atek3
Member
This Saturday and Sunday Several friends and I attended Chuck Taylor’s Tactical Rifle class at the Halo Group, in Concord, CA. It was well worth the 450 dollars I paid. My equipment setup:
Imbel on Imbel FrankenFAL (w/ DSA x-stock and ‘zero climb muzzle break’)
Giles tactical sling (aka ninja sling)
Blackhawk knee and elbow pads
Blackhawk double mag thigh rig
Aussie 7.62 MilSurp ammo
XD-40 in Cendex Nighthawk holster
Streamlight scorpion (we did some night shooting)
Wilderness belt
Tons of sunscreen
Camelbak stealth
Royal Robbins 5.11 Tac. Pants
Course review:
The course was well worth the money. We covered basic rifle handling, sling usage, positions (offhand, kneeling, sitting, prone), mag changing, stoppage clearance, close targets, far targets, small targets, hostages. Most drills were done against a clock to give a sense of time pressure. This was different from the other instructor I’ve learned from, Scott Reitz. He tells students to balance speed and accuracy to go as quickly as possible while still making shots on the vitals. Chuck on the other hand, believes in the speed vs. accuracy debate, but allows fairly realistic windows of opportunity, increasing with distance. So if at say 100 yds. you have three seconds to make the shot from low ready, if you can do it in 2 sec, great, then work on your accuracy to make tighter groups. If you can make a fist sized group in 4 sec, speed up to make the hits faster. Chuck, having scene considerable combat has his biases and makes them clear at the outset. He’s not a fan of electro-optical sights, his rational being things with batteries tend to get murphied (murphy’s law) pretty quickly when in an actual fight. He doesn’t like hanging gizmo’s off of AR-15’s so if you bring a vertical foregrip, laser illuminator, surefire, 14 pound AR, expect some harmless rubs. The good thing is he doesn’t just say, “that’s wrong, do it my way†like some instructors. He takes the time to give ‘constructive criticism’, like ‘you know this isn’t camp perry, lean into the rifle a bit to help counter muzzle rize’, not “ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME MAGGOT, LEAN FORWARD’. We did night shooting and rifle to handgun transitions. Towards the second half of the second day, I could tell the material was being somewhat rushed. I guess we spent too much time eating food and chatting and not enough time learning.
Equipment Review:
One of the great features of a ‘tactical class’ is that you rapidly learn what works and what doesn’t work. My FAL… Worked. Had two stoppages all weekend. The second shot of the weekend was a failure to eject, because I hadn’t set the gas for MilSurp, no problem, adjusted the gas regulator, gun worked great. Second stoppage was one of the last rounds all weekend, I had a failure to go into battery. I pushed the bolt release and the bolt stalled about half way. Either the gun was just really really dirty and underlubed, or the buffer spring is old. Either is possible.
Also, during the night shooting I learned that the rear aperature of the FAL is horrible for dusk and other lower light shooting. The optical battle sights totally owned the night shooting. Using the Streamlight, however, I was able to engage the targets without difficulty. However, without my support arm actively supporting the forearm of the rifle I got really tired really fast.
The DSA x-stock and my face, just don’t jive. My cheek is pretty badly bruised from the repeated pounding of a 308 cartridge. I’m either going to have to modify it myself or buy a new stock. Any recommendations?
The FSE trigger group, while not as nice as the trigger on my match rifle, was wholly serviceable.
The front sight of my imbel was jammed into the lowest position and so I had to hold under all weekend which was mildly annoying but still alright.
I found myself carrying my rifle slung over one of my shoulders far more often than carrying it ‘tactically’ in front of me. Also I lamented the fact that I couldn’t hasty sling with it for better support when we were practicing head shots. The one time it shined was in the handgun transitions. Then I simply threw the rifle out of my way, drew the XD, then POP POP, nailed the target. However given the rarity of such a situation where one would actively drop a rifle in favor of a pistol I think I might install a traditional military sling.
Comments on other peoples rifles:
AR’s were very fast. My FAL, being about 3 pounds heavier was a lot slower to bring into action than the short barreled M4gery’s. Two others had FAL’s, and seemed to have few problems. Regarding the optical battle sights, when they worked, they shined, easily and quickly engaging small targets. But, most people had issues of one sort or another, failed batteries, uncorrectable zeroing problems, and other stuff. The scout M1A’s looked very cool, but had a lot of malfs due to dirty chambers. They had to be ‘kick started’ numerous times in the afternoon, maybe due to bad ammo or lube, I dunno. Two bolt gunners took the class, one was a scouterized rem 700, very cool, only downside… 100 dollar HS precision proprietary 308 mags…not cool. Other was a Remington 788 in 223 w/ an aimpoint sight. Fast rifle, but 4 round mag capacity made him a lot slower than the military style autoloaders. A couple of people w/ M1 Carbines and garand’s rounded out the class.
Imbel on Imbel FrankenFAL (w/ DSA x-stock and ‘zero climb muzzle break’)
Giles tactical sling (aka ninja sling)
Blackhawk knee and elbow pads
Blackhawk double mag thigh rig
Aussie 7.62 MilSurp ammo
XD-40 in Cendex Nighthawk holster
Streamlight scorpion (we did some night shooting)
Wilderness belt
Tons of sunscreen
Camelbak stealth
Royal Robbins 5.11 Tac. Pants
Course review:
The course was well worth the money. We covered basic rifle handling, sling usage, positions (offhand, kneeling, sitting, prone), mag changing, stoppage clearance, close targets, far targets, small targets, hostages. Most drills were done against a clock to give a sense of time pressure. This was different from the other instructor I’ve learned from, Scott Reitz. He tells students to balance speed and accuracy to go as quickly as possible while still making shots on the vitals. Chuck on the other hand, believes in the speed vs. accuracy debate, but allows fairly realistic windows of opportunity, increasing with distance. So if at say 100 yds. you have three seconds to make the shot from low ready, if you can do it in 2 sec, great, then work on your accuracy to make tighter groups. If you can make a fist sized group in 4 sec, speed up to make the hits faster. Chuck, having scene considerable combat has his biases and makes them clear at the outset. He’s not a fan of electro-optical sights, his rational being things with batteries tend to get murphied (murphy’s law) pretty quickly when in an actual fight. He doesn’t like hanging gizmo’s off of AR-15’s so if you bring a vertical foregrip, laser illuminator, surefire, 14 pound AR, expect some harmless rubs. The good thing is he doesn’t just say, “that’s wrong, do it my way†like some instructors. He takes the time to give ‘constructive criticism’, like ‘you know this isn’t camp perry, lean into the rifle a bit to help counter muzzle rize’, not “ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME MAGGOT, LEAN FORWARD’. We did night shooting and rifle to handgun transitions. Towards the second half of the second day, I could tell the material was being somewhat rushed. I guess we spent too much time eating food and chatting and not enough time learning.
Equipment Review:
One of the great features of a ‘tactical class’ is that you rapidly learn what works and what doesn’t work. My FAL… Worked. Had two stoppages all weekend. The second shot of the weekend was a failure to eject, because I hadn’t set the gas for MilSurp, no problem, adjusted the gas regulator, gun worked great. Second stoppage was one of the last rounds all weekend, I had a failure to go into battery. I pushed the bolt release and the bolt stalled about half way. Either the gun was just really really dirty and underlubed, or the buffer spring is old. Either is possible.
Also, during the night shooting I learned that the rear aperature of the FAL is horrible for dusk and other lower light shooting. The optical battle sights totally owned the night shooting. Using the Streamlight, however, I was able to engage the targets without difficulty. However, without my support arm actively supporting the forearm of the rifle I got really tired really fast.
The DSA x-stock and my face, just don’t jive. My cheek is pretty badly bruised from the repeated pounding of a 308 cartridge. I’m either going to have to modify it myself or buy a new stock. Any recommendations?
The FSE trigger group, while not as nice as the trigger on my match rifle, was wholly serviceable.
The front sight of my imbel was jammed into the lowest position and so I had to hold under all weekend which was mildly annoying but still alright.
I found myself carrying my rifle slung over one of my shoulders far more often than carrying it ‘tactically’ in front of me. Also I lamented the fact that I couldn’t hasty sling with it for better support when we were practicing head shots. The one time it shined was in the handgun transitions. Then I simply threw the rifle out of my way, drew the XD, then POP POP, nailed the target. However given the rarity of such a situation where one would actively drop a rifle in favor of a pistol I think I might install a traditional military sling.
Comments on other peoples rifles:
AR’s were very fast. My FAL, being about 3 pounds heavier was a lot slower to bring into action than the short barreled M4gery’s. Two others had FAL’s, and seemed to have few problems. Regarding the optical battle sights, when they worked, they shined, easily and quickly engaging small targets. But, most people had issues of one sort or another, failed batteries, uncorrectable zeroing problems, and other stuff. The scout M1A’s looked very cool, but had a lot of malfs due to dirty chambers. They had to be ‘kick started’ numerous times in the afternoon, maybe due to bad ammo or lube, I dunno. Two bolt gunners took the class, one was a scouterized rem 700, very cool, only downside… 100 dollar HS precision proprietary 308 mags…not cool. Other was a Remington 788 in 223 w/ an aimpoint sight. Fast rifle, but 4 round mag capacity made him a lot slower than the military style autoloaders. A couple of people w/ M1 Carbines and garand’s rounded out the class.
