RickD
January 29, 2001, 06:12 PM
We went to a FAL-Files dot com sponsored shoot here in Phoenix on Saturday. It was cold and intermittantly drizzly. I almost didn't go, but I am glad I did.
Lots of full and semi-autos there to play with of various makes and models, shotguns and clay pigeons, belt-fed machine guns. There was a Maadi-Griffin Model 89 there as well. We had lots of reactive targets to shoot at from 50 to 150 yards. Gongs, plates. 1-gallon water cans, and more.
Some 600 yards away was a 4foot by 4foot piece of ply-wood with two medium-sized household chemical fire extininquishers on either end. The 10mph cross-wind would make things more difficult. The .50 BMG got the first crack at it. Its owner touched off a couple of rounds and dialed in the elevation for that distance but not the windage. Then he kindly allowed others to shoot it (none hit, but they were close). The rounds were thoughtfully "downloaded" by the owner about 10% so that we wussies could shoot it without crying. Nonetheless, I think I detached my retna, or at least left my share of snot on the rifle's receiver. ;)
The ammo was shooting steel-core so that everytime he hit a rock on rocky mountainette (WhiteTanks mountain foothills), a great flash of light would appear, as well as a broken rock.
Then the organizer of the event sat behind the Maadi 89. He touched one off. That he hit the CO2 and powder fire extinquisher was obvious to all. A very cool "A-Team-like" effect of explosion (powder everywhere) made the crowd roar.
Another person finally shot the second extinguisher with the .50BMG the hard way: an earlier shooter had hit the board and flipped the whole contraption backward so that the bottle was hidden from view.
My buddy and I tried in vane to shoot at the target with his .303 Enfield with apeture sight, my Leupold-scoped FAL, and his Savage .30-06. We came within inches with the scoped rifles once we remembered to account for the wind some twenty inches or so (oops)... but we never hit it.
The cool thing about his is that when he was shooting his Savage during the drizzly part of the day, I was behind him with my POS SiberOptics spotting scope. His first shot was lost in my scope due to a blast of mist in the distance, or so I thought. His next shot showed me that what I saw was the bullet cutting through the rain! It's flat arch seemed to be blasting the drizzle out of its trajectory or shaking rain drops off like a wet dog. It was friggin cool, like something out of the movie Matrix. We had people stop shooting just to check out the view from the spotting scope.
We broke for a BBQ and returned for more shootin'. Then, toward the end of the day, we had a cease fire and wheeled out a push-mower with a 3.5 horse Briggs & Stratton engine (blade removed). We placed it some 75 yards away atop four rebar posts pounded into the ground to elevate it about a foot off the ground (I don't know why). Yes, it was running at full rpm and belching smoke. It was on its last legs and had to be put down.
We placed a computer monitor next to it. The .50 BMG was told to shoot the monitor as a prelude to begin the assault on the wheezing lawn mower. He did. The monitor exploded. And the rest of us lit into the condemned garden implement.
Yes, about 35 of use with FALs (full and semi), M2 Carbine, AKs and SKS, two belt fed guns, opened up at once.
We had to shoot as fast as we could because it would be less than 20 seconds before the .50BMG would be reloaded, not to mention the belt-guns.
The lawnmower stayed running a surprising number of seconds. At least I think it did....I couldn't hear much of anything. But eventually it was clear that it had stopped rotating but the firing continued. A small flame appeared. And then it explosed in a five-foot ball of orange flame about the same time it split in two (that might have been the .50 BMG but I can't be sure).
The largest piece left of the engine was half of the piston. The rest was beat up pretty bad. The engine was laying on the ground while the body of the mower was still pretty much on the rebar, which had taken many hits (one bar was sheared off).
Sadly, for our marksmanship, there were many, many misses as evidenced by all the holes in the mower body under where the motor used to be. And some reported seeing lots of dirt kicked up in front of the mower. I chalk this up to the boys with the semi-auto AKs who were limp-fingering the trigger in an effort to produce a full-auto-like mode of fire.
We had quite a mess to clean up before the sun began to set. But clean up we did.
Rick
Lots of full and semi-autos there to play with of various makes and models, shotguns and clay pigeons, belt-fed machine guns. There was a Maadi-Griffin Model 89 there as well. We had lots of reactive targets to shoot at from 50 to 150 yards. Gongs, plates. 1-gallon water cans, and more.
Some 600 yards away was a 4foot by 4foot piece of ply-wood with two medium-sized household chemical fire extininquishers on either end. The 10mph cross-wind would make things more difficult. The .50 BMG got the first crack at it. Its owner touched off a couple of rounds and dialed in the elevation for that distance but not the windage. Then he kindly allowed others to shoot it (none hit, but they were close). The rounds were thoughtfully "downloaded" by the owner about 10% so that we wussies could shoot it without crying. Nonetheless, I think I detached my retna, or at least left my share of snot on the rifle's receiver. ;)
The ammo was shooting steel-core so that everytime he hit a rock on rocky mountainette (WhiteTanks mountain foothills), a great flash of light would appear, as well as a broken rock.
Then the organizer of the event sat behind the Maadi 89. He touched one off. That he hit the CO2 and powder fire extinquisher was obvious to all. A very cool "A-Team-like" effect of explosion (powder everywhere) made the crowd roar.
Another person finally shot the second extinguisher with the .50BMG the hard way: an earlier shooter had hit the board and flipped the whole contraption backward so that the bottle was hidden from view.
My buddy and I tried in vane to shoot at the target with his .303 Enfield with apeture sight, my Leupold-scoped FAL, and his Savage .30-06. We came within inches with the scoped rifles once we remembered to account for the wind some twenty inches or so (oops)... but we never hit it.
The cool thing about his is that when he was shooting his Savage during the drizzly part of the day, I was behind him with my POS SiberOptics spotting scope. His first shot was lost in my scope due to a blast of mist in the distance, or so I thought. His next shot showed me that what I saw was the bullet cutting through the rain! It's flat arch seemed to be blasting the drizzle out of its trajectory or shaking rain drops off like a wet dog. It was friggin cool, like something out of the movie Matrix. We had people stop shooting just to check out the view from the spotting scope.
We broke for a BBQ and returned for more shootin'. Then, toward the end of the day, we had a cease fire and wheeled out a push-mower with a 3.5 horse Briggs & Stratton engine (blade removed). We placed it some 75 yards away atop four rebar posts pounded into the ground to elevate it about a foot off the ground (I don't know why). Yes, it was running at full rpm and belching smoke. It was on its last legs and had to be put down.
We placed a computer monitor next to it. The .50 BMG was told to shoot the monitor as a prelude to begin the assault on the wheezing lawn mower. He did. The monitor exploded. And the rest of us lit into the condemned garden implement.
Yes, about 35 of use with FALs (full and semi), M2 Carbine, AKs and SKS, two belt fed guns, opened up at once.
We had to shoot as fast as we could because it would be less than 20 seconds before the .50BMG would be reloaded, not to mention the belt-guns.
The lawnmower stayed running a surprising number of seconds. At least I think it did....I couldn't hear much of anything. But eventually it was clear that it had stopped rotating but the firing continued. A small flame appeared. And then it explosed in a five-foot ball of orange flame about the same time it split in two (that might have been the .50 BMG but I can't be sure).
The largest piece left of the engine was half of the piston. The rest was beat up pretty bad. The engine was laying on the ground while the body of the mower was still pretty much on the rebar, which had taken many hits (one bar was sheared off).
Sadly, for our marksmanship, there were many, many misses as evidenced by all the holes in the mower body under where the motor used to be. And some reported seeing lots of dirt kicked up in front of the mower. I chalk this up to the boys with the semi-auto AKs who were limp-fingering the trigger in an effort to produce a full-auto-like mode of fire.
We had quite a mess to clean up before the sun began to set. But clean up we did.
Rick