With this special entry we will close the series about the World's Field Target Championships 2022 in Italy, and I hope you see the reason for this very special entry.

I've known this person for a few years.
I first took notice when she was a Junior shooter from a faraway country.

I've seen her face-up and overcome challenges, change completely her life, and become a person that truly embodies the future of FT.

She has made airguns not only her sport, but her livelihood, and she is now embarking on a new phase where she will play a major role in shaping the sport, as she recently accepted an appointment to the highest authority in USA for FT with the American Airgun Field Target Association (AAFTA).

During the shoot she was a bit dejected the first day, when she felt she had not performed to her potential, but as all the rest of the scores started to trickle in, she realized that she had done well in the Ladies class.

Apart from shooting the Match, she took on the role of RGB Rep for the USA, delegated by Greg Sauve who could not come to Italy.

And she did a smashing job of all of these tasks.

So Lauren, THANK YOU!

Thanks for all that you do for FT and for Team USA.

Congrats on a well deserved "High PCP Lady" title earned with hard work that showed in a commanding lead.

Your insights and your way with people will surely play a good role when the Matches come to the USA in 2024.

Although we do not always agree, I see that you have FT's best interest at heart.

It was a pleasure and a privilege to shoot with you in Rome and to be part of Team USA with you.

As "the Old Man" in the team I can say this to you: Never change, always be yourself.

​

After an early, and light breakfast, we drove over to the Range.
Range was about 40 minutes away from the "Villa Tuscolana", and it was somewhat hard to navigate the small roads that made the most direct route, so we found out how to trick the navigation to take us along the main highways, in the end, it took the same time, and it was much safer.
Italians think they all drive like "Emerson Fittipaldi" / F1 drivers, and between the cars, the buses, and the scooters, small roads require a lot of concentration and dexterity in driving.
No reason to get to the venue all frazzled up, better to take the longer, but more peaceful and safer, route.

The courses were set out in an  "Inverted U" geometry. 5-6 lanes on the left leg, 5-6 lanes on the right, and the rest across the top.

We started towards the middle of the course, but after only three lanes, and constant "cold lines" called, we were notified that shooting for the day would be suspended until the strings could be changed and some targets replaced.
This was source of much discomfort for some shooters, but those of us that had been to New Zealand were not fazed too much.

So, we went for a light lunch and returned to the range.

After getting to the range, we were told that the rest of the day was cancelled and that we would re-convene the next day.
I was happy that we DID have an extra day planned for contingencies, and this was a contingency.

Organizing a WFTC's is a LOT of REALLY HARD WORK. And more and more, the "social" aspect has become the predominant task.
Personally, I find it contrary to common sense, but  I am not fighting reality. I am just very happy that we could have a WFTC's AT ALL!

People, let's see the reality: we're back from a pandemic that has strung the world to the limit of endurance on all aspects. Supply chains are still not recovered, cost of shipping and freight is still through the roof. Situation in Eastern Europe is not helping either. And the Italians made a huge effort to put on the best shoot they could.
Problems emerged and they were faced. Perhaps not to everyone's liking, but after all the difficulties, we WERE together, we WERE shooting, and solutions were in sight.

It also has to be said that the organizers received some poor advise.
Someone told them to buy kite string, and that is what they bought. Whoever provided the "spec" forgot to mention either a "# lbs Test" number for the kite string, or a material and thickness.
Also, they WERE told to NOT use new targets, but to use targets that had been TESTED under competition conditions. Well, receiving a bunch of targets in a single shipment just prior to the match is not the ideal condition for a small team of organizers to test all the targets to be put in the match.
Next thing that needs to be said is that the WFTF authority granted approval for the setup with enough time; at least a full day BEFORE the representatives of the RGB's that were present had a walk-through of the courses.
In OUR case (Team USA), it was Mat Brackett the one to do the walk-through and he called the string issue in advance; and I quote from his message to us all through Whatsapp:
"Strings are very thin and stretchy. But we tested them and they work OK. We are allowed to use them for wind, but they catch on all the grass stubble."

Being un-politely honest, while it's true that the strings were on the thin side, it was a combination of a lack of leverage on the pull-post of the targets what compounded the problem. A slightly longer pull post on the targets would have been useful.
On the three lanes we shot on day "zero", we were successful in pulling up all targets with a smooth, even tension from a standing position.

So, I will re-hash here what I said when it was time to publish the results of the New Zealand's Worlds:
Ranting does no one no good.
If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem.
​
I offered help to the organizers, but they told me they had the thing in hand.

And so, we went to our hotel and slept till the next day.

As our RGB delegate told us, after much discussion, on a vote of 10-11, it was decided to just continue the shoot.
I would have re-started the competition, but it seems some RGB's preferred to continue to keep the perfect / almost perfect scores of some of their shooters. Whatever the case, it was an agreement democratically achieved and so, we simply continued with the shoot.
What was really hurtful was that part of the agreement was that those shooters who had not protested targets would loose their chance to do so.
Given that the suspension was enforced without previous notice, it was not nice to see that the last targets that had not fallen to my shots on day "0" had been replaced.
Still, my Father taught me that a game is truly won by points, not by rules, and I just went along.

Personally, I was somewhat satisifed with the first day. Scoring just two points behind Ferenc (a World Class shooter in his own right), told me I was on the right road.
I did detect a few "unexplainable" misses, though and I decided to keep track of them.

What I found out later, when talking to the team mates sbout scores was that I WAS in the "for score" section of the team. Sadly, one of our younger shooters (Nathan Thomas) had to withdraw last minute and so I was the next in line.
Nathan was missed.
With the day done, we returned to the hotel.

On day two I was squadded with Alberto Martín, from Spain and Renie Scorfina, from Malta.

The day pretty much repeated itself for the first half. But after the first half I started to see more and more "unexplainable misses" and I started observing the ranging on the scope.
As the temperatures rose and as the day wore on, it was clear that the sun had affected the scope beyond all reasonable doubt. I started trying other methods of ranging (from pacing in my imagination the distance, to bracketing), but by the end of the day it was clear that not only the rangeing was off, the scope was not holding zero.
Since I do not click, it was fairly easy for me to define that. Targets that were exactly at the natural zero, would hit sometimes high, sometimes low.
So, scope was "toast", literally; something had melted inside with the temperatures that at times, reached the 48-49 C inside the scope, as it was hard to keep a hand on it.

Pulling on all my experience I managed to finish with a relatively consistent score. But it really was an eye opener that results were better using other ranging methods and trying to figure out if there was some rhyme or reason to the wandering of the zero than in trusting the equipment, as from a line total of two I did manage to improve the other lines to 4. Not much, but at least I knew that I had to do something.
It was specially rewarding to do relatively well in lanes 1-5 that were where most shooters had real, serious problems.

And so, on the way back I asked my team mates if anyone had a spare scope, but without luck.

I thought about my options real hard and then decided that, as part of the Team USA, there was ONE thing I could NOT do: Give up.

As soon as I arrived to the hotel and was able to connect to WiFi, I located a local gunshop and went there to look for a scope.

The best reticle I could find within the magnification desired in a reasonable budget was an Element Helix.

Because it was a 30 mm's body tube while the Tac Vector Continental was a 34 mm's, I had to buy some mounts. Mounts obtained had no droop, but I hoped that the scope could be adjusted to use the -5 mRad as the zero line.
​
The shop did not have a wheel that would fit, and so I decided to tackle the last day of the match with the sparse numbers in the knob (I hoped that the numbers were reasonably correct), and then use the now de-listed app (PP-Calc) to get as much solid information as I could in the brief time I had in next morning's sighting-in session.

I arrived back to the hotel with scope in hand, went to my room, and mounted the scope in the fixed mounts.

Somewhat troubled but totally decided to give my best, I went to sleep.

After the usual light breakfast, my team mates and I went to the range, I sat down, decided to do the best possible.
It was a great relief when I noted that windage wise, the scope was reasonably close to zero.
Sadly, it took more than a turn and a half to get the scope to shoot to the -5 mRad line we had set as a parameter.

But, in the end, with patience and serenity, we got to a workable situation.
It was very notable that the grouping capabilities of the gun/pellet combination had not suffered too much. This was a tribute to the stability and robustness of the DIANA 54 action on which the gun was based.
The heavy (9.56 grs) performed well with the 11.5 ft-lbs tune, even when the balance of masses had changed substantially.
MV's had been pretty consistent over the whole Match not changing more than a couple of m/s between days (and between chronos, as it was not the same chrono every time).

I was dismayed and disappointed by the complete lack of accuracy between the knob's markings and any kind of reality. So, I had to "calibrate" the markings with the marked distances in the sight-in range targets, and go by those numbers. I have no problem looking at the knob markings and estimating the ranges in between the marks using a log scale (thanks to my High School Mathematics teachers), but when the distance was 50 meters, the scope said "65"
SOOooooooo
​Once all the numbers were in, I clearly had a ballistic problem worthy of study:
- On one hand I needed the real distance numbers to calculate the right wind drift
- On the other, the knob markings bore no relation to reality.
A quick regression gave me a small table to "translate" between the knob markings and the real distances.

Then we had the problem of the lack of droop. Drops had to be calculated in relative terms and then that input into the app, so that the calculated drops were accurate. Then the reverse process had to be done so that the POA would have a physical correspondence in the reticle.

Once all the numbers were processed, I ended up with a table that had two "distances" for range, and one elevation point that started from -6 mRad, went up to -5 mRad (zero line)  and then dropped down to -7½ mRad again to describe the trajectory from 9 to 50 meters. Wind drifts had been calculated for a "unit" wind of 5 kph at "full force", meaning winds from 3 or 9 O'Clock, while I knew that, for the most part, we would be shooting in 15 to 25 kph winds coming from different quarters, as the lanes traversed from right facing to left facing as the lane number went up.

 The day was if anything, even more punishing than the previous two days.
The sun felt like a rain of molten lead.
The wind was relentless and constantly shifting.

I was putting all my attention to the match, every single shot became a one shot match. Did reasonably well in the first standers, and then also in the kneelers, but the longer shots with wind on the back still eluded me.
Lanes 1 to 5 were, for me, reasonably good. A tribute to the choice of pellet.
But lanes 21 to 25 were not so good. The broken winds that came from the left had me holding too much, rather than too little.
So, it WAS a hard third day for everyone.

Even under those conditions, Team USA performed admirably.

Worthy of note was the effort by Matt Sawyer that had suffered a relatively mild sunstroke on the first day and had somewhat recovered, but by the third day the fatigue overtook him and he was affected again. To the point that he could not hold down even room temperature water.
Luckily, one of his squad mates (from France?) knew what to do and gave him iced water, which permitted him to "muscle through" the day and shoot a very creditable score of 30.
With Cameron in the lead with an amazing 40, and the great scores posted by Matt B and Leo on days 1 and 2, the Team could almost overcome a bad second day.
​By three points (about 1%), Spain retained the lead to place first in Springer Team.

I shot a rather consistent 21

On one side I was happy to have kept some semblance of consistency, even under hard conditions.
On the other, my mind went to those geniuses that gave us the basics to understand ballistics; how they worked also under hard conditions, conditions and situations that sometimes required secrecy.

Above all, it was, IMHO, a triumph for Mathematics.

If there ever was a reason for kids to really pay attention in Maths class, this is one.
Maths will enable you to keep on fighting, even when it seems that the world conspires against you.

After a few beers (more than I care to admit), I was almost putting away my gear when I was notified that I would be in a shootoff! 
Shootoff?? For WHAT?

It turned out that in the Veterans class, my friend Herbie Von Der Stein (English, believe it or not, and there IS an interesting story behind it!) had taken first, but my friend and squad mate from the first day Alexas Jaunias and I were tied for second.

Alexas was also surprised, but a shootoff was in order  and so, we took our positions, I "ranged", consulted my table, took aim, took down the long target, "ranged" the near one, checked the table, and took it down.
Alexas hit the long one, but missed the short one.

And so, I placed, as one good friend put it "the second best old man in the springer world". LOL!

With the shooting now really done, we all went back to get cleaned and spruced up for the ceremony and the dinner.

We had some time to fool around as a Team

And just as we were being called to the Ceremony of closure Frascati gave us one of the best sunsets I have seen

On the PCP  side, Paul Cray placed 10th overall

And David Alsup placed second in the Veteran PCP's.

I was very happy to be part of Team USA, it has been years of hard work that have paid off.

Re-capping the history, Team USA has placed :
2nd in New Zealand
1st in Poland
2nd in England
and
2nd in Italy

There is still work to be done, there always is.

We'll see how things go for next year, it is scheduled to be in South Africa. But the world's economic situation is getting trickier by the minute.

For 2024, it is scheduled to be at Phoenix's Rio Salado shooting range in Arizona, USA.
So, if you have a springer, dust it off and start practicing.
Performing well at an international level in the name of one's country is an honor and a privilege that requires single-purposed minds committed to doing their best.

​Thanks to my Team mates for making such a wonderful memory possible.

Let's continue then

As I wrote before, Team USA had contacted Lazio Airguns with a view to have some "quiet time" to prepare for the WFTC's. We had done the same in Germany, New Zealand, Poland, and England; so we knew it was important.
​When we arrived, we saw a very well setup field. Mostly for HFT, but perfectly adequate to our needs.

Targets were out, but strings needed to be run. As you can see they remain spooled at the gates.
Here are some more pictures of the excellent Lazio Airguns field:

For the next three days, this would "FT Shooting Home" and we were very grateful to have this opportunity.
Sadly, some of the members of the team were experiencing extreme delays in getting to Rome. Some shooters even arrived without a rifle to shoot, and so, some agonizing trips to the Fiumicino Airport ensued, trying to get hold of the guns.
In then end, "with a little bit of Luck" all shooters and guns showed up, in time for the official "Zeroing/Practice range" to open.

As originally planned, the shoot was going to take place in the mountainous region of GrottaFerratta.
GrottaFerrata is a small town in the "Parco dei Castelli Romani" that basically houses all the "Summer Manor Homes" of the most powerful families in Rome.
Next to GrottaFerrata is the well known (and famous for its wine) town of Frascati. Where the new "Social Venue" was located, Villa Tuscolana.

But the terrain between GrottaFerratta and Frascati is pretty similar:

Now, compare the region originally intended for the match to the one that had to be used, given the difficulties encountered:

As a long time Piston shooter, I have come to the conclusion that you should not fight reality. For sure, you are going to loose; and spend much energy doing so.
As soon as we could register our equipment and get it approved for competition at Villa Tuscolana, we adjourned to the range and took some time trying to learn the conditions.

Once the first day of "practice and zeroing" was done, and somewhat satisfied that everything was doing what it was supposed to be doing, we adjourned to Villa Tuscolana for a night's sleep and the first day of competition.

I have always been an admirer of the Italian "Rinascimento" (Renaissance).
The two and a half centuries that span the 1400 to the 1650 saw a number of absolutely genial minds come to grips with nature's mysteries.
We could write a book about the advances in Medicine, Anatomy, Astronomy, Physics, and Military Sciences, but the essence of this Blog is not so wide and the audience would get bored to death, so let's center on the basic knowledge base that is pertinent to us here: Ballistics

Towards 1495 Leonardo Da Vinci was writing in his peculiar "mirror image script" about what he thought the trajectories of projectiles were. He differentiated between "natural motion" (drop), and "accidental/violent motion"  (propulsed).
His incredible mind and eye for reality is astounding, even today, if we pause to analyze the correspondence of his graphics and reality. Let's just take a look at it:

At first these do not seem to be too breathtaking, but let's see a quadratic parabola overlaid and the mirror reversed so we are more in tune with the "normal" left to right form of writing:

Peculiarly, about half a century later than Leonardo, Tartaglia would publish the first ideas of the trajectories of projectiles.
In his mind, the "violent motion" of a projectile would come to an end, and when that happened, the projectile would follow the "natural motion" it had to follow, according to Aristotle, and then fall straight down to earth. This rendered some very peculiar trajectories:

A bit more than a century after Leonardo, Galileo (1638) would pose a more formal explanation and in his theories he clearly outlined that projectiles with "Natural" motion would behave different from projectiles with "Violent" motion. And, not only that, he would lay the borderline at what we would call, in modern terms, about 400 fps.
He would, however, NOT take into account air friction and his tables published for bombardiers would be most helpful to those artillerymen who shot at very high angles and slow speeds (large caliber mortars were called bombards back then).
Galileo's experiments were conducted using inclined planes to "propulse" balls that would later fly off flat planes, while the trajectory was recorded.

So, it is quite astounding that the most accurate depiction of reality was hidden from humanity because of fear of reprisals from the establishment.
Even Galileo, quite famous in his own time, was processed by the Inquisition for postulating that the earth moved around the sun.
But that is a different story
What is important here is that the three scientists that we are analyzing here understood that in the "human reality" things cannot appear and disappear, they move along under a CONTINUOUS motion. There are no breaks/jumps or discontinuities (it would take 300 years more of scientific development for humans to get into the quantic realm).
The next BIG THINKERS in Science's evolution would come 50 years after Galileo:
Newton would develop the differential calculus needed to describe in all precision the trajectory of a projectile around the 1690's and the first edition of "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica" would establish the mathematical relation between physics and mathematics. We all learn the Three Newton's laws, but we seldom stop to think that the three laws are just specific aspects of the conservation of energy in a closed referential system  (and there is an equation for that).
Leibnitz would "invent" Integral Calculus (1675) and it was up to Euler (works in the 1734-1738 time frame) to use that (with improved notation to simplify things) to develop the tools to do the reverse calculations needed to find a drag curve and a BC from a trajectory.
So, when we say that we can only look far into the horizon because we are standing on the shoulders of giants, we truly mean it.

A few months after the 2019 World's in England (just 'google' the following string: https://www.ctcustomairguns.com "2019 World's"), CoVid struck. I was just returning from Germany when the World was shut down; in fact, if I had planned a return just two days later, I would have gotten stuck en route.
When the time came to hold the 2020 WFTC's no one was prepared, travelling was severely curtailed, and some countries were simply closed to all international visitors.
It was therefore, impossible to hold the 2020 WFTC's and the SouthAfrican's very properly asked if we wanted our registration money back.
I found no sense in getting the money back and decided to donate the funds to the clubs.
The world went into hybernation.
 A year passed, and then two, it seemed as though time had frozen.
So, when news came that the Italian FIDASC (Federazione Italiana D'Armi Sportivi et Caccia) was willing to put up the 2022 WFTC's we all jumped at the opportunity.
Details started to trickle in and when the initial venue was announced, I was somewhat surprised.
Anyone who has been in Rome during the summer knows that the heat is pretty high on the scale, going from "uncomfortable" into "unbearable". And a few kilometers distance didn't encourage the idea of a much fresher climate.

To the credit of the organizaers, they very clearly stated that we should be prepared and able to shoot at temperatures that exceeded the 35 C.

I took contact with the organizers and started arranging for some trigger time for Team USA that had to deal with the jet-lag, as well as all the other changes in a trip that takes you 7,000 kms, and 6 hours biorythm) from home, at the very least.
And so, we agreed to access a private range in the Lazio province.

As time approached the FT Team USA Whatsapp group started buzzing with flights and hotel information and as some members came on board and others dropped out, the final group was formed.
All in all, 15 shooters would be traveling to Italy under the US Flag.
I considered myself VERY fortunate to be able to go.

All of a sudden, we were informed that the venue had to change. As it usually happens, the rumors started flying and all sort of information and dis-information circulated.

When we finally got solid information, I was completely taken aback, Google World's topo map showed a plain, with barely 50 meters difference between the summit of the lonely hill and the lowermost point on the side of the match, and about a 100 meters to the BACK of the plot of land designated, where there was a "cliff".
A VERY challenging place to shoot airguns.

All the terrain research done over Villa Cavalletti, went out the window; the venue we expected with groves of old vines and some old orchards (the Agricultural preserve of Villa Cavalletti) where we would be shooting among century old trees over quite interesting differences of level, were gone; and in its place a plain. As flat as it could be.

Information from the local airgun club where we had arranged to practice, also revealed that the winds would be "vicious".

Shooting local matches showed that a hamster would be a good idea and so, it was added:

I had also worked extensively and intensively with an interesting scope: a Tac Vector Optics Continental.
The 34 mm's body posed an interesting challenge.
On one hand the erector tube was not really "spring-piston compatible" Loss of zero was evident. This was solved with a custom made ZR Mount. I had to go through four iterations of the mount till I finally got all the points solved.

Months before I had secured my plane ticket using miles, so, in essence the ticket costed little. The outgoing AA flights connecting through Charlotte proved a good decision, I arrived into Rome on time.
When I arrived, I went through passport control, and then directly to baggage claim, expecting to find the baggage services office there. I waited and waited and waited, and the gun didn't come out, so I went looking for it at the oversized baggage claim, but nothing was there either.
I inquired about where the BSO was and was directed to an AA  employee, who told me there wasn't any.
Somewhat reluctantly, I asked then where could my airgun be and I was told to look for it at the Police office which was, you guessed it, BEFORE passport control.

So, back and forth, I finally was able to find the police office and as I was going in there, I found Garett Kwakkestein.
So we shared the misery of having to get our guns through their own "passport" control.
Police issued new papers with stamps, seals and signatures all over and told us to go through the police office BEFORE checking our bags with the airline.
Getting to the rental car agency was an ordeal. A LOOOONNG walk through the airport, then two flights of stairs and finally I found the SIXT agency.
Of course they tried to "upgrade" me, but I refused. Italy is a conflictive country for driving, probably only third to India and Egypt (in my opinion), so I had purchased additional insurance.  By taking precautionary steps, the rental was not all that bad. In GENERAL, it is a good idea to look into supplemental insurance for many parts of your trip. From delays and cancellations to driving and baggage.

​Which was the only lane towards the lake. USUALLY, the wind from the lake plays goofy tricks with the shots, but this time I was lucky and I had some calm.
I had shot the two shots on the first target when John told me:
-There is a person in the lake beyond the middle target, not that you are going to miss, but just to make you aware"
WHAAAT???!!!!
Stood up and tried to locate the person, but he had rowed past, so I deemed safe to shoot again.
I calmed myself down, breathed real deep a few times and asked John which was the next shot.
John informed me that I had to take my first shot on the second target, so I started there and the rest of the shots went well.
Enough to close the Match with a clean lane that is always very nice.