So I was browsing through footage from Boomershoot 2012 and there was a couple clips I had intended to use but forgot about. You see when Anette heard there was a rifle caliber pistol, she looked all giddy when I told her that. Then we warned her about all the things that could possibly go wrong, most importantly making sure you provide correct eye relief before the shot.
Below is the video of Anette and Shelly teaching us how to shoot like a girl.
Yes, Anette squealed like a little girl and Shelly just turned around and rocked it like a boss. Now in Anette’s defense, she hadn’t seen that pistol fired every. She didn’t know really what to expect other than what we warned her about. Well when you’re warned about it flying back punching people in the face, you get a bit apprehensive. Shelly got the benefit of watching Anette shoot it so she knew exactly what to expect. Never the less, it was fun for everyone there, even Anette!
At the end was my new production clip I’m going to put at the end of every video I do. That was my first venture into the world of After Effects and over time I may add more but that was 100% done in house. I recorded the sound and edited it, did the 3D animation, and did the effect for the writing. The animation was the hardest part because for some reason my render would break about a quarter of the way through. Finally I did it in a bunch of stills and then condensed it into a clip. Also of note, creating models in Solidworks is much easier than Blender. Honestly I think blender has to be the most counter intuitive UI I have ever encountered. When you’re excuse is, you haven’t learned it, you’re doing it wrong. It doesn’t even lend itself to playing to figure it out, that’s a freaking clue!
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
Today I spent some time behind Joe’s .300 Win Mag. My previous long distance best for regular confirmed shots was at 700 yards. 3 inch targets that explode are a great method of hit confirmation.
Today thought my new personal best for repeated consistent hits is 957 yards. There was a steel plate and hits were audibly confirmed and impact points were visible through trace.
I am quite pleased with myself. Unfamiliar rifle to both Joe and I since it wasn’t zeroed and hadn’t been shot regularly. Joe’s app made life much easier, but I am quite pleased with the number of times I rung that gong.
Now to sit back and chat. Enjoy this picture from Drang.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
Looks like I’ll be meeting and hanging out with a bunch of you the beginning of September. Joe mentioned the Gun Blogger Rendezvous last May and I was planning on going. I saw this and really started itching.
Then I had some unexpected expenses and well the wife an I live in a budget. We’ve stopped using our credit cards and are paying down our debt as quickly as possible so when I dipped into the savings fund I said, “Well there’s always next year.”
I saw Joe last weekend and we ended up talking about it and his travel plans have changed. Initially it still seemed like it wouldn’t work and it was going to kill a bunch of extra time since the point of departure wouldn’t equal the point of return. On the way home from the Boomershoot site I had an idea on how to make that work. I told Joe I’d let him know this week yea or nay.
Then earlier this week I got an email at work, the company calendar uses photos taken by employees. I didn’t get a submission in this year because I didn’t have time to prep the photos I was going to submit. They did however look at my submissions from last year and they want to use some of them. They pay the employees for the use of the pictures. It’s not set it in stone, it’s a risk we can take it though because even without it we could do it, it would just be tight. I suspect it’s one of the following though:
So this morning I dropped my check to Mr. Completely into my mail box along with the GBR-VII form. My leave request has been approved so at this point I will be at GBR! So it looks like I’ll be seeing David, Kevin (for the first time since 2009) and Derek (again since 2009) again. If you’re going, find me and say hi. Seriously I’m kind of hard to miss.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
Yesterday was the USPSA match in which I was the Match Director. I designed all the stages and picked out the qualifier. Overall I was looking forward to it. Mainly because one of the stages was going to be the first stage I ever designed.
We got a bit of video of me shooting that stage.
I laugh because someone was glad that I was pissed for “forcing them to shoot this monstrosity” except everyone I talked to loved it and wanted to shoot it again. In hindsight I should have thought of a way to run it backwards. If you’re wondering about the outburst at the end I looked at the target and saw I broke the perf on a no shoot at the end of the course.
However I’m saddened we didn’t get video of probably the most important thing that happened on that stage. It happened while the RO was scoring my stage and I was standing right there. I’m sad I didn’t even take a picture of it.
You see that white guy in the middle. Yeah I shot the little bastard because he wasn’t smart enough to get out-of-the-way. I drilled two A’s into T2, 2 A’s in to T1, and barely nicked the perf on the No Shoot. When the RO came through he called Alpha Charlie on the target. He thought I was outside the perf. I promptly stopped him and said, “Name redacted, That should be 2 Alpha, 1 No Shoot.” He looked at the target again and said, “holy crap you’re right.” The funniest thing is, I didn’t even think twice about it, it was immediate and without thought.
Now I know some of you will think that some how that was in my favor, it was not. Here’s how the score for that breaks down, if it had been an Alpha-Charlie, I would have gotten 7 points. With a 2-Alpha, No shoot I get 0 points. The No Shoot is –10 points, each A is a 5. If I was a little less ethically inclined I could have taken a 7 point boost on my score for that stage.
It’s not worth it at all. I’m in this for fun and you know what, if I have to cheat to have fun I’m doing it all wrong. If I want to stand up on the top of the hill and say I won, by god I want to be proud of how I got there.
I was really sad when I had to call a FTE for the RO I caught as a shooter ran through. I had actually hoped he was the first guy to just skip the body and take the head shots at an earlier position. He shot the steel and forgot to hit the other target.
Here’s the match stages, both the descriptions and the Google Sketch Up files. If you want to use them at your local club feel free to do so. Just give me credit and I’ll be happy.
That particular stage is 30 Minutes or Less. It started off being just 30 shots but when I redesigned it to fit in our bays and equipment list I ended up adding a target.
Another interesting story was from the standard I created 4×3. I designed it specifically so the shooter would have a choice between which hand to use at which distance. I ended up walking up just after they finished reading the stage description and two of the main shooters shot it strong hand closest, then weak hand when further away. I promptly recheck the stage description which says the following:
String 1. Upon start signal from behind F1 engage targets T1-T4 freestyle with one shot each. Perform a mandatory reload and reengage T1-T4 one hand only.
String 2. Upon start signal from behind F2 engage targets T1-T4 freestyle with one shot each. Perform a mandatory reload and reengage T1-T4 with one shot each with the opposite hand.
I thought about it for a minute and promptly talked to the two guys who read the briefing and had shot. In the back of my head I kind of chuckled at the thought of shooting the course of fire weak hand forward, strong hand rear, but I knew it would immediately cause an uproar. So I clarified it for everyone and we re-shot those shooters at the end.
I still kind of wanted to hear the collective groan after I shot the course and then read the description for everyone. If you are into USPSA, learn this now, pick up the description yourself and read it before shooting. Others may have misinterpreted the rules.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
First up, we all know the identification abilities of both the press and law enforcement are how shall we say, lacking. So I have a feeling it probably was not an AK-47.
Next up is why I’m writing this post. If you’re going to play around with reactive targets, please be aware, be careful, and do it right. Doing stupid stuff can cause the powers that be to outlaw things in an effort to stop stupidity. They seem to think that laws will actually stop stupidity while those of us with functional brains know it just stops the smart and law abiding from enjoying freedom while making it a little more difficult for Darwin to do his job.
I’m not sure exactly why this fire started, there’s a couple different options. First is that the bullet itself struck something and caused a spark resulting in a fire. Not impossible, but not very likely unless they were shooting steel core surplus ammo. I find this a possibility given the expeditious fleeing.
Laughably is the idea that the explosion itself set something on fire. Combustion, and the heat that accompanies it, dissipates in milliseconds at most. For the fireballs we create at Boomershoot we actually have to have road flares to cause the fuel to ignite because there is no heat remaining as the vapor cloud expands. We have added things such as magnesium and other materials and this does help. Assuming this was Tannerite, it is possible that some of the elements were still combusting when it hit the ground, I just am a bit skeptical.
Lastly they were attempting to be Ry and recreate the following.
It is well known that creating a fireball like that can land you in an interesting position. The heat radiated after combustion begins can easily cause surrounding plant life to ignite. We do it prior to the fire season beginning as well for numerous reasons. Trying to put out a fire as it rages across the field wouldn’t exactly be fun. Think of the exploding toilet in 2008.
There is a second reason and that is Boomerite that is spread on the ground can actually cause a fire. The KClO3 breaks down exothermically under UV and can ignite surrounding material.
But seriously, if you’re going to go out into the woods and create a fireball. Be ready for some stuff to be lit on fire. It is going to happen and you better be ready to fight it. So if you’re going to do it please do the following:
Have fire extinguishers at the ready
Bring numerous friends to help extinguish the fire
Soak the surrounding area with water if it’s been dry over the previous couple days
Be ready with dirt buckets too
Have a plan to deal with fire
Seriously, it only takes one person to screw it up for the rest of us. Please, don’t be that guy.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
I still haven’t written up a couple posts from Boomershoot. It hasn’t been as much laziness as I have had other things of interest distracting me. From ideas, to projects, to wish lists(migrating the platform for the blog from Drupal)*.
There is one story from Boomershoot I do need to write up. The lesson though evidently was skipped over yesterday during some testing with Ry and Joe.
You see, after one of the boomers went boom, Ry had a new look.
I made the mistake of standing just slightly further back than Ry, not thinking about the amount of rain and how close we were. I had the same outfit afterwards.
(Yes it was cold).
Eventually I will write up a post on what happened at Boomershoot, one of the other reasons for the delay is it will also contain a review of the eye protection I’m wearing.
On to testing:
So Joe and Ry had a couple project ideas they were working on and I offered to go out and help. While they were working on mixing up explosives for some of the tests I worked on an idea Joe had for making primers go bang.
In this section, I verify that all that Hollywood crap is exactly that. Ry had a setup to create an arch between two wires with AC. It didn’t make the primer go boom. Joe had another idea using DC to make the primers go boom. Stuff got warm but still no joy. Then by luck I inadvertently made the circuit pass through a piece of metal in the primer construction. That turned into a light bulb filament. I attached a primer to it, rigged it up and gave that a shot. 10 seconds after connecting the battery I hear a pop. So heat, not electricity makes the primer go bang.
So they go bang, but not enough for solid computer control. Well we still have the question of will boomerite go off? Put it in the bag of boomerite, wire it all up and it was the most anti climatic thing I’ve ever seen. The pop was so faint I could hear the conversation between Ry and Joe who were further away than the primer.
So primers were a bust, what about the lift experiments for getting a good fuel air mixture? I have video for that, and everyone likes vide!
This is probably one of the more interesting stills from the testing.
You can see the water vapor form the lift, this was with ground under the targets. Ry also had some targets with bags of water underneath. I’m not sure it really made a difference, though it’s hard to tell with a sample size of one.
We have a new target type we’re seriously considering putting out for the shooters. This year things were a bit more difficult that usual. Target distribution didn’t end up in the amounts we would have preferred. This resulted in a lot more 4 and 3 inch targets on the hill than we would have liked. Believe me, I don’t like it when that goes wrong. I made a nice quote of the day that made everyone chuckle but no one remembered to actually blog it… yet another story to be told about this year.
The tubes though are 1.5 inches in diameter (inner) and 4 feet long. We figure we can put them horizontal or vertical. Either it will require precision on at least one axis to make a successful hit at distance. Personally I think they’d just be fun. Yeah you want to get a boomer, but if it was easy that wouldn’t be saying much now would it?
*I’m in the beginning stages of investigating moving from Drupal to WordPress. The latest version of Drupal is lacking a bunch of the features I want that help me with my blogging. I could write and build the features I need but I don’t blog as a forte into working on the computer. I have enough other projects that the last thing I want to do is work maintaining my website. The migration however has me a bit nervous mainly because I don’t want to break any incoming links for other sites to material I’ve written here. I think I have a solution to the issue, but even then it will probably take me about 48 hours to rip apart the databases and port the content to WordPress. I have a VM I am using as a testing area currently and I’m learning what exactly is going to have to happen and how to do it before I bite off more than I can chew.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
See, Tango had a couple issues over the Boomershoot event. On his way up his car had issues and had to go in the shop. He figured that was his issue for the trip. The answer to that question was a resounding, “NO”.
See, we got back to the hotel room to eat our dinner while waiting for a call from Phil so we could meet up and chat since we were all departing in the morning. As the wife and I finish downing food our hotel room phone rings. Odd, Phil was going to call my cell phone.
It was Tango informing us he was on the grade and his vehicle had just died. He was in search of a tow truck and currently stranded. Immediately I ask where he is because there’s a secondary problem. He has a trailer behind him so depending on the tow truck that could be a problem. New problem for me, I didn’t drive either truck. I promptly call Phil and say, “We have a blogger in need of assistance. Tango’s rig broke down coming down the grade. He’s currently pulled off at the turn to the dam.”
Immediately he say’s he’s departing the restaurant and he’ll pick me up on the way out.
Yes that’s Tango in the back right as the tow truck driver starts hooking up his rig. Tango was quite pleased that the tow truck showed up. Phil and the rest of us were actually planning on pulling his trailer back up to the Boomershoot site if necessary.
Luckily the tow truck was flat bed. He loaded Tango right up and then hitched up his trailer.
So at that point us bloggers needed to remain no more. Se we left his ass on the curb after taking this parting photo.
After all was said and done and we were relaxing back at the place where RNS was staying Phil stated the following: “Tango is no longer known as Tango, he shall be known as Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.”
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
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