Sunday, June 08, 2014

Day two of gun class

Location: Utah Desert.
Temperature: Hot as the surface of the sun.

Seriously--if you set your rifle down in the sun for just a few minutes, it would be too hot to pick up and manipulate. Drop a metal magazine on the ground? Better have a glove on when you went back at the end of the stage to recover it.

It was HOT. Even the few breezes bought no relief, as they were justnsuperheated air bearing a ton of fine sand. This is why AR rifles have dust covers.

THat aside, it was still a great day of shooting. Everything on this day was done on the move, and we burned through 500 rounds or so easily in walk-and-shoot drills, on plates at distances out to 100 yards while firing around or through barricades, long-range shooting out to 325 yards, a shoot house, and other dynamic drills where we ram fast, shot fast, and generally looked damned good while doing it. Both Ron Avery and Keith Garcia really know their stuff, and watching all of the other three-gun folks at work helped me pick up or refine a few techniques as well. Had it been my choice, the class would have been more "real world tactical" than it was, but there's no denying that I still learned a ton and came away a better shooter than I was on Friday. My rifles will be getting ambidexderous safeties in the very near future and a few other minor changes will be made as well. Both the Aimpoint Comp and the ACOG optics performed as advertised any the only problems that I had stemmed from the Federal 40gr. Franigible training ammo that I was using because I got a thousand rounds of it free. In nice clean guns it's fine, but let a rifle get hot and dirty like mine got and suddenly you start having problems with the both not going back far enough to pick up the next round.  Aargh! But even that was good practice  on malfunction drills under the clock.  Am I disappointed in any way? Not a bit. It was a great class for the money and the stellar company in the form of the vaunted Six from Warrior Ckass blog coul not have been improved on.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have an incredibly dirty AR to clean.

7 comments:

  1. What a nice chore to have to do--means you had a good time! Aside from the heat, sounds great!

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  2. Sounds like fun!

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  3. We only got up to 96 today, not the anticipated 102. Riding enduros in the heat I learned to keep my Camelbak filled with ice - it melts but it's still better than hot water!

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  4. Fantastic! Can't wait to pick your brain as I try to transition to the long gun game. Sigh... I don't even own a AR. There. I have made my confession!

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  5. Clean the rifle and have a cold one.

    You earned it!

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  6. What they said. Sounds like a great session.

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  7. Learning, and experiencing the failures WILL help if you really need to use the gun. And sorry to hear the ammo didn't work too well.

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