90 (Speke) Squadron ATC

39 Woolton Road
Garston
Liverpool
L19 5ND
       Tel: 01514270940
  Email: 90@aircadets.org
                  Web: www.90speke.org.uk

Cadet Sergeant Crighton writes about a recent trip to RAF Woodvale for an Archery and Target Shooting day.

It's not very often that cadets from Merseyside Wing get the chance to do Archery, but today, one of the officers was kind enough to invite us to RAF Woodvale to do 2 hours worth of Archery.

On this day, we had also booked the .22 range for indoor shooting practices, and there were about 13 cadets who attended. After arriving at Woodvale shortly after 10am, we were split up into two groups, and then designated places to go - half of us went to the range to do the morning's worth of shooting.

We were all given the safety briefing before allowed to shoot! We had the three very experienced firers shoot first, which were CWO Jordan Jones, F/SGT Jonathon Solan and SGT Matthew Crighton. We would all be testing the accuracy of the rifles first of all, making sure that they fired okay and were fully operational. Attaching the single - point sling that we use to strengthen our aim, or to stiffen our body took the best part of 5 minutes, and then we finally set up in the prone position to commence firing.
On my first shoot, the 5 rounds that I had shot were within a one inch grouping, at a range of 25 metres, and the other two firers had very similar results.

So the weapons were fine. After this first session, we were put on the range again to fire a further 10 rounds, to see how well we could do. Unfortunately, my second and third lot of 5 rounds were not as accurate as the initial shoot, and I was completely devastated. However, I do have my bad eyesight, and the fact that there was very poor lighting to excuse me!

The CWO and the F/SGT were shooting even better than their first attempts, and clearly displayed they had a keen interest in shooting.

After those 15 rounds, we needed a bit of a rest, as the rifle can become heavy and it was time to let other people have a go. One of the most impressive shoots of the day was done by CPL Andy McNeil, who fired excellent groupings on the Martini .22 calibre rifle, with and without the sling.

At around 11.30, we changed over, so I was now heading to the archery. As this is now becoming a Wing Sport, it was a great opportunity to test our skills and get into it at one of the earliest chances made available to us. We were given our safety briefing, and after being told that we needed to treat the archery range like a real range,  shown the proper usage of the "bow and arrow," we lined up on the firing point and began to fire at the targets that were set up about 15 metres away.

90 Speke Squadron Taking Aim

My first few shots had tight groupings; needless to say I only got one Bull throughout the course of the day. The CWO had even more success with the archery, and was in tight competition with McNeil, who was also hitting the high numbers.

To add a bit of fun to the day, we were presented with Balloons on the targets, in place of the bullseye. There was one on each target and CWO Jones seemed to get all the balloons but one, which was the one that McNeil was successful in bursting.

Overall it was a brilliant day, apart from the freezing cold winds! We all had the opportunity to do some Archery and accurate target shooting to improve and develop our skills in these fields further.