kwelz
05-23-11, 10:32
VSM 1 Day Basic Carbine Class
May 21st 2011
https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=77809
Instructors: Joe Barnsfather
Location: Knob Creek shooting range.
Total in attendance: 10 + instructor
Range conditions: Great water but muddy as hell. This range was under 15+ Feet of water just a couple weeks ago. There were puddles everywhere that you could just about fish out of and a boat on the range that I don't think was brought there by a trailer(And no I am not kidding). There were points I sank down into the mud past my ankles.
I also loved every moment of it. :)
Equipment: This class had a bit more diversity than I am used to on equipment. Most of us were running AR patter rifles. But two gentlemen brought Sig rifles. one was a 552 and I believe the other was a 556. Sighting system ranged from irons to full sized ACOGs.
Myself and one other student were running suppressed SBRs. More on that later.
Class and Drills:
The class started off as we always do with a safety briefing. Since we run a hot range all day emphasis was put on safe handling of the firearms at all time. We also covered the proper way to handle a carbine, and recoil control.
After the briefing we moved onto Zeroing in our guns. This was especially fun considering the range conditions I mentioned earlier. Nobody comes to class expecting to stay clean however. :jester: Joe was nice enough to let us use targets from the previous days class to go prone and. Walking back and forth from the targets was interesting to say the least. And we were all especially amused to see the hundreds of tadpoles that had taken up residence in the range. :eek:
One important lesson I learned at this point. Going prone with a suppressed gun is no fun at all. All those gases were right back in my face.
At this point it was decided to move the targets back to a closer range instead of advancing on them like we normally do. I think i speak for the entire class in extending my thanks to Mr. Barnsfather for this.
Our first drills of the day were simple singe and double shot drills. I know some people who don't think there is value in this. But to me these are some of the most important drills we do. If you can not consistently place a single shot where it needs to be then there is no point in firing off 5 or more rounds. We discussed the importance of trigger control and the height over bore issue brought out by the AR platform.
We then moved on to transition drills. Sadly for me this is where things fell apart. Thankfully I was no alone. We all had trouble to varying degrees in hitting the target after the transition. I threw a couple rounds as did others. However with a little gentle prodding from Joe we all got our heads together and started keeping them in the black.
As normal we also moved onto reload drills and the ever so love Malfunction drills. I managed to jack my gun up so bad that I had to break out my strait knife and multi took on the gun.
And speaking of malfunctions. Except for the self induced ones above the only equipment problems were on the Sig Rifles. Although I guess they were not really equipment problems. One of the gentlemen was having failures to fire. Turns out he was having trouble feeling the reset on the trigger and was failing to reset under recoil properly so he would have a dead trigger when he tried to fire again.
In the afternoon we did some fun drills. One of my personal favorite is the 1-5 drill. Three targets, 1 shot on the first, 2 on the second, 3 on the third, 4 on the second, and finally 5 back on the first. It is a great drill to teach switching targets and keeping rounds where they belong. We also did a slightly modified version of the 10-10-10 drill.
Finally we also did Battlefield pickup. I feel this drill should be required in every class no matter who teaches it. Everyone loads a full magazine and sits the gun on the ground. We all move to the left and pick up that gun and put 3 rounds on target. It is very interesting to see other guns and how they are configured. I feel it helps a lot of people that are newer get a feel for what may or may not work for them. A number of people said they were going to get longer rails on their guns after it was done!
In this case it also brought up the importance of wearing gloves when shooting. As I mentioned earlier, myself and another gentleman had suppressed guns at this class. I was running a 11.5 with an AAC can and he was running a shorter gun with the can recessed inside his hand guard. I was immediately to his right so I shot his gun first. I had no issued with it. But by halfway through the line his hand guard had gotten extremely hot and the people without gloves were feeling it.
Another gentlemen picked up my gun and reached out to grab as far on the rail as possible. Only to discover that big round thing wasn't part of the rail but instead was a suppressor with about 300 rounds through it that day. He caught himself in time but it could have been a bad situation if he had grabbed onto it hard.
This drill also rekindled my hatred for single point bungee slings and Magpul MS2 Slings.
Overall it was a great day. I probably shot better than I ever have in a class before. The other students were great and as always I feel I learned a lot.
We also dodged a bullet with the weather. A thunderstorm rolled in less than an hour after we wrapped up class. Overall kind of hard to complain about the day.
Photos will be added later and I encourage the other students to add their thoughts.
Oh yeah I almost forgot.
GROUNDHOG DOWN! I REPEAT, GROUNDHOG DOWN!
May 21st 2011
https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=77809
Instructors: Joe Barnsfather
Location: Knob Creek shooting range.
Total in attendance: 10 + instructor
Range conditions: Great water but muddy as hell. This range was under 15+ Feet of water just a couple weeks ago. There were puddles everywhere that you could just about fish out of and a boat on the range that I don't think was brought there by a trailer(And no I am not kidding). There were points I sank down into the mud past my ankles.
I also loved every moment of it. :)
Equipment: This class had a bit more diversity than I am used to on equipment. Most of us were running AR patter rifles. But two gentlemen brought Sig rifles. one was a 552 and I believe the other was a 556. Sighting system ranged from irons to full sized ACOGs.
Myself and one other student were running suppressed SBRs. More on that later.
Class and Drills:
The class started off as we always do with a safety briefing. Since we run a hot range all day emphasis was put on safe handling of the firearms at all time. We also covered the proper way to handle a carbine, and recoil control.
After the briefing we moved onto Zeroing in our guns. This was especially fun considering the range conditions I mentioned earlier. Nobody comes to class expecting to stay clean however. :jester: Joe was nice enough to let us use targets from the previous days class to go prone and. Walking back and forth from the targets was interesting to say the least. And we were all especially amused to see the hundreds of tadpoles that had taken up residence in the range. :eek:
One important lesson I learned at this point. Going prone with a suppressed gun is no fun at all. All those gases were right back in my face.
At this point it was decided to move the targets back to a closer range instead of advancing on them like we normally do. I think i speak for the entire class in extending my thanks to Mr. Barnsfather for this.
Our first drills of the day were simple singe and double shot drills. I know some people who don't think there is value in this. But to me these are some of the most important drills we do. If you can not consistently place a single shot where it needs to be then there is no point in firing off 5 or more rounds. We discussed the importance of trigger control and the height over bore issue brought out by the AR platform.
We then moved on to transition drills. Sadly for me this is where things fell apart. Thankfully I was no alone. We all had trouble to varying degrees in hitting the target after the transition. I threw a couple rounds as did others. However with a little gentle prodding from Joe we all got our heads together and started keeping them in the black.
As normal we also moved onto reload drills and the ever so love Malfunction drills. I managed to jack my gun up so bad that I had to break out my strait knife and multi took on the gun.
And speaking of malfunctions. Except for the self induced ones above the only equipment problems were on the Sig Rifles. Although I guess they were not really equipment problems. One of the gentlemen was having failures to fire. Turns out he was having trouble feeling the reset on the trigger and was failing to reset under recoil properly so he would have a dead trigger when he tried to fire again.
In the afternoon we did some fun drills. One of my personal favorite is the 1-5 drill. Three targets, 1 shot on the first, 2 on the second, 3 on the third, 4 on the second, and finally 5 back on the first. It is a great drill to teach switching targets and keeping rounds where they belong. We also did a slightly modified version of the 10-10-10 drill.
Finally we also did Battlefield pickup. I feel this drill should be required in every class no matter who teaches it. Everyone loads a full magazine and sits the gun on the ground. We all move to the left and pick up that gun and put 3 rounds on target. It is very interesting to see other guns and how they are configured. I feel it helps a lot of people that are newer get a feel for what may or may not work for them. A number of people said they were going to get longer rails on their guns after it was done!
In this case it also brought up the importance of wearing gloves when shooting. As I mentioned earlier, myself and another gentleman had suppressed guns at this class. I was running a 11.5 with an AAC can and he was running a shorter gun with the can recessed inside his hand guard. I was immediately to his right so I shot his gun first. I had no issued with it. But by halfway through the line his hand guard had gotten extremely hot and the people without gloves were feeling it.
Another gentlemen picked up my gun and reached out to grab as far on the rail as possible. Only to discover that big round thing wasn't part of the rail but instead was a suppressor with about 300 rounds through it that day. He caught himself in time but it could have been a bad situation if he had grabbed onto it hard.
This drill also rekindled my hatred for single point bungee slings and Magpul MS2 Slings.
Overall it was a great day. I probably shot better than I ever have in a class before. The other students were great and as always I feel I learned a lot.
We also dodged a bullet with the weather. A thunderstorm rolled in less than an hour after we wrapped up class. Overall kind of hard to complain about the day.
Photos will be added later and I encourage the other students to add their thoughts.
Oh yeah I almost forgot.
GROUNDHOG DOWN! I REPEAT, GROUNDHOG DOWN!