Here is my writeup on the Dallas class that took place last weekend on April 23-24.
The class was taught by HKPRO, owner of the HKpro.com and the https://www.hkpro.com/forums/. I am not posting his name for reasons of privacy. He has enjoyed a 30ish long year career in Law Enforcement, during which he held positions in Patrol, Detectives, SWAT, administration, command, and training. He was an instructor for H&K's training division when they had one.
The course was equally geared for people with select fire MP-5s as well as those with semi-auto versions. For some drills the instructor and owners of full auto MP-5s were generous enough to let the semi-auto owners use their select fire MP-5s to participate in drills that required a full auto gun. Thus everyone in the class got to run drills that required full auto weapons.
--Class started on Saturday morning in a meeting room in a hotel with a lecture and slides and videos on the history of rollerlock and MP5 and quick fim clips with translations about current day H&K and the unfavorable political environment that it operates in explains why we have problems getting the things that we do. We also got to see some info on the HK416. We ended the classroom part with a safety lecture before we adjourned to the ETTS range in Waxahachie, TX. Once we got to the range we had our own private bermed bay.
--I spoke to HKPRO before class and arrived early HKpro switched out my extractor spring. I had a new SP5K that I had bought new and SBR'ed a few years ago that started to have failures to extract after it had about 400-500 rounds through it. In this case the ejected case would not fully eject and get in the way of feeding the new round. I don't know if they would be classified as a stovepipe, since the extracted case did not make it out far enough to stovepipe. After the new extractor spring was installed I did encounter one of these failures to extract on the first day with Winchester NATO 123 grain ammo, and I encountered the same malfunction the second day when I was running some Federal 124 grain HST Hollowpoints through the gun. It worked out to about 1 malfunction every 400-500 rounds.
--Once we got to the range at ETTS in Waxahachie (http://www.ettsgunrange.com/ ), we divided the class into two shooting relays. HKPRO was assisted by several range safety officers. HKPRO went over the basics of loading, aiming, and shooting the MP5/SP5 to make sure that everyone was on the same page. The range session started with paper targets from offhand to make sure everyone was sighted in.
--The class had about 20 students in it, and was broken down to two relays of 10 students for most of the shooting. This allowed those not shooting to reload, hydrate, and do other necessary tasks, as well as meet fellow students.
--We did some full auto shooting. Full auto guns were shared for range use by HKpro and class members with those of us who did not have them for certain drills. Of course the people shooting the guns provided the ammo.
--We transitioned to steel targets which were better in terms of immediately telling if you hit target or didn't, and did not require switching like paper targets.
--I like HKpro's advice on using a mag clamp for two 30 round mags because it provided what I needed for the drills, including reloads and malfunction clearances. Running the class with drills requiring two mags of ammo per relay and then switching relays gave us the information that we needed and the reps we needed but kept the class moving fast. The mag clamp was adequate for everything we did in the class.
--HKPRO corrected me of a habit of downloading my mags to 28 rounds to make them easier to insert with the bolt closed. With an HK MP5 and clones, you always lock the bolt back before seating a magazine because they are much, much quicker and easier to seat.
--We also got to fire a dealer sample H&K M320 Grenade launcher firing chalk marking rounds, and an K&K MP7. This was quite a treat.
--The first day on the range we covered basic shooting of the gun, loading, malfunction clearance, transitioning to a handgun when your shoulder arm runs dry, and a bunch of things that I don't remember well enough to list, even though I did absorb the information.
--The second day we did a refresher and did turning and shooting, shooting on the move, movement and then stopping to turn and shoot. We also shot different standard tests like raising the gun and firing and getting multiple hits on an individual and multipe targets, clearing malfunctions, magazine changes, and transitioning to pistols when the shoulder arm was out of ammo or malfunctioned (simulated malfunction).l
--We ended the second day with a scrambler drill. For this HKPRO sprayed a number on each of the metal upper body targets, set up plastic rain barrels as barricades, and had us run it individually. There were 3-4 firing positions set up, one seated, on standing and one kneeling. We ran it individually moving from position to position, firing at the targets that HKPRO specified.
--Everyone enjoyed themselves. The class was very cohesive and friendly, with many HKpro forum members in attendance.