I had the pleasure of taking a Carbine II Course with GreenOps yesterday.

As the graduate of Carbine and tactical Course from 3 other providers I feel qualified to write this AAR.

Pros:

- Highly credentialed Instructors who clearly care about their students success and are possessed with respect for their audience. A nice mix of high end .mil  with some LEO expertise thrown in.

- The level was perfect for a Level II IMO:
It was not too easy to get a near perfect score in every drill  but neither was it made artificially so easy to just give everyone a feel-good moment..
In other words the level of rigor was perfectly balanced: Hard enough to show average shooters they needed work ( and where) and reasonable enough that a strong shooter would not get a plethora of artificial fails due to exercise artifacts.
I believe this balance is important.

- They worked a full spectrum of capabilities..
No endless repetitions of the exact same updrills....  but variance of box drills. various different updrills, dot torture , barricade work and State police qualification heats, all alternated to keep it interesting

- They were not particularly doctrinaire. Where a different school of thought existed to do something different they would usually acknowledge it, explain what the other positions was.

- The One day class was actually a neat package. That way you can get some good training in but still have a good chunk of the weekend left for yourself.

- At 500 the round count was perfect IMO. If it had been much more it may have been a disincentive for some folks as the ammo costs had been high for them.. anything substantially less might have made the drive and day spent seem less worthwhile.. so 500 rds IMO is  a perfect round count for a 1 day course.

-It was clearly  a level 2 class.. . I spotted only 2 guys (out of 12 ish) who seemed to struggle  a bit . but this seemed due to them shaking out new kit....
So IMO the instructors had done a good job in screening for level two  as some pretty competent attendees were in this class.
I consider myself a very competent shooter w/ the Carbine but I had to be 100% switched-on to outshoot my immediate neighbors on the line.
From what I could see there were least one to two guys further down the line whose groups always seemed a bit tighter than mine and who were equally as fast ...often faster. I very much enjoy being able to measure myself against skilled folks.

- They let people register literally the evening before. a Buddy of mine had called me that Friday asking me what I was doing, I told him I was doing this, so he tried to register at last minute and was still able to get in. No hassle was given to him (like I have experienced elsewhere before) for a late registration.

- The introduction of steel targets for portion of the course gave immediate student feedback via the "ping" .. This is very valuable and help and drove us students to try our hardest and focus 100% .. no one wanted to be the guy who would go "bang" and then no "ping"...


Con:

- Bi-metal bullets were disallowed  (as was Green tip) due to some targets being steel rather than paper or plastic. As it turned out the majority of targets we shoot could have allowed it. Had to shoot my spendy brass ammo rather than my Wolf 62gr (for which I was zeroed).
In the end it turned out it was only maybe 100 rds or less that where shot on steel and the other 400 rds could have been drawn form the more affordable part of my stash.
Spoke to a couple of the instructors afterwards and they said they would probably publicize in the future that only 100 rds need be M193 clones (or equivalent non penetrator and non bimetal) and the rest can be economy bi-metal bullets if students so chose.

Not  a real big deal but needed to mention it.. for completeness as no AAR is complete w/o a "con" :)



Summary:
- It was superior all around to the one dayer I took elsewhere the other weekend.. even though that one included live-fire vehicle downdrills, and I still feel I got more out of this one.
- I acknowledge I am a fairly demanding and critical student but I think these guys have a good instruction system going and I will be back soon..

BlueZ,

It was a great class with motivated students. We really appreciate the course review. Thank you for the kind words. We look forward to training with you again.