Saturday, September 19, 2009

Eid and Range time

Today is the end of the month of Fasting- Ramadan. For the next 3 to 4 days families all over Afghanistan will be getting together to exchange presents and feast. No mentoring will be going on over this Holiday period. My team will be very busy once Eid is over, but the next three days will be our last leisurely ones for a while.





We celebrated today by going out to the Range again. This time my partner Steve took his golf clubs and balls out to get is some practice shots. He got to launch a couple of good shots while several of us were making adjustments to our weapons so they would fire precisely where we are aiming.




We zeroed, or adjusted both our regular (iron) sites and optical site or CCO. The picture shows what the CCO site looks like when it is on. The red dot is your aim point, so it is almost like a video game in some ways. The adjusments were a lengthy process for some on the range detail, but it was worth the time we invested.




After we finished our adjustments we drilled on some live fire, sweeping fire and fire on the move. It went well and I had a good confident day of shooting. We did have to monitor the Afghans in the area since some of them were getting a little close to the danger area until the Afghan Range control ran them further away. Normally after firing a day at the range you spend a lot of time picking up the spent brass cartridges. Here we were almost run off the range by some young Afghans who eagerly pounced on the brass so that it could be sold or melted down. I am dusty, hot, dehydrated and have a filthy weapon after I fired about 200 rounds, but it was a very good day nonetheless.

2 comments:

  1. Doc,

    What's the instruction you receive on using the red dot: focus on the dot or on the target? I recall considerable debate about this back when I shot Bullseye and red dots were kind of new.

    Paul Hirsch

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  2. Paul,
    I don't even remember any detailed instruction on the CCO during my training at Ft Riley. I focus on the target and the red dot overlays your aim point.

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