Damn.
My quads and KNEES are sore.
After that class “knees” is permanently embedded into my consciousness. I’m also looking into buying an old used Oldsmobile.
[QUOTE=30 cal slut;613394]Damn.
KNEES QUOTE]
FUCK.
DAMN
DUSTY
KNEES
KNEES! Threw out my hip once… So we can add Oldsmobile to the Neon on the uparmored list? Any of you going to make it out to Street Fighter?
I’m gonna stick my neck out here.
I took Street Fighter in July 2009.
Off the top of my head, in this class, I think we ran twice the number of car drills compared to that (very hot weather) class. We also did quite a bit of pistol shooting this time around (even some dedicated pistol drills).
Besides hearing “knees” in stereo, I keep hearing “contact front”, “contact right”, “contact left”.
After I dumped all the sand/dirt out of my gear bag and pockets, I went to take a shower. My wife wanted to know how I got brusies from head to toe front and back?
Great class, awsome group of guys and top tier instruction. The next challange will be to see when I can squeeze another VTAC class in!
AAR Viking Tactics March 25-27 Night Fighter
Instructor: The primary instructor for this class was Kyle Lamb. His back ground and experience is already known so I do not need to repeat anything about that. I will say this however, he is not only an AMAZING instructor, but a wealth of information, and not just about weapon manipulations. I would not hesitate to, and am currently working on hearing him speak on his experiences and beliefs on leadership.
I thought about this on my ride home and came up with three types of instructors
Type 1: Can give you drills to shoot and might be able to tell you the benefit or the point that they serve.
Type 2: Type 1+ Can identify what you are doing wrong/right or what you might want to try differently
Type 3: Type 1+2+ Show you specifically what you are doing wrong/right/what you might want to change, can coach you through complex ideas and make them understandable and ensures that the information is being processed, understood, practically applied and then retained. Kyle is a Type 3.
Students: The student body for this course was a good mix of military, LE, and civilians. Everyone had a strong grasp for what they were doing and there were no “That Guy” in the class.
Training Overview:
TD1: TD1 started out with the safety brief that was not the stereotypical “these are the four rules”. The safety brief still encompassed all the needed information, but relayed it in a manner that made sense, applied to the situation at hand and was easily understood by all the students. This set the stage for Kyle’s teaching style, simple and effective.
After that we moved to the 50m then 100m line to zero our weapons. We fired quite a few 5rd strings. This was done so shooters could get a really hard zero that was on for them. When we took up alternate shooting positions later in the course a solid zero was paramount to hitting things on than the backstop.
Once all the shooters were good to go we moved into the 400pt aggregate however it had a slight twist in it. I won’t go into the specifics of the iterations of the 400pt aggregate that we did, I will say that this is an advanced course, so you better be proficient with your weapon.
From there we moved into shooting steel from the 100m line from various positions around cars and barricades. Kyle would demonstrate a specific method and then shooters would go forth and do it themselves. Allowing them to adapt the position to their gear/body types. Kyle would spot check students and offer advice and demonstrate slight variations. If more than one student was having a problem, Kyle would call the class in and address it.
As it grew darker we moved in close on VTACs new torso targets and began to work on light manipulations. Kyle is not the type of person who says “you have to do it this way”. He just wanted you to know how to manipulate your setup. The rest of the night was working on shooting in the dark and weapon light manipulations.
TD2: TD2 started with demonstrations of the effect of cars on bullets. It was pretty eye opening experience.
Kyle then began to introduce single hand manipulations and highlighting other “not so common” problem that shooters tend to face. We moved into shooting numerous types of dynamic scenarios. Kyle often changed it up on the shooter during the course of fire forcing the shooter to think on his feet and problem solve. As problems or questions arose, Kyle would go over valuable teaching points. This progressed for the rest of the day and into the night.
TD3: TD3 was very similar to TD2, another period of instruction on cars, bullets and the mixing of the two, then more scenario based situations that always changed from shooter to shooter. This made it very hard to game things and forced to shooter to think on his feet (or end up on his ass in my case). As more scenarios were run, more and more things would get thrown at the shooter requiring quick manipulations.
I learned a ton, things I had never thought of, things I had never expected. I came out of this course with a much better understanding of how to employ a weapon system and what I need to do in order to smoke bad guys in the face.
Likes:
- We do not live in a left handed or right handed world. Learn to shoot that way. VTAC does not believe in a strong/weak side.
- Spontaneous changes in drills forced shooters to change up any type of preconceived plans and forced them to think on their feet.
- You always worked through problems as they arose. There were no pauses or time outs. If you got your ass into an awkward situation, you better get it out of there.
Other Lessons learned:
- Loops (slings, shoe laces etc) tend to get caught on shifters in cars. Take precautions to ensure this does not happen. My shoelaces were duct taped up on TD2+TD3 to prevent this.
- Cars do freaky things to bullets.
- If it is worth shooting once, it is worth shooting twice. If it is worth shooting twice its worth shooting 5+ times.
- Always have a back up plan to your back up plan. Or at least have a strong foundation of how to deal with problems that you can draw on in tight times.
Gear:
I shot a Noveske 16” MIddi on a BCM lower with a JP/VTAC rifle length tube, EO XPS2-0, VTAC sling, SF G2. Gear Sector Hand Stop. This rifle ran fine on TD1 but had a few malfunctions on TD2+3. My guesswas this was caused by the large amount of sand that entered my weapon. An excess of oil in my weapon in the WRONG places and the fact that I needed to replace my gas rings.
My blaster was a G17 w/ SF X300. Boringly reliable as always.
I used Blade Tech belt mounted pouches a Safariland TTT model 6004. To accommodate the ammo requirements and the need for other gear (light, multi tool) I used a BFG Ten Speed Chest Rig. Everything performed as advertised. The BFG tenspeed is holding up quite well for what its been hit with so far.
PJ
My shoelaces were duct taped up on TD2+TD3 to prevent this.
Now that is funny. See even soon to be second Lt.'s can learn.
And a Marine that.
It was very nice to have met all of you that attended the class and I hope we can train together again in the near future. As always I learned a lot from watching all of the students running drills and also from what Kyle delivered.
The range was quite dusty. Very sandy soil, coupled with high winds … gave me the momentary illusion that I was in fact somewhere in the OBX about to heave some w8nbait into the suds.
I was running a Colt MTC with PMAGS as well as a S&W M&P/9. We assumed various prone shooting positions and dropped mags to reload. Also, on several occasions I felt I had no choice but to drop my unslung rifle on the ground when it malfed/went empty (to transition to my pistol) and when I had to exit a compact vehicle (during one drill I had to debus via the front passenger side from the driver side… with Kyle sitting in the passenger seat).
All of this meant that our guns and mags got fairly dusty. I cleaned the rifle every day so there were no issues with the rifle. I left the PMAGS alone and they functioned fairly well, although it got progressively harder to load them through TD3. At dinner time on TD2 my M&P mags would no longer accept rounds. I broke them down and noticed that the entire interior walls of the mags were covered in fine dust. My pistol worked fine through the 3 days without any cleaning.
A note on carbine malfs. In the dark and in the confines of a vehicle, it is very easy to:
- uninentionally cover your ejection port (which can lead to double feeds)
and
- unintentionally hit the mag release button (thanks for pointing that out Jeff). this is interesting, because the mags at some point wouldn’t drop free due to the dust. so it was hard to tell (esp in the dark) if the mag was seated properly at all times.
Interesting learning experience.
Great bunch of shooters. I had a blast and can’t wait to do it again.
KL
Hey Kyle, fancy seeing you post here. Welcome aboard!!
I did not get to take as many photos as I would have liked as I was rather busy. But I’m going to post some here and there.
