Tallahassee, Fl. Isaac Davis Memorial Range 16-17 November

[Engineer shooting]

Where else but Appleseed can a student go from only nicking the edge of the paper on the first target on Saturday morning to shooting Rifleman on Sunday afternoon? Way to go Doug!

A safe and encouraging event, thanks to AdobeWalls, Lucky Lori, Sean shoot here  and Silverbullet it was one of the best events of the year.

Posterity calls to us, what are you about?

[AdobeWalls]

Our Shoot Boss works events in multiple locations, and has reported to us that some Line Bosses call Cease Fire if no shooters have fired their first shot in 10-20 seconds -- indicating shooters' inability to acquire NPOA in a sufficient timeframe. We had just spent most of an hour working purely on NPOA. The Line Boss introduced Stage 2, AQT, and told shooters he would allow 20 seconds for first shot. At 20 seconds, he called Cease Fire. He had shooters make their rifles safe and leave the line, quite a bit more than I had expected. A complete do-over. And it worked!
During that general effort, I discovered that a particular elbow pad I had long used was preventing me from reliably acquiring NPOA. Every time I opened my eyes, my POI was in a different place. I didn't solve this, merely identified the problem. When I disposed of the hard shell elbow pad, NPOA was magically reliable. This may be of interest to other shooters. Don't waste 45 minutes trying to figure out the problem (like me)!
We experimented with having shooters sling up with several practice rifles mounted with green lasers, aimed at a squares target at 7yds. The concept was: 1) they learn more by doing than by watching; 2) they learn how to really get their elbows under their rifles -- the laser tracks vertically with their breath; 3) they learn how to physically move their NPOA onto the target; 4) they learn now to physically move their NPOA to a second target. This experiment was a big success, although we could not say we have worked out the bugs of standardizing affordable lasers for this exercise.
All in all, a very productive Florida event.

[goose]

We are a huge resource of great ideas.  Your use of training stocks and lasers makes a valid point.  I have wondered about this idea, as well, and you fine Patriots actually employed it to the students benefit!

Huzzah!

Now, to find cheap lasers and see if the CMP has M14 stocks still in supply...

"Why stand we here idle?"


-goose

[dougmacinnes]

Thanks, Ken!  Great instructors!

Doug

[AdobeWalls]

Late photograph of new Rifleman Doug MacInnes -- no more pots and pans for him!