DARTMOOR BENCHREST ROUND 4 - 13.6.26.

Today's weather provided excellent opportunities for high scores - if you were paying close attention, or mediocre scores - if you weren't.

Mostly sunny with a medium strength breeze, predominantly from right to left. Although the wind did regularly switch, briefly, to a left to right variety. Fortunately it also featured frequent momentary lulls, enabling those who timed their shots carefully to record a satisfying number of X's.

Rob evidently had the measure of the wind, and his superb 743:22x won the match by a clear margin, although Mike Smith and Mark Whiteway also recorded impressively high totals. Gary's 249:12x was the best individual card, and Teresa continues to make steady progress, recording a personal best of 238:2x.

My own first card was unfortunate - a pellet destined for diagram 9 inexplicably dropped by three and a half inches, clipping the box around target 19. Whatever the reason, the consequence was a 6-point deduction!

However, my difficulties were insignificant compared to those of Ian, who was 'enjoying' his first ever BR competition.

His FX M3 rifle was misbehaving, chopping up pellets in the magazine and conspiring to cause a barrel blockage containing up to ten of them. Even following removal of the blockage, the rifle continued to act up. A single shot loader is now on Ian's shopping list.

Today's averages (from 16 shooters) were 238.19, 242.25, and 241.81. This corroborates our impression that the wind was a little stronger during the first hour of the competition.