What is it? - How does it work??

Club Loreley practices what is called the 10m air rifle competition. The 10m air rifle is an Olympic event, and will be explained herein briefly.

Shooting is carried out from a standing position (or from a stand if you're a senior - 'club rules') in the club hall with targets (see below) 10m from the firer. Modern air rifles are capable of pin point accuracy, and need to be, because the target's Bull's-Eye is a 0.5mm diameter dot in the center of the target!

Targets on the wall in the club hall

Close up of a target

The air rifles are quite expensive. A decent air rifle can cost at least $2000. However, the club has a couple of rifles that were donated through club members for members of the Rifle Association to use. The rifle has a single pellet capacity, and is cocked such that the barrel and shaft of the gun split in the middle. The user pulls the barrel of the gun down towards the shaft. This exposes the core of the rifle, where one inserts the tiny lead pellet, while compressing the air cylinder that provides the air for the single shot.

Of course, the objective is to get as close to the inner ring as possible. A shot in the 'bulls-eye' is awarded a value of 10, and decreases by 1 for each ring to the exterior of the bulls-eye. If a shot hits a line between two rings, the shot gets awarded with the higher valued ring.

Usually, one single session lasts about 15 minutes. A range officer commences and terminates the firing session to ensure safety precautions. During the first part of the session, five targets similar to the picture above are placed 10m from the firer. The firer attempts two shots for each target on each of the five targets. The maximum points to be attained are 100. This is repeated three times to fulfill one session, so that the maximum attainable points for one single session are 300 points. You can see below a picture of the stance of a typical firer, and the type of air rifle used: