Student Review: 6 Day Combined CTT / Combat Patrol: Jon R T

CTT/CP 6 Day Class June 26-July 1 2015: Jon R T (aka Blind Sack)

This was my fourth visit to MVT and my third patrol class. Each time my perspective and understanding open up a bit more. The logic and goals of each lesson become clearer and my comfort level increases. As always the class attendees were just a great bunch of guys.

This was a special visit for me. Through an unexpected series of events, I was able to catch my spouse at a weak moment and received the maternal green light to take our 15 year old son to MVT. The background story is a lesson in and of itself (and humorous as well).

For alumni that have teenage kids and want to bring them to MVT, I would not hesitate to bring them if they have the maturity and skills to handle it. My 15 year old has been shooting for about 4-5 years and we have done a bunch of hunting together over the last 3 years or so. After attending MVT the first two times, I went over the drills with him a bit. We did buddy team drills with AR15 pattern airsoft guns and perhaps on two occasions we did live fire buddy team drills. He did some ‘penny in the magazine’ tap-rack-bang drills also. On the ranges, he performed much, much better than I had hoped. Quite honestly I was shocked how well he did. He was a superb battle buddy. Thinking about it over the last several days, I think his good performance was because almost all his experience with long guns was derived on AR patterned rifles. (Food for thought!)

I would not hesitate to bring my kid back and, when they are ready, his brothers. Attending the class with my son was one of the best experiences of my life. I hope one day that I can attend with at least 3 of my kids and make a team. That would be awesome.

Max continues to refine and improve the lessons. The new raid location was a nice change. The first day of CTT (which didn’t exist when I took the old 5 day CRCD/CP class) was very, very good. TAP-RACK-BANG! My round count to the 6 days was about 1760.

Max, Lee and Scott were great instructors and great guys. Fred’s talk was great. I think I asked Fred the most questions of all the attendees.

Lessons learned and/or reinforced:
-Assemble your entire kit before the class (including your shelter) and practice with it all if possible.
-Read about patrol formations and movement prior to the class (Contact is a good reference).
-Drink lots of water if it is hot. (Holy moly!)
-Streamline your kit.
-Get NOD’s.
-FLIR rules!
-Boonie hats for the woods.
-Get some rain gear.
-Anti-tilt followers are nice.
-Not all flash suppressors are created equal.
-Have an orienteering compass.
-The MVT shield is a high quality piece of kit.
-Those taco magazine pouches look nice and they work.
-Velcro is very noisy in the still woods.
-You don’t want the muscle memory gorilla.
-the new MVT Rifleman Challenge course is tougher than the old one (!)….train up. *Note

Jon R T (aka Blind Sack….why?….you don’t want to know)

*Note: the 2-Mile Tactical Fitness Test has changed route. The new route has a hill in it that you do twice as part of a circuit. It’s a gut check. However, with uphill, there is plenty of downhill – it was felt that this was better than using the entrance road to the site, which was basically an uphill slog for the whole mile back to the finish. I have beta tested it, and as the winner of the first Challenge, Jon also ran it. Times have been adjusted so the Vanguard time is up by two minutes to 25 minutes and the Rifleman time is also up by two to 30 minutes. Although that is a standard 15 minute mile pace and may appear easy in writing, the 2-Miler is supposed to be a gut check, and the hills make it so. You need to get running/shuffling on the plentiful downhills to make it up.