OPERATION "CLIP AND RIP" 02 OCT 2004

   On Saturday, October 2nd, between 16 and 20 high speed militia persons deployed to camp Stasa in central Michigan to enjoy some crisp fall air, laugh at the expiration of the AWB, and for at least one of us, to re-acquaint ourselves with the whole "militia training" thing.

    The weather was sunny and clear, with temperatures in the 50's for most of the day. There was very minimal bug activity, and the humidity was low, despite a bit of recent rain. The road condition was excellent where the gravel had been dumped earlier this year, but at "corner delta" and along the "bean road", the mud was slightly threatening. Hopefully, with your cooperation, we can correct this next spring.

    We had three completely new folks there, Mike from Howell, and Rick and Danny from Ohio. Thanks for coming, guys, we hope you had a good time, learned some things, and we hope to see you again. We also had a couple of folks that I hadn't seen in the field in a long time, if ever. Bill and Randy, come back again soon. Great to see you out there.

   Mak9 was conducting gear checks on some of the newer guys as I arrived (Two of them completed Level One this day), which showed either good initiative, or lack of patience with my tardiness. Anyway, their gear all checked out, and we had standby gear to fill in if there had been any shortcomings. There wasn't.

   There was some function testing and firing of newly improved (post AWB) rifles. I had the chance to test fire an old SKS-D Sporter that Matt, of all people, had repaired to a functional level. Thanks, Matt, I now have another working semi-automatic rifle in the arsenal. Ha ha ha.

   While those needing to be timed headed out on their walk, accompanied by a bevy of already-qualified members, BR and I scouted out a place to set up the rope bridge for Bishop's class later in the day. BR learned the folly of flannel shirts in the fall woods, as a multitude of burrs and other assorted pricker things attached to his shirt.

    The time on the walk was phenomenal, with the guys coming in at between 28 and 31 minutes or so. Way to hustle up.

Look at that clear blue sky...

    There was some more test firing and a couple of the guys qualified. I have to mention that Mike from Howell was not only an excellent shot (10/10, first try), but also a very confident shooter as well. That's how we all need to be. Some folks didn't make it, but did come close. We hope that they can knock this out the next time.

    After a quick delicious lunch of Chuckwagon's famous burgers (with onions) and garlic beans, it was time for the anticipated rope class. We learned the bowline, the butterfly, and the square knot (okay, the square knot was called something else...), and their application toward a rope bridge. We also learned how to tie and hook up a simple Swiss seat with our own rope section. We all need a 12 feet long section of rope, and a good quality snap link/d-ring/carabiner, not the cheap kind, but a good quality one that can hold you and your gear, and then some. Bishop was very patient with us, and made sure that we all could tie, re-tie, and tie again each knot.

   He then, assisted by Doc, set up a rope bridge between two trees. This was not the area that BR and I had located earlier, but this was a better location for visibility and training purposes. Also, since his rope was a climbing rope, and not a static line, it would not have been cool to use for an actual crossing. (The climbing rope is designed to stretch more, while a static line is not. This is to protect climbers from injury if they should slip while climbing.)

  Then, while we were all Swiss-seated up, he went into some rappel basics, with just a set up from a tree, so we could get an idea of how it works. It would be cool to set up a tower or something to really give this a go. Hmmmm....

   Anyway, this was all a really interesting training class, as it was something a little varied from the normal shoot-shoot-shoot some more type of training that we do a lot. Everyone gave Bishop credit for the rope knowledge that he shared with us. This is how the whole thing works.

   Then it was time for the bread and butter drill, with two fire teams making an assault against a position. This time, we installed Super Six as a squad leader to coordinate the two teams. This really smoothed out the operations between the teams. A whistle was used for signal purposes. The drill was repeated over and over and over, first in the open to give everyone an idea of what went on, and then in the woods. We ran a camera to show how the approaches looked. A couple of times, Thumper and Chuckwagon tossed out some firecrackers to simulate "enemy" gunfire. One of the coolest things was when Thumper tossed out some fireworks for the first time, one of the fire teams (the one that I could see from my position) dropped immediately to the ground. They had not been warned about the fireworks, and this was a good instinctive move. You could expect this from postal workers, but I was impressed that a group of civilian militia folks knew this and did it automatically.

BR charging with 8mm.                                                                    Mak9 crossing the obj.

   After this (and after one die hard member whacked his leg pretty hard, but kept driving on), it was dinner time. Some of the folks went downrange and did more weapon familiarization and firing. (I had been working 70-hour weeks for a while, with no day off since September 11th, so I just HAD to blast away with my Daewoo and my Glock... ummm, the AR15 is out for....ummmm...maintenance. Talk about stress relief... )

   Super Six is trying hard to get some sales commissions from Mr. Kalashnikov, and I must admit that every time he encourages me to shoot his AK, I think harder and harder about getting one. Actually, he was knocking pins down pretty well with his old war horse.

Weapon M with Super Six's AK. This is NOT a misprint.

   We also saw some pretty decent pin slaying from Thumper with his new 30-30 lever action. This could be a functional militia rifle. And Randy had the most gimungous spotting scope of all time, with up to 120X magnification.

   After all of this, we stopped by to see the Camp Commander himself. He is doing well, but could use some manual labor help from time to time, especially with the dome.

   This was a good day, for sure, with a lot of learning, and a lot of drilling, and of course, a lot of shooting. We would like to dedicate this type of training to State Senators Jacobs and Brater...Thanks to everyone who came and participated. We hope to see you out there again.

-Weapon M