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In Revision

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Rant about bicycles is in revision.

It will return once I've marshaled my thoughts better.

It sounded better in my head when I was typing it, but didn't read near so well once I'd walked away for a bit.

Fifteen Years

Batting At The Bare Bulb

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Today marks the 10th Anniversary of the expiration of the [so called] Assault Weapon Ban.

It also marks the 20th Anniversary of me being politically active.  I remember talk/politics/guns

A lot has changed in those 20 years.  Mostly for the good (more than 1994 me would believe).  Some bad (much less than 1994 me would have expected).

Share The Road (Revised)

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Link

Share the road...

Keep saying it.

Maybe someday I'll start believing it; because by and large the people not sharing are on two wheels.

Let's just discuss bicycles as vehicles-same-as-cars.

First:  Minimum speed limits do exist and are generally 10 under the speed limit.  Are you holding that speed on your bike?  Obstructing traffic is something you can get a ticket for in a car.

Second:  The same as another vehicle concept breaks down when you consider, no license, no registration, no insurance.  Things that every motorist is required to have before pulling out onto a public roadway.  This lack of regulation and thus lack of enforcement is why the critical mass pricks have people so damned pissed off.  I did bother to look up the rules for bicycles, they have single file rules, keep to the right, get off the road and let traffic pass rules...  It appears that enforcement is the problem here.

Third:  That road is paid for mostly by taxes on fuel.  Fuel that your bicycle is not buying; therefore there's some justification that bikes are free-riders on the system and...

Fourth:  Those roads and the roadway system were designed and built for motorized traffic traveling at or near the speed limits.

Fifth:  If there's a bike path or bike lane use it and stay there for as long as it lasts.

Sixth:  I ride many miles a week so I am not saying this as someone who's just an irate car driver.

Because I am a bicyclist, I tend to pay more attention to cyclists and give them the same courtesy that I would like drivers to give me.

Realistically, what I am on a bike is a rather fast pedestrian and the physics are not on my side, same as riding a motorcycle, so it behooves me to pay more attention to the environment to protect my chubby pink skin.

Two Things

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First, I don't need another gun.

Second, I can't afford another gun.

The problem is J&G Sales has an intriguing price on a Star Model B in 9x19mm.

$320 for hand selected plus shipping and handling and C&R eligible!

That's November scrapings not today scrapings.

Surprisingly there's very little about the Star out there on the internet.

And a dearth of information in my library too.

This was fun:


Hecho En Argentina

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Willard may or may not have stopped by and may or may not have dropped off a .22LR conversion kit for a Browning High Power.

That looks like this:



In the box:  Take-down tool; slide assembly; conversion slide stop; and ten round .22LR magazine.

The conversion is a housing that looks like and replaces the slide of the host gun with a new slide and barrel assembly inside it.


The barrel "bushing" threads onto the barrel and is how the assembly is adjusted for fit to the host.  Tightening or loosening the bushing moves the hole in the barrel to align it with the slide stop pin hole in the frame.  A ball detent keeps the bushing from loosening during shooting.



Alas, someone did not swage the ball in correctly and Murphy caused Willard to lose the ball and spring one fine day.  It's probably a standard size ball and spring, just need to research a bit.  It's a standard 3/32" ball detent.  And for about $50 I can get 20 of them with springs from Brownells.  Now I look to see if I can find some cheaper locally.


Put together you can see that it doesn't have the same contours as the FN slide and transforms the appearance to something vaguely Smith and Wesson...  The ejection port is way farther to the rear than stock too.



Range report to come.

It's Getting Close To Halloween

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So Marv is prepping his 6.8 AR for zombies.


Powered By Spirograph


Didn't Prove What You Think

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An Arsenal SAM7SF is not an AKM.

Hornady 123gr SST is not 57-N-231.

You didn't prove the AK was as good as an AR.  You proved that a very expensive and very well made AK variant with optics is as good as any AR variant I can get from Wal Mart for about half the money.

That you have to take the care that Arsenal does to make the AK equivalent to a commodity AR affirms the idea that the AK is an inherently less accurate design.  That they succeeded doesn't dispel it at all.

Fucking Crooks

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Someone stole my information it seems.

Snipers Online UA of Green Bay, WI has been given $40 of my money in $10 increments; three on one day.

It'd be one thing if I'd donated to them, but it's quite another to find the money's been taken when you go to balance your checkbook.

Fail

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We didn't stake the detent ball in enough.

Drop back and punt!

.22 Conversion At The Range

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While the swaging job Marv and I did wasn't enough to keep the ball captured, it wasn't a total loss at the range.


We kept reading that you needed to use "high velocity" ammunition and there was a 200+ round break-in.  200 rounds of CCI "Mini-Mag" and 50 rounds of Remington Viper "Hyper Velocity" should do.

The second round short cycled.  The rest of the failures seemed random.

A total of four rounds that nosed into the feed ramp (1 Rem, 3 CCI) three short-strokes and fail to feed a new round or cock the gun and one that ejected then just sat there with the next round almost loaded.

I've definitely fired less reliable guns.

Accuracy was fine, POI was about an inch below point of aim at 7 yards.


Even left-handed!


Willard gave some aluminum cased .45 ACP ammo a try in his various commander sized guns and a Sistema Colt.  As is typical for 'luminum...


This was the only failure out of several boxes!  Huzzah!

Much Better

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An F-8D (F8U-2N) is much better equipped to handle the Godless Soviet hordes than the F-4B is during the Cuban Missile Crisis if it had gone hot in Europe.


Here's my third mount in five days...

It's a rare close-air-support mission to blow up tanks near Hamburg.  Zuni rockets kind of suck, but I did manage to get one tank by salvoing all eight.

The Crusader, unlike the Phantom, was designed from the get-go to bring guns to bear on the target, in fact the sidewinder rails were nearly an afterthought on the F8U-1 (F-8A).  This means that it can successfully be used in a dogfight at low level!

A note...  While Strike Fighters 2 does a decent job with the squadron markings most of the time, VMF(AW)-235 should have more red and stars on the nose.



PS: Also much better is the new RAM.  With 2x1gb from before plus 2x2gb I just got from Newegg, I have 6gb!  As they say, more RAM never hurts and often helps.  Frame rates are up and lag is down.  Plus I have two more 1gb sticks coming from Ebay.  Then I'll have two empty slots...  What's to do?

Shark Mouth On The Gator

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VF-111 Sundowners used the shark mouth on the noses of their planes.

It should be an aligator mouth on a Crusader since it's nickname around the boat was "gator".

Grumble

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I now have two dead MacBook Pro 15.4"!

I have an A1226, 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo with 256mb of VRAM and an A1260, 2.6GHz Core 2 Duo with 512 mb of VRAM.

Both are dead at the video card.  This is a well known problem with these models.  Both machines have even been through the recall repair too.

If one cannot afford a $320 Star B, one cannot afford a $270 logic board.

There's nothing huge in my life that's wrong.

It's the steady accumulation of small shit that I can't seem to shift that's bringing me down.

Silver Lining

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My blog finally gets more comments than Tams!

In other news, my glass is also 1/100th full!

I Just Noticed

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There's no difference between a screen shot taken with a slide-show like frame rate and one running seamless and smooth!


No real sense of action.  But you can see the wingtip vortices triggered by pulling some G.  The studied eye can even see that the tail-planes are down and a slight roll to starboard is starting.

I yo-yo'd over the top and rolled in behind this MiG-17 "Fresco A".

It was something of a turkey shoot because his flight was low on gas and basically had to hope I had run out of ammo or something since he couldn't spare a drop for maneuvering.

It also demonstrates the need to stick with your section!  If he'd had a wingman I might not have been able to tuck in with impunity like I did.

You may also notice that this is the fourth plane I've had in this campaign.  I get target fixated a bit and forget to check-six!

PS, it's really hard to get good action shots in this game because you have to do them as you're playing.  My mind tends to be more on the flying and less on "this would make a perfect Kodak moment!"

Today's Oxymoron

Great Britain Remains

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Scotland has decided to stay a member.

My heart does yearn for a free and independent Scotland.

But...

The reality of the political situation is that going on her own would almost definitely been a disaster.  An epic disaster.

The two leading parties being Socialist of the Promise-The-Moon stripe meant that there'd be some heavy doses of reality and/or disaster coming down the pipe.

In short, Scotland is a house in disorder and could not stand on its own.

Perhaps some house cleaning and shoring up and we should revisit this issue.

Next up, Florida Independence!  We have all the makings of a third world shit-hole AND the traditional weather!

Research Project

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This one is going to hurt my brain...

As near as I've been able to find, so far, the statutory language that requires NICS is nearly identical to the language for the anal probe of NFA.  At least as far as who can own such an item goes.

For Title I firearms NICS (or state run equivalent) is required by law if you're buying from an FFL.  There is no law requiring anything that a 4473 or 5320 asks for.  Everything on those forms is because of regulation created by BATFE.

At their core they are affidavits that the buyer is not a prohibited person.

It raises all manner of questions.

Not least of which, which came up recently...  If I am not a prohibited person, and I fill out the form wrong, I've broken no law but I have violated a federal regulation.  It chafes because all legislative authority is vested into Congress and none to the executive.

This is a research work in progress, so what I have here might be amended as I delve deeper into the rabbit hole.
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