00133 Shootin' diary

I've been logging on to shooting diary - http://www.shootingdiary.com/ - to get some sort of analysis done on my progress. It's OK, but I think a quick conversation with one of the local programmers might yield an offline solution which I can manipulate to give me a more useful analysis (what am I saying?).
I'll be buying a jacket soon, although we could probably do without the expense - not forgetting that I'll be buying spars for the giant Dopero soon. Money, money, money. Where will it all end?
Thursday's shooting was good, although the first card was a bit farcical 'cos of a mix up with the turn direction for windage. I kept adjusting the sights to bring the shots back left and they kept going farther and farther away. The next card was a tidy 94, and only then with a couple of wierd pulled shots. Improvement is on the way, I can feel it.

00132 Slack

Slack line

So I did this KAP thing with Simon (Carrot) and only got round to looking at it today. This is pretty much all we got, but we were only trying out the technique. Slack line flying, eh?. He's off to by a Rokaku, which I reckon will be best to start with.
Other news (seeing as I obviously can't be arsed to update this blog too regularly), I've been shooting and the scores are going up. First was a 95 followed by a 91 (but I've a great excuse for that one).
Also I've sorted out the material for the Maxi Dopero. It's alot. The spars are going to have to be glass fibre, because the equivalent in carbon would be over £100 - not going to happen.

00131 Dopero

Do I want a Maxi Dopero? I don't know, bit ever since finding my bag full of rip-stop I obsessed anew. Sadly the cost of carbon rods for a kite thais size is around £lots, so I'm into glass fibre. Let's see if it comes about.

00130 On the Grand Roques

Kitesurfin' - what am I doing rigging up the 15 on a squally, low wind-high wind day? Dunno. Set it up the first time, then spent an hour hanging round by the car dodging rainstorms. Then Dan comes along with his "might go out might not", while I stand about dressed in rubber in a carpark adjacent to the main road. What have I become? Still, went out for a gusty 2o mins and shelved the 4am-drinking-like-a-man-who-wants-to -get-nasty-but-just-doesn't-have-the-demeanour hangover (was that too much?). Won't do it again, well ... maybe not. Arse.

00129 Shootin' better

Two cards on Thursday (16th), the first coached by Martin Mace, the club secretary. He didn't move my sights, so the group was well off center, but tight as a gnat's. The second, coached by John (who's father's name I don't know - this is how he's known to me), was sighted, adjusted and scored at 92. Yeah, I could justify this with suitable excuses. And so (as Dan mailed me the other day) it begins. Maybe I'll cook up a shoulder injury next week. That should sort me out with a six point drop. 94.

00128 New KAP discussion site

Just to mark the event, Cris Benton has launched the improved KAP discusion forum and it's much better than the last iteration by a mile.

And here it is

00127 Grand Roques jumping

Vazon was crowded out with surfers and a windsurfer on a low tide, so I decided on Grand Roques.

Good decision.

Great, if a little gusty, but as soon as I had it "dialed" (I am now holding out my arms and moving the middle and index fingers of each hand up and down to parenthesise this and in doing so providing a modicum of sarcasm to add to the proceedings) I was "rippin'" (see above). Even with the gusts I was going great guns on the new board - the size and flex gave me great control in the heavier gusts and made sure that I didn't accellerate out of control. The jumps were small affairs, but they'll grow in size slowly as the confidence increases with them - that's the idea. Just before I left I thought I'd try to get in a good big one and found myself with mucho altitude and a certain feeling of "hangtime" (once again I refer you to the passage referring to parenthesising extreme sports speak so as to make light of it). Man that was good. And thank goodness for the seat harness as I'm sure the brown stain on the back of my wetsuit would otherwise have been obvious.

Should add that rootin' tootin' shootin' was all over the shop yesterday. I will now come down from my high horse in order to take up a "it's no fun being perfect, I'd rather have room for improvement" attitude.

00126 Gusty Vazon

Slightly worried about the fact that this has just turned into a log of when and where I go to KAP, kitesurf or shoot. I'll look into the creative side of things later.
In the meantime I was of course out kitesurfing at Vazon today. Really gusty, I guess because there was too much south in the wind, meaning that it came over tehheadland and became more turbulent as a result. Still, got a couple of good runs in - but I wasn't going to start jumping in those conditions, no siree.
Oh, didn't I mention, I got lofted and dumped in the shallows thank goodness for seat harnesses. So much for not jumping.
Out shooting tonight. Wonder how the exertions of the kiting will affect things.

00125 New KAPer?

Went to Vazon in very low winds to find something to KAP. Took the rake, but ended up talking Simon (Carrot) through the mechanics of KAPing. He'll be off to buy a kite now, although still needs advice on exactly which one. Sutton Flowform 30 with Becot modification I reckon.

00124 Surfin' and shootin'

Target

Wednesday was kitesurfing, Thursday was small-bore shooting.
The kitesurfing was the first initiation into jumping. The new board was really good with an overpowered 15m and the jumps were pathetic to start with, but once I got the hang of sending the kite back into the window it was superb. 'Course I did land every one on my arse, but that's the way it starts. More soon, I hope.
The shooting was good. Just some grouping to start with, so that I can ease myself back into it again. The groups were nice and tight, so at least my eyesight hasn't deteriorated too much yet. I'll try to go every Thursday, but they'll be closing up the small-bore and moving to full-bore at the end of March (I think). I haven't shot Full bore since I was 18. Why not try it again, eh? Anyway, the first experience of it over here was much better than the time I did it in London. Everyone seemed very welcoming and eager to help. I might even get to join the OE team. Man, that'd be wierd.

00123 KAPin' the nags

Finally got out to do something more than cooking (although we have been cooking up a storm with the old Christmas present - "Casa Moro". Crackin').
Actually went out to take some image of the mounds of sand made when they (the States of Guernsey) send out a digger and a tipper truck to excavate sand from the sea wall, where it builds up and then blows over the wall onto the houses behind, and dump it below the shoreline. It's usually done on something like a low spring tide, so that they can take the sand down near the edge of the water with the truck, then all the mounds of shifted sand just get washed away and redistributed further down the beach. Unfortunately it was done yesterday and they didn't do too good a job of it, so I just got a couple of mediochre images of just a few jumped-on heaps of sand. If I timed it right and got the right light, I'd get really long rows of sand mounds, clean and crisp just after dumping.
As it was, I still managed to get a horse (not quite the group galloping across virgin sand that I had in mind) and experimented with doing fish with the rake. I don't know if it'll take off. I might just try some precision raking with calculated parameters to get even geometric patterns. How much time do I really think I'm going to get to do that? Not effin' much.