I have a little egg on my face.

The other day I posted things that happened at the President's Match at Perry and I will admit that I had gotten my dope from someone a little too early on before everything had settled down.



I asked one of the range people why some of the shooters were not firing and I was briefly told that the Army was boycotting the shootout so I simply ran with that as I figured it to be a good source. I should have waited until things had settled a bit and things cleared up before I posted.



It seems that the AMU members didn't shoot in the shootoff out of respect for the two people that had just fired perfect scores. While I have not dug through the records, this may very well be the first time this has happened. The AMU people didn't shoot out of respect for the two top guns, likely because they knew that the shootout was apt to push these two hard holders down the ladder when things were over.



Incidentally I believe it to be a record year as if my memory serves me (and I might be wrong) but I was at Perry a few years ago and met Staff Sergeant Richard Threatt who had just broken the previous record with a 298 and had set a new record. He was getting ready to retire and that was one hell of a way to put a pretty damned sweet topping on an ending military career.



With the two top guns shooting perfect scores this year, it is nothing short of astonishing. When you consider that the weather conditions were much less than ideal, it is unbelieveable.



Historically as far back as I remember the match has been a simple 30 shot match of 10 shots at 200 yards, 10 at 300 and 10 at 600 yards with 300 possible points. This year two shooters managed to do the near impossible under less than ideal conditions. These two hard holders shot a pair of 300s and this very well may be a National Match record but I am not going to dig through the records to find out as I am out of internet range to begin with and the net here isn't too fast when it is in range.



A few years ago the powers that be decided for some reason to change things and there are a lot of people (myself included) that think that this is another case of someone reinventing the P-38 can opener.



The powers that be have added a little glitch to the match.



After the 30 shot match is fired and things are tallied up, the top 20 shooters are hauled back to the line and fire 10 more shots for score. These are added to their already fired scores and then tallied up. The top 20 shooters are decided this way.



This makes it numerically possible that the person that took top honors in the first part of the match can be dropped down to 20th place in the match. To a lot of us that simply does not make sense.



After the match results were posted I looked at a few things and was surprised to find out that the guy that was in 16th place after the first 30 rounds were fired managed to cllimb up to third.



It just doesn't seem right and a lot of people do not think so, either.



The AMU members this year decided not to shoot the shoot-off and simply allowed themselves to wind up in the bottom of tht shoot-off heap out of respect for these two perfect scorers. I guess they wanted to make sure that they got the top honors they truly deserved.



Still, I really do not think this was the time or place for this but others might disagree. I think the AMU members should have simply shot and done the best that they could and let the chips fall where they may.



Had the two hard holders with perfect scores dropped themselves down a few places it would have made the governing body look a little foolish and given a lot more ammunition to those that want the match reverted back to the original format something to work with. This is especially true when both of them had just set new records.



After all, it looks rather dumb when a pair of hard holders that have just fired perfect scores wind up in, for example, third and eighth place. Eventually the powers that be will realize that they are now looking pretty foolish.



As for another error I might have made, I still root for the Raggedy Assed Marines because they put together a pick-up team to augment a small cadre and give the AMU a pretty good run for their money. Like a lot of Americans, I instinctly root for the underdog. The Marines generally give the AMU, which is very possibly the best marksmanship team in the world something to be reckoned with.



They do not get as much trigger time as the AMU guys do as at the end of the season they revert back to their jobs in the fleet. They are also a lot more approachable as they stay on post for the matches. The AMU is housed off post and when the match is over, they generally leave.



I also watch them from a distance and over the years I have seen some pretty well thought out little public relations coups and it is fun to watch.



That being said, I failed to point out that the AMU does have more responsibilities than meet the eye. They are utilized during the off-season to do a number of clinics and things to 'train the trainers' so to speak and pass their skills on down the line to improve things for the grunts and others in the field. They also do have other responsibilities and they sure do lose a lot of time away from their loved ones.



For many years the AMU was a bastard stepchild and floated through several commands but for the past several years they have found a home under the Recruiting Command which in a way makes sense as they are often in the public's eye.



I will admit that in my previous post on the AMU may have made them sound like a bunch of arrogant little kids, it was in no way so. I simply feel that they should have fired the match and let the chips fall where they may. I think that over time someone in the governing body will see that the shootout is an unnecessary modification of a simple match that has proved to be entirely unnecessary and only serves to cause more problems than it solves.



The shootout is heralded on the CMP website as a an exciting event on their website but the truth is that if we need drama in out lives we just have to turn on the tube and watch one of the many reality shows they have there.



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In other news, the QSL cards from my little venture into amateur radio have started to come in and it is interesting to find out that there were a lot of people that did not understand the National Match program at Camp Perry.



During brief ragchews a commonly asked question was, "Don't you have to be in the service or in a special club or something?"



Another question was "How do I find out about having to shoot there?"



I promptly referred these people to the CMP website to get the straight dope on what it takes to come and shoot.



While not as successful as we had originally hoped, the little station did get the word about CMP and the National Matches out and there were quite a few shooters out there that appeared to be interested in coming next year.



I guess that we managed to do some good for the Matches and that's a pretty good deal.



While the deluge of QSL cards has just started, I am not there right yet to field them and expect to spend a few evenings returning the requests for the Camp Perry Special Event QSL cards and have them being printed up as I write.



About half of the QSL requests I have received have had SASEs enclosed which is a pretty good deal as postage and envelopes are not cheap anymore. One guy sent an SASE and a buck to help defray expenses which was thoughtful and sends him to the front of the line. A QSL card costs about 75 cents to mail these days when you add it all up.



Incidentally, something out of nowhere happened. About 25 years ago I overpaid an electric bill and the Electric people were cleaning up a bunch of old records and posted my name on a list in the local paper. An old friend of mine noticed my name and told me to call them and a check is coming my way for about what I have paid for the QSL cards the other day!



God sure works in strange and mysterious ways.



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One other thing, one of the guys asked me if there was any way I could get in touch with his wife and let her know he was going to be coming home from Camp Perry a day late. I offered him my cell phone, but he had one of his own. Seems he simply wanted the message to get home from a third party so he would not have to go into a long explaination which is something some spouses are apt to do.



I got in touch with another ham and he telephoned the wife and gave her the news.



Of course, a nanosecond after the other ham told us he had called her the hapess poor bastard's cell phone went off as his wife called him demanding to know what was going on and insisting on all of the details and a long, drawn out explaination.



Nice try.



my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/