I have a box of 'em. Fun to try out every now and then. Today I put one up and used my A1 clone. Yep, no RDS or ACOG, just irons. The M16A1 is what I was issued for my 4 years as an Army grunt “back in the day”. It’s been a while since I did anything with irons other than zeroing them. Most of my shooting in recent times has been RDS, so you get a bit “lazy” if you will. Irons require attention to sight picture.
I don’t have a foxhole and didn’t fell like laying on the soggy ground (lately it seems I should’ve built an ark with the incessant rain). So I shot 20 rounds from my bench supported with my hand on a sandbag, and 20 rounds without the sandbag (“unsupported”). The rules on the bottom of the target state if you break the silhouette it is a “hit”. I got 36 out of 40, which is the bare minimum for “Expert”. One was barely breaking the black in the bottom right hand corner of 300m silhouette but rules is rules!
My A1 clone is a chrome lined 1:7 twist pencil barrel so some time ago I did a 50yd IBSZ with M855. Even though it’s a 20" barrel the IBSZ still works out pretty well. I had to put a practice marker up for a few test rounds to see where I was hitting at 25m and I used M193 today as well for the AQT. So not making excuses for myself but I had to hold “high” on each target at 25m to get COM hits, like head level.
If you have an opportunity to get a few AQT’s they are a fun way to test your basic marksmanship abilities. Very basic to be sure, but fun nonetheless.
Yeah yeah. It was fun nonetheless. Sorry, my home range only goes to 100 yards (see there?) anyway. The 25m AQT has the targets from the Army pop-up range qualification scaled to what they’d look like on paper at 25m. Would be similar to having the Marine bulls scaled on paper.
25-Meter Alt-C isn’t difficult if you have a firm grasp of the basics. Alt-C is the choice for unit commanders with a legitimate need to qualify units without access to full-size ranges quickly, or for those units whose troops suck at shooting.
Oh, and there are two kinds of nations in the world – those that use Metric and those who have walked on the moon.
Well considering that I don’t have a 300m pop-up range it’ll have to do!
And yeah, that “firm grasp of the basics” is nice to return to every now and then. A periodic review of the fundamentals is a good practice in things like martial arts, shooting, etc. It was interesting to see how my 52yo eyes would do with irons, and I wasn’t too disappointed.
Well this is easy to explain, the Marines got stuck with the Army’s old beat up 500yd ranges when the Army “upgraded” to the 300m version, of course. Im sure the Marines even have a few of the old “Thousand inch” ranges packed away for when the shit really hits the fan.
So these three countries are the only non-communist countries in the world? Inquiring minds want to know.
“At this time, only three countries - Burma, Liberia, and the US - have not adopted the International System of Units (SI, or metric system) as their official system of weights and measures.”
