NZ Palma Report 3B
Looks like we missed a day so here is the missing Report for 2nd August, Mini Palma Teams
Todays team event started with a roll call at 7.10am for the kiwi teams behind one of the cars. We sorted out the team mounds or in USA lingo, “firing points” and divided off into our teams for the day.
That’s pretty much the point where we didn’t see the rest of the teams for the day. Next was firing order and working out the scoring. Normally we would have our four members of the team up on the mound to help, and a shooter lying down ready for a sighter if needed. But no, this is USA style, so we said good bye to two of our team members who went off down to the butts (called the “pit”) to pull targets. This was Andre’s and Jonnos first outing to the pit and a rapid introduction to the pit chaos.
And chaotic it was, back on the mound our team fires our first shot, where we soon discovered that we had no one to mark our target, so a bit of a reshuffle down the pit and eventually after 10 minutes Amy got to shoot her second sighter.
Helen mean-while was off scoring for the neighbours target. So you get through your first shooter then they haul their gear off the mound, relieve the scorer who can then get their gear up to shoot, all within the time limit and proceed to fire off their shots. To say it was a disjointed coaching experience would be an understatement.
Swap over time and Andre and Jack were back, Andre looking like the whole marking experience had worn him out before he even got to fire his first shot of the trip.
Also added to the whole experience is the cease fire. This usually involves a boat in the impact zone out in the lake. I think we totalled 6 cease fires during shooting yesterday as it was a Sunday. This can be a wait of 5 to 10 minutes or more while they send the coast guard out to move them. If you are unlucky enough to be mid-way with one of your shooters, you don’t get a non -convertible sighter, you just carry on from where you stopped.
The wind reading is interesting, once you work out the mean wind you don’t seem to shift much, there are reasonable deviations when the wind changes angle but I think most of us kiwi’s are still over reading the changes, its often only a quarter or half, sometimes a full minute but during the full day I probably didn’t move more than 1 ½ minutes, if it had been Trentham, I think I would have been making 2 -4 minute changes.
The thousand yard was quite tricky at times and with the heat, having to hold the shooter was quite an effort for them. My team ended up with some good scores, with Helen getting 4th top individual score, and our team Alpha squad placed 7th overall out of 64 teams.
Team scores
NZ Alpha Coach Anita, shooters Amy, Helen, Andre, Jack total 1759.71, 7th place
NZ Oscar Coach Owen, shooters Brian, Paul John S, Steve, total 1743.67, 20th place
NZ Charlie Coach Charlotte, shooters Grace, Clinton, William, Matt, total 1732.52, 33rd place
NZ Kilo, coach Kevin, shooters Rob, Irene, Jonno, Chris, total 1717.62, 44th place
NZ Romeo, coach Richard, shooters Allan, Casey, Brad, John M, 1716.56, 45th place.
Reported by Helen, Jonno, Anita and Andre
