Monthly Archives: June 2011

Got tied up at work and some other training.  Enjoy this random picture of things going boom with heavy objects being lobbed into the air.

I think that established the BC of a snow flake.  Details and video of this experiment can be seen here.

While at the Boomershoot site one of the visitors asked Joe what voltage the transmission lines are over head.  He guessed around 50 or 100kV then noticed I was there and said well there’s the person to ask.  I have the disclaimer and will adhere to it.  All I will say is I know a lot about embedded systems, power systems, protective relays, and communication systems involving power and industrial controls.

I had looked at the lines before but never bothered to really figure it out.  I took a look at it and let my instincts take over.  My estimate was around 230kV but I would count the insulators at home and come up with the actual number.

So from the photo you can see there’s 20 insulator discs.  Three discs are approximately 35kV.

Crunching the numbers comes out to be 233.3kV.  230kV is a standard transmission voltage so the approximation is reasonable since it’s not sitting in between two standard voltages and isn’t way off in the weeds either.

The Husband and I were planning on participating in the non-event a day early while at the Palouse car show. But, we all know that no plan survives first contact with the enemy.  Grocery shopping was going to follow the car show, but it was delayed by a day.  I went out by myself to Wal-Mart and Winco and open carried the entire time.  Though I did not get actual action shots since I was going about my business as usual and therefore had no camera.  However, I did get a shot before I left.

Wal-mart was a complete non-event with maybe a look, but then again I always smile and act pleasant whether I am openly carrying or not.  Win-co for the most part was a non-event.  I was going about my business choosing bacon when a gentleman rounded the corner and almost immediately said something along the lines of “ now that’s cute” in reference to my .357 snubbie safely secured to my hip.  A very long conversation ensued and sadly the man has a lot of misguided knowledge.  To be nice, I listen to what he had to say.

This man felt that concealed carry on the person was much better than open carrying or even purse carrying, which is what I normally do as I don’t have any other option for the time being.  He wanted to make sure I knew the dangers of open carry with respect to someone approaching me and removing my side arm and using it against me.  As I open carry with a Bianchi AccuMold® Belt Slide holster, I would know if someone were to try to take it and act accordingly.  As for purse carry, the man mentioned razor blades being used to slice the purse straps and stealing the purse before you even knew what happened.  My purse happens to be a backpack style and I think that would be rather difficult to remove when actually worn as a backpack as the straps would be harder to slice without slicing the person carrying it.  There were many more things he mentioned, but I don’t really feel like going into all that detail.

I think he was a little disappointed when he learned that I was married because he is looking for a girlfriend who shares his interest in guns.  He asked me if I knew any single ladies around who are interested in guns.  I don’t and as he had a mullet, I’m not sure many woman would go for him, even if he is super nice.

I ended up getting home much later than planned and the husband was actually worried that he was going to have to bail me out of jail.  Usually my grocery shopping trips last about an hour and a half including drive time.  This one, however, lasted almost twice as long because of the man at Win-co being excited to see a woman out carrying a firearm.

On my way home after dinner with Joe yesterday I decided to swing by “The Man Shack” and see what they were up to.  Ended up finally leaving at 0330 this morning.  Seriously the sun coming back up was the clue time had elapsed.

While there we ended up playing around with my camera.  While most of the images are nothing special, there are two which stand out.  The second was inspired by the success of the first.

The lights above are reflections caused by the UV filter I hadn’t taken off.  The second picture ended up being prefect given the luck of a plane taking off as the picture was being taken.  I thought the exposure had been plenty long, but after inspecting it  I should have let it expose about another 15-20 seconds. 

So yesterday after I got my truck unstuck I climbed up to the top of the 700 yard berm and did a 360 degree panoramic of the Boomershoot site.  ICE was a little bit misbehaved in that for some reason it thought the images I supplied were beyond 360 degrees so is placed images where they didn’t belong.  I finally worked around it by doing the panoramic in 3 sections.  One section it called 270 degrees but it was more like 120.

The end result though is very neat.  The thumbnail below is only a section of the entire image.

So my schedule for yesterday did a big fat change Friday night.  Instead of the Palouse car show we decided to help Joe with a private Boomershoot party.  We drove the truck for simplicity sake and got out there a little bit late.  Late enough that everyone was at the Taj by the time we got there.

As I arrived I saw a set of tracks running through the field next to the berm down at 380.  Figured ok passage should be good.  I eventually get in a ways and see a small mud hole that doesn’t look too bad.  This thing was deep enough and wet enough it could have been used as a runaway truck ramp because that’s exactly how it behaved.  I hit it at about 20 to 25 and immediately stated slowing down I got to just the other side but the rear end was mired in.  I Tried backing up cutting to one side to try and get another run, big freaking mistake.  My front end sunk in absolutely no time flat.  When I got out this is what it looked like.

The weight of the diesel block is what did me in cause notice how the front wheels sunk.

We tried to pull it out initially by Joe doing a snatch with his Escape.  It didn’t work, I then tried to use the come along and with his rig as the anchor with the truck trying to pull out.  The Escape just started sliding towards the truck. 

We then proceeded to just move the bare minimum gear up there and were going to get the truck out after the party.  After the depressing failure of the fireball we went and grabbed the Cat.  Hooked it up to the back and pulled her right out.

The ruts tell the story of how bad it really was.

I have now joined the limited group of Boomershoot staff that goes out there so often that they have finally gotten stuck.

When I stopped to chat with some friends from work last night I was reminded of one very important thing.  No matter what, it could always be worse.  How much worse you ask?

That is a Steiger Quadtrac 4WD tractor that sunk in the Palouse mud out here near Pullman.  How sunk you ask?  Well normally they look like the following and they have been known to pull stuck dozers out of the mud.

Decided to do another panoramic today using pictures from out front.

Yeah the winters out here suck most of the time.  Spring and summer out here though is gorgeous.  The ground is pretty bland in the fall after harvest.  Tomorrow I’m going to try and take some panoramic shots from the top of the 700 yard line out at the Boomershoot site. 

Rolf dumped some more pictures last night.  I have added them to my gallery under Boomershoot 2011.

Here’s some of the highlights I saw in the new batch.

Joe’s daughter taking a much deserved break.

The RNS crew with Rolf and someone else who I am not familiar with.

And it wouldn’t be right without at least one picture that somewhat qualifies as gun porn.

That’s Tango shooting his R700 in .308.

In other news my trip to the car show has been canceled to return us to our regularly scheduled program.  Guns, Gas, Flares, and Explosives.  More tomorrow night and probably Sunday.