What did you think of the Night time IGL Match?

[Frank]

I hope everyone had a good time at the ight time match. Hope the lessons at the end helped as well. It is totally different shooting in NO light isn't it? Let me know what you think about the match.

[john]

Frank,
the night IGL match was excellent! I hope you all consider continuing this trend along with Friday Night Fights (I'll be there this Friday), as you stated it's totally different shooting the COF at night, even when I had shot it earlier that same day. More than anything, it was a great chance to validate ( or prove invalid) both TTP's and gear. A few notes I took away from the night IGL match:

1) Weapon mounted pistol light was absolutely validated. As the lessons at the end proved that utilizing a pistol and a hand held light CAN be done effectively, I've found that for me personally a pistol mounted light was much easier to use and was able to get quick, accurate hits on target with only momentary bursts of light. I was also able to maneuver through the shoot house, conduct speed reloads and search/assess/engage with only the slightest difference to daytime shooting. As I shoot with a thumbs forward grip, my support hand thumb only had to activate the momentary on switch of the light, everything else was standard shooting. This might not work for everyone, but for me personally this method was validated.

2) The endcap click switch to my surefire mounted on my M4 is getting thrown off ASAP, to be replaced by a surefire pressure switch (newer style with fenced in pressure pad). I found that when I would put pressure for "momentary on" to engage a target, the light would get clicked on "constant" due to the recoil pushing the button into my thumb. Numerous times through the night match I fumbled the momentary/full clicky because it would be on a different setting than I wanted. For example, during the 2 rounds rifle, transition, 2 rounds pistol drill my rifle light was inadvertently activated to "constant", so when I transitioned to pistol my rifle light was still on giving away my position. This also caused me to have to go back to my rifle, unclick, then go pack to pistol. Epic fail, but lesson learned and something just dry firing won't induce at the house.

3) Having the light on is a "comfort zone", I had to get used to utilizing small bursts of light, followed by movement, then another burst. I'm already much more comfortable doing this, rather than moving around with the light constantly on. That was a bad habit that was worked out that night.

Those were just some of the take aways I had from that night, there were many more as well. Reaching a failure point and overcoming it safely in training/competition is invaluable, it's the reason I think we all show up in the first place. Again, I can't give enough praise to shooting the IGL match in full darkness.

[davesc2]

The night match was extremely valuable for me. I've done some low-light/no-light dry-fire training in my house but my HD pistol has a mounted light but without a holster that allows a mounted light I had to use a hand-held light and while that allows some flexibility the value of a mounted light was pretty clear.

Lasers I had always seen as a bit of an unnecessary gadget that had value as a training tool but not so useful for shooting...I was wrong, very wrong. For the 3rd stage I had a little bit of issue finding the furthest cardboard targets against the berm because the colors of the target and berm blended together but I knew the target was there so I just adjusted POA off of the non-threat. Watching some of the people with lasers it looked like they were using the laser to find the difference in depth and ID the target that way.

I was really surprised at how much I could get done in that 2-3 seconds of light as far as finding, ID'ing and engaging a target. I know I went beyond that 3 seconds several times when I got frustrated trying to figure out using the hand-held light with the pistol but at least I figured it out and that's why this night match was so necessary and valuable for me. I need to find what works for me and my platforms and trying stuff out in the backyard or garage can only get me so far, getting into an actual training scenario engaging targets puts everything to a much better test.

Definitely looking forward to more night matches.