Tuesday, 8 February 2011

Bandits at 12 o'clock

About a year ago, I caught a couple of dodgy looking characters hanging around my yard, but they turned out to be expert model-aircraft pilots who fly their planes in the dark, in underground caves (sometimes). The skill involved to do this is phenomenal - these guys really know what they are doing. Have a look at some of the others of 'Inky's' videos - their skill is STUNNING.

Anyway, I hatched a plan.

I invited them up (2) to our black-powder shooting club, and I constructed a target (a stuffed children's toy) to attach behind one of their planes. They obliged, and below is the video of the morning. Sadly, they lost control of the plane half way through (idiots) and landed it in the top of a 100 foot tree, so one of our members had to climb up and get it for them (twats).

Here's the vid they made. I am in it, but not the star of the show. It was a really good morning, and we all had a laugh. You'll also get a lesson in how to load a 150 year old shotgun.

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7 comments:

  1. Molly8 February 2011 at 13:47

    That was good! I enjoyed watching that. I counted two hits but there were probably a lot more! And looping the loop was brilliant even if it was unintentional!

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  2. Tom Stephenson8 February 2011 at 14:26

    The loop de loop was definitely intentional, Moll. The original target (mine) which was stuffed with red dye, came undone over a tree, but the next one - a tin can - came down to earth riddled with pellets.

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  3. Cro Magnon8 February 2011 at 21:21

    The guy with the dreads looked like he was using a duck (punt) gun. Huge guage!

    That was a really great idea. Maybe an annual Christmas shoot could use a Santa.

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  4. Tom Stephenson9 February 2011 at 01:12

    They guy with the dreads was the star pilot, Cro. I think the gun he was using was a fairly standard sized muzzle-loader, but there are 4 bores in the club! We were using ordinary 12 bore breech-loaders for the towed targets, but the two guys who were the pilots were not used to shooting, hence the way they seem to be knocked back quite a bit by the recoils.

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  5. Cassie9 February 2011 at 02:24

    Had to finally come visit after seeing your comments on John's blog. A coincidence, but we were just talking about black powder guns at my mother-in-laws home on Sunday. My FIL passed away last Nov. and I guess he owned an old muzzle loader. No one knew what happened to it, but my hubby's sister found some black powder paraphernalia still at the house. Useless withour the gun though. This was an interesting post. I couldn't tell that the plane was hit at all, but I guess the pellets didn't make much of an impact.

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  6. Tom Stephenson9 February 2011 at 02:28

    We were trying not to hit the actual plane Cassie! There was a target tied about 20 feet to the back of it - that's what we were aiming for. Since most misses are behind a moving target, we thought the plane was pretty safe - until, that is, he started to double back in loop the loops. Oh well, it was his plane.

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  7. Tom Stephenson9 February 2011 at 02:29

    P.S. If we had gone for the plane, it would have been blown out of the sky in the first shot at that range.

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