Tumbled Gyros

I know it's Thursday but between the weather completely changing, plus yesterday's holiday, and the calendar rolling over to November, today feels like Second Monday.

Monday through Wednesday were unseasonably warm and sunny, yesterday was overcast and rainy, with temps returning to seasonal norms. Today will be sunny but cool.

It doesn't feel like tomorrow brings the weekend, but here it is.

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The Airport Cultural Index

As a longtime orbital peeper using the GoogleSat, I've found something interesting about airports. In some parts of the world, they're a mess.

Check out this disorganized corner of ramp in El Alto Airport in La Paz...

...or the back forty of Quatro de Fevereiro airport in Luanda, Angola...

You don't see that kind of disorganization at Narita, or Schipol, or Heathrow. Airports in the developed world tend to be pretty organized places. The mothballed aircraft at Davis-Monthan, Kingman Field, or Pinal Airpark tend to be parked in orderly rows. Even the Libyan C-130's quietly decaying in a clearing in the woods on the grounds of the Lockeed plant in Marietta are tucked in neatly among the pines.

So the state of Russian airports often surprises me. The Apathy of Kleptocracy: It's visible from space!

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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As Time Goes By...

When I was in my twenties, my big source of disappointment at sunrise on Saturday was that the party had wound down and it was time to go home and get some shut-eye.

Nowadays my big disappointment at sunrise on Saturday is that I only get crosswords in the NYT and the WaPo, because The Atlantic doesn't do a Saturday crossword.

Tempus fugit.

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Bliss

On a beautiful Sunday morning, if you gotta take some time out to run a quick errand, there are a lot worse ways to do it than in a sporty rear-wheel-drive V-8 car with a manual transmission.

Vroom!

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Changes Over Time

Looking back over the years, do you find that your opinions on firearms or self-defense-related things are still fluid and changing? Or did you finally reach that point where you have things pretty well figured out?

Like on things like tritium sights, or ambi safeties on 1911s, or 9mm versus .40/.45/10mm/whatever?

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Important Weather Factoid

When someone says “but it’s a dry heat”, there’s a quick and easy way to tell if they’re talking out their ass or not: Go sit in the shade someplace with a breeze.

Out of the direct sun, as long as your perspiration can evaporate and carry away excess heat like it’s supposed to, you can get well into the ninety degree range without being too miserable. Bump that humidity up enough so that your body’s built-in swamp cooler stops working, though, and even the high 70s are awful.

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Truth in Advertising

You guys, I'm starting to think that Dr. Pepper isn't actually an MD.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 6, 2023

"Chinesium"

I'm old enough to remember when "Made in Japan" was shorthand for "cheap manufactured goods".

The funny part, of course, is that the idea was already largely obsolete by the time I was old enough to mouth the words. Oh, sure, in the Seventies the labor and manufacturing costs were still lower than here in the U.S. (although rising fast), but the quality of manufactured goods from the island nation was by then as good as anyplace else in the world and better than most.

The main source for inexpensively assembled electronics and optics has wandered around Southeast Asia for a while, as costs in Japan rose. I've owned optics from the Philippines and Taiwan, for instance. Vaunted camera maker Nikon only made their most expensive DSLRs in the Home Islands before relocating all camera production to their Thailand plant.

Pretty much for the last couple decades, China has been the source for this stuff. The country has a sophisticated manufacturing base and low manufacturing costs, and it's not like good stuff isn't produced there (you don't often hear people accusing iPhones of being shoddily built) but they will make your electronics or optics to whatever price point you want, and QC & materials prices are easy places to slash overhead.

With China apparently having hit peak population growth, though, that standing of being "least expensive source for sophisticated goods" isn't guaranteed to be a forever thing, and I wonder who's next?

Will we be making fun of inexpensive Indian goods, or are they tracking the same arc as China too closely to be able to supplant them for a decade or two? Or maybe some African country will get its governmental ducks in a row long enough to be seen as a good source of cheap manufacturing and we'll see "Made in Nigeria" pocket knives and toaster ovens?

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The Great Indoors

Got magazines loaded for the High Power so I can walk in at Indy Arms and get to blasting right away when they open at ten.

When it's hot and humid enough, the HVAC system on an indoor range can have a hard time keeping up with the sheer volume of outside air being hauled in by the filtration system. Every bit of the entire volume of air on that range is exchanged in less than ten minutes, if I'm remembering rightly. It's generally fine until outdoor air temps hit the nineties and the humidity is high.

I'd imagine that ranges where the weather's like this for a significant chunk of the year will build more capacity into the air conditioner servicing the range. I remember CCA's not having too much trouble keeping up during a normal Knoxville summer. I don't know enough about air conditioning to grok the specifics. 

I wonder what it's like in places like the Pacific Northwet where A/C wasn't the norm until recently? When I took that class from Kathy at FAS back in 2015, it was pretty hot, but we didn't spend much time on an indoor range, and I've slept since then.

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Awkward...

Have you ever been drawn into a conversation on an internet forum and had the uncomfortable realization, a few posts in, that the person with whom you are conversing... let's go with "has profound mental deficits"? 

This is always awkward for me.

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If I'd known then what I know now...

The 296Ti, a five-shot .44Spl, was one of only two models of DAO enclosed-hammer "Centennial" L-frames made by Smith & Wesson back around the turn of the Millennium.

The other was the 242Ti, which was otherwise identical but a .38Spl seven-shooter. I bought the .44, because I was (and still am, kinda) enamored with big bore snubbies. Thing is, the gun's limited to a max bullet weight of 200 grains, lest it turn into a kinetic bullet puller under recoil. That's not such a big deal, though, since most defense-oriented loads in the caliber use 200 grain or lighter projectiles.

None of those bullets expand reliably anyway, and if they did, they'd probably wind up with marginal penetration so it's probably a good thing they don't. Take Hornady's 165gr FTX Critical Defense, for instance. In my experience it's pretty iffy in the expansion department in clear gel through four-layer denim. In bare ordnance gel, it expands just like the brochure photos...and penetrates about eight or nine inches. The same as a decent .380ACP load.

So, loaded with Silvertips or Federal 200gr LSWC-HP, you've got a bullet that penetrates about fourteen inches through 4LD with some reliability, and you've got five of them. If I'd bought the 242Ti and loaded it with 148gr Federal Gold Medal Match .38 Special wadcutters, I'd get the same amount of penetration, less recoil, and two more shots.

We live and learn.

When carried it on the belt, rarely, I carried it in an old Galco Speed Master revolver holster, which had a distressing tendency to collapse and be difficult to re-holster with. These days I'd use the more rigidly molded Combat Master from Galco... if I didn't just go ahead and get a Summer Special IWB rig from Milt Sparks.

Right after I got it, I had a gunsmith do a trigger job, trying to get the lightest possible trigger pull while still reliably busting caps. It was down around nine pounds. Of course, that required a lightened rebound spring and gave a slow reset you could easily outrun shooting fast in double action. I had that problem sorted by the late Denny Reichard of Sand Burr Gun Ranch, who set me straight with a trigger job using factory springs. Sure, it's a couple pounds heavier than it was, but it's much better for real-world use.

I should get a tritium sight on the front...

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Round Tuit

Photo by Oleg Volk

Among those projects that's been sitting on a back burner way too long, I really need to get the firing pin on my MAS 49/56 lightened so it will run this FNM and Pervy Partisan commercial fodder reliably without the occasional slam-fire. They're such cool rifles, with .308-level wallop but handling like a shorty SKS and a usable receiver-mounted peep sight.

Open to suggestions. Or maybe someone has one of those now-unobtanium titanium ones lying around?

EDIT: Having posed the same question on the Book of Faces, it was answered by exactly who you'd think would be Johnny-on-the Spot with solutions for French blasters. Problem solved, problem staying solved. 

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That doesn't feel that long ago.

According to OneDrive, it was on this date six years ago that I shot Dot Torture clean for the first time with the Glock 37.

It was also the range session where I had the only malfunction I've had with the G37, and it was a doozy.

Yes, that's a live, unfired round... the last round in the magazine, for what it's worth ...that somehow got uncontrolled enough in the feedway that it wound up sticking primer-first out of the ejection port. Those short-OAL cartridges with such fat, heavy bullets probably present challenges.

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Overtaken by Events

The "life in the monkey house" post tag was originally for incidents of people or nations behaving in a silly or stupid fashion, especially if driven by atavistic, poo-flinging, tribal impulses. 

It feels like I could just be sticking that tag on every post other than photos of cats and automobiles now.

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Artists are Weird

It's not at all uncommon to see black electrical tape plastered over the "Nikon" logo on a camera's viewfinder hump or the red dot on the front of a Leica.

The various reasons given for this range from the understandable to the bizarre.

I've heard people say they do it to make the camera less conspicuous, and that makes sense. The bold white block letters or red circle on a black background do make a camera more likely to draw the eye, which is anathema when doing candid work. Still, if you're waving around a full-frame DSLR and a bazooka-like pro-grade zoom lens, nothing is going to make it inconspicuous.

Marketing to street photogs, Fuji keeps their rangefinder-style cameras low-key out of the box.

Others do it because they don't want to advertise for the camera manufacturer, and I understand where they're coming from, even if I don't entirely get it. 

I think the people who obsessively avoid or remove brand logos and badging on their consumer goods are nothing but the opposite pole on the same axis of neurosis as the people who are obsessed with having the right brand logos festooning their stuff. 

The reason to not use the Canon or Nikon strap that came in the box with your camera isn't because it has the manufacturer's logo on it, but because it's a crappy camera strap. Get you some quality, comfortable Peak Design or BlackRapid gear to hang your expensive camera off. Using the little strap that came in the box to hold your camera is like using the plastic dovetail protectors that came on your Glock as sights.

The silliest are the people who cover the Nikon or Leica logo because they don't want to attract thieves.

Bro, the average street thug don't know a Leica from a lug nut. The only people who care about that shit are other camera nerds. Thieves are keying on the fact that you have a big camera and lens hanging around your neck, not that it has a brand name on it. It's one of the things I sometimes think about when I'm out and about with some antique DSLR; it'd be a shame for something to jump off over a camera that would get a thief laughed out of a pawn shop. "Buddy, that thing's twenty years old. I can't buy that."

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Just Zoo It

You know what I haven't done in a while? Go to the zoo.

I've got an 80-400mm lens that's just itching for a look at a tiger.

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Unchained Malady

Tardive dyskinesia is an awful condition that causes the sufferer to suddenly break out in various twitches, grimaces, and jerking motions.

Tardive disconesia is an awful condition that causes the sufferer to suddenly break out in John Travolta and the Hustle.

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Second Fiddle

In this era when .40S&W is tied with (or sometimes ahead of) regular ol' 9x19mm ammunition in the cost and availability sweepstakes, I feel like I should be looking into .40 loadings that offer adequate terminal ballistics while being both as controllable and easy on the gun itself as possible.

I don't need all the foot pounds, just adequate penetration and reliable expansion while being fairly barrier-blind. I want more ammo options...

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Time Travel

The tiny little strip mall ACE Hardware a couple doors down from the drug store where I cashiered back in high school had a teeny little gun/knife counter crammed in the corner. They carried Rugers, mostly, as well as the full Buck catalog. 

There were two items in that showcase I used to sometimes go daydream about on my breaks: A BuckMaster knife and a Ruger Old Army in stainless. They were expensive, but not unattainably so. A more responsible me could have rolled my pennies for a few paychecks and bought them both. I don't know what I would have used them for, but, hey...what if the Russians had invaded or something?

Looking at eBay and GB now, holy yikes, do I wish I had bought them back then.

Yeah, yeah, I realize that they probably have barely kept pace with inflation and if I went back in time, I should buy Apple & Microsoft, not LARP-y knives and guns, but still.

Besides, you'd have to pay with coins and singles if you went back in time, because our current five-dollar-and-up bills would look like counterfeit money back then. Can you buy stock shares with bundles of singles and rolls of quarters? I mean, I guess you can, but it would feel weird.

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