All meetings held at 19:00 at the Royal Armouries unless specified otherwise.

8 January  – AGM

12 February – Handling Protocols / Starting a Collection – Steve Dean & Stuart Taylor

12 March – Carl Zeiss optics – Andrew Claxton. Most shooters use optics of some form or another, either a telecopic sight or perhaps a pair of binoculars. Tonight’s talk will look at the role of Carl Zeiss in the development of binoculars from 1870 onward.

9 April – TBA – Steve Dean

14 May – TBA – Simon Vann

11 June – Choose your calibre: A consideration of the factors involved in choosing a calibre. What are the merits of big, slow bullets versus small, fast bullets? How did the Boers wreak such harm on the British in the Boer War with their 7mm Mausers? Were the lessons re-learned in Afghanistan a century later? Has 5.56mm had its day ? What might the next service rifle calibre be? Come along and find out…

9 July – Swiss Rifle History – ‘The Suttons’

13 August – ‘Might have Beens’ – Noel Oglesby

10 September – Firearm Restoration – Paul Whitelam

8 October – Firepower ! To commemorate the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt we consider the firepower of the English bowman and how firearms struggled to match it for almost 400 years. At Agincourt, English archers were able to fire 12 arrows a minute out to 500 yards yet at the battle of Waterloo it was difficult for musketeers to sustain 2 rounds a minute and accurately engage targets more than 100 yards away. What were the early attempts to make firearms faster to use and thus more deadly on the battlefield ?

12 November – Dutch Service Sidearms – ‘The Gunnings’

10 December – ‘Bring and Show’ evening