This is my second MD class and my first carbine class. I’m not going to try to do a full blown AAR, but I wanted to share a bunch of pictures that were taken with my camera during the class. Most of the pics were taken by me, but quite a few were taken by Zhurdan’s lovely wife, the owner of the range, and a few by Travis himself. Most of the pics Travis took I think were for their own internal use, so I didn’t post those (he took my memory card with him after class to get copies of them and I just got it back this week). Travis is truly a double gifted shooter.
[b]And here is a link to the 231 pics I have so far.
http://s1034.photobucket.com/albums/a426/MileHighPhotos/Pueblo4-2010/[/b]
Weather: As to the class we were lucky that it didn’t snow, but it was WINDY, especially in the afternoon, but highs in the 70s. Makes me wonder how the Precision class I’m taking in June will go for a newbie like me. It really didn’t affect the class, except is got so windy on Sunday that I had a hard time, ear-pro or none, to even hear the instruction. It got bad enought that Chris and Travis pulled back some of the command driven drills because of concerns about everyone being able to hear them.
Facilities: The facilities were great at River’s Edge Range. Great people, great range, great HOT food in a real building for lunch. This was over Easter weekend and the River’s Edge staff was out there the whole time. Kudos to them.
Class Members: I am always amazed at the caliber of the people that I meet at the MD classes. I’m starting to get better with people’s names (and their names here), but I still struggle. I wore a Duct tape name tag the first day, but that really didn’t catch on. I know we had at least three Marks in the class, and was it like 7 Brians or Mikes? You never know who you are going to meet and when I got there on Saturday, there were only about 6 people there. One of them was wearing a turban, and he was 6’4 and had red hair. Ended up he was rasied in the US as a Sikh by his parents and is now a Sherriff’s Deputy in LA - and he won the dollar shoot and the speed shooting excercise at the end of the class. Sat with him at lunch and he was a great guy to talk to. Lots or regular civy shooters, a few LEOs and at least a couple of Army guys nursing some wounds and looking to improve their skill set before they go back. Had a great time shooting next to Magpul Mike (we both can’t count 
). Wish I had fanaggled a ride in Mark’s Land Rover, got the pics on the photobucket site. As always it was a pleasure to shoot with Jeff. Hope to see a lot of you this summer at 3-gun and Pueblo shoots.
Gear: I shot my Noveske N4 Lightweight Reece upper on my CMMG lower with a Geiselle SSA trigger, BAD, Ambi Safety, Norgon mag release, CTR stock. I shot Pmags with M193 from stripper clips. Glad I had the stripper clips, they came in handy so had I time to do more then just jock mags, like take pics. I cleaned out the mag bodies every night, but by the third day it was so windy and dusty that even with 28 rounds loaded I had a hard time getting a few mags to seat correctly on tac reloads. Other than that I had very few problems. When I was sloppy with my rifle workspace, I got my chrging handle (BCM big version) caught on me MS2 sling. I could screw up an iron ball. I brought my STI Tactical in 45ACP and that is a dream to shoot, but the mags are a nightmare when the fine dust from the range get into them. Rounds just don’t want to roll up the body, or even load sometimes. When it is running, it is a dream to shoot. Big heavy gun with the push of the 45ACP and the recoil master dampening it even more. I have some mag bodies from SVI and STI mag bodies treated in FailZero to see if that helps the issue.
I had a hard time finding a holster for the STI, so I made my own Kydex holster and mag holders. Since I was inside 60 days, I made my own AR mag holders too. I had the STI on my right side and starting mid line I had my double STI mag holder, then two real Raven AR mag holders then 2 of my AR mag holders. Doing your own Kydex is a thread unto itself. Short story, plan ahead and order from Raven if at all possible. I had a CR Speed double belt so I could jock up and strip down fast, and that worked well. Tough to get the perfect amount of tension - or a better way to put it four AR mags is too much for a belt, especially if you have a few spare amgs in your pockets. Just too much weight with out something like suspenders to help fight gravity. Next time I’ll just go with 2 AR mags, a single pistol mag and maybe a spare in my pockets. I had my high power stool that I took to the line, which worked well to store spare mags, ammo and water. No need to walk to from the 25 to 200 yard line on breaks.
Instruction: Travis and Chris can play a class like a fine instrument. What might look like on-the-fly teaching is really them tailoring the class to its capabilities and needs. Personally, the instruction and drills go too fast for me. I’m a chemist by training and I like to play with all the variables- it helps me get into the groove of the right way to do things. There just isn’t time to do that and if the class went any slower they couldn’t cover all the material. I just try to keep up and plan on working thru stuff after the class. This worked well for me in the Handgun class last year. I’ve thought about trying to pre-learn stuff, but I’d rather not ingrain some training scars. You may think that 20+ students would swamp just Travis and Chris as instructors. In discussions I had with more than one other student, everyone was amazed at what level of detail that both Chris and Travis garnished on them. Chris and Travis see everything. I don’t know how Chris and Travis do it, but they keep the material seeming fresh and are incredibly engaging. Both Chris and Travis remembered me and what gun I shot last year as at the handgun class. How many guys do they see a year in Larue baseball caps and sunglasses? One thing that I really didn’t start to use till the end of the class was Travis’ concept of getting amped up before a drill. The over-analytical side of me was just going thru the motions to get them right. When I amped myself up a lot of those basic functions just worked themselves and it allowed me to be a lot faster, though not fast enough to win the last drill.
The last drill was the only one I hadn’t seen before and it was intro’d a variation on a LAV ( I think drill). Three silhoutte targets with 8 inch circles from about 7-10 yards. 1 shot on the first target, 2 on the second, 3 on the third, 4 on the second target and 5 on the first target. The student winning time was a shade over 4sec. Travis did it in the mid threes, and the amazing thing is that the shot splits never seemed to change, he just moved the gun from target to target.
If I had any suggestions it would be to incorporate more competitions into the shooting. I found it really helped to focus me and work up my accuracy. I get so involved with the process I would loose track of effectiveness. The other would be that since at this class we don’t have the night shoot, move the lunch motivation speech to one of the evenings so that you can give the whole presentation and preserve as much daylight range time as possible? It is a great talk, but after a big lunch it is hard to keep focused for all of us. What do you think about letting students shoot a bit after the official class day? I’d like an hour or so to work out some of my kinks with live fire, but I understand it would be a liability nightmare.
Overall it was a great class and I’m feeling more comfortable in the MD system of instruction. I’m really looking forward to taking a handgun class next year and doing the whole thing from concealment. I tripped just before lunch and I was surprised how long it took to heal. It was two weeks before I was back up to speed. That was some tough low brush remnants that my foot got caught in.
Here are some of my favorite pics below.
Jeff- Travis got some great ones of you on my camera. If he hasn’t sent them, send me your physical address and I’ll send a disk. I have the .cr2 raw files so you can do the max to them. Looking forward to see the pics from your camera since I ran it some Monday afternoon. ( I was too afraid to bring my camera out in the dust storm. My Canon G9 had already died.)
