Author: hsoi

Range time

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I needed to go to the gun range this morning to take care of some chores. This wasn’t a practice session, this was taking care of some business. So, I headed to the local indoor range and took care of my two tasks.

Zero the 10/22

I will be needing a .22 rifle this coming weekend, so I wanted to make sure my Ruger 10/22 was in working order. The scope had come loose last time it was being used, so I had tightened things down and wanted to ensure it was zeroed. It wasn’t too far off, just needed a little tweaking, but it’s back to being zeroed at 25 yards and I’m happy. Should run just fine this coming weekend.

I haven’t shot the 10/22 in a while, and I forgot how nice it is to shoot. Not so much the gun itself, but just shooting a little .22 rimfire for accuracy. I could certainly see making myself a really customized up target rig with a Ruger 10/22 as the base, and just sitting out in the country somewhere on a nice day, drinking iced tea, and punching holes in paper. I’ve experienced this before when shooting this gun… there’s something somewhat Zen about the experience.

Also since I hadn’t shot it in a while, now shooting it I realized the truths about that trigger. It’s not a bad trigger, it’s just a lot heavier than I remember. I guess I’ve been spoiled by lighter triggers lately (the snub notwithstanding).

Anyway, this was a simple enough task, then I got down to what I really wanted to do….

Break in the Snub

Ever since I got my S&W 442 a little over a week ago I’ve been itching to break it in. Finally got that chance, but my time was cut short. Read on.

I started out just wanting to throw some lead. Just get some rounds through it to break it in under fire (I’ve already been doing a lot of dry fire to start the break-in process), get the feel for it in my hands. Went through a box of Magtech .38 Special 158 grain lead round nose to start.

I don’t like the small grip. I don’t like how my pinky hangs off the bottom. Feels weird, plus it takes away recoil control. I knew this going in. However, I don’t want to give up the smaller grip and thus concealability. Just grip harder with both hands. Having that “crush grip” worked fine and I was able to control the little gun just fine. I’m still going to look for grips that might be just a hair longer, but I’m not going to really sweat it too much.

Under actual fire, I realized that I was using the distal joint of my index finger…makes sense with the heavier trigger pull. Interestingly, everything worked just fine. My eyes were trained on the front sight, and even with all the grip and trigger differences, I was still being combat accurate enough. But again, I think the crush grip is what makes the difference here.

I’d like to put some red paint or something on the front sight to make it a bit more visible.

I then started to go through some defensive ammo. As I wrote about here, I don’t have the ability to do deeper testing of the rounds, like gel or wetpack, chronographs, and the like. But, most of that information is out there if you look for it. What I’m looking at is how well it works in my gun and how it performed for me. Today I was able to try out: the Federal Nyclad, the Buffalo Bore, and the Cor®Bon DPX.

The Federal Nyclad felt about the same as the Magtech, which stands to reason as they’re both standard pressure rounds. Accuracy was fine, and again since it was a standard pressure round was certainly the most controllable round to shoot. I was surprised at how much muzzle flash there was. It may just be the nature of the snub-nose beast, but I was still taken-aback by the amount of flash I saw. And note, this was at an indoor range… it’s not dark, but it’s not bright and sunny either.

The Buffalo Bore by contrast didn’t have as much noticeable muzzle flash, but did produce a lot of smoke. I will say that their claim of being “non+P” is a lie. 😉  I mean, this is Buffalo Bore, I expected it to be hot, but I figured if they were saying “non+P” that it might be in line with that. I can say that, at least in terms of the felt recoil, it kicked hard and was the hardest recoil of the bunch. At one point I looked at my right hand and noticed I was bleeding in the web of my hand between the thumb and index finger… where your hand wraps around the back of the gun. It wasn’t more than just the skin being broken, but it bled a lot and eventually is what caused me to cut my range time short.

The Cor®Bon recoiled more than the Nyclad, but less than the Buffalo Bore, and I’d say closer to the Buffalo Bore than the Nyclad, since 1. the DPX is a +P round, and 2. this is CorBon and they’re always hot loads. It too had some noticeable muzzle flash.

Anyway, that’s all I was able to manage, due to the aforementioned wound. I was there to break in the gun and instead it broke me. 😉  I did manage to put a few rounds of Remington UMC 130 grain FMJ downrange just for some additional comparison. I’ve always thought UMC had the most muzzle flash of any ammo I’ve seen (looks kinda cool at night), and I’d say that the other muzzle flashes I saw today were on par with that tho the UMC was likely the brightest of all.

They all shot well enough. All ran in the gun. All were accurate enough. I do think the Nyclads were the most controllable and the Buffalo Bore the least, but the spread wasn’t that wide. The key was shooting enough to get familiar with the load and the gun so you know what you’re up against and how your tool will behave. Crush grip is key.

So what will I pick for now? Well, for now I’ll probably go with the Buffalo Bore. I actually don’t like how hot it is and how much it bites, but these will be used in a defensive situation, not a normal range ammo. Furthermore, because they’re so hot I don’t know how the S&W 442 would appreciate a steady diet of them. But for now until I get the ammo I really want, when I take the 442 out I’ll load it with the Buffalo Bore, but only because of two things:

1. Lowest perceived muzzle flash

2. it’s the only semi-wadcutter that I have

#2 is the bigger reason. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m finding more and more support that the “lead semi-wadcutter hollow point” (LSWCHP) is really the load that I want to use for self-defense. It provides penetration above all, but has expanding capabilities which helps to maximize desired impact and minimize risks of undesired (collateral) damage. It’s got a proven track record, and I don’t really have to worry about potential issues such as if the bullet will expand or not, if say I was in a contact shot situation, going through clothing, or other such matters. Again, I am not providing any sort of true scientific review or study here… this is just me in my informal reading, researching, Googling, talking with folks whose knowledge and opinion I trust. I’d really like to get those Remington R38S12 and carry those. I looked on the shelves at the range, but alas they didn’t have any. I Google to find someone online selling them, nothing. 😦  So, I shall just keep looking.

Other Range Observations

The range was rather busy for an early Sunday morning. The guy in the bay next to me was shooting a muzzleloader. I was surprised how quiet it was in comparison to some of the other cannons going off around me. It was fun when he’d shoot tho… all this smoke would drift across my bay. Kinda neat.

Lots of kids there. That’s not something I usually see when I go there, but lots of parents had brought their kids out. A father-daughter took the bay next to me after Mr. Muzzleloader left. She was shooting a bunch of lever-action rifles. I saw some kids shooting a Buckmark with Mom. Various other things. It was nice to see families doing things together.

I do not like shooting indoors, but when there’s a chore to do and it needs to be done quickly, it’s about the only option I have as the outdoor ranges are a bit of a drive.

But hey, I got to go and take care of some business. Can’t complain. 🙂

Snub ammo trials

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

I’ve been blogging a lot on the right ammo for snub nosed revolvers. I thought I’d try to pull things together here.

First, this isn’t about finding practice ammo, because any sort of .38 Special ammo will fill that bill (read: what’s cheapest and, especially these days, available). This is about finding the right ammo for carry. And not any .38 Special ammo will do because out of the short-barrel snub nose revolver, you can’t get much velocity and that can affect the ammo performance (e.g. ability for hollow-points to expand).

First, some back postings:

And now, we come to this.

Based on all that I’ve read, here’s the list of the snub nose carry ammo that I wish to try:

Are there more out there? Sure. But from what I’ve been reading, these tend to be the most popular.

Hey, just came across this very nice write-up from thehighroad.

A summary of what I’ve been coming up with. Note: the following is just based upon a lot of Google searching and reading:

  • Old school Nyclads were pretty good, but apparently the new Nyclads aren’t all that great. They’re not bad, just nothing to write home about. Their big advantage is they give reasonable performance from a standard pressure load, so if you need standard pressure, they’re not a bad choice.
  • The specific aforementioned Buffalo Bore are another standard pressure load and supposedly a lot more potent. They are also a semi-wadcutter bullet. Their big downside is they can be hard to find, and expensive.
  • Corbon is going to be hot hot hot. Potent, but hot.
  • The Speer Gold Dot short-barrel model seems to be extremely popular and apparently have good performance.
  • I already wrote up all I could about Hornady Critical Defense. I’m intrigued but skeptical. There’s enough anecdotal evidence that the load has problems. Hopefully Hornady can work things out as it’s a nifty approach. But am I willing to trust my life to nifty and unproven? Nope. Consequently, I’m not going to bother spending any money on this ammo to even bother testing it.
  • The semi-wadcutter seems to be a proven stand-by. It’s old technology, but it’s proven technology and many people stand by it. The Remington R38S12 seems to be the standard by which all others are judged.

In terms of my own testing, unfortunately I cannot do things like ballistics gel testing, or even just shooting through water jugs or wetpack newspaper. About all I can do is shoot them, report on accuracy, report on how they feel out of my S&W 442. And I can’t even do a lot of testing because I’m not made of money. But I can report what I do and can find.

Will I admit some initial bias? Yes. Nyclads I’m interested in because having a load that’s effective but not difficult to shoot has great appeal given the gun is already one that will be hard to shoot and control just due to its nature. Buffalo Bore and the Corbon I’m not looking forward to shooting because I expect they’re going to kick like hell. I regard Gold Dots favorably, they’re my choice of carry ammo in my 9mm Springfield XD. The semi-wadcutters are proven and old school, and I’ve a warm spot for that especially since it does have the long proven track record.

Furthermore, I’ll admit some initial favorable bias towards the LSWCHP because it does have the long track record, it’s apparently not too horrible to shoot, and supposedly is your best bet for contact shots. Whereas hollow points are designed to impact and expand, the intent of the contact shot is not to expand but to cut a hole… the wadcutter cuts the hole, but it’s the rapid expansion of gases into that hole that perform the tissue damage. Ugly, I know. But if the snub is to be used for contact shot purposes, the right ammo matters. Unfortunately I cannot find much data on this.

As well, 158 grain is considered the “standard” bullet weight for .38 Special. In theory, the fixed/integral sights on the snub would be set based on assumptions of shooting that sort of bullet. That puts a little bias against things like the Corbon DPX, but then the DPX is also loaded differently. YMMV.

We shall see.

Updated: Got to the range and was able to do some testing.

Updated 2: Since I got to shoot the above-mentioned Buffalo Bore, I was looking for some more data on the Buffalo Bore semi-wadcutter load. I found this at brassfetcher.com, that shows that very load fired from a S&W 642 and how it behaved in ballistics gel. Fairly consistent behavior. It’s got penetration and some expansion. It even had fragmentation, which can mean all sorts of things for defensive loads.

Same site also has some results of various .38 rounds into gel. Here’s one on the Gold Dot 135 grain. Here’s the Remington LSWCHP. The Cor®Bon DPX.

Check this: he did a contact shot test. I’d love to see more of this, comparing say hollow point loads like the Gold Dot 135 grain, DPX, even the Buffalo Bore SWCHP vs. the FBI load.

Looking at all of the brassfetcher .38 tests — and ballistics gel only tells us so much (it’s main advantage is controlability and consistency), it does seem many of the above-listed rounds are good. In fact, it makes me feel a little bit better about my current choice to use the Buffalo Bore (load 20C/20).

Sunday Metal – Van Halen

/ hsoi

If we didn’t have Van Halen, we wouldn’t have metal and hard rock as we know it. Everything about the band, from the music, composition, Eddie Van Halen’s guitar playing, David Lee Roth’s stage presence, off-stage partying, you name it. If Van Halen hadn’t been around, rock & metal wouldn’t have been what it was.

Here’s one of my favorite Van Halen tracks, “Unchained”.

Just do what they tell you

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I cannot stand modern “self-defense” tactics that teach things like just being passive, just give them what they want, if you just do what they ask you they won’t hurt you, blah blah blah.

Tell that to Teresa Butz.

Before she died, Butz talked to a neighbor, Albert Barrientes, saying of the attacker: “He told us if we did what he asked us to do, he wouldn’t hurt us. He lied, he lied.”

If someone has put you in honest fear of your life, if they have broken into your house, attacked you, threatened you with grevious harm, or anything of this ilk, that person has demonstrated they are irrational, dangerous, and untrustworthy. What makes you think they won’t harm you further? Why should you trust anything they have to say after the actions they’ve already presented?

6 is enough

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Shoothouse Barbie goes off about the saying “If I can’t get the job done in 6 rounds then I’m in over my head”.

Commenter RevolverRob quotes Clint Smith from Thunder Ranch:

“Nobody has ever complained of having too much ammunition during a gunfight.”

Amen.

I make no bones about the fact that I like capacity. It’s one reason I like 9mm handguns over other calibers like .40 S&W and .45 ACP. Since all pistol rounds suck about the same, I think it’s useful to consider other aspects such as capacity. If .45 ACP and 9mm will both get the job done, and I can carry twice as many 9mm rounds well… hopefully I won’t need them, but gosh it’s nice to have them if you do. We’re back to one of those old adages for why you carry: better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. So, nice to have more ammo if you can, eh?

Put it this way. I opted to carry only a 5-shot snub-nose revolver a little while ago, and just when I opted to do that I had an incident that had potential to be ugly. Thankfully nothing came of it and that we did have rifles, but boy those 5 rounds just didn’t feel like enough. Maybe if it was just one guy it’d be OK, but again we like to say that “2 is 1, 1 is none”, to be aware of that which you can’t see, and all that stuff. So if it did wind up being 2 or more attackers, would those 5-6 rounds be enough?

Playgrounds I have known

/ hsoi

Going through my morning blogs and news rolls and get to the Once Upon a Win website with this entry about dangerous playgrounds.

Ah yes, real playgrounds, from our youth.

You see, when we went up for the funeral, as I mentioned, the town was so small they didn’t even have a stop sign on the main drag. But there at the community center was a playground. A joyous playground that I’m sure would make some of the neaüveux parents of today just shit their pants with fear. 🙂

See-saws… and without handles too!

A big metal slide.

Various swing sets, with various sorts of seats from repairs over the years…. all guaranteed to burn the back of your thighs.

A tractor. Yes. A tractor. Just a big farming tractor, obviously disabled, but just mounted there for the kids to play on. Reminds me of when I was in 2nd grade, the school I went to had a giant gutted fire truck on the playground. I’m sure the “safety pencil and a circle of paper” folks of today would be calling their lawyers. But oh how joyous it was.

A hill with pipes. Just a big 4-way intersection drain pipe that was above ground, but then dirt piled over it. Talk about a great place to make a fort or other things that can just spur a child’s imagination.

A couple “merry-go-round” sorts of things.

Blacktop with basketball hoops.

Monkey bars.

All sorts of things. All made out of metal. No plastic. No rubberized or mulched areas to protect the precious snowflakes from falling and risking a skinned knee. It was just a glorious playground to behold, where kids can be kids, they can use their imaginations, and if they happen to get hurt they learn how to shake it off and keep playing.

It’s good to know that somewhere in America there’s still a place where kids can be kids and learn things that will be useful to them as they become adults, and not further the wussification of America.

New Kitteh

/ hsoi

How did this happen?

We now have a new cat in the house. Well, kitten.

If I remember the story correctly, my in-laws were driving and saw this little kitten lying on the road. They stopped to check it out (they rescue many animals; seems to have become an informal hobby), thinking it was dead. Turns out, it was only stunned (pining for the fjords no doubt), but was covered in fire ants and was probably going to die. They took it to the vet, got her checked out, shots, all that. Kitty seems to be OK. They were going to give her away, and being as small and young as she is (we estimate 2-3 months old) I know there’d be no problem with that because the cute is strong with this one.

And as a result…. we have a new cat.

We get to the in-laws yesterday and get told about the kitten (they kept it in the bathroom because some of the dogs would probably play too rough). Kids go to visit and of course, instant love and cries of “Oh Dad, can we keep it?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

So what do kids do when Dad denies them? Turn to Mom.

Wife sees kitty. Falls in love.

“Honey, please?”

“N…..” *begrudging groan* “Fine.”

Later Wife tells me she was having a talk with Daughter. “Mom, I know why Dad said we could have the cat. Because he can’t say no to you.” 🙂 Damnit… my secret is out.

I said we could bring home kitty on one condition: trial period. We have two other cats, which I shall refer to as Gordita and Twitchy. Gordita and Twitchy are very well bonded to each other. I wasn’t sure how a 3rd wheel would work into this, especially a little kitten that doesn’t know its place (yet). Furthermore, Gordita may be a little runty butterball, but I’ve never seen a cat that fights with such intensity or has such lightly quick reflexes and awareness — she’s amazing. I wasn’t sure if she might scrap, and if so if kitten might be honestly harmed. Twitchy is the wild card. She’s nicknamed Twitchy for a reason. I wasn’t sure if she might smack kitten around, or if Twitchy might go and hide under the bed never to be seen again… that’s not good either. So, I told Wife and kids that keeping the kitten required a trial period just in case there were integration issues. Honestly, I didn’t expect any real issues, but better safe than sorry.

So we get kitten home and start the integration. Little kitten is first introduced to the litter box (vital!). We kept her shut in the laundry room for a bit while we unpacked and said Hi to the other cats. Then we let kitten out and she started to meow. Immediately other 2 cats come slinking down the stairs in search of this new meow. Much curiosity ensues. Good thing is kitten isn’t totally inept and is old enough to scrap. There’s lot of sniffing, poking at each other, and kitten knows how to turn sideways and make herself big. But she also seems to know she’s a little thing by comparison.

Gordita follows her around trying to watch every moment. Twitchy was a little wary and freaked at first, but eventually just watched from a distance. Eventually, Gordita lost interest and Twitchy got to a point where as long as kitten didn’t invade personal space, she’d be fine else get a hiss, growl, and perhaps a smack. And that’s about where things are as of this morning. Kitten is running around learning where things are and playing with anything she finds on the floor. Oh, and the strange kitten she saw staring back at her from the reflection in the dishwasher… that one will be dealt with later. 😉  Other 2 cats are just going about their business, watching kitten, ignoring kitten, ensuring kitten stays out of their personal space.

I think we’re going to be keeping her. *sigh*

Oh, and Oldest named her. He said the first thing that came into his head and the other two kids liked it, so, it’s official.

Ritz Bitz

Ritzy for short.

🙂

Jamming student phones? Bad.

/ hsoi

An Iowa school system is considering jamming student phones.

The FTC did say such jamming equipment wasn’t legal, but that doesn’t matter. Student’s are disobeying the rules and using their phones, so we’re just going to jam them.

Trouble is, the jamming equipment isn’t discriminatory. So I trust that teacher and administrator phones would also be jammed. Plus, any parent or other visitor to the school, their phones would be jammed. How far would the jamming signals go? Could someone driving by the school be infringed upon?

The school system says they’ll disable the system during an emergency.

Oh yeah, I’d like to see that happen.

Quick! The school is burning down! Turn off the jamming system so people can call the fire department!

Oh noes! An active shooter situation! Turn off the jamming system! Vital seconds were already lost, lives were already lost as a result… and oh the lawsuit that will probably ensue.

Look. I understand it’s bothersome that teenagers have no self-control and keep using their phones. Welcome to teenagers, and welcome to trying to teach them greater responsibility. But such blanket measures are not going to solve the problem; in fact, they’re only going to create bigger problems.

TomTom – the aftermath

/ hsoi

So the TomTom finally got unpacked and set up, and we set off using it. Wife’s Granddaddy’s funeral was yesterday up in middle of nowhere Texas. It’s a joke to estimate how small a town is by the traffic control devices. Does it have a stop light? if so, how many? No stop light? Does it have just a flashing red or yellow light at some “major” intersection? How about a Stop sign? or maybe just a Yield sign? Or no signs at all… where everyone in town knows each other so you can just wave each other by?  Well, this town was so small I don’t think there were any traffic devices as you went down “main street”. Yeah, that small. So, since it was way up in north Texas and I had never been there before, might as well try out this navigation device and see what happens.

First, the geek part of me just got a silly giggle out of it. It’s just a new toy and it’s fun to play with. When we first left the house and I programmed in the way to get to my in-laws (first stop), I was totally a kid playing around. I’d play with the points of interest on the map. I got a kick out of how it could estimate your speed and how it would know the speed limit for the road you were on and then set off an alarm if you drove too fast (Wife was driving, so it was funny once the kids understood what the beeping was, how they would prod Mom about driving too fast). 🙂  I also had it set off an alarm when we’d pass schools. Wow, didn’t realize how many schools there were; everywhere we went.

I stuck the TomTom on the windshield so everyone could see it. I didn’t like how the speaker was so quiet. It’s loud enough if everything else is silent, but once you account for road noise, maybe a little bit of music playing, it’s tough to hear. I think a really geeky thing would be integrating it with the car stereo.

I was impressed with the maps being as complete as they were, tho they didn’t give me directions to my in-law’s house… just up to their main road. They live in the country, and while the maps knew about all the roads no problem, they couldn’t get the house number. Oh well.

Since we had it on a female voice, we kept personifying the device. Eventually Wife dubbed the device my new girlfriend, because she kept nagging “turn left, turn left, turn left”. 🙂

While I didn’t always find the device necessary to help us get around, what became the most useful part was the estimates. It could tell us how many more miles to go, how much time was remaining. This was the most useful part because it was a very long day of driving and inevitably you got the “how much longer?” questions from the kids. While it’s not a problem to estimate and figure it out yourself, being able to just glance at the screen and give an answer was very useful.

The device is nifty, and I do think on longer trips we’ll certainly bring it along as there’s no harm in doing so. Based off the one trip I don’t see massive amounts of gain in having such a device, so I am happy this was a gift and not my own money spent. Frankly, I think there might be more gain in a combined device. For instance, this TomTom ONE 130 isn’t “real GPS” but rather satellite triangulation (I believe). You get something like an iPhone 3GS, that’ll be “real GPS”, apparently TomTom is going to be bringing their software to iPhone, then you have all the additional things like Internet access and phone to more fully get around and get information and well… that I think could be more useful, or rather, a more cost-effective solution than a single dedicated device.

By the end of the day, I had pretty much ignored the device (tho the “girlfriend” ribbing from Wife remained) 🙂  The novelty had worn off pretty quickly. But there’s a place for such a device. Again, it’ll get brought along on trips. The true utility of the device still to be determined.