Automotif CCXXXVII...

The Rolls Royce Wraith is a hard car to miss. It's two and a half tons of metal, leather, wilton wool, wood veneer, and twin-turbo V12. Over seventeen feet long, with a roofline most of five feet high, it's a coupe of near SUV-proportions.

I was tooling down 54th to shoot the new Kimber test gun at Indy Arms Co. when I noticed this in the parking lot at the American Legion hall, so I swung in to get photos with the little Nikon D3000 in the passenger seat.

Notice the Rolls logo is upright on all four center caps? Yeah, they don't spin. I have to replace a couple little roundel center caps on the Zed Drei every few years when they get bounced loose on Indy's bomb-cratered streets. Fortunately the plastic caps on the Bimmer are cheap. I should start keeping a spare or two in the trunk. Hopefully the ones on the Roller are more secure, since a set of four that claim to be OEM goes for seven bills on Amazon.

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FA,FO

“So we fucked around, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the finding out.”
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

— MateoG (@MateoG) August 10, 2021

The Black Ghost

This was unexpectedly touching. Definitely worth the watch.

More story can be found here.

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Virtue Signaling

I can’t wait until CNN reports that Biden said “Breathing is healthy!”
Two weeks later, after a plague of autoasphyxiation deaths in red states, it’ll come out that Tucker was taking the dry-cleaning bag off his head during commercial breaks.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) August 10, 2021

Litany Against Derp

I'm still learning every day.

I must not derp.
Derp is the reputation-killer.
Derp is the little-death that brings total enstupidation.
I will face my derp.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the derp has gone there will be nothing.
Only clue will remain.

I wonder what I'm wrong about right now?

A: I have an [X] in my derp drawer!
Me: I can't fit my past derp in a drawer. How much future derp do I have lying around? #HalfLifeOfFacts

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 15, 2017

Automotif CCXXXVI...

Early-mid Eighties Mercedes Benz W126 500SEL, which Benz started importing in self-defense because so many were coming in via gray market importers. (Benz originally only imported the smaller-engined 3.8L V8 cars in an attempt to keep Corporate Average Fuel Economy up.)

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Fresh Reading

The latest Palladium Wars volume dropped today. Got my reading for the evening!

Upside Downside

Greg Ellifritz has a good piece up on some of the pros and cons of the traditional double-action auto.

"Surprisingly, the dual trigger pulls were not the problem that you might expect them to be. At the time, a lot of the officers had been originally trained on revolvers. The first pull of the TDA auto is quite similar in feel to a double action revolver trigger.

The bigger training issue was managing the TDA auto’s decocking lever. Teaching a student when to decock while the pistol was still in hand was harder than teaching the double action trigger pull. Getting students to remember to decock before holstering while under a lot of stress was hard work. When the stress levels increased, I had lots of cops trying to holster cocked TDA pistols."

I pretty much agree with his observations.

Everything has tradeoffs. If you carry a TDA (or a single-action like a 1911), you need to reliably and habitually activate the decocker (on a TDA) or safety (on an SAO) when you come off the sights, otherwise many potential advantages are lost. This is complicated on TDA autos with non-returning combination safety/decockers; on a S&W like the one in the photo, I flip the lever down to decock the pistol and back up again immediately to ready the pistol for work again. Real proficiency with either TDA or SAO will be higher-maintenance than equivalent skill with a striker-fired auto. 

I still think a light-but-long DAO is the best of both worlds for the non-hobbyist* defensive user, but I've long realized that I’m shouting into the void on this one.

[SARCASM ALERT] The complete necessity of sub-.25 splits in defensive situations has totally poisoned the well for the commercial success of DAO guns. Mrs. Edna Crabapple will not be able to defend herself from felons without a short-travel, sub 5# trigger. [/SARCASM ALERT]

Would you consider yourself unarmed with a DA/SA gun like this Smif 1066? I wouldn't.

*By "non-hobbyist" I mean the typical gun owner, who likely isn't reading this blog and wouldn't list "guns" as one of their hobbies. They keep a gun in the house the same way most people keep a fire extinguisher. However the market does not cater to their needs, because they're generally one-and-done customers, not enthusiastic repeat buyers. The market caters to gun nerds like me and you.

Ouch.

I've had persistent pain in my left elbow and soreness and tightness in that forearm, most likely from sleeping on it funny one night and then somehow aggravating it.

Even though it's my support-side hand, it definitely makes itself felt when shooting, though, especially an all-steel full size 1911. It'll be nice if this goes away; I have enough parts of me that are more or less permanently stove up and I'd hate to add my left elbow to the list.

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Automotif CCXXXV...

Super-clean lightly customized 1969 Buick Electra 225. I had a hard time identifying it at first because not only is my Buick-fu weak and the car had been de-badged, but I was looking in the wrong years.

The lack of FMVSS-mandated side marker lights had me scouring pre-'68 cars, but the 4 Ventiports said "Electra" and the svelte front bumper didn't match the heavy wraparound chrome on the front of those older cars. Except when the owner de-badged the car he also removed the side marker lights and filled in the mounting holes before re-painting his sled.

He and his girl had been at Indy Arms Co. doing some shooting while I was picking up a test gun, and I made sure to compliment him on his ride when he came out.

Blacksmith

The blacksmithing shed at the State Fair is maybe my favorite picture-taking spot. It's cool to watch the hot metal being shaped, and it's challenging to get good photos.

It's good to see that it's got multigenerational appeal!

American-Occupied America

I so love taking photos around the Pioneer Village area of the Indiana State Fair. This whole enterprise got its start sixty years ago as a collection of photos and mementos posted on a pseudo-rustic wall under the grandstand at the Fair and has grown into this. Now the sawmill here has provided most of the lumber for the little "village" of Possum Holler that is a bit of living history, manned by enthusiastic volunteers.

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Horsepower...

Two thousand pounds of horseflesh, Bill is twenty-five  CORRECTION: twenty-two years old. He can still drag a log right smartly.

Toro!

An interesting artifact is this 1939 Toro tractor. Turns out that Toro is a great example of a company identifying a niche and filling it.

"One of those companies was Toro. Created as the Toro Motor Co. in 1914 to build tractor motors, its first customer was the Bull Tractor Co. In 1919, it introduced the To-Ro cultivator. The game of golf was gaining in popularity in the early 20th century, and in 1921, Toro was one of the first companies to fasten gangs of reel mowers to one of its power units to maintain golf courses. From that point on, Toro was a leader in lawn maintenance products: first commercially and then in residential applications.

Until Toro got involved in golf course maintenance there is no record of any special tractor made to handle gangs of mowers. Model T Fords were sometimes modified for that purpose but were only marginally successful because considerable power was needed and the T’s somewhat fragile drive train was taxed beyond its capacity. Toro developed a specialized power source and continued to improve it as the years went by. By the late 1930s, Toro pretty much owned the golf course maintenance equipment and tractor niche market."

I love the streamlined art deco prow on this thing. It just screams "Hop in! We're mowing this golf course into the future!"

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Whitesmith, Redsmith

The blacksmithing shed in the Pioneer Village at the State Fair had a new neighbor this year. A guy was set up doing tinkering right next to it, hammering out tin and copper bowls and knick knacks.

Here he's working with a leather-faced slapper to form the broad shape of the bowl.

Unlike the blacksmiths, who work with metals so hard they have to be heated red hot to be malleable, coppersmiths and tinsmiths work with cold metal.

Here he's finishing out the shape, or "planishing", with a hammer.

While no longer used to make day-to-day use items like bowls, pitchers, and ashtrays, cold-working metal skills survive in the auto body shop.

Fuji X-T2 & XF 18-55mm f/2.8-4

Lack of Practice Makes Imperfect

The lower A-zone was trying to push a little bit of speed, and the results of not shooting much meant my recoil control was terrible. You can't dry-fire that, sadly.

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Range Day Yesterday

Lovely weather yesterday for an outdoor range day at Marion County Fish & Game. I got there shortly after ten AM and at that hour you have to stand back behind the 20 yard line in the bays if you want to shoot in the shade. So if, like me, you are too lazy to set up target stands and don't want to stand in the sun, you get used to shooting steel plates from twenty some-odd yards. It's good for trigger control.

It had been a while since I'd run a full-sized steel 1911 in .45AARP, but it felt like old home week and the hits on the plates were stupid easy. A useful sight picture and a good trigger made the Emissary as easy to land hits with as the dot-sighted XD-M, maybe easier.

Got my Pocket Pro II out only to discover that the battery has gone to wherever 9V batteries go after a long and fulfilling life.

The XD-M Elite 3.8 Compact OSP will be in an upcoming issue of RECOIL and the Emissary will show up in Shooting Illustrated.

Baby Bimmer needs a bath, badly.

Snarly Utility Vehicle

Spotted this butch-looking Jeep SJ Cherokee Chief while out and about yesterday. I dig the side exhausts. Maybe not super practical, but this thing's hardly set up for rock-crawling anyway.

I can never see a Cherokee Chief without thinking of the song by the same name off Jerry Harrison's Casual Gods solo album...

"Got a bulletproof window, two inches of steel
Nothing gets to me, sitting at that wheel
Got a big gun on the top, wide track down below
No place in this jungle, no place I can't go

Don't look now I'm parked outside your window
But you can't see my face through the pane
Oh, in this town it's always earthquake weather
When you drink at the bar, look straight ahead"

Temporary Island

"One complication facing any expedition to Oyster Island, a speck of land about half a mile southwest of the Statue of Liberty, is that most of the time the island is not there. For this reason, perhaps, it is rarely marked on maps—another complication. One of the last charts to note Oyster Island by name was issued by the U.S. Coast Survey, in 1844, and since then it has been portrayed mostly as an underwater hazard—marked on maritime apps, for instance, as “foul area,” a mere navigational risk. It is a remnant of the oyster beds that surrounded Liberty and Ellis Islands through the late nineteen-twenties, by which time they’d been contaminated by sewage, industrial toxins, and dredging. Oyster Island is primarily a sunken island, but it returns occasionally when the moon is both full and especially close, as it was a few weeks ago, when an unusually low tide offered a two-hour window during which a small group landed there to explore."

Sounds like a fun, if damp, place for a quick picnic lunch.

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Unexpected.

Today in completely unexpected Wikipedia articles:

Fishing industry in Switzerland

Yesterday in its little "Did you know..." trivia panel, Wikipedia served up the apocryphal-sounding tidbit that the Swiss fishery boomed in the Fifties after a fisherman discovered an industrial potato peeler would make two perfect filets out of a perch. I don't know the veracity of this, but I want it to be true.

I hope the Swiss navy guards its fisheries zealously!

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Automotif CCXXXIV...

How could you not be happy, tootling around town on a glorious Sunday afternoon with the top down on a nice, clean little Karmann Ghia?

Those round rear side marker lights say it's a 1968 or '69 model, as they were added to comply with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards that went into effect for the '68 model year. In 1970, VW went to rectangular wraparound turn signal/side marker lights in the rear.

I had no idea that the Karmann Ghia has a Virgil Exner connection! Per Wikipedia:

Segre and Virgil Exner became close professionally and personally, eventually traveling Europe together. Peter Grist wrote in his 2007 Exner biography that when Exner in 1955 eventually saw the Karmann Ghia, which cribbed heavily from his Chrysler d'Elegance, "he was pleased with the outcome and glad that one of his designs had made it into large-scale production.” Chris Voss, a stylist in Exner's office, reported in 1993, that Exner considered the Karmann Ghia the ultimate form of flattery. Segre in turn sent Exner the first production Karmann Ghia imported into the state of Michigan, in gratitude.

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Attack of the Clones

"The number of firearms that you can assemble yourself from scratch, from the frame/receiver up, without using a single part made by the original manufacturer makes for a pretty small club. And if that club is small, then the exclusive party room in the back is populated by designs where you can buy completely assembled derivatives from third parties. This usually happens when a popular firearm becomes old enough that any patents have expired, although sometimes clone makers do jump the gun and matters get settled in court.

Glock pistols, at least of the first three generations, have been in the first club for a while. Off the top of my head, I can’t recollect when the first turnkey, aftermarket Glock frames became available, but it has to be getting close to 20 years. CCF Race Frames were certainly available in the early Aughties, and (as this is written, anyway) you’ve been able to buy stripped grip frames to get your DIY gun-building kicks for a while now..."

Click on through to read the rest...

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #203...

Just in for review work is Springfield Armory's latest 1911 model, the Emissary, for an upcoming issue of Shooting Illustrated. 5" bull barrel, stainless railed frame, blued carbon steel slide, .45ACP chambering, two mags in the box.

Some unusual stylistic and functional choices in this gun. It's not a gamer gun, but there are some things that are off the beaten path for a CCW piece, too. 

Oh well, I'd best get to shootin' it...

Asymmetrical Warfare

The Taliban is proving that, contra POTUS's claims, you don't need combat aircraft if you can deprive the other side of the people who fly them. According to Reuters...

At least seven Afghan pilots, including Zamaray, have been assassinated off base in recent months, according to two senior Afghan government officials. This series of targeted killings, which haven't been previously reported, illustrate what U.S. and Afghan officials believe is a deliberate Taliban effort to destroy one of Afghanistan's most valuable military assets: its corps of U.S.- and NATO-trained military pilots.

In so doing, the Taliban -- who have no air force -- are looking to level the playing field as they press major ground offensives.

On top of this, the Afghani Air Force is facing serious logistics problems.

About one-third of the Afghan Air Force’s 160 aircraft can no longer fly because they lack spare parts since the United States withdrew its contractors from the country, Afghan lawmaker Haji Ajmal Rahmani reportedly said during a recent webinar sponsored by the State Department Correspondents Association.

The Afghan Air Force has also run out of laser-guided precision munitions, Rahmani said.

Looks like the embassy in Kabul has a spacious rooftop for when we wrap up this season of That Seventies Show...

Prepper Camp

...and you can take "camp" in both senses of the word, actually. 

In her perky rural drawl, Survivor Jane cheers, “You’re ready, right? For when the SHTF (shit hits the fan)?” This is the first session of Prepper Camp, founded by Jane and Rick who are hoping to save the world one ill prepared soul at a time. Their website promises that Prepper Camp “is a total immersion event in preparedness, survival, camp craft, off-grid living, and homesteading skills.”

A burly man dressed head-to-toe in camouflage sits in the tent’s front row and yells ‘yes!’ Jane high fives him. The rest of us, twenty would-be preppers on folding chairs sinking into the mud, halfheartedly nod.

It's a well-written, humorous piece.

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Giraffles!

The front can't get here soon enough.

According to Wunderground, the dew points at all the nearest weather stations are in the 75-78°F range, which is literally miserable.

I checked and that's also the current dew point in Miami Beach and slightly worse than current conditions in Houston or New Orleans. 

Fortunately around here it usually only does this for a few days at a whack before a front comes through and sets things to a more tolerable range. Up here it's a heat wave; down South this weather would be just another day in summer. P.J. O'Rourke described it best in Parliament of Whores:

We've had four days in the low nineties with sticky humidity and dew points in the high sixties, but tomorrow should be only eighty or so and considerably less humid.

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An ugly bird.

The marabou stork is not the most fetching of avians.

"I heard that!"

As with most birds with largely featherless noggins, it's adapted for a lifestyle that involves a lot of time spent with its head stuck inside of corpses. Can't get your feathers all covered in clotted nastiness if you don't have any.

Most storks eat fish and frogs and the like and are far more attractive animals. Another thing I'm reminded every time I see them is how enormous marabous are. Wingspans in the 7-9 foot range are apparently the norm.

"Are you still talking about me?"

Apparently they've become common dump pests in sub-Saharan Africa:

"Increasingly, marabous have become dependent on human garbage and hundreds of the huge birds can be found around African dumps or waiting for a hand out in urban areas. Marabous eating human garbage have been seen to devour virtually anything that they can swallow, including shoes and pieces of metal. Marabous conditioned to eating from human sources have been known to lash out when refused food."

That sounds positively unnerving, because these are some big-ass birds.

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Turbo Kitties!

A good camera and lens really makes a huge difference at the zoo. Even the "2x zoom" on most cell cameras is only about the equivalent of a 50mm lens on a full frame camera.

The old style 80-400mm Nikon zoom I was using is available on the used market pretty cheaply for what it is, because it won't autofocus on D3xxx or D5xxx cameras that don't have internal focus motors. But that 400mm focal length will get you right in there with the critters.

I thought about using a crop sensor body, since the narrower field of view would give an effective 1.5x focal length boost. Maybe next time. These were all shot with the D3.

Man, a bad day taking pictures at the zoo is still a pretty good day. I really should spring for a membership.

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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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Automotif CCXXXIII...

I'm pretty sure this is a 1938 Chevrolet Master Deluxe, but prewar cars are way out of my wheelhouse. David Burge would know.

Aesthetically, this thing's just about spot on for my tastes. I might quibble about the wheel pattern, but that's minor.

Also, I shot this with the Fuji X-T2 and XF 18-55mm f/2.8-4 that is increasingly my constant companion. I love the controls, the size, the image files it puts out, and the fact that it has a lot of "pro" features like weather sealing, dual card slots, and effectively zero lag on the controls. Plus I love Fuji's retro dials and rings for shutter speed, ISO, and aperture.

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Bucking Bronco

This tasty first generation Bronco Sport was enough to get me to get up from my table with my camera and jog across the street...

It probably looked shabbier on the showroom floor...

Well, I guess it's time...

It's that quadrennial hint to get off my ass and start working out.

The Good Ol' Days

Alum and plaster of paris in the bread and a bit of Borax to cover the taste of spoiled milk. Really makes you long for a return to the good ol' days, no?



The bit on baby bottles is toe-curling.

Electrifying History

Fascinating stuff about the early days of electricity in England.

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