Please e-mail address changes, unsubscribe requests, or questions to me. In this issue: Cheekpiece adjustment Masters Games in NZ Re: The problem of canting Re: dealing with heat / canting / cheekpiece Re: The problem of canting Re: The problem of canting Need WCH results from 90 and 94 ******************************************************************** Although I'm not much of a shooter and have only been to one NRA coaching school, when Chet gets to the point of placing the cheek on the cheek piece, he does not explain how the cheek piece is adjusted. I assume it would have to go to the right (for a right handed shooter) about an inch to get the eye lined up with the rear sight. Plus of course the verticle adjustment. Most guns only have verticle and not horizonal adjustment of the cheek piece. Then where is the butt of the gun? The butt it would appear would rotate down on the bore axis. It would no longer be on the shoulder but in the chest. So now does the butt need moved to the right also? I guess a picture would be worth a thousand words. Can Chet name a book by a top shooting coach that shows this? My favorite books are by Heinz Reinkemeier. Should I be using another book? Thanks. Rich [Editor - you'll find many cheekpieces suck as Mr. Sorensen expounds upon below. You have to modify it to fit you. There is a book mentioned below ("The Way of the Rifle") that should be good, but the English translation has not come out just yet I think.] ******************************************************************** Mike: Here's some info on an event that some of your readers might be interested in. There is another Masters Games for us more seasoned shooters. The NZ Masters Games will be held Feb. 5-13 in Dunedin, NZ. This is on the south island. Minimum age for all shooting events is 35, except for clay target which is 40. If you register before Oct. 31st, the fee is only $30NZ, and after that it is only $40. Each event or sport you enter has its own sport fee, which varies. The total cost though, will not be too bad, considering that the New Zealand $ is about .55-.57 US. So, the $30 entry fee is about $18-19US. There are a great many other sports/activities that a person could enter, if you want. You might want to enter the shooting event of your choice, and then also enter the fishing. Shooting events include: Blackpowder, Centerfire, Clay Target, Pistol, Smallbore and Silhouette. Sports fees range from $8 per event up to $45. Some events include lunch and afternoon tea in the sports fees. For further info, contact the Games online at: www.nzmastersgames.com and see what else they have to offer. I am planning, at this time, to take off Jan. 30/31 to Christchurch, renting a car and driving down the east coast to Dunedin. When my two smallbore events are over, I plan on making the loop around the southern part of the island and heading off to the west side and the mountains and fjords/sounds, etc before heading back to Christchurch to come back home. I plan on being gone 2 weeks. It should be fun and worth the cost of the plane ticket, etc. I enjoyed my week long stay on the north island back in 1994 when I went to Brisbane for the World Masters Games, and I expect to have as much fun in 2000. ******************************************************************** Very good job with "cant." With the current sights, it is easy to know that one's cant is consistant and have elevation / wind clicks independent of each other. The latter does not happen with service rifle sights, but it is easy to make a chart of corrections. The fundamental principles are: to the extent possible, make the gun fit the shooter and then build a solid & consistant position. Chet tends to have too many principles and they get in each others way at times. Keep up the good work! Good news is that at a prone tournament I put on last Sat., we had a new Junior shooter (came from service rifle) who did very well. Far too few new shooters. Warm regards, Mac ****************************************************************** FROM: Wayne Sorensen, Canadian Smallbore Rifle Team Re: hot weather clothing > I use spun-polyester underwear against my skin (shirt only) in hot weather, and a light sweat-shirt on top of it. I ran across the underwear in talking to a buddy of mine who does alot of 'touring' skiing in the Rockies near Calgary. His crowd uses it to wick moisture away from the skin and into the next layers of clothing so they don't freeze. I immediately saw that he has the same problem (but with a far more dangerous conclusion) as us!! Anyway, the stuff is inexpensive and can be bought at most hiking/skiing shops that are worth their salt. I bought mine at Mountain Equipment Co-op (a Canadian chain). If anyone can't find any, let me know and I'll try to help. It makes me feel a lot cooler than anything I have tried before (in 22 years of shooting). Also, after arriving in Cuba for a World cup, we trained without drinking water the first day, and my body reacted by sweating like there was no tomorrow!!!! Lesson: keep your body hydrated and you will sweat less! Drink even when you are not thirsty, and be conscious of your urination amount and frequency to see if your body is getting enough liquid. In humid conditions, canvas jackets and pants stiffen up an amazing amount, so you can probably get away with less sweaters. As an aside, you may want to take opportunities to train in similar humidity and temperature conditions for this reason, so that you know what to expect. I have totally lost my positions at major events because the clothing had swelled up so much. I felt like I was suddenly in a straight-jacket! Conversely, if you are coming from Malaysia to Calgary (elev. 3,500 feet, humidity about 20%), be prepared for your jacket to become a limp rag offering little support... Re: Cant of rifles I watched Glenn Dubis shoot a 397 kneeling at the Atlanta World Cup this year, and you better believe he has some cant on his gun!! No doubt he has worked hard on his position and has the right combination of sling, buttplate and cheekpiece tension to control everything.... He went on to win the 3-p match, as you probably know. I wouldnt exactly call his kneeling performance 'careless', as Chet declares. Conversely, and in the same match, Josef Gonci has his rifle set up in standing to have absolutely no cant at all. He shot a 391 standing.... Interestingly, he has the buttplate canted way to the LEFT!! Most shooters have the buttplate canted to the RIGHT, moving the rifle to the LEFT and closer to their head. Cheekpiece: Alot of shooters get into trouble because the factory designed the cheekpiece of their rifle for a Collie, not a human. So , they lean the rifle over to see thru the sights, or they tilt their head over to the right. Even on all my top-dollar match rifles in the past and present (Anschutz as well as the supposedly universal Walther KK200PM), i have basically had to severely reduce the size of the cheekpiece, or modify the lateral adjustment mechanism to give me more room for experimentation. Then I move it from side to side until I can plunk my head down into a comfortable position (for my neck) that can be found and maintained IN THE LONG TERM! I see some shooters who have a 'dish' shaped cheekpiece. I prefer what I call a 'shelf' design, which is a cleaner, almost right -angle edge to rest your head on. It makes for consistent placement of the head. The Feinwerkbau 600 was one of the first rifles to offer this sort of cheekpiece in a competition rifle. Anschutz has always offered some fat, rounded cheeekpiece that looks nice but never fits.... the bandsaw always beckons. Other components: It is fine to write down a mission statement that says the rifle must be absolutely vertical in order to shoot well. Unfortunately, in the real world we athletes have to deal with a number of forces acting on the rifle - sling tension, right-hand grip pressure, head-weight resting on the gun, palm rest, butt-hook, etc. All these forces act on the 'in-recoil' path of the barrel, and cannot be avoided. The object is to minimize their impact on the jump of the rifle. The hard work comes in orchestrating all the components of the position to achieve this, and there is no short-cut. Get down, shoot, get up, make a change, down, shoot, up, make a change, etc. But it IS possible to shoot good scores with some cant, so do not lose hope. Personally, I have decided that minimizing lateral pressures is the key. I hook my elbow madly in all positions, so as to avoid side-pressure from the left hand. I also prop my prone position up on the right arm so that the right hand is not hanging off the pistol grip and dragging the rifle to the right. I also spend alot of time getting the buttplate to fit, so that any twisting of the rifle during recoil is minimized. Wayne Sorensen sorenw1@investorsgroup.com ****************************************************************** Another aspect to the cant discussion: The method described by Chet to reach a cant=0 situation talks about position and forces of the head in relation to the rifle cheek piece. However, especially for standard / air rifle, shoulder contact is also involved here. If you insist on a straight, relaxed head position, you may end up with only the tip of the butt plat having proper contact with the shoulder. On the other hand, starting from a good, solid shoulder/upper arm contact, you are forced to use some (more) rifle cant (and perhaps even head cant) to get eye and sights aligned. The book of Buhlmann, Reinkemeier and Eckhardt (*) shows some nice examples of the extremes and of compromises. The authors mention a trend towards lower shouldering and hance more cant: not only rifle cant, but even head cant! (*) "Wege des Gewehrs Band 1 : die Technik" by Gaby Buhlmann, Heinz Reinkemeier, and Maik Eckhardt. EINVERLAG ISBN 3-00-001509-4 (That's Buhlmann with u-umlaut; see also UIT Mailing List Vol. 2 Issue 18). ------------- I have a question related to cant that I've been playing with for some time. Does the use of riser blocks increase the Point of Impact displacement caused by a certain cant angle error? Why (not)? Jeroen Hogema (air rifle, The Netherlands) jhogema@worldonline.nl [Editor - yes, it does increase the displacement if you have angle error. See the next article.] ****************************************************************** I was asked to expound on why canting might be less desirable than not canting: Editor - In closing let me point out that with all due respect to Antonio Banderas and Bruce Willis, canting a pistol is not a required or desirable skill. Best regards, Phil [Editor - I responded saying the POI projection would be a circle rather than an ellipse if the rifle were rotated about the sight line.] You are exactly right! Boy, did I miss the boat on that one. (See what happens when you let biological scientists fool around with simple physics!) To further your point, I called my friend Ken Oehler (Oehler Research) and discussed this whole issue with him. He confirms your position that a conical is the resulting shape and that there is absolutely no problem with canting except that it somewhat complicates the making of sight corrections. As long as the cant is consistent there is no reason not to cant the firearm. Good call! Best regards, Phil [Editor - so to more fully answer Jeroen's question above, the use of blocks would cause a larger POI circle to be projected on the target if you were to rotate the rifle about the sight line. Obviously, for a given cant angle error the amount of arc inscribed on a larger circle will be greater.] ****************************************************************** I need to know results of World Championship in rapid fire pistol. Only winners and their results in 1990 (Moscow) and 1994 (Milano) I want necessarily, other results from other years are advantage for me. Thank you Peter Mlynarcik mlynarcik@hotmail.com [Editor - I would contact the ISSF directly on this unless one of our readers has UIT Journals from those time periods.] ****************************************************************** End of UIT Mailing List #36 Michael Ray - Systems Engineer Rose-Hulman Inst. of Tech. Rifle Coach UIT Shooting Page - http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/1190/index.htm