AAR: Vickers Tactical AK Weapon Series Class

[VA_Dinger]

Vickers Tactical held it's forth very successful AK weapon series class this weekend. I would like to thank everybody who attended, you helped to make it an outstanding class.

Please use this thread for class pictures and comments.

[mark5pt56]

Indeed, more to follow. The highlight was shooting the Sturmgewehr 44!

It was my first official AK class and was thoroughly impressed with LAV's instruction.

I should get some pics tomorrow of my new piece, the piston upper from ADC.

Mark

[John_Wayne777]

Others will do a more thorough AAR I'm sure.

This AK class was a good one and I enjoyed it more than the inaugural class because I didn't spend the entire class fighting with my equipment this time. The BFG "Victory" sling and universal loop attachment setup that I used worked very well.

Deciding to mount an Aimpoint was also a wonderful idea, and it improved my performance with my VEPR dramatically. I wouldn't have made that 200 yard shot on the last walkback drill (or, frankly, most of the shots that lead to that one shot) if I was using iron sights. The AK, in my opinion, benefits tremendously from the addition of an Aimpoint...even moreso than the AR family of weapons.

That being said, there were a number of guys shooting iron sights that were turning in exceptionally good performance. Having sucked out loud with irons I know that is no easy feat, so my hat is off to them.

Getting some full-auto trigger time on the STMG was wonderful. Mr. Vickers is generous to give his students the ability to shoot a weapon that most have never even seen in person before. In and of itself that experience is worth the price of admission. By the end of the STMG shoot the weapon was literally smoking hot....something that made the gun collector in me cringe. There aren't many people on the planet who will take a weapon like that and hand it to 16 relative strangers along with the ammo to shoot through it.

The course overall was much as I expected it to be. I've trained with Mr. Vickers a couple of other times since the inaugural AK class and I've always learned a great deal and I've benefited tremendously from his instruction. The AK class, like the low light classes, has tremendous repeat value, especially for an individual (like me) who hardly ever fires an AK of any sort. This run through the AK course re-enforced the observations I made in the first course, namely that the AK is a much more capable weapon than 99% of shooters on the planet, and that with enough training just about anyone can learn to run the AK as effectively as the AR. I'm certainly not an expert shooter, but I am better trained and better practiced than most people who are posting on the internet and in the chain of weapon-ammo-shooter, I am the weakest link on every platform I've ever tried.

...leading me to believe that many who opine about the limitations of the AK platform on the internet are...well...out of their lane.

I was also impressed by the VZ-58. The weapon is light, handy, and at least in my hands proved to be very accurate. It's not just any weapon you can pick up for the first time and start ringing a small steel target with off-hand at 200 yards with iron sights....well, at least not for me.

Getting some trigger time on the ADH AR piston system was also nice.

Most weapons ran very well through the course. Big Fat Bertha (my VEPR) didn't experience a single malfunction (that I didn't deliberately induce) through the course, and most other weapons ran similarly well. There was only a single 5.56 AK in the course, and it actually ran fairly well despite an early malfunction. The class was mainly 7.62x39 weapons. A couple had shell casings get lost inside the receiver, gumming up the works. The 5.45 AK's ran well too, but TheKatar's weapon started keyholing something fierce with Wolf 5.45 ammo during today's shooting.

I don't know if he was shooting Wolf yesterday or not, but I didn't notice evidence of keyholing on his target yesterday. It appeared to run just fine with Bulgarian ammo.

General gear lessons:

1. If you want a red dot optic for any serious use or that will potentially be used for any serious purpose, buy an Aimpoint.....ESPECIALLY on an AK, as EOTechs on AK's are uglier than Rosie O'Donnell dry humping Whoopie Goldberg. Aimpoint micros are awesome on AK's with Ultimak rails.

2. If you want an AK that works well, stick to AK's in com-bloc calibers.

3. Always buy AK magazines with steel re-enforced locking tabs and locking lips. The ones without the steel reenforcement are next to worthless.

4. The first thing you do after buying a Glock is replacing the polymer factory sights with something serviceable.

It was nice to see familiar faces and to shoot with folks I hadn't had the pleasure of meeting before.

The sheer volume of information to learn about AK's is staggering. I have absolutely no idea how Templar can keep all that stuff straight. Hearing Templar and the instructors and TheKatar trade comments about some obscure version of an AK magazine made in Uzbekistan (or some similarly god-forsaken place) along with listing all the specifications of the magazine and ranking it on a quality scale is mind blowing. I could never keep all that straight.

[Heavy Metal]

4. The first thing you do after buying a Glock is replacing the polymer factory sights with something serviceable.

I called Heinie and ordered nearly a month ago, it was out of my hands at that point!


The two biggest sucks on the AK series are by far the sights and the safety.

Fortunately, there are excellent solutions now available to mitigate both issues.

[M4arc]

I'll type out a AAR in the morning but I just wanted to say it was a fantastic and fun class and it was great to put faces and real names to screen names.