Yesterday was the day of the British vision impaired shooting championships. Due to the differences between this competition and how international competitions are shot, I decided not to shoot in this competition. However I still went to see what was going on, see whether there were any shooters who may be interested in the international disciplines and also to collect my EcoAims which I will use for prone.
The first thing which struck me was how quiet it was at the competition. Having gone to international competitions and mainstream national competitions, I have got so used to there being music playing and plenty of people talking. Seems like many in this country are still under the impression that vision impaired shooters need silence, rather than the shooter learning to cope with background noise or getting earphones with better sound isolation.
Another difference was the fact that paper targets of air pistol size were being used. This probably is the main reason I decided not to compete, all my international competitions are done using air rifle targets and with electronics, so the rhythm and score would not compare. Also I am not satisfied with the current solution used in this country for using the EcoAims with paper targets, they mount the LED on the wall above the target. This means any error in positioning the target in the target carrier will lead to an inaccuracy of the aiming system. At my shooting club we are so disatisfied that we have decided to look into developing a target holder with an LED which is loaded into the target carrier, thus ensuring the target and LED are always positioned the same relative to each other.
We had a bit of a conversation with one of the clubs from Cornwall. To my surprise one of them was someone I went to school with and had not spoken with since I left school in 2003. They seemed quite interested in the international disciplines and I hope that they do look into it further.
With the journey home to do I decided to head for home before the final results were announced, so unfortunately I cannot give details of those here. I hope those who competed enjoyed the championships and feel that they achieved their goals.
Finally before I go, I am sure some of you may have the question why I was getting a second EcoAims aiming device? The reason is so that we can set one up for standing and the other for prone. Also the EcoAims device I currently have is an older device and the adjusters do not have such a good feel when you move them, so it can be difficult to adjust it precisely, the newer devices have much better clicks in the adjusters. This possibly is one advantage the VIASS has with its electronic adjustments, providing you remember the values you can set the adjustments from a computer, which makes it much more suited to multi-discipline use.
