I attended Defensive Carbine 1 with Defensive Concepts in Carthage NC during May 2016.  The website for the course is here.  Here's a summary of my thoughts afterwards.  Sorry for the goofy format, but I’m limited to 2000 characters per post.

Company
Defensive Concepts is a small two-man company.  Steve and Chris are the two employees, and both are engaged in the administrative and the instructing portions of the business.  If you've met either of them, Chris is the louder skinnier one, and Steve is the quieter, larger one.  Chris does nearly all of the instructing, with Steve providing support.

Site
This class was held at Trigger Time in Carthage NC.  I was very impressed with the quality of the range.  There were several different bays that had provisions for multiple scenarios.  Our bay was 50 yards.  No one was using the other bays during our class, but I got the impression that shooters in various bays would not disturb each other. There is a covered shelter with picnic tables at each bay, which is a godsend during the summer months.  The restrooms are portable style, but were extremely clean.  Parking is ample and private.  There are a couple fast food restaurants nearby that are feasible for a quick 45 minute lunch, and there are plenty of hotels in the area as well.  The one complaint I had was that someone had damaged our bay's steel targets, so we had to get creative in order to allow everyone to shoot steel.

Content
This is the website's description of the course content:

"The course curriculum covers the following topics: marksmanship fundamentals (sight alignment, sight picture, trigger manipulation, zeroing of sights), carbine manipulation (loading, unloading, malfunction clearance), shooting on the move, use of cover and concealment, and extensive shooting drills at various distances using several shooting positions."

DC also offers a Defensive Carbine .5, which is intended to be an introduction to the carbine platform, and a Defensive Carbine 2, which is an extension of this class with more shooting while moving and more use of cover and concealment.

This is a 2 day class that has zero classroom time.  All instruction takes place on the range.  Overall I found the site description to be fairly accurate.

Required Experience
I've been shooting recreationally for about 5 years.  I have taken two handgun classes and watched a few DVDs, but this was my first formal carbine class.  I was well-prepared for this course.  There were several shooters that were handling a carbine for maybe the second or third time.  It is my opinion that they should've taken Defensive Concepts' Carbine .5 class first, but this class was still mostly applicable to them.  There were some ex-military guys in the class that seemed a little bored. For a more experienced shooter, this class may be best used as a fun range experience or just a means to maintain existing shooting proficiency.

Equipment
Almost everyone in the class brought an AR.  The class is compatible with other platforms, but the content is mostly geared towards the manipulation of this platform and the 5.56 round.  The instructors worked with the exceptions in the group and the training was still meaningful for them.  Technically there is no requirement for ammo carriers, but it is recommended.  Everyone having lots of mags allows range sessions to be longer.  I would bring at least 5 mags and pre-load them the night before to save time.  I used an ammo carrier that held 3 mags, and I'm glad I did.  A scope with magnification is not needed for this course, but if you already have a scope that dials down to 1X or 2X, you should be fine.  Either iron sights or red dots are well-suited for this content.

As transitions are part of the curriculum, we all brought handguns and holsters.  No cross-draw holsters are allowed for handguns.  Pistol ammo carriers are optional; I never needed more than 2 mags for my handgun, but mine holds 17 rounds.

As with any class, electronic muffs are recommended, but not required.  I didn't bring any and didn't have any trouble hearing the instructors.

Schedule
It's been a few weeks, so I may have missed a topic or two, but this is pretty close.  Each of these items denotes range instruction as well as drills to illustrate the content.  We went from 9:00 to 5:00 both days with a 45 minute lunch break.

    Day 1
    Introductions
    Safety Briefing
    Zeroing
    Stance
    Target Zones
    Close-Range Drills
    Reloads
    Transitions
   
    Day 2
    More Transitions
    Timed Shots
    Malfunctions
    Mid-Range Drills
    Kneeling
    Shooting while moving
    Range Cleanup
    Closing Comments

Class Pros
I thought that this class served as a very good demonstration of the basic carbine techniques we should all learn.  The instructors were well-informed and qualified.  The pre-class communication was clear and the training site was very good.  The safety briefing was well-handled and I felt the environment was kept safe throughout the training.  I thought the demonstration of height-over-bore and holdover during zeroing was very well done, and forcing us to zero from prone was good as well.  The transition content was well-executed and we had good use of both paper and steel targets.  We planned for a 50/10 shooting to break ratio, which I thought was reasonable. Something I hadn't seen before was what I called "group mistake sessions." Whenever some sort of weird malfunction or incident occurred, the entire class was halted and we all circled up to understand what happened and how to handle it. Some examples were a few nasty double feeds, a failed optic, and a non-dangerous sympathetic fire incident.  Chris and Steve did a good job of providing feedback and help with students that were struggling.  Many of the rifle drills involved a certain number of hits to various target zones.  Chris randomly assigned the number of hits to each zone before calling the drill, which I've always thought was useful.  It forces you to improvise and react to the scenario rather than assuming what should be done.  Perhaps most importantly, the class was fun.  I guess this is partially dependent on the other students, but the instructors did a nice job of keeping the mood light.

Class Cons
My concerns about this class mostly fall into a single bucket; lack of structure. This class felt less like a training session and more like a group range trip where one of us kept suggesting things we should do. The 50/10 schedule was not adhered to, and due to the temperatures we had one case of heat exhaustion after skipping two breaks. However, sometimes the breaks ran obnoxiously long because the instructors were swapping stories with the students.  The first one or two were entertaining, but most of us were grumbling about it by the end of Day 1.  We also had some shooters show up with un-zeroed rifles, so we spent well over half of day one on zeroing. This was mostly wasted time for me and several others in the class. To make up time, Chris proposed that we start day 2 an hour early.  I thought this was a reasonable compromise.  So all the students showed up an hour early, as well as Steve.  However, Chris didn't show up until normal time so we got zero benefit out of that extra hour.  This was more than a little irritating to many of us.  It also cost us the "cover and concealment" content of the course because we never made up the time we lost.

I was also surprised by the amount of profanity Chris used.  To be fair, he did ask if anyone minded.  However, the amount of 4-letter words Chris can force his monologues was pretty shocking.  The frequency of dirty jokes was similar.  I don't mind that type of humor, but it got pretty old after two full days of it.  Maybe not an issue for everyone.

Last, I brought 1000 rounds for this course as required.  That cost me quite a pretty penny, but I was excited at the thought of that much trigger time.  For me, that was a factor in choosing this training class over others.  However, at the end of Day 2, I had only fired about 360 rounds.  That's a pretty big difference.  That didn't seem to bother everyone, but I felt like I spent $300 that I didn't need to.

Bottom Line
This class was a good introduction to the carbine platform.  The site was excellent, and the training content was very good.  The ambiance struck a good balance between business and fun.  However, I think Defensive Concepts needs to improve their professionalism significantly.  In our case, the class would've benefited from a pre-zeroed rifle requirement.  For me personally, the lack of enforcement of a schedule, the wasted hour on Day 2, and the low round count push this company into the NO category.  I will not be training with Defensive Concepts again.  But they are cheaper than nearly all of their competitors ($275 fee covers both days), so they may be an appealing option for those on a budget that are looking for a slow-paced class.

I have been to several of their classes. Everything except the lowlight and shotgun stuff.  Always worth my time and money.
Doesn't hurt that trigger time is 20 minutes away.

Lucky man, I wish TT was closer to me. Seems like all of the major training courses for a lot of instructors are held there, and its about 4 hours from my area.