They work great until they don't...

I took that little Sig Sauer P250 Compact with me to Topeka, intending to run it in the class.

Lucky Gunner kindly sponsored the ammo for the class, and so instead of having to transport half a case of .380ACP halfway across the country, five hundred rounds of Armscor .380 was waiting for me at the range.

Saturday morning in the hotel room, I took the P250 apart, applied a drop of Slip2000 EWL to all the lubrication points, and reassembled the pistol.

After lunch on that first class day, preparatory to beginning the shooting portion of the curriculum, I swapped out the Glock 19 on my belt for the P250 and a Bladetech Eclipse holster. On the first drill from the holster, the gun began exhibiting issues. Multiple failure-to-eject and failure-to-feed issues, suspiciously like the Canik TP9v2 shooting Blazer Brass.

Fortunately everybody else in the class was shooting 9mm and Lucky Gunner had brought plenty of that, so I switched back to my G19 carry gun and finished up the class with it.

I brought the Armscor .380 ammo home with me and I'm about to take it to the range for some chrono work...

So, what are the lessons from this?

1. Just because a gun has functioned with complete reliability up until this point, there's no guarantee it will continue to do so.


2. Always bring a second gun to class. This is the second class I've been to now where a heretofore completely reliable pistol has $#!+ the bed hard, bright and early on the morning of the first day.

So...

I rolled out of Topeka in the passenger seat of a pickup truck somewhere around 8:30 or 9:00 local time last night. Caught a brief nap in a parking lot in Poseyville, down in southern Indiana, before continuing on to pick up my car near L'ville right around 0800. I decided to brave the morning rush hour traffic and headed right back out in the Zed Drei, arriving home a little after 10:30.

I'm exhausted, but don't want to go to bed and wind up waking up at midnight, so I'm going to try to stay awake a little longer. I doubt I'll be very coherent, though...
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Hotel Room Morning...

Gun school this weekend, hence the light posting...
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Overheard in the Office...

So, my coughing has indeed strained an abdominal muscle. And it's not one I can relax, since I use it to, you know, breathe. Physically fine overall except for that. But class this weekend is probably going to suck mightily.

RX: "Will you be among friends? I mean, in case you collapse?"

Me: "Oh, yeah. They'll loot my body and divide up my stuff."

RX: "Good. I just wanted to be sure someone would decide who gets your cool stuff, even if it wasn't me."

Testing, Testing, One, Two, Three...

So, in regards to an upcoming training class, I'd said up-front that I would be shooting the P250 Compact .380. Running it in a full two-day class would serve as a sort of proof of concept for the gun in my mind.

Then I'm in a Facebook thread where the instructors are chattering and mention is made of the fact that day one of the class will consist almost entirely of shooting 2" circles from distances between three and five yards.

Suddenly I'm thinking "Has my mouth written a check my ass can't cash? I haven't fired the P250 in over a month, after all..." So I grabbed a target and went to the range this morning.

A fifty-round box of .380 gives three full fifteen-round magazines and five rounds left over. The target in the picture above has fifteen rounds fired into the two-inch upper right "B" circle at three yards, fifteen into the lower left "1" circle at five yards, fifteen into the 3"x5" head box at seven yards, and the remaining five into the center circle at fifteen yards.

I had the range to myself, so I might have broken the speed limit some, but I wanted to make sure I could hit with the gat this weekend. As long as I remember that it seems to shoot to the top of the front sight post for me, I should be fine....

Is there any wine so sweet?

Apparently the Nazi Anime Fan wing of the internet has its jimmies thoroughly rustled by the fact that the genocidal founder of the Democrat party has been replaced on the Twenty by a gun-toting African-American Republican woman. And the Pinko Identity Politics wing of the internet doesn't even realize that's what just happened.

This is like sipping a martini made out of hippie and Nazi tears, shaken AND stirred.

Breaking: Treasury throws founder of the Democratic Party off $20 bill, replaces with gun-toting Republican pic.twitter.com/G9dVXpTaXv

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) April 20, 2016

Springtime

I got back from far-off Castle Frostbite in the kingdom of Cryogenica to find springtime well underway back in Broad Ripple. The streets are lined with color, the trees are starting to leaf in, and the whole place smells like a florist's shop with a slight undertone of bus exhaust.

I put in a couple miles on the bike, just pedaling around and around the neighborhood, to make sure I hadn't forgotten how to ride.
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The Big Apple

 I can't help it. I just gawk and snap photos like I've never seen a skyline before...

The Chrysler Building is still the standard by which other tall buildings are judged, in my opinion...

Changing planes at La Guardia or Newark can be a little fraught. If there's some sort of flight malfunction that causes me to need to stay overnight, I'd need to make provision for the airline to hold on to a big ol' Pelican case full of verboten. Boston? I won't even change planes in the cradle and the grave of American liberty if it can at all be avoided.
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Reading Recommendation...

Today's the big release day for Marko's newest novel, Chains of Command. We were on Amazon at midnight last night, which is I guess the 21st century equivalent of standing in line outside the bookstore waiting for it to open, only without costumed people in sleeping bags.

I've read the advanced reader copy, but I bought a copy of the dead tree version to go with the preceding volumes. This one has the best action scenes yet. And lots of them.
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Overheard at the Strip Mall...

Marko's teenage niece is visiting from Germany. We took her to Five Guys for burgers and then turned her loose in Kohl's this past weekend. Teenagers have a lot more Kohl's endurance than most, and so eventually Marko decided we'd amble next door to the Game Stop and meet her there.

I flagged her down in the checkout line and informed her of our plans, then caught up with Marko on the sidewalk out front.

Me: "Okay, I told her we'd meet her next door at Spiel Halte."

Apparently German mine not so good is, although very literal.
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Sure to wake up the room!

With all these voice-activated gadgets around, my band's next hit single will be "Hey Siri, tell Alexa it's okay, Google!"

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) April 18, 2016

Project Whimsy Crosses the Finish Line

Sunday afternoon on the back yard range at Castle Frostbite, the Glock 37 (aka "the waterhead Glock", aka "Project Whimsy") fired a hundred rounds of commercial .45GAP, bringing the total to 2,010 since the last time it had been cleaned or lubricated, back in January.

The elusive Major Caudill fired a couple magazines.

The Remington 230gr FMJ left my fingers all gray and nasty as always, but all one hundred rounds fired without a hitch. The weapon went through its complete cycle of operation with every press of the trigger.

The Glock 37 has now fired 2,010 rounds since it was last cleaned or lubed, with one failure to feed on round #1,589, one failure to fire on round #1,712, and one parts breakage. This concludes the 2,000 round challenge and the gun is getting a well-deserved bath. Look for a wrap-up piece soon with more photos, thoughts, explanations, and future plans for the poor bobblehead Glock.
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Automotif CXXIII...

1963 Chevrolet Impala station wagon.
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Race for the Stick

Ygraine and Baby in a game of competition stick fetching.
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Saturday morning...

On the upside, I'm feeling a lot better.

On the downside, my head is empty. I am a giant, sucking void of anti-creativity right now.

I need to go watch some MSNBC or something to get back into the spirit of things. All I've done for the last several days is nap and surf the Bookface on the iPad.

I probably need to get out some, too. Take the a camera and go for a walk.
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Ramblings...

Heh. Bernie Gracchus and Donald Sulla...

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) April 16, 2016

Update...

The fever seems to have mostly gone. I haven't made a Kleenex look like the Italian flag since about 0700.

There are some things that have made this more complicated than getting sick normally is, but those will have to stay (REDACTED) for another couple days.

I still feel like I've been beaten all over with a sock full of nickels, but two aspirin make that go away nicely.

The trick now will be clearing my lungs without triggering the sort of involuntary coughing fits that can bring on a good case of bronchitis. Delsym to the rescue.
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Inside the Iron Sandbox...

So, the first time my new phone rang and my iPad Mini started ringing, too...? That was a little unnerving. On the other hand, the way the phone automagically set itself up as a WiFi hotspot for the iPad was pretty neat.

The stuff in Apple's Iron Sandbox does tend to interface pretty seamlessly.
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New vs. Old...

Keads will be putting the new polymer-framed Colt XSP .380 through a documented 2k round test head-to-head against an original Eighties-vintage Colt Mustang.

Watch that space.
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Status Update...

I have not joined the zombies. Yet.
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