Paratus

Training yourself to shoot well

This post is inspired by what I see as an unfortunate trend in what should have been a great training tool: the e-postal matches. When the e-postals first came out, I shot a few, even did well on one, but then I began to wait for what I expected would be a zinger of a match: one with good training potential and fun potential at the same time.

I have waited in vain. Maybe my standards for having fun are too high, and for me, fun is the feeling I get AFTER a productive range session, not during it. Having fun on the range seems to bother me, as I keep worrying about fun getting in the way of safety, and safety is the most important thing on the range.

If my fun standards are too high, my training standards are even higher. My background in police work led me to much range training, and the objective of all police range training is to make the cop into an accurate, safe and target-discriminating shooter.

Guess what, sports fans? That's exactly what we should ALL be trying to get out of training.

I thought I would put together what I see as some do's and some don'ts for range training.

DO: Train like you expect to have to shoot for real, to defend yourself and/or project deadly force as part of a greater military objective. That means introducing some reality into your training, such as training with the weapons which you will carry in the field. If you have a "race" gun, confine it's use to the competitions that you shoot in, and sufficient training for those competitions, but compartmentalize: race guns are NOT for defensive or offensive shooting, so set some time aside from your busy IPSC or bowling pin competition schedule to work with field weapons. Those, of course, will NOT have optics or electronic sights on them (save maybe for a Scout Rifle or sniper weapon). I don't believe in night sights either. Not stealthy. Anyone in your rear hemisphere can shoot you just from seeing your night sights in the dark.

DON'T: Don't confine yourself to standing on a range lane and shooting at 8X10 paper. It's great for weapons familiarization, but after you are familiar enough to be safe with a weapon, you need to learn to carry the weapon, draw it or unsling it from your carry, and shoot it, taking advantage of cover. You need to learn to shoot on the move, you need to learn to reload on the move, and you need to learn to move. Most ranges won't allow this, so you will have to find some place in the boondox where you can do it safely.

DO: Shoot in your practice like you shoot in the field. You won't be bringing your brass back with you from any field mission (unless there are stealth reasons, but such ops are very rare). This means shoot and reload without paying heed to the brass. If you are a real range rat, you've probably trained yourself to shuck all revolver empties into a can or a pocket, and you probably watch your ejected shells from autoloaders (if you handload, I KNOW you do this). This practice can get you killed in the field, and under stress, you might revert to it unless you stop doing it at the range. It DID get a CA officer killed in the 1950's, in a shootout. He pocketed his revolver brass in the same pocket as his reloads, and when wounded, couldn't get any good rounds into his weapon in time to kill the onrushing baddie, and was killed himself with a handful of mixed empties and live rounds in his bloody grip.

DON'T: Targets. Don't shoot at the usual bullseye target except for sighting in and familiarization. Get yourself some wide butcher paper (a couple of bucks buys you yards of it), some rattle cans, and some largish cardboard. Fashion yourself some stencils for various targets. The one I like the best is the military head-and-shoulders field silhouette (it has a designator, but I don't remember it). If you are restricted to an actual range and not the open range, make these silhouettes in different sizes, to simulate the size of an individual at various ranges. It will give some perspective to your  iron-sight shooting with rifles. Pistol practice should always be on a man-silhouette like the NRA #28, but you don't have to buy those life-size bedsheets and figure out how to hang them. Make some smaller ones, the same size as the K-5 area on a #28. I have a stencil for that, too. You don't want to hit anything out of that K-5 zone anyway, it won't be fatal and might not even be disabling.

DO: Practice cover and concealment. In a real field situation, you won't be standing tall like at your range, because if you are, you will be dead. You will be hiding behind whatever will give you protection from bullets, or at least concealment from whoever is shooting at you. I have practiced hiding behind and shooting from behind a curbstone! It's been years since a standard 6" high curb would cover much of me, but it's better than nothing, and in an urban situation, there will ALWAYS be curbstones.

DON'T: forget your physical training. In the old police training range, we used to have a little exercise: We strapped on our duty belts (and were wearing our protective vests) and assembled at the range house. On the command, we moved out in a double-time trot for about 400 yards, ending back at the 25-yard line, where we immediately opened fire on silhouette targets. You will be surprised that even with your heart beating faster, and your respirations coming harder and faster, you can still shoot at least 85% as well as you can full rested and in perfect breath control. Of course, if you jog or do other aerobic exercise, it's even easier.

DO: Practice shooting a walking-fire exercise. This is done moving parallel to the target line, with your shooting buddy calling "fire" (and the target number to be attacked) at unpredictable intervals. Very revealing, especially if he has a shot timer. Once again, this will be forbidden on most ranges, and you will have to do it out in the boondox.

DON'T: stop the world if you have a malfunction. If your weapon doesn't fire, you should "tap, rack and go" as your first and AUTOMATIC REACTION TO IT. If "tap, rack and go" doesn't clear the malfunction (it won't if you have a magazine malfunction, do a magazine change AND KEEP SHOOTING. Don't stop to examine the faulty mag, put it in a pocket afterwards. You REALLY need to practice malfunction drills. One of the best is "ball and dummy". Have your buddy take a magazine and put in a dummy round and NOT tell you where it sits in the magazine, then give your loaded weapon CAREFULLY back to you. Do a drill, any drill, even a walking-fire drill. When you get to the dummy round, you will have your malfunction. clear it and smoothly go back to shooting. If your buddy is a true FIEND (not FRIEND), he will put a round in backwards so that you get a REALLY COMPLEX malfunction. Remember, it's always "tap, rack and go", THEN lock the slide back and change the magazine while inspecting the chamber, then chambering a good round from the new magazine. Remember that all this clearing should be done with the weapon pointed downrange (at the enemy) AND preferably while you have ducked behind some cover (and if there's no cover, you better be running towards some in a low crouch).

DO: stop right after your drills and make some notes to review later. Be honest with yourself about what you got out of your range/field session. Make notes on what to improve the next time.

Well, I got that out of my system. I even have some ideas for a "Real War" e-postal, and if enough are interested, I'll put it out there for all y'all.

"Human Weapon" TV show

I watched an installment of a new "reality" series on TV last night, and came away impressed. The show "Human Weapon" (History Channel, Fridays, repeats at various times during the week) uses two martial-arts-trained hosts, and excellent computer graphics, to show the effect of various martial arts blows, in different disciplines.

Last night's show was about Muay Thai, known to most of us as Thai Kickboxing. What I didn't know is that the current ring styling of Muay Thai is NOT anything like the martial art it descended from. In the show last night, the two hosts toured all over Thailand, going to various kickboxing gyms, military academies, and even a religious compound, to see and try out the original forms of the hand-to-hand fighting art.

I learned what were known then simply as "Combatives" in the Air Force. We were told, at the start of the 16-week training program, that the fighting arts in Combatives were a mix of Karate, Judo, Aikido and a Philippine knife art. One thing that was emphasized, over and over, in my training was "get inside".

Getting Inside: when fighting, it is natural for all who fight to fight offensively and defensively at the same time. The defensive fight takes the form of defending your fighting space, usually defined by the reach of your arms. Of course, in any form of fighting, the winner of the fight is the one who can project force into the defensive space, and disable the opponent. Combatives taught me to blade my body in a half-sidestep, and close to the very center of the fight, the opponent's head. Blading the body is more difficult than it used to be for me (there is a lot more body now, so blading doesn't expose less body, it exposes more).

What interested me is a close strike that the original (not the ring-fighting) form of Muay Thai teaches. I didn't write down the name (it's Thai, and I can't begin to write the letters from how it sounds to me), but the strike is basically a two-fisted uppercut, effected by entering the opponent's defensive circle in a FORWARD (not bladed) crouch, and lunging upwards at the chin with both fists locked together, and the legs AND forearms uncoiling. The effect of the strike is to unleash (from a fit and trained person), a force of two and a half TONS on the lightly protected underside of the jaw, and/or the adam's apple area of the throat. A crushed glottis (the interior of the Adam's apple) ends the fight, because the bone fragments will sever arteries, and the opponent will drown in his own blood.

The difficult thing about this uppercut strike, and why you will need to practice it with a partner who holds the heavy bag for you, is that coiling and unleashing the power of the legs takes time, and it is hard NOT to telegraph this move, which is easily countered by a simple back-step. The move also leaves YOUR defensive space unguarded for a moment after you deliver the blow, and in range of the opponent's counter-strike. The magnificent thing about this move is that it is a fight-ender. Properly delivered, the blow will either break the jaw, result in the opponent severing his tongue, break the neck, or crush the glottis. It is not a move that many opponents would expect.

The show is breezy and informative. If every episode has at least one strike that a person could add to their inventory of moves, it WILL make a difference in one's level of success in unarmed combat.

S.H.T.F. Equipment Report - Garrity KP043G LED Dynamo-Lantern

As expected from my last Ammo Alert, I made a trip to my local Bi-Mart store to get some ammo and a few other items.

This $29.99 Garrity lantern was one of the other items. It has 15 smallish white LEDs in it, but can run on 9 of them to conserve energy. It is powered by AA rechargeable NiMH cells. It is self powered in that it incorporates a built in, hand-cranked dynamo to recharge the batteries, as one of three recharging methods. The others are AC adaptor and 12 VDC power cord (included). There is a DC output suitable for charging small equipment such as a cell phone from the unit's battery.

Here is the recharge time schedule:

You will note that it takes roughly 1 minute of cranking to give you 2 minutes as you get into topping up the battery. Maybe Chris Byrne can help me out here (he's an EE), but I suspect that the curve for recharging is not linear, so that it falls off rather badly as you get more power into the battery. My experience (no science, just experience here) is that ALL storage batteries are like this, and it has something to do with the voltage differential between a discharged battery vs. the charging voltage, and as the battery charges, and the voltage spread reduces, the time to a full charge gets longer and longer per turn of the crank. No matter, you will probably recharge this lantern in one of the other ways.

It looks like this in the original packaging:

It looks like this lit up, but it had a weak charge in it then:

It wasn't exactly overwhelming the 9 60-watt CFLs in my kitchen ceiling, but after 2/3 of a full charge, I am blogging by it now. I can read clearly with the lamp 3 feet away and above me (on full power). The diffuser seems to do a good job of dispersing light, unlike an earlier 30-LED lantern I own which definitely bands it's light output.

I'm naturally curious, so I removed the bottom cover to the battery compartment and inspected the lantern from the inside. The AA cells are not replaceable by the each, but are a unitary, proprietary battery pack. I might acquire another battery pack to have two, or put together one of my own. The NiMH cells in the pack are only 1200 MAH, and I have some 2800 MAH cells I could lash together. There might be an issue with installing higher-capacity  cells, though, in that the dynamo might not be up to hammering them with enough current. Maybe Chris can help out with THAT little EE problem, too.

Overall, the lantern is put together well, but it's far from Mil-Spec. It's very light, weighing about 3/4 pound. It's 10 inches high, and would fit in a 6" cylindrical container with room for packaging. It comes with a generous selection of connectors for it's cell-phone charging set-up. It has charging-in-progress and charging-complete LED indicator lights.

It is not waterproof, and may not even be splashproof, but it fits into a 1-gallon Ziploc bag which will provide that capability for a few centavos.

It comes with a factory-replacement warranty for one year (not good in Mexico).

Two years ago, this type of light was unavailable. They are becoming common today, and since I have trust in the Garrity brand of portable lighting, as good, value-for-the-money medium-duty equipment, I highly recommend this product.

BTW, under the LED array and on top of the battery compartment (accessible though the battery compartment) is a cylindrical void about 2"X4". Since this lantern is light enough to blow over in a strong wind, I recommend putting some weight in this void. In the right tube container, you could get almost 100 rounds of .22 ammo in there (think empty pill bottle of the right dimensions). That would almost double the weight, and end the instability issues. What else you might think to stash in such a compartment will be up to you.

Gun Control Alternatives

I'm here to talk about GCA. No, not the ancient Ground Controlled (Radar) Approach that instrument pilots could rely on to bring their airwagons into the airpatch during inclement weather, I'm talking Gun Control Alternatives.

Over at Rivrdog Central, in this post, I discussed why the door for new gun control action by Congress is suddenly wide open. Never wanting to abandon a constituent voting bloc (and the (D)onks do a MUCH better job of loyalty to objectives than does the GOP), the liklihood of new gun control initiatives is now bordering on a certainty.

Last Fall, I advised readers to finish up completing their personal weapons collection. I said then that I didn't trust the (D)onks, who were then campaigning on a no-new-gun-control platform.

I was right, and now there is a end-gun-shows bill in the House and also a new AWB, and they will likely pass. The gun market thinks they will likely pass, because the prices of certain semi-auto weapons, stable all last year, have now risen. If they pass, President Bush will probably NOT veto them. The reasons he won't are that he previously said that he would sign an extension of the AWB which sunsetted two years ago if it came to him, and the new fact that  as the dust begins to settle on the early campaign trail, the three most likely contenders for the GOP nod for POTUS are ALL gun controllers.

The NRA will put up a valiant effort, but the handwriting is on the wall for me.

The Second Amendment is going to take a body blow, this year. In '09, REGARDLESS of which party wins, it will likely take MORE body blows.

I don't know about you, dear readers, but for me, the assumption that we will be in a shooting civil war BEGINS with the death of the Second (or the First, for that matter).

It goes this way, and now the gloves are OFF and it's bareknuckle time: The Second Amendment exists, in fact, was written to insure, that the ability of citizens to remove their government NOT BE INFRINGED. The Second was meant as a threat to Big Government, or Overbearing Government, or whatever you want to call the sorry excuse for Constitutionality that we now have in Washington, DC. The Second was meant to always be there to remind the Federal Government to do the basic job and go home when it's done.

The Second Amendment was meant to prevent exactly what our Federal Government has become.

The Second Amendment  did not do it's job as a threat to big government. Rather, I should say that too few people ever thought of using the Second Amendment for what it was designed for (to assemble a Militia and, if necessary, remove the Government). Because the Second was NEVER exercised (it has had fewer cases on point than any other Amendment in the Bill of Rights), like any other unused threat, it's effect has diminished over time, and the Second now languishes as simply a debate topic, and has been nullified almost to the point of death by legislation over the past 70 years.

People, the Second Amendment still lives! It has NOT been repudiated in any official or binding manner. It also lives in Spirit, in the minds and pens and yes, the GUNS of those who, like your blogger, KNOW that it WILL be called upon to fulfill it's original purpose.

OK, OK, fine talk, you say, but how does this change things. Talk changes nothing, action is required.

We must be prepared to act to not only DEFEND  the Second Amendment from further depradation, we must be prepared to USE the Second Amendment for it's original purpose, that of arming the Militia.

Into the present.

There will shortly be legislation making the easy and legal acquisition of militia-suitable military small arms difficult, if not impossible. It is important to use the last minutes of the window of availability for the acquisition of a suitable, modern, semi-automatic military rifle. At this point, I am abandoning my distinction between military RIFLES and military CARBINES that I have discussed earlier. The acquisition of suitable handguns is also advisable, and of course, the acquisition of magazines for both handguns and rifles/carbines is a MUST, as these will be banned very soon. Handguns are nowhere near as important as rifles, not only because of their limited combat range and effectiveness, but because in the very strictest of interpretations of the Second, only officers and some non-commissioned officers (NCOs) are normally armed with handguns, but ALL may be armed with military rifles.

There are currently no bills for acts to restrict the supply of ammunition for military weapons, but the prudent militia member ALWAYS considers a source of ammo for his/her weapon to be of the highest priority, so acquire more than you need, and be prepared to acquire more when the time comes to do so, by having a rifle/carbine that uses the same ammo that the Standing Army uses, or by having reloading equipment and supplies to make more ammo.

This is the advice for TODAY, and maybe for the next two or three months that it will take for the next attacks on the Second Amendment to be formalized.

This advice is not enough for a prudent planner of conflict, however.

We must look past the implementation of restrictions on militia weaponry, to conflict preparation IN SPITE OF THOSE RESTRICTIONS.

If you acquire just one weapon, and the forces of the government seizes it, you are an unarmed militia member, for the moment anyway. Assuming that the government doesn't seize YOU along with your weapon, you could still be of use to the militia, especially if you had another weapon which did not get seized.

I recommend the acquisition of at least TWO militia-suitable military rifles/carbines. Three would be even better. You don't want to get to the point where you are the nail that sticks up, i.e.: you are maintaining a militia ARSENAL, because if you do, you will be the first to have those weapons seized and probably yourself with the weapons. Of course, dispersal means dispersing the ammunition also, and such spare parts for each weapon as you have and will need. Don't forget, even if you have your military battle weapons already, the distribution of parts for them are likely to be banned as well, so just assume that the implementation of restrictions as in HB 1022 are TOTAL BANS. Making such an assumption will save you the trouble of having to find bootleg parts for your weapons.

The acquisition of multiple militia weapons means nothing, of course, if you keep them all in one place where one action by the government can seize them all. Let's make their job a little harder, and ours easier: store your weapons in different locations, preferably within a day's drive of your most likely place when the militia is called out. Dispersing your weapons will likely mean trusting someone else with them, or getting VERY creative with dispersing them about your own property. You need to form those trusting relationships NOW, so as to let time test them before actual events test them.

OK, you've followed all this advice above, and actually have broken no CURRENT laws in doing so (another reason for doing it NOW). What do you need to do to continue your preparation?

1. Practice with your weapons. If you can report as a militia member ready for combat, you not only are much more valuable to the militia, your preparation will pay off in being designated as a leader, because there will be a lot of militia members reporting with NO preparations whatsoever.
2. Have your "kit" ready to go. Read the archives of this blog, I've covered this subject extensively before, especially here (start at the bottom of the stack).
3. Have yourself in some level of physical fitness. Combat is physically and mentally stressful. You don't know if and/or when you will actually go into combat, but if you have to, you want to be able to have your body carry you through, and especially you want to have your mind sharp and in focus on your militia job.
4. Plan with trusted friends. Your responsibility under the Militia Act and your duty as a citizen do not necessarily involve you being in a position of leadership in the militia, but if you have leadership qualities, of all the times you will have used them before, your responding to a militia muster will be the penultimate test, but also the penultimate reward for having those talents.

A muster of the militia to defend the Constitution may not be a formal event, with announcements over public media (in the current state of the media, they can be counted on to REFUSE their duty to broadcast details of a militia muster). In fact, it will probably be clandestine, with a word-of-mouth announcement. It is likely that the muster will have some way to authenticate it so that you may be sure you are being called up into the militia, and not marching into a trap. As the size of the militia grows rapidly, it's disposition will become more formal, if all goes as expected. If things DON'T go as expected, you will have to decide whether the clandestine operation of a militia fills YOUR definition of proper militia duty. The government can be expected to say that ANY militia duty, or bearing of militia arms will be unlawful, seditious, treasonous and just plain not nice, and their words should have some weight in your decision, but not all the weight.

So, the last instruction for your preparation checklist is to get educated. Educated on politics, because most politicians are predictable, as you have discovered by reading these blogs. Educated on military custom and procedure. Educated on survival. Educated physically. Educated spiritually. Even educated religiously, if that's your choice.

If you get all this education and the militia is never called out to perform it's ultimate duty, you have still improved your value as a citizen, by a huge amount. If there are enough like you, military action to restore the Constitution will not be necessary, because as reality-educated citizens, the militia, properly formed and "regulated", is THE ONLY force that is strong enough to overcome all the evil that lurks in the hearts and minds of the politicians who would destroy our Constitution and culture.

AC power via DC inversion

That's a mouthful, isn't it? What it means is taking the stored electrical energy out of a 12 volt DC storage battery, and inverting (really CONVERTING, I don't know why this term was used) it to 110 volt AC.

With the invention of heavy-duty power transistors several decades ago, the development of an efficient system for making AC power out of DC was developed. Prior to that, the motor-alternator was the only way to do it. A 12 volt DC motor was connected directly to an AC generator (alternator) and the output was AC power, but of inferior frequency and voltage control, because as the voltage input to the DC motor varied, so did it's speed, and therefore the frequency (60 cycles per second) of the AC. If AC frequency is not maintained exactly, bad things happen, such as AC motors overheat.

The solid-state inverter eliminates all these problems, and inverters built in the last 10 years even have the correct sine-wave pattern to the AC, along with exact frequency control. This means that you can use them for computers, which have to have a very stable source of power.

There are two means of making your own AC power: you can generate it with a factory-built generator set (genset), or you can make it from battery power via an inverter. Generator sets are very common, but they have restrictions on their use. If you live in an apartment block, you probably can't use one. They require constant supervision, since they consist of an engine running at high speed, and such troublesome things like being maintained in fuel and oil. Oh, did I mention that they are noisy? Yes they are. For most people this is their biggest drawback. They can also kill you, as their engines make carbon monoxide while running.

None of these disadvantages apply to battery-inverter power generation. It is quiet, and in a small room containing your equipment, all you will hear is the cooling fan running on your inverter, if you have a model with a fan. It requires little attention, the only two items of maintenance being to keep flooded-cell (lead-acid) batteries topped up with distilled water, and to occasionally brighten the battery connections to promote perfect contact. Other than that, when you need power, you switch on the inverter and plug your appliances and lights into it.

Here is a generic list of materials which you will need to put a set together: battery (batteries if you want a beefier set), battery boxes for the batteries, an inverter, cabling to connect the batteries to the inverters, a battery charger, and ordinary extension cords.

Like generators (to some degree), battery-inverter set-ups are scalable. That is, you can build them to suit the work. If you wanted to run a few necessities in an average house, you wouldn't need a very big set-up, but if you plan on running refrigerators and freezers, a large TV and most of your lights, you will need more batteries and a bigger inverter.

Let's take this one component at a time.

First the batteries. If you go to your local department or auto-supply store, you will find what are called "RV Deep-Cycle" storage batteries at $45-60. These are usually remanufactured, some offshore. You don't really know what you are getting. A battery is a simple device, but, as with any device, the quality of construction usually means something. In a battery's case, it definitely does. That's why batteries are sold with guarantees by the month. Personally, I don't buy any sort of battery with less than a 72-month guarantee. Storage batteries are rated as to their total capacity in "amp-hours", but they are also rated in CCA (Cold Cranking Amps) and Reserve Minutes. You may ignore the CCA rating, you won't be starting any engines with these batteries, and if you were, all of them would start a gasoline V-8 with no difficulty. The Reserve Minutes rating means that the battery will be able to put out x-number of minutes of power (at 25 amps draw) until it gets down to 10.5 volts (dead).

Let's remember Ohm's Law: Volts times Amps Equals Watts. Amp-hours are a quantity of amps over time. 120 amp-hours means that your 12-volt battery will deliver 10 amps for 12 hours. Except that it won't really do that. A 120-A/H battery will give you 60 useful A/H. The reason is that you don't drain your batteries below 50% of capacity before recharging if you want them to last, and all inverters will cut out when their input voltage drops below 10.5 anyway. That means that a battery down to 12.06 volts will not operate an inverter, because when you load that partially-discharged battery with the inverter, it's output will drop about 1 1/2 volts. Use this table as your guide. You don't need a fancy battery-condition computer (they sell them for about $250) to tell you how your batteries are doing. Just switch off your inverter for a moment and use a cheapo digital voltmeter on it and compare the voltage reading to the chart above.

If you get a marine-rated battery (the best ones are all marine-rated), it WILL be a quality battery. The reason is that things move around in the marine environment, and these batteries are built to take some bumping around, so they cost more. They will also weigh more, because they have more lead plates in them which gives them their increased power. A cheapo RV battery may weigh about 60 pounds, but a Trojan of the same size weighs about 72.

As to brands, you can't go wrong with Trojan. They are on the upper end as to price, but they have more plates stuffed into their tough container, so they actually give a little more power (8% more) than a bargain-basement battery. Another good one is Exide Nautilus, specifically the Nautilus Gold. Note that the Trojan is an "Absorbed Gas Mat" type of battery, which is newer (and more expensive) technology than the usual lead-acid. It is not the same as a "gel-cell", which are perhaps the ideal battery, but they have their own issues, the first being that they are triple the cost, and the second being that it takes a special type of battery charger to charge them. They are made in all shapes and sizes, and may be used in any position, not really important to our consideration. They do have one huge advantage, in that they may be drawn down to zero, like a nickle-cadmium or lithium ion battery, without damage, whereas a lead-acid or AGM battery must not be taken below 50% of charge, except in emergency and with the knowledge that you have just seriously shortened it's life.

Battery boxes. The most popular is the Tempo brand, and their ordinary battery box, sized for either the smaller Group 24 or the bigger Group 27 size, is about $8-10 at your local RV or marine supply place. They have an upscale one also, which has a 12VDC outlet wired into the top, as well as a set of indicator lights which give you the state of charge while you are using the battery, or with a press-to-test function when you are not. It is about $35.

Inverters. Inverters are all over the place in size (and price). I have three small ones, a Xantrex 175 Micro, a West Marine 150 and a West Marine 250. I have two larger ones, both older superseded models but similar to this Xantrex 800 and 1500, except that the older models ran on 12 volts, whereas with these new ones you have to tie two 12 batteries together in series for 24 volts. That's probably a lawyer-driven modification, since there is zero functional difference between the two except that with 24 volts, there is half the amperage, therefore less chance of heat buildup in the cabling. You decide how much inverter to get by adding up the AC wattage of your loads. If you have 150 watts of lights (you don't NEED that much, but you might plan for it), a 400-watt fridge and a 400 watt freezer to run, you DON'T need a 1,000-watt inverter, because you aren't going to be running the reefer and freezer at the same time. There is an idle current with these inverters, and it gets bigger as the size of the inverter goes up. For the average user, I would get two inverters, one small one for low power applications and one 800-watt one to run the reefer or freezer. That makes your batteries last longer. If money is no object, and you are going to put together a large battery-inverter set, get one of these. It is a combination inverter and charger, and it has automatic changeover, so you could connect it directly to house power to make an Un-Interruptible Power Supply (UPS). You will need at least 4 batteries, and you'd be best to go to Golf Cart batteries. They are not all that spendy, though, I paid $320 for four of them at Boater's World two years ago.

Battery chargers. You need to be able to recharge the batteries. You do that under emergency conditions with either a generator set powering a battery charger, or with your automobile alternator. A couple of caveats here: I can hear your first squawk already. You are saying "I thought that the whole idea of this batter-inverter idea was to avoid generators". You're right, the concept avoids generators for the continuous-draw loads, but you have to recharge those batteries somehow. If you have a protracted outage like they have had in recent months in St. Louis, MO and  Seattle, WA, you will have to recharge those batteries several times. If the city can't supply that power, you have to. The simplest solution is to have your vehicle outfitted with a 12-volt heavy-duty pigtail lead that you can plug the batteries into and let the car alternator charge them up, which it will do quite rapidly. Most cars have a 50-amp alternator, which will recharge your battery in about an hour, two batteries in about 2 1/2 hours (Group 27 storage batteries). You need some way to keep your car's engine revved up to about 2,000 rpm, where the alternator makes the best charge rate. A brick will do nicely, but you could have your vehicle fitted with a hand throttle as well. Any fab shop which services farm equipment can do this modification for you.

The other solution is a small generator powering a battery charger. Forget about the "battery charging" loop on the genset, none of them provide more than a 15-amp charge, and that's too slow (3-4 hours for ONE group-27 battery). The best battery chargers are made by Xantrex, the same people who make the inverters. I have a Tru-Charge 40. It's an expensive charger, but it will do all the charging functions. To charge a battery properly, first you need to stuff in some fast amperes. This is called the Bulk charge, and it recharges the battery up to about 85 or 90%. then you get to the Float charge, which tapers off and does the rest (but takes a lot of time, all day). The very best chargers also have a maintenance cycle, in which they regularily discharge the battery and recharge it though the three stages. This is called "de-sulphating", and it make a battery last years longer. A good battery charger does just that - it makes the batteries last much longer and provide better output when they are called on to do their job. You can get a useful charger for about a third of the Xantrex, though. This one will fill the bill nicely.

Cabling. You need cabling to ties the main components together. All connections should have lug-terminals on them, the kind that go on a bolt-type battery terminal. DO NOT use anything with spring clamps. The actual connection area of a spring clamp is so small that heat build-up is almost guaranteed, with it's attendant fire hazard and loss of efficiency. You could only be drawing 10 amps from the battery (giving you 100 watts of AC), but the clamp might be drawing another 3 amps in heating itself up. That 3-amp heat build-up WILL burn something up eventually. Your cables should be at least #4 size. You can go to a marine supply place or an automotive supply place and they will have a good selection. Use the correct color coding, red for positive and black for negative, and measure before you shop because the longer a cable you have, the more power you waste. You want the shortest cables that will tie your system together.

An alternative. There are ready-made systems available. The best one I have seen is this Xantrex, but they come smaller also, and are available everywhere in big-box stores like Home Depot or Lowe's. The Xantrex will power good-sized appliances with it's 1,500-watt inverter, but it only has a 60 A/H battery in it, so it won't run for long at high loads. It does have inputs, and might be capable of having additional storage batteries put in parallel with it, giving it the legs one needs on output, but I'll bet it's charger won't back-charge those other batteries, so you are back dealing with battery charging anyway.

Let's put a set together. Let's build a basic battery-inverter set. We will need:

• One battery. Let's get a mid-range Exide Nautilus Gold 105 A/H. We'll pay $80 for it locally.
• One battery box, the Tempo Power Center box. That's about $42 with shipping.
• One inverter, an 800-watt Xantrex Micro, about $90 shipped.
• Cabling, two 14" battery cables, two 24" at $24, buy locally.
• A cheapo DIGITAL multimeter, about $8 locally.
• 2 size 14 extension cords. Price depends on length, about $25 locally.
• Battery charger, about $150 shipped

You are going to fabricate a hold-fast to fasten the inverter to the top of the battery box. Time, with pop-rivets and fender-washers, about 10 minutes with whatever strapping you have handy. While you don't have to fasten the battery charger to the battery box, I'm thinking that this whole lashup will fit nicely in a RubberMaid footlocker, about $20 at Ace Hardware. Just to be sure we can stretch out our recharge capability, we are going to add the pigtail-lead set in, another $90 or so shipped, and if you pay to have it hooked up, whatever those labor charges are.

Grand Total comes to $529.

Gensets? I would only recommend the Honda line, and they are not that cheap. An EU1000 with about the same power capacity as the battery-inverter set we just built will set you back about $600, while a beefier EU2000 will cost you $950. I have the EU2000, and it did just fine when we lost our power for a night during the recent Northwest storms, but I also used a small battery-inverter setup for my computer power and local lights in my computer room. Because I ran the genset continuously (save for refuelling it), I didn't get a lot of sleep. With just 3 more batteries, I can lash together a 1500-watt set with my large inverter, so I'm going to do that soon.

Running all this? Easy as pulling the extension cords out, hooking up the things you are going to power, and throwing the switch on the inverter. Just a quiet hum tells you that it's running, plus the lights on the battery box come on. You can do the math if you have a steady draw, and calculate when you will be down to 50% on the battery, or you can hook up your multimeter and just eyeball the battery voltage occasionally. When it's time to recharge, you run out those 30 feet of jumper cables, plug into the pigtail lead, start your car and you're packing amps! Run the car for an hour, then shut it down and repeat as necessary. If the mains power comes back on, plug in the battery charger to get the battery back up, but don't leave it plugged in. For long-range maintenance, have a bottle of distilled water and a battery-bulb handy and refill the cells to the ring as necessary. Once a year or so, take apart all the connections, and using a small welder's steel-bristle brush, polish them bright and re-assemble.

You're prepared for a power outage now, my friends, but if you want to get educated in more depth, read this excellent 12VDC primer.

When is the beginning of the end? Part Two

In first post in this series, we talked about anti-gun strategies of the Left and their possibilities for enactment. We talked of the neccessity to pick out the tipping point, or "The Beginning of the End".

There is a rip-snorting (well, at least for yours truly) discussion on this topic going on over at Random Nuclear Strikes, in this post. The discussion opens with a fine article by Phil, and some very cogent questions are being asked and (hopefully) answered in the comments.

My link takes the place of writing Part Two of this series, so go and read.

Now.

The hour is getting late.

When is the beginning of the end?

Welcome back. I haven't posted here in several months because I've been following the principle of simplicity, and for a while, decided to put all my eggs in the one Rivrdog basket.

I've gone back to the old idea, and decided to re-energize this blog for it's original purpose, that of preparation for conflict, and more narrowly, internal civil conflict.

Events of the past few months, and especially of November 7th, have indicated a need for a different preparation. Over at Rivrdog, I've talked about arms preparation fairly often, urging the stockpiling of arms and ammunition against a changed legal background for acquiring it.

I talked about that preparation while using the assumption that only the sale of arms and ammo would be restricted. Of late, I've been reading some rather severe what-ifs in regard to this legal picture. These folks wonder what would happen if POSSESSION was restricted.

"Oh, My God", you exclaim. "That can't happen", you protest. "Against the Second Amendment", you ALL agree.

I'm sorry, I DON'T AGREE.

Dangerous streets, and training for them

First it was the attack at a Seattle Jewish Community Center, then the Jihadi vehicular assaults by another self-avowed terrorist in San Francisco, and now, back in the Tacoma area, an attack by armed goons (mouthing lefty garbage) on a soldier in uniform.

Two things: if that troop's commanding officer had any balls, he would issue orders to his command to not leave the base unarmed. According to my Dad, who served here in the CONUS during the Depression, this happened a few times on a few posts (and commanders also urged their non-coms and officers to obtain civil permits and pack heat when off base). Then he would issue sidearms to those trained to use them, and rifles to the rest. If he has a few MPs sitting around, he might put them in an armed Hummer or Stryker vehicle and have them do a few patrols of the bad parts of town. He won't have that grade of 'nads, though, because he would be countermanded by some Pentagon general officer, and his career would slide to a halt.

The second thing is that there seems to be an escalation of violence in the West and Northwest that may call for an escalation of civilian armaments carried by those who may properly do so.

For example, I normally carry a 9mm compact pistol as my walking-around piece. Lately I added a second clip to my walking-around TOE. I am considering upgrading the Kel-Tec P-11 europellet dispenser to a .40 S&W full-frame Glock, or perhaps my 1911A1. Pain to carry them, since that calls for a full shoulder rig, and the overclothing to conceal it (sportscoat when in polite company, and golf jacket when casual). When winter comes, I can sling my folded Kel-Tec sub-rifle under a heavier coat, but that gets me out to the absolute end of the weapons spectrum.

This San Francisco attack particularily bothers me, because it is so easy to copycat. In these United States, a simple fact of the culture is that most people drive. In these Western cities, a lot of us drive pickups or sport-utes. Any of these vehicles can repeatedly jump curbs, and make perfect weapons for maiming and killing lots of civilians, as happened in SFO. I EXPECT there to be copycat incidents. I would be surprised if there weren't. In my area, there is currently a rash of injury and fatal hit and run vehicular crashes, mostly against pedestrians and bicyclists of all ages. The perps don't seem to fit any Jihadi profile, but the attacks are happening anyway.

To me, this calls for some training.

Training in disabling an automobile by killing it's driver.

This type of weapons fire is VERY risky, since it usually can't be performed from behind cover (with a pistol anyway), but rather the shooter must get as close to the perp vehicle as possible, and direct a LOT of gunfire through the driver's side of the windshield, if in front of the vehicle, or through the driver's window and door, if to the side. The shooter MUST NOT fire through the passenger side, unless he/she can make sure that that seat is not occupied (unless the car is obviously full of assault-minded perps, in which case everyone in it is a legitimate target).

This is not the type of shooting we do normally, at the range or in real life. It is not the ideal type of shooting to do with a handgun, either. A carbine or assault rifle or shotgun with slugs is much more suited to this level of force application.

Generally, any person who uses a vehicle for assault may be presumed to have committed assault with a deadly weapon, which USUALLY permits firearms fire to end the assault and prevent more assaults. You need to look this up in YOUR state. Of course, an armed citizen is ALWAYS permitted to use deadly force to protect the lives of others that citizen may reasonably believe are in mortal danger.

Now that we've done our legal homework, some practice is in order.

At the range, you will need a firing line where you can move laterally while shooting, and a variation of the rules to allow you to practice lateral movement and firing. Set up an 18"X18" target at 10 to 15 yards. Your objective will be to hit this target with the entire contents of your weapon in the shortest time possible. A shot timer would help, but a training buddy would be better (your range rules would probably require range-officer supervision for this type of shooting anyway). When you get reliable enough standing in one place (my standard would be 90% hits in 4 seconds for a single-stack magazine, or 7 seconds for a double-stack), you need to practice opening fire, then moving at least ten feet sideways and firing again. If, by some miracle, you can set up a moving target (running deer type) at your range, set it for a 4-to-6 second exposure.

Accuracy counts, as does target observation while firing. If you are shooting at an assaultive vehicle with a trained driver, he will be ducking below the windshield level as the bullets come into the car. He wins those encounters if you do not cease fire immediately and wait for him to pop back up into view. If you are shooting through the car door, the very minimum round that will do the job is a NATO 9mm, and they are iffy. For this, you need .357 magnum hardball or it's ballistic equivalent. This type of shooting is what .357 was designed for. The .45ACP or 10mm are also fill this bill, but you have to have a penetrating bullet in the hulls. Hardball at least, FMJ-AP if you can get it. .40 S&W should do OK in hardball, but I've never actually tried it on a car.

Remember also that this type of target is not a Mozambique drill. You ALWAYS empty your weapon at a vehicle with a driver in sight. In this type of vehicle shoot, you almost always find, when successful, a dead perp from ONE of the MANY rounds fired, you never know which one is going to end the perp's assault.

Preparation for this type of shooting should remind you that you need a reload, and the ability to properly reload under combat stress. It won't do you any good to force that driver to end his vehiclular assault on someone else, only to have him redirect his attention to YOU, and you have an empty gun.

We face increased threats, but can carry on our lives without interruption, if, and only if, we spend the time and energy to prepare for the new threats.

War Walking, Week One

I've finished the first week of the War Walking program. The basic stats: walked 6 days out of seven (had a twinge of gout on the fourth day, laid off), totalled 9.12 miles, averaging a mile and a half. I did those segments in an average of 36 minutes (24 minutes to the mile). Almost all the segments were in hilly terrain, on pavement. Today's was on the treadmill, as I was nursing a blister and wanted the extra cushioning effect of the springy walking base of the belt.

As for pondering while walking, I considered Tactical Organization, Tactical Research, a non-tactical R2KBA subject, Tactical clothing, hydration gear & boots (thanks PawPaw) and finally, Who Is The Enemy.

After a lunch with the proto-doctor daughter today, I'll go off to G.I. Joe's and Home Depot to get the materials for the pseudo shoulder arm that I'll begin carrying on my War Walks next week. Fairly basic, it'll be a 3 1/2 foot length of 3" PVC pipe, with caps, two sling swivels mounted and a rifle sling. By adding river rock (large pebbles) to the pipe, I'll be able to get it to the weight and balance of a battle rifle. I'll present a photo when I have it done. I'm entertaining suggestions for the paint job.

War Walking

No kneepads, I'll just have to kneel down and make this confession where I stand: I'm not in shape to fight the war that I think I might have to fight and the war that I've been talking to all of my readers about fighting.

The military has an advantage when it comes to physical conditioning: they don't take anyone past their middle 30's, and don't have to continue training with anyone much past 50, at which point most military members retire.

I'm almost 63.

I've been diagnosed as a diabetic ("lifestyle-management" capable), I've had difficulties with gout (it's managed with medication) and I'm hypertensive. I'm between 10 and 50 pounds overweight, depends on which doctor is lecturing me at the moment. I have a chronic lower back strain that's manageable with the right exercise (maybe, the discs involved are degrading).

My mind is clear and I can still shoot straight, though. My goal is to improve my body until I can bring the readiness of my body to fight up to the level of the readiness of my mind.

You won't catch me in a gym. They are a waste of money, IMHO, and cater to people who want to look good in a mirror. I don't give a damn what I look like, I just want to be able to take the field for a month or longer and fight until the coming war is won. If someone shows me a gym without a single mirror except in the locker room, I might join it. Such gyms don't exist. They don't exist because the bottom line in a gym is brought in by the men and women who want to look good in Spandex, and they demand mirrors.

Nope, no Winsor Pilates, spendy diets, or exercise equipment for me.

This program is called War Walking. It's elements are:

1. Start with a level you KNOW will not injure you. I started today with a 1 1/2 mile hilly-country walk, which I completed in 33 minutes. I'll probably repeat the walk before dinner.
2. Leave the headphones and I-Tunes at home. Take only your mind for company. While walking, think of an element of war. Organize that element in your mind into sections, and think about each section during your walk.
3. Do take equipment. You probably can't hump your ruck and rifle in most neighborhoods, but you CAN take some weight to work your arms with. If you want to look nerdy, get some walker's hand weights. I have a walking staff which weighs a couple of pounds. It's good for now, and I'm working on something heavier that won't look too offensive to my yuppie neighbors. I'm thinking of a piece of 2 or 3 inch PVC pipe, capped, with sling swivels and a sling installed. I can add as much or as little weight to the pipe as I want.
4. Do record your progress. Your weight once a week (measurements if you want, but like I already said, I don't give a damn about how I look), your time every session, and notes on the weight you carried. For me, I'll also be recording my blood sugar levels after the session. I might expand the log to record my entire food intake, but I haven't committed myself to food restrictions, just walking.
5. Keep track of your feet. For me, as a diabetic, this is of paramount importance, but  it's also important for everyone else. If your shoes don't fit, get better shoes. Better yet, get several pair, so you can dry them out between sessions. When you progress to the next level, All-Terrain War Walking, you will want good boots. That will also be a good time to bring in more of your fighting clothing to your training regimen. Your BDUs, (if you are going to wear them, I'm not, see this post), your field jacket (when it get colder, dummies, not in the heat of the summer), and any other of your kit you can wear without alarming the hell out of your neighbors.
6. Hydrate. If you don't need to whiz right after (or during) your War Walk, you haven't hydrated enough. Hydration means water. Forget the sports drinks. You won't have them in the field, and your nutrition program should be taking care of ALL of your nutritional needs, so all you need is water. If you sweat a lot, take some salt. You don't need much, just a little pile about the size of a dime (not quite a gram), then lick it up off your hand where you measured it out, and chase it with a half-liter of water. If you are in hot country, you should drink a liter for every two to three miles you walk, less if you live in a cool climate. If you do live in hot country, you might want to consider a hydration pack, like HydraStorm or Camelbak.

Well, that's about it. Start small, keep at it, and keep it up.

War Walking, to give you what it takes to take you all the way.