AAR: SlyTac Training Solutions Low Light Handgun, Homestead FL, 1-2 February 2020
SlyTac Training Solutions
Low Light Handgun
1-2 February 2020
Homestead Training Center, Homestead, Florida
Instructor: Bryan Veliz
Class Size: 16
Instructor to Student Ratio: 1:16 (Jon Dufresne of Kinetic Consulting hosted the class and pitched in as AI for the more complex drills).
Ammunition Requirement: 1,000-1,500 rounds
Actual Rounds Fired: 580
Tuition: $350
Introduction & Training Background
This was my first SlyTac class, and my fourteenth class since I started taking training seriously in 2012. The majority of my firearms training has been with Randy Cain of Cumberland Tactics (primarily handgun). I’ve also trained with Mike Pannone, Ernest Langdon, Craig Douglas, and Jeff Gonzalez. I’m typically at the range two or three times per month, shooting on average around 10,000 rounds annually, though in 2019 and pre-COVID 2020, I’ve gotten closer to 20k/year as my interest in shooting has continued to grow. I work in security management and I ride a desk, so my reason for taking this class was purely to further my proficiency for self-defense, as I do not carry a gun on the job.
Location
The class was hosted at Homestead Training Center. I’ve taken a number of classes here, and it’s one of two ranges where I regularly shoot, as it’s just fifteen minutes from my house. HTC is a nice facility, with multiple bays ranging from 25 to 500 yards, a shoothouse, air-conditioned classrooms, and permanent bathrooms with running water. We used two different action bays for class.
Gear
Concealed carry was permitted for this class, so I shot my EDC rig: Phlster Floodlight and JM Custom Kydex AIWB High-Ride Spare Magazine Pouch on a Graith Specialist belt. I shot one of my VP9s, upgraded with Lazy Wolf trigger job, Boresight Solutions grip work, milled for an RMR by Primary Machine, and equipped with an X300U (itself upgraded with Phlster ARC switches). For a handheld light, I started with a Malkoff Bodyguard v2 and switched to a SureFire EDCL-2T.
Apparel was a mix of fishing shirts and TAD and Arc’teryx pants (kneepad inserts were clutch with the amount of time spent on our knees between injured shooter drills and urban prone). With heavy wind and rain on TD1, a LEAF Alpha jacket kept my upper half nice and dry, while TAD AC pants quickly got soaked, but dried just as fast once the rain stopped.
PPE consisted of Sordin Supreme Pro-X muffs upgraded with NoiseFighters gel seals over EAR Inc. custom-molded plugs and Rudy Project Tralyx Slim glasses with ImpactX-2 photochromic lenses.
I had no significant gear-related issues.
Course Description
From the SlyTac website: “Low Light Handgun is a two-day course focused on creating a better understanding and knowledge of basic low light fundamentals. This course is designed for intermediate shooters to advance shooters looking to further their knowledge and proficiency of low light applications. This course focuses on how to employ your weapon system in a low light environment while understanding the primary flashlight applications, techniques and search methods on the handgun platform. While introducing students to injured shooter principles combined with low light applications. Low Light Handgun primarily focuses on employment of handheld, weapon mounted light & injured shooter applications, come prepared mentally & physically.”
About the instructor: “Bryan Veliz began his career as a state law enforcement officer serving as an active patrol officer for several years. As a Patrol Officer, within in his first two years on the field he was assigned as a member of the agency’s Emergency Response Team where he later was responsible for instructing firearms training, tactics and qualifications as well as instruction of pistol, carbine and shotgun weapon platforms. Bryan has attended several training courses with top instructors across the nation and seminars regarding the fundamental’s, mechanics and safety standards of firearms. Bryan continues to serve in law enforcement in addition to being the founder and lead instructor with SlyTac Training Solutions, LLC..
Bryan also serves as an instructor cadre with Centrifuge Training, LLC teaching Vehicle Close Quarters Battle (VCQB) along with assisting in other various programs with Centrifuge Training, LLC. Additionally Bryan also provides ballistic data collection for TRIARC Systems, LLC in gathering, recording and assimilating data for various TRIARC weapon platforms.”
Day 1
1400-2300
Wx: Low 63°, high 75°, intermittent heavy rain/wind
300 rounds fired
Class started in a classroom with student and instructor intros, then several videos from low light OISs, with discussion after each video of what went right and what went wrong. Some of the topics discussed:
• WML is not always the right tool for searching—handheld light is key.
• The gun is the priority, not the light. In other words, keeping the gun fed and running is what is most likely to win the fight. Example: if you need to perform an emergency reload with your WML on, it’s generally more important to reload quickly and get back in the fight than to worry about shutting off the light first, although the situation may dictate differently.
• Read the light and adapt. Is your position backlit? Is there darkness that can be used to your advantage for concealment?
• Photonic barriers. Smoke, fog, and opposing lighting can all hinder your own light, hence wanting “all the lumens” (or, more accurately, all the candela) to dominate any lighting situation you end up in. More light equals more information, and the more information you have, the better you can solve the problem.
• Carry multiple lights. There is a use case for having a dedicated fighting light and a separate task light for admin use.
• Use of ceiling (umbrella lighting) or floorboard to illuminate the room.
• Light displacement. Do you want to turn your light on from the same position every time? Changing the elevation of the light may be appropriate if using it in bursts rather than on continuously.
After the classroom portion, we moved to the range and started with a warmup, shooting from various ready positions. Some of the things covered:
• Traditional handheld light techniques of the FBI, neck/chin index, and Harries. Because it was still daylight out, Bryan gave each of us a 1” square of reflective tape to put on the target so we could verify our handheld lights were actually oriented at the target.
• Positional shooting with a focus on kneeling, squatting, and urban prone. With kneeling, Bryan advocates keeping the outside knee up, and keeping the inside knee down, rolling slightly onto the side of the knee and putting the inside of the foot parallel with the ground for increased stability (taking into consideration not everyone has the physical ability to do this). With urban prone, the preferred method of searching and assessing before moving to kneeling is to keep the gun pointed downrange while rolling onto your back and using your handheld light to search and assess. Emphasis was placed on searching at every level, as your field of view changes every time you change positions.
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Students firing from urban prone.
• Temple index and holster index. I know there’s some internet controversy over the temple index. It’s just a repeatable gun-up position for moving in a confined space where pointing the gun down would be unsafe (example: working behind a small piece of cover with a partner kneeling beside you). Holster index is a gun-down position that keeps the gun away from your feet (unlike Sul) and which might be more appropriate if temple index can’t be used (example: if you’re the guy on his knees with a partner standing right next to you, temple index might have you pointing the gun at your partner). This technique is simply holding the gun alongside the outside of your holster with your thumb hooked over the top edge of the holster). For those carrying appendix, this can be modified to hook your thumb into your hip pocket instead. I did not find this as consistent as I would have liked, and I think I would have found more utility in this position with an OWB holster or duty rig that would create some offset between my hips and the gun to help keep the muzzle away from my legs and feet. Both positions were practiced by partnering up and moving around each other.
• 1-4 drill. 1 is 1 shot from standing, 2 is 2 shots from squatting, 3 is 3 shots from kneeling, and 4 is 4 shots from urban prone (alternating left and right sides). Bryan would randomly call out a number and we would fire the drill, then search and assess while recovering to standing. Standing, squatting, and kneeling shots were to the upper chest of the target; urban prone shots were to the pelvis.
• Weapon light activation. Bryan is very opposed to using the trigger finger to activate a WML due to risk of negligent discharge if the trigger finger enters the trigger guard. I struggled to avoid doing this, as I adopted this as my preferred method of activating the light on the draw after seeing a well-reasoned argument for this method by Bill Blowers. To summarize, it allows you to activate the light earlier in the draw because the trigger finger is indexed to activate the paddle as soon as the gun clears the holster, while the support hand thumb isn’t in position to do so until count three, and it works if one has to shoot one-handed. My personal opinion is it’s a pretty broad brush to paint with if one is going to say using the trigger finger is dangerous because of a few cases of poorly-trained LEOs using it improperly. When I use my trigger finger to hit the paddle, I am pushing down and away from the frame of the pistol (similar to how I work the VP9’s paddle magazine release), not in and toward the trigger. I’d be interested to hear others’ opinion on this topic. Use of the momentary function on a WML was discouraged because the light tends to flicker when it moves during recoil, which equates to “information buffering” as the light strobes. I don’t recall if there was any discussion about the DG switch.
• The super drill. Barrels were set up to create 4 shooting stations with paper and steel targets laid out at a variety of distances, both upright and laying sideways on the ground. Starting with one shooter at a time and using only a handheld light, the shooter would engage the targets closest to each station, engaging from near to far, and high to low, with sideways targets having to be engaged from urban prone. The shooter would search and assess back to standing, then move laterally to the next station, and repeat. Temple and holster index came in handy here—two shooters were working the drill at the same time, and if you were the second shooter, when moving to the next station, you had to use one of those two positions to avoid muzzling the other shooter. If there was nobody ahead of you, though, you were encouraged to move naturally without going gun-up or gun-down, as there’s no reason to use one of those positions if straight ahead is a safe direction. For the second iteration, instead of moving in the same direction, two shooters started on opposing ends of the course and moved in opposite directions, which required communicating with each other when arriving at the same station, and being able to safely move around each other. During the second run, those of us with WMLs were allowed to use them. This drill was meant to simulate a running gunfight with one or two opponents, not a firefight with 20 different bad guys.
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Student fires around barricade from kneeling.
Day 2
1500-2345
Wx: Low 52°, high 68°, windy
280 rounds fired
Day two began in the classroom again. Topics discussed:
• Interlimb coordination. Whatever is in your hands when the shooting starts, you are likely to continue holding on to. More OIS videos were shown to reinforce this, with officers holding on to their pens, clipboards, etc. throughout the shooting.
• Injured shooter. Training CAT tourniquets were handed out and we practiced proper staging and self-application.
• Use of the environment to help fix malfunctions, whether it be your belt or holster, a table, barrel, etc.
• Just because a limb is injured doesn’t mean it is totally out of the fight.
We then moved to the range, and covered the following:
• Injured shooter techniques when you can’t use your fingers, but still have your hand available. This consisted of using opposing pressure with making a fist and using your knuckles or the top of your fist to press into the grip of the pistol, or putting pushing the backs of your hands together like you would with the Harries technique. Wiffle balls were handed out and we held them in our support hand to take our fingers out of play.
• Reloading. Putting the gun back in the holster worked well for those with OWB holsters or duty rigs, not so great for me with a concealed AIWB holster. The environment could be used (put the gun on the ground or a flat surface like a barrel), but if you have an optic, you have to be careful not to crank the brightness up or down when pressing down to keep the gun from sliding around. The gun can be rolled upside down and placed in the crook of the elbow with the mag well facing up. This was my favorite technique as it maintained mobility, but I wouldn’t recommend doing this after a sustained volume of fire if you’re not wearing long sleeves… Pinching the gun between the knees is another option, but again, you lose mobility, and now you’re looking down and not maintaining much situational awareness of your surroundings.
• Malfunction clearance. Tap and rack the gun using your thighs, the holster, or the environment. For a failure to extract, depress the mag release while vigorously smacking the bottom of the dust cover (or WML) against your thigh or wrist to eject the magazine, then rack using the environment.
• WML activation. Recommended techniques were to use whatever nub is available on your injured hand to activate the paddles, put the gun right-side-up into the crook of your elbow and roll it with the paddle pressed against your bicep, or use the edge of your holster to activate the paddle. When searching post-engagement, up to the shooter whether the light stays on or gets turned off. If left on, the gun can be placed on the ground facing the threat while you search your surroundings using your handheld, or placed back in the holster. Here’s where I again disagree with the recommendation against using the trigger finger to activate the light. We’re jumping through hoops using time-consuming methods to do something that could be accomplished more efficiently (and, I believe, safely) with the trigger finger.
• The super drill, now with injured shooter component. With wiffle balls securely duck-taped to our support hands, we repeated this drill shooting strong hand only. Also incorporated was target identification, with the targets painted different colors, and a random color assigned to each shooter just prior to starting his run. Also added to the mix was the magic malfunction-inducing stick, forcing us to clear a variety of malfunctions without the benefit of using our support hand fingers. Oh, and Bryan and Jon were walking around with spray bottles of fake blood, and at some point during each shooter’s run, one of your limbs would start getting liberally doused, prompting a self-application of a tourniquet.
• The super drill, but with opposing lighting. Flashlights were attached to several of the targets, pointed up-range at the shooters, and a car was pulled onto the range with its headlights angled laterally across the firing line. By this time there was a conveniently a nice amount of fog which added to the photonic barriers. As with night one, this time shooters were moving in opposite directions, having to communicate and move around each other safely.
• Finally, we wrapped up with a performance on demand drill, which consisted of shooting at 7, 10, and 25 yards with par times, using all the handheld light techniques and WMLs, for those of us who had them. Shooters who missed the A-zone or busted par were DQ’d.
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Student fires around right side of barricade from standing while second student conducts post-engagement search from urban prone. Note that the second student's muzzle remains oriented downrange while he uses a handheld light to search.
Summary and General Observations
This was truly an awesome class. I’ve had a little bit of low-light training, but this was my first dedicated low-light class, and I definitely walked away from it with some insights. I was not expecting as much emphasis on injured shooter techniques, but I’m glad we spent time on them, as I picked up quite a bit of knowledge. I do wish we had the opportunity to work some support hand only drills, but there simply wasn’t time for that. Additional takeaways:
• I started night one using the Malkoff Bodyguard v2. It’s a nice light, with a ribbed body for positive grip, and puts out something like 1,150 lumens for the first few seconds, then drops to 250 lumens after 8 seconds of constant-on, and it takes 18650 batteries, which I’ve tried to move to as much as possible over the past year. This is a purpose-built defensive light, though it can be pressed into administrative use if you want to wait 8 seconds for it to step down in intensity. The intent of the light is that it would be used in brief increments of momentary use (less than 8 seconds). I found that for each string I shot, I would need the light on for 10-20 seconds in order to shoot and search and assess, which meant I had to manually strobe the light once or twice to keep it at maximum output. This was annoying. So, I switched to the SureFire EDCL-2T. Which gives you max output just as long as you can keep the tailcap depressed. I wish this light had a clicky tailcap, as it did get a little fatiguing to keep constant pressure on the gas pedal style switch, and I wish it took 18650 batteries, but otherwise I was very happy with its output and slim form factor. I also preferred its warmer color temperature compared to the Malkoff. Several other students had Modlites, and this was my first in-person exposure to them. Yeah, they’re impressive, and I’ve since gotten rid of nearly all my SureFire lights on long guns and replaced them with Modlites, though I still find their handheld a little chunky compared to the EDCL-2T (in fairness, I have not yet tried the new slim head).
• I’ve previously used SureFire Combat Rings for shooting at work with Matt Graham’s technique (WMLs aren’t an option), but I haven’t used them in an EDC context before. After seeing others using the Thyrm SwitchBack in class and spending two days going back and forth between handheld and WML, I have a better appreciation for the utility of such a ring. There were a number of drills where I was able to use my WML for shooting, but had to search with the handheld, and I know it slowed me down by having to pocket my light before moving on to the next problem. With a ring, I could have just let it dangle from my hand. I can’t stand the Thyrm in an EDC context because it basically blocks all access to whatever pocket it’s in, but I think it’s well-suited to a duty application where it lives on a light in a dedicated pouch. I’ve tried the Raven clip and ring, and it’s a decent compromise, but even if I pocket the light with the ring tucked behind it between the light and my hip, it tends to work its way out and partially obstruct access to other items in the same pocket, though not as egregiously as the Thyrm. There are some homebrew options I’ve seen involving the use of shock cord, which I might try to see if I can build some sort of retention into the EDCL-2T without having a ring that gets in the way.
• Quality clothes are worth the expense. Not news to anyone here, but in the wet and cold (for Florida) weather, having top-tier rain gear made what would otherwise be a miserable experience very tolerable. Wool socks were clutch, too, as I wasn’t wearing waterproof shoes, and although my shoes soaked through, at least my feet weren’t cold.
• Pistol RDS in the rain… not that big a deal. It was raining and blowing wind hard enough that the targets would not stay upright, and although my RMR did collect enough rain to cause multiple dots to appear, simply confirming with the BUIS was all I needed to do.
• Good grip stippling is essential. Liquid chalk washed off pretty quickly with the rain on night one, but I was still able to maintain a good grip on the pistol thanks to Boresight’s excellent texturing. This is a must on any serious-use handgun.
• Having a small microfiber cloth on hand helps to keep one’s optic and WML clean. Lube from the barrel hood tends to find its way onto the optic, and depending on what ammo you’re shooting, it’s nice to be able to wipe down the lens of the WML periodically. (I use the Thyrm CLENS lens protectors on my WMLs, which makes them easier to wipe off, and the entire CLENS can be peeled off if needed.)
• I struggled a bit with one-handed draws while keeping the handheld light in my support hand pointed at whatever I was searching for that needs shooting. Trying to get my thumb under my shirt to lift it up and acquire the grip did not work reliably with a shirt made of thin, lightweight material. Using my whole hand to grab my shirt and flip it up, then pinning it to my stomach with my wrist while acquiring a firing grip worked a little better, but I still fouled my draw a number of times. This begs the question, if searching with a handheld and you find something that needs shooting, is it better to just drop the light and go for a two-handed draw from concealment? Depending on the handheld and whether you have it in constant-on mode, you might end up with it rolling around on the ground and perfectly illuminating your own position, which I suppose makes a case for SureFire’s momentary-only tailcaps.
• WMLs are the easy button. But we didn’t get to use them all that much. Which makes sense, because using a WML doesn’t really affect your shooting that much. The various handheld techniques are the hard part, and we got our money’s worth practicing those in class. The occasions where we did get to use the WML reinforced why I choose to carry one in an EDC setting. Good WMLs are worth the money and size penalty. Most of us with WMLs were shooting X300Us, while one shooter had an Inforce APLc, and it was practically useless, especially when faced with opposing light.
• Bizarre malfunctions can happen. During one of the super drills, the magic malfunction stick induced something I’d never experienced before. Initially, I was faced with a failure to eject, and somehow when I went into immediate action, the spent casing managed to bounce around in the ejection port and wind up back in the chamber, backwards. When I got a mushy trigger the second time and switched to remedial action, I managed to beat the empty casing so far into the chamber that it required stopping the drill and getting a cleaning rod to beat it back out of the barrel. Lesson learned: sometimes you may actually want to look at the gun to figure out what is going on with it before going all non-diagnostic caveman on it. Had that happened in the real world, I would have been screwed. Statistically, I’ve fired something like 100,000 rounds of 9mm in the past ten years, and this is the only time it’s ever happened, so, I admit that it’s pretty unlikely and there is some degree of artificiality created by the use of a stick to induce malfunctions in the first place.
• Crawl/walk/run. Bryan’s method of instruction involves a dry fire demo and dry fire individual practice with each technique, follow by a live fire demo, before students attempt each technique live. We did this every time something new was introduced, and it worked well.
Overall, I had a great time in this class, and learned a lot. Bryan was very personable and kept the atmosphere light, while being very attentive and quick to provide coaching when someone didn’t execute something properly. There were plenty of “your mom” jokes to go around. About the only thing I didn’t care for was that after every drill involving a new technique, we would debrief and every student would have to articulate something they took away from the drill. Maybe that’s beneficial for someone who isn’t mentally engaged and needs to be prompted to analyze what they just did, but I found it repetitive, and by the time we got to the ninth or tenth student during each debrief, there wasn’t anything insightful being said. Despite that, I’d recommend this class without hesitation to anyone looking to firm up their low light skills and practice some injured shooter skills. I think Bryan is probably undercharging compared to other more well-known instructors, so the class is a great value (and would still be worth it at $450-500, which seems to be around the going rate for many two-day courses).
