John-R Jones
Preparations for the runner club champs shoot for Saturday 6 May 2023 started way back. First of all, with target procurement; I bought the Jackal and Warthog targets at the beginning of the year and had A1 prints made of the Hyena target we used in the past.
Thursday, I went to the range to check make sure that the runner was working after sanding for such a long time. Good thing I did because it did not, work that is. I also checked the suitability of the target “hangers” Jimmy Bekker gave us. The hangers would work perfectly, but the two needed for the jackal and the hyena were too long so they would hang too low. I had to the cut and reshaped them so that the targets would hang at the desired height.
The fact that the runner would not work was an issue; I had not brought any equipment with me to test. Donald and I ran (hobbled) around to determine if it was a power supply issue, but alas there was no load shedding at the time, and all switches were ON. Save putting my fingers into the socket I had no idea what was preventing the runner from working; I had to leave the range with no surety. Friday morning was all booked up with my visa applications for my England visit in July, so I was under the crunch time wise.
I got back from Johannesburg at about 13:00 and by 14:00 I was back on the range to investigate further the saga of the runner that would not run. First, I pressed the main motor relay in by hand (stick) and determined that there was power to the motor, then I plugged my soldering iron into the 15amp plug to check the 220v supply to the internal 220/12v transformer; there was power there too, but no 12v output from the transformer which powers the motor control circuitry. Upon closer investigation I discovered that the transformer casing was broken and that it was obviously burnt out.
Next whilst I was on the range on Thursday, I discovered that the one steel pipe upright was rusted through and broken off so before I could go and buy a new transformer, I had to weld that back on (I had prepped the pipe on the Thursday evening).
I procured a new 12-volt transformer (got it at Sasolburg Alarms were Sophy Rabie works), R300. I had to make some extensive changes to the control box to incorporate the new external transformer into the circuitry; this took a few hours on Friday night. Now the transformer is plugged into the 15amp socket on the righthand side of the main control box.
Saturday morning once all was plugged in, things worked “fine-ish”. The electrics worked fine, but the steel wire cable that pulls the trolly back and forth was too slack and kept on jumping off when the runner was stopped whilst running from left to right, either with the stop button or the limit switch. Clive Spenser came to the rescue and rushed off to get some tools and we adjusted the cable length a bit to ensure sufficient tension to prevent it from jumping off the pully. After that we were cooking with gas.
I broke the ice shooting first. We have moved the firing point back as far as we could reasonably, 40m to the target in the far-right corner and 30m in the middle. This of cause meant that the lead allowances were all very different than they were before, so I shot first to establish a baseline lead. I scored well on the jackal and the hyena but due to stoppages caused by ejection problems to I only scored 2 hits worth 1 point each. I was in the lead after 1 shot, but that was short lived as Tom put up a very good score of 52 points as the 2nd shooter, and from then on as shooters came and shot, I fell further down the ratings. Clive Spenser with his semi auto Ruger put up an excellent score 69. Sharon Mladina shot well with a bolt action; 56, but she was pushed down to 3rd place by Jimmy Bekker with is “plaas geweer” bolt action Anschutz; 67 points. Dave Wilson tied with me on 49.
The top sores are therefore tabulated:
| Clive Spenser | 69 |
| Jimmy Bekker | 57 |
| Sharon Mladina | 56 |
| Tom Diedericks | 52 |
| John Rutherfoord-Jones | 49 |
| Dave wilson | 49 |
It was nice to see Conrad and Debbie van Schalkwyk and their daughter Cornelia on the range; they all shot with the quietest .22 semi-auto I have ever heard.
I need to apologize to Anso Spenser for putting her off a bit; when she started to shoot, I was sitting a bit too close to the shooting table and got “peppered” by the hot cases ejected from the Ruger semi-auto rifle. One went down the front of my shirt and then one landed on the back of my neck and trickled down my back, did you see me dance and move away fast, but not before letting out some loud expletives; poor Anso did not know what was going on.
Final Scores:
