A Shot in the Dark ...
Night Ops 1
Class Review
By Kathy Jackson
This review was originally written in April, 2005. Firearms
Academy of Seattle director Marty Hayes is continually fine-tuning the
curriculum, striving to improve his students' skills and find fresh ways
to communicate what they need to know. During the winter of 2007, the
FAS core handgun curricula was extensively reworked, and as a result,
the course reviewed below no longer exists. I am leaving this page up
because I believe it shows a good picture of the evolution of a shooter,
and also because it presents some skills that people who are concerned
about self-defense really need to know.
If you are interested in learning the basic skill set formerly taught
in the Night Ops series of classes, and want to attend FAS, I would recommend
you begin with a Defensive Handgun course and then take the special interest
seminar titled "Low Light Handgun." This will provide you with a good
introduction to these essential skills.
You can reach the Firearms Academy of Seattle website at
www.firearmsacademy.com
An intermediate class available from the
Firearms Academy of Seattle, Night Ops provides around 16 hours
of low light training with the handgun. Class entry is limited to people
who have already taken at least one shooting class (FAS-2
or higher) and who have already mastered the basics of shooting in normal
lighting conditions.
Getting ready for the Saturday morning 10 am check in, I looked out the
window and saw torrents of rain mixed with sleet coming down hard. Ugh.
"Maybe I've made a mistake signing up for a class this weekend!"
I thought unhappily, as I pulled several extra layers of clothes over
my long johns. I hate being cold.
At the FAS classroom, I met my classmates, several of whom were old friends
or at least familiar faces from other classes we'd taken together. There
were a dozen shooters in the class, which was taught by FAS owner Marty
Hayes. Marty was assisted by longtime assistant instructor Rick Bressler.
After checking in and getting up to speed on the FAS range rules and safety
instructions, the class adjourned to the low light range to begin work.
The low light range at FAS is large enough to accommodate 15 shooters
on the line at once, at distances up to 15 yards from the targets. With
a merry fire crackling in the range's woodstove and the exhaust fans going,
the room was almost cozy -- especially with the sound of heavy rain battering
the roof to remind us how nasty it was outside. It wasn't exactly warm
on the range, mind you, but it was a heckuva lot better than being outside
to weather what Mother Nature was doing.
For those who haven't met him, Marty is a large, gruff man with a very
straightforward but easy-going style of instruction. He is very good at
diagnosing shooting problems and communicating what the shooter needs
to do to fix it when things aren't working right. For those of us on the
line, it often seems as though Marty is everywhere at once, and it's almost
a guarantee that if you mess up in some way, Marty will somehow instantly
materialize at your elbow to let you know what you need to do to keep
it from happening again.
We began shooting with the lights on, so Marty could see that each shooter
on the line was familiar with the basics of good marksmanship and was
capable of drawing and reholstering the gun without committing any safety
violations. In fact, throughout the weekend, the instructors were very
conscious of range safety. This was particularly important because of
the nature of low light shooting, and more so as we began doing some of
the more difficult activities on the schedule.
After making sure everyone was drawing and reholstering safely, the class
worked on low light draw and fires. Marty started us out by helping everyone
find or remember their optimum stance, and did what tweaking was necessary
to get everyone into the A zone at five yards slowfire. Once that was
accomplished, he had us doing D&Fs, not under time stress, but just
to make sure the hits would still be there once we started moving around
a little.
And we did move around! One drill we did later in the day involved starting
roughly two yards from the target with the gun in sul position (we worked
either from holster or from sul all weekend). On command, we fired one
shot into the center of the target. Then we came back to sul and as a
group, took one single step back from the target so that we finished with
the "wrong" foot forward. The command to fire was given again,
we fired and stepped back one more step (leaving the "right"
foot forward this time) We repeated that procedure, one step back at a
time, until we were near the rear wall of the building. The purpose of
this drill was to show us that we could get good hits independent of foot
position, and that what we needed to worry about was the geometry of our
upper bodies. It also showed us that it is possible to get good hits in
low light even without night sights or lasers.
An aside about lasers. I have a Crimson
Trace laser on my Glock 26, and I really love it. Out of the dozen
shooters in the class, probably ... hmmmm, four or five ... of us had
lasers. Two of the students work for Crimson Trace and of course they
were laser equipped. At the beginning of class, Marty talked a little
bit about how cool and useful lasers are both in low light and in regular
light. Then he said, "If you want to leave your laser on all weekend,
spend a dedicated weekend training with the laser, that's fine and I won't
give you any grief over it. But if I were taking the class, here's what
I'd do to maximize my training dollar. I'd go back and forth between using
the laser and not using it, so that I could get full benefit from the
low light shooting instruction. If you have the basics down, it won't
be hard to add your laser into it, but if you don't have those basics
down and your laser quits on you for whatever reason ... anyway. It's
your class, you do what you want, but I think you'll get the most benefit
if you work without the laser as much as you can."
Following Marty's advice, I ended up working without my laser for probably
90% of the class, and I'm glad I did. Gotta point out that lasers are
really a radically unfair advantage in the dark. (Always cheat, always
win...) In any case, it was obvious that you don't need a laser to take
this class and that's a good thing for most folks.
Other drills? One involved standing about 5 yards from the target, with
our left shoulders towards the target (so we were facing the side wall).
On command, we would then turn and fire one shot at the center of the
target -- without moving our feet. We repeated that drill facing the other
direction, too. Very interesting ... and yes, it is possible to get good
hits that way.
Later, Marty had us starting with our backs toward the targets. On command,
we would pivot to face the targets and fire. Again, it is possible to
get good hits that way.
Of course we did multiple target drills too. Later in the class we were
shooting while moving (right, left, back, and forward), and then shooting
multiples while moving (back). Shooting multiples while moving in the
dark was incredibly intense, but yes, it is possible.
As we walked out of the building for lunch on Saturday, I was shocked
to discover that at some point the rain had stopped and there was even
some sunshine peeking through the clouds. Wow, I must've gotten really
wrapped up in what we were doing in there!
After lunch break, we worked on one handed shooting, both left and right
handed, and then did a few drills with flashlights. Of course we'd been
using our flashlights to scan after shooting all along, but up until this
point we had not used lights to shoot at all.
We worked on using flashlights around left and right side cover, a surprisingly
stressful and difficult task.
We had a nice long dinner break, which was great. It was just beginning
to get dark when we got back onto the range. Marty directed us over to
the moving targets and explained the three basic methods of shooting a
moving target. Marty had each of us shooting the movers while it got dark.
Toward the end, when it was fully dark, we had a little class competition
on a BLEA-1 target. Folks with lasers had to be back at (what is it, 10
yards at the back of that range?) while folks without lasers could shoot
from a couple yards forward. I opted to use my laser for this one, shot
a 107 out of 120. Should have been a 117, but I had a gun-juggling malfunction
and held onto one of my shots ... darnit.
After that, we went down to action alley (a run-n-gun bay) and shot it
in the dark. That was quite the challenge.
Several embarrassing moments happened to me during the day Saturday, but
the most embarrassing happened Saturday night during my run through action
alley. There's one shot there that must be taken while crouched down behind
a barrel. There are two poppers to be shot from behind this barrel, about
35 yards downrange.
I crouched down, doing something awkward and stupid with my light so I
could see the targets, blessed the laser, got the first popper in one
shot. Cool! Okay, lined up the second target and... wait a minute, something
didn't feel right. Sure enough, I'm out of ammo. Okay, I can reload. Flashlight?
In a fumbly fingered moment, I dropped it ... and it stayed on. Crap.
Well, my hands are full, and I'm crouched so I cannot safely reholster,
so what the heck. I finished my reload, picked up the light, shot the
target, headed down toward the next shooting station. Marty remained suspiciously
quiet.
Finished my run. Rick says to me, "Great run, Kathy."
Marty says with a chuckle, "Heh, yeah, all except the part where
you got killed cuz you left your flashlight on." (Point taken, Marty
-- I won't make that mistake again. Of course I've got dozens of others
you can expect me to make next time I'm there!)
We walked off the range Saturday night at 10 pm, and were supposed to
meet back at 11 am Sunday. This of course was to give us enough time to
get a good night's sleep -- a great idea in theory, but maybe a little
weak in practice.
We started out with some dryfire practice, draw and fires with Rick blowing
the whistle and running the line. After awhile the lights went out, but
the dryfire continued while Marty shuffled papers in the back of the room.
Eventually he finished, shut off his light, and the range went hot for
timed D&Fs -- Marty declared a 2-second par time, 2.25 from concealment.
Everyone was pretty well getting under the time so then Marty said, "Okay,
now it's two shot drills. Two seconds, 2.25 from concealment, must have
good hits." Ohhhkay. And away we went.
We set up the barricade barrels and Marty & Rick stapled up some cartoon
target problems for us. With five shooting stations, the idea was that
you would simply move from one station to another, solving each problem
in "the most appropriate manner," as they say. Five shooters
got on the line to shoot targets, and the rest of us were hustled out
to stand in the northwest sunshine (that's the wet stuff) and shoot the
breeze. As each person moved down the firing line, the last shooter on
the line would simply cycle straight out the door to stand in the back
of the waiting line outside. Worked well enough.
Eventually, Marty called a halt to the shooting and called everyone over.
"Okay," he said, "we're working on a qualifier for this
class. I'm not quite sure about the times yet, so you guys are the guinea
pigs. We're going to run through and test you on everything we learned
in this class, like we do for FAS-2. Heh, we'll find out how it works."
The qualifier was tough. Especially the one-handed stuff.
After we shot the qualifier, we were done shooting for the day, but weren't
done with class yet. Marty sent us all up to the low light tac house and
we did a bunch of hide-n-go-seek in there for awhile. That newly remodeled
tac house is Da Bomb. Very nifty cool. There are a number of different
tactics appropriate for low light situations, and the new tac house will
let us practice them all. It's amazing how sneaky one of them homo sapiens
beasts can be!
Once we were all thoroughly humbled in the tac house, Marty handed out
certificates and gave the wrap up discussion.
I got everything out of this class that I expected, and a whole lot more
besides. The class was fun, challenging, thought-provoking, and applicable
to real life. What more could you ask for?