Guns

Yikes and away

/ hsoi

It’s been raining pretty heavily over Central Texas the past 24-48 hours. One area about 90 minutes drive north got 13″ of rain in less than 12 hours and had some pretty bad flooding. Some predictions today are 6-12″ of rain to the west of where I live (into the Texas Hill Country). There’s been bits of flooding here and there… small stream beds that were bone dry are now full. Storm drains are backed up with debris and can’t carry the water away fast enough. The ground is so parched that it just can’t soak up the water as fast as it normally could…. but at least with the sporadic rain events, it gets some time to soften up and that should help moderate the flooding.

At least we had a break in the action last night and were able to go to the Parish Fair for a few hours. I got to have a funnel cake. Life is good. 🙂

Right now it’s coming down at a very strong rate. At least the lawn is happy.

And… I’ve got Combined Skills class.

It’s still going on. Just not sure how things are going to change based upon this rain. I suspect if it’s coming down there as hard as it is here, we just can’t be doing range drills…. cardboard targets will not work.

Tomorrow is supposed to have rain but far less chances.

Well, it’s going to be an interesting day. 🙂

The waiting is the hardest part.

/ hsoi

With apologies to Tom Petty.

That’s all I’m doing right now. Waiting.

Waiting to see how much it’s going to rain this weekend.

Waiting for Apple Developer Technical Support to get back to me with answers to the problems I’m encountering in the product I’m working on.

Waiting for the updated documentation to be delivered so I can integrate it into the product.

Waiting for the work day to end so we can attend my church’s parish fair. Which also means about the only time with the Wife and Kids this weekend. So, waiting on being able to spend my time with my family.

Waiting for the main event of my weekend to start.

Just waiting….

As long as I’m thinking about the Combined Skills class….

What do I want to get out of it? Education. Tom Givens and SouthNarc are among the best in their field. I just want to learn. I just want to further my skillset. I want to open my mouth as little as possible and open my ears and mind as much as possible.

And if it’s raining a lot, that I don’t flub up my draws too much. 🙂

Seems it’s not a new idea after all

/ hsoi

Much has been said about the Ka-Bar Pistol Bayonet.

The most popular statements tend to be things like: this is stupid, I don’t get it, WTF?, and so on.

But apparently Ka-Bar is selling a lot of them and laughing all the way to the bank.

I admit, I don’t get the appeal either.

Checking the mailbox this morning, my TSRA 2010 calendar arrived. Flipping through it, the theme this year is very old and odd guns (May 2010 is amusingly odd). Quite cool.

What do we get for Miss July?

My apologies for the poor quality. I no longer have a scanner so I had to take a picture with my iPhone. Still, you should be able to make out the important bit.

The spring-loaded bayonettes.

On a gun made circa 1820’s.

There are no new ideas. We just keep reinventing and rehashing old ones. 🙂

Combined Skills prep

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

The Combined Skills class is just a few days away.

I know there are slots still open for the class, but in all honesty I hope the class stays as small as possible. I know, selfish of me to say, but if there are fewer people it means a better teacher-to-student ratio. Better chances for more direct instruction, more time with eyes on me to help teach me and correct my problems, and hopefully more time on the line… don’t have to have 3-4 groups to rotate through, maybe just 2 groups.

But on the same token, I want to ensure that Tom Givens, SouthNarc, and Karl Rehn all get paid for their time and effort, enough to consider it worthwhile to do this again in the future.

That all said, foo.c and I have been preparing for the class. The weather is looking mixed. Temperatures should be pretty good, probably in the high 80’s to low 90’s at most — far better than the mid-100’s we’ve been dealing with all summer long. But rain chances continue to rise. While in some respects training in the rain will be good for us, I also don’t know how much it might screw with the class running smoothly or if it might flat out change some things done in the class… the weather may prevent certain things from being done at all. I don’t know, just have to wait and see. The way the rains tend to be working is heavy and sporadic. So some place will get dumped on for an hour, then that’s it for a while. But it can vary as some spots get nailed for a long time and get a lot of water dumped. This morning, the town of Wimberley (a bit south and west of me) got 3-4″ of rain just this morning. Ouch.

Consequently, a lot of foo.c and my planning is around the rain. Bringing additional guns, hoping for a chance to clean/dry the guns out during the course to contend with rust, bringing multiple changes of clothing in addition to rain gear and towels. It’s going to be… interesting.

I’m looking forward to it tho. It should be quite an educational experience. Long and tiring, but educational.

Low Light shooting

/ hsoi

Just noticed over at The Box O’ Truth that a large series of articles about Low Light Shooting Essentials has been posted.

If I can promote a bit… Old_Painless himself puts a disclaimer up saying this is informational and you really should seek adequate instruction. If you live in or can get to the Central Texas area, KR Training will be offering their AT-1A Low Light Shooting class on Oct. 24, 2009. It’s a fun class and provides a good and solid introduction to low-light shooting skills.

Who says it’s not a hunting rifle?

/ hsoi

See? An M1 Garand works just fine as a hunting rifle.

It shoots .30-06, which is certainly adequate as a hunting round, so why not the rifle itself? I used my M1A on my first hunting trip. Works just fine. But I opted to change to a different rifle for hunting, mostly due to two things: weight and noise. The M1A is a big heavy rifle. If I was sitting in a blind, who cares. But stalking hunting, that weight gets to you after a while. Plus the gun is noisy on two counts. First, the muzzle brake directed a lot of noise back at you and unless you’re wearing hearing protection (which I stupidly wasn’t on that hunt… finally got a set of Pro Ears Stalker Gold’s coming my way) it’s going to hurt. Second, the gun itself was just noisy… the safety is hard and heavy to click off and makes quite a noise when it does.

Still, it’s a fine rifle and I’m sure I’ll hunt with it again at some point.

How to recognize different types of AK-47’s from quite a long ways away

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

This is an AK-47:

The gun in this article is NOT an AK-47.

(h/t to Slashdot)

Updated: The Arizona Rifleman has an additional guide for those that need extra help, especially if you’re a reporter.

It’s a good day

/ hsoi

So far, it’s a good day.

It’s the Labor Day weekend. It’s been productive for me, despite my overriding desire to be lazy all weekend long.

I just came in from a workout. I’m so happy with where my martial arts work is going. The Kali, JKD, Silat, Muay Thai, and boxing stuff… it all blends so well with my defensive handgun work. I don’t expect a self-defense situation to be a pure gunfight or a pure empty-hand situation. It always could be, but chances are it won’t. It’s wonderful to have many options at your disposal, and for these things to blend well into making your own system. I don’t regret my Kuk Sool training at all, but some of those aspects don’t really lend towards my current goals. But I envison later in life that I’ll find myself studying different martial arts again just for the sake of studying some art; for instance, Baguazhang holds appeal to me due to its Taoist underpinnings.

But for now, I’m riding a high of everything coming together so well. Serendipity. 🙂

Hopefully later this morning the family will take a trip to the best Korean grocery store in town and pick up some things. Need my kimchi fix. They also have a little diner in the store, which should make for a good lunch. Not sure what I’ll have yet, but if nothing else my default of a bibimbap would be just fine.

Then home, relax, have a beer, and just enjoy the rest of the day basking in the joy of my family.

It will be an even better day. 🙂

Joined the club

/ hsoi

Yesterday I finally was able to get out to the Austin Rifle Club’s range orientation meeting.

ARC is a private club; you must be a member. Membership isn’t difficult. You need to attend the orientation meeting where they’ll discuss club rules, policies, how the club and ranges work. You need to have a background check (or a CHL). There’s a range safety live-fire evaluation exercise. Then you pay money, fill out forms, and at the monthly general meeting you’re voted in (or not).

So as of now, I’ve done everything but had my membership voted on. So I’ll know in about a week and a half if I’m truly a member or not.

I’ve wanted to be a member for quite a while. ARC is one of the better facilities in town for shooting. Many pistol ranges, 100 and 200 yard rifle range (they used to have a 300 yard range but that was removed due to the action bays, tho there’s talk of a 400 yard range right now), ranges for silhouette. They are a little weak for shotgun but you can do some basic shotgun, just not a lot for things like skeet and trap due to the sheer space that tends to require. And the brand new action shooting bays. From how they were talking last night, they’re growing at a rate of almost 30 new members a month, primarily due to the action bays. That’s great news. Part of why I’ve wanted to join is the action bays, especially if they get opened up for regular member use (i.e. not just limited to being used in formal matches). I’d like to be able to go there to practice shooting on the move, working with my AR transitioning to handgun and back. I’m not sure they’ll do that because while membership tends to be on the better side of gun-handling (background checks and the range safety eval help), there’s no question that membership isn’t always the best. Witness the holes in the ceiling and eyebrows of the 15 yard plinking range, the fact the target holders on the plinking range get shot to hell (shotguns are prohibited on that range since they destroy the target holders, yet people use them there).

In my class yesterday, there were about 30 people. The age range was pretty wide, from a few teenagers to a few seniors. I’d say probably a third of the people were female. Mostly white folks but a few other flavors as well. I’d say probably half of the people had CHL’s, but I believe I was the only person that was actually actively carrying. I’m not sure what to make of that. Perhaps some of them normally carry but opted to disarm for this function because they weren’t sure how the procedures were to be handled? Perhaps some were carrying but opted to shoot another gun? It didn’t seem like that tho. Most appeared to not be actively armed, except perhaps one other gentleman who had an OWB holster on… but it was odd because his Glock was slide-locked back and in the holster (when did he do this?). Bottom line: if you’ve got a CHL, you ought to be using it for more than an adornment on your wallet.

Glad to finally (well, almost finally) be a member.