Nom de guerre: Rivrdog

I went Postal on 'ya

I shot Mr. Completely's Snub-nose Pistol-Postal match today. I won't know how I stacked up until next week, but I have some personal results to show for it.

Of note is the fact that I shot three, count 'em, THREE belly guns, one pocket pistol and my Hi-Standard Model 103 with the short barrel attached.

Here are the guns:

Top left, AMT Backup, SAO, 380ACP, top right, North American Arms micro-revolver, .22 short rimfire (smallest firearm in production), Bottom Right, Beretta Minx, Model 950-B, .22 Short rim-fire, Bottom Left, Walther PP, .380ACP. Note that four weapons fit nicely on one sheet of standard paper.

The NAA revolver is an area-fire weapon. I couldn't reliably get hits on the paper at 10 yards, so I brought the target in to 5 and fired one demo target offhand not for score.

This is the Hi-Standard Model 103 with the 4" barrel. Shot one 3/4" group with it. It's a target pistol, and doesn't really belong in this competition, but Mr. C's loose rules (probably written for his pinshooter HS tunnel-sight pistol) allows it, so I shot it, but he can't shoot in my category as his barrel is too long (nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah).

Here are the targets:

First, the 5 yard demo with the ONE-INCH barrel NAA:

Getting most of them on an 8X10 sheet of paper is quite an accomplishment. The gun has no rear sight, but it has a doofus front blade sight that does you no good at all. I point-shot this target from the Weaver short-distance stance. I happened to get most of the rounds on the paper, and actually scored a 58 (out of 250).

Next, I shot the Beretta Minx, Model 950-B in .22 Short Rim-fire. This was my mama's purse gun and hunting signalling gun and she carried it everywhere (well before there were CHLs). It is well-made, unlike Mr. Completely's Jennings J-22 which is a zip-gun masquerading as a pistol. It is not a safe gun, as it has no safety except a half-cock on the hammer. It is quickly unloaded with the ubiquitous Beretta tip-up barrel feature, though. It has rudimentary sights, and I actually shot a 1" group ("minute of mouse") with it (none of the rounds going sideways, either). .22 Short actually has a little more steam in a CCI Mini-Mag than .25 ACP, which this particular mouse-gun is also chambered in, and the ammo is only a quarter as expensive. First the benchrest target #2:

Then, the offhand target #1:

Check out that top right bull: that's a 1 1/2" group, straddling X, with a fixed sight mouse gun! BTW, there are several possum notches in this piece, the last two being a nesting pair I found when I opened my compost heap to put in some grass clippings, and the pair of marsupials had the gall to spit at me. I yelled for the gudwife to bring me a weapon, and she hustled me out my .357 service revolver!. I couldn't touch that off in a suburban neighborhood, so I asked for the Beretta, and it made quick work of the noxious beasts. I was worried that someone would call the fuzz, but that was 15 years ago when people in that neighborhood gave a shit, nowadays they hear semi-auto fire there frequently, so no one gives a rip if someone shoots a .22 in their back yard.

Then I drug out the sturdy little AMT Backup. Most of these weapons are DAO, but for the first couple of years of the model run, AMT (now owned by Kahr Arms) built them as a SAO. The weapons have a thumb AND a grip safety. They are quite compact, but don't kick too bad with .380 95-gr ball. The trigger is quite stiff, with no creep. When you get about 8 pounds on it, it goes off. It has usuable sights, sort of.

Here's Target #2, the bench-rest:

Nothing to write home about there, the smallest group was a little over 2".

Then the offhand Target #1:

Once again, I totalled the upper right bull. That's less than a 2" group, offhand, no less! Not bad for a snubbie with a horrible grip and mediocre sights.

Then we come to my fine Tauschen-Pistole Walther, Modele Polezi-Pistole, Kaliber 9mm Kurz. This fine pre-war example was imported by Stoeger Arms, and it shoots like a dream. It was my Dad's favorite carry piece, before AND after he got his CHL. Loaded with +P Cor-Bon JHP, it's suitable for defense, but just barely. You need to be good with a .380, as you will have to get several rounds in the goblin to assure a stop.

I'm good with Der Walther: The Benchrest target #2:

Some decent groups there, I boast.

Then the offhand target #1:

All those goblins are dead. The Walther is a magnificent example of the gunmaker's art. That's why James Bond carried one, right?

Of course, shooting Mr. Completely's Postal Matches wouldn't be complete without tweaking the beak of Mr. Race Gun himself, so I pulled out the Hi-Standard Model 103 Sport King and mounted the short field barrel on it. I don't think His C-Ness has a short barrel for any of his trick competition Hi-Standards.

I shot from an elbow-rest (Target #2):

That top-left bull is about 3/4", thank you.

Then the offhand (Target #1):

The bottom-left bull is about an inch, with 2X, if the X-ring is a caliber ring in the middle of the 10-ring. That's minute-of-anything shooting.

So, Mr. C, fire up one of those race guns and spot me 60 points for your tube or holographic sights and forever barrel, and let's see how you stack up! Oh, BTW, I was shooting cheapo Remington Green Box bulk ammo.

The scores and classes:

SHORT BARREL:

Beretta Minx .22 Short Rim-fire: total 360 points
AMT Backup .380ACP: total 276 points

INTERMEDIATE BARREL:

Walther PP .380ACP: total points 370
Hi-Standard Model 103 .22 Long Rifle Rim-fire: total 405 points

SUMMARY:

Ton-o-fun. Can't wait for His Completeness to figger (or jigger) the rules for the next pistol match.

Levees aren't forever

The storm surge posed a different stress on the levees of New Orleans. A rapidly-rising water level, and water pressure coming from directions that the levees weren't designed to take.

A composite levee (base and fill are rocks/gravel/sand-earth) must be designed against water pressures from a certain direction. When the water pressures come from a different direction, the levee gets stresses it wasn't designed for.

'Nother levee question: when were they built? Some must date back to the Hughey Long days. Long, if you remember your history, was one of the most corrupt politicians to ever have power anywhere in the US. He was assassinated, as I recall. Wouldn't it be a strange irony indeed if the failed levees weren't properly built in the first place, because Long put some of the levee money in his pocket? It might be traceable.

If that scenario did take place, lo these decades ago, then Hughey Long is getting his final revenge on N'awlins.

Oh well, it's all up to FEMA now.

Hang on, help's on the way

Dateline 30 August, 2005 1700 PDT. No dry eyes on my block.

I was just putting the weekly trash and recycling out at the curb when a big white Ford pickup swung by into the cul-de-sac below me, followed by an SUV.

The SUV was loaded with gear up to the roof in back, and the pickup was towing a rental 400 gallon water buck, empty. In the open bed of the truck were two gas-powered gensets, a 4 inch trash pump and two oil barrels. The truck drove in with one young man at the wheel. At my neighbor's down below, it stopped, and a young man I have eyed with some suspicion in the past got in, dressed in work clothing with an orange vest and a hard hat. He had two large duffel bags with him.

I started for the end of the block, but they had no time to stop. I yelled at them above the clatter of the diesel engine, "You headed for the Gulf Coast?".

They grinned and gave me a big thumbs up. That's when I noticed the Stars and Stripes flying from the antenna. Not a large flag, but proudly flown.

A private recovery mission, launching from my block. I'll bet there are hundreds more of them enroute as I blog. The neighbor lad left as a boy really, but he'll be coming back as a man when he gets finished with his work of mercy.

No governments involved, I'll wager, just 5 young men taking vital equipment and the brains and brawn to use it down where it's sorely needed, ready to earn high wages for hard work in a ruined land.

May God speed them safely to the drowned cities, and may they work hard, earn their wages and return, having given the gift of a lifetime to the hurricane victims. Amen.

Damn, where's the wiper switch on these glasses?

Afraid of snakes?

Don't read this post if you have nightmares about snakes. If your only worry about snakes is what size gun to kill them with, read on.

Fall !

Ah, fall is in the air!

SHORT TERM FORECAST NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PORTLAND OR 354 AM PDT TUE AUG 30 2005 ORZ006-WAZ039-301800-

GREATER PORTLAND METRO AREA-GREATER VANCOUVER AREA- INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...HILLSBORO...PORTLAND...OREGON CITY.. GRESHAM...VANCOUVER...BATTLE GROUND...WASHOUGAL 354 AM PDT TUE AUG 30 2005 .NOW..

A MIX OF FOG AND CLOUDS IS FORMING IN THE WILLAMETTE VALLEY THIS MORNING. FOG WILL MOVE IN AND OUT WITH SOME LOCALLY DENSE FOG AT TIMES UNTIL LATER THIS MORNING. AT 350 AM PDT HILLSBORO WAS REPORTING 1/4 MILE VISIBILITY IN FOG.

PATCHY DENSE FOG MAY OBSCURE PEDESTRIANS IN WALKWAYS OR OBJECTS ON THE ROADWAYS. SLOW DOWN IN FOGGY AREAS AND ALLOW EXTRA TIME TO REACH YOUR DESTINATION THIS MORNING.

The temp is in the low 50's and may fall to the upper 40's in places by sunrise. My new LBL super-insulating windows have dew on their outer panes.

New WIC standard

So, these two Puget Sound area teachers (husband and wife) are picketing (for higher pay), and one of them carries a sign claiming to qualify for WIC (Women, Infants, Children) welfare support.

A local blogger then checks the public record and finds that they each make over $45,000 in salary, and have a benefit package worth over $11,000. The blogger checks the public site for WIC and finds out that you need to make less than half of that salary to qualify.

Liar, Liar, pants on fire?

Not so fast.

This is, after all, the Seattle area, home of the most efficient Democratic Party machine in the nation. Yes, Virginia, the same Seattle where the Elections Director was proven to be so incompetent that several different kinds of fraud were perpetrated on his watch in the last election, stealing said election, BUT HE STILL HOLDS HIS JOB!

Could it be that both the WIC system AND it's applicants here are crooked?

Nah, not OUR Feddle and State Gummints, couldn't be. Say it ain't so.

Hat tip to the Bitter Bitch, who got the word here.

Monday Night

...Means different things around the Pacific Northwest.

It means Monday Night Football, where my Oregon Ducks phenom quarterback of 2002, Joey Harrington, now plays for the Lions in his critical fourth year. Tonight, the Lions were playing the Rams, who have Stephen Jackson, who played for the rival Oregon State Beavers at running back. Both were drafted in the single numbers. Tonight, Jackson had over 100 yards in the first half, with a 65-yard run and a touchdown, while my pal Joey had goose eggs.

The Rams have RBs Jackson and Faulk, with depth also in receiving, and the journeyman Bulger flinging passes, and they will be a contender.

The Lions have Harrington, but can't protect him, can't rush the ball and have an unremarkable defense. Result: zilch. Harrington will play backup next year for someone else or start in the CFL.

Monday night also means cleaning rifles. It means "Beware of the Sproinnnnng". While cleaning the Marlin Camp 45 from the Oregon Blasto of weekend before last, I referred to the disassembly manual posted by Warlord:

Download marlin_manual.doc

Note that it says "(The spring shouldn't fly out, it's meant to stay in the receiver housing.)" This advice was trumped by Murphy's Law (Prime) which says "If anything can go wrong, it will". The bolt stop spring which wasn't supposed to fly out went sproinnnng, and resides in an undetectable corner of my workshop, putting the Camp 45 out of commission until Numrich ships me a new one (and a spare). I learned a valuable lesson here. After firing much GI milsurp 230-gr ball thru the Camp 45 8 days ago, it was very crudly. Had I hosed it down with WD-40 BEFORE disassembly, it would have come apart smoothly, and the spring wouldn't have sproinnnng'd. Instead, all the powder crud had sort of cemented it together, and when I pulled the bolt group apart, it came apart with a vengeance, AS THE TRIGGER GROUP HAD DONE, BUT I PAID IT NO MIND.

Monday night weather. No, not the horrible weather down in the Gulf, the weather right here in Stump Town. A series of thunderstorms rolled through from 2:30 pm to 5:00 pm, dumping an inch and a half of rain and lowering the snow level in the Cascades to 7,000 feet. Major good news, now I won't have to put any of the City's spendy water on my lawn for at least a week, and the dust from the various construction projects has made it down to the creek and off my cement.

So I can afford the parts order from Numrich to repair the Camp 45.

Does anyone know of a tool or guide for repairing the damaged lips of .45acp Colt magazines? I have two rather rare 15-rd single-stack maggys for the Camp (also fit into a 1911, but stick out a WHOLE BUNCH, and now both of them have mangled lips.

Monday, Monday, I hate that day.

Leonard Pitts: TV sucks

Leonard Pitts can be as real as burnt toast in one minute, and as trivial as a bread crumb on a Panama suit in the next minute.

Today's column about the triviality of TV news reporting really got my attention. He is sooooo right about the BS that passes for news reporting and commentary, expecially the example of the Natalee Holloway case. He illustrates his point with a story about the sportswriter Bob Costas, who was supposed to appear on Larry King Live recently, but when Costas found he was following the "lead" story of the Holloway case, he backed out of his appearance.

But, just when I begin to think that Pitts and I are on the same wavelength, I almost choke on my breakfast bagel as I read: "...I like to think that Costas was mindful of the racial and sexual bias inherent in the news media's recent fascination with missing persons cases".

WTF, over?

What does racial and sexual bias have to do with Greta VanSnivelin being on the boob tube in the first place? Or commenting incessantly, ad nauseam about the Holloway case in the current instance?

Once again, Pitts can't follow through on a perfect opening premise: the news media suck and they are making zombies out of the weakest of us with their presentations. No, instead of driving his point home, he has to trivialize his premise by finding a supposed racist theme to the media's trivial insanity.

Bah!

The actual fault of today's media is that they always play to the lowest denominator. They give any of us with the actual power of reason the brush-off while they pander to the imaginations of those whose thinking never progressed beyond Power Rangers or Ninja Turtles. The missing-persons cases are fodder for those who couldn't even manage to read a Mickey Spillane novel, let alone Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Dame Agatha Christie's works.

And don't even try to send me to PBS. Yes, they broadcast to a more educated class of viewers, (I LOVE "Mystery!") but then, just like Leonard Pitts, they ruin their educated presentation with the liberal-entitlement jabber of the Left, which appeals to few with actual intellect.

Nope, for this Rivrdog, it's the Internet for current news (I can pick my mode of getting the news from the 'Net), and the library for the past masters of entertainment.

What free market?

I'm as much of a "free market" guy as the next capitalist, but will someone please tell me that when a hurricane interrupts OUR oil supply on OUR coast, why in God's name do we have to pay the Saudis an extra five or six dollars a barrel for the oil that THEY pump out of THEIR desert?

Especially when their cost of production is $5/barrel or less?

When you have posted your answer in my comment section below, perhaps you will give me an answer about why fear psychology affects the price of what should be a Mark One Mod Zero supply-and-demand pricing equation.

I can understand a ship setting sail full of $58 oil, and discharging it to a refinery at $65 because the price has gone up during the voyage, but what I can't understand is how Al-Zaqueery setting off 6 car bombs in a day in Iraq is worth raising the price of oil from Saudi Arabia or Venezuela by several bucks a barrel.

No current threat exists to over 90% of the world's oil supply, so why do the fear-mongers command such a price control?

If we added it up, the price that our economy pays for the inconsequential things that jack up the price of oil is considerable. As the major consumer of that product, don't we have some say in the marketing of it? If we don't, I think that would be a good initiative for the Bush administration: put some Yankee fairness into oil marketing. We have the clout, so why don't we use it in our own interest?

Pity the F**king residents

Yes, you read it right.