2011 Bianchi Cup for the shooters

[Milford Cubicle II]

For those of you who follow shooting sports I thought I'd post up a little thread about the Bianchi Cup this year, today was the final day of competition.

Results are here and scores are here.

Same results as last year for the mens' open and women's division, Doug Koenig winning the cup followed by Bruce Piatt and Jessie Abbatte winning the women's division. Amazing shooting as usual, Doug shot a new Bianchi record score of 1920-187x.

I was lucky enough to be a range officer for the brand-new, never been shot before side event, the "Bushmaster Tactical Carbine Challenge" featuring Bushmaster's long awaited ACR (Adaptive Combat Rifle) in the .223 flavor. If you want my review of the rifle after putting over 6,000 rounds through it in 3 days, PM me. Here is the rifle.

This is the basic course of fire for the Bushmaster TCC, as demonstrated by an NRA staff member.



The winner of the Bushmaster TCC was actually the winner of the first season of the History Channel's "Top Shot," Iain Harrison. He completed the course in somewhere near 17 seconds with only 3 misses, giving him the highest composite score. Interestingly his top competitor in Top Shot, Chris Cerino attempted to exact revenge on him at Bianchi but lost to him handily at the Bushmaster TCC. However, Cerino did wipe the floor with Harrison at the falling plates event, beating him by 30 points. It was interesting to watch all of this unfold to say the least, I'm already looking forward to next year's Bianchi Cup :cheers:

 

[Milford Cubicle II]

Nobody? Lol, really? I thought on this forum somebody would be interested :dunno:

 

[ECKSJAY]

I'm gonna give a sympathy reply. I saw this the other day and didn't reply.

How did you like the ACR?

 

[Milford Cubicle II]

Lol well I'm quite shocked that there isn't anymore interest in this than there is, considering all of the gun owners/enthusiasts on here. Oh well.

I believe they want $2600 for that rifle... absolutely no way. Our first shooter comes to the starting box, horn sounds, shooter grabs the rifle out of the barrel, magazine goes flying out of the mag well. We boil it down to "operator error," which is a sort of misleading term due to the fact that if you even look at the mag release very hard, the mag comes dropping out. That, combined with the placement of the mag release (directly where your trigger finger *should* be when you're not ready to fire) led to a difficult time keeping the magazine in the rifle. Also, if you shove the magazine into the mag well too hard, the mag will stay in the mag well but it WON'T lock in so that the first time you fire or jostle the rifle, the magazine says bye bye see ya later. So you have to be somewhat "ginger" with the magazines. To me, that's a pretty major flaw for a combat rifle where reliability is key.

To answer your question, I didn't like it at all.

 

[ECKSJAY]

What kind of mags? Were they being topped off and loaded on a closed bolt?

I notice on my AR carbine that my trigger finger rests on the mag release when it's indexed, too...but you actually have to push on it to get it to release.

But yeah, KISS is key in my world...

 

[Milford Cubicle II]

Oh har har, NO they were not being loaded on a closed bolt

They were the Bushmaster mags that came with the rifles. We tried other much older metal AR mags with the same problem. To me, having to finesse mags into a rifle completely defeats its purpose.

I'm buying a SCAR