Josh
Amateur
Training AAR
Class: Nightfighter 101
Company: TNVC
Date: 23-24 April 2022
Location: Alliance PD – Alliance, Ohio
Course Description: (From the TNVC Website)
“Night Fighter 101 is designed to arm students with a solid understanding of the fundamentals of night vision operation and use. Beginning with gear choice and setup, the class provides students the tools for learning to safely / effectively move, shoot, and communicate in low-light/no-light environments. Students will participate in a variety of movement and live-fire exercises aimed at producing a core competency with night vision goggles, lasers, and white light.”
Instructors:
This course was led by a primary instructor, Chip and two A.I.s – Joe and Matt. The cadre at TNVC has a reputation for being top notch and squared away – and needless to say, or cadre was no different. Chip, Joe, and Matt all have extensive backgrounds as end users, instructing, as well as pretty solid technical understanding and experience. All of these factors combined to give the students a wealth of knowledge and resources to pull from during the course.
Class Size/Makeup:
Approximately 14 students attended this class. The class was comprised of average earth people, prior service, Guard, and active LE - all with minimal amounts of experience with night vision. Some students brought their own nods and helmets while some students rented equipment through TNVC. There was a mixture of both single tubes as well as dual tubes.
Instruction:
TD1 started off with the pledge of allegiance and a thorough safety briefing. Following our safety brief, we had a couple of hours of power point/classroom discussion. Topics of discussion focused on basics and history of night vision, applications of night vision, and maintenance/care of the technology. Additional topics covered in the classroom portion were focused on the suite of accessories and mutually supportive equipment, lasers, helmets, zeroing equipment, and switchology.
Wrapping up the classroom portion was a primer on the “Flow Drill” – which walked everyone through the basic body/ready positions we would employ during the range portion of the course. .
Following the opening drill, the instructors walked us through several drills that got us further acclimated to our gear, special considerations we would need to keep in mind while operating under Nods/darkness, and ultimately allowing us to crawl/walk/run in the day before we could crawl/walk/run after sunset.
Once the sun went down, the class zeroed lasers and continued on the path of learning and exploration. Drills and points of instruction covered reloading, passive aiming, active aiming, and movements. These points of instruction ultimately led to several drills that the class ran as a group and incorporating many of the skills and lessons learned into a practical application.
Temperature on the range was high 70s and dipped into high 50’s by the time the course wrapped around 2AM
TD2 started again with the pledge of allegiance and a thorough safety briefing.
POI on TD2 picked up right where TD1 ended, giving students the crawl/walk/run in daylight hours before the sun went down. Several drills on TD2 built on the foundation from TD1, and incorporated movement, scanning, and body positions. All things that sound simple, but get complicated and layered when the lights go out and your FOV is roughly 40 degrees.
TD2 culminated with a multi stage scenario working around vehicles/barricades, utilizing passive, active, and dynamic body positions to make hits on target.
Temps on. TD2 we’re near identical to TD1 - highs in the upper 70s/low 80s and dipped into 50’s by the time the course wrapped.
My Thoughts/Takeaways
1. I’m no gunhand, but I’ve taken a fair amount of courses over the years. I can say with no hesitation or exaggeration that this was the best course I’ve ever taken. Hands down. The instructors were charismatic, engaging, and most of all knowledgeable. All three instructors had the technical data and real world examples to give us the “why” behind the “what”. Almost every moment of the course was filled with meaningful learning – even between drills and evolutions, the instructors had pearls of wisdom and helpful anecdotes for the students. The student cadre was squared away, with little to no safety issues that I saw. All of this combined to be an amazing experience.
2. Alliance is my home away from home. I love that place. Joe W and Cory are amazing people and don’t get enough recognition.
3. This was only the second course I took since Covid kicked off. I shot just okay. My gear needs fine tuned. I need to get out more. Mechanical offset is real. Real talk.
4. There was so much to learn and I felt like a sponge the entire time. Early on in the course, Chip and the AIs discussed how this course was not meant to be a ‘Rifle 101 with the lights off’. The daylight drills were done with purpose and each served to be a building block on the next POI. And each POI was grounded or directed towards ensuring the student could work comfortably in the dark.
5. Having jammed mags prior to class was a HUGE help. Downtime was spent hydrating or soaking up more info from the cadre of students and/or instructors.
6. If there was one thing I would recommend to the cadre for addition to the course is a little bit of one on one time to make sure my nods and helmet and overall system is setup in the best way. Are my nods too far forward? Is my eye relief good? Do my nods need to be mounted higher or lower? That kinda thing. This point might actually be a time suck and end up causing students to miss out on or compress some other POI so I’m not gonna be sad if someone says it’s a dumb idea or whatever.
Thanks to all the sponsors, thanks to TNVC, thanks to the instructors, thanks to Alliance PD (Joe and Cory!) and thanks to the students for such a great environment to learn. Can’t wait for 201!
Class: Nightfighter 101
Company: TNVC
Date: 23-24 April 2022
Location: Alliance PD – Alliance, Ohio
Course Description: (From the TNVC Website)
“Night Fighter 101 is designed to arm students with a solid understanding of the fundamentals of night vision operation and use. Beginning with gear choice and setup, the class provides students the tools for learning to safely / effectively move, shoot, and communicate in low-light/no-light environments. Students will participate in a variety of movement and live-fire exercises aimed at producing a core competency with night vision goggles, lasers, and white light.”
Instructors:
This course was led by a primary instructor, Chip and two A.I.s – Joe and Matt. The cadre at TNVC has a reputation for being top notch and squared away – and needless to say, or cadre was no different. Chip, Joe, and Matt all have extensive backgrounds as end users, instructing, as well as pretty solid technical understanding and experience. All of these factors combined to give the students a wealth of knowledge and resources to pull from during the course.
Class Size/Makeup:
Approximately 14 students attended this class. The class was comprised of average earth people, prior service, Guard, and active LE - all with minimal amounts of experience with night vision. Some students brought their own nods and helmets while some students rented equipment through TNVC. There was a mixture of both single tubes as well as dual tubes.
Instruction:
TD1 started off with the pledge of allegiance and a thorough safety briefing. Following our safety brief, we had a couple of hours of power point/classroom discussion. Topics of discussion focused on basics and history of night vision, applications of night vision, and maintenance/care of the technology. Additional topics covered in the classroom portion were focused on the suite of accessories and mutually supportive equipment, lasers, helmets, zeroing equipment, and switchology.
Wrapping up the classroom portion was a primer on the “Flow Drill” – which walked everyone through the basic body/ready positions we would employ during the range portion of the course. .
Following the opening drill, the instructors walked us through several drills that got us further acclimated to our gear, special considerations we would need to keep in mind while operating under Nods/darkness, and ultimately allowing us to crawl/walk/run in the day before we could crawl/walk/run after sunset.
Once the sun went down, the class zeroed lasers and continued on the path of learning and exploration. Drills and points of instruction covered reloading, passive aiming, active aiming, and movements. These points of instruction ultimately led to several drills that the class ran as a group and incorporating many of the skills and lessons learned into a practical application.
Temperature on the range was high 70s and dipped into high 50’s by the time the course wrapped around 2AM
TD2 started again with the pledge of allegiance and a thorough safety briefing.
POI on TD2 picked up right where TD1 ended, giving students the crawl/walk/run in daylight hours before the sun went down. Several drills on TD2 built on the foundation from TD1, and incorporated movement, scanning, and body positions. All things that sound simple, but get complicated and layered when the lights go out and your FOV is roughly 40 degrees.
TD2 culminated with a multi stage scenario working around vehicles/barricades, utilizing passive, active, and dynamic body positions to make hits on target.
Temps on. TD2 we’re near identical to TD1 - highs in the upper 70s/low 80s and dipped into 50’s by the time the course wrapped.
My Thoughts/Takeaways
1. I’m no gunhand, but I’ve taken a fair amount of courses over the years. I can say with no hesitation or exaggeration that this was the best course I’ve ever taken. Hands down. The instructors were charismatic, engaging, and most of all knowledgeable. All three instructors had the technical data and real world examples to give us the “why” behind the “what”. Almost every moment of the course was filled with meaningful learning – even between drills and evolutions, the instructors had pearls of wisdom and helpful anecdotes for the students. The student cadre was squared away, with little to no safety issues that I saw. All of this combined to be an amazing experience.
2. Alliance is my home away from home. I love that place. Joe W and Cory are amazing people and don’t get enough recognition.
3. This was only the second course I took since Covid kicked off. I shot just okay. My gear needs fine tuned. I need to get out more. Mechanical offset is real. Real talk.
4. There was so much to learn and I felt like a sponge the entire time. Early on in the course, Chip and the AIs discussed how this course was not meant to be a ‘Rifle 101 with the lights off’. The daylight drills were done with purpose and each served to be a building block on the next POI. And each POI was grounded or directed towards ensuring the student could work comfortably in the dark.
5. Having jammed mags prior to class was a HUGE help. Downtime was spent hydrating or soaking up more info from the cadre of students and/or instructors.
6. If there was one thing I would recommend to the cadre for addition to the course is a little bit of one on one time to make sure my nods and helmet and overall system is setup in the best way. Are my nods too far forward? Is my eye relief good? Do my nods need to be mounted higher or lower? That kinda thing. This point might actually be a time suck and end up causing students to miss out on or compress some other POI so I’m not gonna be sad if someone says it’s a dumb idea or whatever.
Thanks to all the sponsors, thanks to TNVC, thanks to the instructors, thanks to Alliance PD (Joe and Cory!) and thanks to the students for such a great environment to learn. Can’t wait for 201!