This class was in Franklinville, NC on June 11-13, 2021, hosted by Gil Narvaez of Fortitude Consulting. Obviously, Ernest Langdon is extremely well known on this forum, but I didn't find a ton of information out there specifically about his 3 day class, so I thought I'd write up a quick aar to give an idea of what goes on.
If I understood the situation, there were 16 registered students. Only 14 showed up on Friday morning at 8:30 for the classroom portion, and those missing two never did arrive. So we started out with 14. The classroom portion took us through lunchtime and included the safety brief, a discussion on mindset, stress and other matters. I think the lecture is probably the same at the 3 day class as at the 2 day, and I found some fairly detailed accounts already out there, so I won't elaborate.
When we got to the range, it was hot and humid and threatening rain. The shooting portion of the class was perhaps 4 hours or so, and that was probably enough. The drills that first day were designed to teach fundamentals of pistol shooting. We did stuff like 10 shot groups on 2 inch circles at about 4 yards. Then 5 shot groups at one second intervals, 5 shot groups at half second intervals, and 5 shot groups at the 4 inch circle at more like a quarter second. Ernest continually stressed not shooting at the cadence just to shoot at the cadence: if your sights aren't where they're supposed to be, don't take the shot. There was a fair bit of what he called "anxiety shooting" going on, and I must admit some of it was from me. The day ended with (IIRC) The Test shot for an LTT hat. We quit around 4.
Day 2 started at 9am, with some review of the previous day's fundamentals. We covered one handed shooting, reloads, shooting on the move, and target transitions before taking a longish break in the afternoon. I think the hat drill on day 2 was the 5 shot roundup, which we did before breaking. We quit sometime around 4 and came back to the range at 7 for the low-light portion of the class. Well, daylight in North Carolina in mid-June sticks around for a very long time and the range required us to quit live fire at 9pm. So the low-light training was not live fire. I don't think this detracted much, if any, from the value. True, we didn't practice our flashlight techniques under recoil, or see what the muzzle flash of our carry ammo looked like or what have you. So we didn't get the full effect of a night shoot. But really the principal lesson that Ernest was trying to convey to us, that in my experience set the low-light portion apart from other trainers, is the variability of low-light conditions. For one thing, when we were using our lights, we did it one person at a time, so the whole line didn't get lit up as though it were daylight, thus undercutting the whole point of practicing low-light shooting. For another thing, he set up a bunch of lanterns and kept moving them between "strings" to change the lighting situation. Different kinds of backlighting, lights in our eyes, etc. We quit at about 10:30.
We slept in a little bit and started at 10 on Day 3, with a little review, and then FAST. We had a coin winner--I think it was coin #20. I think there were 3 or 4 hat pin winners, too. I was not one of them. I shot the test clean in 7.11. I'll say a little bit about that time later. After lunch, we did some work on cover, and then the day ended with shooting moving targets, both while we stood still, and while we moved, forward, backwards, and diagonally. The hat drill was the 9 shot close speed drill. There were three hat drills and three different winners. I think we quit at about 3:30 or so. It was another pretty hot day, and I do think several students were struggling a bit with attention by the end.
Let me talk a little bit about the students. It was an interesting mix. There were several guys who were shooting at a pretty high level, and a few guys shooting at a very basic level. One guy was removed from the firing line early on Day 2. He was on the opposite end of the line from me, so I didn't see or hear much of his interactions with Ernest, but evidently he was warned twice on Day 1 about serious gun handling lapses, and on Day 2 he kicked things off by straight up muzzling the whole line. He was allowed to stay and watch, but he chose to leave. Another guy kept taking his gun out of the holster when he shouldn't have, including when Ernest was downrange a couple of times.
A third guy, a really nice fellow who I believe said he is 80, struggled a bit physically--understandably! But by the afternoon of Day 3, he got to be a bit of a safety problem. He flagged me with a loaded gun on the moving target line. I called muzzle and Ernest talked to him. He was apologetic. Before that, however, I'd had to put my hands on his gun and walk him forward towards the firing line. Neither Ernest nor Gil saw this incident because they were helping other shooters. This was during the practice on cover. There were four stations set up, and students were cycling through the stations in a hot range environment. So the shooters were set up arms length from the cover and the rest of us were milling around ten or fifteen feet behind them, waiting our turn. Well, the older man drew his pistol at those 15 feet or so behind the shooters. I was standing next to him, and was able to direct his muzzle down gently and slowly, and get him to step forward to the line. This was, I am sure, mental exhaustion on his part, quite different from the carelessness exemplified by the other two problematical gun handlers. It drew to my mind what must be a serious problem for traveling trainers like Langdon and others. You run a class that involves treating students like adults, and have them do some fairly complex things with guns in their hands, for extended periods of time, in what can be challenging weather conditions--and some of these students are just not capable of this at all, while others are capable until they reach that point of exhaustion and distraction, and they start making safety errors. But you're tied up trying to teach a student on the far side of the line and can't necessary keep a short leash on everyone. That's a rough situation.
Another consideration about the students and Ernest's teaching style. I think you can see the former NCO in Ernest. (Or maybe he was an officer. I don't actually know.) He does not hesitate to put the students to work, hanging new targets and other stuff. That's perfectly OK, but it does bring out some interesting observations about the variety of students. Just like at matches you always get the free riders who just don't seem to notice that somehow the holes in the targets get magically covered after every shooter, we had students at the class who didn't seem to have any hang ups about sitting in the shade while others were downrange setting up targets or whatever. A retired Marine and an active duty Marine seemed to take on the leadership with dealing with stuff like that. Probably not a coincidence. I would like to think I did my share or more, but you'd have to ask the Marines.
My own situation at the class: I just got a P07 slide back from Jagerwerks a few weeks ago with an RMR on it--my first red dot. I still carry my iron sight P07 because I knew I wasn't really up to speed on the dot gun, but I thought, going in to class, that I had more or less gotten my index squared away. And on draws when I am standing still I basically did. But I found that for whatever reason I wasn't seeing the dot immediately on reloads, and I really struggled to find the dot when I was moving. After the reload in the FAST, I didn't see the dot, and fished around for it for what seemed like forever. No idea how long it took in real life. What does that mean about my 7.11 time? It means it's a fair assessment of my skill level right now with a dot gun. The fact that I think I might have been able to shoot it faster with iron sights doesn't mean anything, because I didn't shoot it with iron sights. Also, it did not occur to me to use the iron sights. I was looking for the dot, dammit, and I wasn't shooting til I saw that dot. There are a lot of lessons in there for me. One is that I need a lot more dry fire and live fire practice under a variety of conditions before I consider carrying the dot gun.
Relatedly, on the half second drill, all three days, I put my whole first group about an inch below the circle. The whole group. (What I mean by the half-second drill--shoot five shots with about 1/2 second splits at the 2 inch dot at about 4 yards.) I was really angry at myself each time I did this, because I thought it was anxiety shooting. After having a little time to reflect on it, though, I think it was more that I wasn't remembering the offset for the dot, and I was focusing on the dot rather than the target. So I wasn't seeing (or anyway wasn't noticing) the low hits. So there's another lesson about shooting with a dot for me.
Ernest's teaching style is laid back. He doesn't hover, and he doesn't do a ton of coaching. A lot of my problems over the weekend were problems that he addressed multiple times, not specifically to me personally, but to the class as a group--and then he'd say, you have to be your own coach. If you're shooting before you get a good sight picture, stop. This is that 'anxiety shooting' I mentioned earlier. Like I said, I was guilty of it. The worst case was during the moving target drills, where I was moving. I could not find the dot, but in my first run, I felt like I 'had' to shoot, so I was taking index-based shots. The hits were not good, and on one shot I hit the wooden frame of the hanger on the extreme right of my target. The round did hit the silhouette, in my defense, it wasn't wild. But it wasn't a good shot. Ernest said something afterwards like "it's never good when you see wood fly," which wasn't exactly a chastisement, but sort of felt like one. The next run, I did not anxiety shoot. I still didn't find the dot quickly, though, so there were some runs where I only took one well-aimed shot, or two, instead of the assigned three. And there was at least one run where I got off no shots at all. But the point was that if I don't see what I need to see, I've got no business shooting. My anxiety shots hit Ernest's target frame. No big deal. But in real life, that shot might have hit a bystander. Big deal.
Of course, I knew before Ernest's class that I was totally accountable for every shot I fired. But I learned it in a new way through the class. I think I would say that was the greatest value for me from the class.
Round count was advertised at 1400. I think we shot somewhere between 800-900 rounds. I can't be more specific because I used some bulk ammo and I'm not counting the rounds remaining in my ammo box. But 800-900 is a pretty reasonable estimate. Part of the reason we were low is that we didn't live fire the low light shoot. Round count didn't matter to me at all, but I am local and didn't have to ship ammo. I am not sure if any of the other students did.
My P07 was almost perfect. I had one light strike. It seems reasonable to blame the ammo, which I bought post-Covid/riots/Biden, so it was rush-produced and probably exemplifies the reduced QC that I've heard of. But it might have been the gun. Can't say. I had a cleaning kit with me, and I fully intended to clean and lube the gun on the evening of day 2, but frankly after the night shoot, I was just tired and I elected not to. And then I meant to lube it before we got started on day 3, but there's a longish walk from the parking lot to the range, and I didn't remember to bring my lube to the range where I had intended to do the deed. So the gun got no lube through the class, but ran perfectly. Some of the guys running Berettas got some encouragement from Ernest to get some lube on the gun, but the P07 had no difficulties.
It was of course a Beretta-heavy class. Lots of guys with 92's of various sorts and others with PX4's--quite a few of these guns already had Ernest's fingerprints on them. But there were Glock shooters on the line, including Ernest(!).
Final word: excellent training class that presents a ton of good ideas and pushes you to become your own coach.