June ePostal match

I hit the range last weekend with the intent of shooting this month's ePostal match. Sebastian has come up with a creative contest involving airplanes. I'm gonna say +5 cool points for the creative contest with a cool theme! I had 10 targets printed out for the attempt.

On scene at the range I realized I didn't know how many shots were allowed on each target. I phoned home, but the SCQueen couldn't find the answer. I guessed 15 was allowed (that's all a past participant or two would need for a perfect score). I need all the help I can get. The correct answer is 25 *25* TWENTY FIVE SHOTS ARE ALLOWED on each target.

Here we have a good example of how not to shoot the match (as always, click on pic to enlargify). This target has has four hits on my plane and one enemy blimp so it would score a one. My 15 shots were aimed at the 4 targets above and 7 below my plane. NEVER at the planes between the wings... So even that one hit was just luck.

Ammo is scarce in on the shelves, but this is worthy of a digging into the reserves; surely better than just blasting holes in paper. This sucky target scored a 1. My best score on the first 10 tries was a 4. But I was only shooting 60% of the available trys and I never scored high enough that the penalties kicked in.

I'm gonna print out a dozen targets and try again this weekend with 25 shots on each. You should too!

BTW, as a tiebreaker, Sebastian could have asked for id's on the silhouettes used as targets. (Hint: Piper Cherokee:front quarter & top view, Cessna 210 (top & frontal view), Mooney (guess model 201) and I'm guessing the blimp is a Goodyear)

Tailwinds, Cloud Dancer

'cept for takeoffs and landings.

Today we learned David Carradine apparently took his own life. Now I don't usually get too worked up about celeb's offing themselves, but David played his roles effortlessly. He didn't act a part, he WAS the part. It was all very natural.

I have no speculation on the actual story of his death, but color me skeptical. Skepical as when people die while in 3rd world countries under strange circumstances. These stories have the hollow ring of an official explanation that can be bought for a sawbuck.

'Tis also possible he received some news he wasn't willing to deal with. Heck, a relative when told "you have cancer" responded with "Ok. get me my gun. I'm not going through this!" There are just too many possibilities...

I don't know but then I don't have any skin in the game either... Just color me skeptical...

Most news stories offer up his roles in "Kung Fu" and "Kill Bill" as examples of his life's work. But I'll always recall the lesser known "Cloud Dancer".

Cloud Dancer tells the story of a competition aerobatic pilot with the predictable love interest and a subplot into creative financing via drug smuggling. It's of particular interest because it was filmed nearby the SandCastle at an airport where I used to base the airplane. Then the plot talks about the next competition across the country... which was filmed at the airport next door, less than 10 miles away. Heh... Back then both airports were "out in the middle of nowhere." Heck, it wouldn't surprise me if the airports were served by dirt roads! However suburbia has enveloped both in the last 30 years.

I guess the flick didn't do too well as it's practically impossible to find in the rental stores and only rarely shows up late at night on the movie channels. However when I mentioned it at lunch today, he SCQueen took it as a mission to find a copy. And she claims to have scored! My Birthday is coming, but I'll have to wait until then to re-see the flick!

Removing a broken stud

This doesn't look like much, but to me it's a work of art. You see life is not all fun and games. Sometimes you have to fix the mundane tools we take for granted every day.

The truck has had a broken exhaust stud since before I bought it in 1995. Until recently the resulting exhaust leak would seal up within a few seconds after starting. However last year the gasket blew out. I've dreaded this job knowing that a steel bolt in an Aluminium head has probably corroded itself together over the last 14 years. Also the job is easy to screw up, turning the head into 30 lbs of scrap Aluminium.

Removing a broken stud requires drilling a hole down the middle of the stud then inserting a bolt extractor and unscrewing the broken part. The rub is the hole in the stud has to be drilled straight into the stud and not veer off into the softer Aluminium of the head. Also the break tends to put a peak in the center of the stud, which pushes the drill off to the side. The installation in the vehicle prevents getting the drill near the hole which will allow the drill bit to wander, again off the stud and into the soft head.

The trick is to use a drill guide. This keeps the drill bit centered on the stud. I didn't have one but was able to make one from a section of 1/2" steel rod. The end was ground into a cone to fit the hole. It worked perfectly. I held the guide on the hole with my fingers and used a long shank drill to start the hole.

Once the top of the stud had nice Vee started, A counter clockwise cutter was supposed to dig into the face and twist out the stud. In this case it was cutting nicely but not digging in. A couple taps of a hammer set it into the stud and next thing you know it was out on the floor!


update: Looking back at this article reveals a glaring omission. Considering the time the steel broken stud has been the Aluminium head (>14 years), dissimilar metal corrosion is always a problem. A penetrating oil can ease the removal. I sprayed it liberally with Kroil. I don't know how much it helped, but would guess it's in the 10-40% range. BTW, the one can I have will probably last lifetime.

Dang.. If their offer of 2 cans for $12 including shipping is legit (I don't know why it wouldn't be, but I didn't read the fine print), that's a screaming deal. My one can with shipping was nearly $20. Give the other to your favorite son or a friend!

(Standard disclaimer applies, I have no commercial interest in Kroil nor Kano labs, I'm just a satisfied customer. I bought my can, they didn't pay nor solicit this mention. A penetrating oil won't do the work for you, but it will make the work easier.)

NRA Annual Meeting Wrap Up

The upside to having the convention local is that you don't have to travel much nor spend the $$$ on a hotel room. The downside is that you don't have a nearby base of operations so you can't just pop back to the room to relax and refresh for an hour. Total travel time to and from the event was right about an hour each direction. This travel delay played into my missing the Friday evening blogger event and yet another chance to meet other bloggers. Spending Friday walking the show floor with friends, plus the hour commute home, I was done... Same goes for the morning events. I'm not a morning person. Add in an hour travel time and that's not a recipe for getting there early. (This is not a scheduling complaint)

I did get to meet Kevin, Kevin, Thirdpower, Mike, Cowboy Blob, Chris & Melody Byrne, GreatSatanInc, and probably a couple others bloggers that slip my mind at the moment.

Probably the most frequent question on the floor was something along the lines of "Ok, When is this ammo squeeze going to blow over?" I asked it a bunch myself and heard it asked several more times. The straightest answer came from the Hornady folks:

"April 2010. That's what we're hearing!"

And went on to elaborate about the 12 new machines they have on the line and the whole factory running 24/7. Still my observations match Mr Completely's. If everyone is cranking out at top speed, why isn't any much of it showing up in the stores?

The prohibition on concealed carry in restaurants that sell alcohol is a real embarrassment to this state. I understand the need for the parking lot bill, but personally this should be a higher priority. It has passed the legislature in recent years but Governor Jane-O (Now your head of Homeland InSecurity) vetoed it. Our new Governor is likely to sign such a bill, but she has a multibillion dollar budget headache courtesy of said Jane-O to solve first. Unfortunately she's been taking her budget solving queues from the Governator next door. Hopefully the CA election results this week will adjust her bearings.

The HSPrecision booth was empty every time I walked by. Props to Atomic Nerds for asking the tough question.

I tried to get into the Carrying Concealed seminar, but arrived to find it was Standing Room Only, and even that was running out fast.

Thanks to Bitter & Sebastian for coordinating the Blog Bash. I am simply going to have to make GBR IV.

NRA Annual Meeting Gun Pr0n

Barrett Rifles M82A1 .50 cal semiautomatic

The FN-SCAR is real hit with the Halo crowd which the SCSon enjoys (probably a bit too much). The chance to touch & hold a real one made his day. It also gave him a good perspective on how big and how heavy it is, something you just can't get from playing a video game.

The Springfield Armory "Fully loaded M1A" was surprisingly heavy.

Magnum Research showed their full line of big bore handguns.


Including this BFR S&W .500 revolver.


Larry Parker Showed off some fine engraving. I personally wouldn't spend any coin on this because it doesn't make it shoot any better. But I do respect (and admire) the skill and attention to detail that it takes to create this level of detail. Apparently Mr. Parker doesn't have a website so no linkylove.

Too close to home!

Exurban League notes a home invasion near his home base. Just heard the story on the radio of a Kidnapping at a nearby WalMart. I'll second what Kevin said! That's waaaaaay too close to home!

The victim was packing items into her car at the Wal-Mart on 1175 S. Arizona Ave. when the suspect attacked the woman from behind at knife point.

Fortunately she was able to escape, but this could have ended much worse. The SCQueen happened to hear this story and exclaimed "Yet another reason to do the WalMart Walk".

Yep, that's my wife! (I chose wisely!)

PC problems

PC problems have kept me from posting my Final NRA Annual Meeting missive. The system powers off randomly at intervals of 1 minute to 3 hours. It may stem from an attempt to install a dual boot system with Linux on a dying hard drive. And I don't know enough about Linux to remove the attempt (my bad).

Tonight I'm running on Ubuntu 8.10 which allows me to access the hard drive. I've ordered a new 500GB hard drive to re-install windows. $60 is cheap compared to losing the data on the other hard drive. Stand by... hopefully tomorrow.

BTW, Encountering this problem, I guessed the problem was most likely a MoBo problem, perhaps a processor problem (and ordered replacement versions). But it's been running flawlessly now several hours on Ubuntu 8.10. So I'm now thinking the root cause is either a virus or something software related. Either way I'll probably have a parallel Linux system up and running by the end of the week. I would really like to get to a comfort point with Linux that I can give Redmond the middle finger salute!