Piece Rate

One of the most corrosive effects of unions is the need of the business they've extorted to make a profit now that the wages are higher and the sale price of the good is inelastic.

That means you can't just raise prices for you SEIU members.

You can't lower wages, the union has seen to that.

But what if you can get the union worker to make more units in the same time frame?

So you engineer things to be easier to assemble and automate the assembly of as many parts as you can.

I got laughed at for pointing this out, but a bot can make a circuit board with embedded relays on it for lot less than paying a UAW worker to install relays in a fuse box.

Thus, we end up with a $500 part we need to replace because a relay failed rather than a $5 relay.

It's why we have to buy assemblies and cannot buy parts. 

It's Just That We Don't Trust You

Something I keep wondering about is if why do we even have things that can be abused by the government?

Gun registration lists cannot be used by the government to track gun owners if there is no list.

But they make a list and tell us they're not accessing it.  Because it's illegal.

I don't want it to be illegal to misuse a list, I want it to be impossible.

The only way for that to happen is for there to be no list at all and not collecting any information that could be used in a list.

Not even if a non-governmental entity holds the list, government will access it. 

Flock cameras are the same thing. 

Because it is possible for the government to use the information to violate my rights, they will do so.  "They have not done so yet!" is a very weak defense and Flock's own spokesman doesn't much reassure me that they won't enthusiastically assist government in fucking me over.

But if there are no Flock cameras... 

Penetration

Sometimes it seems like a given round is underperforming in GURPS.

But it's a game, not a simulation...

For example, the WW2 M82 APC (APEX in GURPS terms) does 6dx10(2) pi++ with a linked 6d+2[4d+2] cr ex.

That was calculated from a formula that gives all six dice their average value of 3.5 to, mostly, match the muzzle penetration value against rolled homogeneous armor.

Thus that round will penetrate DR 420 or rolling a 21 on six dice or ((6x3.5)x10)x2.  Dr 420 is 6" (152.4mm) of RHA.

But you could roll a 6 on six dice, do 60 damage and penetrate 120 DR or 1.7" or 43.5mm.

OR you could roll a 36 on six dice and do 360 damage and penetrate 720 DR or 10.3" or 261.3mm. 

Officially it penetrates 143mm or 5.6" or DR 393 or 6dx9(2) pi++.  At the muzzle.

Gun Stats gives it a little extra performance.

Realistically, that 393 points of damage should be at the muzzle and it should get smaller as the range increases.

But you can roll all ones for 6x10 at 1 yard and all sixes for 36x10 at 6,660 yards.

Again, game.

Balance between playable and accurate.

It's hard to strike sometimes.

The randomness of the dice and the chance at unrealistic results allows the game to account for anecdotal stories where people went, "Did you see that shit?"

A DR 4 M1 helmet will not stop even the minimum damage of a 7d pi K.98k, but there's examples where the round bounced off.  Result of a miss by two?  A miss by one is a torso hit (ever notice that all misses by 1 go low not high?)  The GM has to provide narration to what's going on to the players.

There's examples of "no way that will penetrate" going right on through.

Things tend to GURPS.  It's what I like about the game.

I don't wanna have to do the math that calculates the impact angle against the angle of the armor's slope and the velocity at that EXACT range.

Dice will suffice. 

For Comparison's Sake Gun Stats Update

Updated from this post. 

GURPS: World War II has stats for WW2 vehicles, surprisingly enough.

Since I've been mentioning the performance of Cold War stuff, and many people are more familiar with WW2 shit...

It's Front/Sides/Back/Top/Bottom (if needed)

Sherman M4A1 Hull: 300/150/150/75/50; Turret: 300/200/200/100

Gun Motor Carriage M10 Hull: 255/85/85/55/50; Turret: 275/100/100/0

Panzer IV Ausf H Hull: 315/120S/80/40/40; Turret: 200/120S/120S/40

Panther Ausf G Hull: 540/190S/160/60/120; Turret: 600/260/260/60

Tiger Ausf E Hull: 400/420/320/100/100; Turret: 425/310/310/100

Königstiger Ausf B Hull: 850/310/310/155/100; Turret: 700/310/310/170

T-34/76 1940 Hull: 350/250/175/75/75; Turret: 350/250/175/80

Guns!

M4A1 Sherman's M3 75mm firing the M61 APCBC or just AP does 6dx6(2) pi++.  That's good for a whopping 252 DR.

The "long 75mm" 76mm M7 cannon firing M62 APCBC delivers 6dx12(2) pi++ and a linked 6dx2[4d-1] cr ex.  This punches 504 DR.  M93 HVAP does 6dx12(2) pi++ without the linked explosion and punches the same 504 DR  This was considered HOT ammo!

The 7.5cm KwK40 L48 on the Pzkw IV-H firing a PzGr 40 APCR or APHC does 6dx12(2) pi++ that will penetrate DR 504 with most dice.

A KwK42 7.5cm on a Panther G lobbing a PzGr 40/42 does 6dx14(2) pi++.  That's good for punching holes in DR 588.

Tiger E's KwK36 8.8cm gun gets the most penetration with the PzGr 40 which is an APHC round doing 6dx13(2) pi++.  That'll punch 546 DR on average.

The heavier Tiger II's KwK43 8.8cm gun shooting a PzGr 40/43 round gets 6dx16(2) pi++ to routinely stab through 672 DR.

The pride of the Soviets 76mm L-11 gun firing BR-354P APHC does a mere 6dx9(2) pi++ for an average penetration of 378 DR.  And people were bagging on the M3 in the Sherman!

Update: The D-5T 85mm gun from the T-34/85 firing a BR-365 APHEX round will do 6dx13(2) pi++ with a linked 7d+1[4d+1] cr ex.  That will penetrate 546 DR on average.

As a reminder, the 90mm gunned M48A3 has Hull: 606/314/96/113/87; Turret 716/314/281/129; Cupola: 386/386/386/193.

The M41 gun firing M332A1HVAP APHC does 6dx12(2) pi++ for 504 DR penetration.  Not enough for a lot of the heavy Nazi armor.  Damn the Tiger II is tough!  The Patton is somewhat vulnerable to the King Tiger's gun, but it's even more mobile than the Sherman that maneuvered around it to get rear shots.  But HEAT is what we thought would be the real armor puncher.  The M348 HEAT round does 6dx4(10) cr ex with a linked 6dx 3 cr ex that will burn a hole in 840 DR.  The hull front of a Königstiger is still not penetrated!  But the more visible turret front is!

However its expected opponents the T-54/55 and T-62 aren't near so well protected, but they're a lot more mobile:

T-55: Hull 330/218/165/68/55; Turret 565/358/165/165

T-62: Hull 281/218/126/85/55; Turret 667/421/110/110

Good thing the Patton is mobile and reliable.

The 100mm D-10T firing a BR-421D APHEX round in 1953 does 6dx17(2) pi++with a linked 5d+1[5d] cr ex.  That will punch DR 714.

A 115mm U-5TS firing a 3BM4 APFSDS round in 1963 will do 6dx28(2) pi++.  That gets past 1,176 DR.  Yes, the Soviets were ahead of us on tank guns.

But what if we drag an M60 into the argument with its M68 cannon?

The 1959 issue M392 APDS does 6dx23(2) pi++ for 966 penetration.  The M456 HEAT will do 6dx5(10) cr ex with a linked 6dx3 cr ex and make a 1,050 DR deep hole.

 

Heroes

The California Highway Patrol is staffed by heroes.

 Ayup, that's one super deadly gun there.

Not one mention of returning it to its rightful owner, is there? 

Citing Your Religious Text Is Not Making An Intellectual Argument

It's OK to have faith, but you cannot cite your religion's text, traditions and dogma when trying to convince someone outside your faith to start or stop something your faith requires or forbids.

You have to use other means to convince them.

M14M

Get ready to tell the kids they're going to a community college because you're emptying their college fund!

The CMP is going to get some genuine M14 rifles to sell.

ATF has approved a method of modifying the receiver to get past the, "once an MG, always an MG," rule.  Contrary to popular belief, they've done it before with M2 Carbine receivers.

No word whatsoever about pricing and availability.

Clinton's Cap'n Crunch ate a lot of these guns, and their valuable parts, so it's anyone's guess how many there are to give to the CMP for sale.  An arfcom thread had an AI guesstimate of about 10% of the 1.38 million made are still in inventory or service.  That's close to the same numbers they had for the 1911 sales.

Their time as designated marksman rifles means a lot of what's left got rode hard and put away wet in the middle east.

I wonder what condition and configurations will be coming out of this.  Wood stocks?  SAGE stocks?  Fiberglass?  Scope mounts? 

Jeff, You Cleared Up Any Doubt For Me

FOP is constantly on the wrong side of freedom and liberty in Florida and this scare tactic is bullshit since funding for fire, law enforcement and schools is guaranteed.

In other words, Jeff is lying through his teeth and he knows it.

Again.

I remember FOP and their position on conceal carry, open carry, campus carry, 18-21 year olds carrying, waiting periods, bump stocks, and anything NFA.

So, pardon me, if I just vote for my self interests and tell the help they can suck it up or find productive employment. 

Much Newer Than I Expected

The term "sound suppressor" refers to a device that reduces the sound intensity of a firearm when it is discharged. The earliest use of the term "suppressor" in this context dates back to a US patent in 1985, while the term "silencer" was originally used by its inventor, Hiram Percy Maxim, in 1902.

It's a quote from Wikipedia generated by the Duck Duck Go AI, so apply the appropriate levels of salt.

If the term silencer is wrong, and was never used and it's always been sound suppressor, what were they called for 83 years?

I am thinking that the youngin's are at it again and forgetting a lot of us old grognards were there when the changes happened.

I watched this happen with "assault weapon".

Assault weapon and assault rifle were terms the gun community itself was using for military look-alike guns at least as early as 1986.

I remember when the gun control people starting using it against us.

I remember when we tried to say it was always referring to a select-fire, intermediate cartridge firing rifle or carbine.

I remember when we tried to say we'd never used it for describing a semi-auto clone.

And I remember when a group of very young internet gun bloggers tried to "take it back." 

Odyssey

I am starting to see a divide in the YouTube pundits over Christopher Nolan's Odyssey.

They either love it or hate it.

I think I spotted the why of it.

It's the same as when Paul Verhoeven did Starship Troopers.

Some people loved it.

Some people hated it.

There's no middle ground.

So I asked the people who loved it, "Why?"

They loved it because it's a funny, sci-fi action movie.

"What about all the changes from the book?"

"Book?  What book?"

And there's your divide.

The people who hated Starship Troopers wanted to see the book, not an unrelated property with character names from the book.

I'm willing to bet that the people who don't like Nolan's Odyssey are in the same camp.

They wanted Homer's epic, verbatim.

PS: John Leguizamo is an epic hypocrite!  John, if you're going to whine about Anglos in Hispanic roles, you shouldn't take on roles where you're not playing an Hispanic character.  Or roles where the character is significantly older than you, what about all the genuinely elderly actors who need the work, John? 

Hmmmmmmmmmm

 

MilSpec

"No civilian should have a military specification handgun!" paraphrased because I cannot be arsed to find the actual quote.

Found it! 

Well, ignorant gunbanner, this is a Revolver, .45 Caliber, M1873, "Altered."  Not quite state of the art in 1892 but still military issue and a genuine weapon of war.

I notice you never mention six-guns when you're frothing about "military" guns.

In point of fact, every single bolt-action hunting gun has a lineage that can be traced back through some military arm.  Some retain more of that lineage than others, but a staggered internal box mag on a bolt gun is a military innovation.

No You're Wrong

Dear everyone clucking like you know what the fuck you're talking about:

A thing you screw onto the end of your gun's barrel to make it quieter is a SILENCER.

How do I know that?

Because that's what it's called in the 1921 patent by Hiram Percy Maxim.

Got an earlier patent for one that's called a suppressor?

Because if you don't, saying "there's no such thing as a silencer, they're called suppressors," just makes you sound ignurnt.

The person who invents something gets to name it.

Maxim named it a silencer.

He could have called them mufflers, because that's the only earlier patent for something that makes the noise from a tube quieter. 

Speed Test

Now that Derpyputer has replaced The BeastMac on the desktop, I wondered if I'd see a speed difference if I plugged the CAT6 cable into it.

In a word, yes.

It also led to checking the speed with both logins on the router.

Insertrouternamehere got:

53.76 Mbps down and 40.01 Mbps up.

Insertrouternamehere-5G got:

300.27 Mbps down and 237.94 Mbps up.

The wired connection to Insertroutername got:

 503.36 Mbps down and 421.70 Mbps up.

I think I can live with that. 

Stupid Attitude

 

I would say that I don't care how much enjoyment the thief gets from my stolen property, but that's not true.

I do care.

I want them to be utterly miserable from their theft.

Far more unhappy than I am about the loss.

I want them to contract a slow moving, incurable, untreatable, painful disease that also, perversely, prolongs their life.

I want them to experience this in a poorly run prison, where their cellmate considers their affliction a kink.

For Fuck's Sake!

Where does the idea that someone who steals from you being happy about stealing being a good thing come from?

Perhaps the idiots who think this way should be treated more harshly than thieves.

The thief's depredations are far more limited in scope than the idiot depicted in the comic.  That idiot will go out to vote, get laws changed and make it impossible to punish thieves.

Shitheads like this think, "property can be replaced, so it's wrong to kill thieves," and, "your property isn't worth more than their life!"

I shouldn't be surprised to find that's a close quote to something Che Gueverra said, "The life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on Earth."

That's wrong-think.

The proper attitude is, "nothing here is worth getting killed over."

It's not me deciding that my property is worth more than their life, it's them deciding that their life is worth less than my property.

It's illegal for me to act morally on this. 

Gaming The System

The feint rules in GURPS are pretty simple.

There's a quick contest of weapon/defense skill rolls and margin of success is the penalty to their defense next round.   See p.B365.

It doesn't get used much because, most of the time, the players are overpowering their opponents and they don't need the bonus to land hits.

But something I noticed a while back was when you announce that you're feinting, the opponent goes all-out-attack that same turn.

They KNOW they don't need to defend that round, because a feint isn't an actual attack, and they get a +4 to hit.  If they hit, the penalty from wounding the character doing the feint more that offsets the risk of a penalty to their defense next round.

That seems unclear to ME as I write it.

Turn 1:

NPC feints at Player.  Contest gets a -3 to the NPC's defense in turn 2.
Player all out attack (determined) the NPC scores 3 points of damage.

Turn 2:

NPC suffers effects of injuries, -3 to hit.  Misses.
Player has defenses again, at -3, but that doesn't matter because the NPC missed.

Thus nobody feints!

At least not when they have the initiative and move first.

If you go after the Player, then they have to decide to use all out attack BEFORE you announce your feint.

So to make this work, you have to take a wait maneuver to let them attack first.

If you've got good active defenses, like il Gatto, then this is a good plan. 

PS: Suddenly a lot of cinematic and SCA fights I've seen make more sense in gaming terms.  If there are numerous wait and feint maneuvers going on, that explains the circling each other slinging soliloquies! 

Conceited

Something I noticed that's made it hard for me to watch some CarTube channels is the obvious wealth of the presenter.

Their being richer isn't the problem.

It's the conceit that they're experiencing the same problems I would have in getting the money together for the project while they casually mention dropping thousands on it.

Additionally the "old friend" from the car rags days has returned.  Parts donated by a vendor and deals I won't get because a seller isn't trying to get ME to mention them on my channel.

So, no, will not be taking my $100k F350 and $20k enclosed car trailer to pick up a $3,500 car with a seized engine.

I will not be finding a 6.2l aluminum LS engine, that already has a Summit stage 4 cam, laying around for less than $5k.  I will not be handed a $5k exhaust system.  I will not be spending the day getting my car dyno-tuned, a $1,500 to $3,000 value.

But most of all, I will not be doing it in my forty-thousand square foot shop with 8 two-post lifts.

Because of all that, it rubs me wrong when they start complaining about how much a fucking water pump would cost.  I might, by necessity, need to skip the $200 water pump if I needed to get my car back on the road after an engine swap.

But I also don't brag about "being under ten grand" on a project that has, at least, another $10k in parts donated to it.

Your project is $25 grand to the rest of us and I can't pretend otherwise.

My suspension of disbelief is no longer willing. 

But Did It Happen

I am certain there are racists out there doing racist things.

Some of them try to comment on my blog, that helps with the certainty.

Despite this, I still get a record scratch moment when a black person mentions experiencing racism.

I think I might have figured out why.

I didn't do racism.

I lived someplace where nobody around me did racism.

So I never saw racism directly.

I did get to see and experience the hate that is reflected from the racists doing racist things.

It was quite an epiphany to realize that hate was racism too and that I was experiencing it as a victim.

So I spend my entire life after that crippled by the knowledge that someone out there hated me because I was white and dedicated all of my waking moments to forcing the government to punish them and enrich me!

Actually not.

I tried to understand why they hated me.  I have not, and likely never will, succeeded in understanding hate based on skin color.

Having internalized that whole individual responsibility thing, I can hate individuals for their crimes but can't really transfer that hate for superficial similarities between people.

There's a whole raft of dissonance and hypocrisy when I think about invasive cultures amidst my own culture.  I'm still working through it. 

The Very Butcher Of A Silk Button

Cirilo di Faenza has the highest skill I've ever given a character with a sword.

A skill of 17 with a rapier gives a 14 or less to hit the vitals.

He then delivers 1d+1 imp.  On average that's 4 points, and typically without DR so that becomes a 12 and his opponent is looking to make a consciousness roll to keep fighting.

It's -9 to hit the eye, but you get x4 damage to hit there.  That wouldn't change if they die in one shot or not, but 16 is closer to dead than 12.  Even if they live, they're down an eye.

All out attack (determined) would give a +4 to hit that eye so 12 or less net.

All out attack (strong) would give a +2 to damage.  That'd be 6 points on average to the vitals and 18 delivered.

All out attack robs you of your defense and he's not stupid enough to do that.

What is the best course, with his skill is the seldom used feint.

That might even get a good roll at that eye without needing to all out attack. 

 

I Need An Equalizer

Something I've noticed about Ubuntu and media is a lack of an equalizer to shift the preponderance of bass down a notch.

I know there's a nerd or two reading this.

What do I need to do? 

Hit The Ballpark

I decided that artillery rounds would get a base cost calculated from 1/1000 of the starting wealth for the TL times the weight in pounds.

Then you multiply that by the cost factors in Gun Stats.

The TL7 M107 round is $15 times 116.3 lb. (Shell, PD fuse and powder bags) to get a base of $1,744.50 and x2 for HE rounds...  $3,490.

An actual M107 runs $2,860.  I'm acceptably close.

Especially since my price is in $GURPS not USD. 

Generic

Rather than have five HE rounds for the 155mm and four APFSDSDU rounds for the 105mm...

I decided to go generic and just use the best APFSDSDU-T round for every tank gun.

I found out that the older rounds would go back to the factory and the uranium would be melted down and re-alloyed into more advanced rounds.  Even the Russkies!

For the 155mm because the M107 HE and M795 HE have such different performance, I called them TL7 HE and TL8 HE.  Some nations never updated to the later rounds like the US and UK, so lots would still be around...

One could make the argument that the newer stuff is the scarcest because it got fired first.

T2K is, in a lot of ways, a fantasy setting. 

PDMTSQEIEIO

Nearly every cannon round fuse is built in and goes off when it hits something hard.

Howitzers and mortars call this a PD fuse for Point Detonation.  It's an impact fuse.

This is the default fuse for GURPS: Gun Stats.

But there are others!

Most common is the Mechanical Timer Super Quick or MTSQ.  This is a fuse that has a clockwork timer in it the gunner can set to go of before impact, if they time it right, it creates an airburst over the target and more things get attacked by fragments.

Proximity fuses do the airburst thing too, but at a fixed altitude rather than selected time from firing.

MOFA are Multi-Option Fuse, Artillery.  This is everything all in one.  Impact, timer, and proximity.

Just to be confusing, there's also an anti-aircraft proximity fuse, but the sensors look sideways instead of forward.

All of the timed and proximity fuses I've found have an impact mode too.

Where this gets sticky for GURPS terms is your basic M107 HE round can take any type of fuse changing it from a PD to an MTSQ to a Proximity round with a spin.

The entry for all of the timed and proximity rounds is "Airburst".  +2 cost factor to any round.  Which makes it a little awkward because the various base rounds will have different prices.  One would think that the price increase would be the same for all rounds of the same chambering.

Worse, some rounds have to be timed fuses or they just don't work right.  DPICM, for example. 

If You Have Nothing To Hide You Have Nothing To Worry About

I do so love being able to toss this back in the faces of the Democrats.

They're busted and they know it and that's why they're scared of the SAVE America Act.

Their objections at state level attempts to clean up the voter rolls were not the reaction of a group that's innocent of the charge. 

NBC Notes Updated

Twilight: 2000 has five chemical round categories:  HC Smoke, Irritant Gas, Blood Agent, Blister Agent and Nerve Gas.

Irritant is easy, that's tear gas.

Nerve is also easy, that's nerve gas.

What differentiates blister and blood in their effects is whether you can get by with just a gas mask or if you need an NBC suit.

Blister agents include mustard gas and you need a suit.

Blood agents include chlorine gas and you don't.

What's interesting about researching chem rounds is how the blood agent rounds disappear after WW2.  Mustard and nerve keep going and the US added tear gas to the 4.2" mortars and 40mm grenade launchers. 

Update:

Poisons on p. B439 will give us our game effects:

HC Smoke will be treated as Smoke. 

Irritant Gas will be treated as Tear Gas.

Blood Agent will be treated as Chlorine Gas.

Blister Agent will be treated as Mustard Gas.

Nerve Gas will be treated as Nerve Gas.

NBC Purge

Something I've noticed about using the internet to look up artillery rounds for Twilight: 2000 is how few write-ups on many weapons still include the chemical rounds.

In 1995, in the Home timeline, the Chemical Weapons Convention was drafted and signed already and well on its way to being put into effect.

The US and Russia had been happily destroying their stockpiles, informally, since the end of the Cold War™®.

Many of the weapons in service now, were in service then, so they get listed without their, now-defunct, icky chemical weapons.

In the OG T2K timeline, however, the Cold War™® was still in full swing in 1995 when what would be known as the Twilight War began and chemical weapons were still a thing, if only to keep the other side from using them with impunity.

You kind of have to dig to get information on the rounds. 

It should be noted that the Soviets were firmly convinced that we'd use chemical weapons first and lavishly and they only held their stocks for retaliatory purposes.

NATO had the same conviction about the Soviets... 

I Will Say It Again

I don't mind immigrants.

An immigrant is someone who has decided to move to a different nation and become a citizen of that nation.

They adopt that nation's language and culture.

They change from a them to an us.

The thing I rail against is not immigration.

While it might not rise to the level of colonization, we do have enclaves of foreigners who have no intention of adopting our language or culture.

Most of these people have not entered the nation legally, and there's a significant number of people who entered legally but did not return home once their visa expired.

But adoption of culture and language is important.

Hell, I'm even willing to compromise on the language part if they're doing our culture well enough.

That I have to make this post is an indication that people who hate America have managed to shift the language so that immigrant doesn't mean what I've indicated, but anyone who's managed to cross the border.

The best you can call a small number of them is "expat."  But expats enter legally and keep a low profile. 

Never Done

The 4.2" mortar would still be in service in T2K.  I forgot it.

I am torn between adding the specific round designations for mortars like I did for other cannon; or going generic on the cannon.

On one hand it's simpler to just say APFSDSDU.

On the other, there are several APFSDSDU rounds with different performance and old-stock would be brought forward as the good stuff ran out or was late getting to the front because of production delays.

The OG game certainly didn't worry about it, but it was much coarser grained than GURPS.

It gives me something to tinker with. 

Illuminating

The deep dive into artillery for GURPS led me to discover something neat.

We have IR illumination rounds now.

That is really cool!  Hot?

Not sure if they would have had them for T2K or not, but it's still neat. 

Hold On I Got This

Apparently, illegal aliens being detained in Miami are being treated like animals...

I will bet that they will be treated like people in their home nation.

Since they find how they are treated in MY nation not to their liking, I invite them to head home.

90% of the reason they are being detained is a refusal to just be deported.

Fuck 'em.

However...

I wish someone would treat me like an animal based on how my friends and I treat our pets.

Yet another example of how the media and these illegals don't understand America. 

Done Again!

I have updated my Twilight: 2000 to GURPS 4e to account for the effect of Guns Stats.

Many of the older stats I'd pulled out of my ass.

If they're still wrong, they're all wrong the same way now! 

An example:

If the range stays the same, I didn't repeat it until it does.
 

Missed Opportunity

Babylon Bee is sleeping at the switch.

They should have had a headline, "Trump, taking inspiration from Mars Attacks 'addresses Congress'."

Area woman says, "he killed Congress!"

Film at 11. 

Tinker Tinker

I've tried all the rifle length handguards on Dissipator Dottie!

First is the round A2 style that came with the upper:

Then a set of USGI A2 handguards that look so similar to the ones that came with I can't tell the pictures apart!

I tried out an M5 RAS:

I was happy with reproduction triangle A1 style:

Now I'm trying out the Magpul:

I've long liked how the Magpul handguards have felt, I don't even mind how they look.  The rifle length is a bit too long for where I want my light, but it's workable on the other side.

ARs are, indeed, Lego for men.

Wait That's The Same

Something about explosives is the Relative Explosive Equivalency Factor.

GURPS calls this REF when you're figuring dice from boom.  It's also another example of GURPS using real world numbers for things.

An M107 155mm HE shell can be loaded with 15.1 lb. of either good old fashioned TNT or Composition B.

Comp B has an REF of 1.4, making it the equivalent of  21.14 lb. of TNT.

An M795 round is filled with 20.1 lb. of either TNT or IMX-101.

IMX-101 has an REF of 1.62 making it the equivalent of  35.6 lb.

The M107 is constantly criticized for not having enough boom, but the supposedly superior M795, when loaded with TNT, has less than the M107 when loaded with Comp-B.

I have no information about when or why or how many rounds get loaded with TNT as opposed to the better explosives. 

Blacked Out

Harvey and I were out back watching movies last night and we could clearly hear helicopters.

Definitely 4+ blades. 

Normally that means a Coastie Jayhawk, the sheriff's 406 or a Lifeflight EC145.

I always go out to look.  Just in case it's a Hind sneaking up on me.

No lights.

Sometimes the sheriff's helo will do that.

Look up the ADSB.

The only thing in the area was a Cessna 152 that I'd seen and they were in the opposite direction of the rotor sounds.

The closest helo on ADSB was the county to the south's sheriff helo and that was way too far away and the wrong direction.

I am wondering if we're hearing training from MacDill up and around here.

They've done it before. 

I'm Much Cheaper

It turns out I did more about 155mm shells than General Dynamics did last week, and I didn't spend $500 million to do it.

Ooops! 

Though it appears that GDOT did a, "we think this might work, but we won't know until we try to actually do it," deal by using older machinery to make newer rounds.

Well, we now know that the machines that made M107 rounds don't make M795 rounds.

Reading between the lines, to me, it seems that they're getting a handle on it, but the worst case scenario played out. 

A Long Long Time

The US has been using 155mm artillery since we bought guns from the French in WW1.

What surprised me is the rounds are nearly identical to what we're loading today into an M777.

We have developed a handier charge than the silk bags packaging, but the M107 HE round dates from WW2 and isn't very dissimilar to the HE Mk. 1

The HE Mk. 1 is the round that came with the guns in 1917.  It's developed into the M102 then M101 then M107.

They made the walls a little thicker to handle higher velocities in the newer guns.

They changed the threads to accept different fuses.

They changed the weight and kind of explosives.

But if you sat all of the HE rounds from WW1 to today next to each other, you almost need the markings to tell them apart.

There's just enough difference between them to see on the GURPS stats, but if you treated all 155mm howitzers the same and gave the same numbers to all the HE rounds, you wouldn't get too far off track. 

 

Net Positive?

While I will miss AutoCAD and Photoshop, I had not actually used them for much of anything in years.

What I have gained, is desk real-estate!

That tower and the two monitors took up a lot of space.

I should be able to run a second monitor from any of my Ubuntu laptops.

I'd long since stopped using the drives on the Mac for primary data storage.  Technically, the data is still on the hard drives.  I have several ways to read those if I need to. 

PS: I am much less upset about the machine's death than I expected to be.

Maybe because it'd become progressively less useful as time went on and neither OS was safe to have online anymore. 

Sad Day

My 2008 Mac Pro A1186 has died.

With it goes my copy of AutoCAD and Photoshop. 

Ah

I found the section in the Take Care of America's Veterans act that has all the big names in a tizzy against it.

It's deunionizing the staff at VA hospitals.

It was never complaining about future veteran's care, it was all about lining the union pockets.

AFL-CIO and SEIU are against this bill.

My kneejerk is to be for it now.