A flashback - 2008 NRAA Queens at Belmont

[ecomeat]

This is one for those with a couple of minutes to read about "how it was", just eight short years ago in a Queens at Belmont. I was playing around on Google looking fr something completely different, and stumbled on the following thread with a lot of input from Rod Davies , who was shooting...and Alan Fraser who was in Vic, wishing he was shooting !
Rods comments about fish tailing winds and wild vertical are 100% relevant today....or any day
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2136

[plumbs7]

Great Flashback Tony. Really enjoyed it !

[RDavies]

Arrhhhh yes, back in the olden days, I remember it now sonny.
Actually the link is from June 2009. In June 2008 I had never shot in a Queens and swore I never would.

Back then, all F Open was squadded together on one or two targets away from everyone else, usually up near the end some where. We would shoot the whole 5 days together so the F Open group became fairly tight knit back then, always knowing exactly who had just shot what and who was in the lead, usually quite a bit of banter, slander, ribbing, slagging off and heckling to anyone who was doing unjustifiably well.
Back then we had Garry Hunts famous red light. The loser of each range had to wear the flashing red light on their belt until the next range, then the "caboose" would loudly pass it on to the next unfortunate person who did go so well.
The 6.5x284 was still very common then but the big booming 7mm 284 was starting to be seen by those big hairy chested blokes who were able to handle such a big beast.
We used 10 ring targets, where the 10 was around X ring size or slightly bigger, so 95s and 97s were pretty good.