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SIGH

July 20, 2015, 11:58 am
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I am frustrated by the pride some people take in not even learning how to use modern technology.

I am happy for you that you've never owned a cell phone and your POTS is copper.  Just as I am happy for the ignorant savage in the rain forest who's never owned a longer ranged weapon than a bow and arrow.

I am frustrated by people who claim to be experts on a topic and don't bother to update their knowledge from time to time.

Yes, the round in question started as a means to improve terminal ballistics at close range.  Ten minutes after making that decision someone said, "it'd be nice if we could outrange an AKM too..."

If CQB was the the goal entire, then they'd have stopped when they discovered that 7mm did the most damage.  The person who initially developed the round is part of your rarified air of retired SF, why don't you call him up and ask him?

He was friendly enough on the forum.

Even though it is true they had an eye on CQB at first, that was 13 years ago.  In the mean time lots and lots of effort was put into the round to increase its reach.  It's not the round that it was introduced as.
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New Shooter Alert!

July 20, 2015, 2:17 pm
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Willard's granddaughter is now a shooter!


You just don't get this smile from being a new not-shooter...


This is her with Ian's US Survival AR-7.


Shooting lefty she blocked the bolt handle from reciprocating a couple of times.

She started with a handgun.


Willard started her off with hummingbird rounds in a .22 revolver fired single action just to build confidence.  And about 3 yards.  You have to start somewhere and it's way better for your first experience to be positive and fun than negative and frustrating.

I think she'll be back!


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Zastava CZ999

July 20, 2015, 2:26 pm
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We took Willard's CZ999 to the range.


It shoots a little left for me.  I put 15 into the head and 15 at the '7'.  Some of the vertical stringing is from the fans behind us blowing the target around.

I'd say it shoots!  Very comfortable in the hand and mild recoil.  Single action is nice and crisp, with a dead space in the takeup that took no time to get used to.  Double action is a long, jerky drag until it goes off.  The single hole to the right of the '8' was aimed at the '7' above it in double action.

We fired 60 rounds, proving it to be reliable for all time.  ALL TIME!  GRIN





Very pleasant, very affordable.  I wonder if I can trade him for my Star B...
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True Story

July 21, 2015, 10:16 am
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I'll go shooting in the rain.

I've found I'm fairly waterproof.

But there's various degrees of "the rain".

Here in sunny Florida, there's a rain that's not unpleasant and while you're wet, you're not really miserable because the air is warm enough you don't feel cold.

We get this kind of rain fairly regularly here on the Gulf side.

The Army has a slogan, "If it ain't rainin' we ain't trainin'".  It seems like much of the time I was in the field we were cold, wet and miserable.  Taking one-station-unit-training (OSUT) in winter in Kentucky didn't help either.

The Army experience has made me very adverse to being cold, wet and miserable.  I am a tool using monkey and shelter is a tool.  Air conditioning is a tool.

Good news for most trainers is I know what a cranky bitch I am so I don't subject them to my money much.

For civilian training, I'm going to refuse to be treated like a soldier.  One, been there done that, got the medal, lost the leg.  Two I have vastly different expectations from a teacher I am paying to teach me.  I expect the environment to be conducive to learning.  Three, what's this applicable towards?

Outdoor training, the weather gets a vote.  I'm stoic enough to account for it.  I'm gutting past my throbbing leg just standing there; what's a little hurricane strength wind and torrential downpour?

For me to risk being cold, wet and miserable or hot, sunburned and miserable... can you, Mr Trainer, tell me what I am going to be learning a little better on your web-page?

Good web pages must really be expensive because the places that seem to do a good job explaining why you should part with your hard-earned sure want a lot of my hard-earned.  Actually, the places with bad web pages don't really seem to want less money, they just tend to lack a blogger taking the time to document the place.

I occasionally wonder if the whole point of many training places is to give a military fantasy experience to people who regret never serving.  They then impart what any graduate of basic training learned and everyone walks away happy.

In one of the shitty little carbine classes I took, I was giggling to myself about how most of this group preparing for WARRE would be lost and starving in the wilderness because shooting is such a small part of soldiering.  Never mind that training your shooting to the latest Army standard forgets that Big Green is a gigantic organization with a correspondingly large number of people doing things that are more akin to what Fed-Ex does to make sure that the boots on the ground don't have to carry a campaign's worth of stuff.

In this case it's Preppers 1; Gun-Campers 0.

Where can I be a-shooting my carbine for reals?

Well, hurricane apocalypse is one scenario.  That's not move-and-shoot house clearing drill.  That's defend the bunker, supplies and wimmins!  Why is it defend the bunker?  Because Law will return and when they come you're going to have to justify every fucking round fired while they were on vacation evacuated.  Preppers 2; Gun-Campers 0...

So far I've yet to see someone talking about a GUN-course that will pertain to this sort of scenario.  I've seen, through Erin, several prepper places that talk about the being prepared for hurricane and tornado disruptions to law enforcement.  Thankfully, humans really don't descend to lowest-common when confronted with disaster most of the time.  We tribe-up and work together.  Barbarity is the exception and that's what I want to take a class on.

If I knew more, I might even teach that class!

Now there's an idea!
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Are My Online Friends Real

July 21, 2015, 10:41 am
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Sometimes I think I should administer a Turing test to my online friends to see if they'd just created a script to keep me entertained.

On one hand it's depressing they don't want to interact with me.

On the other it's touching they'd go to the effort.
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Feel The Hate

July 21, 2015, 10:50 am
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I read this...

You know, for a group so supposedly filled with hate as Confederate Flag Supporters are... I'm just not seeing them murdering folks for it.

Unlike the people who supposedly don't hate at all.

It's almost a classic case of transference or projection.
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Appendix Carry

July 21, 2015, 12:17 pm
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For my fat ass that's like a flap holster...

Flap of flab!

I'd say try the veal, but the mental image prolly has eliminated all hunger from your mind.
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Star For The Course

July 21, 2015, 3:29 pm
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My Star B came with two magazines.

One worked with all 8 rounds.  One double fed if loaded with more than six.  Even hand feeding slowly they'd pop an extra round up past the feed lips.

I found a Triple-K* magazine at a gun show, that would double if loaded with more than five...

I decided today that I couldn't break a broken thing so I started comparing the good magazine to the bad ones.

Both of the bad ones springs were too long.  Two coils on the Star and half on the Triple-K.

Both had feed lips that didn't match the good one.

So I shortened some springs and bent some lips (and hammered out a dent in the Star one).

Now I have two repaired magazines that hand feed all eight.  Range testing, perhaps, tomorrow, depending on Willard's generosity.

The reason, I think, they were double feeding was the pressure from below was pushing the round against the lips which were only in contact with the rim of the round.  That made the lips a ramp and they slid down it.  Tweaking the lips to they contacted the entire round and reducing the pressure seems to have cured it.

Interestingly, if this was a 1911, Glock or M&P magazine, I'd have tossed them and bought new.  Not an option with the Model B since there aren't really any new magazines out there.

* Triple-K...  KKK...  Makes you wonder how they escape the trigger-word PC police, don't it?
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Grav Pong

July 21, 2015, 4:12 pm
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Control of the artificial gravity, grav compensators and utility gravity systems is important in keeping control of the ship from pirates in Traveller.

Anti-Hijack is the go-to program to keep the command and control spaces secure from hijacking.

Because the grav systems are safety equipment, it's normally very difficult to disable and bypass the interlocks and lock-out-tag-out protocols.

I add in my campaigns that anti-hijack going active allows engineering to easily take manual control of the grav systems and play a brisk game of grav-pong!

Merely shutting off the artificial gravity and acceleration compensators on a type S means aft is down and at 2g.  A fall of 4m hits at 12.71m/s.  If you're at the bridge door when engineering flips these systems down its a 15m fall and you hit at 24.27m/s.

That's the equivalent to falling from twice the distance on earth.

So a 4m fall becomes the equivalent to an 8m fall that rounds to 9 yards in GURPS...  There's a table on B.431.

Lets say our hijacker has 10 HP (the more HP you have the harder you fall).  The hatch on the aft wall of the common area in our Type-S is a hard surface (which doubles the dice)...  So (2x10x14)/100=2.8 which rounds to 3d cr damage.

If he fell the whole 15m that's 32 yards equivalent.  for (2x10x26)/100=5.2 or 5d crushing damage.

That's one heck of a fall, really.  Even more fun for the hijacker, the engineer can apply up to 6g to the fall, making it a 98 yard fall from the bridge hatch or 9d cr!  On average that's two death rolls!

Now, if our engineer is a deft hand with the grav controls he can apply the gravity laterally and bounce our hijacker back and forth along the 16.5m engineering corridor once he's smashed through the hatch from the common area for as long as he wants (9d+2 cr per smack which is also per second).

Please note that this only applies to hijackers who've managed to get inside the ship.

There's no artificial gravity or compensation outside on the hull.
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Standards

July 22, 2015, 8:45 am
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If the ability to manage ones own financial affairs is now the new standard to allow gun ownership:

There's going to be a LOT of disarmed police departments out there.
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Two Steps Forward One Step Back

July 22, 2015, 2:49 pm
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The massaged Star B magazines both function.

Hurray!

The firing pin broke.

Disassembly was simple.  Drift out the rear sight, push out the firing pin retaining pin from the bottom of the slide through the dovetail for the rear sight, dump out the pin and its spring.


I expected it to break around the thin spot for the retainer.

While I vocally and publicly blame Willard, who did dry fire it once at the range...

The damn things are notoriously fragile and it just happened to happen this time the hammer was dropped on an empty chamber absentmindedly.

Looks like it's been cracked for a while too.  The pictures don't clearly show it, but there's some shine of edges that have been rubbing in the fractured area.



Bummer.

Replacements look to be $25 plus $5 shipping.

I wonder if a tiny o-ring between the firing pin spring and the thicker part of the pin would buffer it and prevent further breakage.
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Running Gag

July 23, 2015, 11:29 am
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Some generalizations get too much traction on Facebook.

There's a cute little pie chart showing a teeny sliver of "all religions" and a huge swath for "atheists".

I get ticked off at some atheists myself from time to time.  The Freedom From Religion Foundation because they're jerks.  It mostly centers around that they've decided to be offended that religion can exist where they can observe it and wish the world to be scourged of anything they've interpreted to be religious in nature.  Especially when its something I care about and my atheist ass didn't bring no imaginary buddy to the symbol.

But I am ticked off at them for specific actions and don't blame all atheists for their actions.

But I posted it just to yank a Facebook buddy's chain (and it worked) =D.

He's a magnet for the kind of attention from Christian proselytizers that make me want to donate to FFRF!

He so consistently finds this attention where FuzzyGeff and I don't makes us wonder if it's actually him and not them.  There were years before we all moved away from each other when were in the same places at the same time, yet it was only Skeezer who attracted the special attention of religious kooks.  He still attracts this special attention.  Yeah, it's him.

It's entirely possible that I just didn't notice them and it rolled off my back like a water on a duck; but FuzzyGeff would have noticed if it were happening to him.

And it really didn't, beyond some harassment at the gaming table playing AD&D at The ISU Memorial Union.  Public place and all...

Honestly, despite the irritation from asshole atheists, I am far more concerned about devout Islam.

Assholes file lawsuits and demand you pay attention to them.

Fanatically devout Muslims murder people.

Even pushy ass Christians don't rise to that level.
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Invalidate

July 23, 2015, 12:27 pm
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This is the crux of why the hullaballoo about the Confederate Battle Flag bugs me.

Symbols, being mutable, can mean different things to different people.

Swastikas are the ur-example.

What I wonder though, is why A person, offended by A meaning of a symbol, may demand and receive censure of that symbol irregardless of other meanings for that symbol.

The CBF is pregnant with diverse meaning, yet it doesn't matter what the person displaying this symbol means with their display if ever it was used to symbolize today's popular offense?

Am I getting this right?

Because if the offended get to define the reason someone has displayed a "symbol of hate" MRC/Tamiya, Monogram, Revell, Testors, Dragon and Hasegawa have been actively recruiting for the National Socialist German Worker's Party for decades and millions of scale model builders have been promoting the final solution to the Jewish problem with the assembly of every model ship, plane or tank.

Hang on, lemme guess, "but that's different," right?

No.  It's the same.

The difference is my building and owning a 1/35 scale Panther doesn't make anyone accuse me of being a disciple of Hitler.

It's assumptions.

It's sad because the people who actually made the CBF a symbol of racism are the very party most associated with the most active in attempting to ban it.  I think it makes sense that they would, because the "Southern Pride" folks, who aren't racists, were successfully taking the symbol back!

Makes it seem more like a trademark dispute, doesn't it?
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Near 100%

July 23, 2015, 12:43 pm
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If you are looking to be offended, you will find offense everywhere you look.
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Drawing A Blank

July 23, 2015, 2:05 pm
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In the spirit of making noise for the 4th of July and New Year's Eve I've long wanted some blank ammunition to go with my M16A1 clone and M15A2 Blank Firing Adaptor.

When purchasing blanks make sure you get the M200 blank and not the M195 grenade launching blank or M755 Sting Ring Airfoil launching blank.

They're easy to tell apart.

The M195 has red lacquer sealing the rose-crimp, the M755 gas yellow lacquer, the M200 has none or blue.

M200 has a knurl about half an inch from the head.

The launching blanks have a lot more thump to them and could damage the gun if fired through the BFA.
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Lemme Guess

July 24, 2015, 11:19 am
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Ask Me About The Weather

July 24, 2015, 12:35 pm
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Civic Sensor Update

July 24, 2015, 7:50 pm
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The Lovely Harvey had it replaced while Up North™.

The Dormann sensor I'd bought from Advanced Auto had failed and "looks all melty".

She had them give her the part so we can demand warranty from Advanced.

Very reasonable rate for the work too.
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Who Wants To Fisk This

July 25, 2015, 2:48 pm
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Civic Sensor Second Update

July 25, 2015, 11:31 pm
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A code that the car has had since I got it P1298, that doesn't light the check-engine light.

It's "Electrical Load Detector (ELD) Circuit High Voltage".

I read that it's a known problem and sometimes is set merely by turning on the headlights.

The problem with known "no-problem" problems is sometimes the "no-problem" isn't the cause.

Our ELD was toasted and melty.

The cam-position sensor code (1361) has not reoccurred since replacing the ELD.

Huzzah!

Plus thanks to The Father-In-Law for taking the car in and having the work done out of his pocket so his little girl would be able to get home.  (Also so that The Lovely Harvey wouldn't take his Trailblazer from him).
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