A few pix from Nationals

[Dave951]

Well the Palmetto Sharpshooters had a ball at Fall Nationals. We finished 5th in Smoothbore and had good showings in Carbine and Musket. Got skunked in Artillery but the Rifled Howitzer class can be extremely competitive. Two flyers put us dead last.


Part of Co A standing formation for Opening Ceremonies.



This is the first Nationals we've flown our colors properly. It's a full size 4th Bunting Confederate Battle Flag with authentic Palmetto Sharpshooters marking.

Battle Flags of the Army of Northern Virginia - Confederate Flags

CONTENTS OF THIS PAGE: FIRST NATIONAL FLAGS FOR THE CONFEDERATE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC DEVELOPMENT OF THE BATTLE FLAG THE PROTOTYPES THE SILK ISSUES THE COTTON ISSUE FIRST BUNTING ISSUE SECOND BUNTING ISSUE THIRD BUNTING ISSUE THE SECOND NATIONAL FLAG AS A FIELD AND BATTLE FLAG IN THE ARMY OF...

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Our new flag in the breeze with 1st Sgt Miller, Pvt Kelly, and Sgt Spradlin. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves after the pigeon board. Then the wind really started to kick up on the part of the line where we were on Position 58 and by the 100yd event, the targets were dancing and about all you could do was chuck a round into the middle and hope to hit something.



Part of Co A blasting the pigeon board into iddy biddy pieces.



Opening ceremonies looking down toward Position 1 off in the distance. The large tower you can see on the firing line is the main control tower. There are 3 more auxiliary towers for range control.

 

[Windini]

That sounds like an awesome time! Great pics.

 

[Red Marley]

Looks great, thanks for posting pics

 

[Tim]

Sweet! Looks like fun

 

[Dave951]

Sweet! Looks like fun

Oh I assure you, it's way more fun than about any other form of competition. It's also the only form of competition where you shoot as a team. At Nationals, each Musket and Carbine team consists of 8 shooters. Each match consists of 5 events shot in enough relays to get all the teams through. Each event has a 5 minute time limit to break all the targets on the array. Each array consists of breakable targets, gotta break it to count. Generally, the first event in Carbine and Musket is the Pigeon Board, a 4x8 sheet of cardboard with 32 clay pigeons attached at 50yd. You can see them in the background of the formation pix. A clay at 50yd presents the aspect ratio of an 8moa target at 100yd so basically, you're shooting the equivalent of an 8in black at 100yd against the clock with a Civil War arm offhand. No rests, No benches, No prone, No pressure.........😆

The N-SSA Nationals also have other classes of arms to compete in- Smoothbore, Revolver, Henry, Spencer, Single Shot pistol (smoothbores), Single Shot Rifle, and Artillery. Artillery is divided into Mortars, Rifled Guns, Rifled Howitzers and Smoothbore Howitzer. Many of the guns on the firing line are shooter grade originals and there's pretty much nowhere else you can shop for original stuff than our sutler row. At the exit to the Fort is Back Creek Gun Shop. BCGS is probably the largest quantity source for black powder around. Just to give an idea of how much Jackie sells, we did a rough calculation of the amount of powder expended in a Nationals during Small Arms competition and it works out to over 4 tons and that doesn't even count artillery consumption. So yeah, we burn some powder and have a ball.