TNVC recently ran another Nightfighter 101 class at our “home” range in Alliance, Ohio on July 17-18. This remains staple location in our training venue map, and it really ends up being like old home week when we are there. This was a sold-out class, and we really enjoyed having that many students again. The class had a healthy mix of law enforcement and civilians in the class and the class went extremely well.
The weather was, well, Alliance weather. We got lucky and missed out on all the precipitation during class hours, and for July, the temperatures and such were not that bad. On night two, we did see some effects of the weather on I2 technology—more on that later.
We saw a wide spread of night vision devices in this class. Everything from PVS14s to white phosphor DTNVSs. No student complained of being under-equipped and all the goggles worked great. No tech-related issues in this class.
Gear wise, this was a “loud” class—more than half the class ran without suppressors, which is not a big deal. It does make for some interesting light shows. Optics ran the spectrum of both type and height, with their associated results. Again, high mounts rule the day for night vision passive shooting.
We also saw a lot of handguns without both optics and light mounts/lights. Our recommended and preferred setup for a handgun is a red dot on top and a light on the bottom rail, all in a duty holster.
We encourage our students to bring what gear they have—learn to use what you have on hand, and then you can make informed purchases after the class. The only gear we strongly encourage purchasing prior to a class is a high mount for your carbine optic and a red dot on your handgun.
On night two, we did have some students that had trouble picking up the steel when we ran our final drill. Weather and other environmental conditions (smoke, temperature, terrain, etc) can all collaborate to make the I2 technology really struggle to see clearly. This location we use is excellent to demo that limitation. However, a little bit of coaching and use of tools such as lasers and IR illuminators helped them complete the drill.
Nightfighter 101 remains a fun and consistent class for us to teach. We really enjoy our students in this class, and we saw everything from novice users to repeat students in this class.
Our schedule remains busy and full this year. We are sold out for remaining training classes, but we do have an active waitlist, and seats generally open for each class. If you are interested in attending a class and want to get on the waitlist for a class, please email us at
[email protected]We are proud to be associated with the Alliance Police training facility, and we cannot say enough good things about the work Joe Weyer does to help us have great classes. If you have the chance to train there, you should really take advantage of it. Great location, amazing training opportunities and some super trainers train there.
Additionally, several companies generously stepped up to offer students swag and such for their attendance. We really appreciate their generosity and are proud to have them associated with our classes.
Rite in the Rain
Ops-Core
Unity Tactical
Thyrm
Geissele Automatics
Otte Gear
Phokus Research Group
Blue Force Gear
Cloud Defensive