I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound so negative. I appreciate your input. We were at Staunton River Bridge Battlefield this weekend for a 150th anniversary battle. Artillery was by invitation only. We had a safety inspection on Saturday morning on our equipment and our drill. The Park Service guy that inspected said we were all clear and actually the "best drilled crew in the field, but he wanted a second opinion on the vent." Some old fart came over and looked at it and then asked me to fire just a primer. Which I did without incident. Then this second guy took out a precision measuring instrument and inserted it in the vent. The instrument was a retractable ball point pen. He said he could not pass it and we were not allowed to shoot. He said the primer raised up out of the vent before it fired. It always does that as the breech band on a six pounder holds the lanyard up off the tube about 1/4 inch. It doesn't come out of the hole and doesn't mis-fire. In the 8 years I've had that gun we have had only 3 mis-fires. And only one was primer related. When no. 4 pulled the lanyard the wire broke and nothing happened. Cleared the vent, re-primed and no issues. We set up camp on Friday afternoon just in time to brave two of the worst thunderstorms I have ever experienced. Then got rolling early Saturday morning just to get rejected from participating. 2.5 hour drive each way. It caused quite a controversy in the camp and several units packed up and left with us. Most all the artillery and the cavalry left early Sunday morning. It was a fiasco.

Keith