Just finished my SQ here in Meaford, I didn't particularly find the Grenade range to be all that fun. For one, they didn't allow us to look through the view ports, apparently it was unsafe because the glass wasn't 3 inch thick. Was only 2 inch thick. The practice nades seemed to me to be a waste. I threw one that went off just after coming out of my hand. And figure, for the cost for every two or three of them you probably have yourself another real grenade. Thankfully we only had two duds the whole time. Apparently the course before us had 8 duds, so they spent the whole day on the grenade range instead of half there and half on the machine guns.
The machine guns were more fun, but on our course critique the same thing I'm sure everyone else says... "MORE AMMO!" We got lucky, and our instructors managed to get us 165 rnds for the C6 and 150 for the C9. So a bit more then what they had to give us. The phosphorous for the C9 ammo was practically worn off, so the only really thrill you got out of it was hitting the tank at about 150 to 200 m's out. Makes a nice echo to boot. And the C6, well thats just fun incarnate. Not as much kick as everyone claims, but that thing can unleash some hell. And the tracers for it were perfect. Nothing like watching the ricochette shoot up some 50 to 100m's into the area after smashing into the turret of one of the tanks. The experince was very good, it wasn't enough shooting to get a really good feel for those weapon systems, but its exactly what its supposed to be on the SQ - a familiarization shoot. I wonder how stoppages are on the C9 and C6 under a more of a sustained fire role, IE operating in a fire base for a platoon level attack.
When we did our offensive and defensive dismounted ops in the field the C9 behaved well with the blanks, so long as you were firing in Adverse. Any time I fired or watched someone fire in normal with the blanks with the C9 you may get one or two bursts out but she'd get a gas stoppage almost immediately.
My only beef with the SQ course was that they've cut Mine Awareness from it, thankfully Captain McArthur took flak for us by giving our course two extra days to fit in Mine awareness and a few other things that our instructors thought would be useful. I really hope that those in charge of setting the length of a course take the course critiques from those of us going through the course and the instructors seriously and start expanding a little bit on the current SQ.
Anywho, take care.