[JGarcia]

Gene,

Our resident old fart (Presidents Hundred) is always drilling me on odd ball stuff which usually has me (and everyone else) stuttering and stammering with his questions.

This ACOG thing was one of them. It started because he wanted me to figure out how to get the MILS for the TA31F reticle given some data he provided me with.

I did it.

We finished our SDM course out at Camp Roberts, CA last week. We had a great time, graduated 27 students after two weeks of training. They came to training with the M4 and TA31F. The wind and light conditions were near ideal on test day, consequently we had some pretty high scores. The weather was mostly overcast and light sprinkles the rest of the time. We had one broken ACOG that somehow the prism cracked and got fogged over inside. This occurred on the 600 yard and in KD range test day, the shooter had to use his partners weapon and dope book, he passed.

The KD and UKD ranges at Camp Roberts, CA are excellent. On the KD range we could have trained 48 students if we had enough instructors. UKD range goes out to 1000 or more; the firing line is very wide about 170 yards, no significant dead space and no prominent fixed objects to assist in range estimation which made it a little more difficult than the range estimation exercise at Camp Robinson, AR. The unit we trained provided a dedicated range detail that did a ton of work for us which allowed more training time for students.

Camp Roberts, CA range control has no iron maidens, if you go out there to teach you will need to bring your own. They also had no spray adhesive for targets on the 6'x6's but they did have the paste you have to mix up. Classroom facilities are decent, but small. Range control was easy to work with and on the ball.

The guys shot very well out to the 600 Meter range, we nearly had a three way tie for top gun and had to have a shoot off. Good times. We typically set up a 700 Meter target and this time was no exception, we ranged it at 757 Meters, a few of our best students were capable of hitting it several times, but as I said conditions were ideal. We did notice some anomalies with the M4 back up iron sight that indicated either a couple of Soldiers reverting back to bad habits after three days of shooting or a 4 to 5 MOA windage error when changing from the 400 to 300 setting / yard line. Not quite sure about it yet so we are going to try and get our hands on some of these sights and experiment. We hope to be out there again this summer for another MTT.

One last thing. There was a very large squirrel population on the UKD range, and that's all I am going to say about that.