November 2021

This month, I switched primarily to air rifle on the 10m range. For the most part, I used AR10, and for the most part I shot unsupported.

7th of November

It is a little difficult to score much of today's cards. Why? Because I fired most shots at the centre target of the card, instead of 2 per each of the 5 targets on the card. Why was I doing that? Because of the utterly awful unsupported score I got last month. I wanted to limit variables, improve my stance without having to worry about irrelevancies.

What this means in essence is that I'm going to have to make some assumptions; when several pellets have clearly gone through the same hole (making it difficult to distinguish their score) I'll take the lowest possible score. By later in the month I did switch over to (mostly) 2 per each of 5.

Everything fired today was unsupported AR10 on the 10m range.

Card ID	Score	Notes	Scanned Image
Unsupported AR10 1/3 [center target]	45	3 missed	SCAN
" 1/3 [combined tests]	36	2 missed. Done on the same card as 1/3.	"
" 2/3	54		SCAN
" 3/3	46	2 missed	SCAN
" Ex 4/3	25	3 missed	SCAN
" 5/3 A	48	2 missed	SCAN
" 5/3 B	34	2 missed	"

I shot around 80 pellets this session, 70 of which I scored above. I started to feel (incorrectly) like I was getting the hang of it, even though my performance dipped throughout the shoot. Looking back, my groupings are so bad that it's hard to even call them grouped. This means that the score is irrelevant, as shots are landing effectively randomly.

14th of November

I was still shooting in much the same way this week as I was on the 7th; shooting all at the centre target. Also, apparently I had no pen or pencil this day and resorted to crayon for card markings.

Card ID	Score	Notes	Scanned Image
AR10 Test	40	1 miss. Awful group.	SCAN
AR10 1/3	56	1 miss	SCAN
" 2/3	56	All on target	SCAN
" 3/3	45	1 miss	SCAN

I didn't shoot for long this day. I believe I got to the range later than usual, and only had time for 40 pellets before it closed. There's not a great deal to say at this point; I wasn't happy with my progress.

21st of November

Still AR10, still 10m. I finally switched to (mostly) 2 shots per each of the 5 targets per card. I mostly shot unsupported, but did a little bit of bench-rest too.

Stance	Card ID	Score	Notes	Scanned Image
Unsupported AR	AR10 Test	48	1 miss. "fuck me"	SCAN
"	" Centre	62	0 misses	SCAN
"	" 1/3	60	0 misses. It's quite clear how imprecise my shooting is with how far away from each other the holes are. The score is still kind of irrelevant at this stage.	SCAN
"	" 2/3	61	0 misses. "いいかな...". My precision seemed to be improving a little.	SCAN
"	" 3/3	53	0 misses. And then my precision plummeted again. I lacked consistency... "もう！"	SCAN
"	Test shots AR10	57	I did 11 shots on this card, which was all I had left in my tin. In scoring the card, to make it 10 shots again I removed an 8, one of the highest shots on the card. (I did this card after the bench-rest ones below)	SCAN
AR Bench-rest	AR10 benchrest 1/2	66		SCAN
"	" 2/2	69	Seeing how close the bench rest shots land to each other, that's the dream for unsupported. That said, my accuracy wasn't excellent on this last bench rest card. I think I was losing concentration.	SCAN

28th of November

On this day, I went to the range planning to continue my struggle with air rifles, but all the air rifles were taken by other club members. So I used an air pistol (AP3) instead 1 handed.

Card ID	Score	Notes	Scanned Image
Warmup + zeroing	56		SCAN
Warmup part 2	56		SCAN
1h AP3 1/3	64		SCAN
" 2/3	58	Apparently I was starting to become aggressive to myself, since I started writing things like "Aim for the black dot" on the card.	SCAN
" 3/3	73	And on this one I wrote "SHOOT BETTER". Hey, it worked!	SCAN

I ended this session on a high note. Overall, my scores were not great, but given that it had been a month since I'd shot air pistol, I was pretty happy. At least, at the end, I was. After the first card, my feelings were a little different:

November 2021 roundup

Here's a chart logging my average scores and number of misses, with lines of best fit. I've combined it with my data from September and October.

In previous months, I focused on AP 2h, and then AP 1h, but this month has been almost entirely AR with a sprinkle of AP 1h. This will of course make it hard to note useful trends at this point. Really, I'm hoping to begin seeing trends emerge by Yuletide.