Palm Bay, FL AAR July 17-19, 2020

[malabar]

When we ran our first train-the-trainers pistol event last year, we specifically excluded the folks down here in Florida, because we wanted to spread the training our across the country.  But we promised them we would hold an event just for Florida soon. Well "soon" stretched out as we changed the course of fire and updated the manual. But we finally held the Florida-only, train-them-trainers event this past weekend at Port Malabar Rifle and Pistol Club in Palm Bay.

Thirteen instructors came from every part of the state (and it's a big state). They braved driving rain (so loud on a tin roof that we had to stop instruction) and extreme heat -- and were rewarded with some great meals. I hereby nominate Cable_Guy as the official Appleseed chef for the state of Florida. The club president joined us for our grilled chicken and steak dinner and told me the next day that it was some of the best steak he had ever had.

The bad news: No one was able to shoot score -- 210 out of 250. At our first event, out of 20 participants, we had two shoot the score. But they were also a handpicked group that had a lot more experience at this style of pistol shooting.

The good news: There was a LOT of improvement in scores, and several of our shooters were right at the edge, shooting scores in the 190-200 range.

As a result of the this weekend's work, we're going to roll out some new targets for specific drills. We'll post those in the pistol forum for comment.

Thanks to all who attended the event. Each one of these brings us that much closer to having a functional pistol program to roll out across the country.

[sleepy]

Good to see more pistol action happening! We have a few instructor events between August and October in this part of the world.

We hope to have some public shoots posted shortly.
'

[stoneknives]

First off many, many thanks to Tom and Gary for putting on a very informative Instructors Boot Camp presenting the new Appleseed Pistol Course.

It was very informative and an eye opener, the amount of information and practical knowledge is still being collated in my mind several days later.

I was one of the Instructors that had a lot of doubts about us being able to accomplish a defensive pistol course that was both safe and an equal to high caliber of the Appleseed rifle course.

I was also skeptical about our abilities to run such courses and the depth of our pistol expertise.

The concern I had were well covered, to my great satisfaction by Gary and Tom.

Compared to our rifle course, the pistols brings an additional level of difficulty but with the right amount of instructor coverage and observation of the students we can present this course safely.
For the average recreational owners of a full size pistol or revolver with some extra mags and speed loaders the Pistol Course can be done. Like anything worthwhile homework will be required. This class is challenging and owners of some pistols and revolvers designs will likely not be able to score Expert without additional range/dry fire practice, some designs not at all, just like Rifle Appleseed. What I'm saying is it might not be done as quickly as most people shot rifleman, but the time it takes to earn the Expert patch will not be excessive.

I like the new Sunday History part, I think it will work well with the program, so of course I'll have to personalize it and make it my own. It does need bullet points to cover, like we have for the Three Strikes, to insure the points our program wants heard are met. I would also like to allow enough for enough time to have solo stories. They personalize the shoot and give the IIT's practice speaking time.

Speaking of IIT is there an IIT path in the future? The nature of short guns to allow firing line issues we will need all the trained hands and eyes we can get.

The Tom, Dennis, Gary, Todd, Gary and all the folks at Port Malabar, Job Well Done.
3 Huzzah's for you all.
Todd the food. . . . WOW.

Henry