The 29th Annual Kramer Open

Wild Marsh Sporting Clays Course.

Saturday was the 29th Annual Kramer Open hosted by a good friend, Dave Kramer.  Dave originally started the Kramer Open as a means to raise money for the family of a good friend who passed away, Doug Leu.  Dave has done this now for 29 years and over that time Doug's wife had passed away leaving their children.  My involvement began a number of years ago when my great and late friend, Tom Emmons invited me to shoot the Kramer.  Although a lot of the players have changed over the years, it is still fun to get out on the first Saturday after Labor Day and shoot 100 birds at Wild Marsh Sporting Clays, I used to shoot a league there a number of years ago and it was a lot of fun.  It was a 500 bird league with the requirement to shoot 100 birds a month for April, May, June, July, and August.  You could basically shoot it anytime within the designated time for the month so there was zero pressure to show up every week and shoot, which was nice.  Of course time always flies by quickly and it would seem as though we would barely get in our 100 birds before the next month started.  The Kramer is alot of fun as I do not shoot a sporting clays league there anymore however I really enjoy the shooting and the challenges of hitting the clay targets in the configurations that they set up.  Usually the courses are set up like a golf course.  At the Wild Marsh they have the Green Course, Blue Course and Red Course.  In previous shoots there would be 9 stations per course, 50 targets sort of like a golf course.  This year's setup was 16 stations on the Green Course, 14 with 6 targets and 2 with 8 to make a total of 100.  It certainly made for a fast course completion as the stations were fairly close together, I think it only took about 3.5 hours, about an hour faster than usual.  So out of 41 guys I finished in 7th place with 82 out of 100 targets hit, right behind my friend and co-worker, Mike Scheunke, who was on my team along with Lory Brasel and 2 new guys, Tim and Dan.  Mike shoots quite often in a league and hit 3 more than myself with a score of 85.  These are not bad scores at all considering how rusty one gets after a year of not shooting.  Anyway it was fun and afterwards we all gathered at Dave's house for some refreshments, a Taco dinner, and the infamous Junk auction where Dave raises money for the Leu family.  All in good fun, I bought some obscure garden tools for $1.00 and did donate some extra funds to get a set of seven In-Fisherman how to DVD's a pretty nice set and will come in handy for ice fishing entertainment.  Dave had a nice new in the box Browning A-Bolt .308 rifle on the auction but they did not call my number on that one, which was OK.  All in All it was a fun time, something that I look forward to every year as it is always on the weekend after Labor Day.  Not that I need any excuse but it also serves as a great memory of my times with my late friend Tom Emmons.

New Power Center Distribution Terminals

Last week I had updated my progress on rewiring the boat to fix a number of electrical issues I have been seeing when I fish Canada.  One of the things that is probably causing my issues could be low voltage at the docks where I plug in at night, preventing the batteries from fully charging overnight.  This has an accumulative effect as the batteries are not at their peak of charge and performance.  There are 2 things that I have done.  First is to significantly beef up the electrical circuits that feed the console power.  Although I am not sure what the original configurations were, I bypassed it and as stated last week, ran #6 ga from the batteries in the floor to the console.  This is more than enough to assure good power to my electronics.  I finally received the terminal blocks and mounted them where my electronics hookup area is and started from there.  In the past I had discussed using a boost circuit to help however when I reconfigured it, the circuit kept blowing the automatic circuit breakers that are standard with my Ranger.  For sure I could run the converter straight off the battery via the distribution terminal without issues so I put a 20 Amp fuse in line for protection and reconfigured all of my power connections so all of my add on electronics such as the Lowrance HDS Carbons, SonicHub 2, Structure Scan 3D and other electronics would now have a boost voltage of 14.6VDC assuring trouble free operation.  In addition I replaced my USB power socket with a new one that has a red LED voltage readout on it (much easier to see in the sunlight than my previous blue LED) then tied it directly to the distribution terminals.  Now I can monitor the battery voltage from the console, it is pretty slick.  One of the other things is building a boost transformer for the low dock voltage in Canada.  At the Fisherman's Cove where I was last month the voltage at the end of my extension cord was 92VAC.  I suspect that it may be similar at the Lac Seul Outposts, where I am going on Monday.  If so maybe I can fix the problem from both ends, increase the dock voltage that powers my on board battery chargers to assure a full charge over night, and fix the internal power inside the boat so if there is an issue, it is minor.  Time will tell!  Either way I am fishing next Monday through Friday so my next post could be a week late. Hopefully it will be worth it.