Originally Posted By User55645:
Linseed oil or Beeswax for steel

I'd be leery of letting others know you have plenty of ammo to waste

6 AA's can be used in lieu of a 9V

Originally Posted By taliv:
Practicing away is a good idea.  Seems like it involves quite a few folks though

Originally Posted By User55645:
@Lowdown3
I'd just like to point out I never said not to train nor live fire. I said to be leery of letting others know you had ammo. The examples you gave were the epitome of what I said. Leaving your AO to train is being "leery" (cautious).

I do like your use of a drone, though. Just pay attention to flight level, direction of travel, etc. Like a homing pigeon, it could be used as a vector to your camp.

Originally Posted By taliv:
I do have a suppressed 22 lever gun and a lifetime supply of 22lr.  But my 9mm suppressed are quieter.  

Thanks for the options on paint.  Maybe I can try the lithium.  With the price of a .88 can of spray paint pushing $5 now (and prob half the contents) a lot of alternatives might start becoming cost effective.  

Originally Posted By Lowdown3:
Excellent points Rock.

Ideally everyone would be training ahead of time- ideally...  

Ideally everyone would be more or less on the same level with training, as say a military unit may be- ideally...

What happens with us civilians in this sort of thing is that some convinced themselves they know everything they need to know ("grandpappy taught me to shoot when I was 12" often heard prepper type mentality) or the "I was in the Army 50 years ago" thing. A lot has changed. I remember having an old Marine in class, nice older guy, gave him massive props for coming to an all day/most of the night class. He was hell bent on holding his rifle like a paddle (port arms IIRC??), this was of course a safety issue. I worked him a lot on a patrol ready type carry muzzle down but he was constantly reverting to port arms (I call it paddle hold, looks like your holding a canoe paddle LOL). We literally had to change the class around him and his inability to change this. Morale of the story- training concepts change what was current in 1968 may have something better in place now.

Typically in a civilian group you have some other factors that can affect training levels in the group. Attendance to training events is a major one. "Damn! Where is everyone?" "Joe is on vacation, Ted had to work, Jim's wife has his balls in her purse...."    Do you cancel the training event because they are lacking? Most likely not you move on. So then what happens over time is you get some that are pretty regularly and that shows when it's time to shoot a qual, work drills, etc. But maybe Joe and Ted show up in the PAW, hell maybe even Jim finds his nutsack and his responsibility for his family and shows also!  Now you have a mixed group as far as capabilities go. And it's not easy to keep up with who has had what training, especially when it's done regularly. You can write it down and should to an extent maybe just not using normal names.  So Joe, Ted and nutless Jim now have some catch up training to do. And these are your standard guys, not even your brother in law that showed at the last minute or Jack's wife and sons that haven't had a lot of training, etc.  When you look at it in this regard it's easy to see that their will be some training needed after the fact.

Some of it can be done on a "mentor" type basis. Double up a guard watch with one of your trained people and one that needs some training- provided the trained person if of the maturity and type to take this task on- bad habits we don't want.  But pairing up say a trained adult male with one of the kids for example is a good way to do this. We always paired a younger person with an experienced one. What typically happens is the younger wants to impress/fit in with the experienced and will listen well, etc. (all things being equal). Never pair up two kids together- I remember cringing watching "Homestead" when they had two kids out on OP, trainwreck incoming..

This sort of "mentor" type work in can work with OJT training to an extent. After a certain amount of training, dry work, dry walk thrus etc, 1 or 2 (max in a larger patrol) are worked into a security patrol. This helps them gain experience but doesn't risk putting out say a 4 man patrol consisting of 1 experienced and 3 new guys. I am of the opinion that even your "support" people should be rotated into a security patrol regularly for a number of reasons.

One type of "training" weapon we do keep is gas airsofts, where the gas is inserted into the magazine and the magazine holds 40 rounds. They operate and look exactly like a normal rifle, no large "hopper" with 300 paintballs, no weird manipulations, etc. If you had one of these a lot of manipulations work, actual mag changes and short range accuracy training could be done with these. The sound is significantly less than a suppressed weapon and again any work with them would involve actual manipulations like your normal rifle, which is a plus.

Originally Posted By ROCK6:

These are such great points and realistic experience as to the challenges of serious training in civil world and the realities of competing priorities.

In the next couple years, I’m going to find myself in a unique role to do some “training” with four boys (kids from my wife’s niece…essentially our “grandchildren”. Good boys, all athletes who love the outdoors. They’re excited with me moving down right by them. While I didn’t want to invest in Air Soft again, that may very well be a great option to do some individual and small unit training with the boys. The niece and her husband are rock solid “kids”.

Quick addition about your “seasoned Marine student”. One of my primary instructors outside of Atlanta is an older, former Marine (God bless him!). He’s actually great, but some of his methods are old school but he doesn’t force them. My son was around 16 doing the tactical rifle class and C-clamped his AR with his support arm extended. He did a little competitive shooting and it worked for him. Marine instructor kind of dogged him out at first, but after drills, he left him alone. Some old dogs can’t learn new tricks; you end up tolerating them and feed them fewer treats!

ROCK6