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To answer your original question of what do you do with a large class and small range... here is what we do.

Don't send everyone to the range at the same time. We hold our class size down to 32 because we have 8 shooting lanes on the range. 16 people go to the range. 16 people eat lunch while watching "The NRA's Guide to Personal Protection Inside the Home" (DPS approved video in 2005, 60 minutes long.)

It takes about an hour for 2 rounds of 8 shooters, so that works out great. So, what do the other 8 students do at the range when they aren't shooting? They are watching, observing, helping keep the 8 shooters pointed in the right direction and out of trouble. In other words, practicing gun safety. I think that qualifies as instruction.

They get done shooting and headed back to class about the same time the video is done and those students are headed to the range. Now, understand, you cannot manage this scenario all by yourself. It requires one instructor in the classroom, and one on the range at all times. And an extra RSO to help manage the range. Luckily, there are 2 of us, so we only have to come up with one other to help RSO.

Now, knowing you aren't good at math, you need to get your wife to figure out for you how many students you can have in a class to make this work for you.

4, 8 hour days is 32 hours.

So, you, yourself, personally, actually spent 4 hours ON THE RANGE and SHOOTING to make the 36 hour minimum, right? Not watching, not listening, not driving to the range...not doing anything else other than pulling the trigger? 4 hours.... really?

When you were at instructor school, if your time at the range only included the time you were ACTUALLY on the line shooting, would you have met the minimum class time required for your class? 28 or 36 hours?

Which, oh by the way, has been reduced somewhere along the way from the original 40 hours required. How did that happen?

wgoforth wrote:The 10 hours is INSTRUCTION time. You may count the minutes that person was actually shooting, but not the entire time the class spent at the range. ie, if you have a large class and the entire class is standing at the range for 2 hours waiting to shoot, you may not count that entire time. If that person is at the firing line shooting for 15 minutes, you may only count 15 minutes. They went over that aspect thoroughly in the recent Instructor School because they said so many were violating this aspect. Nor may you count travel time to and from the range.

I believe that watching other people shoot can also be considered "instruction time". If DPS says you can learn by watching certain approved videos, then certainly you can learn something by watching others take their range proficiency testing. Especially if the instructor is offering instruction on safety, stance, sight alignment, trigger control, etc.