acaixguard
07-25-12, 12:26
Class: Vickers Tactical 2-Day Level 1 Handgun
Date: July 23-24 2012
Location: Blue Trail Range, Wallingford, CT
Got back from this class yesterday, and had a great time. Met some cool people, and of course, the opportunity to learn from LAV speaks for itself.
I’m still a bit tired from the past 2 days, and also trying to get caught up on stuff with work, so I may be missing some details. But I’ll try to recap what I can, without rehashing too much that’s already been mentioned in countless past AAR’s.
The class consisted of 21 shooters, a few of which were LEO’s, but I believe mostly civilians. The guns used were mostly Glocks (at least 2 were Gen4’s), followed by 3 1911’s that I counted, a couple Sigs, an HK45 compact, an M&P, and a Springfield XDM. I used a Glock 19 outfitted with 10-8 RB1 sights, grip texturing done by Cold Bore Customs, the Vickers mag catch and slide release, and OEM 4.5 connector. The holster and mag pouches I used were RCS.
TD1
The morning started off cloudy, and quickly started to rain on us not long after we began.
Larry opened up with a safety briefing, then went into dry fire drills, where you have to keep an empty casing balanced on top of your sight when pulling the trigger. He then introduced the time factor, emphasizing that in the real world, you cannot take however long you wish to pull the trigger. This reinforced the idea of a non-jerky trigger pull under time constraints. We then went into the ball and dummy drill, where you don’t know if you are about to dry firing or actually fire a live round. Any jerking of the trigger needed to be followed up with remedial dry fires.
After this, Larry covered the topic of trigger reset. He is very much against the idea of slapping the trigger, and discussed how this is a carry over from competition shooters used to extremely light trigger pulls. While it may work in that realm, it has no place for real world combat shooting.
After this, some work from the 3, 6, and 9 yard lines, from low ready. At the 3 yard line, all shots must be in the X ring, and the 6 yard line, within the 10 ring, and 9 yard line, within the black. Larry emphasized that when doing these drills, at least 70% of your shots should be in the black, with the occasional on the white, but still within the paper. Anything outside the paper (but still on the cardboard of the IPSC target) should be considered a complete miss, and never accepted. Throughout the class, Larry had no qualms with telling you how bad your shots are if you missed the paper.
Not sure if this was done before or after the shooting from different distances, but Larry also went over proper sight picture and how to shoot within your wobble zone.
Team drills were also done to introduce some stress into the equation. We formed 3 teams of 7, and had to come up with names. I was part of team Brute Squad., and the other teams were Glocksuckers and Broken Back (or is it Brokeback?).
LAV then went over drawing from the holster. Essentially, he went over how to acquire proper grip, smooth and straight presentation of the gun to target with the support hand in the proper position to receive the strong hand, and finger out of the trigger guard until ready to shoot. He also gave some pointers on how to quickly acquire the proper sight picture during the draw process.
I believe we went into the same drills from 3, 6, and 9 yards, but this time from the draw. Team competitions were done with these drills. The emphasis on drills from the draw is to be fast with the draw and presentation so that you have the extra time cushion in aligning your sights and pressing the trigger without jerking. The one area you CANNOT rush is the trigger press.
By this time, the rain thankfully let up. Before lunch, we went over the test, and half test. The test was 10 shots from low ready at 10 yards in 10 seconds, and the half test was 10 shots in 5 seconds from 5 yards. Watching Larry shoot such a tight group while demo’ing these tests had some of us in amazement.
After lunch, the weather was starting to get a lot warmer, and we went over reloading. As mentioned in previous AAR’s, bring your gun in within a foot of your face and turn slightly to the side and up (in a safe direction) and drop empty mag. Then use support hand with a knife edge position to sweep back against your waist till it reaches your spare mag, grab it up, and with your strong hand still holding your gun at chin/mouth level not too far from your face, bring the spare mag into the mag well in a straight line and insert, then use your support hand thumb to hit the slide release. LAV prefers to use the support hand thumb first, then slingshot second. His least favorite is using the strong hand thumb to release the slide release.
More drills followed, incorporating reloads this time. Throughout the day, we revisited the topic of maintaining accuracy by not jerking the trigger. Anytime the need came up, we went back to the basic dry fire drills for reinforcement of the basics.
Larry’s rule of thumb is, students will start to fade at either 3pm or 300 rounds (whichever comes first), so we wrapped things up by 4 after a good day of training in wet and hot weather. Some of us met up for dinner after class, and I had the pleasure of getting the seat next to Larry. Needless to say, he kept us entertained with various bits of humorous stories and gun related insight, as was the case throughout the training day as well.
TD2
The weather was sunny and definitely hotter than the prior day. We began with a brief recap of the basics covered on TD1, such as dry fire drills and going over the drills from various distances, with the goal of keeping all shots in the black. If memory serves me correctly, much of the morning was spent doing more drills, including a team drill done on steel. Many shooters in the class fell apart when shooting the steel, and Larry used this as a good example of why he believes that the majority of our training should be on paper, with just a sprinkling of steel for fun. The reason is, with steel most people naturally tend to focus more on the target after each shot rather than worry about their front sight, since they are naturally curious about checking out the target following each shot.
I had the pleasure of joining Larry for lunch, throughout which, he strongly urged me to move out of the communist state of NJ. Can’t say I disagree with him, and I’ve been formulating a long term plan in doing so.
After lunch, we covered malfunction clearance procedures. The big one was how to clear a double feed. Larry’s preferred procedure is, following a tap rack bang that doesn’t work, lock the slide back, yank the mag out, point the gun up a bit and shake so anything out of the chamber falls out. Meanwhile, retrieve another mag, and while doing this, hit the slide release to let the slide slam forward. Insert the new mag and cycle the slide and return to action. Where most people mess up is forgetting to let the slide slam forward before inserting a new mag after clearing the chamber. Larry also emphasized safety in doing all this. When you need to keep your gun more parallel to your chest, you rotate yourself towards the gun, always keeping it downrange, rather than turning the gun so you are muzzle sweeping everyone down the line to your side.
After malfunction clearances, we covered shooting on the move, which ended with some figure 8 drills. I really botched these, with Larry cracking some funny remarks about the shapes I was walking that I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at.
The day concluded with a simple drill from the 2-3 yard line. With a small black dot pasted on each target, we all had to fire 10 shots, with the object of getting all the shots forming one ragged hole. If I recall correctly, LAV, myself, and 1-2 other people accomplished this. After this, we got our class certificates, took a group photo, and said our goodbyes. As I said my farewell to Larry, he again reminded me that I need to find a different state to live in :)
Overall, this was an outstanding class with a heavy emphasis on the basics. If you get the basics right, the rest will almost fall into place later on. While each shot required you to be mentally focused, which leads to a pretty tiring day, the class was entertained with lots of funny stories from LAV during breaks. We also got a lot of pointers about training scars and gear related issues (which I will touch on below). Larry managed to pay attention to each one of us, making sure to walk the line during the drills to correct any of our mistakes. There are lots of little details I’ve surely forgotten to mention, but you really do need to attend one of his classes to get it all. Many thanks again to LAV for the class, and to 30CalSlut for doing a great job in hosting him!
Gear
Some random gear related topics Larry touched on throughout the class…
• If buying a Glock, stick with Gen3 or older. Gen4 Glocks continue to be problematic, evidenced by several malfunctions from at least 1 Gen4 we had in class.
• Magazines must have some form of a basepad on them. The days of flush fit mags, such as the older 1911 ones, are over.
• Some magazines, such as Glocks, need to be downloaded by one. The rule is, you should be able to press the top round down a bit enough so that there is a small gap between the top round and the feed lips.
• Rudy Project glasses offer THE best optical clarity, bar none. Larry used to like Oakleys the best, until he tried Rudy Project. He had his particular pair fitted with reading prescription lenses. Best to contact Larry for the details on the prescription power, but he got this idea from Rob Leatham, and for aging eyes, they are awesome.
• Aimpoint is THE ONLY red dot scope he would trust his life to.
• Tactical thigh holsters should be positioned such that if your arms are hanging naturally to the side, you should be able to scoop the bottom of the holster with your fingers. Any lower than this, which is commonly the case, will cause problems down the road.
• Grip texturing on polymer guns are definitely worthwhile. This came up during TD1, when we got rained on and this quickly got slippery. Larry has all his polymer frame work done by David Bowie.
• Lubrication on any firearm is a MUST, and even more so when it rains. Several guns started to choke on TD1 before lunch, likely due to the rain washing away a lot of the lube. Show up to class with a lubed gun, and be sure to re-lube during your lunch break.
• I asked Larry about the Aimpoint Micro with 2MOA, and his advice is if you already have one with a 4MOA, no need to ditch it for a 2MOA. But if you are buying new today, might as well go for the 2MOA.
• Avoid the Gen4 Glocks. As evidenced by in class at least twice, the Gen4 problems are not solved yet. Stick to the Gen3, or even a Gen2 if you don't have to have rails.
• Wilson Combat is making the best 1911s today out of any shop. So much so that the guns they are putting out are better than most custom 1 man shops. Ironically, they owe this partly to Nighthawk Custom. NC entering the picture really pushed WC to step up their game even more.
Date: July 23-24 2012
Location: Blue Trail Range, Wallingford, CT
Got back from this class yesterday, and had a great time. Met some cool people, and of course, the opportunity to learn from LAV speaks for itself.
I’m still a bit tired from the past 2 days, and also trying to get caught up on stuff with work, so I may be missing some details. But I’ll try to recap what I can, without rehashing too much that’s already been mentioned in countless past AAR’s.
The class consisted of 21 shooters, a few of which were LEO’s, but I believe mostly civilians. The guns used were mostly Glocks (at least 2 were Gen4’s), followed by 3 1911’s that I counted, a couple Sigs, an HK45 compact, an M&P, and a Springfield XDM. I used a Glock 19 outfitted with 10-8 RB1 sights, grip texturing done by Cold Bore Customs, the Vickers mag catch and slide release, and OEM 4.5 connector. The holster and mag pouches I used were RCS.
TD1
The morning started off cloudy, and quickly started to rain on us not long after we began.
Larry opened up with a safety briefing, then went into dry fire drills, where you have to keep an empty casing balanced on top of your sight when pulling the trigger. He then introduced the time factor, emphasizing that in the real world, you cannot take however long you wish to pull the trigger. This reinforced the idea of a non-jerky trigger pull under time constraints. We then went into the ball and dummy drill, where you don’t know if you are about to dry firing or actually fire a live round. Any jerking of the trigger needed to be followed up with remedial dry fires.
After this, Larry covered the topic of trigger reset. He is very much against the idea of slapping the trigger, and discussed how this is a carry over from competition shooters used to extremely light trigger pulls. While it may work in that realm, it has no place for real world combat shooting.
After this, some work from the 3, 6, and 9 yard lines, from low ready. At the 3 yard line, all shots must be in the X ring, and the 6 yard line, within the 10 ring, and 9 yard line, within the black. Larry emphasized that when doing these drills, at least 70% of your shots should be in the black, with the occasional on the white, but still within the paper. Anything outside the paper (but still on the cardboard of the IPSC target) should be considered a complete miss, and never accepted. Throughout the class, Larry had no qualms with telling you how bad your shots are if you missed the paper.
Not sure if this was done before or after the shooting from different distances, but Larry also went over proper sight picture and how to shoot within your wobble zone.
Team drills were also done to introduce some stress into the equation. We formed 3 teams of 7, and had to come up with names. I was part of team Brute Squad., and the other teams were Glocksuckers and Broken Back (or is it Brokeback?).
LAV then went over drawing from the holster. Essentially, he went over how to acquire proper grip, smooth and straight presentation of the gun to target with the support hand in the proper position to receive the strong hand, and finger out of the trigger guard until ready to shoot. He also gave some pointers on how to quickly acquire the proper sight picture during the draw process.
I believe we went into the same drills from 3, 6, and 9 yards, but this time from the draw. Team competitions were done with these drills. The emphasis on drills from the draw is to be fast with the draw and presentation so that you have the extra time cushion in aligning your sights and pressing the trigger without jerking. The one area you CANNOT rush is the trigger press.
By this time, the rain thankfully let up. Before lunch, we went over the test, and half test. The test was 10 shots from low ready at 10 yards in 10 seconds, and the half test was 10 shots in 5 seconds from 5 yards. Watching Larry shoot such a tight group while demo’ing these tests had some of us in amazement.
After lunch, the weather was starting to get a lot warmer, and we went over reloading. As mentioned in previous AAR’s, bring your gun in within a foot of your face and turn slightly to the side and up (in a safe direction) and drop empty mag. Then use support hand with a knife edge position to sweep back against your waist till it reaches your spare mag, grab it up, and with your strong hand still holding your gun at chin/mouth level not too far from your face, bring the spare mag into the mag well in a straight line and insert, then use your support hand thumb to hit the slide release. LAV prefers to use the support hand thumb first, then slingshot second. His least favorite is using the strong hand thumb to release the slide release.
More drills followed, incorporating reloads this time. Throughout the day, we revisited the topic of maintaining accuracy by not jerking the trigger. Anytime the need came up, we went back to the basic dry fire drills for reinforcement of the basics.
Larry’s rule of thumb is, students will start to fade at either 3pm or 300 rounds (whichever comes first), so we wrapped things up by 4 after a good day of training in wet and hot weather. Some of us met up for dinner after class, and I had the pleasure of getting the seat next to Larry. Needless to say, he kept us entertained with various bits of humorous stories and gun related insight, as was the case throughout the training day as well.
TD2
The weather was sunny and definitely hotter than the prior day. We began with a brief recap of the basics covered on TD1, such as dry fire drills and going over the drills from various distances, with the goal of keeping all shots in the black. If memory serves me correctly, much of the morning was spent doing more drills, including a team drill done on steel. Many shooters in the class fell apart when shooting the steel, and Larry used this as a good example of why he believes that the majority of our training should be on paper, with just a sprinkling of steel for fun. The reason is, with steel most people naturally tend to focus more on the target after each shot rather than worry about their front sight, since they are naturally curious about checking out the target following each shot.
I had the pleasure of joining Larry for lunch, throughout which, he strongly urged me to move out of the communist state of NJ. Can’t say I disagree with him, and I’ve been formulating a long term plan in doing so.
After lunch, we covered malfunction clearance procedures. The big one was how to clear a double feed. Larry’s preferred procedure is, following a tap rack bang that doesn’t work, lock the slide back, yank the mag out, point the gun up a bit and shake so anything out of the chamber falls out. Meanwhile, retrieve another mag, and while doing this, hit the slide release to let the slide slam forward. Insert the new mag and cycle the slide and return to action. Where most people mess up is forgetting to let the slide slam forward before inserting a new mag after clearing the chamber. Larry also emphasized safety in doing all this. When you need to keep your gun more parallel to your chest, you rotate yourself towards the gun, always keeping it downrange, rather than turning the gun so you are muzzle sweeping everyone down the line to your side.
After malfunction clearances, we covered shooting on the move, which ended with some figure 8 drills. I really botched these, with Larry cracking some funny remarks about the shapes I was walking that I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at.
The day concluded with a simple drill from the 2-3 yard line. With a small black dot pasted on each target, we all had to fire 10 shots, with the object of getting all the shots forming one ragged hole. If I recall correctly, LAV, myself, and 1-2 other people accomplished this. After this, we got our class certificates, took a group photo, and said our goodbyes. As I said my farewell to Larry, he again reminded me that I need to find a different state to live in :)
Overall, this was an outstanding class with a heavy emphasis on the basics. If you get the basics right, the rest will almost fall into place later on. While each shot required you to be mentally focused, which leads to a pretty tiring day, the class was entertained with lots of funny stories from LAV during breaks. We also got a lot of pointers about training scars and gear related issues (which I will touch on below). Larry managed to pay attention to each one of us, making sure to walk the line during the drills to correct any of our mistakes. There are lots of little details I’ve surely forgotten to mention, but you really do need to attend one of his classes to get it all. Many thanks again to LAV for the class, and to 30CalSlut for doing a great job in hosting him!
Gear
Some random gear related topics Larry touched on throughout the class…
• If buying a Glock, stick with Gen3 or older. Gen4 Glocks continue to be problematic, evidenced by several malfunctions from at least 1 Gen4 we had in class.
• Magazines must have some form of a basepad on them. The days of flush fit mags, such as the older 1911 ones, are over.
• Some magazines, such as Glocks, need to be downloaded by one. The rule is, you should be able to press the top round down a bit enough so that there is a small gap between the top round and the feed lips.
• Rudy Project glasses offer THE best optical clarity, bar none. Larry used to like Oakleys the best, until he tried Rudy Project. He had his particular pair fitted with reading prescription lenses. Best to contact Larry for the details on the prescription power, but he got this idea from Rob Leatham, and for aging eyes, they are awesome.
• Aimpoint is THE ONLY red dot scope he would trust his life to.
• Tactical thigh holsters should be positioned such that if your arms are hanging naturally to the side, you should be able to scoop the bottom of the holster with your fingers. Any lower than this, which is commonly the case, will cause problems down the road.
• Grip texturing on polymer guns are definitely worthwhile. This came up during TD1, when we got rained on and this quickly got slippery. Larry has all his polymer frame work done by David Bowie.
• Lubrication on any firearm is a MUST, and even more so when it rains. Several guns started to choke on TD1 before lunch, likely due to the rain washing away a lot of the lube. Show up to class with a lubed gun, and be sure to re-lube during your lunch break.
• I asked Larry about the Aimpoint Micro with 2MOA, and his advice is if you already have one with a 4MOA, no need to ditch it for a 2MOA. But if you are buying new today, might as well go for the 2MOA.
• Avoid the Gen4 Glocks. As evidenced by in class at least twice, the Gen4 problems are not solved yet. Stick to the Gen3, or even a Gen2 if you don't have to have rails.
• Wilson Combat is making the best 1911s today out of any shop. So much so that the guns they are putting out are better than most custom 1 man shops. Ironically, they owe this partly to Nighthawk Custom. NC entering the picture really pushed WC to step up their game even more.