Some friends and I made the road trip to Talladega over winter break. Wow! This is the nicest range any of us have ever seen. The main rifle range offers electronic targets at 200, 300, and 600 yards and over 50 firing positions. There is a huge and immaculate club house, complete with a well-stocked gun store and friendly staff.
The covered firing line is well-designed and constructed. In addition to visual appeal, it does a better job at sound mitigation than any covered firing line I've ever visited. Walking around through the day, there is not a single spot where you get that face smacking blast common on some lines. The floor is perfectly flat concrete, which I find ideal for F-TR. The pavement in front of the firing line slopes forward to reflect the muzzle blast forward and away form the covered area and clubhouse.
The Kongsberg electronic targets worked well and allow for a higher rate of fire and strings only limited in length by one's ability to keep shooting. The range went hot at 9:00 AM and had not been cold for one minute when we left at 2:00 PM. Presumably, it stays hot every day until closing at 5:00 PM. Most of my buddies got in more practice in a single day than ever before. The electronic targets allow the user to pick either the F-Class or the normal high power target appropriate for the distance. Hits are reported immediately. All the shooters in the party reported scores comparable with what they shoot on paper for the given rifle and conditions. There was no way to check the absolute accuracy with issues like whether a shot scored a 9.9 or 9.8 would really be a 10 on a paper target, or whether a shot scored a 10 would have really barely missed the 10 ring on paper.
Only one of the shooters in our group shoots Master level scores with any regularity, so I really can't say how the system performs for shooters putting 18-20 shots in the 10 and X rings every match. Throughout the day (maybe 800 shots total), there was only 1 reported failure to register a hit (in a string of 9s and 10s) and 1 reported cross fire (seemed real, but buds denied it).
On the whole, we were all left hoping someone organizes F-Class matches for this facility. Any accuracy issues in the electronic scoring are likely to average out over the course of a tournament for our skill level, no pit duty, and lots of creature comforts.
The covered firing line is well-designed and constructed. In addition to visual appeal, it does a better job at sound mitigation than any covered firing line I've ever visited. Walking around through the day, there is not a single spot where you get that face smacking blast common on some lines. The floor is perfectly flat concrete, which I find ideal for F-TR. The pavement in front of the firing line slopes forward to reflect the muzzle blast forward and away form the covered area and clubhouse.
The Kongsberg electronic targets worked well and allow for a higher rate of fire and strings only limited in length by one's ability to keep shooting. The range went hot at 9:00 AM and had not been cold for one minute when we left at 2:00 PM. Presumably, it stays hot every day until closing at 5:00 PM. Most of my buddies got in more practice in a single day than ever before. The electronic targets allow the user to pick either the F-Class or the normal high power target appropriate for the distance. Hits are reported immediately. All the shooters in the party reported scores comparable with what they shoot on paper for the given rifle and conditions. There was no way to check the absolute accuracy with issues like whether a shot scored a 9.9 or 9.8 would really be a 10 on a paper target, or whether a shot scored a 10 would have really barely missed the 10 ring on paper.
Only one of the shooters in our group shoots Master level scores with any regularity, so I really can't say how the system performs for shooters putting 18-20 shots in the 10 and X rings every match. Throughout the day (maybe 800 shots total), there was only 1 reported failure to register a hit (in a string of 9s and 10s) and 1 reported cross fire (seemed real, but buds denied it).
On the whole, we were all left hoping someone organizes F-Class matches for this facility. Any accuracy issues in the electronic scoring are likely to average out over the course of a tournament for our skill level, no pit duty, and lots of creature comforts.
