What are you trying to achieve ?

Thanks for posting photos Rick ,
The Nationals , I would like to thank the Berger people who did a fantastic job of organizing and running the match,
The run down , It was great to see Andy ,Dave ,Vicky and everyone else although I really did not have much time to visit, seems I'm always fiddling with something and It chews up all my time , could be the OCD ,( I am going to have to work on that), by the time I got done messing around every day it was dark and everyone was gone .I did see Dave and Andy a bit in passing but we were always going opposite directions ,
First 2 days were a little rough as I could not get a handle on the tune , bottom line is I sucked at 100 , not happy with that ,Rob Seeman and I stayed and shot until dark on Wednesday with the rails looking for another node , when 200 came around in the morning life got better , the rail turned on and I finished up respectable for the agg .
Thursday night ,I figured try the same for the bag guns so again Rob and I shot until dark looking for a decent node , and again the lower node looked to have a bigger window (I need big windows ,helps cover up poor decision making on the line ) , Thursday morning conditions were not tough and I was fortunate to ride the tune to a decent finish , Rob did a better job of chasing the tune and was on his way to passing me when luckily for me we ran out of targets ! Rifle kept shooting ok for lv and hv , looking back at the targets I should have been chasing the tune a little harder ,
In the end it worked out allright , had a great time just wish I had more time to visit , maybe when I get better at this I'll get some .
Need to thank Wayne Campbell once again, rifles were awesome ( they sure do make me look smart when I Don't screw up the tune ) and it was a pleasure to get to share a bench with him and TB
Looking forward to seeing everyone in the spring .

Barrel block is the most popular Vic, I have both the v block and the delrin sleeve set up for mine , it came with the v block mounted to it and shot pretty good  so I never tried the other so can't comment on it are you looking at buying one or making one?
I liked the first one so much I bought another!
 nothing shows a good or bad component like a rail.I test seating depths , powders ,bullets ,primers even brass lots in the rail , if they are going to have issues the rail will inherently show it quickly
 when I first looked at buying one I thought it would just be something I needed to shoot the nationals ,never would have guessed how much fun they are to shoot,

Distance is a big problem, no way for the guys in the west to practice with the guys in the east as a team and develop a strategy.
 there are many ways to prepare as team , biggest hurdle is distance followed by no real team SOP , we are making great improvements but could do better ,the Aussies have a good system looking from the outside , not sure how to fix the distance part.

Good luck to all this weekend , it will be a great shoot ,

Thanks to Rick for putting on the shoot, and thanks to the volunteers for giving up their weekend to help out, muchly appreciated, it was a lot of fun with challenging conditions.Regrettably I will not be able to make the provincials as I have other commitments, I would like to wish everyone good luck and have a good shoot
Hugh

I'm planning to be out Friday morning ,

Yep

Thanks Dan, the credit goes to Wayne Campbell,he brought me a rifle that was set up and ready to go , all I did was follow his advice all weekend and pull the trigger ,

its no trouble , I was just trying to figure out what you were getting at, let me try to shed  some perspective on the article you pointed to, the little girl did a great job of shooting a very good top of the line rail. (the same rail just shot a record 5 shot agg with Lou driving it) that was obviously well tuned for the day by the owner of that rail. Does that mean she is an expert ,nope, it means she listened to who ever was coaching her,(smart girl) He does pretty well in sbr out west. It is good to see younger people getting into the sport and we need to promote and support them , that is what I got out of the article.

I'm not sure what a proven expert is,  I look for help from  winners,(they are easy to find their on the top of the list at all the big shoots) those are the guys/girls I want to learn from, in contrast I am not likely to take advice from people who are at the bottom of the list or don't compete at all, If you have met TB you would know that the first thing he tells you is that there are many ways to do this sport, his is just one of them, When I am fortunate enough that Tony" talks" to me (my experience is that Tony will make a suggestion ,not dictate) , he has my full and undivided attention. Just  anyone at the top of the list would.
no matter where you are in the process advice form the top guys  is always helpful and will keep you from wasting time going down the wrong path, which is easy to do.
My experience has been very positive in this sport,  I have enjoyed meeting the other shooters from across Canada and the U.S, all of whom have been very helpful.

MY suggestion for Grant would be, get out and shoot and have fun with what you have , ask lots of questions and read the books I already mentioned,  that will be the cheapest education you can buy , come to the clinic in May ,shoot some full on bench guns and see if this is for you , Then proceed from there, there are lots of good br shooters in Canada and they will get you going on the right path should you decide you like it and want to go to the next level.