I apologize for the lateness of this issue. My son, Sydney Austin, was born on 9/25 so I have been busy with more important things. In this issue: Shooting Positions USAMU Manuals Corrective lenses needed? The Great E-mail Challenge Eye dominance World Masters Games update ******************************************************************** To all list members. Contained within the last three UIT list issues you have found one of the shooting positions printed therein. The List membership may at their desire reproduce the three shooting positions with the copyright attached and as printed in the List for the purpose and use as hand outs to their shooting athletes. Some time ago the positions were printed and the membership responded with very favorable comments about the available position information. Since that time, I have researched each position and consulted with Bill Krilling as to the correctness of the information provided. All must remember there are no perfect shooting positions but only a position that fits the shooter's body build and configuaration. Once the fit is accomplished, then we can say that the shooter has achieved the perfect shooting position for that shooter and no one else... Good shooting to all... Chet Skinner Coach cskinner@clarksville.com [Editor - for those of you outside the US, Mr. Krilling has authored a couple excellent books on UIT shooting and is the top (?) rifle coach at the US Army Marksmanship Unit.] ********************************************************************* Good morning, Michael. Kudos to Ross Mason for his wonderfully lucid thoughts on optical systems! I, for one, would enjoy having his insights on the proper sizing of front and rear apertures. On a different topic, many years ago (in the days before mortgage and children) I was able to attend the national championships at Camp Perry. The Army Marksmanship Unit shooters who were also there put on a smallbore clinic in the evening, and distributed a paperback book covering most aspects of international style rifle shooting. My club is planning a similar clinic for junior shooters, and I am wondering if it is still possible to obtain these AMU manuals. Do any of the list subscribers know? Thanks for the help. Tom [Editor - as for aperatures, my opinion is it depends on the shooter and his eyes. The experts say use one 2 times the apparent bull size. Many successful shooters use smaller. For example, Elizabeth Bourland, one of our best women uses well over a 4.0mm in air rifle (4.6 I think), while Bob Foth uses a 3.6 (which equates to a 3.4 since he has a small bloop tube on his air rifle). Thr rear iris should be large enough to allow enough light in but not be larger than about 1.5mm as you start losing the diffraction effects. As for AMU manuals, I would not recommend them as they are very outdated. We have 3 different AMU marksmanship manuals and I don't use any of them. I have heard they are working on new ones though so maybe they are out now.] ******************************************************************** I have a question. How do you know if you need shooting glasses (corrective lenses)? I am a smallbore and air rifle shooter. I am having trouble with my eye by the end of the match. It seems like I can focus on the front sight but by the end of the match I am experiencing a good deal of eye strain. I appreciate any information I can recieve. Thank you. Jeff [Editor - The experts will tell you to use a larger aperature as a smaller one supposedly causes undo strain. You may also be holding in position too long, which is part of your mental game. Of course, you should have your eyes checked also to see if you need lenses. Since you are young, I don't think your eyes would tire too quickly. If you still shoot at the pace you did a few years ago (and assuming you didn't have the problem then), get your eyes checked out and move up a couple sizes if your eyes are OK.] ****************************************************************** Michael, I would appreciate a reprint of a previous message on the.... THE GREAT EMAIL CHALLENGE Pit your Competition PB from the months of September or October 1997 against other avid emailers. Just email the organiser with your best COMPETITION scores from these two months. Closing date for receipt of scores will be November 3rd 1997. Results will be emailed during the first week of November to all entrants. Name ................................... Country .............. email address.................. Scores: Prone ................. Competition name and date............................... 3P ..................... Competition name and date............................... Air .................... Competition name and date............................... Competitions can be State Championships, Club Championships, International matches, Postal matches, in fact any endorsed competition match undertaken in these two months. The prize?...... just the contentment of seeing how you are going in the shooting scene. The interest is high in Australia - and we would welcome participants from all over the world. If you have friends who would also like to participate in this little FUN EVENT, then please tell them about it, and have them submit scores also. Address for return entries...... tra@vianet.net.au by November 3rd 1997. AND FURTHER.... it is not a problem whether these ranges are indoor or outdoor, or whether it is on a metric or yarded range (just note that next to the score). I had forgotten just how few metric ranges there are in the USA!!! Open to both men and women equally. Contact me if you have any further queries. Tricia Van Nus National Coaching Director Target Rifle Australia Inc. ****************************************************************** Michael, I am the rifle coach for our highschool and I occassionally have adults in for instruction in the evenings. I have run into a problem with eye dominance with one of the older men in our club. I have always checked my high school kids for eye dominance and had them change if there was a cross dominance problem. However, this gentleman (about 45), is having great difficulty trying to switch. He is right handed and has a dominant left eye. He shoots quite well shooting right handed by using a blinder. I have tried to explain, based on material I have read, the importance of shooting from the dominant eye, however, I am discovering the more I try to explain, the less I actually know about the subject. Could you or any of your readers please explain shooting from the dominant is so important. Can't an individual see the target just as well by using a blinder? Should adults try to make the change as well as young people? What if the dominant eye is the weaker of the two? If anyone knows of any DETAILED information on this subject, I would certainly like to hear from them. Thanks so much for your help. Ron Crawford rcrawf@gmc.cc.ga.us [Editor - since he is so old, I would let him shoot RH with a blinder. While I don't know the physiological differences between the dominant and non-dom eye (eg, better acuity?), I would think if a blinder is used even with a youngster, there wouldn't be a problem. Just be sure the blinder is light in color and not too close to the eye so maximum light is allowed into both eyes. Keep in mind the eye dominance is much more important in shotgun or general pistol shooting where blinders are not used. Any eye experts out there?] ****************************************************************** Mike: I would like to ask you to print something from the following: World Masters Games-Go or Not? I have just attended the Congress of State Games meeting here in Portland, and one of the presenters was the World Masters Games-1998. In looking over their handout, I noted that the shooting sports, which were included in their original papers and entry froms were produced, was no longer on the program of contested events. This is despite the requirement from the Int'l World Masters Games organization in Europe that shooting be one of the 15 core sports that MUST be contested. Ten others are chosen from a long list of optional sports. Shooting was on the original program, and I was the chairman of the initial organizing group meetings for this sport. Because of some bungling by the organizers, the local clubs will not host any of the shooting sports events, if in fact they are still going to be held at all. So, unless the organizers in Portland can come up with another host club, there seems to be no shooting events on the program for this time. So, I would urge all you who read this to think strongly before entering the 1998 WMG in Portland in the shooting events. If you have already sent in your steep entry fee, I would contact them ASAP and ask for assurances that they will have some quality shooting events, and if not, to demand a refund of your entry. I am not sure, even if they do hold shooting events, that they will be of any kind of quality. I was told, in one of our earlier set up meetings, that there would be shooting, "even if we have to have bb-gun shooting in a phone booth". That does not sound too encouraging to me!! I should have been suspicious right then, but I trusted the person from the WMG staff that we talked to and had meetings with. Besides, of all the events that I and others told them they should have, they cut out about half, and thereby eliminated nearly every U.S. shooter that would have entered and made it more for international shooters than anything else. I wanted Black Powder, IPSC, NMC in pistol and highpower, plus all the UIT rifle and pistol events, as well as NRA prone only matches for smallbore and highpower. But, the only area that even got close to that was the pistol folks. Why they were scheduled to have NRA and UIT events and none of the others was beyond me. Also, the organizers wanted to hold the entries to about 500 total, with half coming from outside the U.S.!! They want to do the same with all sports, so it is just not shooting that this would effect. Anyway, it looks to me like they don't want to contest the shooting events. Please think seriously about entering!!! Don Willliams, Beaverton, OR. ****************************************************************** End of UIT Mailing List #3 Michael Ray - Systems Engineer Rose-Hulman Inst. of Tech. Rifle Coach UIT Shooting Page - http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/1190/index.htm