Security in the Home: Vacation Electrical Timer

One of the items mentioned in the NRA Refuse to be a Victim class is a simple electrical timer to turn lamps or TVs on/off at various times in order to make it look like someone is home. Such timers are also good for other purposes, like saving money by running a water heater only during the times you usually need it. In my case, I got one to save money on running a recirculation pump on my hot water supply (in addition to the ones we have for controlling lamps, and in the winter, our Christmas tree lights).

At the low end, you can get a mechanical electrical timer for about $10. Amazon sells one (The Intermatic TN711C 24-hour timer) which is adequate for controlling a few lamps, and features a “randomizer” that causes the on and off times to vary by a few minutes either way to avoid the “timer-controlled” predictability. You can probably find a mechanical timer even cheaper without the randomizer, but the randomizer is a good feature to have, and my experience with the cheaper timers is that they don’t keep time reliably. When I used one with my recirculation pump, I found that after a week, the time was off by enough the the pump wasn’t running when I needed it.

Also, if you have a power failure, the timer just stops while the power is off, and the time will be off by the length of the power outage when it comes back on. That might not matter much if your primary usage is to run lamps on “vacation mode”, but if you are using it for saving money by turning off appliances when unneeded, it’s a bother.

A better solution in that case is a digital timer. While the mechanical timer is a bit simpler to set up, it is much less versatile. A digital timer, depending on the features, will run two or three times the price of a mechanical one. My wife purchased a GE 15079 Digital Timer, which features up to 20 different on-off times over a 7-day period, so you can set up different times for weekends and weekdays, etc. For security purposes, it has a simple push-button random setting. One of the nicer features of this timer is a built-in battery backup, so power failures don’t cause the timer to lose the time of day. That also means that you can un-plug the unit and move it to another location without having to completely reprogram it, making it a portable timer.

We did find one drawback to this unit, namely, the instructions were written in teensy-tiny print on a small slip of paper, which can be a problem for folks in the trifocal generation. My wife took the instruction sheet and scanned it into her computer so she could enlarge it enough to read easily. Overall, though, we have been very pleased with this unit, especially after discovering that it has several useful features that weren’t even mentioned on the outside of the retail packaging, such as the count-down feature.

Trends in CHL Class Enrollment

Yesterday’s class was another smaller class, but it appears that the enrollments for the next few classes will be bigger (I’ve got a new registration script on my sign-up page, so it’s easier to track that now). I am also seeing a general reversal of the renewal percentages that I have been getting for the past three years.

Back about 6 years ago, the Texas legislature made a change in the renewal term from 4 to 5 years. At that time, I was teaching separate renewal classes, because I had about as many renewal students as initial applicants. But about 4 years after the renewal term change, I experienced a drop in the number of renewals — along with a gradual increase in the number of initial applicants. Since it wasn’t really worthwhile to teach a separate class for only two or three renewal students, I started just teaching initial-applicant classes, and letting the renewals attend a part of the class. I didn’t really like that as much, but since I was getting anywhere from 14 to 18 initial applicants, and 2 or 3 renewals in a typical class, it worked out well enough.

Then the Legislature made another change a few years ago. Now, after your 2nd renewal, you only have to attend the renewal class once every 10 years, or every other time you renew. By then, a typical class was 15 to 20 initial applicants, and maybe one or two renewals. Many classes had no renewal students at all.

But that has changed as of about 6 months ago. I am now getting enough renewal students to make it worthwhile to offer renewal-only courses again. Plus, I’m still getting renewal students in my initial-applicant classes (generally, they choose that class due to their schedule constraints, because they end up spending about an hour longer in the initial-applicant class because I pace the course for the new folks). Yesterday’s class (10 total) had 4 renewal students. It was going to be 7 renewals, but 3 of them re-scheduled to a later class.

I suspect the overall increase in the renewal students is only partly due to the end of the first five-year renewal period. I think that the current political situation has caused current CHL holders to place a higher value on the concealed-carry license, and the lapse rate is going down. On top of that, the interest in CHL has been steadily increasing long enough now that there are many more current CHL holders needing to renew. Most of my renewal students in the last 6 months have been first-time renewals, whereas before that, more than half of my renewal students were on their 2nd or 3rd renewal.

Over the past several years, I’ve seen several of the instructors that I know quit because they weren’t making enough money at it. Some of them quit just before the demand for CHL started to go up rapidly, and are now regretting that, because it’s quite a hassle to get back into the program once you have allowed your credentials to expire. Basically, they have to start over.

And now, the DPS new instructor classes are getting huge again, after several years of shrinking enrollments. Unfortunately for all those new instructors, there are some more changes coming that are going to make it much more difficult to make much money teaching CHL classes. I don’t really know what those changes are going to be (I’ve only heard rumors), but I can already see what I think are significant trends. For starters, the law was changed to allow more use of online instruction — and the DPS has already applied that to the instructor courses. Next time I renew my instructor certificate, I won’t have to go to Austin to do it. I will take an online course and exam, and then find another instructor to give me the range test. The only differences between the tests for an instructor and for a regular CHL applicant are 1) the instructor has to score 90% on all tests, and 2) the instructor must pass a range test with both revolver and semiautomatic.

I’m guessing that within the next two years, CHL renewals will be able to take the renewal course online, and my only role will be to administer the range qualification test. It’s possible that in another couple of years after that, the initial applicants will also be getting the classroom training online, which means that I will basically be out of the classroom training for CHL. I want to emphasize that this is only a guess. I don’t know for sure that any of this is really going to happen.

I have added NRA instructor credentials to my resume. In addition to my perception that I need to branch out in my business, I have mixed feelings about allowing someone who only barely passes the ridiculously easy range test to carry a gun. The CHL course prepares you for a gunfight about as well as buying a piano makes you a musician. The NRA courses do a much better job of preparing you to become (with practice) a skilled marksman. Judging from my general success in being able to coach inexperienced students through the CHL range test, I am confident that anyone who successfully completes my NRA Basic Pistol class will pass the CHL range test with a high score on the first try. With the trends I’m seeing in the way the CHL courses may be presented in the relatively near future, I may see an almost complete shift in my business to the NRA courses.

Large CHL classes vs. small CHL classes

A couple of weeks ago, I did a fund-raiser CHL class for the Greater Dallas Republicans. I had 29 students in the class, many of whom had little or no experience firing a handgun. That made for a challenging class. I discovered that some of the paperwork procedures that I had used successfully in smaller classes (I normally limit my classes to 16 students) simply did not scale well at all, making things a bit more chaotic. And on top of that, the classroom and range facility that I used made some minor changes in procedure. It’s always a little surprising to me how just a minor change in my routine can throw me off my game. Fortunately, my brother was there to help, and while we both ended the day feeling like we’d been run over by a truck, we did manage to get through with most of the students having had a good learning experience.

Before I left that night, my brother and I had a talk with the range owner, and went some of the problems we had. He made some really good suggestions for improvement. My brother and I brainstormed a bit over the following week, and we came up with some other things to try.

I had the opportunity to experiment with some new procedures in a smaller class yesterday (June 12th, 2010). Since I only had 10 students, I didn’t ask my brother to come down from Pittsburg (TX), but my wife helped me run through some of the changes in procedure (she handled the notary and the student check-in). We had some glitches in the new procedures, but since the class was small, we were able to handle them fairly easily without the class dissolving into chaos, and I think I have found things that will scale well enough to work for very large classes. Meanwhile I have thought of a few more ideas for making the class go more smoothly, and enhance the experience that the student has in this very long class day.

I have been at this for over 8 years now, and I continue to learn and improve my classes.

One thing that became very clear to me is that  the range testing for inexperienced students becomes exponentially harder with increasing class size. When you have only one or two inexperienced students on the firing line, you can give effective coaching, and almost always get them to shoot well enough to pass, but only through reminding them of the very basics before nearly every round. In a very large class, you are likely to have 6 or more inexperienced shooters on the firing line, and you simply can’t provide the same level of coaching — and invariably, one or two of them will fail the test on the first try, in spite of the fact that the range test is almost insultingly easy. I have come to the conclusion that my predisposition to accept completely inexperienced students (especially in the larger classes) doesn’t really do them any real favor, and I need to require some experience or training in basic handgun safety and marksmanship before accepting a student into my CHL class.

Because of this, I got certified as an NRA instructor for the Basic Pistol Shooting course, and I am offering those courses starting in July 2010. The first class is being offered at an introductory rate of $89, but that is really too low a rate to cover my costs and my time for a smaller class. For that course, I want smaller groups, and I want to use a co-teacher in order to make sure every student gets the maximum benefit, so I will be raising my course fee to $139/person (perhaps more) after my first presentation of the class. I will be limiting the class size to 8 students. Students wanting to take a combined NRA+CHL class can take the CHL range test the same day as the NRA portion, while the NRA marksmanship training is still fresh on their minds, and will be able to finish the CHL portion of the course earlier than the rest of the class.