Hanson does Blackwater USA: DAY 4

Buckeye Firearms Association Legislative Chair Ken Hanson recently attend Blackwater USA’s 5 day pistol/carbine class.

While attending class, Ken kept a blog of his experiences. Since most visitors to this site take training very seriously, we thought you would enjoy his ramblings.

Ken's five day experience will be published on this website on Tuesdays and Thursdays through the end of the month.

Click on 'Read More' for the fourth installment.

Day 4

Long day, mostly spent on rifle. Started with some warmup drills. Moved to some facing/spinning drills and some failure drills. Worked on stoppage drills. After lunch we started with the larger targets and went more to combat accuracy rather than fundamentals/fine accuracy. Used kneeling, supported kneeling, double kneeling, squatting, prone, rollover prone and supine prone. The compensator dug a nice hole from the rollover and supine positions, lots of gas blasts. I was surprised how well the gun functioned in rollover prone, given the ejection port is basically on the ground. We did 15 round strings prone from 100 yards. I was able to keep them all on with either the red dot or iron sights. (8 inch plate.) With the compensator my dot came off the target about 6 inches at 100 yards, 6 inches DOWN.

I had my very first failure with the polymer cased ammo at about round 1,100. It tore a rim from the case and the next round seated up into the case that was still in the chamber. This was an interesting failure, but a quick flick of the knife blade and it all pulled out, it was like having a stuck case remover. In an abundance of caution I checked the bore before the next round and all was well. It looked like Robin Hood, with the one round shoved up into the other round right square in the back. I think the polymer case ammo has a bad rap, I went through 1,500 rounds with only one ammo problem.

The night shoot was a lot of fun. We split the group into two with one half on the Rogers range and the other half at 50 yards with carbines on steel. The carbines on steel at night is pretty spectacular, huge spark flashes. I had what I considered normal standing and unsupported kneeling accuracy at night, missing about 1 in 10. (these are big steel.) Got some good video of this.

The Rogers range was trying different flashlight techniques. If you have never seen one of these ranges, it is like the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disney but with steel plates popping up and down randomly instead of dolls and you get to shoot. Considering it is 8 guys shooting steel 5 yards to 10 yards away the range also shoots back with frag. Good accuracy on this. Frankly, I did better with night sights and no light but oh well. That thing is a round eater, you could go through 50 rounds in 2 minutes easy. I tried to get video but it didn’t turn out well.

Stay tuned for the final installment of Ken's time at Blackwater USA on Thursday.