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Thread: AAR: Sage Dynamics RDS Handgun Instructor - May 26-28, 2020 - Brownells Range (IA)

  1. #1

    AAR: Sage Dynamics RDS Handgun Instructor - May 26-28, 2020 - Brownells Range (IA)

    Sage Dynamics RDS Handgun Instructor
    https://www.sagedynamics.org/untitled-sitepage_32
    May 26-28, 2020
    Location: Brownells' Big Springs Range, Searsboro, IA

    Tuition: $600
    Class Size: 16 law enforcement firearms instructors
    Instructor: Aaron Cowan
    Round count: Approximately 800-850
    Weather: TD1 - Classroom, TD2 - Hot, humid, and sunny. TD3 - Overcast, cooler, rained for about 30 minutes.
    Class Hours: 0900-1600 daily (+/- 30 minutes end time)

    I became aware of this class about three weeks before it was to occur when I was referred by a coworker. I completely the registration page on the Sage website, which collects your information and promises a reply with payment info. After several days without receiving one, I sent Aaron Cowan an email. He replied promptly with an invoice and course overview. Payment was collected via Paypal and was expectedly simple. I read a couple course AARs as well as reviewing Aaron's video on the course and the course overview document. This is a course designed to prepare LE firearms instructors to implement and maintain a program at their agency, however if somebody were to attend just as a "user" course, it's probably 80% applicable there.

    Classroom Day
    The first day is a classroom day. We were notified a little under a week out that, due to concerns related to COVID-19, Brownells would not be able to offer us their excellent training room at their facility in Grinnell, Iowa. I have trained there before and it is a very nice classroom (plus you can wander into the retail store on lunch). Instead, we were placed in a pole barn at the range. That facility is...suitable...but the accommodations were card tables and folding chairs. There is no climate control in the building, but with the doors open, it was fine. There were a couple periods of rain where the uninsulated metal roof made it difficult to hear Aaron and periods where he had to stop talking for a few minutes to let it die down. The issue with the classroom is 100% not on Aaron, and frankly, I wish Brownells or the course host agency could have found us something else (like a high school gym or hotel conference room).

    The first day was a full day of training, wrapping up at around 1530. All items on the course overview were covered and Aaron provided Q&A time. Aaron is well spoken, thorough, and engaging. He knows his material inside out and upside down. He is humorous and teaches without a bunch of idiosyncratic fluff, irrelevant stories, etc. No handout material was provided and I did not find any cause to take notes. All course material is provided after completion via a Dropbox link. Students are told that they have full privileges to use the material as they see fit, to include just rebranding it for their agency. This is a level of instructor humility I have rarely seen.

    Students and Equipment
    All students were currently serving LE firearms instructors. I do not know the average experience level but felt like I was in the top 1/3 with 17 years. Many of the students, including me, paid their own way. Many students (including me) were from agencies either not currently authorizing optics and hoping to build data and credibility to propose it or from agencies just starting the process and wanting to develop their internal training program. There were a couple M&Ps, two P10Fs, and the rest Glocks. All students were shooting 9mm. Optics were about 60/40 Trijicon/Holosun. All Trijicon optics were RMRs, although one student's RMR shit the bed on the first day and he swapped on an SRO from another gun. The Holosuns were evenly split between 507C and 508T models. I shot a brand new 507C V2 on a 45 MOS with a gen 4 C&H Precision Weapons Systems MIL/LE plate backed up by 10-8 Performance sights. I owned several dot guns going into the class but bought this one brand new for the occasion as I wanted to use an MOS gun and did not own one. All students had Safariland ALS holsters but a couple switched in and out of simpler kydex rigs at various points. I used an older 6354DO the whole time.

    Range Days - Generally
    The second and third days were range days. The Big Springs range facility consists of several three-sided berm ranges. We were on a 50 yard range with a gravel surface. The gravel made for efficient drainage following rain periods. The range was just wide enough for the number of students and ideally, would have been a little wider. The target stand "pits" are always (in my experience) full of absolutely terrible mud that one would be remiss to step into. Stands with fresh cardboard backers were provided. Aaron brought his signature targets from Targets Online, which are printed on card stock and are outstanding in the rain. If you've never bought or used targets like this, you should have some. Our agency keeps a supply of our qualification targets in this format for rainy days. They are life altering if you've ever been a frustrated rangemaster on a wet day. In addition to the large silhouette targets, they were faced with Sage Dynamics Eleanor and A/B zone targets (available on the Sage website). Misses were periodically marked and targets changed only a few times a day. The overall accuracy standard remained fairly high, so this was not a big deal.

    Class started promptly on time each day. Most LE training in my state starts at 0800, so most students were at the range at least thirty minutes early. Aaron provides a simple and realistic safety briefing. His rules are simple and logical. I would have liked to have seen a little bit more personalization on what "the plan" is, since cell reception is poor at the range and everybody needs to know that somebody will have to drive up to the road. Breaks were provided at reasonable intervals to stuff magazines, hydrate, and rest. Lunch was a full hour each day. If you are training at Big Springs, that is exactly enough time to drive to town, stand in line at Subway, eat your food, drive back, and get geared back up. If you have a class at Big Springs, it's best to bring your lunch, AND A CHAIR. There is nowhere to sit at the range and a cheap camp chair is a huge help. As with the classroom, Aaron was available to answer questions, including on breaks. For a guy who is running a pretty popular outfit right now and likely mostly by himself, I was impressed how little time Aaron spent on his phone.

    Aaron demos everything he has the class shoots. His skills are very good and he can perform on demand. He did not limit instruction just to RDS-specific stuff, but rather covered small things about basic firearms skills that served as good refreshers on some topics and new ideas on others. I thought the malfunction clearance portion in particular was a very practical middle ground between our basic academy lowest-common-denominator approach and a higher speed diagnose-before-fixing approach.

    Range Day 1
    The first range day started with zeroing. We were told on the classroom day that we would be confirming zeros the first day, but in actuality, it was only for the people that felt they needed it. Of course this ended up being fewer people than actually needed it. To Aaron's credit, though, getting guys' guns fixed when there were issues did not noticeably get in the way of class time. However, I think a period of instruction on zeroing procedures would be a beneficial addition to the class. In my state, firearms instructor school does NOT include anything on handgun optics and patrol rifle instructor is a separate course, so conceivably, somebody could attend and not really know how to do it. Zeroing targets were from Barely Tactical (free download) and are calibrated for dot size. They're a good target for the task and Aaron believes in them because they have accurate click marks so you can "use math" instead of guessing.

    The range days are structured in a "most likely to least likely" format, so the first day covered very much basics of the draw, dot acquisition, how to "find the dot", etc. This is a short list of topics that is actually half a day of instruction. I have attended another well-known instructor's RDS handgun user class and he believed that you should basically just "keep trying until it works". Aaron believes in looking at the why of things and solving them. This significantly shortened the learning curve for people who were new to RDS handguns compared to what I saw in the other class. A good portion of the first day also covered shooting in cadence and how to build cadence. We also shot the Sage Dynamics "Eleanor" drill a few times for familiarization and were told that we would shoot it cold in the morning for a challenge coin. I have shot this drill on my own time and it is extremely challenging. My confidence was not high when the first day ended.

    The total round count for the day was somewhere around 400-500. I brought 21 loaded magazines (17 and 21 rounders) and shot through all of them. I loaded another 8 or 10 and shot through some of those. I learned in the past that it's easier to bring a ton of mags and bring them loaded for a class. It saves your thumb, maximizes breaks, and lets you help your classmates out.

    Range Day 2
    The second day on the range began with another opportunity to check and fine-tune zeros. This time there were about twice as many guys that needed to make changes. Some students discovered loose optics, loose mounting plates (MOS guns), and loose front sights. I did not notice any battery failures. The first order of the day was to shoot the Eleanor Drill for a chance at a coin. One guy did it (P10F with SRO), another just missed it with a line-break on the circle. Aaron said he had four guys in a similar size class do it once and that's the most he's ever seen. I guess guys that "know" have prepped for it before hand and regularly still don't make it. I didn't feel bad missing out on the coin.

    The second day was focused primarily on working on acquiring the dot from various positions. That started with reloads, high ready, low ready, muzzle high, position sul, etc. The lesson was that the direction you were moving the gun tells you where to start looking it you don't have the dot in the window. We also worked on one handed shooting (both sides) and acquiring the dot following a malfunction. Accuracy standards remained fairly high. The round count was similar to the first day. I loaded all of my magazines back to full in my hotel room the night before and then had to reload a similar number near the end of the day.

    The second range day ends with a qualification course. The course is not provided in advance and Aaron mentions several times that you DO NOT NEED TO WORRY about passing the qual. The sole purpose of qualification, per Aaron (and I agree) is to establish a minimum level of proficiency for court defensibility later. The qualification course starts at 3 yards and works back to 25 yards. The times are not tight but not overly generous. The strings of fire are consistent with strings fired throughout the class. The accuracy standard is that all 50 rounds must be within the silhouette target and no more than 10 rounds may be outside of the B zone (8.5" x 11" zone). Students who perform to a higher standard are rewarded with a red Sage Dynamics patch. The best shooter receives a black patch. I'm intentionally withholding the higher standards. A little mystery never hurt anybody. About half the class received the red patch. One shooter had a single miss, which was due to a "can't find the dot" panic, and he received a DNQ. Aaron does not allow another attempt the same day and the student will have to have another instructor run the course for him later and provide proof.

    Conclusion
    Overall, I was very happy with the class. I went into it with about 6 years shooting RDS handguns and learned some really key things that are useful to me, but will be extremely useful in teaching. The preparation and presentation from the overview material to the end of the last day were thorough and if you've made it to the end of this long AAR, you should know that you can comfortably go in blind using just the overview document and be fine.

    I think I had a minor critique or two in the body, but here are the two things that might be good for improvement:

    1)
    I think it would be worth considering an alternate format that provides classroom instruction interspersed with range time. This would make it easier to deal with weather. It actually wasn't ever an issue for us, but we were seeing forecasted thunderstorms up until the final day and we got lucky. I know that not all venues have this capability (if the classroom is not on site or is used for different things), but it's worth considering.

    2) A block of time on zeroing, probably with a demonstration, would be helpful. On the same topic, some time demonstrating proper optic installation, particularly on modular plate style guns, might be valuable. A lot of people know how to do this, a lot of people don't know, and a lot of people think they know. This is elementary, but a properly mounted optic is the foundation of everything else working right.

    3) A little variety of gear and some hands-on show and tell time might have been useful. Aaron brought all Glocks with RMRs and maybe a Holosun. Because so many agencies are just starting to think about this, some hands-on time with another optic or two would probably benefit the students. Aaron had some good pictures of broken optics and talked about all the common ones, but there's no real replacement for looking through it, pushing the buttons, etc.

    Fire away with questions or critiques...

  2. #2
    Site Supporter
    Join Date
    Jul 2012
    Location
    NoVA

    Nice review!

    Great AAR and very informative. I went to their open enrollment instructor course back in January and left with a coin

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