Match Report: Alpha-Mike 2/17/2008

Last Sunday I shot the Alpha-Mike match in Bulverde, TX. It took me a bit to get the video finished - I didn't have the scores on hand, and then had to go out of town for a funeral. I prefer to get these things up while they're still fresh in my head, but, as the prophet Jagger said... You can't always get what you want ;)

Ok - I won high overall at this match, and Open division. There were a total of 53 shooters, which is the biggest attendance at an Alpha-Mike match that I can recall seeing, though its probably not the biggest they've had. Nice turnout, though. Here's the video, and comments will follow...




The thing that always strikes me about Alpha-Mike is the setup... These guys generally can't get on the range until something like 0830 the morning of the match, which means that match setup is done on a very compressed time frame. Somehow they manage to get a full match set up and running in an hour and a half. Very impressive.

A few notes on the video... That last split on the first stage is an .11. The second split on the second stage is a .10. On the second one, I had trigger freeze, and then relaxed off the trigger and grip, which allowed the gun to rock on the 2nd shot and cause a 2nd actuation of the trigger... I didn't call either shot, unfortunately, and so the 4th shot on the target was required... The target (at 12 yards or so) had 2 As and 2 Cs - funnily enough, the two As were the 2nd and 3rd shots - the .10 split - as I called the other two shots as Cs....

On the third stage, that's definitely me jumping the clock, not a weird video artifact. You can see I reacted to the sound of shooting in the next bay over. That caused me some pause, as I partially expected Roy would stop me for creeping. My first shot was a 1.13, so it obviously affected my draw a bit - Roy figured that evened things out...

The classifier, Can You Count, is merciless in its punishment for tension. My second string was a 3.09 - a GM run, not quite 100%. The first one, though, was wracked with tension - a trigger freeze and a blown reload. The draws were sharp, however - a .78 and an .84. I'll take those ;)

The last stage was interesting - that last shot cost me .75 seconds. I'd called a hit on the target, and then visually saw there was no hit, so I made it up (to my benefit, thankfully). But, I walked away from the stage wondering what the heck had happened - I called a solid A on the target and it wasn't there. The video clearly shows the reason.... Hear the "tink", and see the wall rock? That last target was at a hard angle, and I wasn't quite fully as far into the doorway as I needed to be - I just barely edged the corner of the wall, and it spun the bullet off to who knows where...

All in all, a good match. I'm already seeing improvement from the work I've done since the Florida Open...