BOLC II - Week 2

Holy hell, this week was long. It's kind of strange how, both weeks, each day felt like a whole week, but at the end the whole week felt like one long day...

Anyway, this week was BRM (basic rifle marksmanship) and US Weapons. We zeroed our weapons, did a known-distance (KD) range, and qualified, and then spent Friday shooting off 50-Cals, 249s, 240Bs, MK19's, and 203s.

Zeroing was more difficult than I anticipated... we're using CCOs (close combat optics) instead of the old iron sights, and getting used to them was a pain. You're supposed to keep both eyes open, which is weird as hell, and (supposedly) if your target is more than 50m away you don't have to have your red dot centered (I don't believe that... nothing is completely parallax free, so if I have the time to center the dot, I'm going to...). Zeroing at night with the PEQ15s (umm... basically an infrared laser devide) and NODs was ok, but I wasn't issued a PEQ15 so I had to fire someone else's weapon. After it was already zeroed. And then my platoon got screwed into picking up everyone else's brass. *sigh*

Known distance was easy, and kind of fun. Basically you're just shooting at the same target from 100m, 200m, and 300m, so you can see where you tend to place your shot groups at different distances. KD at night was a waste of time, because they weren't marking the targets with... I forget the name, but basically marking them with tape that shines in infrared. Since they didn't do that, once we were farther than 100m away we couldn't see our shot groups. We also couldn't see the numbers on the lanes, which was a pain. I'm pretty sure I shot someone else's target a couple times.

Qualification... once again, CCOs are a pain to get used to, and I had to keep reminding myself not to close my left eye. I shot 29/40 though, which was good enough to get off the range. Qual at night was horrible... mainly because we all forgot that the PEQ15 has an IR spotlight on it, so we couldn't actually see our targets with the NODs. I also was never issued a mount for my NOD, so I had to borrow someone else's, and basically hold it with my left hand while I fired with my right, since it wasn't adjusted to fit me. Joy.

Tuesday and Thursday were long days, since we were doing the night stuff. We didn't leave the ranges until 2am both days. Fprtunately, our cadre took pity on us, and cancelled PT. Unfortunately, we won't have organized PT next week either, since we'll be in the FOB, so I have to motivate myself to do it on my own. Yay...

Friday was ok, the lines were long and I never got to shoot the 50-Cal (which was all I really wanted to fire anyway :( ). The MK19 was cool, but getting the damned thing to not jam was a pain in the ass :-/

Oh well... The infantry museum opened yesterday, so I'm going to check that out this weekend. Otherwise, not much going on I guess... 2 weeks down, 5 to go.