Threat Dynamics In Portland Area

[Mac5.56]

Hey Everyone,

My wife and I are really considering taking over the family farm and moving back to Oregon where she is from and where I met her. Hunting and firearms are one of the major perks that are making me consider leaving my career to go back west and get the f@ck out of the North East.

We were back last month and we swung by Portland to see friends and introduce our son to all the babies our friends have had. I happened to drive by the Threat Dynamics and I after spending some time navigating the hell that is Portland driving, I managed to finally get to the parking lot to check out the set up. I had never heard of this location, or what they do. I guess they use a CO2 powered laser modification on Glocks and AR's to simulate real life environments. I got sucked into their promo stuff while I waited to look at the suppressed SBR they had as a rental gun for their live fire range. The virtual range seemed like a cheep way to get some time on the range...

Does anyone have anything to say about this group and their shop?

I couldn't help but notice that they had a lot of .380 pistols for sale, some weird arse 9mm carbines that I would never rent to shoot, and the SBR once I got my hands on it was a total Franken gun with a bunch of mods to it that seemed completely useless. These observations made me skeptical, so I figured I would pose the question here.

Is this a place worth looking into at all?

Hopefully I will be having more questions for you guys as we get closer to switching Coasts.

[Mac5.56]

Seriously almost 240 views of this thread and not a single response?

[bzdog]

You probably need a more regionally focused forum.

There is a regional forum called Northwest Firearms Community that has a business reviews section. You might check/ask there.

OTOH, the regional forums tend to have a higher noise ratio.

-john

[sproc]

I haven't been yet, but here is some feedback from the Vuurwapen blog (http://vuurwapenblog.com/2011/05/09/threat-dynamicsvirtra-systems-virtual-firearms-training/).

I did a search on a regional forum (northwestfireams.com), but the vast majority of the posts were by people whose opinions I doubt most of us would value.

[quackhead]

I didn't get a good vibe when I was just in there. The guy behind the counter was " beating his chest" to impress a female customer who was interested in learning to shoot/ defend herself. I'm pretty sure he was pushing a "woman's gun" on her as opposed to teaching fundamentals and how to handle a pistol suitable for her needs. I was in there for a short time and was not impressed

[strambo]

On the off-chance anyone still cares...I went there with my wife and we did a whole bunch of scenarios to include the 300 degree simulator. I have had a ton of training, her just a 2 day defensive handgun course. She did extremely well, good situational awareness, trigger control, and accuracy. The video scenario training is great and well-worth adding to your training on occasion since the force on force aspect is both the most important and most difficult aspect to train. The staff "driver" of the simulators was good as well from a technical aspect and he had a good customer service rapport. He didn't ask our training background to tailor the simulators to us and I felt he should have asked if we were carrying since it is a shall-issue CCW state and we were going into a no-ammo training environment.

I don't go to indoor ranges so I can't comment on that, or the gun store, or the classes. The video simulators are definitely worth the time and expense on occasion. I wouldn't use them to substitute for range time though