Automotif CDXCVII...

These GMC motorhomes, made from the '73 to '78 model years, are notable for two things.

For one, they were made in-house at GMC, whereas most motorhomes and RVs are made by coachbuilders who buy bare chassis from a truck manufacturer and ad their own body.

The other is that they're front-wheel drive, using the basic driveline from the GM E-body Toronado. There's a longitudinal V-8 up front, either a 455 or 403 Olds Rocket, sitting atop a transmission driven by a roller chain off the crank, with half-shafts transmitting power to the front wheels.

It's so very cool and aero-looking. Those lines have aged well.

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Scam Spam

The latest form of scam emails to clog my spam folder are ones that purport to be from various services claiming that a payment was declined and my account will be suspended or deleted or terminated or some other ominous-sounding word.

This is most amusing when it's coming from someone claiming to be from Sirius XM or some other place where I don't actually have an account.

I can see a less net-savvy person falling for one of these, as some look very official. I avoid even looking at these on a touchscreen device.

One giveaway is the return email address...

Horking Cat

I was awakened this morning, about an hour before the alarm clock was due to go off, by the plaintive cries that Huck makes just before he horks something up.

He was in some unknown location in the house, and it took me a second to pinpoint where.

Understand that every square inch of floor in Roseholme Cottage is hardwood, tile, or linoleum... except for a smallish, maybe six foot by four foot, oriental-type rug on the floor next to Bobbi's bed.

I went stumbling in that direction, half-asleep still, muttering "No, Huck! No! Not on the rug!"

He must have heard me galumphing his way, because he skedaddled down the hall to the office and proceeded to hork out a blob of hairball and other ick nearly the size of a golf ball.

It's really hard to get back into dreamland after that, and I'd been having a neato one about living on a cool space yacht like the Millennium Falcon.

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Meme Dump...

The Titanic kills an average of 13.4 people per year.

People in My Neighborhood

Some shots of the crew at Fat Dan's Chicago-Style Deli at 54th & College, using the Fujifilm X-E1 and the lovely little Zeiss Touit 32mm f/1.8 lens.

Being a roughly 50mm equivalent focal length, it's about as short of a lens as I'll ever use for portraiture, and its fast maximum aperture is good for making the subject stand out against a softly-blurred background. At the same time, f/1.8 and an APS-C size sensor is less likely to wind you up in those "Oops, I only had enough depth of field to get one eye in focus" situations than, say, f/1.4 on a full-frame.

Bug

So the germ that had me feeling a little ookie for a couple days last week has pretty much knocked Bobbi flat.

She's definitely improved over yesterday, but I imagine it's going to be tomorrow before she's feeling up to going anywhere.

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Automotif CDXCVI...

In the '70s, Alfa Romeo started selling a fastback coupe version of its compact Alfetta sedan as the Alfetta GT. Its Giugiaro-penned lines were very swoopy, very disco.

For the '78 model year the North American version was renamed the Sprint Veloce. This China White 1979 Sprint Veloce would have had a 2.0L DOHC inline four up front driving the rear wheels through a 5-speed rear mounted transaxle. The EPA-compliant version was down a bit more than a dozen ponies from the Euro mill, being rated at 111 SAE net horsepower.

Between the rear-mounted transaxle, DeDion tube rear suspension, and inboard rear brakes, these Alfas had plenty of exotica to make sporty car fans of the era salivate.

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Red Gold

Apparently one of the things that has kept gold's price at record highs the last couple years is consumer demand in one of the largest economies on the planet:

"Often considered a safe investment during times of geopolitical and economic turmoil, gold has soared in price in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the war in Gaza. But gold’s climb to highs above $2,400 per ounce has proved more resilient, and lasted longer, because of China.

Chinese consumers have flocked to gold as their confidence in traditional investments like real estate or stocks has faltered. At the same time, the country’s central bank has steadily added to its gold reserves, while whittling away at its holdings of U.S. debt. And throwing fuel on the fire are Chinese speculators betting that there is still room for appreciation."

It's a paywall-vaulting gift link if you want to read it.

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Automotif CDXCV...

Of all the days to leave a camera at home while running an errand to Indy Arms Co., I had to pick one where this '71-'72 Mustang convertible was parked out in front of the local car stereo installer.

Fortunately the longer lens on the iPhone 13 Pro Max is a ~77mm focal length equivalent and will take a pretty undistorted pic if you have room to back up, unlike the regular ~28mm camera, which always gives funhouse proportions.

'71-'72 was the beginning of the end for the original Muscle Car-era Mustangs. Mustangs are, properly, pony cars, not muscle cars, but that's another post.

The body was widened to accommodate the Lima-series 429 big block V-8s, after squeezing the Lima-derived Boss 429 hemi motor into the eponymous '69-'70 Boss 429 cars required engine bay surgery at Kar Kraft of Dearborn to shoehorn the motors in.

For '71 you could get your Mustang with anything from a 145bhp (SAE gross) Thriftpower 250 cid I-6 to a snarling 375hp 429 Super Cobra Jet big block.

In just three years, the Mustang would be a Pinto.

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The Zombie Internet

There's a great article up at 404 Media about the tidal wave of bot-generated AI glurge that's swamping social media:

All of this, taken together, is why I think we should not view Facebook’s AI spam through the lens of the “Dead Internet.” The platform has become something worse than bots talking to bots. It is bots talking to bots, bots talking to bots at the direction of humans, humans talking to humans, humans talking to bots, humans arguing about a fake thing made by a bot, humans talking to no one without knowing it, hijacked human accounts turned into bots, humans worried that the other humans they’re talking to are bots, hybrid human/bot accounts, the end of a shared reality, and, at the center of all of this: One of the most valuable companies on the planet enabling this shitshow because its human executives and shareholders have too much money riding on the mass adoption of a reality-breaking technology to do anything about it.

You should click through and read the whole thing.

Negligent Discharge

So one of the NYPD cops, an ESU* officer at that, cranked off a round in the Columbia building that was temporarily occupied by student protestors. He was using the weapon-mounted light to find a way to navigate barriers in the dark. Fortunately the bullet didn't hit anyone.

There was absolutely no reason to have an unholstered firearm in the middle of that Punch & Judy Show. That was a job for a handheld light, not the SureFire U-Boat screwed to your Glock. 

People act like just having a light on a pistol turns it into some sort of dual-purpose tool and next thing you know they're using it to direct traffic or look for stuff they dropped under their squad car in the dark. I swear to gawd, it's only a matter of time before we hear about some Officer Fife using it to check for horizontal gaze nystagmus.

*NYPD Emergency Services Unit contains their equivalent of SWAT, but not all ESU officers are SWAT dudes.

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When Concealed Isn't...

This dude doesn't care too much.

Like the folks in these photos, sometimes people just aren't really trying to conceal their firearm, and if there's no legal requirement to do so, fine. That's up to the toter.

But what if you are and you think it's been spotted anyway? Note here that we're talking about a situation where there's no legal reason you can't be carrying and therefore no legal repercussions to being discovered, but you'd still prefer to be discreet. If you think you've been "made", what's a good response? Greg Ellifritz has some ideas.

This dude only sorta cares.

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Automotif CDXCIV...

The fourth generation of Ford's F-series pickup trucks were produced from the 1960 through the 1966 model years. The 1965 models, like the faded Light Turquoise F100 in the photo above, saw an entirely new frame slid under the existing body design, featuring a "Twin I-Beam" swing-axle front suspension in place of the previous solid axle. This basic chassis would remain in use through the '79 model year.

For '65, the F100 could be had with two flavors of inline six: a 150hp (SAE Gross) 240 cubic inch inline six, or a longer stroke 300cid version of the same motor rated at 170 horsepower. The V-8 badge on the hood indicates this one has the 208hp 352-cube "FE"-series big block V-8, which was the most powerful engine that had been offered in an F-series truck up to that time.

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Meme Dump...

So basically...

What happened was that pollen season got started with a bang and I was late noticing and starting prophylactic Claritin use. So both my sinuses and lungs began filling with fluids and then, unusually, I managed to pick up a low-grade upper respiratory tract infection and a flareup of bronchitis at the same time.

I'm finally on the mend, but it's been an unpleasant week

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Here comes the rain again...

And not a moment too soon, either. The amount of pollen in the air has been giving my sinuses fits, such that every time I blow my nose, the bones in my skull creak and groan like the hull of a u-boat changing depth.

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Tab Clearing...

• Wingo: The short-lived indoor shotgun wingshooting game.


• Training Terminology: Flash Sight Picture, Hammer, and Controlled Pair.


• Hipster Tactical reviews the Daewoo DP51.

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Automotif CDXCIII...

The owner had de-badged the decklid of this super-clean Cherry Red '87-'93 Saab 900. With the alloy wheels and spoiler it's probably a 900S or Turbo, but I'm not enough of a Saab nerd to pick up the subtler details.

...and back to Ouch.

Between torn external intercostal muscles from grappling with a very large dude while trying to shoot him with a sims gun, and strained internal intercostal muscles from a day of violently trying to cough my lungs clear of deep-seated nastiness, I gotta say that the former may hurt worse, but the latter is no picnic either.

Robitussin, take me away!

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Brr...

I somehow ended up out from under the covers last night, and just to make it worse, the legs on my pyjama bottoms had ridden up nearly to my knees. So I lay there, with my metabolism as low as it ever gets during the day, radiating heat into the chilly bedroom air until I woke up shivering with my teeth chattering.

I bundled myself into a fleece woobie and burrowed back under the covers but I still haven't recovered from that. I'm sore all over.

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Bad Info Drives Out Good

Greg Ellifritz put up an informative post on social media regarding the (in)efficacy of birdshot in a home defense role recently.

It was shared widely on the internet with predictable results, as the legions of shambling mouth-breathers tried to set Greg straight.

He's had about enough of that.

"I got my first shotgun instructor certification in 1999. I’ve been teaching shotgun skills longer than some of these commentators have been alive. I carried a shotgun every day in a 25-year police career and used those shotguns to convince some very bad men to submit to arrest. I’ve seen, treated, and investigated gunshot wounds from birdshot, buckshot, and slugs. I’ve killed lots of critters with shotguns in the hunting fields. I’ve attended countless shotgun ballistic gelatin shooting demonstrations and autopsies of victims killed with shotgun pellets. I’ve written 162 different articles on using the shotgun for self defense as well as producing the largest firearms stopping power research study in the last two decades.

I might know a thing or two about what shotgun pellets do to human bodies.

But when I try to share that knowledge with the general public, I get shit upon from the anonymous population of uneducated internet trolls who gain self esteem from insulting other people."

Bad info drives out good. I definitely know the feeling, as it's why I rarely discuss gun stuff in GenPop-accessible places myself these days.

Save the birdshot for birds.

Happy Perfect Date Day to all who celebrate!

I need to watch Miss Congeniality again. That is such a good movie.

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It's like a whole 'nother country over there.

Forgetting that you have a gun or ammo in your purse or briefcase at the local courthouse can be embarrassing.

Forgetting that you have a gun or ammo in your purse or briefcase at the TSA checkpoint at the airport can get you jammed up legally.

Forgetting that you have a gun or ammo in your purse or briefcase in Boston or NYC will almost certainly get you jammed up. You go through the checkpoint at Freedom Tower or the 9/11 Memorial or some other tourist attraction with your out-of-state toters permit, and it's gonna be a bad day.

And as for traveling overseas? That could be really bad.

"An Oklahoma man faces up to 12 years in prison on a Caribbean island after customs officials found ammunition in his luggage.

Ryan Watson traveled to Turks and Caicos with his wife, Valerie, to celebrate his 40th birthday on April 7. They went with two friends who had also turned 40.

The vacation came to an abrupt end when airport staff members found a zip-close bag containing bullets in the couple's carry-on luggage. Watson said it was hunting ammunition he had accidentally brought with him — but under a strict law in Turks and Caicos, a court may still impose a mandatory 12-year sentence.

"They were hunting ammunition rounds that I use for whitetail deer," Watson told NBC Boston in an interview conducted last week that aired after their first court appearance Tuesday."

There's a reason I keep the bags that I use for carry-ons at the airport "sterile". I don't take them to ranges if I can help it. If I have to while on the road, I keep them as far from the line as possible and painstakingly go through them in the hotel room that night.

People throw the phrase "responsible gun owner" around a lot. This is just part of that.

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Ouch.

Something had my back all jacked up last night. I didn't get a lot of really good sleep.

Hopefully tonight will be better.

I did have a really long detailed dream that was likely caused by watching The Three-Body Problem before going to bed. Very science fictional dream. Lots of space kablooie.

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My mind has been changed... mostly.

At the TacCon presenter's dinner this year, Andy Stanford passed out SureFire Stilettos to attendees as door prizes.

When the Stiletto was introduced, it was very much the flavor of the month and all the cool kids used them for a bit before moving on to whatever the next awesome light was. I am very much an uncool kid and I stuck with my trusty EDCL2-T, which I'd been using since they were introduced back in '17.

I stuck with that 2-cell light until a few months back when I downsized to its single-cell EDCL1-T cousin as part of a general pocket clutter shrinkage project: Sabre Red Mk.6 to a POM dispenser, Spyderco Delica to a Spyderco Dragonfly, et cetera. Since doing so, I haven't found myself feeling limited by the single cell light's 500-lumen output. It's still plenty if your job doesn't include nighttime traffic stops and clearing structures.

The Stiletto is roughly the same size as the single-cell EDCL, but nice and flat and more comfortable in the pocket.

When I popped the packaging open I immediately felt stupid. See, the reason I didn't jump on it like everyone else back then is... um... I didn't realize it had a "tail cap" button that served as a momentary switch for the full 650 lumens.

For some reason I had thought the only buttons were the ones on the side (one a light control and the other used for programming the sequence of toggling between 650, 250, and 5 lumen settings) like the setup on the Guardian or Sidekick. 

That side button is fine for normie flashlight use but sucks for "tactical" applications. Further, you don't want to have to toggle through brightness settings to get to the full output in a "tactical" light, but having it immediately pop on with 650 lumens and then toggle down to 5 reduces its utility as a normal task light. That was the genius of the EDCL series, where a light press of the tailcap got you a task light, but a full press summoned up the face-melting output.

So I've been carrying and using the Stiletto for something over a week at this point and here's my rundown:

PROS:

• It really is comfortable in a pocket. It's slim and light and my fears of it turning on in a pocket seem to have been overblown.
• The dual button configuration makes it handy for both normal and "tactical" use. You can program the side button so the bright light comes on first, but why would you? Use the tailcap button for that.
• It doesn't look "tactical". Some security people have started getting squirrely about knurled metal "tactical" flashlights, even ones without scary fanged bezels. You're less likely to be told you need to leave it in the car than the EDCL1-T.
• You don't generate a steady stream of dead CR123 lithium batteries that need to be disposed of.

CONS:

• Supposedly it's plenty tough and rugged and waterproof, but I just don't get the same reassuring vibe from plastic, no matter how "high-impact" it is, that I do from knurled metal.
• When the internal batteries go flat, you have to plug it in to recharge it and that takes time. You can't just toss a fresh cell in there and be up and running immediately. Also, SureFire... Micro-USB? Really? The rest of the world is basically standardizing on USB-C. Why not step boldly into The Current Year?

On balance, though, the Stiletto is an improvement over the EDCL1-T, I think, so I reckon I'll stick with it for a while, unless some flaw I haven't noticed pops up.

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FOMO

Registration for TacCon 2025 opens tomorrow night, Wednesday the 24th of April, at 9PM EDT.

TacCon 2024 tickets sold out in eleven hours.

Be there. I will.

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Automotif CDXCII...

Here's a current generation (2019-2024) Bentley Flying Spur, built on the same chassis as the Bentley Continental GT and the LWB variant of the Porsche Panamera.

The V8 badge low on the front fender means that under the bonnet you'll find a 4.0L twin turbo motor putting out just a hair less than 550 horsepower and backed by an 8-speed Porsche PDK transmission. (Hey, back when they were still British-owned and part of Rolls-Royce, they used TurboHydramatic 400 3-speed or 4L80-E 4-speed slushboxes purchased from General Motors.)

Tab Clearing...

• Asked to write a blog post, an AI churns out glurge.


• John Hearne writes about Understanding Criminals and Their Motivations.


• Bobbi on troubleshooting a mysteriously malfunctioning door.

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Automotif CDXCI...

It's been a good month for spotting Japanese Domestic Market imports here in SoBro.

Here's a very early-1990s Nissan Atlas 150 Double Cab with a funky paint job and groovy rims. Most of these things seem to be 4WD with 5-speed manual gearboxes and middlin' big diesel fours in the 2.3-to-2.7L range.

The Answer, My Friend, Ain't Spitting In The Wind

Elsewhere on social media I came across an angry and despairing rant from a Columbine High School graduate whose younger sister was there on that day. The sister was unhurt, thanks to hiding in a closet, but it was all day before they learned that, since she was one of the last students to get out of the school and get bused to the rendezvous point at the nearby elementary school to be reunited with her parents.

The woman, in her angry reminiscences, was like "...but thank god that the Columbine shooters didn't have AR-15s, because things would have been worse..." with the implication that they were somehow illegal at the time.

I didn't have the heart to explain that they were plenty legal and the only reason they weren't used is that they were kinda spendy in those days and not as popular.

Nothing I can say to her is going to change her mind, certainly not within a 280 character limit.

There was a time when I would have gleefully waded into that sort of righteous online pissing contest, convinced that I was performing, not to change her mind, but rather to persuade some imaginary throng of bystanders.

Nah. That's not how it works. It took me a while to realize that. Everybody gets mad, walks away still thinking what they thought before the flamewar, and the only people who come out ahead are the advertisers, slurping up the eyeballs and attention and engagement.

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But what is it for?

Ah, square trigger guards on 1911s...

"The big change on the frame is the large, squared trigger guard. This was a fad touch on custom 1911s for a hot minute back in the day when dudes wore tube socks, foam-front trucker caps, and bootie shorts at pistol matches.

And the reasons given for it vary. It provides a secure place to park the support hand index finger for those who like to wrap it around the front of the trigger guard. It allows more room for people with jumbo-sized fingers, or maybe people wearing heavy gloves.

Personally, we’re convinced that the two major drivers behind the big, square trigger guard were: A) Some people thought it looked cool and different, and B) It was not an easy modification to execute well and cleanly; it was sort of a calling card for the pistolsmith who did it. Now, with Springfield Armory’s Emissary, you can just buy it that way from the factory."

The entirety of my Springfield Armory Emissary review is online for your delectation. You can read the whole thing at the link!

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Portrait Glass

I really enjoy candid... well, technically I guess "casual" would be a more accurate term ...portrait photography. I'm usually relatively close to the subject, so anything in the 85mm to 135mm focal length (in full-frame terms) range generally works for what I'm doing. Probably a fast 85mm would be my favorite axe.

I would love to get a dedicated portrait lens for my Fujifilm XF cameras. I'm in more or less constant danger of winding up with their 56mm f/1.2 or 90mm f/2 if I find a deal on a used one.

The only thing that's saved me so far is that I got a smokin' deal at Roberts on a used XF 50mm f/2 R WR. While the 75mm equivalent focal length is a little shorter than I find ideal, it's compact, fast, and sharp as a tack. It sure spends a lot of time on my X-T2.

Tortured Poet

These roses are red
Yet those violets aren't blue
Haiku is hard, man

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Automotif CDXC...

Here's a 1991 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am convertible in Bright White.

1991 and 1992 were the last years for the Third Generation F-bodies. The Fourth Gen cars were already in development and, although they were derived from the Third Gen cars (in much the same way as the SN95 Mustang platform was a heavily-revised Fox), they featured significant improvements.

One problem the 3rd Gen F-bodies had is that there wasn't room for a 5-speed manual gearbox that could handle the torque of the 5.7L TPI motors, and so '91-'92 were the last years for the LB9 Tuned-Port Injection 5.0L.

Rated at 205 SAE net horsepower, this fuelie 305 was the only motor available in the Trans Am convertible. Presumably this is because the convertibles were actually converted from coupes with a roofectomy performed by American Sunroof Corporation in Michigan and the torque from the 245hp L98 350 would have twisted the frame like a pretzel without the stiffening provided by the roof structure.

Re-Wilding the Internet

It didn't used to be like this...

"If you were born around the 1970s, you probably remember many more dead insects on the windscreen of your parents’ car than on your own. Global land-dwelling insect populations are dropping about 9% a decade. If you’re a geek, you probably programmed your own computer to make basic games. You certainly remember a web with more to read than the same five websites. You may have even written your own blog.

But many people born after 2000 probably think a world with few insects, little ambient noise from birdcalls, where you regularly use only a few social media and messaging apps (rather than a whole web) is normal. As Jepson and Blythe wrote, shifting baselines are “where each generation assumes the nature they experienced in their youth to be normal and unwittingly accepts the declines and damage of the generations before.” Damage is already baked in. It even seems natural."

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US v. EU

Good post from Chris Arnade...

"Every few weeks Twitter gets caught up in a fight when someone proclaims that Europe is better than the US, or vice-versa1. I usually stay away from these dust ups because it’s an ignorant debate. The question is badly defined, subjective, and impossible to answer, so the fights devolve into two groups talking past each other, until someone eventually drags out a picture of Breezewood, and then for all effective purposes it’s over2.

To the pro-Europe side, Europe is a cornucopia of crime-free, gothic-cathedral-having cities with great public transportation, quaint row homes, and sensible policies on guns, health care, and child care. America, in contrast, is a dystopian landscape of depressing suburbs with oversized cars, soul-sucking strip malls, and people shooting up drugs and each other.

To the pro-US side America is a land of hard-working, money-making, independent-minded people who hate being told what to do, especially by mid-wit bureaucrats with zero appreciation that human flourishing requires true and almost absolute freedom. Europe, by contrast, is an impoverished, crowded, backward, continent determined to stay impoverished, crowded, and backward because of a stubborn and stupid commitment to high taxes, high regulation, and low entrepreneurialism."

The title is self-admitted clickbait, but it's worth reading the whole thing.

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Meme Dump...

Apropos of nothing in particular...

"Strip Mall Funeral Parlor" is the name of my next band.

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Automotif CDLXXXIX...

Spotted pulling into the SoBro Fresh Market on a Grey Poupon run was this Series I (2010-'14) Rolls-Royce Ghost in the disappointingly prosaically named "Silver" color.

With a chassis derived from the then-current BMW 7 series and powered by a twin-turbo 6.6 litre BMW V12 rated at 563 SAE net horsepower, the Ghost's power is certainly "Adequate", even when dealing with a curb weight that's only about a case of Perrier short of two and three quarter tons.

Photographed with the Nikon D700 and Nikkor 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6G superzoom lens.

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EV Speedrun Challenge

"Times are starting to get tough for Tesla. The electric vehicle automaker had been riding high, with quarter after quarter of successive growth and plenty of profits in the process. But lately, that success has mostly been due to a series of price cuts meant to tempt customers to buy into an aging lineup. This March, the company reported its first quarterly decline since 2020.

Now, it plans to lay off more than 10 percent of its workforce, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters."

Basically, Tesla's challenge was to learn how to make a car company faster than established car companies could learn how to make Teslas.

The First Rule of Dunning-Kruger Club...

ZCQOTD: "This man has built an impregnable stone house with lovely west-facing balconies on the summit of Mount Stupid."

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Automotif CDLXXXVIII...

Speaking of unexpected sights, check out this absolutely pristine '84 or '85 Ford Tempo GL coupe in Medium Regatta Blue.

The Tempo was the downsized front wheel drive replacement for the Ford Fairmont. It was the second FoMoCo car to feature the new curvy aero styling after the '83 Thunderbird and presaged the coming of the bombshell '85 Taurus. (If you weren't around then, it's hard to understand what a splash the original Taurus made after a decade of square-edged boxmobile sedans from Detroit.)

The Tempo's platform was derived from the Escort and it was powered by Ford's 2.3L pushrod HSC, for "High Swirl Combustion", inline four cylinder engine, driving the front wheels through either a 3-speed auto or 4-speed (in 1984) or 5-speed (for 1985) manual. For '84, the HSC had a 1-bbl Holley carb and was rated at 90bhp. In 1985, the carb was replaced with electronically controlled throttle body fuel injection, which actually dropped power to 86 SAE net horses. Performance was tepid, and 0-60 times could best be described as "eventually".

For '86, the Tempo received a facelift, getting flush headlamps that better complemented the aero styling. (NHTSA approval hadn't come through before the styling of the '84 models had been finalized.)

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Random 1911 Musing...

Y'know, I wonder if the proliferation of relatively cheap CNC machinery is responsible for the overall rise in the quality floor of 1911s over the past couple decades?

I mean, thirty years ago if you weren't spending a G on a 1911, it was basically understood that you were buying a pistol kit that might cycle ball reliably. Nowadays even the Turks will sell you a Government Model clone that will probably run adequately out of the box, at least with good magazines and bullet profiles that aren't too weird and are in the normal 185-230gr weight range.

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Do it, bro!

Photobucket has been sending me messages for literal years that my inactive account would be deleted and that if I didn’t respond, it’d be a goner.

I’ve never responded, but those dudes still haven’t deleted my account (which I am hoping they will. I only had it because a couple forums on which I was active a decade or more ago didn’t have their own photo hosting.)

Are you gonna bark all day, little Photobucket? Our are you gonna bite?

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Sorry...

I absolutely have to get some chrono testing done this morning so I can ship off a review this afternoon.

I won't go to the outdoor range on the weekends... it'd be impossible to get any chrono testing done then anyway ...and today's the only dry weekday in a solid block of rainy weather stretching from last Tuesday to this coming Friday. We're on pace for one of the wettest Aprils on record here in Indy.

Duty calls.

More this afternoon...

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Automotif CDLXXXVII...

This one almost slipped past me before I realized what I'd just seen and jogged down to the corner to grab a photo of it at the traffic light.

What we've got here is a right-hand drive JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) 1994-'96 Toyota Mark II in the Tourer-V trim level, meaning it's packing a 280bhp twin-turbo 1JZ-GTE 2.5 liter inline six. These midsize RWD sedans are popular tuner cars in Japan but were never imported here.

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Totin' trends...

It's been interesting noticing the trends at TacCon now that I've been there for seven years.

The first one I attended, at DARC in Arkansas back in 2017, was largely after the "Caliber Wars" were over. I'm sure there were a few .40s and .45s in attendance, but 9mm was the overwhelmingly most common chambering and it wasn't even close.

I obviously didn't get pictures of everybody shooting in every class, but I'd feel pretty comfortable stating that probably half everybody was shooting a Glock of one variant or another, with M&Ps being the second most common, and the remainder a mishmash of Sig Sauers, HKs, and Berettas, mostly. I only got pictures of one guy using a red dot; an RMR mounted on an 9mm M&P.

Next year TacCon was at DARC again. Glocks were still the most common gun, but probably only a plurality at this point. Sig P320s were already vying with M&Ps as the second most commonly seen pistol. There were a handful of people using red dot optics in 2018, and John Johnston made it into the man-on-man shootoff with one.

At 2019, down in Louisiana at NOLATAC, there were more red dots, and Rick Remington won the shootoff with an RMR atop a 9mm Wilson. Glock alternatives continued to grow in popularity.

After a one-year hiatus during the Plague Year of 2020, TacCon was held at Dallas Pistol Club in 2021.

That's when I first started seeing significant numbers of the smaller pistols, like Glock 48s and Sig P365s. Red dots were commonly spotted in every class and were no longer limited to hardcore dot proponents who'd had pistol slides custom milled for RMRs.

2022 was back at DPC again. Red dots and smaller pistols were everywhere, even in the shootoffs.

2023? More of the same.

For 2024, the biggest difference I noticed was that there was a greater number of people who were willing to talk openly about living "the snubby lifestyle" à la Darryl Bolke. I spent the weekend at the the range, catching rides back to the hotel in the evenings; I'd get dinner and socialize in the lobby a bit and then head to my room to process photos. There weren't many potential scenarios I could visualize there that I didn't feel reasonably comfortable solving with a 3" .38 Special revolver, especially since I was surrounded most of the time by switched-on, like-minded individuals. 

Gear-wise, dots had become downright prevalent. Walthers had become more common. I don't know how Walther's doing in terms of overall market share, but they've certainly penetrated the serious training hobbyist demographic. The majority of optics were now Holosuns. Enclosed emitter optics were trending. If you added 365s and 320s and the few die-hards still shooting the hammer-fired classics together, there may have been as many Sigs as Glocks, if not actually more.