BassCliff
Hellcat
Salutations,
It's been a busy 24 hours here in the Wild Wild Upper Midwest, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.
If you frequent the other popular threads here in the forum you'll know that we got about 5" of snow last night and into this morning. I enjoyed spending the afternoon shoveling my driveway before making my way to the range for an Advanced Defensive Pistol Skills Clinic. As I pulled out of my freshly shoveled driveway, I was wondering if I also needed to rake my roof.
It looks like the snow plows were able to clear the road to the range. That's a good thing.
Whoever plowed the parking lot didn't do such a great job. All the parking spots next to the building were half covered in snow.
It was a full class today, all 12 lanes. I got my favorite. After our warm ups, one of the instructors was looking over the targets.
Our warmup drill was a simple draw and shoot, 3 to 5 high center chest. From distances of 5, 10, and 15 yards we would pivot 90° or 180° before putting hits on target as quickly as possible. This was my target. Not too terrible.
I should mention that I was using my Mod.3 with Holosun optic. I'll start carrying it more often now that I'm getting used to it. After our warmup the instructors got us set up for the first scenario. We had three areas of cover with six bad guys beyond.
We were told to come up with our own course of action. The mission was to put three to five in the chest while going left to right. Then put one head shot in each while going back to the right side.
Some would shoot on the run. Others would shoot only from cover. We had to remember to "slice the pie" and possibly do a tactical reload while behind cover.
After my run the instructor said the only thing he'd like to see me do better is take another step away from the cover so that I could "slice the pie" better. Some students were really hugging the cover, which can be a bad thing because you may have to expose too much of yourself in order to shoot around it. The instructors set us up for our next scenario.
This was a similar scenario except the cover was all in a straight line instead of staggered like in the last setup. There was also two sets of targets. The "no shoot" targets were closer than the bad guy targets.
Again, we just had to put three to five shots on the bad guys WITHOUT hitting the bystanders or flagging them with our muzzle.
Some students had to go back and forth between the cover to get the right angle to hit the bad guys. This is not me, but I also had to take a knee to get one of the targets. I was able to hit all the bad guys without going back and forth.
The instructor liked my run through and my accuracy. The only critique was that during a reload, I ducked back behind cover, and when I came out I did not change my position. I was kneeling when I had a slide lock. I ducked back behind cover to reload and when I came back out I was still kneeling. The instructor likes to see us either stand up or go to the other side. That's to help keep the bad guys guessing. (That's why you don't come back out in the same position.) It was during this exercise that I got my finger pinched during a reload. Ouch. It broke my old man skin, started to bleed, so I got a tactical camouflage band-aid from the first aid kit.
OK, just a couple more drills for the class. This was a plain old Bill Drill from 5, 10, and 15 yards. Just put your hits, six at a time, in the rectangle (center mass), as quickly as possible.
We did four drills at 5, 10, 15, then back to 5 yards, six hits just as fast as we could. My target looked like this when I was done. Again, not too terrible.
For our last drill, the "Fletcher Drill", we went back to the Immobilize Zone targets.
This is the standard timed drill at this range. Load two magazines with 5 rounds. You have two targets. On the beep, three to the chest and two to the head on target #1, slidelock reload while "getting off the X", then target #2 gets three to the chest and two to the head. We each ran the drill twice. I shot pretty well with just one hit on each run outside of the scoring zone, a half second penalty. A few of my hits were touching. You can see my targets and video. My time was OK but not quite good enough to get a patch for the next level up.
The class "Standard" patch is under 13 seconds. I have the "Intermediate" patch, under 10 seconds. The "Advanced" patch is under 8 seconds. The "Expert" coin is under 7 seconds. Here is both of my runs, live and in color. On the second run I fumbled with my shirt and it slowed down my reload. But this is the shirt I wear, so that's why I train with it.
OK, that was our fun. We picked up some of our ventilated trash and headed back to the classroom to debrief.
All in all, a good class. I did pretty good with this optic. It gets better every time. I think I'll do the same for the class next month. Thanks for coming out with me. You guys are the best.
Thank you for your indulgence,
BassCliff
It's been a busy 24 hours here in the Wild Wild Upper Midwest, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.
If you frequent the other popular threads here in the forum you'll know that we got about 5" of snow last night and into this morning. I enjoyed spending the afternoon shoveling my driveway before making my way to the range for an Advanced Defensive Pistol Skills Clinic. As I pulled out of my freshly shoveled driveway, I was wondering if I also needed to rake my roof.
It looks like the snow plows were able to clear the road to the range. That's a good thing.
Whoever plowed the parking lot didn't do such a great job. All the parking spots next to the building were half covered in snow.
It was a full class today, all 12 lanes. I got my favorite. After our warm ups, one of the instructors was looking over the targets.
Our warmup drill was a simple draw and shoot, 3 to 5 high center chest. From distances of 5, 10, and 15 yards we would pivot 90° or 180° before putting hits on target as quickly as possible. This was my target. Not too terrible.
I should mention that I was using my Mod.3 with Holosun optic. I'll start carrying it more often now that I'm getting used to it. After our warmup the instructors got us set up for the first scenario. We had three areas of cover with six bad guys beyond.
We were told to come up with our own course of action. The mission was to put three to five in the chest while going left to right. Then put one head shot in each while going back to the right side.
Some would shoot on the run. Others would shoot only from cover. We had to remember to "slice the pie" and possibly do a tactical reload while behind cover.
After my run the instructor said the only thing he'd like to see me do better is take another step away from the cover so that I could "slice the pie" better. Some students were really hugging the cover, which can be a bad thing because you may have to expose too much of yourself in order to shoot around it. The instructors set us up for our next scenario.
This was a similar scenario except the cover was all in a straight line instead of staggered like in the last setup. There was also two sets of targets. The "no shoot" targets were closer than the bad guy targets.
Again, we just had to put three to five shots on the bad guys WITHOUT hitting the bystanders or flagging them with our muzzle.
Some students had to go back and forth between the cover to get the right angle to hit the bad guys. This is not me, but I also had to take a knee to get one of the targets. I was able to hit all the bad guys without going back and forth.
The instructor liked my run through and my accuracy. The only critique was that during a reload, I ducked back behind cover, and when I came out I did not change my position. I was kneeling when I had a slide lock. I ducked back behind cover to reload and when I came back out I was still kneeling. The instructor likes to see us either stand up or go to the other side. That's to help keep the bad guys guessing. (That's why you don't come back out in the same position.) It was during this exercise that I got my finger pinched during a reload. Ouch. It broke my old man skin, started to bleed, so I got a tactical camouflage band-aid from the first aid kit.
OK, just a couple more drills for the class. This was a plain old Bill Drill from 5, 10, and 15 yards. Just put your hits, six at a time, in the rectangle (center mass), as quickly as possible.
We did four drills at 5, 10, 15, then back to 5 yards, six hits just as fast as we could. My target looked like this when I was done. Again, not too terrible.
For our last drill, the "Fletcher Drill", we went back to the Immobilize Zone targets.
This is the standard timed drill at this range. Load two magazines with 5 rounds. You have two targets. On the beep, three to the chest and two to the head on target #1, slidelock reload while "getting off the X", then target #2 gets three to the chest and two to the head. We each ran the drill twice. I shot pretty well with just one hit on each run outside of the scoring zone, a half second penalty. A few of my hits were touching. You can see my targets and video. My time was OK but not quite good enough to get a patch for the next level up.
The class "Standard" patch is under 13 seconds. I have the "Intermediate" patch, under 10 seconds. The "Advanced" patch is under 8 seconds. The "Expert" coin is under 7 seconds. Here is both of my runs, live and in color. On the second run I fumbled with my shirt and it slowed down my reload. But this is the shirt I wear, so that's why I train with it.
OK, that was our fun. We picked up some of our ventilated trash and headed back to the classroom to debrief.
All in all, a good class. I did pretty good with this optic. It gets better every time. I think I'll do the same for the class next month. Thanks for coming out with me. You guys are the best.
Thank you for your indulgence,
BassCliff
