Originally Posted by
Gerard
Whatever ails Ian seems to have leapt across the pond and contaminated my club members. I brought my newly acquired, well worn but hard shooting (for what it is) Junior to the club last evening and pulled it out of my kit after shooting a half-dozen targets with my Pardini. Got a LOT of weird looks. I offered it around, hoping someone would be brave and take a shot or two. Nothing. Every shooter leaned backwards as I offered it, like it were a piece of luncheon meat with green-grey blotches on it or something similar. I'd never shot it at 10 metres before - just received it a week ago and rebuilt it with proper lubrication so it's new to me. The spring is in excellent condition, but being a .177" Junior it's shooting around 245fps. There's a very noticeable interval between the bang of the piston and the impact on the trap plate. As there's no vertical sight adjustment (it's an early 1950's model) I soon found that aiming at the top edge of the target paper resulted in a hit on the black. That's about all I could hope for. Have to work on that, try to learn to keep all the shots at least in the black at 10 metres.
Perhaps if that's manageable the rest of the formal 10 metre AP shooters at the club won't be so stand-offish about it. But I doubt it. Too much of a toy in their eyes. One said it looked like a flare gun. Oh well. More shooting for me if no one else wants a try. Their loss. When I went back to my K10 for one last target before calling it a night I shot a 93 with 5 hits on the 10. Not my best target this week (managed a 97 two days ago at home) but my best for the night. And it was obvious I owed it to the harsh reminders of trigger smoothness and sight picture maintenance brought into crisp focus by shooting a dozen shots with the Webley. After that, shooting an Olympic class PCP felt easier than usual. I shoot the Tempest quite regularly at home for that very reason. A .22" Tempest kicks like a mule. A dozen or two shots through that and then back to formal practice and I feel like I'm bathed in luxury, like the Pardini is almost too easy to shoot. Contrasts are good. Isn't it almost universally accepted that without pain we'd appreciate pleasure less?
Now, if I played cricket (
dont we have a yawn smillie?) a Wobbly may help me with my overarm swing.
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