I’ve just been informed that John Buchanan, our Vice Chairman, passed away last week. I have no information on the circumstances, but he was some years over his three-score and ten and not in perfect health.

His funeral will be held on Monday 30th July in the Pentland Chapel at Mortonhall Crematorium at 1.30.

John was a member of the Masonic (Edin) Rifle Club for most of his shooting career (if not all of it) and was its leading organiser for many years although he had to retire from active shooting some time ago.  He was a good shooter in his day and gained one full Scotland cap, at the Bisley meeting in 1994, of which he was very proud. He was a member of the LBTSA Executive Committee (latterly the Management Committee) for many years, serving as Vice Chairman since 1992 and was also the Association’s long-term NSRA Representative. He also ran the Postal League in two separate stints.  He was regularly elected as a member of the SSRA Council over a long period. He was an accredited ISSF Judge and served on one of the Juries at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester in 2000.

His club and the County will miss him.

UPDATE 25/7/18:
There was a notice in The Scotsman this morning.  It says John died ‘suddenly’ on Wednesday 18th July, and that all are welcome to attend the funeral (details above).

(If anyone has anything substantive to add to this, please write in.)

The ‘Scottish’ finished last Friday after a dry, sunny and warm week of shooting.  Conditions were very difficult on some days not only due to the fickle winds, but also because of the heat haze rising from the grass which, combined with the bright sunlight, made spotting shots very challenging if not impossible, especially at 100 yards.

One significant improvement was that the firing point had been covered in Astroturf, thus eliminating the dust and dirt issues that have plagued this range for a couple of years. Thanks have to be given to Ian Thomson for facilitating this, and to him and the local crew for laying it at fairly short notice.

After the pleas for more entries to the meeting, it’s good to see that the net entry jumped from 180 last year to 203 this year.  This momentum has to be maintained if the meeting is to have a future as it is still making a loss, but the NSRA have announced that it will be held again next year (at Lauder).  2019 will see the 100th Scottish Meeting, so it’s an important milestone. If it does continue beyond 2019, it looks like the meeting might now have a permanent home at Lauder due to the cost involved in transporting the range equipment (target frames & supports, stop plates, firing point scaffolding and roof etc) to alternative venues.  This has been quoted as £15,000.  If it does ever move to another location, then it will likely remain there for a few years.

Lothian was represented at the meeting by members of four clubs, one of which had two entrants and another only one.  Watsonians and George Watson’s College combined had over 30 shooters competing, about 15% of the total.  It’s not too much of a stretch to say that these two clubs are keeping this meeting in existence. Trophies were won by Susan Jackson (3), Roderick Bryce-Stafford and Euan(sp?) Stanley of Watsonians, Rhys Olley of Edinburgh University (5), Isabel Stark, Magnus Carswell (4), James Topley, Sam Coates, Neasa O’Connell (2) and Lucy Brechin, all of George Watson’s.  There were also many 2nds and 3rds, too numerous to list here.  In addition, the GWC team won the Junior Team competition and Bill Hamilton won the Benchrest Aggregate.  Susan Jackson made a valiant attempt at repeating her wins in the Earl Haig Scottish Championship of 2005 and 2015, but came a very creditable 3rd in difficult conditions.  Robin Thomson came 6th.  Congratulations to all. (E&OE: please advise any errors or omissions.)

James Brown (Watsonians) was selected to shoot for Scotland in the International match but was unfortunately unable to take up the place. Scotland was narrowly beaten by only 5 points by England, who also won the Ladies’ match fairly convincingly.

The Lothian team in the County Sextette repeated their 6th placing of last season. Will we ever win this again?

The statistics and major competition winners reports under the ‘Miscellaneous’ link on the right have been updated.

The Annual General Meeting will be held at Balerno & Currie’s range on Thursday 31st May at 7.45pm.

The Agenda can be seen here. Last year’s draft Minutes can be viewed from the Information Area to the right.

A prize presentation may or may not take place after the meeting, but see the Prize List here anyway.

Any club or individual who currently holds an Association trophy is cordially invited to return it either at the meeting or arrange to deliver it to the Secretary beforehand.

The results of the Final of the CYOH team knock-out are now available. Balerno & Currie have won the Tom Hastie Shield for the first time since 2004, beating Watsonians in a nail-biting final by a single point.

Take the link in the Competitions menu above to see full details.

Apologies for the delay in posting this – one has  been away on holiday.

With the new General Data Protection Regulations coming into force on 25th May, clubs must take steps to introduce a ‘privacy policy’ by then.  All club members must sign up to it.

The NSRA have issued new guidelines along with processes and a template that clubs can amend to their own requirements. Check out the NSRA’s web page here.

Club representatives have today been advised by the County Secretary that the AGM of the Association will be held at Balerno & Currie’s range on Thursday 31st May, commencing 7.45pm.  All members of all affiliated clubs are welcome to attend.

The agenda will be circulated later, but there is advance notice that the currently vacant posts of Chairman, County Captain, Awards Convenor and one position on the Management Committee all need to be filled.  Nominations for these posts and any further items of business for the agenda should be sent to the Secretary as soon as possible using the ‘Contact Us’ link above.

Teams representing Lothian attended the above event in Aberdeen last Sunday and were runners-up in both the indoor and outdoor matches.

See stand-in Captain Robin Thomson’s full report on the matches and how Lothian shooters fared in the Individual competitions run at the same time.

The Final stage of the Individual Championship took place last Saturday at Balerno & Currie’s range and in the final, Alasdair Horne of the home club overcame his club colleague Niall Geogeson to win the Whitton Cup for the tenth time.

Of the finalists who qualified and those from the reserves list, only ten could attend on Easter Saturday evening for what is supposed to be a 16-shooter straight knock-out.  It was decided that all ten would shoot a preliminary round of two cards each, with the bottom two scorers dropping out.   Adam Dove (Watsonians) led the way with a fine 199.

In Round 2 (the first KO round), the pick of the scorers was Alasdair Horne with 199, which was a little too good for young Isabel Stark from George Watson’s College. Next best was Alan Anderson from Hawick with 198, beating Robin Thomson (Watsonians).  The other winners were Niall Georgeson and Adam Dove , whose form deserted him with a 194 which was just suffient to beat Tomn Diggle of Edinburgh University on a regauge.

In the Semis, Georgeson narrowly beat Anderson 198 to 197, but Alasdair Horne had the best score of the day with 200 to send Adam Dove home earlier than he probably wanted, as he went further backwards with a 188.

Both finalists coldn’t keep their earlier form going either, but Alasdair Horne took the trophy with 195 against Niall’s 191.

Take this link to see full details.

The stickers for the Choose-Your-Own-Handicap Team Knock-out competition have been issued to the four participating clubs.  The first round is due to be shot by 16th April.

Take the CYOH link in the Competitions menu above to see the draw for which team shoots against which.

The STS All ranges and Inter-Regional competitions are being held at Denwood Ranges, Aberdeen on Sunday 8^th April.   The online entry forms are available on the STS Website (http://www.scottishtargetshooting.co.uk/sbr-events/).

This is an open shoot combining indoor (25yds)  and outdoor (50m/100yds) shooting for individuals (in Classes), clubs and regional teams. Detailed information is given on the STS site.  Lothian usually enters a regional team.

If you are planning to attend please let Robin Thomson know if you have his contact details, failing which get in touch with the Site Administrator who will pass on your message, so that he can look at team selection for the Inter-regional events,

The scores and results for February’s round are now available.

The results for January’s round of the Individual league have now been released.  Take the dropdown link in the Competitions menu above.

If you still get the ‘report not available’ page then try doing a browser refresh.  If that doesn’t work, try clearing your browser’s cache (Google it).

For info:

Due to an extension given to one of the participating clubs, the January results will be delayed. The organiser will get them out as soon as he receives the cards.

If any club is looking for somewhere to sell its empty brass cases or the lead excavated from the stop-butts, here is a useful contact.  I know one club which has recently sold their brass and lead to the following for a reasonable price with no complications :

John A McDonald
Unit 5
Sauchiebank
Russell Road
Edinburgh
EH11 2NN

Just make sure the brass is inert!!

The previous version of the LBTSA website was introduced in 2005 and still seems to be working ok. You may think that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but it’s well past time it had makeover, mostly because the framework used to construct it (Microsoft’s ‘FrontPage 2003’ product) is considerably out of date and beyond any official support (there’s a clue in the name). It won’t even run under some installations of Windows 10 (although it does on yours truly’s for some reason but might not in the future). Also, the HTML code that FrontPage produces is not up to modern standards and is considered to be flawed compared to that produced by more-up-to-date website-building systems.

So, here we are with a brand spanking new site built using something called WordPress, which has future-proofed it for many years. I’ve pretty-much replicated the old site but the way in which information is accessed is different. All the content you have come to know and love over the years is still available, though – somewhere. There’s very little that’s actually new but this Home/News page is one of them as it now set up as a ‘blog’-type page.

This is the third incarnation of an LBTSA website I have produced so you might think I was getting the hang of it, but if you have suggestions for improvements or changes, if you find a missing or bad link, if you think there might be something I have failed to transfer from the old site or even if there’s just anything you don’t like about it then please get in touch with the Site Administrator and he will see what can be done.

You’ll have noticed there’s a picture at the top of the page. Each page shows a photo selected at random from a collection of pictures of notable landmarks, places and other points of interest in and around Lothian and Edinburgh to represent our area of the country. If you have a suggestion for an additional icon of the region, please get in touch. Take the “Banner Pictures” link in the side menu for further details.

Well glory be!  The Commonwealth Cities match result has just come through and Edinburgh won again.  Quite comfortably over Auckland.  Take the County Teams link in the top  menu to see the scores.

Massive congratulations to all who shot in these three winning teams (see posts below).

The only thing left is to win the Women’s equivalent match in the BSA Cup format. We haven’t entered this one for a few years but I’m sure we have five ladies who would do us justice. Many readers might not know that Watsonians’ team of three have in recent years been regular winners of the National Women’s League Division 1 so a core of the required talent is here.

Edinburgh finished one place better than last year and once again won the Cities & Boroughs match, winning the C&B Trophy and also the Wyllie, Barr & Ross subsidiary trophy for the best Scottish team (we were the only Scottish team, but we don’t need to mention that!).

Congratulations to Susan Jackson and Ollie Barron of Watsonians on having the joint top score of 299. Susan also top-scored the winning team, again with 299, as long ago as 1998 (but we might not need to mention that either).

Take the County Teams/Indoor teams dropdown above then the C&B button on that page to see the Edinburgh team scores.

The Fixtures Meeting for the Shoulder-to-Shoulder league will be held at Prestonpans range on Thursday 28th September commencing at 7.30.

Unfortunately the League Secretary will not be there himself. He will be on a holiday delayed at the last minute thanks to Hurricane Irma and his absence was not planned. Yours truly has volunteered to try to keep order in his place.