AAR: Green Ops Practical Red Dot Pistol Skills 11.13.2021 VA...

Background: First time I've used a RDS in a class. I'm an average shooter on PF, but an above average shooter in NJ-lol! I threw a Holosun 507K on my Dan Wesson Vigil CCO in 9mm, ran a 100 rounds through it to see if it was relatively zeroed in at my local indoor range, and took it to Culpeper, VA. This was the only 100 rounds of live fire in almost a year. House fire, pregnancy, covid business, and twins being born last year, so....I wasn't expecting much other than dusting the rust off of my meager abilities.

I met Mike Green back at the TLG Memorial Shoot back in 2017. I liked his presentation, met him briefly and then saw Green Ops take off on PF. I also happen to be friends with one of the instructors on the staff who is a former mod here on PF. I had planned to go to 12 Labors that @SouthNarc et al was hosting in December, but that fell through so said PF mod said come take this class.

Instructors: I got there early that morning to help set up as the mods are shit here and he roped me into setting up at the cost of a breakfast sandwich ;) It was there that I met Luke, then Josh, then Chris. There were 4 instructors during the class and Josh took the lead. You can find their bios over here. All of these guys were great individuals and worked in concert like a perfectly braided steel cable. I learned something from all of them, and no student went unnoticed for good or bad. I think the class had ~20 people in all, so a 1 to 5 ratio is pretty sweet.

Overview/Intro Level:The class started with a safety/medical briefing, SOP, so I'll skip. We hopped on the line and warmed up. It was a nice progression for me as I said, shooting has had to take a back seat the last year. The pace went like this:

Shoot with some basic goals in mind. I'd argue this is as much to get the jitters out with a few rounds as it is a diagnosis to see who is going to need more help and how fast we may move through material.

Then we covered how to handle a RDS in different failure situations. 1. No dot, but glass. 2. No dot, and can't see through glass. 3. As luck would have it, how to deal with glaring sun at different directions messing with your dot. Most of this work was on paper except for some of part 2 and all of part 3.

Overview/Mid Level: At this point we're deep into the comfort zone with the above skill set, so we transitioned to abbreviated shooting stations that would be akin to putting some USPSA targets, basic movement, transitions, modulating your speed/accuracy of shots together in small groups. This is where I started feeling comfortable, but then got blinded by some bad sun until Josh threw me a lifeline of closing the eye on the side where the sun was shining...PING! Shwew! We had barricade shooting, metal, paper, high/low, short/long distances, etc.

Overview/Final Phase: The last phase was comprised of two cobbled together 10-12 round stages the combined all of the above under the pressure of time, accuracy and movement. Think of it as a simple 2 stage USPSA match. I'm normally not one to go to a class looking to impress anyone other than improve myself, but I had a great guy who was an instructor in MD that was my "pace car" of sorts.

That being said, I took home 1 of 2 patches offered during their RDS coursework. Sure that says something about me not being awful at shooting, but it also says a lot about these 4 guys getting me going from Zero to Hero in one class.


Equipment/Functionality: I had no failures on anything other than a quirky moment when we first started class where my RDS just didn't go on. Luke fixed it and we have no idea what happened other than him suggesting me to get some Permatex Dielectric from Amazon.

I ran an Enigma/AIWB with a papoose. I had one spare mag all up front with no belt in a pair of jeans and a heavy pull over as it was ~40. Then I had 2 spare mags in each back pocket. If anyone's interested, then I'll post some photos.

Thank you to Green Ops and their fantastic four.

Three things I'd like to add.

1. Who is this class for? I'd say anyone new to RDS at any skill level would benefit from this class.

2. As an added bonus, they had some steel that I wanted to work on after the class b/c it's rare for me to get beyond 25 yds in an indoor range. That being said, Josh helped me dial in and I was hitting solid metal shots at ~50ish yards for the first time in my life and I didn't feel like I was breaking a sweat.

3. Thanks to @Cecil Burch for explaining more than once how his astigmatism was helped drastically by the use of RDS as it was his post that finally made me pull the trigger and I couldn't be happier.

So lastly, thanks to the whole PF community for keeping this guy on the straight and narrow.

Thank you for attending the class and for the great AAR!

Nice write up. I'm in Woodbridge so I'll have to look into them.

Awesome AAR, thanks for coming out and training with us! See you next time.

-Josh

Oh, and it was 9mm.

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Originally Posted by 73Bronco

Nice write up. I'm in Woodbridge so I'll have to look into them.

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@73Bronco Feel free to PM if you have any questions. [emoji41]


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