Greetings all, It's not too often that I get to compete in a country I have never been before, so I welcomed the chance to participate in the first UK Open to be held in 11 years, at the Kells Rifle and Pistol club in Northern Ireland. Certainly it was going to be a long expensive trip, but I was excited to see how things were done up there. Since one cannot travel through the UK with guns, we had to fly directly into Northern Ireland, and that, only after the match organizers and some friends (Thanks Mic, David) were kind enough to help us arrange our import permits some months in advance. By the way, I never did show that license to anyone at all, as when I arrived at the airport at 11pm, there was no one to show it to... The Kells shooting range is built into a working sheep farm - now that is new! it was a little strange to walk to the range through a field of grazing sheep - but, a pleasant experience all the same. The sheep must have been well accustomed to the shooting, as they did not seem bothered by us or our guns one little bit!
The range includes one indoor and one outdoor bay, wide enough to host 3 stages each. The RO's had to work hard to change the layout of the stages, so that we had 6 new stages waiting for us the next day. The stages themselves, while not easy, were rather simple and straight forward. You were not likely to get confused on these stages. Mostly, you had to set up and shoot what you could see from each position, with the targets almost all being in the mid to mid-long range. There was a good level of difficulty though, with 2 tough strong hand stages and good distance.
Having said that, it is certainly fair to say the match organizers did a fantastic job with what they had: They had to build 3 stages per bay, and, local police rules require that all bullets go into the back-stop, so no portable bullet traps are allowed, and no sideward shooting is possible. So given these restrictions, the stages were as good as possible. It would have been nice to have had a few more rounds though - with a total of only about 190 shots, it was a small level III. Some stages could have benefited with a few more targets thrown in... The match had a bit of a "retro" feel to it, all us foreigner shooters agreed. It has been a long while since I shot stages using props like a phone held to your ear, or starting writing on a clip board. These kinds of "real life scenarios" have long since been all but filtered out of IPSC in Europe, and I think rightfully so. In my opinion, if it does not test and measure a shooting skill - why have it? Most of the STI Euro team was at the match, and did well. Ralf Jensen won Standard by a commanding lead over team mate Fabrizio Pesce. I shot well enough for a close 2nd behind Eric Grauffel, and Emil finished 3rd even though his mag base pad exploded off his long magazine in the biggest stage of the match... It was a real pleasure to shoot this match! The organizers were thrilled to once again have international competitors coming to the UK to shoot, and we were made to feel so very welcome. For me, that more than made up for the simplicity of the stages and low round count, and I had a great time. So after 12 stages of shooting, these were the final scores: Open Division top 10:
1 100.00 896.7028 100 Grauffel, Eric FRA
2 95.97 860.5793 101 Kirsch, Saul NED
3 87.86 787.7999 111 Obriot, Emile FRA
4 70.07 628.2913 107 Huttner, Eli ISR
5 67.49 605.1886 105 Carnette, Irene L ITA
6 61.06 547.5254 22 Cowan, Mick GBR
7 56.88 510.0540 9 Mitchell, Geoff GBR
8 55.29 495.8138 73 Rankine, Stuart SS GBR
9 51.55 462.2730 63 Seger, Dick NED
10 50.48 452.6519 118 Dunkley, Bob S GBR
Standard Division top 10:
1 100.00 906.0065 18 Jensen, Ralf K DEN
2 79.28 718.3001 106 Pesce, Fabrizio ITA
3 76.32 691.4388 4 Thompson, David GBR
4 74.71 676.8827 42 Kirkpatrick, Paul GBR
5 68.65 621.9481 96 Pedlow, Andrew IRL
6 67.98 615.9484 76 Rodgers, Cleland GBR
7 57.89 524.5091 88 Smith, Paul S IRL
8 55.97 507.0909 7 McAleese, Robert GBR
9 54.86 497.0012 37 Cumming, David GBR
10 53.94 488.6863 12 Hunter, John GBR
Production Division top 10:
1 100.00 888.7406 95 Hobdell, Angus USA
2 90.06 800.4050 110 VanUitert, John NED
3 82.93 736.9974 48 Greer, Stephen S GBR
4 80.77 717.8361 97 Saveljic, Boris MTO
5 79.91 710.2271 19 Towndrow, Nick GBR
6 71.70 637.2104 1 Ellis, Alexander S GBR
7 68.23 606.3907 29 VanStanden, Dave IRL
8 66.87 594.2832 25 Chamberlain, Ian GBR
9 63.58 565.0725 15 Spence, Martyn GBR
10 62.66 556.9168 104 Power, Mike IRL
As always I have my sponsors to thank for their support
STI International
Fiocchi
Hornady
Competitive Edge Dynamics (CED)
Aimpoint
Vihtavuori
MSA Sordin Until the next time I wish you all excellent shooting.
Saul Kirsch | Pictures 
Saul in action in the most difficult strong hand stage. 
Irene and Fabrizio shooting amongst the sheep... 
At the awards. 
The outdoor range. Used for 3 stages at once.
Movies: Saul clip 1 Saul Clip 2 Ralf clip 1
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