MPL Rested Pistol Competition - marvellous

[RedFox]

I can't believe how good this Rested Pistol discipline is in the MPL competition. I've just shot this for the first time as an intro for me returning to shooting in general - it's such a leveller of skills and abilities that I'm surprised not more of us are doing it. It also gave me a great confidence boost for then attempting the 6yd MPL Pistol and I believe helped to improve my handling skills.

It's such a simple idea - resting the butt end on a suitable 50mm diameter tube, at a convenient height for sitting or standing, allows you to sort out your trigger control and sight picture and have the inherent straight arm free-hand wobble reduced - in my case it didn't completely remove the wobble, but certainly reduced it to a minimum.

It is simple to shoot, but please don't think that means easy - you still need to practice, practice, practice, breathe and squeeze and maintain the same sight picture for each shot. I used an HW40 that is effectively recoilless, but there's still a slight barrel jump when you release and follow through - you also seem to know more positively when you've pulled one off to the side and spoiled what you thought would be a good score.

I had to think about how to construct the "rest" and what height to use it from and considered using 50mm plastic waste pipe (but didn't want to buy a 3m whole length, nor had any offcuts) so I first made up a flat piece of pine shelf with 2 x 50mm pipe clips screwed side by side to the wood. I opted to fire from a seated position (I have joint problems and fibromyalgia) and placed my bespoke pine shelf / pipe clip rest on the top shelf of a 5 tread step ladder Turn the step ladder round so your feet are in the open part of the ladder frame, not the treaded side when you're seated and, voila, stable rest. To fire from a standing position next time I'll acquire some open tube, cut a slot along the length and push it onto the top rail of the step ladder - no need for an expensive shooting chair

With regards to the butt being on the tube, it obviously helps to have a flat butt, so to speak, as that needs to form a tangent with the tube. Having any protrusions from the butt such as a CO2 screw or a filling port won't help, so that will probably determine your choice of pistol for you.

I can't stop recommending this enough - you need to try this as a discipline. I feel this will also encourage more of us to shoot pistol - I was a full bore and small bore rifle shooter for years and this has been a revelation.

What do you think?

[zooma]

Thanks for your enthusiastic "support"

We will continue to offer the supported pistol class in the next MPL series and hope others reading your report will be encouraged to give it a try as it is a very good and interesting discipline to shoot - and as you suggest it can also help to improve and give confidence to your regular free standing pistol shooting as well.

Your cheap and easy method of achieving a legal sized support should also encourage others to "give it a go" as you have shown it is easy and inexpensive to "knock something up" at home that will do the job.

This is the ONLY class in the MPL competition where all types of single shot air pistol can be used and a recoilless type (of any sort) is a real advantage.

[zooma]

The next MPL competition starts today - and we have already had one new entry for the Supported Air Pistol class

Lets hope we get a few more join in this season as it is a good new discipline that is well worth having a go at !

[Grunalf]

Hi

I've signed up - but haven't built my rest yet. I'm hoping to make it the same height as my usual standing position so that I can concentrate on sight picture and shot release as if I was shooting free hand.

I think I'll need to make it adjustable until I get the perfect height, I'll share my design once I get it figured out!.

Happy shooting

Paul

[Grunalf]

Hi

I tried this last night with a make shift support - (aerosol can gaffer taped to a piece of wood stacked on some boxes on top of my shooting table, no wonder my kids call me a bodger!)- only to find that the cocking arm of my IZH 46m means that the pistol rests quite far behind the centre of gravity.

This means that I need to apply quite a lot of force to keep the sights aligned resulting in the shakes - even worse than free hand!

Looking at the various threads on Supported Pistol, it seems that a wedge is sometimes used on the base of the grip - I'll need to see what I can make and still allow the pistol to be cocked.

If that fails I'll get my RWS C225 out but I fear that this will play havoc with my trigger control on the IZH - the reason I decided to have a go at Supported Pistol.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Straight shooting.

Paul

[Grunalf]

OK - rest has been built.

I built a small table from an offcut of pine board about 40cm high and 25cm wide - two sides, a top and a centre brace (all I could do with the wood I had to hand).

This sits on top of my shooting table (actually an Ikea storage box) which is about 90cm high.

I did not have any 50mm pipe, but had some 40mm plastic waste pipe, so I cut two 40cm lengths and cut one down the length.
I then pushed one over the other giving a diameter of about 47mm which should be OK (maximum diameter is 50mm) and makes the pipe a little more sturdy.

This is then mounted on two M12 x150mm coach bolts fitted to the top of the table with bolts and washers above and below - this allows the height of the rest to be adjusted by about 80mm.

I tried it out with my IZH46m - and found I got reasonable sized groups but still had the shakes vertically.

Carefully adjusting the height (lowering) brought the group close to centre of the target and I found that I could hold the sight image better.

Only had about 10 shots before I had to pack it in - I still found that I got the shakes trying to hold the sight image steady because of the nose heavy nature of the IZH 46m and the position of the cocking lever pushing the point of contact well behind the centre of gravity..

I'll try with this for a practice 30 shot match and see how I get on before I try make a wedge for the IZH 46m.

I'll post pictures when I figure out where to put them so I can link to them!

Thanks for reading

Paul

[Peter Pig]

Just to add another rest to the pot I use a photographic tripod with a five and a half inch length of surplus curtain pole threaded for the quarter inch whitworth camera thread, I will at some time have get hold a length of aluminum bar and use that.
This has the benefit of being portable to the range and can be used on the shooting bench and in my garage.

[thirdwheel]

Brilliant info on different ideas for making a little rest and how to keep it simple. This branch of the sport is big in Germany and growing and really does level the field for all ages. Not their myself yet "cough" though.

George

[Grunalf]

Hi

I've put some photos here:

https://goo.gl/photos/2kYTyzMKupZ7ZVjK9

These show my adjustable bench reset and the wedge I made for my IZH46m.

I had to remove the wooden end of the cocking lever to allow it to sit below the wedge - I need to watch I don't trap my fingers!

The wedge extends 40mm in front of the rear most finger position which is what the spec allows (as far as I can make out).

I have found that I can get goodish groupings with this set up but every now and then I pull a shot and it seems to be worse than shooting off hand - it seems to exaggerate the error - perhaps because the pistol pivots about the contact point with the rest?

I think there's a lot to learn and I'm hoping that this will also help my off hand shooting.

Roll on the MPL Supported Pistol competition!

Paul

[thirdwheel]

This is just what is needed to de-fathom the rested pistol, great pictures, your rest looks great and well made too and totally transportable and useable at most clubs without any problems, certainly at ours as we have nice solid benches and one is completely adjustable for disabled shooters again easy to use from a wheel chair, will knock up something similar and let them have a go at the range. We do a lot of bench rest shooting but no rested pistol --- yet.

George

[Grunalf]

Hi

Just came across this link to the ISSF Supported Rest Shooting Rules in another thread in the General Air Pistol section:

http://www.issf-sports.org/getfile.a...ition_2016.pdf

Thanks thisisdonald for this!

Paul