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October 2nd, 2009
Congrats to Team Sierra Spindle Shooters and Team Sinclair. The Sierra-sponsored Spindle Shooters won both the 600- and 1000-yard team events for F-Open and the F-Open Team Aggregate. Likewise, Team Sinclair won both 600- and 1000-yard events and the Team Aggregate for F-TR. In the process of winning the F-TR Team Championship, Team Sinclair set new records. Brad Sauve, Team Sinclair shooter, posted: “I am proud to announce that Team Sinclair, sponsored by Sinclair International and Sierra, set new national records at the 2009 F-Class National Championship at Camp Butner. The new 600-yard team record is now 784-40x and the new 1000-yard team record is now 774-20x. Paul Phillips did a fine job coaching the team (and also shooting) along with Jeff Rorer and Derek Rodgers.” Finishing second in F-TR Team competition was the USA Veterans Team, while Charles Ballard’s Precision Rifle & Tool Team was runner-up to the Spindle Shooters in F-Open class.
Sierra Spindle Shooters: Shawn Ahrens, Jeff Cochran, Brett Solomon, Jeff Traylor.
Team Sinclair: Paul Phillips, Derek Rodgers, Jeff Rorer, Brad Sauve.
Click Here to View All TEAM Results (PDF File)
Individual Results through Friday
There’s one more day left in individual Competition. Currently, after two days of shooting, Charles Ballard (893-48X) leads F-Open, followed by Jim Murphy (888-43X), and Larry Bartholome (885-29X). In F-TR Class, Danny Biggs (866-31X) is in first place, with Jeff Rorer (864-28X) two points behind, and Darrell Buell (859-18X) in third. There are 87 competitors in F-Open Class, and 56 in F-TR.
CLICK HERE for All Individual Standings Through Friday (Excel file)
 Whidden’s Report from Butner
John Whidden writes: “Today’s conditions have been very tough and most shooters have been humbled! Clearly the leaders figured something out but most of us struggled. Danny Biggs has a 2-point lead lead in F-TR while Ballard is up by 5 in the F-Open class.
Winds started out fairly mild for the first string but all of that changed shortly afterward. Winds were from behind the firing line and fishtailing. Wind velocity climbed through the middle of the day and any slight angle change could easily have shooters crying the blues. Mirage offered little help mostly looking like a boil. As the time for team match arrived things were starting to calm a bit. The last shooters to shoot the team match all had realtively easy conditions.
Again the day at the range was long. Firing was completed near 6:00 PM. Tomorrow’s schedule holds three, 15-shot strings of individual fire and no team match. Weather is forecast to be milder with highs of about 82° F.”
October 2nd, 2009
John Whidden, our correspondent at Camp Butner, NC, provided an early report after the 600-yard stage at the 2009 F-class Nationals. Charles Ballard is leading F-Open while Danny Biggs is leading F-TR class. Ballard is the reigning 2008 F-Class Open Nat’l Champion.
Whidden reports: “After the 600-yard stage, the top three spots in F-Open are held by Charles Ballard 449-29X, Don Nagel 448-22X, and Robert Bock 447-28X.” We’ve learned that, in F-TR, after today’s 1000 yard phase, Danny Biggs is in front with an aggregate score of 866-31X, followed by Jeff Rorer with a 864-28X, and Darrell Buell with a 859-18X.
“Classic Butner” Conditions at Nationals
Whidden tells us that “Classic Butner” conditions (as described by F-Open shooter Tom Guercio) are prevailing: “Early in the day there was a switching headwind that turned around into a switching tailwind by the end of the day. Winds were relatively light, but changes came quickly making it easy to have shots in the 9 Ring.”
Whidden adds: “The match ran smoothly but shooting three 15-shot strings plus a team match made for a long day. The schedule is the same for tomorrow. Everything today was fired form the 600-yard line. The remainder of the match will be from 1000 yards. Weather was cool in the morning and warmed up very comfortably near mid day. Tomorrow the forecast predicts winds increasing to 15 mph with gusts to 25 mph, so I suspect that we will see changes on the scoreboard.”
We also asked John Whidden if Whidden Gunworks has any new products in the works. John reports: “We have new angles available for our pointing dies. Bryan Litz has helped us develop two new dies to better match the shape of a number of different bullets. These dies are available as an accessory for those who already own our Pointing Die System or we can supply a Pointing Die System with any of the three dies.”
September 30th, 2009
Speaking of Camp Butner (NC)… the 2009 F-Class National Championships commence today, Sept. 30th, at that range. America’s top F-Class shooters, and many competitors from overseas, will compete for honors in the nation’s fastest-growing long-range discipline. Competitors will be divided in two classes: Open and F-TR. Open Class allows any chambering under .40 caliber with a total weight of about 22 pounds, and a front pedestal rest may be used. F-TR class is limited to .223 Rem or .308 Winchester chamberings, with a max weight of 18.15 pounds. In most F-Class matches, F-TR shooters are limited to bipods — no pedestal front rests allowed.
Hosted by the North State Shooting Club, the Nationals kick off today (Sept. 30th) with open and team practice sessions. Thursday (Oct. 1) is the 600-yard phase of the event, followed by 1000-yard phases on both Friday and Saturday. Sunday is reserved as a make-up day in case of rain. On both Thursday and Friday, a 4-person team match follows the individual events. Barring rain delays, the National Champion will be crowned on Saturday after three final individual 1000-yard matches.
For more information, visit the North State Shooting Club website, or CLICK HERE to download the complete 2009 F-Class Nationals Program.
September 24th, 2009
North Carolina-based gunsmith Nat Lambeth is one of the gurus of the Savage world. He has built many highly competitive match rifles using Savage actions, employing his special accurizing methods. Nat recently built up a 6 BRX prone rifle using Gary Eliseo’s new S1 Savage Chassis. The 6 BRX, a 6BR improved with 30° shoulder, can be a very accurate cartridge, as demonstrated by Nat’s new rifle. Right out of the gate, this gun shot an 0.290 five-shot group during barrel break-in.
The rifle features a Savage Target action, factory Accutrigger, and a very accurate 32.5″, 8-twist Broughton 5C™ barrel. The load was Lapua 6BR brass hydraulically formed to 6 BRX, 32.5 grains of Hodgdon Varget, Wolf (Russian) SRM primers, and a Berger 105gr VLD bullet.
Nat really likes the 6 BRX chambering in a long-range prone rifle: “The 6mm BRX is like a 6mmBR on steroids. The whole purpose of the 6mm BRX and 6mm Dasher is to make the 6mmBR a better round for 600-1000 yard shooting. The have the advantages of the 6mmBR with a little more velocity. Most folks who shoot a 6mm BRX fire-form their 6mmBR brass by seating the bullets in the rifling and loading the 6mmBR case with a 90% load. The case expands into the larger chamber making a 6mmBR case now a 6mm BRX. [For this gun] I used my new Hornady Hydraulic Forming Die. [Editor: the hydraulic die will form the cases to about 95% of final shape using just the die, a water-filled case, and a mallet.] As you can see, the hydraulic die allowed me to start off with a standard 6mm BRX load from the get go. For optimum accuracy, barrel life, and case life the 6mm BRX seems to have an accuracy node between 3000 fps and 3080 fps.
Another factor is that the Broughton barrels seem to give about 100-150 fps more velocity. Almost every Broughton barrel that I have chambered seem to gain a little velocity after the first 200 rounds. I have chambered the 6mm BRX with most other barrel manufacturers and they all have shot well. This is a very sweet round.”
If you want to check out this rifle, head to the 2009 F-Class Nationals at Camp Butner, Sept. 30 – October 4. Nat explains: “This rifle will be at Butner for the F-Class Nationals and future matches and practices. I will have it and ammo available for those who would like to shoot it during the practice sessions both as a 6mm BRX and .308 Win.” For more info, call Nat Lambeth at (919) 556-0554 (Home/shop — evenings and weekends), (919) 662-6848 (cell), or email NLambeth [at] embarqmail.com.
September 6th, 2009
The 2009 F-Class National Championships will be held September 30 through October 4 at Camp Butner, North Carolina. This year the host North State Shooting Club has amassed a treasure trove of prize awards, worth over $15,000.00. If you’ve been debating whether to attend the Nationals, the lure of big money prizes should motivate you to load up and head to Butner.
 Rifles, Actions, Stocks, Scopes and More Will Be Awarded
2008 F-Class National Champion (and North State Club member) Charles Ballard reports that: “This years prize table is huge, with over $15,000 worth of prizes donated by our sponsors. Kelbly’s is donating an F-Class action to the top junior, and Precision Rifle & Tool is donating an F-Class stock. Remington Arms will give the top F-TR shooter a new Model 700™ XCR™ .308 Tactical Long Range rifle. All F-TR shooters will be entered in a drawing to win a new Savage F-TR Rifle. Nightforce Optics “will make two shooters very happy.”
F-Class Nationals Sponsor List
Bartlein Barrels
Berger Bullets
Broughton Barrels
Brux Barrels
D&B Supply
Ear East
Kelbly’s Inc.
King Canopy
Manson Precision Reamers
Nightforce Optics
Pacific Tool & Gauge
Precision Rifle and Tool
Pro-Shot
Redding Reloading Equipment
Remington Arms
Savage Arms
Sierra Bullets
CLICK HERE for a complete list of F-Class Nationals Prizes
CLICK HERE for F-Class Nationals Program, Schedule, and Application Form
Note: The entry application (page 4 of program above) must be filled out and mailed to: Jane Green, 6147 Hebron Road, Oxford, NC 27565
The Nationals commence with a Practice Day on September 30. On Thursday, October 1, the match begins with the 600-yard Stage (both individual and 4-man team match). The first 1000-yard Stage will be held on October 2 (individual and team), while the final 1000-yard stage is set for October 3. October 4 is reserved as a make-up day in case of bad weather.
August 29th, 2009
 The Spirit of America National Fullbore Rifle Prone Championship is now underway at the NRA Whittington Center in Raton, NM. Sponsored by the Bald Eagle Rifle Club, the Spirit of America (SOA) is a major match that draws many of the top prone shooters in the country. The match is for Target Rifles as well as for F-Class Rifles. “Target Rifle” is defined as “a rifle chambered for use with the unmodified 7.62×51 commercial or .308 Winchester cartridge [or] a rifle chambered for use with the unmodified 5.56mm commercial or .223 Remington cartridge.” In practical terms, “Target Rifle” is a class for .308 or .223 Palma rifles.
Fullbore rifle competition originated in the United Kingdom in the 1960s as an offshoot of Service Rifle shooting and has gained popularity in the United States. Both team and individual matches are featured in the championship, in which competitors shoot from distances of 300 yards up to a maximum of 1000. The match is governed by the Fullbore Rifle Rulebook. Different sets of targets will be used by the two classes:
Target Rifle: 300 yds – MR63; 500 yds – MR65; 600 yds – MR1; 800, 900, 1000 yds – NRA LR
F-Class: MR63FC, MR-65FC, MR-1FC, and LRFC
Running for a full week, the SOA consists of a series of daily matches, each with their own awards and rankings. At the end of the week Aggregate awards are determined for Grand Aggregate (Target Rifle and F-Class), Short Range Aggregate (Target Rifle), Long Range Aggregate (Target Rifle), and SOA Team Match Aggregate.
Aug 28 — Cunico Automotive Team Match
Aug 29 — Folsom Shooting Club Team Match
Aug 30 — McGee Stocks Individual Match
Aug 31 — U.S. Armed Forces Indiv. Match
Sep 1 — Sierra Bullets Team Match
Sep 1 — Galaxy Glass Long Range Team Match
Sep 2 — Sinclair International Indiv. Match
Sep 3 — Sierra Bullets Indiv. Match
CLICK HERE for a seven-page Guide to the Match that includes rules, match information, and complete schedule.
August 3rd, 2009
The August issue of Target Shooter, the excellent UK-based webzine, is now available FREE online. As usual, this edition is chock full of interesting feature articles written “by shooters, for shooters”. You can either read the monthly e-magazine online, OR you can now download the entire August issue to your computer. This lets you peruse multiple articles at your leisure. (For readers with a slow web connection, reading offline may be more convenient, once you’ve downloaded the file.)
 Among the featured articles this month are an authoritative section on rifle maintenance and scope-mounting by Vince Bottomley (p. 13), a user’s guide to the Redding T7 press by Laurie Holland (p. 55), and an excellent guide to Rimfire Ammo selection and sorting by Carl Boswell (p. 40). If you follow Carl’s procedures (including the visual inspections shown at right), you’ll experience fewer unexplained “flyers” — we can guarantee that.
Complete F-Class Worlds Report
Amazingly, Target Shooter’s August issue contains a detailed, 4-page report on the 2009 F-Class World Championships which concluded just a few days ago in England. You’ll enjoy the reports from the field and interviews with top F-Classers from around the world. In addition to the match report, the August Target Shooter profiles Britain’s Gary Costello, the winner of the Individual World F-Class Championship.
Gary’s rifle was built by American gunsmith Alan Warner and is chambered as a 7mm-270 WSM. (The 270 case is used because it has a slightly longer neck and slightly less capacity). The action is an aluminium Stolle Panda with RBLP configuration. The scope is a March 10-60X mounted in Kelbly rings. The stock is an Alex Sitman Master Class laminated long-range thumbhole model. Sadly, the handsome gray/blue stock broke at the thumb-hole during shipping from the USA. However, Pet Walker of Walker Customer Rifles in West Yorkshire restored the stock to better than new condition, providing Gary with a beautiful rig that carried him to victory.
July 31st, 2009
 This year’s 2009 World F-Class Championship was held at the historic Bisley Range in England, and UK Shooters served their country proud, winning the prestigious F-Open Team Competition and dominating the individual matches in both F-Open and F-TR classes. Great Britain’s F-Open shooters proved their mastery of the challenging Bisley course, posting a 3436-230V score to top the second-place American Team by 59 points (Team USA score was 3377-234V). The South African Team, defending Champions, finished third with a 3337-188V score.
UK Shooters truely dominated the Individual F-Open Championship, capturing ALL of the top ten places, lead by Gary Costello (1st Place) with 458-44V, followed close behind by fellow Brit Des Parr with 456-36V. That’s nine Brits and a Scot in the Top Ten. In the Individual Competition, F-TR division, Britain finished one/two at the top of the podium, with Russell Simmons (437-23V) winning the Gold, and countryman George Barnard (432-23V) winning Silver. American Stan Pate took third with a 420-25V score.
American F-Open Team Vice-Captain Shiraz Balolia, writing in his Bisley Blog, suggested that the windy conditions favored the 7mm caliber used by the home team Brits: “The individual World F-Class Championship is over. We essentially got overpowered by the 7mm guns. Bisley is not a range that you can win using 6.5mm guns, which is what the whole US Team is using. Of the top 10 positions, all but one were Brits with 7mm guns. The odd one was a Scot also with a 7mm gun.”
After the Team Match concluded, Shiraz wrote: “The British team won the World F-Class Open Championship. USA took second and South Africa third. The Brits beat us by 59 points and they were very surprised that we came that close to them. I believe that there were two main factors that worked very well for them. First and foremost was that they had full knowledge of their range and have been practicing on that range fairly regularly as a team for quite some time. Secondly, their 7mm guns were a good wind-bucking caliber that, when combined with good coaches (who have coached at that range for many years), gave them the results they were after. Someone made the comment to me that the Americans were improving by the day. Unfortunately, we ran out of days and it was game over. Our coaches did an outstanding job under very trying conditions. We beat the previous champs, South Africa, by 40 points.”
EDITOR’s NOTE: In the previous F-Open World Championships in South Africa, Team USA was defeated by the home team South Africans who were shooting 7mms. At Bisley in 2009, the same thing happened, with the Brits winning on their home turf, again using 7mms. Do we see the writing on the wall?
CLICK HERE for Complete F-Class Championships Results.
CLICK HERE for 2009 F-Class World Championship Photo Archive.
Americans Win F-TR Class
In the F-TR class the American Team powered to victory, haulting the British juggernaut. Under the leadership of Captain Darrel Buell, and coach Gary Rassmussen, shooters Brad Sauve, Dale Carpenter, Warren Dean, Monte Milanuk, Paul Phillips, Stan Pate, Jeff Rorer, and John Weil won the F-Class Restricted Teams Match with a 1581-76V score. The USA Rutland Cup Open Team of David Bailey, Mike Downey, David Gosnell, and Larry Taite, coached by Nancy Tompkins, also finished first, besting a strong Great Britain Red squad (second place), and Don Nagel’s third-place Connecticut Yankees.
All photos © 2009 by 762_AK, used by permission.
July 23rd, 2009
 F-Class competition at the Bisley Range in the UK is well under way. Currently, shooters from many countries are competing in the F-Class segments of the annual U.K. Imperial Meeting tournament. This will be followed by the actual F-Class World Championships, an event held every four years. The F-Class Worlds officially start with the individual championships next Monday and Tuesday (July 27-28) with the “main event”, the Team Championship, on Wednesday and Thursday (July 29-30). USA F-Class Open Team Vice-Captain Shiraz Bololia is providing regular written updates in his Bisley Blog. Here’s part of his latest report: “Today there was only one 300-yard match …. For me it was an early morning shoot at 8:00 am. The wind was dead. The weather was cool and overcast. Reminded me of the Plantation 300 yard range in Bellingham, WA where I shoot a lot of matches. First time since I got here the wind was less than 2 MPH. Less than ½ MOA change on my gun. It was a 15-shot match and I shot a perfect 75 with 15 Vs. As Coach Mead later said, even a blind Hog could have done that! Anyway that guarantees me a spot in the finals. Lot of US shooters in the St George’s finals.”
AK’s Great Bisley Photo Collections
In addition, British shooter “762AK” has posted fantastic collections of images from the World F-Class Championship, as well as the Imperial Meeting, which is being held concurrently. 762AK, a very talented photographer, is updating his Bisley photo collection daily. You should definitely check out these collections on Flickr. Click the links below to see hundreds of quality photos.
2009 F-Class Worlds | F-Class Worlds Slideshow
Imperial Meeting 2009 | Imperial Meeting Slideshow
July 14th, 2009
The U.S. F-Class Open Rifle team takes off for the UK on July 15th to participate in the 3rd World F-Class Championship, hosted in Bisley, England for 2009. This prestigious match is held every four years. The American Team won the inaugural event held in Canada, while the second World Championship was won by the South African squad on their home turf. To view profiles of U.S. Team members and learn more about the 2009 Championships, click the link below:
Daily Bisley Blogs from Shiraz Balolia
 This year Shiraz Balolia, U.S. Team Vice Captain, plans to provide Daily Updates on the World Championships via a Web Blog. In his first Blog entry, Balolia writes: “On July 17th [there are] three matches, the Century 500 and 600 yards and the Admiral Hutton 900 yards. There are a number of different matches just about every single day until Saturday the 25th of July. Then, the World Championships start on Monday July 27, 2009.
The whole U.S. F-Class Open team will be shooting the proven 6.5-284 caliber. Several of the other teams are shooting the ballistically superior 7mm calibers, but we expect to outwit them with our calculated wind calls. The English have a ‘home court’ advantage and are utilizing their best wind readers who know the nuances of their ranges inside out.”
CLICK HERE for F-Class Blog by Shiraz Balolia
F-Class News for Twitter Fans
The U.S. F-Class team has also created a Twitter account, so you can follow events via this popular social networking site. CLICK HERE for the latest F-Class “Tweets”.
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