Student Review: Night Optical Device Firing 19 Sept: ‘Hello Kitty’

WTF? OK, before we get into this Student Review, I want to disabuse you of the notion that it is written by a female. I’m a little nonplussed by the handle ‘Hello Kitty’ myself. The guy has a shaved head and a bushy goatee, and looked like a viking on the night firing class!

AAR Night Optical Device Firing – Sept 19
Hello Kitty from TN

I got the opportunity to take the NODF course in conjunction with the updated CTT course.  It was well worth the money and time.

Instructors: Max, Chris and Aaron.
Only 2 students including myself attended.

We started at 1730.  Course lasted roughly 4 hours.

I used a PVS14 and a Crye skullcap.  Along with a rifle mounted OTAL infrared laser.  I also used my battle rig I used during the CTT course.

We started out with a lecture on how to setup your NVG with  personal preferences from each instructor.  (See Chris’ NVG article on blog.)  Max discussed some tactical applications to consider when using NVGs.  Excellent learning opportunity.

Next we moved to range.  All while using our NVGs, by the way.  Entire class was done in the dark.  On the range we zeroed our lasers on our rifles.  Once we got zeroed, we began shooting in different firing positions, moved to reactive firing drills, RTR (return fire, take cover, return effective fire) drills and then to fire and movement drills.

We ended the class with a final exercise.  An assault on an enemy camp.  We patrolled 300 yards into a valley, got into position and assaulted a mock camp with campfire and multiple targets using the fire and movement we learned on the range.

I am still processing everything I learned in this course.  The amount of info I did not know was astounding.  And it was only a 4 hour course.

Some of the many lessons I learned:  how to quickly and accurately put the laser on my target from patrol ready, how to move better on uneven ground, dealing with fogging when sweating heavily, making your laser safe from negligent discharge when moving into position, shadows can hide bad guys even when you have NVGs on, scanning constantly/head on a swivel, which is particularly challenging when assaulting, where is the enemy, where is my battle buddy, where am I taking cover next, etc.  using NVG is not easy and you have to put hours and hours of time using them tactically.

If you have NVGs or considering buying some, you do not know how to use them.  Trust me.  This course will make a huge difference.  Taking them out now and then and walking around is not the same, plinking with them on is not the same.  You need to train with them.  Our instructors had years of experience behind NVGs, why would you not want some of that knowledge?  Take this course.  And repeat.

Meow