Friends of NRA Sporting Clays tourney

Our good friends at Great Satan Inc passed along a flyer announcing a Friends of NRA "100 bangs for freedom"(pdf link) Sporting Clays tournament local enough to make with only minor travel requirements.

We are happy FoNRA supporters and we have been practicing the scattergun weekly since his end of season performance at Sparta IL.  So this event seemed a win-win.

Our squad was a diverse crew of three juniors, your humble host and a high mileage unit "Russ" shooting a mega buck Kreighoff*.  He shoots several thousand rounds and many competitions each year.  I told the SCQueen "I want to retire and be him!"

I started off badly with an 0-fer on our first stage.  Everyone else did better.

The interesting thing about sporting clays is the variety.  Each scenario is different.  And the course length also varies.  The state match the SCSon competed at least March only used 10 stations so each station gave 5 presentations of the same target pairs.   Contrast that with today we had 15 stations so we only got to see the same pairs three or four times.

I started the day shooting a semi-auto shotgun.  It's the same one I've shot  the past seven weeks without a hiccup.  Today it failed to cycle first the 2nd stage, and twice in a row on the third.  I disassembled and wiped it down with oil last night and maybe that was a mistake.

The SCQueen put the gun in timeout** while I shared the over/under with the SCSon for the rest of the event.   I've shot the O/U*** before but I normally shoot the semi-auto.  So the first O/U shot today was "different".  When it didn't cycle, I thought something might have gone wrong.  By then the 2nd bird was aloft so I got back down on the gun and broke the clay.

One stage was king of interesting... it was an AB on report (2nd bird launches when the first shot is fired).  A was a high inbound while B was a high L to R crossing.  Frequently pieces of the broken inbound A bird would land in the immediate vicinity of the firing platform.   The "Incoming" warning call was heard more than a couple times.  I felt for one shooter who had a large piece of broken clay land literally at his feet as he engaged the B bird.  (I think he broke both birds).

The final scores were none too surprising.

Russ scored 86/100
Elder junior scored 67
SCSon scored 66
Your humble host scored 50
and the younger 20 gauge**** shooting junior scored forty something.

Here's the SCSon's take on the day.

* Kreighoff does very nice shotguns for serious shooters.  We visited with them at Sparta earlier in the year and IIRC the least expensive gun on the wall clocked in at about $18K.  I want to be in that league!  But I am a long way from there today.

** took it back to the car.

*** Said O/U was a birthday present for me...  However the SCSon normally claims it first so I rarely get to shoot it,  leaving me with the semi-auto.  #firstworldproblems

**** Larger bore means more shot in the air and better chances to break the bird.  The SCSon was waffling between 12/20 gauge early this year.  In two rounds of trap he scored 19/25 with the 12 gauge and 9/25 with the 20.  He hasn't looked back.

Refrigerator repair

The main 'fridge here at the SandCastle developed a rather serious problem a few weeks ago - the ice dispenser failed.

Now to many this would seem like a minor inconsequential inconvenience.  After all, most of us had to open the freezer door to get ice.  Heck most of us had to manually refill ice cube trays.  However the SandCastle is in the heart of the Sonoran desert and we use a lot of ice.   The dispenser gives ice without opening the door and that saves energy and $$$.  The automatic ice maker + in door dispenser may well be the ultimate luxury appliance 'round these parts.  Right up there with the Garage Door opener!  I smile every time I hear the ice dump into the storage bucket!  So this is a big deal.

First guess was a blown fuse or bad relay.  Heck, fuses are designed to blow in order to save the rest of the circuit.  I used to have a large note on my tool box "CHECK THE FUSE FIRST" because of all the time I wasted troubleshooting only to find a blown fuse.  But we haven't been able to find an electrical schematic.  Usually there is one somewhere on the inside of the unit but we came up empty pulling off the back cover.  If there is a fuse in the circuit, we haven't found it.

We first checked the auger motor.  Pulled it off (four screws) and one electrical plug.    From there we were able to determine which conductors ran the motor.  Checking for power to the motor at the connector we had none.  Ok, the fault is probably further upstream.  For sake of completeness we put 120VAC to the motor and it ran easily.  Reassembled that and move on.

Rung out the front panel switches.. all check out ok too..  And finally got to the microswitch controlling the dispenser.  It also checked ok.  But in the process of getting this far, I noticed the lever that activates the dispenser switch wasn't reaching all the way to activate the switch.

The problem isn't electrical, it's mechanical!  The lever that activates the switch was misaligned.  We reassembled everything and now it works.

Side story... back in my college days I caught a nail riding home from school and blew a tire.  I was about midway through the tube repair when my roommate came home in his 3 piece suit from his internship at a certain tri-lettered high tech giant.

Him: "What are you doing?"
Me: "blew a tire... gotta patch the tube."
Him: (bewildered) "You can do that?  You don't have to pay someone to fix that for you?"
Me: "um no...  you see they sell this kit for a couple bucks."

Patching a bicycle tire was unheard of in his world.  That was something beyond the basic ability of normal people... you need special equipment and have to pay others to do it for you.  To me it was as normal as mowing the lawn.

Total dollar cost to fix the fridge: $0.  Total time to fix: about 2 hours.  Best Benefit: The SandCastle Son did a lot of the work and got his hands dirty in the process.   The couple hours hands on troubleshooting even doing simple disassembly/reassembly will hopefully translate into $$$ saved for him down the road.  That and that I wore insulating gloves while hotwiring the auger motor directly to the ac outlet.

BTW, the hardest part of this repair was not the electrical circuit.  It was the mechanical problems of disconnecting electrical connectors.  Each electrical connector has mechanical locks that we had to figure out how to release.

I hope he takes away the "you can fix it" lesson.  That and check the fuse first!