattered light across the target faces making the sighting somewhat difficult. Dmitri stood out from the crowd posting a fine 49.6 followed by 50.6 which put him in the lead by one central. The wind conditions were light but variable with changes across the zero regularly occurring causing many scope shooters grief on the small ring. Mark had a few problems with hold & sighting, picking the changes OK but firing a bad shot on each stage. He finished with 3 x 49’s & out of the running as several shooters had finished with 148’s.
Dmitri was last to shoot on target No.3 & the conditions remained challenging. Drawing a crowd to watch, Dmitri showed excellent control with his first 5 shots near perfect waterline. Then a quick breeze from the right caused a wide inner. Not perturbed by this, he soldiered on finishing with a 49.4 (see HERE), taking out the day by several centres with the highest aggregate score of 148.16. I believe that the electronic V’s mechanical measurements results made Dmitri a very happy boy and added to his confidence in a great result.
The next morning at 5am we took off from Murray Bridge, where we had stayed 3 days, and returned to Sydney safely at 11pm
Tim Walter, Captain; Mark Buchanan, President