TargetTalk

My kids have been doing some biathlon over the past year and I have been watching world cup replays on biathlonworld.com and I have a bunch of questions.

My daughters rifle came from one of the world cup racers and has almost no 1st stage on the trigger, is this typical?

The minimum rifle weight is 3.5 kg, is that without the harness?

The Finnish woman, Kaisa, seems to have an adjustable aperture on her rear sight, but other than that I don't think I saw any more. Do the racers vary their apertures?

Why does everyone have custom stocks? I sure the reason is fit, but the stock Anschutz stock is very adjustable. It seems that weight distribution would be the other reason. Some seem rather fragile and I know broken stocks are not uncommon.

My biggest question is how do you build biathlon positions? I have been reading Ways of the Rifle and only some of it is applicable.

You can set a trigger to your preference - google adjusting an anschutz trigger.

You can get apertures with adjustable diameters. On bright days you can reduce the aperture size for better depth of field and improved focus.

You can also get rear sights that have an adjustable diopter in them, to adjust focus, but I don't know if those are legal, nor do I know how well the lenses would do in the cold without fogging.

I guess my questions were somewhat confusing. What I ment to ask is, are biathlon rifles commonly set up with very little 1st stage? I personally prefer a distinct 1st stage, and it may just be that the previous owner didn't.

I also realize that there are adjustable apertures for both the front and rear sights, I'm really asking if their use is common in biathlon. I would think with the varying light conditions the races are contested in that changing aperture sizes would be benefitial.

Ill jump in here, but know that I don't shoot biathlon. I have had a few friends over the years that did, and I have played with the rifles a bit doing summer biathlon so I'm not totally in the dark here.

Trigger preference will be all over the map ... it's up to the shooter, so adjust to your liking.

On the dozen or so biathlon rifles I've handled, I've not seen an adjustable aperture. This was never a point of discussion so I'm totally guessing here ...

To my thinking you don't want something that can freeze up in poor conditions (the iris blades) nor do you really need the precision an adjustable would provide. Biathlon is more speed oriented rather than precision, so big (relatively speaking) open apertures would be better.

Anybody else have anything to add?

My son uses front and rear adjustable apetures for a reason. Biathlon I believe has the highest light variation of any rifle sport. It varies from brilliant sunlight with reflected snowlight to dark snowy obscured light. He has had no problems with the apetures.
As for building positions in prone and standing, " The way of the rifle " is an excellent study in prone and standing shooting. My son shoots smallbore 50 yard and meter outdoors in the summer. On that target you can cover the X and 10 ring with a dime. Excellent practice for biathlon. His prone and standing positions stays the same for both sports. If you can shoot in the high 80's, low 90's on the summer outdoor target, the 4" biathlon plate is a chip shot.
Chris

hey levergun,

I hoped you would chime in here. As far as positions, does you son pull up his knee in prone for smallbore? Is it much of a change for him to find his position with skis on? Does your son use guidelines of some sort for finding his initial position in prone? How did you set up his rifle (lop, cheek piece highth, handstop) to split the fit between the 2 positions.

Lots of questions,
Thanks, Phil

My son does not pull his right knee up very far normally in prone. He uses the same body position with his skis on. He checks his POA on the middle plate then works left to right. He uses a little cant but doesn't change his cheek piece height. The hand stop is set for a low position just above 30*. You could set a board across his toes and it would point to the middle plate on the target in standing. He checks that with POA before he shoots. Hope this helps.
Chris

A few of things worth considering:

Trigger weight: The minimum allowed trigger weight is 500 gram. Typically I would pre-load the trigger pretty heavily - perhaps 300+g through the whole sighting process before applying the final 200g or so to release the shot. With this technique the first stage is actually irrelevant so you may as well do with out it.

Gloves. In cold conditions we used to shoot with a gloved trigger finger. Subtlety is out in these conditions - just get a good feel on the trigger by loading it up to the limit. Even if you are not wearing gloves, in a race your finger doesn't have the sensitivity it has in 'normal' circumstances.

Speed. A fair bench mark used to be some thing like 30 - 40 seconds to the first shot then less than ten seconds between subsequent shots. In and out of the range in a minute if you can. No time to go back and forth on the first pressure. Get the pressure on and be ready to release when the picture is good.

Rory W

Kind of late but I'll add in:

Weight is the rifle all ready to go but without mags.

Trigger is all personal preference and with a glove on it is best to not get too technical. I have my trigger right at 500 gr. and bring a screwdriver to tech to account for the weight change with temperature. I fail, reset it to the tech's weight and tech out.

Adjustable apertures are legal but expensive. They do make it nice for changes in light but that's about it. There can be no optical magnification in biathlon and fogging would negate any advantage.

I've never adjusted my sights aperture during a race.

Most range times for world cup are pole-to-pole in about 25 seconds. Between shot times are typically 3 seconds so set up and remount account for about 15 seconds of this. At the club level a good range time is 40 seconds.