Vickers Tactical Advanced Pistol/Carbine -- 7/11/08 AAR

[VA_Dinger]

Great class, even though I did not get to make every day it was still a blast.

It's not every day that you get to train with a great group of guys shooting the 10.5" SCAR, new FN .45 handguns, new S&W M&P 9 Pro, HK416, ADC gas piston guns, and last but certainly not least a brand spanking new belt-fed Hungarian/Vltor PKM. I had a blast and learned a lot as per usual for a Vickers Tactical class.

Thanks to everybody who attended for helping to make it a very successful class. I look forward to August Level I Carbine, Sub-gun, pistol caliber carbine class. It will certainly be just as good of a class.

[GLOCKMASTER]

JW excellent daily reports and very informative.Looked like a great class.


Being that this range is only about 45 minutes from my house I need to jump in on some of these LAV classes.

Note to self....LAV in Va.

[Heavy Metal]

Damn man, how do you have the energy left to do these so promptly?

I am still in South Hill chillin' in the motel and am hitting the sack after I watch Family Guy!

[Heavy Metal]

Thanks for taking the time to post your account of the first day. That's a lot of typing after a hot day on the range shooting those tough little bullseyes. Tell the Milfmasta (NCPatrolAR) to go easy on those stories. Looking forward to your day 2 report.

BTW, I call those "instantly lowering the gun" after a shot, the "collapse". I see many does it at IDPA matches and during training events. Don't do it.

I gave MilfMaster my "Tweakers are the new Zombie" lecture at the Cracker Barrel the other night!

That will teach him to wear his Family Zombie defense plan T-Shirt to dinner!

“Nobody would stand here and let me throw rocks at you as hard as I can, so why in the hell would you think that somebody isn’t going to move when you try to shoot them?” LAV

The truth laid bare in one simple sentence........

[Business_Casual]

We then worked backwards dropping anyone who put a shot outside the black until it was down to me and a member of the NoVA crew. After a few tie runs he managed to break his pistol shot a little faster than I did and won the competition for our relay.

M_P

[TOrrock]

Fantastic class as expected.

I'm beat, but it's a good beat. I'm downloading and editing pictures as we speak, but there are a lot of them, and video too, so it might be tomorrow before I have everything done.

I'll post the pictures here in the AAR thread.

Special thanks to Sinn Fein for taking the time and effort to make the class, and giving us a taste of SCAR-L and FN 45 goodness.....

Thanks as well to ADC for stopping in and letting us ring out his uppers, and giving us some insight as to when to expect them. They are definitely a very serious contender in the AR gas piston world.

Pics to follow.

[Heavy Metal]

Give the man a break, he really needed an ego boost to make up for his performance on the previous walk back drills

He did really, really well on the transition competition.

[Robb Jensen]

M_P

Congrats 'Mr. Business Casual' !

[Battlepack]

It was great meeting everybody and getting into another one of LAV's classes.

John Wayne, great AAR and I'm looking forward to the Day 3 post. I also had high expectations on the competitions even given my mediocre at best skill set. I was even shooting a 1911 (only one in the class) which I thought was giving me an advantage..............and I promptly missed the steel right out the gate. At least I was able to hit the steel once on the next competition before El Snatcho showed up.

No equipment issues for me, just poor shooting/technique. I learned a couple of new phrases which is always worth the price of admission.

[John_Wayne777]

Day 3 –

We began day three with another (don’t call it a) walkback drill. To make things go faster Mr. Vickers changed the drill. We would now have 4 seconds to fire up to two shots (from the low ready) to hit the steel. Much to my surprise, I managed to actually hit the steel this time.

After the (don’t call it a) walkback drill we then moved to the “Fallujah” drill…a teamwork drill modeled after some real situations in the world to teach communication and muzzle awareness. The class was broken up into six teams of six men each, with those who had been through the “Fallujah” drill before acting as the captains of their squad. Our team came up with what we thought was a pretty good plan. Carlos and I would provide covering fire for the two guys who would be retrieving the downed men. The plan was to have the two deliverers go across the “street” one at a time under the cover provided by Carlos and myself. The first man over would set up and provide covering fire for the second man who would clear the weapons of the downed men and prepare them for the drag. Once they were ready, he would tap the first man and they would each grab an arm and haul ass back.

The execution was pretty good on the part of the deliverers….unfortunately I screwed them because I didn’t have the magazine in my carbine seated properly. Apparently the flaw in our plan was not having a dedicated shooter cross the “street” with them to provide steady covering fire over there. Still, we managed to do okay and we only killed one innocent during our run while sending the bad guys to met Allah.

Accuracy was an issue. I didn’t get two of the required 10 hits on the first bad guy because that’s the one I was shooting when my failure to seat the magazine properly showed up. The other bad guys got all 10 hits, most of them in the head. All hail the prone position! Accuracy in general was an issue for everyone giving folks some idea of just how quickly accuracy can go to pot when you have a lot of crud going on around you….and that was the point of doing the drill in the first place. In a real fight there is going to be a lot of crud going on around you. You need to have the ability to remain aware of what is going on around you and still muster enough concentration to apply accurate fire to the people trying to kill you. Mr. Vickers told us before the drill started and after the drill was over that accurate fire is the best force multiplier there is.

After a lunch break we saw demos for the ADH piston system, the SCAR rifle, and Larry’s new PKM.

ADH piston system –

The more I see of the ADH piston system, the more I like it. The design can be described as elegantly simple and it seems that just about every conceivable angle has been covered. The recoil impulse is very familiar and the samples out there now seem to be absorbing very high round counts without issue. If the designer can achieve his vision in production numbers I think he’ll do well with it.

SCAR-L rifle –

Thanks to our friendly FN rep the SCAR got quite a workout. After seeing the weapon broken down it appears to me that the folks at FN have really thought this one through. I don’t know much about the history of the weapon. Prior to the day’s festivities the only thing I really knew about the SCAR was that some SF type units were interested in the weapon and that some sort of development was going on between FN and the military. From the pictures I’d seen of the weapon prior to the live show I thought it would be heavier and would feel more awkward than the AR series of weapons. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The SCAR-L is actually a very light, very handy little weapon that is still very controllable even on full auto and with an 11” barrel. (I assume it was 11 inches) I had no problem getting controlled pairs from the weapon (thanks to a decent cyclic rate) in full auto and when you hold the weapon properly shot to shot recovery on semi-auto isn’t impaired at all over the AR. I didn’t get a whole lot of trigger time on the weapon, but I did play with all the controls and tried to do as much eval as possible under the circumstances. I found myself liking the weapon quite a bit. I think if more people had some trigger time on the weapon and had some clue as to just how much engineering and R&D is going into this weapon they’d be lined up to buy one. I never really had an interest in the weapon prior to shooting it, but after staring at its guts and after some quality time with the weapon I’m certainly interested in the civilian version that is forthcoming.

PKM –

This was probably the most fun demo for me. I don’t know anything about belt fed weapons and it was a delight to have a lesson on this fairly rare (at least here in the States) machinegun. It’s a very light weapon (for a belt fed machinegun, anyway) and it’s remarkably simple for a belt fed machinegun. Mr. Vickers described it as a beefed up AK operating system turned upside down and fed with a belt. The bolt looks almost identical to an AK bolt.

Shooting it was a blast. The PKM’s light weight and powerful cartridge could lead you to believe it will be a bear to control, but in reality it’s very easy to control. Simply get behind the weapon in a good prone position, dig your feet in and push back, and you can put the rounds very close together. Mr. Vickers was scoring multiple hits on the C zone steel target with bursts from the PKM…but before killing the steel target so was Heavy_Metal. (Who also provided most of the ammo for the PKM) I had no trouble keeping my bursts within a fairly small beat zone when I did my part on the weapon. I even managed to hit a different steel target set up at 100 yards without too much problem. You have to control the weapon and fire reasonable bursts to hit anything, but that’s true of even sub-machineguns. I can see why the PKM is so popular with those who have spent a bit of trigger time on it.

A big thank-you to Heavy_Metal who provided the ammo for the PKM. That was a generous thing to do. It was also generous of Mr. Vickers to provide his new and to that point unfired weapon for a show and tell. I don’t know how many rounds were fired through it today, but it got a decent little workout. I think Heavy_Metal re-filled the belts at least 3 times, possibly more.

As the show and tell drills wound down, people started bringing out other cool toys. I finally had the chance to shoot the HK 45 with an LEM trigger pack, and I have to say it was VERY nice. I found it easy to make hits with and easy to operate…and the weapon feels VERY good in the hand. It looks bulkier in pictures than it actually is. My only real gripes about the weapon would be that I would prefer a shorter trigger reach and I would prefer some different sights. Despite those two (very minor) issues I had no trouble making good shots with the weapon.

Va_Dinger brought a new M&P 9 pro that someone had sent along with him to be shot at the class. I had the chance to play with the weapon quite a bit and I have to say that I liked it a LOT. The outstanding feature was the trigger. I had my Burwell customized M&P 9mm there to compare it with and the stock trigger on the 9 pro was almost as good as Mr. Burwell’s trigger job. I fired a full magazine at the head of an IDPA target rapid fire at 15 yards, and all 17 shots were kept within that small square without much effort on my part.

THAT is the trigger S&W should put in ALL the M&P’s from the factory.

Overall it was a good course filled with good people. I enjoyed meeting and shooting with all the folks in the class and I enjoyed getting some trigger time on some pretty cool weapons. I think everyone learned something valuable in the class. As I told another individual, I think I will run out of money long before Mr. Vickers runs out of things to teach me.

Templar is most likely going to be posting a lot of cool pictures and video, especially of the SCAR and the PKM. You don't want to miss those.