I promise I will give you all an honest-to-God after-action report, but that will have to come after typing has stopped hurting; until then, you can read the official-ish one here.
Better Half qualified as a Rifleman on Sunday, shooting a 211, 212, and 227, each score with a different rifle due to equipment failures, and hit the Redcoat target shingle every single time; I qualified as a Rifleman on Saturday, shooting a 210, then a 223, 227, and 233 on Sunday, and managed to clear the Redcoat target on Sunday. Evidence will be forthcoming as soon as I take pictures. Commenter Lynn H. also qualified on Sunday, shooting a 222 and 223 as well. Apparently 40% of the shooters qualified, which is either close to or legitimately a record of some type. (Max possible score is 250, qualifying is 210.)
Oh, and this was only the third time Better Half has ever fired a rifle, and the second time she was behind her rifle. No one is "too" inexperienced for Appleseed, though knowing how to run your rifle is kind of a necessary requirement (they just do not have the time to cover it).
Kilts are wholly unacceptable attire for spending eight hours outside in <60 degree weather and >10mph winds. I am very thankful WizardPC brought emergency pants.
I got in WizardPC’s pants.
Testing your rifles beforehand by shooting ~500 rounds of the ammunition you use at Appleseed in no way guarantees that the rifles will actually work on the firing line.
Yes, both our rifles failed. My homebuild consistently refused to strip the second round in the magazine (we would load, make ready, aim, fire, and then I would go click, have to re-cycle the slide, and everything was peachy after that; I am running a Wolff extra-power spring), occasionally had the bolt stick back after shooting, and occasionally nosed a fresh round into the bottom of the chamber, binding things up; while Better Half’s Magnum Research… well, it found pretty much every failure it could. Stovepipe, failure to extract, double-feed, double-feed with stovepipe, bend the bullet 30deg off the casing while trying to load it, bend the bullet 30deg off the casing while in the magazine. I assume replacing the extractor might fix some of that, but it is not like the existing extractor is that old, and I do not believe MR uses stock Ruger extractors. I wonder if this is warranty-claim-able…
These repeated failures were tremendously frustrating, but you cannot let it get to you, otherwise your shooting will go to hell.
Know which target you are shooting at. It does not matter how well you shot your neighbor’s target, and your neighbor might be a bit annoyed.
Get a good sling. This can be hard, and does not include most slings found on Amazon (it did not include mine), so hopefully your shoot boss will bring some to sell like ours did.
Make sure your optic is set up to be usable at both standing and prone positions; hint: your head will be in different positions on the stock.
Keep trying. Better Half shot every single Army Qualification Test and Redshirt target, and progressively improved on every one, despite having rifles drop out.
Take a lot of padding. The shoot took place in a (thankfully) covered firing line with a concrete floor, and not only was said concrete hard, it was quite cold. We took remnants of carpet large enough to stretch from past our elbows in prone to past our knees, and then some cheapie $7 sleeping bag mats from Wal-Mart. It was not enough; thanks to a mild case of pectus excavatum, the bottoms of my left ribs are about ready to kill me, and Better Half’s arm joints are no happier. I cannot imagine how WizardPC (on a comforter) and Oddball (on a fleece blanket) survived.
A huge "Thank you!" to all the orange- and red-hats and the green-hat responsible for this whole shindig.
If you have not been to an Appleseed event yet, you are cheating yourself out of a lot of good instructing and an interesting look at the instigating actions and decisions of the founding of our nation; it may be a bit like trying to drink water out of a firehose, but eventually some of it will sink it, and you will become a better rifleman.
And that is what it is all about.
I can’t recommend Appleseed highly enough. Congrats to the new Riflemen! It took me a few tries, I had set a personal goal to qualify and shoot a clean Redcoat using iron sights and did so last August with an S&W M&P 15-22.If you pay attention, there is no way you can leave an Appleseed without being a better shot. Even if you don’t qualify to attend for free and have to pay, it’s a steal. Taking my kids and wife to the local one this weekend.
It was great meeting you, Better Half, WizardPC and Oddball this weekend. I now have organic avatars to put with the ‘verse ones and perhaps a better understanding of the musings I find here and at Wizard and Oddball’s place.
This was my second Appleseed and apparently a few things managed to stay attached inside this old brain pan. I never expected to qualify this weekend but the instruction provided is designed, as you mention, to bring out your inner rifleman.
You’re hurting? Surely not, young buck! I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt a bit (try alot). I could barely move last night (could have been the couple of glasses of wine) and after a pain reliever/anti-inflammatory and a good night’s sleep, I did manage to drag myself into to work today.
I’ll second all you recommendations above and give a big thumbs up to the volunteer instructors, safety officers and range boss for a informative (technically and historically)and worthwhile clinic. BTW, Claude asked if I’d like to become an instructor and I am seriously considering it.
Told you not to worry so much! Congrats to all!
Knew you two would qual! So lets see some patches…
If the nearest one wasn’t two hours away I probably would, it’s not feasible at the moment though.
You folks that traveled hours to be able to lay down on cold concrete really have my admiration. It was extremely rewarding to see your group excel so much. I had no idea that Better Half was a novice; she operated that MR like an old pro. I’ll take back my charge of showing off
. Her frustration was visible, so I’m glad that she used me loaners. She still needs to hold the trigger back a bit longer for follow through. I’m sure that some of the finer points will give her an “aha!” moment in the near future.
And I’m glad you used the Wizard’s emergency pants, but I guess we’ll never know what a Scott/Gael wears under his kilt…
One of the loaners I let students use for Appleseed, I just noticed last weekend did not have an extractor. I have no idea how long it has been gone, and several students have scored rifleman with it. I only noticed it when a student didn’t get all the rounds off in Stage Two of the AQT. Extrators are apparently Extraneous.
It is a blowback action… theoretically, extractors would only be used to control the round during feeding (keeping it on the bolt face) and extracting unfired live rounds.
@ AlanR – GunRightsAlert.com: After seeing the targets on the range, and seeing how small they are at 25 yards, I have concluded there is absolutely no way my shoddy eyesight is going to allow me engage things that small with iron sights. I rationalize this to myself by concluding that I am not going to be able to do a friend-or-foe identification on a target 400 yards away with my naked eye, so why would I shoot it? Or something like that…
On the flip side, a gentleman at the shoot with us qualified on a bolt-action, iron-sighted rifle, and he was at least half-again older than I am. *sigh*
Have fun at your next one!
@ Lynn H: It was good meeting you as well! Did you end up qualifying with the rifle you brought, or with the one you had to borrow? It definitely seems like more people qualify with optics than without, but those two teenage girls managed it with irons, as did the aforementioned bolt-action dude.
And, hell, worse than the constant proning on concrete, we had a three-hour drive home after the shoot on Sunday. I was pretty much a zombie all day Monday, and am still probably recovering.
I think you would make a great addition to the instructor corps at Appleseed, and if they want to keep their “double every year” plan (which I hope they understand is a short term plan), they could definitely use you
. I would be tempted to consider it myself, if the closest one was not two hours away…
@ Heather: Hey, it was not exactly easy, both in terms of shooting and in terms of everything else. Probably half of my AQTs were… unsuitable for scoring.
@ Mark@Sea: We are still sorting targets, and figuring the best way to photograph them. Plus there is still this whole “real life” problem
.
@ Stan: Like I said, we had to head three hours one way to attend ours, and spent two nights in a hotel. It definitely adds to the cost, there is no question, but hopefully they will be able to expand into a new one near you soon
.
@ Charlie: First off, thank you for taking a weekend out of your life to help us become Riflemen and better riflemen at that, and doubly thank you for bringing spare rifles for those folks who had issues with theirs… I have no idea what was going wrong with Better Half’s rifle, but I will be getting in touch with MR in the near future to send it back to them and see if they can figure it out. Like you saw on the firing line (I think it was you… sorry), there was nothing out of whack on the internals when I stripped it down and cleaned it, but darned if the thing wanted to behave.
We both need to work on our trigger control some… I release quickly after the shot as well, and I know that is responsible for at least one of my fliers.
Thanks again!
@ John: You say that, and I know the physics support you, but I have read far too many posts / threads wherein “improved”, or at least new, extractors remarkably improve the reliability and function of the 10/22 in question. In any case, for such a simple design, they surely do have a plethora of ways to go wrong…
@Linoge: I didn’t get to qualify with my personal rifle (iron sights only) due to the trigger issue on Sunday so my qualification scores were optic assisted. I never had a ‘official’ scoring of any targets I shot with iron. However, I did score two AQTs from Saturday using the Android version of the Appleseed AQT Score app Monday night and, using just iron sights, got a 186 and a 189.
Perhaps TNColonel will get lucky and find a host range in East Tennessee soon.
Linoge, yes it was me that saw the MR mis-behave. You might want to take a sharpie to the metal parts of the mags and see if the bolt is catching on an edge.
It and its magazines will be making the trek back to see it’s Maker next week… hopefully they will be able to suss out whatever the hell is going on inside.