The Seven Seventeen Year Itch

Ever since it was initially customized, this Model 57 has been wearing the same uncheckered pau ferro Hogue Monogrip.

In fact, my very first interaction with Farmer Frank was him pointing out how silly it was to go through all the effort of converting a square-butt frame to a round-butt and then putting a round-to-square conversion grip on it.

It wasn't necessarily the grip of choice, it was what was in stock at our wholesaler when the revolver was completed back in 2001. It was always intended to be a placeholder until a more permanent grip could be selected; ideally a set of Eagle Secret Service stocks to match the PC13. When I got it from Marko back in 2005, getting some proper round-butt stocks was high on my list of things to do.

Seventeen years down the road, I finally got around to doing something about it...

Those are VZ Grips 320 stocks, so named because they have a matte texture similar to 320 grit sandpaper. 

They're still a placeholder. I fully intend to get those Secret Service stocks on there, someday. (I could buy the VZ's on Amazon with free Prime delivery, but Eagle Secret Service stocks have something like a 4-week wait, and I'm all about the instant gratification.) Then I'll move these VZ's over to my 3" 629, probably, since the factory round-butt combat stocks on that thing are worth nearly half what I paid for the whole gun back in 2001.  

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Days of Future Past

Dean Ing, writer of numerous SF and thriller yarns as well as a bunch of prepper-oriented nonfiction, passed away last year.

His personal car, the Mayan Magnum, was absolutely the perfect ride for a sci-fi writer, and a reader writes to inform me that it's currently up for auction on Bring a Trailer. (Warning: BaT as a time-suck is second only to TV Tropes.)

With just under nine hours to go, it's still under eight grand.

It's Corvair-powered with a Porsche transaxle and a decidedly kit car interior, but you'd definitely be the only kid on your block with one.

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I hate it when that happens.

I'd had a Wikipedia tab open to the entry on Fort Mandan for so long...a couple months, at least...that I'd completely forgotten what I'd planned to do with it.

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ba-dum!

Apparently they had difficulty keeping his lungs inflated. https://t.co/YuGzSd2HUZ

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) September 6, 2021

'Vette Dump

Late '80s C4 ragtop

C8, still not a common sight

'67 C2 convertible

The C2 is still my favorite body style...

'69 C3 Stingray with a 427 big block...

...if the hood and the rumble coming from the side pipes is to be believed.

Not gonna lie...

...I'd kinda low-key hoped Willard Scott would make it to 100 so Al Roker could wish him a happy birthday on the Today show.

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*nervous laughter*

Reminder...

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This is why we can't have nice things.

Behold the sculpture/structure called "The Vessel" in NYC.

Photo from Wikipedia

It's probably going to be either closed to the public or torn down because people keep jumping off of it. They thought they'd cut down or eliminate jumpers by not allowing people to go up there by themselves, but the most recent one was up there with his family.

It's not very considerate of them, but they're not being very considerate in the first place.

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A blog to read...

There's good reading to be found at Swift, Silent, Deadly.

The blogger is a former USMC Special Operator and current paramedic who writes well and shares a lot of good information on a wide variety of topics. Lots of archived older entries to dig through. Recommend.

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Automotif CCXLVII...

Loiter on the patio of one of the restaurants at 54th and College and sooner or later, one of everything will drive by...

...like this very early De Tomaso Pantera. The earliest '71 models are identifiable by push-button door releases shared with the earlier Mangusta. Production using the old style manufacturing methods was having a hard time keeping up with the output required by Ford (to say nothing of indifferent quality control) so Ford invested a bunch of money in new tooling for the Italian maker.

The most visible sign of the cars made on the newer tooling are the flat-latch door handles.

You can tell it's a '72 from the flat door latches and the graceful chrome bumpers, replaced for the '73 models (called the Pantera L), with large rubber federally-mandated energy absorbing 5mph bumpers.

The blue and white De Tomaso logo is visible in the grille and the wheel center caps. The colors are from the Argentinian flag, where Alejandro de Tomaso was born.

The aftermarket wing looks nice on this car, and the sound crackling from those exhausts was that of a Ford 351 Cleveland V8 that meant business.

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Rocket Men

There's an interesting piece at The New Yorker on the reasons behind the FAA investigation into Virgin Galactic's big media event flight:

"The rocket motor on Virgin Galactic’s ship is programmed to burn for a minute. On July 11th, it had a few more seconds to go when a red light also appeared on the console: an entry glide-cone warning. This was a big deal. I once sat in on a meeting, in 2015, during which the pilots on the July 11th mission—Dave Mackay, a former Virgin Atlantic pilot and veteran of the U.K.’s Royal Air Force, and Mike Masucci, a retired Air Force pilot—and others discussed procedures for responding to an entry glide-cone warning. C. J. Sturckow, a former marine and nasa astronaut, said that a yellow light should “scare the shit out of you,” because “when it turns red it’s gonna be too late”; Masucci was less concerned about the yellow light but said, “Red should scare the crap out of you.” Based on pilot procedures, Mackay and Masucci had basically two options: implement immediate corrective action, or abort the rocket motor. According to multiple sources in the company, the safest way to respond to the warning would have been to abort. (A Virgin Galactic spokesperson disputed this contention.)

Aborting at that moment, however, would have dashed Branson’s hopes of beating his rival Bezos, whose flight was scheduled for later in the month, into space. Mackay and Masucci did not abort."

I love flying, but unpowered aircraft, gliders and hot air balloons, have always given me the creeping willies. Not having your own source of power aboard really limits how much input you have on where you come down, it seems.

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Automotif CCXLVI...

Here's something you don't see every day: An MGC GT.

The MGC was a more potent version of the common MGB, substituting an inline six in place of the B's little 1.8L four. You can see the bulge in the hood needed to clear the radiator, which was located further forward due to the longer motor, and the little bump that gives clearance for the dual SU carbs.

The 2.9L BMC C-series six cylinder made 145bhp in production tune, which was a fifty horsepower boost over the four. In exchange for half again the horsepower, though, the car became extremely nose-heavy. Even though the powerplant was a redesigned, lightened version of BMC's existing straight six, it still weighed two hundred pounds more than the four cylinder engine in the MGB (itself not very svelte, being a 350+ pound cast iron lump.)

The MGC was roasted in the British motoring press and only lasted two years in production.

Interestingly, the later MGB GT V8, which used the 3.5L Rover V8, did not suffer from these problems. In fact, the aluminum...well, "aluminium" now, I guess...V8, originally designed by Buick, was actually about forty pounds lighter than the cast iron B-series inline four.

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Automotif CCXLV...

The final version of the Fiat 124 Sport Spider was sold as the "Fiat Spider 2000", for its two liter (well, actually 1,995cc) twin-cam motor.

Fiat retired the car in 1981, but Pininfarina, who had originally built the bodies, took over manufacture and continued selling them as the Pininfarina Spider for a few more years.

It only put out roughly a hundred SAE Net horsepower, and reliability was par for the course for a '70s Fiat, but they sure were fun when they were running, and when they weren't you had something pretty to look at while waiting for the tow truck.

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The Journey Starts With a Single Step

This is super cool! Langdon Tactical is branching out, with a new offshoot called LTT Discover.



This is aimed at normal people who've decided to take charge of their personal protection, instead of being jargon-laden tacticoolness geared toward firearms hobbyists who do this whole self-defense thing as a lifestyle in and of itself. (Guilty as charged.)

I love this direction and I'm eager to see how it develops!

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The Littlest 3rd Gen

The CS9 (or Chiefs Special 9) was the smallest of the traditional double-action Smith autoloaders. It was even smaller than the already-compact 3913. The 3913 was a 25-ounce 8-shot single stack with a 3.5" barrel; the CS9 shed half an inch of barrel, a round of magazine capacity, and a quarter pound of weight.

The double-action-only version, dubbed the CS9D, was unusual for a Smith auto during the Great DAO Duty Handgun Boom of the 1990s, in that it was a true DAO. The normal Smith DAOs of the era had a pre-loaded trigger that reduced travel and gave a great pull but needed the slide to cycle to cock the action. The CS9D just dispenses with the single-action notch on the hammer and has a regular true double-action pull for every shot.

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Rangefinders

Unfortunately the Nikon S in the middle needs repairs, and the Minolta-35 in the background is probably uneconomically repairable. The camera in the foreground, though...

The Zorki-6 seems to be in good working order. It uses the Leica 39mm thread mount, but it's unclear how well my Leitz 5cm Elmar will interface with the rangefinder cam on this crappy commie camera. When I have a couple bucks to spare, I'll get myself a Jupiter or something, I guess...

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Trade Imbalance

 When the previous administration talked about addressing our trade imbalance with Europe, I thought we were going to try and export more things like cars and computers, not cults and quackery.

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Automotif CCXLIV...

Generally speaking, a '91-'93 Buick Century is the opposite of an interesting car.

If a majority of these things didn't spend years toiling as fleet cars before dying ignominious deaths as hoopties sold off tote-the-note, no-credit-no-problem lots, I'll be shocked.

Which is what made this unusually nice thirty year old GM family bus so eye-catching yesterday afternoon.

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Get A Grip

Back in the Nineties, the first "upgrade" I tended to make to a handgun was to throw a set of Hogues on it. I liked the matte black look and the soft, squishy feel of the santoprene Hogues, like the ones on this Smith & Wesson 1066, over the harder, shinier rubber found on Pachmayrs. 

But that was because at the time I spent a lot more time holding handguns than shooting or carrying them. I quickly learned that when I put them on a CCW gun, the tacky texture of the soft rubber would bind against the cloth of many cover garments. It was also tacky enough to the touch that it could be difficult to shift the gun in your grip even if you wanted to.

In the early Aughties, as I read more detailed accounts of shooting technique, and studied more about revolvers specifically, I learned that noted authorities like Bill Jordan and Jerry Miculek preferred smooth stocks on their wheelguns, so I ditched the soft santoprene and got more into the uncheckered Hogue hardwood Monogrips, like the Pau Ferro ones on this Model 19 Combat Magnum.

The stated reason for Jordan and Miculek preferring these smooth grips is that they could adjust their grip as they were acquiring a sight picture, if it were necessary to compensate for a less-than-prefect initial grip on the draw. Then they could just clamp down and start shooting.

Thing is, dudes like Bill Jordan and Jerry Miculek could probably crack walnuts between thumb and forefinger. They could clamp down on a set of smooth revolver stocks and keep the gun from shifting via brute grip strength. Alas, this was not an option available to me*.

I needed a material that was itself hard and relatively low friction, but which could be textured such that when I clamped down on it it wouldn't shift in my grip. You know, like normal checkered hardwood grips. Huh.

The Spegels on this K-22 Combat Masterpiece are, bar none, the nicest revolver stocks I've used. Enough so that I wish my Model 19 were a square-butt so I could swap them over. Maybe I'll hunt down a 4" Model 65 or 681...

If one prefers something a little more rugged and ugly than wood, there are numerous textured offerings in G10 or Micarta these days that accomplish the same thing. My 1911s, for example, pretty much all use VZ Grips, except for the Wilson, which came with Wilson's own pretty decent G10 "Sunburst" textured grip panels.

*At least, not without a little cheating.

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