Magpul Dynamics Carbine 1 September 26/27th OKC
We've all read a thousand AAR's on here so I'll try and be brief and cover what I can remember that might be of interest.
We had this course at the Oklahoma City Gun Club in Arcadia, OK. We had a large range to work on being 100 yards long by about 75 yards wide. We cut the range in half though and only used one side which still gave us lots of room. We mainly worked from 50 yards and in.
Instructors were Costa of course and Mike Lamb was with him. Both were great and two of the best instructors I've ever trained with. They complimented each other well and another benefit of having Mike was he was a lefty so the two lefty shooters we had in the class got to see how he ran his gun.
Weather was good. High of 80 first day and 90 the second day with a little cloud cover and slight breeze. No rain! Our normal high allergy air quality was pretty low too.
We had 21 shooters in the class. It was the usual mix of LE, Mil, doctors, lawyers, IT guys and I forget what the others were. Some had attended training before and some had none.
Everyone was using an AR variant except one guy that had a XCR in 556. Optics were mainly Aimpoints and Eotechs. We had two or three guys use irons only and one Trijicon TR24 and a Leupold CQT. As far as I remember no optics went down.
We of course started the day off with introductions and a safety briefing. The Magpul guys' safety briefing and procedures are the most thorough of any class I've taken which I greatly appreciated. We had a small staging area setup in case of an accident and designated who the two primary medics would be and who's car we would load them up in if it was that serious.
Next we gathered on the range and went over admin loading and where your workspace is located. Costa then had me demonstrate the prone position and talked about the correct position and different ways to hold the rifle while in prone. After everyone said they understood we moved on to zeroing our rifles. I was amazed out how quickly this went as the last class I was at it seemed like it took an hour to get everyone zeroed. I knew at that point the Magpul guys were definitely good at what they did.
I won't go into specifics with all the drills we did but will say the class was well organized and I really appreciated how the instructors would demo everything before they asked us to do it. Magpuls motto of Reality, Consistency, Efficiency proved to be a winning combo. There was no fluff or anything added. Everything they taught had a purpose and was simple and they could explain why they did it that way instead of just saying do it. I will say that I enjoyed the BSA drill. I liked how you can adapt it to fit everyones ability. You start shooting only two rounds at a time but the better shooters were asked to shoot more. The new Magpul targets were very cool as well and had a lot of neat features on them. We covered admin loads, speed reloads, tac reloads, basic malfunction clearing, standing, kneeling, prone, urban prone and supine. We also covered 90 and 180 turns, moving forward and backward while shooting and pistol transistions. We were unable to get any type of barricades for the class so instead Chris and Mike setup a drill using barrels setup in a triangle fasion and we had to move and engage targets at each station. It made us use all the skills we had learned throughout the class and required lots of muzzle discipline. It was a good way to end the class.
We had a good number of guns go down for some reason. I don't know the story on all of them but my primary went down just before lunch on TD1. I was shooting a S&W M&P 5.45x39 upper that I had shaved the FSB and put a 12.0 DD rail on. I had about 1500 rounds on it without any issues before the class. I had been shooting the Wolf Military Classic ammo in it though and for this class could only find the regular Wolf. I started having stuck fired cases in the chamber and had to knock them out with a cleaning rod. I missed one evolution of drills and took her apart and cleaned it good but it started doing it again after another 150 rounds or so. So I put it up and went with my KISS 556 upper for the rest of the class. All I can attribute the problems to is the different ammo. I was bummed because I was used to having the longer rail system and vert grip on the 5.45x39 upper and had to switch to just having MOE handguards so it took me some time to adjust to holding it different and not having my arm out as far. I'm a little dude but my wife says I have monkey arms. When I got this upper it was during the ammo crunch. My original goal was to have two identical carbines, one in 5.45x39 and one in 556. That way I could carry my 556 rifle on duty and use the 5.45x39 in training with the much cheaper ammo. I didn't have enough cash to finish setting up my 556 upper though before the class. I learned a valuable lesson though as Costa pointed out. Sure I saved $100 on ammo but was it worth it? No. I could have been training instead of jacking with my gun. So I will have an upper for sale shortly... lol. Lesson learned is don't skimp on good ammo. The other problems I saw were mostly ammo related also. I saw one stuck case that had the rim ripped off in a Colt. It came out easy though and he was back up and running very quick. One gun was having ejection issues that were solved with switching buffers. The others I'm not sure what went wrong. No pistol issues that I can remember.
I will be changing a few things after this class. The first is my optic mount. I had always been a fan of absolute co witness spacers before this class but found the higher lower 1/3 co witness spacers would have worked better in some of the positions we shot from. It seemed like I would mount the weapon and have to dip my head a little more then I wanted to to find the dot. I will be getting a higher one now. Costa had the KAC micro mount and it was very nice and I think what I will go with. I used an Aimpoint H-1 in an ADM mount for the class. I also want to get a padded war belt setup. I used an extra nylon duty belt with bladetech pouches on it. It worked great but my hips were sore and bruised after two days of going prone. I also think I will try out a Magpul sling. I have always used single point slings and my BFG padded UDC sling was great but when we are standing around talking or loading mags or whatever it gets a little uncomfortable. Having the ability to quickly switch into a more comfortable two point mode would have been extremely nice.
Final thoughts are I will definitely try and get these guys back for Carbine 2 or a pistol class. Hell I'd even do Carbine 1 again it was that good.
Sorry no pics we were too busy shooting!
I also posted this on M4C and LF if you are a member on there please reply too.
We've all read a thousand AAR's on here so I'll try and be brief and cover what I can remember that might be of interest.
We had this course at the Oklahoma City Gun Club in Arcadia, OK. We had a large range to work on being 100 yards long by about 75 yards wide. We cut the range in half though and only used one side which still gave us lots of room. We mainly worked from 50 yards and in.
Instructors were Costa of course and Mike Lamb was with him. Both were great and two of the best instructors I've ever trained with. They complimented each other well and another benefit of having Mike was he was a lefty so the two lefty shooters we had in the class got to see how he ran his gun.
Weather was good. High of 80 first day and 90 the second day with a little cloud cover and slight breeze. No rain! Our normal high allergy air quality was pretty low too.
We had 21 shooters in the class. It was the usual mix of LE, Mil, doctors, lawyers, IT guys and I forget what the others were. Some had attended training before and some had none.
Everyone was using an AR variant except one guy that had a XCR in 556. Optics were mainly Aimpoints and Eotechs. We had two or three guys use irons only and one Trijicon TR24 and a Leupold CQT. As far as I remember no optics went down.
We of course started the day off with introductions and a safety briefing. The Magpul guys' safety briefing and procedures are the most thorough of any class I've taken which I greatly appreciated. We had a small staging area setup in case of an accident and designated who the two primary medics would be and who's car we would load them up in if it was that serious.
Next we gathered on the range and went over admin loading and where your workspace is located. Costa then had me demonstrate the prone position and talked about the correct position and different ways to hold the rifle while in prone. After everyone said they understood we moved on to zeroing our rifles. I was amazed out how quickly this went as the last class I was at it seemed like it took an hour to get everyone zeroed. I knew at that point the Magpul guys were definitely good at what they did.
I won't go into specifics with all the drills we did but will say the class was well organized and I really appreciated how the instructors would demo everything before they asked us to do it. Magpuls motto of Reality, Consistency, Efficiency proved to be a winning combo. There was no fluff or anything added. Everything they taught had a purpose and was simple and they could explain why they did it that way instead of just saying do it. I will say that I enjoyed the BSA drill. I liked how you can adapt it to fit everyones ability. You start shooting only two rounds at a time but the better shooters were asked to shoot more. The new Magpul targets were very cool as well and had a lot of neat features on them. We covered admin loads, speed reloads, tac reloads, basic malfunction clearing, standing, kneeling, prone, urban prone and supine. We also covered 90 and 180 turns, moving forward and backward while shooting and pistol transistions. We were unable to get any type of barricades for the class so instead Chris and Mike setup a drill using barrels setup in a triangle fasion and we had to move and engage targets at each station. It made us use all the skills we had learned throughout the class and required lots of muzzle discipline. It was a good way to end the class.
We had a good number of guns go down for some reason. I don't know the story on all of them but my primary went down just before lunch on TD1. I was shooting a S&W M&P 5.45x39 upper that I had shaved the FSB and put a 12.0 DD rail on. I had about 1500 rounds on it without any issues before the class. I had been shooting the Wolf Military Classic ammo in it though and for this class could only find the regular Wolf. I started having stuck fired cases in the chamber and had to knock them out with a cleaning rod. I missed one evolution of drills and took her apart and cleaned it good but it started doing it again after another 150 rounds or so. So I put it up and went with my KISS 556 upper for the rest of the class. All I can attribute the problems to is the different ammo. I was bummed because I was used to having the longer rail system and vert grip on the 5.45x39 upper and had to switch to just having MOE handguards so it took me some time to adjust to holding it different and not having my arm out as far. I'm a little dude but my wife says I have monkey arms. When I got this upper it was during the ammo crunch. My original goal was to have two identical carbines, one in 5.45x39 and one in 556. That way I could carry my 556 rifle on duty and use the 5.45x39 in training with the much cheaper ammo. I didn't have enough cash to finish setting up my 556 upper though before the class. I learned a valuable lesson though as Costa pointed out. Sure I saved $100 on ammo but was it worth it? No. I could have been training instead of jacking with my gun. So I will have an upper for sale shortly... lol. Lesson learned is don't skimp on good ammo. The other problems I saw were mostly ammo related also. I saw one stuck case that had the rim ripped off in a Colt. It came out easy though and he was back up and running very quick. One gun was having ejection issues that were solved with switching buffers. The others I'm not sure what went wrong. No pistol issues that I can remember.
I will be changing a few things after this class. The first is my optic mount. I had always been a fan of absolute co witness spacers before this class but found the higher lower 1/3 co witness spacers would have worked better in some of the positions we shot from. It seemed like I would mount the weapon and have to dip my head a little more then I wanted to to find the dot. I will be getting a higher one now. Costa had the KAC micro mount and it was very nice and I think what I will go with. I used an Aimpoint H-1 in an ADM mount for the class. I also want to get a padded war belt setup. I used an extra nylon duty belt with bladetech pouches on it. It worked great but my hips were sore and bruised after two days of going prone. I also think I will try out a Magpul sling. I have always used single point slings and my BFG padded UDC sling was great but when we are standing around talking or loading mags or whatever it gets a little uncomfortable. Having the ability to quickly switch into a more comfortable two point mode would have been extremely nice.
Final thoughts are I will definitely try and get these guys back for Carbine 2 or a pistol class. Hell I'd even do Carbine 1 again it was that good.
Sorry no pics we were too busy shooting!
I also posted this on M4C and LF if you are a member on there please reply too.
