A wonderful day on the line with members of the Maryland Air National Guard for a day of marksmanship and history. Our hosts were the Gunpowder Military Reservation National Guard training range in Glen Arm, MD (outside of Baltimore), and it was beauty! Covered line, target stands, great quiet environment.
Saturday started sunny and stayed sunny, with ideal temperatures in the 70s for most of the day. After we finished all of our admin and safety rules, the Wing kicked off the first Hits Count (Redcoat) target of the day. It was clear that many Wing members knew what they were about but that we needed to get good zeros on rifles and quickly get less experienced shooters up to speed. The rest of the morning was spent on squares targets, tightening groups with loop slings, prone steady hold factors, the 6 steps to firing a shot, and NPOA. It was great to see groups shrink from multiple inches to an inch or less, allowing us to use IMC to make sighing adjustments.
Lunch took us through the first two strikes of the match, with the colonists causing the British to retreat from the North Bridge and Smith abandoning his dead and wounded there.
After lunch, we launched into demonstrations and practice of Seated and Standing positions. Shooters showed real proficiency in both, with the Shoot Boss noting several 49 scores in standing practice.
It was then time to hang our first AQT of the day. Results were quite good, with several shooters thwarted by malfunctions in various stages. We posted a second AQT, used the sighter square to confirm zeros (as people had changed rifles due to problems) and this time we had Mike not only breakthrough with a Rifleman patch, but earn his Distinguished tab with a 230 using iron sights - Huzzah!
The final Red Coat target showed significant improvement, with shooters moving up at least a level. Shermeen, who was not an experienced shooter, was particularly impressive on the last target, coming within one hit of cleaning the target with a shot in the 400 yard just outside the 30-cal radius but nailing the shingle.
Seeing the groups during practice, I believe we would have had even more Rifleman and cleaned Red Coats but folks were thwarted by various malfunctions. I know they were frustrating, but we appreciated the persistence and hope they will come to a future event.
We wrapped up they day with the 3rd strike of the match, our benediction, patches, and some 7th stepping before departing.
Many thanks to Applecore Bravo_Alex for organizing the event for his Wing and to Monkey for driving many hours to work the event with me. These Mil-Seed events are so meaningful to the instructors and the program. We hope to make this an annual event (if not more) and use these seven shooters as our evangelists to get more folks out!
Hope to have a set of pictures privately posted for the Wing members soon.