Rangemaster Firearms Instructor Qualification Course of Fire

I’ve been writing a good bit on Rangemaster events and courses over the past couple of months, mainly because those are things I’ve recently participated in. It naturally follows that readers have recently been asking questions about those writings. The curious minds have had some commonly themed inquiries. Next to asking about the details of the Rangemaster Pistol Master Award, the most common inquiries are about the details and difficulty of the instructor qualification courses of fire.

Okay, so let’s talk about them. One at a time, with the exception of the fourth one from the Rangemaster Professional Pistolcraft Instructor Development Course, since we’ve already covered it. Across multiple posts. Starting with the Rangemaster Instructor Qualification, the first one required to earn the first Rangemaster Instructor certification.

The Course of Fire

Target: RFTS-Q

#	Distance	Start position	String	Par	Reps
1	3 yd	Holstered	Fire 3 rounds	3.00s	1
2	3 yd	Ready, gun in the dominant hand	Fire 3 rounds dominant hand only	3.00s	1
3	3 yd	Ready, gun in the non-dominant hand	Fire 3 rounds non-dominant hand only	3.00s	1
4	5 yd	Holstered	Fire 4 rounds	4.00s	2
5	5 yd	Holstered	Fire 3 rounds to the chest, then 1 round to the head	5.00s	3
6	7 yd	Ready, only 4 rounds loaded	Fire 4 rounds, reload, then fire 4 rounds	8.00s	1
7	7 yd	Ready, empty chamber	Attempt to fire, remedy the malfunction, then fire 2 rounds	5.00s	1
8	15 yd	Holstered	Fire 3 rounds	6.00s	2
9	25 yd	Holstered	Fire 3 rounds, drop to kneeling, then fire 2 rounds	15.00s	1

Scoring: First, add up all the impacts to determine the score. A hit in the 8-inch inner chest circle or the 4-inch head circle is worth five points. Hits between the 8-inch inner chest circle and the 10-inch outer chest circle are worth four points, and hits in the silhouette outside the circles are worth three. Line breaks count as long as the impact breaks the line entirely. Tears don’t count. A perfect score on the instructor qualification is 250 points, so the minimum passing score of 225 is 90%.

My Thoughts on the Instructor Qualification

This qualification has evolved over time. Specifically, the version I shot in August 2022, and the one I described here, is the 2019 revision. The student manual I received at the Rangemaster Instructor Development Course documents it.

Earlier Revisions of the Instructor Qualification

John Daub documented an earlier revision of the instructor qualification from February 2013 in his book Drills, Qualification, Standards, and Tests, which has some notable differences. First, all of the 3 and 5 yard strings that require a draw also require a side step. Additionally, the dominant hand only and non-dominant hand only work happens at 5 yards instead of 3. It calls for only one head shot instead of the three at 5 yards. Finally, the 25 yard string calls for an extra shot from the kneeling position, and the time limit is increased by three seconds. It might be interesting to perform a difficulty analysis on this version for comparison. At a glance, I suspect this earlier revision is a bit more difficult, but it’s hard to say by how much.

Tom Givens’ book, Concealed Carry Class: The ABCs of Self-Defense Tools and Tactics, holds another revision of the instructor qualification. The one in my copy of the book is from 2017. In this revision, the strings are identical to the 2019 revision documented in this post. However, the 3 and 5 yard strings that require a draw also call for a side step. In addition, the 25 yard string has a shorter 14 second time limit. Like the revision documented in Daub’s book, I suspect this version is also a bit more difficult. Again, though, it’s hard to say by how much.

Test Pressure

An aspect of this qualification that is hard to quantify is the difficulty added in the form of test pressure. After all, earning the Rangemaster Instructor certification requires a passing score, on top of a notable time and monetary investment. I would be lying if I said that wasn’t on my mind when I took the Rangemaster Instructor Qualification for score. That was true even though I had previously shot it with a passing score several times in practice while getting ready for the course. While practice and preparation can mitigate the effects of test pressure, it still has a way of negatively affecting performance.

Relative Difficulty of the Rangemaster Instructor Qualification

As Karl Rehn prescribes in his book, Strategies and Standards for Defensive Handgun Training, the first step in calculating the relative difficulty of the instructor qualification is establishing a Grand Master (GM) par time for the course of fire.

This analysis should be pretty straightforward, because we have data on GM performance for 8-inch A-zone hits at known distances from 3 to 25 yards. However, there are two oddities in the course of fire that require a little bit of guesswork. They are:

• Remedying the malfunction in string #7, which I’ll treat as a slide lock reload (1.25 seconds)
• The transition from standing to kneeling in string #9, which I’ll treat as a transition plus a shot from the ready position at 25 yards (0.5 + 1.3 = 1.8 seconds)

The Math

With that, here is the GM par time analysis for the instructor qualification:

#	Distance	Reps	Par	GM speed	Difficulty
1	3 yd	1	3.00s	1.40s (1.1 + 0.15 × 2)	47%
2	3 yd	1	3.00s	1.30s (0.7 + 0.3 × 2)	43%
3	3 yd	1	3.00s	1.30s (0.7 + 0.3 × 2)	43%
4	5 yd	2	4.00s	1.74s (1.2 + 0.18 × 3)	44%
5	5 yd	3	5.00s	1.86s (1.2 + 0.18 × 2 + 0.3)	37%
6	7 yd	1	8.00s	3.80s (0.85 + 0.2 × 3 + 1.75 + 0.2 × 3)	48%
7	7 yd	1	5.00s	2.30s (0.85 + 1.25 + 0.2)	46%
8	15 yd	2	6.00s	2.00s (1.5 + 0.25 × 2)	33%
9	25 yd	1	15.00s	4.80s (1.8 + 0.4 × 2 + 1.8 + 0.4)	32%

The relative difficulty of every string falls in either the easy or the normal difficulty bucket I suggested in the first post of this series. Given a total par time of 72 seconds and a total GM speed of 27.96 seconds, the Rangemaster Instructor Qualification comes in at an overall 39%, which is right at the top edge of easy difficulty. Based on that, I would say that a student who has reached C-class in USPSA or Sharpshooter in IDPA should be able to pass this qualification, assuming they can deal with the test pressure. Moreover, based on the charts in KR Training’s Relative Performance Measurement blog post, passing this qualification suggests the student has developed some automaticity. That, in turn, suggests they have been practicing with some regularity at a minimum.

Where the Points Go

Based on my experience and discussions I’ve had with others who have passed the instructor qualification, the strings where one is most likely to lose points are #2, #3 and #9. Strings #2 and #3 are the dominant and non-dominant hand only strings, with most points dropped during the non-dominant hand string. This is because one handed shooting is not something folks like to practice.

While string #9, the 25 yard string, is the easiest in terms of relative difficulty, most folks rush and send the shot as soon as they have a stable, acceptable sight picture. Still, with few exceptions for students who have very high levels of developed marksmanship skill, most students would benefit from shifting their focus to ensuring a good trigger press after establishing a good sight picture. While this takes more time, the par time leaves plenty of room for this additional task with each shot.

Closing Thoughts

Passing the Rangemaster Instructor Qualification requires that the student have consistent, competent pistol handling skills. More specifically: a safe and consistent draw with a decent grip, an adequate ability to visually process the information provided by their sighting system, and the ability to press a trigger without disturbing the muzzle and target alignment. In short, all of this is possible with some dedicated, intentional practice.

As mentioned, a USPSA C-class or IDPA Sharpshooter shooter has sufficient mechanical skills to pass the instructor qualification. However, they also will have to contend with the test pressure. USPSA B-class or IDPA Expert ability would make quick work of the Rangemaster Firearms Instructor Qualification, even with test pressure jitters on board.

Next on the ladder is the Rangemaster Advanced Firearms Instructor Qualification course of fire, which gets the same treatment.