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National 50 Benchrest League

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Loufish

Loufish

Member
Dec 16, 2018
627
1,244
CALIFORNIA, United States
The new N50BL targets are now available. When you get a chance take a look at the rules and give us some feedback. 

We are open to ideas and recommendations. Our goal is getting clubs and new shooters involved to shoot 50 yards. You can create a new club with as few as 2 shooters, 2 benches and target boards. 

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http://national50.org/

Contact: [email protected]




 
I proposed N50 to our club at our monthly meeting last Monday night. Our club wants to start a RF league and has been considering ARA. They had several questions and concerns about N50. Our club suggested having 2 classes in RF and 2 in Airguns, Production (under $1K) and Custom (above $1K). They asked if N50 RF included .17 HMR. Mike and I discussed these questions over the phone at length. He said ARA was only RF and didn’t include airguns while N50 is mostly geared towards airguns but would include RF. He said N50 will only have 2 classes and would not include .17 HMR.

Initially I sided with our club because they want to bring in new shooters and youth. Typically these folks can’t afford multi thousand dollar guns and we thought it unfair to allow these expensive guns to compete against a $150 Marlin or Ruger 10/20. Mike explained that basically a stock CZ was competitive in the RF class against high dollar custom RF rifles because it basically comes down to ammo and finding the right ammo that your gun likes. Find the magic combination and it shoots lights out and using the wrong ammo makes the best shooter finish mid pack. Mike also said the same could be said about air guns. Find the ammo it likes and the right speed and the magic can happen in a similar way as the RF class. That makes sense to me.

Thanks again Mike for willingly sharing your time and answering all of my questions in detail. I wish you and the organization the best success and I look forward to help getting a club started in my neck of the woods.
 
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I proposed N50 to our club at our monthly meeting last Monday night. Our club wants to start a RF league and has been considering ARA. They had several questions and concerns about N50. Our club suggested having 2 classes in RF and 2 in Airguns, Production (under $1K) and Custom (above $1K). They asked if N50 RF included .17 HMR. Mike and I discussed these questions over the phone at length. He said ARA was only RF and didn’t include airguns while N50 is mostly geared towards airguns but would include RF. He said N50 will only have 2 classes and would not include .17 HMR.

Initially I sided with our club because they want to bring in new shooters and youth. Typically these folks can’t afford multi thousand dollar guns and we thought it unfair to allow these expensive guns to compete against a $150 Marlin or Ruger 10/20. Mike explained that basically a stock CZ was competitive in the RF class against high dollar custom RF rifles because it basically comes down to ammo and finding the right ammo that your gun likes. Find the magic combination and it shoots lights out and using the wrong ammo makes the best shooter finish mid pack. Mike also said the same could be said about air guns. Find the ammo it likes and the right speed and the magic can happen in a similar way as the RF class. That makes sense to me.
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Thank you for sharing. Your club is also trying to accommodate what they feel will be most productive. No matter how much I feel in what I believe will be best, is not always so. 

When we discussed the rimfire side of N50 we basically copied ARA Factory class list with their permission. Coming from the rimfire side of things it would mean that there would be limitations on what an individual could compete with. With that in mind plus competing in both air and rimfire you have two completely different animals

A great shooting factory air rifle shooting slugs alongside a purpose built slug rifle alongside a factory rimfire with limitations did not sit good, especially when these factory rimfires were shooting a larger score ring in ARA competition. Having limitations we decided to open it up to All Factory rimfires with only a few limiting factors barrels, attachments and ammo everything else being open. 

We are fully aware that we are not going to satisfy all. With input like yours we can digest, tweak and improve.

Regards,

Joe F
 
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Thank you igolfat8 for responding. The below example is not true for all and just happened to be the case at Joe's range on that day. It was the 1st unofficial N50 match with a large number of shooters (10) and different equipment. Participation and interest was high and we had a challenging good time.

The rimfire shooters shot the 1st match together and included is the 1st place pellet (RAW) score. The 4th 22 pellet example is 1st place pellet score of the 2nd match to compare. The CZ is an older box stock pencil barrel of 28", the Anschutz and RAW are modified. Examples shown are experienced shooters. There were no slug-guns.

As can be seen the scores are similar. In fact if Dennis had shot his average rather than 237 on his last card his score would have been 740 - high score for the day. Edit: I should have added Chris' (an inexperienced shooter) 1st match score. He shot 715 (not shown), but if he had shot his average on his 1st card his score would have been 723 with a borrowed .177 Thomas. 

22LR vs 22 pellet examples

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Allowing "any" rimfire was our nod to the many older target 22s hiding in safes not used. Thus, Model 52's. Kimber's, Martini's, 40x's can shoot next to modern Tikka, Savage and CZ's and Air Slug guns. From experience allowing nearly any rifle and rifle modifications will not inform you when to 'not' to pull the trigger.

We believe the scores will be competitive when shooting against all variables including the elements - we will see how it plays out.

Lou
 
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I’ve never entered a rifle competition so all of this is new and intriguing to me. Just thinking out loud so could a club run an ARA match in conjunction with a N50 match? That way it would draw shooters from both disciplines who want their scores entered in ARA and N50 or is my thinking illogical? I suppose this may be too cumbersome dealing with two different targets and scoring systems... Maybe it’s best to stick with one organization and if the interest is there just run individual matches on different days.
 
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JPS, Yeah ARA "worst edge" scoring is tuff. But I grew to like it. Hard scoring made me try harder to shoot in that little circle. If it was "best edge" it could be too easy similar to IR 50/50.

igolfat8, I can't think of any reason why we can't shoot at the same time as long as the duration is the same. We did that last month at Open Grove. Use different sign up sheets, score differently, send in results to proper organization. In the pics you can see the 25m target boxes and the permanent 50 yard boxes. There was zero interference that I could see and I don't remember anyone complaining.

https://www.airgunnation.com/topic/results-1st-unofficial-national-50-benchrest-league-match-usarb-open-grove/

Lou
 
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I’ve never entered a rifle competition so all of this is new and intriguing to me. Just thinking out loud so could a club run an ARA match in conjunction with a N50 match? That way it would draw shooters from both disciplines who want their scores entered in ARA and N50 or is my thinking illogical? I suppose this may be too cumbersome dealing with two different targets and scoring systems... Maybe it’s best to stick with one organization and if the interest is there just run individual matches on different days.
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You will have a hard time getting to shoot with the ARA guys they are a different bunch! At my home club a couple of guys that did not have the high end 22 RF rifles wanted to shoot the ARA Hunter class but the Unlimited ARA guys would have none of that on "Their Range" and would not allow them to shoot! Kind of crazy in my opinion when everyone is trying to get more people involved with the shooting sports! Shooting the National50 and the USARBR together would be a lot easier match I think. 
 
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I’ve never entered a rifle competition so all of this is new and intriguing to me. Just thinking out loud so could a club run an ARA match in conjunction with a N50 match? That way it would draw shooters from both disciplines who want their scores entered in ARA and N50 or is my thinking illogical? I suppose this may be too cumbersome dealing with two different targets and scoring systems... Maybe it’s best to stick with one organization and if the interest is there just run individual matches on different days.
Click to expand...

You will have a hard time getting to shoot with the ARA guys they are a different bunch! At my home club a couple of guys that did not have the high end 22 RF rifles wanted to shoot the ARA Hunter class but the Unlimited ARA guys would have none of that on "Their Range" and would not allow them to shoot! Kind of crazy in my opinion when everyone is trying to get more people involved with the shooting sports! Shooting the National50 and the USARBR together would be a lot easier match I think.
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Have been shooting ARA for 15 years and have had issues in the early years. If the clubs match director posted an Unlimited match then it's just Unlimited, if posted Unlimited/Factory then it is both. If posted Factory then it is just Factory. It is what the match directors setup in advance. Hopefully that was the case.

If one was to shoot ARA and N50 together, might have to be on the hush hush IMO. You can always email ARA and ask, but personally do not think they would like both together.

Shooting USARB and N50 does work together, more work for the match director and those involved in the scoring process, and does get easier once you get a handle on it.

New clubs and new shooters is always more difficult, the learning process involved, trying to please the competitors, new shooters intimidated with their abilities to compete and so on. Is there a right way to magically have all the answers, no. 

N50 is still in the working process to bring more to the competitors.

Regards,

Joe 




 
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What is a typical entry fee to shoot in a match?

Is there typically a payout? If so, is it usually a 50/50 club split or a different percentage? If there is a payout, how many places?

“N50 FEES: Sanctioned Clubs will also charge $1.00 per target per match payable to N50 when scores are submitted.“ So, if there are 5 shooters in the match and each shooter shoots 3 targets each ($3 x 5 = $15) would the club send $15 to N50 after the match is over?




 
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So, I have been chatting with Mike from Thomas, and we at Kalamazoo MI, SMGC are willing to give the National 50 a try. I polled the shooters that we have and most just want to shoot 25 Meters USARB. But, a few are open to try the new 'National50 Leage'. So I talked with our Pneumatics director at the club, and I purchased a club membership for SMGC for this year, and a set of plugs and targets. We don't have any 50 yard matches scheduled yet, the plans are to run a couple trial runs after our 25 meter match moving the targets out to 50 yards and see what kind of interest it brings. Having the official targets and plugs will make scoring the 'practices' more like a real match so that those that are interested can see results of their efforts. maybe with some fun and some good scores we may interest more shooters. I should make a note that our airgun range is an airgun range only... so we can not allow rimfire to compete with us... that's the only fly in the ointment there.

I'll keep you all informed. Thanks Mike and Lou and Joe for getting this thing moving.
 
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Hey guys, When running a match is there typically a practice time and an allowable set up time? So if you have 20 minutes to shoot the card, does that 20 minutes include practice and set up time or is the practice say an hour before the match and set up is 10 minutes before the match begins? Just trying to understand how to run a match not ever having seen one before. When do you hang and retrieve targets? Just trying to get ideas to stream line the match and keep time management efficient.
 
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having come over from centerfire BR, what I do is I run a 3 minute sighting in period... during that time no record shots can be taken, if a shooter needs a little more time to get sighted well grant that permission until he's on paper well enough to begin competition. after that sight in period we check the targets with a spotting scope to make sure no "record" shots were taken. If none have been taken we start the 20 minute match.


 
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