PoppaPump
09-20-11, 18:12
Class: 2-Day Tactical Pistol/Carbine
Instructor: Jason Falla – REDBACK 1
Sept 17-18, 2011
Pitcairn-Monroeville Sportsmen's Club North Versailles, PA
We had a good class of 16 shooters, all were tuned in and we had no safety issues.
I will do my best as an incredible amount of information was put out at this class and I did not take notes and am going from memory.
Classmates, feel free to chime in to add or correct if I get something wrong!
TD1: Jason started TD1 with a detailed safety brief and review of the curriculum that class would entail.
After the lecture we jumped right into zeroing carbine. Jason teaches a 50 yd zero, with the logic being that with it, the POI only varies approx 3.5 inches from 25 yds out to 200 yds.
After zeros were complete, we jumped into pistol work. Proper grip, sight picture, sight alignment, trigger control, recoil management, follow through and reloads were all covered in depth. Of course it all starts with establishing a good grip when starting the draw stroke, if you don’t get a good purchase on the draw stroke, it is going to have adverse affect on all the components previously mentioned. The presentation ends with the pistol at the high ready, the pistol is canted at 45 degrees with front post ending up on target, with the target visible to the shooter by looking over the front sight. This way if a shot needs to be taken, the movement needed to acquire the sight package is minimal, with bringing the rear sights up slightly, which brings the front post down on target. Jason stressed to remember that you may not need to shoot every time you draw. But with the high ready method, if you do need to shoot, you are set up to do so.
On the grip, Jason’s method is a thumb over thumb for as much contact with the pistol combined with a stance that has your elbows up almost parallel to the ground, which naturally causes your palms to roll into the gun to help recoil management.
On reloads, the palm up/palm down technique was covered. When reloading, the strong hand palm is rolled up, the support arm elbow is raised parallel with the ground and the magazine is stopped just short of the magwell and then inserted cleanly into the magwell. The reason for bringing the elbow parallel to the ground is to present a nice even plane to seat the mag, if the elbow is hanging low; the mag is coming up on an angle which could lead to fumbling the insertion into the magwell.
After the new magazine is inserted, the strong hand rolls palm down and the support hand can either power stroke the slide or work the slide release and the support hand then regrips the pistol.
We employed a variety of RedBack One targets that included both low percentage and high percentage targets. One of the biggest pieces of knowledge I brought home was when we did the compass drill. This drill basically shows that when taking a high percentage shot, your sight alignment doesn’t have to be perfect. To prove this, Jason set a drill where we used a RB1 target that had 6in bulls with a black 1 inch square in the center. We were to purposely skew our front sight in the sight alignment 1 of 4 ways, high, low, left or right. Even with the imperfect sight alignment, it was possible to get effective hits on a high percentage shot. This was one of the light bulb going off moments for me personally.
TD1 also included bringing the carbines out for transition drills. The carbines were setup to run dry after one shot, a transition to pistol was made to finish the shot requirements for the drill after the pistol was reholstered, the carbine was reloaded and shots were made as dictated by the drill.
After a break for dinner, we reconvened at the range at dusk for a night shoot. Jason presented another safety brief and gave an excellent lecture on various methods for illumination at night ranging from weapons mounted lights to handhelds to employing the carbine as light platform if it has a light and your pistol doesn’t. We got about ½ hr of shooting in before we had to cease fire for range rules. That was my first night shoot and it took about 2 shots to establish I need to make some kit changes as my current illumination device isn’t user friendly.
As I said, I am going from memory, not notes. If I missed something or got it wrong please jump in.
TD2 began with a lecture covering the mechanics of what causes malfunctions and Jason then reviewed the 7 fundamentals of shooting.
After the lecture, we moved to the range to work on shooting to a cadence with the timer. The drills started with 6 shots in 6 seconds and the times decreased from there. Jason them worked his way down the line with each shooter and timed their string of 6 shots and made recommendations on what time they should be striving for based off the shooters time for the string.
The theme of the day seemed to be speed, when to go balls out, when to back it down and when to speed it back up. This applied to both shooting and administrative movements and tactical movements.
Examples of administrative movements are transitioning from carbine to pistol, bringing the weapon up on target and bringing a magazine from reload source to the weapon. All of these movements should be done fast.
Examples of tactical movements are breaking retention, finalizing sight package and inserting new magazine. These movements should be done slow, not at full speed.
A walk back drill w/ pistols was done on some steel, we went back as far as our range would allow, somewhere around 60 yds.
We finished TD2 with shooting on the move, turning 90 right/left and 180 and partnered up for cover/covering drills.
Round count ended up being right around 600 carbine and 450 pistol
Final thoughts….
This class kicked ass! I learned a bunch of new things, found out I am pretty good at some things and found some other things I suck at and I need to spend more time training on. But on the plus side, I was usually pretty good at self diagnosis, most of the things I was screwing up, I had a good idea of why it was happening. A quick conversation w/ Jason either confirmed my thought process or he had the solution in about ½ a second, the man is like an encyclopedia.
Some of my kit is going to be changed, like the aforementioned pistol light
I need to take notes if I am going to attempt to write AAR’s!
Seeing the bewildered look on peoples faces when they try to figure out what some Aussie term Jason uses is priceless!
Jason is an EXCELLENT instructor has a very good thing going on in RB1, if you have a chance to train with RB1, jump on it!
Lastly a big thanks to Shawn and Steve from PMSC for making this happen.
Instructor: Jason Falla – REDBACK 1
Sept 17-18, 2011
Pitcairn-Monroeville Sportsmen's Club North Versailles, PA
We had a good class of 16 shooters, all were tuned in and we had no safety issues.
I will do my best as an incredible amount of information was put out at this class and I did not take notes and am going from memory.
Classmates, feel free to chime in to add or correct if I get something wrong!
TD1: Jason started TD1 with a detailed safety brief and review of the curriculum that class would entail.
After the lecture we jumped right into zeroing carbine. Jason teaches a 50 yd zero, with the logic being that with it, the POI only varies approx 3.5 inches from 25 yds out to 200 yds.
After zeros were complete, we jumped into pistol work. Proper grip, sight picture, sight alignment, trigger control, recoil management, follow through and reloads were all covered in depth. Of course it all starts with establishing a good grip when starting the draw stroke, if you don’t get a good purchase on the draw stroke, it is going to have adverse affect on all the components previously mentioned. The presentation ends with the pistol at the high ready, the pistol is canted at 45 degrees with front post ending up on target, with the target visible to the shooter by looking over the front sight. This way if a shot needs to be taken, the movement needed to acquire the sight package is minimal, with bringing the rear sights up slightly, which brings the front post down on target. Jason stressed to remember that you may not need to shoot every time you draw. But with the high ready method, if you do need to shoot, you are set up to do so.
On the grip, Jason’s method is a thumb over thumb for as much contact with the pistol combined with a stance that has your elbows up almost parallel to the ground, which naturally causes your palms to roll into the gun to help recoil management.
On reloads, the palm up/palm down technique was covered. When reloading, the strong hand palm is rolled up, the support arm elbow is raised parallel with the ground and the magazine is stopped just short of the magwell and then inserted cleanly into the magwell. The reason for bringing the elbow parallel to the ground is to present a nice even plane to seat the mag, if the elbow is hanging low; the mag is coming up on an angle which could lead to fumbling the insertion into the magwell.
After the new magazine is inserted, the strong hand rolls palm down and the support hand can either power stroke the slide or work the slide release and the support hand then regrips the pistol.
We employed a variety of RedBack One targets that included both low percentage and high percentage targets. One of the biggest pieces of knowledge I brought home was when we did the compass drill. This drill basically shows that when taking a high percentage shot, your sight alignment doesn’t have to be perfect. To prove this, Jason set a drill where we used a RB1 target that had 6in bulls with a black 1 inch square in the center. We were to purposely skew our front sight in the sight alignment 1 of 4 ways, high, low, left or right. Even with the imperfect sight alignment, it was possible to get effective hits on a high percentage shot. This was one of the light bulb going off moments for me personally.
TD1 also included bringing the carbines out for transition drills. The carbines were setup to run dry after one shot, a transition to pistol was made to finish the shot requirements for the drill after the pistol was reholstered, the carbine was reloaded and shots were made as dictated by the drill.
After a break for dinner, we reconvened at the range at dusk for a night shoot. Jason presented another safety brief and gave an excellent lecture on various methods for illumination at night ranging from weapons mounted lights to handhelds to employing the carbine as light platform if it has a light and your pistol doesn’t. We got about ½ hr of shooting in before we had to cease fire for range rules. That was my first night shoot and it took about 2 shots to establish I need to make some kit changes as my current illumination device isn’t user friendly.
As I said, I am going from memory, not notes. If I missed something or got it wrong please jump in.
TD2 began with a lecture covering the mechanics of what causes malfunctions and Jason then reviewed the 7 fundamentals of shooting.
After the lecture, we moved to the range to work on shooting to a cadence with the timer. The drills started with 6 shots in 6 seconds and the times decreased from there. Jason them worked his way down the line with each shooter and timed their string of 6 shots and made recommendations on what time they should be striving for based off the shooters time for the string.
The theme of the day seemed to be speed, when to go balls out, when to back it down and when to speed it back up. This applied to both shooting and administrative movements and tactical movements.
Examples of administrative movements are transitioning from carbine to pistol, bringing the weapon up on target and bringing a magazine from reload source to the weapon. All of these movements should be done fast.
Examples of tactical movements are breaking retention, finalizing sight package and inserting new magazine. These movements should be done slow, not at full speed.
A walk back drill w/ pistols was done on some steel, we went back as far as our range would allow, somewhere around 60 yds.
We finished TD2 with shooting on the move, turning 90 right/left and 180 and partnered up for cover/covering drills.
Round count ended up being right around 600 carbine and 450 pistol
Final thoughts….
This class kicked ass! I learned a bunch of new things, found out I am pretty good at some things and found some other things I suck at and I need to spend more time training on. But on the plus side, I was usually pretty good at self diagnosis, most of the things I was screwing up, I had a good idea of why it was happening. A quick conversation w/ Jason either confirmed my thought process or he had the solution in about ½ a second, the man is like an encyclopedia.
Some of my kit is going to be changed, like the aforementioned pistol light
I need to take notes if I am going to attempt to write AAR’s!
Seeing the bewildered look on peoples faces when they try to figure out what some Aussie term Jason uses is priceless!
Jason is an EXCELLENT instructor has a very good thing going on in RB1, if you have a chance to train with RB1, jump on it!
Lastly a big thanks to Shawn and Steve from PMSC for making this happen.