Wednesday, July 16, 2008 Rama: A tactical frenzy (continued) By Karlon N. Rama Stage Five
SPACE limitations and the deadline forced the editor’s hand, Sunday night, and a portion of the piece I submitted for last Monday’s edition landed on the wastebasket.
Unfortunately, in the amputated paragraphs were the names of the rest of the winners of the first Kamagong Tactical Rifle and Shotgun Challenge.
So to those who’ve been waiting for the results, here they are, resuscitated from the trash bin.
In the Open category of the Submachine gun event, the champion’s trophy went to Miguel Osmeña, son of Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña, who shot the match with an HK UMP45.
Glenn Uytengsu, shooting an HK 94, and Zandro Fajardo landed a distant second.
Conversely, Jhufel “Jojo” Roble of Team Roble Shipping and Badoy Cosedo of Romy Cortes’ Safariland Arms Corporation topped the Standard category.
A little trivia–the Heckler and Koch UMP45 may be described as a blowback-operated, magazine-fed submachine gun that fires the .45 ACP cartridge from a closed bolt. But doing so would deny this German-made beauty the lofty place that it deserves.
First rolled out in 1999, this largely polymer bodied firearm is more powerful than the touted HK MP5 and its many variants because it fires the big forty-five.
However, because of its largely polymer construction, it is about a pound lighter and is more resistant to wear and corrosion. Likewise, it is highly controllable because of a reduced cyclic rate.
The HK 94, on the other hand, is the semi-automatic-only version of the HK MP5. And, like its more famous cousin, it is also chambered for the smaller yet faster 9mm cartridge.
It’s heavy because only the pistol grip is plastic. The trigger guard and mechanism housing are made of stamped sheet metal.
Going back to the results, the trophies in the Open category of the Shotgun event went to John Melendres, definitely one of Kamagong’s fastest tactical shotgun shooters, Safariland’s Cosedo and Melendres’ teammate, Andy Chua.
In the Standard match, the awards went to Vincent Tiu, Christopher Panes of the Cebu City Swat Team, and Kamagong’s Mario Caballes.
The shotgun event drew 21 shooters – seven for Open and 14 for Standard – with the classification being based on operation. If the gun is semi-automatic or has optics, it gets categorized under Open. If it is manually operated, it gets scored under Standard.
Between the shotgun, submachine gun and rifle events, it was the long guns that drew more shooters–56 entries all in all.
In the Rifle event’s Open division, a total of 40 shooters competed for three slots. In the Standard division, there were 16.
The dividing line between what equipment gets classified under Open and Standard was the barrel length, compensators and optics.
Guns with barrels shorter than 16 inches, as well as those who employ muzzle breaks and scopes go to Open. Those that
don’t belong under Standard.
In the Open division, Supt. Leo Tolentino outscored 39 other contenders to grab first place, with Dr. Allan Sacris landing some 25-percentage points down.
Edlred Sait of the Army’s Light Reaction Company took third.
In the Standard event, PO2 Cliff Ediza of the Cebu City Police Office and I almost tied for first place. I got 249.9926 match points against his tally of 249.6038.
I was quite surprised when Stats Officer Renante Cabasag handed the results over. I had four misses in the long course and fumbled during reload in two of the match’s three stages. I guess Cliff, who is a damn good pistol shooter, just had it worse than I.
Vincent Tiu, one of the youngest shooters in the competition, took third.
Scuttlebutt has it that the organizers want a bigger, bolder and, in all respects “badder” tactical match in two to three months’ time. We’ll see.
