AAR-Vickers Tactical 1-Day Basic Handgun Class - NC‎ - Nov 20, 2010

Training Vickers Tactical
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AAR: Vickers Tactical 1-Day Basic Handgun Class - NC‎ - Nov 20, 2010

Vickers Tactical
www.vickerstactical.com

Grey Group Training
www.greygrouptraining.com

First and foremost, doing this on my phone, so bare with me lol

By far the most accurate level 1 class The LAV has seen and I’ve got to agree. Out of 24 students, there was only 3-5 that has taken a class with The LAV, and only 8-10 that has taken some sort of formal training, so needless to say, half the class hasn’t had any formal handgun training. Didn’t get into backgrounds of the students, nor names, but that was fine. We had a lot to cover for a single day level 1 handgun class

With The LAV, he had 3 adjunct instructors with him to make sure the line was safe (Thanks to Chris914, NCPatrol, and AMP). Dry fire drills, he had everyone on the line, and live fire drills consisted of 2 relays. Safety was paramount, and it showed by the amount of AIs he had. Not once did I ever feel unsafe.

Out of the many fundamentals of marksmanship, Vickers stressed on Trigger Control the most. And like all his other classes, stresses on accuracy the most. We did the traditional Slow Fire Ball and Dummy drills to help with trigger control. After that, we did 2 more patented LAV Ball and Dummy drills which the names can’t come to me this early in the morning. We spent a good hour on trigger control. Shows you how much he stressed it. Since on the rest of the “fundamentals”, it was only 5-15mins on it.

Right after trigger control we went into sight alignment, sight picture.
One thing that Vickers did, that no other instructor I’ve ran into has done, is explained why we concentrated on our front sight when shooting. I’m guilty of this as well. I just tell shooters to concentrate on their front sight, but never explain why nor have I been asked. So that a neat thing to learn.

One of the cool things that I liked about the class, is how he compared training to real world actions. One that stood out in my mind was how we look at sights all the time concentrating on our front sights. In the real world, we’ll be looking more at the “Assclown” we’re getting ready to drop because we’re looking to get accurate hits on target. Concentrating on our front sight in training is fine, so we know where our rounds. But for the most part, when you encounter a bad guy, you won’t be concentrating on that front sight.

*I’ll add more later, gotta get back to work…

Below is a vid from my phone. Will get the rest off my camera up later tonight hopefully …

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Vickers Tactical
www.vickerstactical.com

Grey Group Training
www.greygrouptraining.com

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You got pics of Tiger, Math Whiz, and the Punisher, and I can make out ol’ Negligent Discharge in a couple of them.

That was an enjoyable day.

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Math Whiz? Come on, man, I’m suppose to be Costa. MAGPUL 4 LYFE. And in my defense, I’m an engineering student; we don’t do math, we have calculators to do that for us.

All in all, a great day. Being my first formal class, I learned a Helluva lot:
[ul]
[li]I’m not that bad a shooter.
[/li][li]I’m not that good a shooter.
[/li][li]The ball and dummy drills I’ve been doing on my own is great for getting rid of tendency to snatch the trigger for first round shots without too much pressure.
[/li][li]Standard ball and dummy drills don’t help as much for when shooting multiple shots under pressure; a simple time pressure can kill accuracy, to say nothing of what might happen in an actual gunfight.
[/li][li]Electronic ear pro is worth its weight in, eh, copper? Either way, a very vital piece of equipment.
[/li][li]Bring extra batteries for said electronic ear pro.
[/li][li]Reloading is simple (the catch being that the simple things are never easy).
[/li][li]Movement also fucks with your accuracy severely, even when it’s just moving forward and backward (I dread to think what side to side is going to be like).
[/li][li]Classes are addicting.
[/li][li]Cole slaw on burgers is actually not too bad (although there was nary a wagon at the Wagon Chuck).
[/li][/ul]

Probably a lot more that just fell out of my head, but for now, I have a lot on my plate to practice. This class was well worth the money, and I plan on taking his Level 1 class next April.

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I was toward the outside of the line, so I didn’t catch a lot from the middle and the other end. I heard him call someone Costa, but didn’t know it was you. How’d you get that one? We need pics of that old English MAGPUL 4 LYFE abdominal arc tattoo when you get it.

This was my first formal training too, and I took away quite a bit from the class. I’m going to be drilling on fundamentals a lot more in the future. That was the first time I’d ever done ball-and-dummy drills, and I’m going to incorporate those some as well.

Ditto on the ear pro. I don’t like using muffs, but for a class the electronics are a must. I got lucky and was able to borrow some from the guy shooting beside me. I could barely pick up the timer during the morning dry-fire stuff, and many times I didn’t hear it at all, even with Surefire EP-3’s.

I hope ND wasn’t too tore up with his, um, incident. I could understand how it could happen, especially if he wasn’t wearing electronic ear pro. Even wearing them I had to make sure to pay close attention to be able to pick commands from the chatter and other distractions.

I enjoyed meeting the other shooters in the class too. Everyone seemed to take it seriously but still kept it light and had a good time.

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Folks,
It was a good class. I enjoyed being part of it. Everyone improved over the course of the day. Keep the trigger under control and sights aligned and the bullet holes will appear where you want them to be. I am looking forward to seeing some of you again in future classes.

Chris
“Hans”

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An outstanding Level 1 class. The students were eager to learn and most had made big improvements in their shooting by the end of the day. Everyone came away with improved shooting skills and a new vocabulary! Larry does a great job pushing the students to the next level but at the same time keeping the class fun.

I had a great time helping out and I look forward to the next one.

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It fucked the rest of the class off for me, honestly. :frowning: I couldn’t hear a damn thing being on that end and I made a mistake. No excuses about it, I fucked up. Ear pro is on the Christmas list. I’m just glad he let me finish the class.

I still learned a lot. He’s an awesome teacher and I had a lot of bad habits to break. That whole looking at the mag well to reload was an eye opener. I was taught never take your eyes off the target, but watching a BG shoot you would ruin your day quick so… It put a lot of things into perspective. The ball and dummy drills were worth the price of admission alone. It’s nice to know what I was doing wrong and how to fix it. I met Mr. El Snacho and it wasn’t a pleasant encounter. I’m heading off to the range in the morning to try and reboot my operating system and delete him.

V/r
Uglyguns

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When it comes to ND’s, there are those who have had one and those who haven’t had one yet. I’m in the former group, but my incident wasn’t quite as public as yours. :smiley:

I think I have the training bug now though. I’m going to have to take a second job or win the lottery so I can get together the funds to take classes.

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Vickers Tactical
www.vickerstactical.com

Grey Group Training
www.greygrouptraining.com

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Vickers Tactical
www.vickerstactical.com

Grey Group Training
www.greygrouptraining.com

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Vickers Tactical
www.vickerstactical.com

Grey Group Training
www.greygrouptraining.com

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Vickers Tactical
www.vickerstactical.com

Grey Group Training
www.greygrouptraining.com

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Vickers Tactical
www.vickerstactical.com

Grey Group Training
www.greygrouptraining.com

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ND as in you shot the target out of turn? Or ND as you were holstering the gun and pulled the trigger?

I’m sure LAV made it a good teaching point.

He’s said at least 10 times I’ve heard, that there are the two camps as mentioned: Those that have had them, and those that will.

Maybe we could all learn something, if you care to share.

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Go Hells Bells! :neo:

I’m glad someone got some pics. I brought my camera but never got it out. I was too worried about staying squared away to mess with it.

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Do believe it was when they were doing dry runs on shooting on the move.

I would suggest that people using plugs or non-electric muffs position thmselves near the center of the firing line in classes like this. This greatlyhelps limit the chances of this type of thing from occuring

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[SIZE=“3”]

NCpatrolAr is correct and that is some good advice. I’m not sure who shot when holstering that was not in our class. As far as Lav making it a training tool, ah… not so much. He made it very apparent it was a dry run, but I already knew I was wrong when I was the only one shooting. There is not much else to say.

V/r
Uglyguns[/SIZE]

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Sounds like you’re beating yourself up over a very minor issue in the grand scheme of things. If anyone else was beating you up about it, karma will get them in the end. :sarcastic:

That being said, we don’t need to discuss it further, I was just curious since it sounded like you shot your targets due to a mis-communication, and didn’t blast the dirt while finger fucking your gun. While not an ideal event, the fact that you didn’t have a repeat performance means you learned the self-taught lesson you needed.

Clear that shit from your head, and enjoy. I’m sure you, like me, have a ton of stuff to continue practicing.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

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Good advice. You had your weapon pointed in the right direction, which is what matters most. It really was as much a miscommunication as an ND. Of course, you have to know that you’re going to take your lumps for it, but it’s all in good fun, and I wouldn’t worry too much about it either.

If there’s one criticism I have of the class, it’s that stuff like range commands and whatnot wasn’t really discussed. It was a basic class, and even if most were relatively experienced with their firearms, if you hadn’t been in a class before, you wouldn’t know what to listen for and would have to pick it up on the fly. Also, it would have been good if the instructors had anticipated the problem and told people without electronic ear pro to move to the center of the line, because surely that is a situation that has occurred somewhere previously. It was a big class (22 or so) and Larry stayed around the middle of the line. With LAV’s intimidation factor on high to a bunch of newbs, it’s kind of hard to turn around and tell him to sound off like he had a pair.

Minor issues though, and overall the class went really well. The adjunct instructors really picked it up and answered questions when asked and stuck with people who needed help grasping some of the concepts. I’m still pretty stoked from the whole weekend and am itching to get to the range and work on some of the stuff I learned.