Sunday, 5 July 2015
Since we have more available manpower than usual, we are planning some range and safety improvements this Summer and Fall. One of these - cutting down the cottonwood tree just west of the range gate - happened early Friday morning, 7/3/15, around 7:30 AM. The cottonwood was a very large tree, but unfortunately, as cottonwood trees do, it had started losing limbs, which were falling nearby the tree, or remaining as widowmakers, caught in the upper branches. Some of the limbs that have come down were fairly large, 6 inches or more in diameter, and some of the (fortunately) smaller limbs had already landed on vehicles parked under the tree. Rather than take the risk of limbs falling on people or vehicles during public shooting events, or during the annual picnic, the decision was made to remove the tree. Justin Wolfe did all the tree cutting, Mike Norman ran the dozer, and Gary Griesenauer, Chuck McClaugherty, and Cole Unger did the rest of the work. They managed to avoid hitting everything except some limbs on the smaller pine tree just south of the cottonwood. There was enough damage to the pine tree that it was decided to remove it as well. The cottonwood tree trunk will be moved out of the way of the WRITA shoot parking, and will be cut up later in July. The pine tree may end up on the firewood pile.
Work has started on the 65 yard range just to the east of the 100 yard range. The trenches for the west and east walls have been dug, and the gravel for the base of the bunker block walls has been ordered. The next steps are to put down, level, and compact the gravel base for the side walls, and then put down the first two courses of bunker blocks. Some of the dirt on the north side of the range needs to be moved so that the north wall foundation can be dug and prepared. Then bunker blocks will be moved into position to form the walls, and dirt will be moved against the interior of the walls to form the impact areas.
The interior range dimensions will be roughly 65 yards south to north, and 80 feet west to east. The range will be larger than the two combined 50 yard ranges, and is intended to augment them, and allow CRGC members more flexibility in setting up shooting scenarios. The range walls will be set up to allow shooting in 3 directions, with some restrictions. Handguns, shotguns, and rifles will be allowed on that range. Although it has not yet been decided whether or not to require members to be briefed on range safety and operations specific to that range before they are allowed to use it, that is likely to be the case. The 65 yard range will be usable whenever trap #1 is not scheduled for use.
Work will also start soon on designing and building baffles and ricochet barriers for the two 50 yard ranges. The first problem is to get the blackberries off the top and back of the 50 yard berms so an engineer can look at the site and determine how to set up the bases for the steel columns to form a single line of baffles comparable to those on the 100 yard range. The ricochet barriers will be set up at the base of the columns, and will overhang part of the impact area for both ranges. Because this involves a permanent structure, we will probably need a building permit from Clackamas County, so we are not expecting this to be a high speed process, but never-the-less we need to get started on it. We also want to get the work done first on the 65 yard range so that we do not lose any range space when work starts on the two 50 yard ranges.
In addition to the digging of the trenches for the new 65 yard range, we have also laid out the positions for two conex containers which will each be used to house two handgun-only shooting positions. The area needs to be leveled, and then piers put in place to hold the containers. We will then contruct an impact area from bunker blocks and dirt, and then place containers. The basic design of the shooting positions will be very similar to those in use at TriCounty Gun Club, and there will be some interior construction to be done in the containers to set up a target trolly and shooting bench inside each conex. We will need the assistance of some welders and metal fabricators to finish these shooting positions.
Work on all three projects can go on in parallel, although the 65 yard range needs to be in service before we start taking the 50 yard ranges out of service intermittantly. We have a shortage of weekends for construction already, so please keep an eye on the club web site calendar for schedule range outages. They will show up in red text on the calendar, so they should be easy to spot.