AAR - Costa Ludus - Carbine Employmet I - Jan27-29'12

[JTNieman]

Keep in mind that I may have mixed up which items happened in what order, and maybe on what day we started it... oh well.
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Day 1
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First thing we did after introductions and briefing was zero our guns. Most were already zero'd but you want to dial it in perfect. We went over the pros/cons of a 50 yard zero versus a 100 yard zero and knowing holdovers at ranges and what not. We mostly focused on 50 yard zero. 50 yard range.
Did some marksmanship shooting for hits. IPSC target with a trapezoid that's like 8x8 and the bottom like 6 wide. Headshot zone was like your normal 3x5 card area. We worked on shooting positions before the marksmanship. Standing, 'dynamic' Kneeling, Prone, and supported Kneeling.

Standing had us more squared up to the target. The rifle was brought more into our shoulder than out on meat which is soft and allows the rifle to move with recoil. It wasn't over our chest or anything, still in the pocket but favoring the left side of the pocket. Our reaction/support hand went out until elbow nearly locked. We focused on finding the path of least resistance for the recoil to go. If the bent support arm is the weakest, then your rifle will move left after each shot. Everyone but the Navy Fighter Pilot had a red dot. Watching the dot during shots/recoil told us a lot. I found that by the end of day 3 I was pretty decently able to keep the dot in tight on the point of aim during recoil even while hauling ass on the trigger, even though I couldn't get most of the bend out of my elbow. I'm a big guy though - more mass, etc.

Dynamic kneeling was interesting to me. You basically kept your standing stance, did not move your feet, and went to your trailing knee, while you sat on your leading foot, if that makes sense. Your support elbow did not rest on your knee, you just did dynamic kneeling in the case that you may need to make a smaller target of yourself while you get a shot off, while maintaining the potential to instantly be able to explode upward and relocate again to set up the next shots.

Kneeling for aimed shots was hard for me, I found. Had the most trouble with that. I couldn't find the best place for my elbow to rest, to remove wobble. I ended up doing best with a position Costa showed us where you wrapped your support hand around the 30 round mag and c-clamped the handguard in front of the magwell. My support forearm would be behind the mag, while my wrist twisted around the front of it, and my hand clamped the handguard like a C-clamp. I found it to work well for timed kneeling shots. Everything had to rest properly between elbow and knee however or I'd take way too long to get back on target.

Prone is prone. You shouldn't be able to screw this up, but there are ways to ensure you're doing it to the best of your ability. When going from standing to prone, we basically slid our feet backward quickly, while putting our reaction hand out to catch ourselves and lower us to the ground as if you're doing a one-handed push-up that you are failing miserably at. It's just to ease you into the dirt so you don't land on your nuts and have to mentally shrug off that pain to make the hits (like I did once. Ow.) Before you drop, you must remember to kick the muzzle upward, so that by the time gravity brings it down again while you fall, its pretty much horizontal and not muzzle dipped into the dirt. By the way, the birdcage is great for holding in leaves, grass, and mud when you don't want it to. The object, also, was not to dive forward, but to go STRAIGHT down and land so that you're most of the way to your cheek weld. The big key here was that - the more points of contact you have, the more stable you are, and the faster you can score good solid hits without err.

Marksmanship drills - He had us shooting 15 shots, for instance, while standing, at 10 yards, and whenever the group about finished, he'd record the time and we'd have to do it that fast, or faster, the next day, without getting misses. Then we'd do 15 kneeling at 25, and 15 prone at 50. We'd always start standing, so time to get your nuts on the ground, or on your knee, mattered. This was great for practicing the principle of 'compartmentalizing' as he would call it. You can't think of the whole thing as one task. It is made of many individual tasks. Once you go prone, you forget that shit, and you move to the next compartment of the job. Going prone is one compartment of thought. Once it's done, you move to the next, and you don't let that bother your next compartment of action. If you get all amped up and hurried because you just had to turn 180 and drop prone, and you pull the first shot and miss, you fucked up. You let that first compartment of action ruin your next one. Separate them and you will succeed.

We did drills he called "BSA Drills" which were Balance Speed and Accuracy. This was to identify how fast you could push your cadence of fire before your groups went wild and started going outside the hit zone. We would do a string at various positions, under the shot clock. He would give us 2 seconds to score 2 good hits at 10 yards. Then 3. Then 4. Then 5. He was looking for our point of failure. When our groups started getting too wild, he'd stop and give us our number. He would go to each shooter and hold up 'x' fingers to them to tell them how many shots they are to attempt for all BSA drills. The time never changed for each drill. It was always 2 or 4 or whatever, for each drill. It varied based on position and distance, but the number of shots stayed the same. We would find out point of failure, number of rounds in that time, and push it, and force ourselves to focus.

Reloads.
Speed reload. Bolt locks to rear, you feed it, hit the ping-pong paddle, and get back to fighting. Snapping the gun up into your "workspace" (in front of your face) was key. It is unwise, we were told, to bring your face down to your rifle. Get the rifle up in your work space to feed it, so you can keep watching the fight and do what is needed, and track your threats. Bring rifle up straight, hit mag release, swing rifle to the side so that your firing-hand-thumb is to your face. This movement aids in dumping that empty mag if it hadn't already dropped free. Stuff that new mag in there, and hit the ping pong paddle. Snap the rifle back into your shoulder while your reaction/support hand goes back to point and boom boom boom.

Tac reload. I had only previously trained to let the mags drop. It ain't worth the time to save them. Costa and a couple training-junky friends have told me different and I'm starting to come around. Bullets are time. Time is life. Suppressive fire can be effective at one round per second, for example. Each round is a second. Those 10 rounds I dropped could be another 10 seconds for me to shoot and move my way away from the fight, or to a safer position, or to the other side of the hallway where my kid is hiding, or whatever. So my preferred method of tac reload (he showed us a couple ways) was to bring the gun up into my 'workspace' first. Rotate gun before hitting mag release. Bring a fresh mag up to the gun (while I was rotating it) and hold it at a 90d angle to the mag in the gun. Hit mag release, pull mag out, rotate hand, insert new mag, stow the now-removed mag into pouch. This is done from the furthest pouch from the gun, or rear-most on my hip, or whatever. The closer the mag to my gun, the fuller it should be, typically. Tac reloads are done only when there is time and opportunity.

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Day 2
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Started off with a "Dollar Bill competition" in which we all staple a Washington to our target and whoever shoots him closest to the nose, wins, prone at 25m. Day 2, we all shot very low, being retards, who forgot to consider our optic's height over bore, and the 50m zero of it. The only guy not to shoot low was, ironically, the agent from the Secret Service office in New Orleans. That irony still makes me laugh. So he won, and got to keep everyone's dollars. Or as we referred to them, from then on, "evidence of defacement of federal government property".

After this, we ditched the rifle gear and strapped on with only our secondary. It is the first time he had us get our secondary out. He did not want us to even grab our secondary on Day 1, because we weren't doing transitions until day 2. Wanting to avoid causing training scars, he didn't want us having repetitions of fixing malfunctions in the rifle and ignoring our secondary when we have it. He wanted us to transition to the secondary if the rifle has a problem, and not to fix the primary while there is an operational secondary on your hip. Use the secondary to fight to cover or a moment of calm and then fix the primary in safety.

So he quickly had us do basic shooting to ensure we were all shooting with a decently modern grip, fixed those that needed it, gave a couple pointers. One thing I immediately liked was that he showed us that instead of keeping the gun at a "low ready" pointed at the target's nutsack or waist, as a lot of instructors say, he prefers to instead bring the gun back, but keeping the front sight post directly on target, with the rear sight lowered - effectively angling the gun upward enough to be a safe direction. The reasons other instructors have you put the gun to the lower ready position is that the sights are still in the peripheral of the eye-target line, but lower, so you can watch hands and eyes and still quickly acquire your sights. Costa's method, however, did not seem to inhibit this when I tried it, and had the added benefit of quickly SNAPPING the press-out upon call of 'threat' and the whole while, the front post actually moves along the eye-target line, and I'm able to be taking up slack much sooner and firing immediately upon extension of the gun. I was much faster and never lost accuracy with Costa's method, than methods I'd been instructed before. I'm taking a Tom Givens class in mid March and am interested to ask his opinion on this. He is one that instructed me of the lowering of the gun when there is no threat, while you scan the area. It seems to be a majority-common tactic, in what limited experience I have.

Anyways, after that, we practiced drawing and firing, and then strapped full gear back up with rifle and secondary. We did some more BSA drills, with Costa hurrying us up and forcing us to get more shots on target in the same time, pushing us further to our failure points.

We then began facing movements. Basically introduced us to thinking of our gun as a stripper pole. Instead of taking a step to the right, if you have to turn 90d to face a threat, you sort of dance in place around the axis of your rifle's barrel. Your rifle would be vertical (up OR down) while you rotate your body around it. This means you need not worry about your orientation and proximity to objects as much as if you instinctively stepped around and moved to the side to face your target. To put it simply, you rotate in place and snap the gun to your shoulder and engage. We did this from right, left, and rearward facing positions and drilled appropriately. We were instructed to transition to our sidearm when a mag ran empty. We didn't want to keep having to simulate malfs so that we could practice transitions, so we just decided to tac reload when we could, from then on out, and to replace speed-reloads as a malf and transition to our secondary. I speed fed my mag during a drill once, and as luck had it, Costa was near me shouting "HOLY SHIT THAT SECONDARY TRANSITION WAS SO FAST I DIDN'T EVEN SEE IT". It was a beginner course and so he was not trying to be R Lee Erney or anything, but he was a pretty good motivator. He is a bit of a joker when he can be, so humiliation and shame are tools he uses when applicable.

We were taught the positions of "supine" and "urban prone" but they would not be entered into our normal typical drills afterward. We did one segment on these positions, and drilled them, but after that segment, we did not revisit them. Supine was basically laying on your back, do a half-crunch to look down between your feet, which should be about 45 degrees apart, at least, and shooting between your feet. This was the only position where we did not pull the stock into our shoulder traditionally, but instead used our sling and pushed the rifle out to shoot. The sling behind our shoulder would fight the push and steady the gun some. This was very difficult to shoot, I found. Probably because I'm a fat ass. The practicality of this position, I find suspect, and Costa even mentioned that it's not something you should ever find yourself doing, but if you do end up on your ass laying down, he just wanted to show you how to do it safely. Don't put your knees up. Keep legs flat. Guys with SBRs should be extra fucking careful. Don't forget sights height over bore, look through your red dot, not see your foot, then find out your barrel was right in front of your fucking toes, and end up trying to convince your buddy that the enemy with an AK shot your foot with a 5.56 round. Going back to practicality, the only time Costa claimed the position was useful was boarding a ship that had waves sweep guys off their feet, finding themselves sliding down a deck to the low side on his ass. So keep that in mind.

Urban prone was interesting. It's basically a position assumed to take advantage of an active shooter who may be using effective cover to negate potential shots on his body and head, but has left his lower extremities or maybe just his feet, exposed. The other aspect is for shooting under cars or mail drop boxes, or other objects that may provide cover/concealment with an open area below. Basically you drop to your side on the ground, torso squared up to the target all the same. Cheek weld and shouldering the rifle all the same. Exactly the same as you would shoot if you were standing, except now you're on your side. Your feet go a bit forward, your hips slightly forward (not much, just enough to settle on your legs), with your support side foot almost straight to the target, and your firing side leg about 15-20 degrees back from the other leg. It gave me a pretty stable platform, and depending on which side I was on, even allowed for an additional point of contact. I found it decently easy to get pretty quick shots. Not as fast as traditional prone, but with practice, it seems viable.

We did a bunch of drills from standing and kneeling to Supine or Urban Prone, mixing in facing commands, then left it at that. From then on, really, he started mixing in facing drills with all our drills. Combined with our instruction that 'from here on out' we will transition to our secondary (pistol) upon bolt lock, and to tac-reload only as often as we care to, as well as remembering our facing processes, every one of our drills got additionally more complicated as time went on. It further pounded in the necessity of "compartmentalizing" our movements. Doing some things as fast as fucking possible, but slowing down when necessary, and not letting the previous moment of "HOLY SHIT FAST AS FUCK" impede our ability to take the proper shot, or insert the mag properly instead of ramming the feed lips into the side of the magwell or fumbling something else.

We did a lot of shooting drills requiring up and down. Drills that were like 5 shots standing, 5 shots kneeling, 5 shots prone, 5 shots kneeling, 5 shots standing. Round counts were climbing. No more 2 shots each type of shit where it was easy to avoid pulling shots. We were doing more and more shots, so that we REALLY had to ensure we DOMINATED our muzzle and kept it on target, to get in before the time was up.

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Day 3
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Started the day again with a dollar shot. This time someone beat the secret service guy, so he had less evidence to take back with him. This time, everyone remembered their holdover, and got damned close, but one guy managed to hit Washington between the eyes, making him the "closest to the nose". I was about 3/4" - 1" low.

We did a round of marksmanship and got yelled at if we had a single 'miss'. That shit was behind us, and the marksmanship drills were with a generous amount of time, so we should be getting all hits. Class was great. However, this is the drill where I discovered my optic was off. Given that I was not -far- low at the dollar shot, it makes me wonder if me proning out for the dollar shot made the optic lose zero. It was either the dollar shot, or the shots taken during the marksmanship drill (which are, again, 15 shots standing at 10m, 15 shots kneeling at 25m, 15 shots proned at 50m, each time starting at standing position). Thus began my day of kentucky windage, which I did better at than expected.

Continued BSA drills and upping round counts.

Today's focus was shooting when you have to, not when you want to, basically. We sprinted to the 5 yard line, from the 50 yard line, hauling ass as fast as we felt we could (some old people were in the class) and drilled 5 shots into headshots. We then sprinted to the 50m line and did the same, standing, at center mass. We sucked. We got better. Shooting with that stress is rough for a guy as out of shape as I am. I didn't make it back to the line at the same time as the army, navy, and secret service dudes, but I did my damnedest, and I wasn't far behind. I kept it all on the IPSC outline, but not all were in the vital area we were aiming for. We did some more of that shit and I got better and better at compartmentalizing and dealing with breathing.

We began shooting and moving. We would split into 2 groups, and shot 1 group at a time, to give room, moving laterally and shooting, running forward and shooting, backward and shooting, keeping in mind to not look backward while running, but taking glances and occasional "snapshots" of the terrain behind us and keeping eyes on the threat. We were basically moving around as instructed, synchronized, and engaging the targets on randomized call of 'threat!'

After this, we partnered up with one other person. That person stood at the 10 yard line or so, staring down rage, weapon safely pointing down. The partner would be at the 25m line weapon vertical as preferred (up or down) and upon call of "THREAT RIGHT" or "THREAT LEFT" "THREAT FORWARD" they would sprint up to their stationary partner, move to left or right, or around them and in front of them (back to back) and engage target. This was simulating situations where you may have an innocent or person you're protecting between you and the threat, but it just doesn't make sense to send bullets whizzing by their head to hit the guy beyond them. We discussed many situations such as recent sprees by people with AKs in restaurants (actually near here) and mall situations.

After this, we discussed shooting around barricades (the barricades were not great examples, we found) or shooting more moving drills and run-and-gun stuff. After discussing that we normally can't run and gun at most ranges, and that barricade practice can be had much more easily, normally, we decided to run and gun. It was typically a combination of facing drills, shooting in your wide lanes, keeping muzzles safe, moving THEN shooting, and clearing malfunctions while moving, if comfortable doing so. It was a great experience, I found, and I got my physically unfit ass kicked well, as I needed.

Afterward, we had a friendly competition to end the day. At 10 yards, we were to stand facing up range. Set up with your rifle loaded 11+1 with a mag ready with 12 rounds. Pistol loaded and ready. Upon buzzer, safely turn and engage all three targets with 4 shots center-mass. Speed reload and engage all 3 targets with 4 headshots each. Transition to secondary and engage all 3 targets with 3 headshots each. I whooped everyone's ass. Cool guy points for me, right? I'm pretty sure it's only because I'm so used to USPSA shooting. However, the 3-gunners with their fancy comps and light triggers still got beat by the carbine newb with a 7.5 pound PSA trigger, and a M&P9 with no trigger reset who has to fully slap the trigger for every shot. I have the DCAEK in my other gun, but I am soon getting the APEX DCAEK for that one too. Anyways... great time.

I improved a massive amount. I went from average performance, to excellence amongst my peers. I continued to push myself right at my point of failure. I rarely had -all- my shots within the vital zone we were aiming at. I usually did for headshots, though. But for center mass, I was always trying to squeeze in one more shot per timer-period and so my groups were sometimes wild. I pushed myself, but not hard enough to do my training more harm than good, I found. It made me focus harder, compartmentalize, and improve every volley. I did something better/different each time. Fixed my grip. Remembered to only reset the trigger instead of repeatedly slapping it. Remembering to not put too much finger in there. Treat the trigger press as I would my pistol. Control the muzzle. Shoot during natural respiratory pause, if applicable. Drive the gun target to target. Snap the gun up into position as fast as possible to leave me as much shooting time as possible to make my shots. Prone out, kneel down, stand up as fast as possible to leave myself shooting time.

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Overall impressions of Chris Costa
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I found his class to be fast paced. I noticed some people fumbled at times, struggling to keep up, and forgetting how many shots for a drill, or how to do a drill. I engaged a target with body shots instead of head shots at one point. We were driven fast. The information given was dense as fuck and constantly coming. It was good info. Every bit helped me shoot and control my rifle faster. He emphasised remembering the basics, while pushing us to perform better, and telling us how fast we COULD be if we were better. He raised the bar continuously, but not out of reach. Stepped it up as we could handle it, and always pushed forward. This was definitely a physical and mental work out, every minute of every day. I was physically and mentally exhausted each evening. Because of all this, I felt it was more important than other training days, to write up an AAR. It's more for me than you. I don't want this shit to fade, and writing it down will help me remember what to do, how to do it, and continue practicing properly on my own time. I found that there were time in his class where I found myself thinking "Damnit, we're already moving on to the next thing, but I really need more repetitions on this aspect! I don't have it down completely yet!" but my next thought was "I can do repetitions any time. New material is more important for this valuable time with the instructor," and I think that's great. I like that pace. It means I'm being inundated with material and not just dragging it out to fill the class time, rather than pushing as much material into it as possible.

Our class syllabus said bring 1500 rounds min. - others, and Costa, say that is the typical round count he hits at. We shot over 2000. Partly because we broke for lunch for 30 mins max, since we had plate lunches brought to us, rather than going somewhere to town, eating, then coming back, waiting for stragglers, whatever. Part of it, he claims, was because we were performing better than most. I'll go ahead and choose to believe the compliment, lol. Thanks be to Academy in Hammond for having cases and cases of fairly priced Monarch ammo on hand, as me and my coworker made an emergency run to buy another case of 500. I still have enough to keep about 15 mags full, though. Still need more...


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GEAR EXPERIENCE
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Vortex Sparc - Skip it except for plinking. I say that as someone working at RJF who is buddy/buddy with Vortex. I like their midgrade rifle scopes a lot. Costa even said those are awesome for that price niche ($180-300, I believe we were discussing) and Vortex will do great if they really hit that market hard. Their high end shit needs a bit of work if they're going to enter into price points of Nightforce and all that shit. Their red dots though are... well this is my experience: Sparc: The dot looks good, adjusts well, would appreciate one lower setting for very overcast days, but ce la vie. The NV button however gets hit REALLY REALLY REALLY fucking often when you safe-and-hang the rifle, or at all brush your hand by the optic. That basically means the dot disappears and you get fucked up a bit. Day 3 I took we did a marksmanship drill out to 50m. My groups were consistent, average accuracy, all in one place, but low. The groups I put on headshots - low. The groups I put on center mass - low. A good 6-8 inches low. I took some test shots on the next volley, and the optic was fucked. Return-to-zero failed without ever doing anything other than leaving the optic on since Thursday when I put it on the gun and zero'd it. Strangest fucking thing is that throughout the next couple hours (was going to wait until lunch to re-zero) I was just kentucky-windage'ing it and noticed my gorups were moving up. The fucking thing moved back to the original zero. No fucking clue, but I know my holdovers were right. This was day 3, not day 1. Coworker had a Sparc on his shit too, lost zero by 6-8 inches low and left, mostly left. He adjusted it immediately and it stayed on adjustment the rest of the day.

Sling - VTAC advanced 2 point. Love it. Comfy, feels good, quick adjustments. Hate the tail, even with the velcro keeprs. Once, the tail got stuck in a mag pouch during a hurried tac reload, and impeded me speed reloading from the mag in front of it. During a different speed reload I came real fucking close to stuffing hanging tail into magwell with the mag. Another instance, I had the sling actually completely covering the magwell, and I had to move it to put the mag in. It worked for everything but some run-n-gun. Going to get the Magpul single/double point sling for such work. Couple others had it. Costa had it - I admired the fucking thing when watching others.

Buttstock - plain MOE- lack of QD points = no bueno, lack of 'lock' really doesn't bother me. Nothing else worth note, not much to it.

Handguard - needs to be longer. 16" barrel. Middy gas, midlength MOE guards. Need more length so I can keep my nose closer to the charging handle but my reaction/support hand out more to steady/lock my elbow. It was slowing my time back on target, or rather, impeding my ability to not DOMINATE the muzzle and keep it always on target.

Muzzle device - Birdcage - works fine, holds mud well (derp), but when shooting Costas rifle, holy shit - do want. Surefire double port comp, I believe.

Irons - A2 front post, Daniel Defense fixed rear always kept with small peep. Shit worked, did what was necessary when my optic failed me, and I got good hits - cowitness was absolute with this particular Sparc mount, and before this, I pretty much prefer it this way. I know some of you stand by lower 1/3 - more power to ya. I'll never run flip up irons, or if I happen to come across a deal on some and buy them, I'll never collapse them short of shipping/transport consideration. When you need it, you need it now, not after you shanghai karate chop your shit twice.

Lacquer Coated steel case. (Monarch in this situation, Wolf/WPA, Tula sometimes) Rifle history: ~2k rounds of shit lacquer coated steel before class. Cleaned nothing ever, until just before class, where I cleaned the trigger group and BCG only. Brake cleaned all of it, greased and oiled per Dave_M's MilCopp troglodyte AR maintenance guide and went to rock and roll. About 1500-1600 rounds into the class, cartridges began to require more force to extract, eating up much of the recoil energy, enough to keep the bcg from stripping the next round from a mag, entirely, or double feeding. Great malf practice. Now I know the limits to lacquer cases even in my Daniel Defense chrome lined chamber. Shot Costa's rifle to finish one 'evolution' then took my rifle apart, scrubbed the chamber with copper and carbon solvents with a bore brush and it ran like new again for the rest of the day ~400-500 more rounds.

Taco Pouches for rifle mags - there are many other reviews out there with much more authority than I have to offer. I had no problems. Easy in, easy out, stayed there when doing all sorts of shit up and down, standing, kneeling, prone, urban prone, supine, dynamic kneeling, trotting, sprinting, jogging.

Blue force gear double pistol mag pouch. It's definitely an only-OUT-quickly pouch. It's basically a spandex sleeve for the mag. Holds it super tight, it stays there until you need it and comes out easy. It's not something you could tac reload from/to if you are someone who does that with pistol. I don't/didn't so it was a nonissue, but it's a worthy point to think about pouch style in the case you want to easily backfill, or tac-reload, your secondary pouches.

HSGI Suregrip Padded Belt - aka War/Battle Belt. With their cobra riggers belt inside. Shit's comfy as fuck. The only downside I had was that the back side would sometimes flip up on me when I went prone from standing. It would just rise up on me. Combination of me throwing my feet back too fast and not lowering myself down like a one-handed pushup, added to the fact that my gut holds the front down, while my fat ass probably bumps the back up. The gel-like padded interior is comfy as fuck with a decent bit of weight. It seemed to get more comfortable and conforming, the more I put on it. In retrospect, I'd prefer to run some kydex mag carriers on just the riggers belt for a class like this, as it's more practical to my civilian lifestyle, so I may retire the belt to some fucking Zombie Apoc type system like the couple examples of 'scout rigs' that Gravedigger4 and sigboy have shown great examples of. I like the premise and execution of those, but dunno when I'd ever use it.

Serpa holster. Not my ideal choice for reasons well known to the net. I never before had a single problem with this holster. It's a backup to my CCW holster mainly for competition/USPSA (Comp Tac Minotaur IWB) and since this class came up last minute, I just bought a quick MOLLE backer to it, and ran the SERPA. Costa cringed when he saw the holsters on me and a couple others. Cited many instances of seeing people shoot themselves, even some he's had happen on film when taping a class. He's >|< close to banning them from classes, he says. I never had a problem with them until one 'oh fuck' moment when I drew my gun during a drill under duress. I found my finger slipped into the trigger guard before I was up in front of my chest pressing out. My finger slipped into the guard during the draw. Don't fucking quarterback that, it just happened and I won't be using the holster again. I'm not a newb when it comes to pistols and I know what I'm doing. I shoot a lot, I shoot pretty well for your average joe, and I train. I have repetitions out the ass, I have a stippled area on the frame for indexing my trigger finger off-trigger, I try to do everything right. Shit still happened. Holster goes bye-bye. I'll be getting a proper OWB kydex holster now. I had/have the consciousness to recognize that my finger was in the trigger, pop it out until the right time, but if one more thing had gone wrong during that moment, something irrevocable could have occurred and that is simply UnAcceptAble.

[JTNieman]

Post reserved for cool-guy pics from class.

I'll finish up the AAR later. Maybe lunch time tomorrow, after I review with coworkers on what we did, to recharge my memory and discuss things more.

[TCB Firearms]

JEALOUS does not begin....Costa is cool as hell and has been a total pro everytime i have seen/meet him. Wish i had the coin to either attend or the area to host some of his classes. I like the 3 day syllabus over a 2 day, looks like you are able to retain a lot of "a-ha" training you would gloss over in a 2 day.

[JTNieman]

mk. All wrapped up I believe.

[TCB Firearms]

Great addition to the OP. It sounds (reads) very similar to the Magpul videos, but obviously more in-depth. My question is was it more in-depth than the videos if you have seen them or was there some new "aha" stuff you had never noticed or thought of? Again great AAR, thanks even though i fully understand your stated reason for writing it.

[JTNieman]

Great addition to the OP. It sounds (reads) very similar to the Magpul videos, but obviously more in-depth. My question is was it more in-depth than the videos if you have seen them or was there some new "aha" stuff you had never noticed or thought of? Again great AAR, thanks even though i fully understand your stated reason for writing it.

I deliberately and emphatically abstained from even bothering to watch a DVD until I had professional training from an instructor on-site that could diagnose the real problem.

It's my personal belief than a DVD is no replacement for training, and can do more harm than good to someone untrained. I abstained from really doing anything more than plinking with my AR15 until I got this training, because I did not want to develop training scars. I did not want bad things in my muscle memory. I did not want corruptions into my instinctual manipulations. You know how people say women are typically better learners and performers at training guns, because they typically aren't shooting guns throughout their youth and early adulthood? Yea, I did that to myself regarding AR15s and semiauto rifles in general, and I feel I am better for it, after watching the rate at which I excelled. I mean, I had only experience with bolt actions until 3-4 years ago, so I did have that going for me. I only had a few "oh fuck" moments where I did something stupid, and it wasn't because of a poorly trained instinct, but rather because I was mentally forced to failure and just went fumbling.

I think that I would be open to taking a look at the DVDs now that I've trained with the guy, for maintanence. I say this because I've had the guy standing over my shoulder telling me "watch the foot placement." "Square up to your target" "Stop putting so much finger on the trigger" "Your pattern looks like this because xxxxxx" "If you do xxxxxx, it will help you xxxxxx" and so forth. A DVD cannot tell you how to fix you, and cannot diagnose through the TV screen. It can only throw information at you as if it were talking to a brick wall.

A buddy of mine has seen them, also, and said that Costa has changed many things, dropped some that he later commented he doesn't like anymore and were bad ideas, and added some things that he borrowed from others, and/or developed through trial and error, or experience in getting lucky.

Additionally, the dvds are modern, in certain contexts, but dated in others. They will not change or adapt to new information. They will be the same recordings from 'x' years ago. You may be getting bad info or info that's been improved upon or changed.

And unless you have them with you on a laptop outdoors, or at a range, it doesn't replace actually going out and shooting, and you may as well be watching Blackhawk Down and calling yourself a veteran. Sorry if that came off harsh, it's somewhat hyperbolic, but I think it expresses the logic I subscribe to.

[TCB Firearms]

Totally agree with your last sentence....
I watched the DVD's as a "really/" thought but did find some validation in previous training and they pointed out some oops i had been doing for years. Was mainly wondering if the core content was similar, did not mean to imply at all that DVD vs Trainer were even in the same ballpark

[Paladin1]

Great AAR write up. Looks like there was some great learning, I saw a couple of tips in there I may try.

[gravediggerfour]

Nice way to set the bar bro. Ill try and put up a good AAR from my grey group class in a couple weeks.

[Regular Guy]

Nice JC, I'm AAR is jealous of yours. I'm glad you got a good class, that's damn cool.

[Big B]

Good AAR.

Dynamic kneeling was interesting to me....

When I took Magpul Carbine 2 from him I had the same feeling. I ended up really liking it.

Serpa holster. Not my ideal choice for reasons well known to the net. I never before had a single problem with this holster. It's a backup to my CCW holster mainly for competition/USPSA (Comp Tac Minotaur IWB) and since this class came up last minute, I just bought a quick MOLLE backer to it, and ran the SERPA. Costa cringed when he saw the holsters on me and a couple others. Cited many instances of seeing people shoot themselves, even some he's had happen on film when taping a class. He's >|< close to banning them from classes, he says. I never had a problem with them until one 'oh fuck' moment when I drew my gun during a drill under duress. I found my finger slipped into the trigger guard before I was up in front of my chest pressing out. My finger slipped into the guard during the draw. Don't fucking quarterback that, it just happened and I won't be using the holster again. I'm not a newb when it comes to pistols and I know what I'm doing. I shoot a lot, I shoot pretty well for your average joe, and I train. I have repetitions out the ass, I have a stippled area on the frame for indexing my trigger finger off-trigger, I try to do everything right. Shit still happened. Holster goes bye-bye. I'll be getting a proper OWB kydex holster now. I had/have the consciousness to recognize that my finger was in the trigger, pop it out until the right time, but if one more thing had gone wrong during that moment, something irrevocable could have occurred and that is simply UnAcceptAble.

After my SERPA, and another LEO's SERPA, failed during our class Costa and Steve Fisher, the other instructor, didn't seemed surprised at all. The impression I got was they would like to have banned SERPAs a while ago, if it wasn't for so many LE departments issuing them to officers.

[Unorthodox]

So I check on facebook and Costa has blown up my wall with updates from CE1/Night Operator course hosted by Nolatac. I believe I have made a positive ID on JamesCannon judging from the gear, location and epic beard.

Clearance requested to post your ugly mug, if not then they shall remain on FB

[doc66]

Forget the Magpul sling. If you like the VTAC you'll love the Ares Armor Huskey. Yeah, I pimp it a lot. Because it's all the things that the VTAC is, and more. LA Police Gear has them on sale. Get one, never look back.

Interesting that you didn't do more roll over prone in three days.

You're comments about Costa changing training methods is typical; all good instructors will change with the times. We've spent the last ten plus years at war, we do a hell of a a lot of things differently than we did even five years ago. If the school isn't evolving with the times, it's not worth the money to take the classes.

Glad you had a good time.

[JTNieman]

After letting the class settle in, and digest what went on, I've had a week to really think about it.

I'm very surprised at some things we didn't do.

And yes, I have completely foregone the idea of getting that magpul sling. I have since messed with my sling at work on the range and found it to be just fine. I've looked at the Ares and I think I might like it better, given the cleanliness of it all. I'm probably just going to tack it onto an order whenever I next buy something from someone who carries it, like SKD or something.

Also, we had room to shoot 100, 200, 300 yards, it looked like, so I'm curious why we didn't do at least a little bit of shooting out to that range with a dot. Maybe just one setup to prove that you -can- with a red dot, assuming we could. /shrug

Rollover prone was not there... we mostly did straight drops to prone positions, whether it be urban prone or traditional prone.

Dox; https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hp ... 6536_n.jpg - I'm on the right
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hp ... 8101_n.jpg - pistol work

The surprising thing about the class was that I -didn't- have Beard Dominance there. I had just trimmed the beard, and a couple other people had about the same level of beard, then we had the guy we affectionately termed "warlock" or "wizard" because he had a big beard... so he had the right-of-way upon path crossings. Beard law.

I'd be interested to see his syllabus from his advanced or level II class. Maybe some of the things I wanted to see were not stuff he puts in his level I class... /shrug - it felt like they really should be imo.

[doc66]

A lot of classes don't get us using range; they want you to get solid hits to build confidence and improve skills, which is easier to do inside 25 meters or so.

We've actually been trying to incorporate range in our classes these days! I (we've) found that by teaching at close ranges, people get into a mindset of "that's really far," and chose not to take shots that they could easily be taking (there's a story behind this, of course). At our last pistol class, we put up target clays and started moving back in our shooting to show that hits could be made at range even with a pistol. Even the misses were close for most people. Shooting at a clay is like shooting the heart (or the computer center of a zombie), and it's a boost to confidence to take that shot and make near hits and hits at 40 meters with a handgun. Dave and I have shot 75+ meters regularly with a suppressed .22 and scored hits. We've shot 140 meters+ at steel. You have to practice it to be confident with the shots.

More classes should take advantage of distance in rifle classes especially. After all, the advantage of the rifle is the distance you can reach out. Yes, you have to slow down a little to get the sight picture, you can't just hammer rounds down range, but in the end, getting those 100+meter shots feels really good and that really builds the confidence to use the rifle, like a rifle.

[JTNieman]

Yea, the confidence thing is what made me think that maybe he leaves it for the next step in class work. That's the main benefit I could see to 50m and in... hammering the target and getting hits. You feel better, while still practicing basics, and at 50m, if you fuck up your trigger control, muzzle control, etc, it's quickly apparent... without being like "HURRRR WHERE DA HOLES GO - I DONT SEE NUFFIN ON DA PAPER" because you pulled them all at 100 or 200.

My background is mostly pistol. I love trying to pop clays at the 100 yard berm. It's a real challenge. Rewarding too, and makes me really ensure I have proper grip and trigger press.

If I didn't say it before, this was my first carbine/rifle class. I don't have anything to compare this one to, yet. So some of my 'concerns' or curiosities are without knowing if it is normal or not.

[doc66]

Probably more normal than we want it to be!

Some of the distance problem is that most public ranges just don't have the distance to use!

I know that John Farnum would try to make up for the distance problem by using smaller steel and saying that they approximated 100 meters, or whatever, but there is no substitute for real, honest to God, sight pictures over 100 meters, over real ground (or through trees, for that matter!). My first Instructor rifle course, all of the shooting started at 100 meters and we ran forward after engaging the 100 meter targets to the barricades at 50, 25 and 15 meters. It was a hoot.

[JTNieman]

heh, considering that he had us start at 50m, and fight our way sprinting to like 15 feet, then fight our way back to 50m.... maybe I should be happy we didn't have a straight 100

[doc66]

heh, considering that he had us start at 50m, and fight our way sprinting to like 15 feet, then fight our way back to 50m.... maybe I should be happy we didn't have a straight 100

HAHAHAHAAAa! Yeah, you see, we want to make everyone suffer like we once did!

Once more, glad you had a good time and learned stuff! Keep practicing, its a perishable skill!

[northernxposure]

Great AAR James!

The experience with the Vortex is disappointing. I was hoping it would have proven to be a reliable option in the $200 bracket.

NXP

[JTNieman]

Great AAR James!

The experience with the Vortex is disappointing. I was hoping it would have proven to be a reliable option in the $200 bracket.

NXP

Shit, mine was almost free and I still gave it back.

[nimdabew]

Great AAR James!

The experience with the Vortex is disappointing. I was hoping it would have proven to be a reliable option in the $200 bracket.

NXP

Shit, mine was almost free and I still gave it back.

Sent for replacement or just gave back?

[JTNieman]

Great AAR James!

The experience with the Vortex is disappointing. I was hoping it would have proven to be a reliable option in the $200 bracket.

NXP

Shit, mine was almost free and I still gave it back.

Sent for replacement or just gave back?

Gave it back to my employer for whatever he wants it for. He gave it to me on a trial basis, to decide if I wanted it. Told him I wasn't interested.

He said Vortex is moving the location of the NV button, which would alleviate the most common issue with the sight, but not the most critical

[northernxposure]

I agree that moving the NV button would help, but if the damn thing wanders as much as you say it does, moving a button isn't going to help that at all.

*le sigh*

Oh well, now to watch for sales on Aimpoints and Eotechs....

NXP