AAR: Pistol Manipulation 1.0 with Falcon Ops

Blah blah shooting classes blah reports. Needed to write this down so here we are. We'll get back to cats and stuff later on in the week.

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If this is tl;dr, here’s a summary:

Take the Pistol Manipulation 1.0 class with Falcon Ops. They care about making you a better shooter and they have the teaching and communication skills to do it.

http://falconops.net/products-page/c...al-pistol-1-0/

Covered the basics of Falcon Ops Carbine 1.0 already so a couple paragraphs from that AAR are copied here. As before: Attempt here is to focus on what isn’t available on their website.

Same guys (Charles ‘Voodoo’ Ferrara, Anson ‘Hollywood’ Beck, plus the other instructors Senior and Hoss; all instructors are credentialed/certified), same range (Prado in Corona, CA). 8 hour course, 500 rounds planned. I will use nicknames because that is what they call each other.

27 students, 4 instructors (more on this shortly).

Cans of dip chewed: Many. If you like guns and dick jokes, spit chew and can follow the four firearm life safety rules then you will be right at home with Falcon Ops. Also popular: the f word.

They swear a lot. Like, a fucking ton. If you can’t handle 4 letter words (8 letter, 16 letter, who can keep track with the way Hollywood talks) then this is maybe not for you. And you would be missing out, because the quality of the instruction is excellent.

What constitutes quality instruction? The ability to effectively communicate and demonstrate complex concepts. At this they excel.

I liked the Falcon Ops training style very much. They want training to be safe, educational and fun. Their presentations are professional, polished and well organized. They run a tight ship, so although the environment is informal it is not casual. They talk about the difference between these two things, and proper attitude, during the mindset portion of the training (which runs throughout the day).

ESSENTIAL GEAR NOT LISTED ON THEIR LOADOUT LIST: Gloves appropriate for shooting. Sunscreen + sweaty hands + hot weather + lots of rounds = slippery hands, even for guys that had guns with custom stippling. Gloves help a lot and if you don’t have them it’s very difficult to unfuck yourself. Practice manipulating your gun with gloves on to make sure that you aren’t a mess when you get to your class.

Favorite joke of the day by far:

Hollywood: Are there any re-enactors here?

Class: [Blank looks]

Hollywood: Re-enactors? Anyone? No one is shooting a 1911? [2 hands go up] Oh, couple guys? Cool.

I about fell over laughing. They didn’t mention the 1911s again after that. As far as I know there were no issues with any of the pistols, 1911 or otherwise, over the course of the day.

Topics covered (from memory, no notes, order may be jumbled because we hit them throughout the day):

• Mindset
• 7 fundamentals of marksmanship as they relate to pistol shooting
• Trigger control (this came up all day long)
• Three Five types of reloads (admin, tactical, emergency, Russian, New York)
• Shooting from low ready
• Shooting from compressed ready
• Drawing from a holster
• Identifying a threat to your right, left, or rear, turning, drawing and shooting

We closed out the day shooting a single-elimination tournament on a dueling tree, which was great fun after a long day. Disappointingly, we didn’t get to finish it due to the class size. Speaking of class size…

Stuff to improve: Class size and instructor/student ratio. Due to a **** up on the website registration code the class was overenrolled by 5 students (about 25%). There was no way to proceed quickly without compromising safety so the pace was slow. No way around it, so some of us got to hone the fundamentals a bit more during drills. Also, we ran short on time at the end. Other than that, wouldn’t change anything.

Looking forward to training with these guys again.