The 2019 Ignition Custom Winter Classic Precision Rifle Series Australia match is done and dusted for another year.

Yes, that pun was intended. Dust the biggest challenge of the day.

Buchan put on a majestic display of Victorian weather at its finest with crisp mornings warming into blue sunny skies and clear dry conditions (a far cry from last year, when afternoon temps on range dropped to 4 Celcius with heavy hail and rain downpours – it didn’t dampen our spirits, but that mud got into everything!).

Warm dry conditions this year meant an abundance of fine dry dust.  We had almost no wind disturbance at all, making conditions ideal for new and experienced shooters. Except for the *@#^! dust….

As gunsmiths of the PRS series we have seen how dust, dirt (and mud!) presents a challenge from a mechanical perspective. It works its way into everything. When it gets into the action and magazine It causes feeding issues. If you cant get the rounds out of the mag….you have nothing to shoot.

SSAA Range rules state each hang fire (pull the trigger and it goes click but not boom), requires a 15 sec wait before opening the bolt/action to inspect.

Losing that time can force a time out and not completing a stage. When you’ve only got 60 second a stage, a hang fire is not ideal (that’s a bit more polite than the words used on the day).

Overall it was a high scoring competition. The victory wasn’t determined by who was clearing stages. It was about who was missing points due to failures or personal management mistakes.

This meant the pack was tight and made for a close and exciting competition.
The roof pitch posed a challenge for many competitors and tripods came into play several times. This was new PRS Australia and there was a clear lack of experience in tripods. Watch this space.

The “Titanic” platform made a return to PRS at Ignition Custom Winter Classic. It is a platform, suspended by 4 chains, that hovers and wobbles. Ever tried managing recoil off a suspended platform? Many shooters, however, clearly had been practicing and several really knew how to work the system to get maximum performance through body weight counterbalance.

“Run what you Brung” was another new surprise for us all. Pick your gear carefully, because shootershad to carry everything they needed for the stage  – while crawling under a very low hanging net.

Upon getting to the line, we had to engage the 250mm target at 363m with four rounds from the first position, transition to the second position for the following four rounds.

Finally, dragging everything over a barrel – without using the barrel as support – for the last two shots.

Oh, did we forget to mention it had a time limit of 120 seconds?