PeteFox wrote:Weairy wrote:
Limiting the cartridges and projectiles that can be used would be much easier to police.
Soft nose hunting bullets perhaps?
Pete
Limiting cartridges is still extremely hard to police. Can you easily tell the difference between a 223 and a 223AI or 308 and 308AI at a glance, or projectile weights etc etc etc. The list is endless on policing that one. Something like that would cook the poor ROs.
I've tossed this over in my head about 40000 times and it's still not easy to fix the rules. It all depends; are you trying to make this "F-Class with less-suited guns" or "Simulated Hunting" style shooting? That would dictate where you start drawing the line with scopes, bags, bipods, even things like mats and clothing come into play.
The idea of the scope was that it's pretty easy to police (black and white; it's in spec or it isn't) and it helps build the border between that and F-Class rifles. I personally was arguing for a 24x limit, which cuts out most of your high-end Nightforce, March & Vortex Scopes and is more realistic on a hunting rifle. Mainly to help rein in the budget of the class a bit.
This class was designed as a "grass roots" class, to get people in the door. What I'm seeing is a lot of high-end shooters are dropping back into the class, for fun or budget reasons, which is perfectly fine, but they've obviously got an advantage. Heck, I'm about to sell my SEB and my Barnard is in pieces at the moment, I'm going to S/H as my only class after 5 years of F-Class. Is it fair that I now sell the Barnard, buy a high-end action like a Borden, take my NF Comp off the Barnard and drop it on, then use all the knowledge accumulated in F-Std and F-Open to build an F-Open grade rifle with a muzzle brake on it, and compete against the new guy with his $1500 standard Howa package? Probably not, but the potential is there. Is that person with the $1500 rifle then going to say "Well, this is shit, I have to spend thousands to even be in the mix"? Possibly. But how do you stop that from happening?
Personally, I've got two rifles that qualify with the rules as they sit. One is a rebarreled REM700 223 with an MDT chassis and a $500 Vortex scope, sitting bang on 6.5kg. The other is a rebarreled Rem700 308 in a Form timber stock (as it came off the shelf) with a brake and a Nightforce NXS 32x, at 6.2kg. These are what I'd class as "higher end" standard rifles. They're a run-of-the-mill action with half-way decent Hardy barrels and scopes on them, in standard bog-arse no-frills calibres. These were put together "in the spirit" of the class (the 223 is my PSR rifle).
I still think either a grade system or a class split as "Standard" and "Open" would be about the best you'll do, with some simple rule adjustments. WA had the right idea with their Lithgow Cup in my opinion; SAAMI approved cartridges/commercially available calibres.
- Keep Standard Class as a 6.5kg limit, limited to "commercial" calibres (223, 308, 6.5 Creed, 243; stuff you can walk into any gun shop and buy a packet of ammo or a rifle). Maybe a scope restriction. Free stocks, free barrels, free triggers to 1kg minimum pull weight (lets be honest, most factory triggers are shite)
- Make Open class really an open class; a weight that'd open it up to PRS style rifles & heavier factory rifles (AIs for instance) at circa 8kg, free calibres, free scopes, free additional chassis weights etc.
- Go back to standard squeeze bags instead of eared bags across the board.
- No plates/boards under the bipod or rear bag.
- Make stocks a free item in the SSRs so it stops becoming an issue with chassis' and other stocks.
Sorry to write a novel, but just my latest thoughts. I have zero impact on the rules changing.
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