AAR - Magpul Carbine 2, Seattle area, Sept 2nd-4th 2009
Bill B. of the Valley Swat team hosted this class and did an excellent job taking care of all the details, everything ran smoothly and professionally.
The Facility, Auburn Valley Swat Range in Auburn, WA (just south of Seattle) could be described as spartan, though entirely adequate, and conveniently located.
The course instructors where Chris Costa and Drake Clark. What can I say about these two? The level of instruction was exceptional as expected and Drake’s LE background was a boon. Great work Drake!
The weather all 3 days was excellent (high 60’s to low 70’s), with only a few light showers that helped keep the dust down and to remind folks that this is the PNW.
This was originally set to be a LEO/MIL only course but was opened up to civilians at the last moment to help fill up the last few slots. As it happens I had ammo available that was purchased in preparation for another class that I’d hoped to attend last month, my schedule didn’t work out for that course, thankfully though I was able to get a few days off for this course and jumped on it.
There where a total of 16 students, 12 LEO’s, 1 Mil, 2 civilian and 1 PMC. The LEO component comprised primarily members of Bill’s team and ones and twos from other teams from around the Puget Sound area as well as LE instructors and (I think) state academy cadre. The cop jargon/job-descriptions blow by me pretty quickly so someone who knows can give a correct accounting if its important.
Also, I’m sure each of those teams are having their own internal AAR’s and I won’t speak to their experiences, I’ll leave that to Bill and others to post whatever they might feel is appropriate. I will say that I count myself damned lucky knowing that these people will be the ones getting the call when shit goes bad in my AO.
The Magpul core concepts of Reality, Efficiency, Consistency where incorporated into each aspect of the course. I won’t go in depth on the specific drills, if other attendees want to post and break it down a bit that would be welcome. I will say that this course is changing and evolving over time so there where a few distinct differences between this course and the Magpul Vol 2 DVD, additionally this particular course’s scenarios where focused toward the LEO. Though Drake and Chris do make the point the much of that focus is transferable to the civilian and Mil domain, and a combat mindset is a combat mindset regardless of the domain.
I found the daily morning “kick off” BSA drill to be particularly effective as a measure of improvement. We where using some new Magpul paper targets that where designed around the BSA drill. I believe that these will be available for purchase soon.
In terms of weapon systems it was all AR’s, many of them Colts, maybe 25% SBRs and several select fire lowers. For this course I again ran my BCM 16” middy (round count is now up to ~5000), it was rock solid with only 2 malfunctions, neither had anything to do with the upper. The first was a “foreign object” that somehow got lodged into the locking lugs (a small piece of plastic) this caused a FTF and a stuck live round and was easily fixed. The second malfunction was due to a roll pin coming partially out of an H-buffer that caused my buffer spring to bind and was a bitch to fix, luckily it happened on the last drill of TD2.
The only major gun-killing malfunctions where all from the one MIL attendee (Flashpoint) who broke (I think) 3 guns (maybe more), including Costa’s gun, one of my guns (a DDM4) as well a slick new type of extended rail switchblock Noveske SBR that Stickman was kind enough to deliver to us from John so that the class could try it out (seen here: https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=37321), though I think the Noveske issues where just with lube, as it was running suppressed. Who knew that 13Fs where toxic?
Pistols where a mix of mostly Glocks, 1911s, Sigs and I ran a HK P30. There where no issues with anyone’s handguns that I recall.
I used a Norgon ambi-catch for the first time in a class. I can see that this will help with speed reloads and I was able to do the “L-shaped” tactical reload, however under stress I found myself defaulting and not using the Norgon, obviously a training issue and I may stick with it. I again used the ACLM ambi charging handle with no problems to report. I also went with a single point type sling for the class, an Emdom/MM gunslinger 1-point/2-point sling, without a breadth of experience with 1-point type slings I can’t really compare to others, but this set-up created no problems for me during transitional work and general manupulation so I’ll call it a win. I also decided to run a padded belt setup for this course, the belt was an ATS Warbelt with Eagle FB pistol mags pouches and AR mag pouch a Safariland 6378 ALS holster on a UBL all of which worked very well. My chest rig was the ATS M4 with ATS H-harness that simply works.
I personally found this course to be immensely rewarding, I was stressed and strained while trying to keep up with some skilled shooters and pushing myself to respond to the demands of the class. I do not use these skills in order to make a living, but I may one day use these skills to save my or my loved ones lives so I don’t treat this as a “hobby”. I have the greatest of respect for those who do use these skills to make their living and spend a career honing those skills.
Additionally I’d like to thank John from Rainier Arms for quickly repairing the DDM4 (I’d purchased it from them earlier this year), they are located just a few minutes away from the range and are a great group of guys with a top notch operation.
Also present at the class was Stickman who was doing photos that will be part of the 2010 Magpul Dynamics course catalog so there will be some follow-up posts coming soon with some nice photos.
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