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Saw a compilation of military fails.
One of them was a group of Marines looking in a grassy field for a missing suppressor.
I remember during Reforger hearing about a unit that had lost an M9 near where we were operating.
We all looked at each other in the turret for a moment and simultaneously said, "free pistol!"
Hey, it's not like we signed for it!
Sadly, we did not find it.
Starting Tuesday, it is gauche to wear white until next spring.
#TheMoreYouKnow
hat-tip Mr Fleetwood
Doing the Gun Stats math on 12ga 2-3/4" shotgun ammo.
It doesn't quite match the Basic Set or High Tech stats.
One load of 00 buck matches exactly, most don't. The 1,325 fps stuff gets 1d pi instead of 1d+1 pi. 1,600 fps gets it to 1d+1 pi, but that's a single Hornady loading.
But once you do #2 birdshot, the damage stays 1d-5(0.5) pi-, you just get more pellets and a higher chance to hit, until #9 birdshot when it changes to 1d-5(0.2) pi-.
I will probably calculate all of the shot sizes because you lose range with every decrease in shot size.
00 Buck is 40/800 for range. #4 birdshot is 16/312.
Steel shot doesn't do less damage than lead, or lose range, but you get more pellets.
NRA is suing over Denver's non-resident carry ban.
Back in 2007 when I was in Denver to say goodbye to Mom, my Florida permit was good to go.
Not sure what happened in the meantime, but...
The NRA wouldn't have to sue if it hadn't changed.
My favorite local brewery does a customer appreciation day over Labor Day weekend every year.
They grill burgers and hot dogs and give them out for free.
Something that stands out is how many new faces I see there.
The customers bring their extended families for free grub...
But they're not the worst. You can make the case that they appreciate the family letting their customer come to the brewery.
The worst are the people, families in tow, who have never patronized the place.
It ticks me off.
I like the owners of the brewery and I don't like seeing these people take advantage of them.
If someone is so mentally off center that they're a danger to others, they need to be kept from others.
Not guilty by reason of insanity should lead to a mental hospital.
The stay to be governed by how long it takes them to regain sanity and if they never do, then they stay forever.
An insanity plea shouldn't be a means to escape all the consequences of their actions.
Arguably, a successful insanity defense should yield a worse "punishment" than prison because release is predicated on showing they have, fully, recovered from their psychosis and are safe to be among the rest of us. That predication makes the sentence open ended and indefinite.
I'm open to the argument that any mental illness that leads to a homicide should end in euthanasia. I can also see how dangerous that idea is, so I'm not advocating for it.
We've a mental health problem in the US. We dismantled a working system in the Reagan era, rightfully in too many cases, and did nothing to replace it.
Solid, compassionate, institutions caring for the mentally ill were closed with the callous and abusive. Thanks Sixty Minutes!
It does need fixed, but who do you trust to do it?
It only took 18 minutes for a jury to convict John Battaglia for murdering his two daughters.
His defense (on appeal) was remarkably, and superficially, similar to Lindsey Clancy's.
The Lovely Harvey is following this trial closely and I'm getting snippets.
Something that stands out is the willingness to create a narrative where her husband is actually responsible, even if she did the actual killing.
But none dare call it sexism.
Florida, where guns are so easy to get that criminals are forced to use pick-axes to assault people!
But since guns are easy to get, our assailant got shot for his trouble.
Slow clap.
Note that this was the second time the assailant had come at the victim.
The pace of armor development and rounds that penetrate said armor is evidenced by the staggering number of new rounds since the Cold War ended.
The Russians improve reactive armor, we improve the APFSDSDU.
We improve the round, the Russians make another improvement to their reactive armor.
Lather.
Rinse.
Repeat.
But such things are, presently, not in the damn rules for GURPS.
So I'm making shit up. SWAG, but still...
1st generation Explosive Reactive Armor (Blazer 1982, Kontakt-1 1985) eliminates the armor divisor of HEAT and HEDP and nullifies the special effects of HESH; making them just HE rounds.
2nd generation Explosive Reactive Armor (Kontakt-3 never produced), as 1st gen plus: Reduce the armor divisor of AP type rounds from (2) to (1.5).
3rd generation Explosive Reactive Armor (Kontakt-5 1988), as 1st gen plus: Reduce the armor divisor of AP type rounds from (2) to (1.25). Reduce the armor divisor of the second charge of an MS-HEAT round from (10) to (5).
4th generation Explosive Reactive Armor (Nihz 2003), as 3rd gen, except change the AP armor divisor from (2) to (1).
Spaced armor, as per High Tech p.229, is designated with an S after the DR gives 1.5x the DR vs HEAT and HEDP rounds and negates the special effects of HESH.
Laminated armor is designated with an L after the DR and gives 2x the DR vs HEAT and HEDP rounds and negates the special effects of HESH.
Starting with the M829A2 APFSDSDU round ignores the effects of 3rd plus generation ERA. Not sure what to call this ammunition upgrade. ERA Proofed? Reinforced Rod?
Deserter's conviction reinstated!
I can't believe this shit is still going on, nice to see resolution happening.
Gun Stats assumes that both shaped charges are the same size!
So you calculate them from the published penetration in millimeters, which comes out as half as much as a single stage, then double that damage.
A normal HEAT round that punches 900mm will do 6dx12(10) cr ex linked 6dx5 cr ex.
An MS-HEAT round that punches 900mm calculates at 6dx6(10) cr ex linked 6dx5 cr ex.
If the target is protected by explosive, reactive armor MS-HEAT does the listed damage as if the ERA wasn't there. If it not protected by ERA, then double the listed damage.
Silly me, I've been finding out the penetration of the precursor charge and main charge then adding them.
For example, the PG-29V fired from the RPG-29 will penetrate 900mm RHA, but only 750mm it it's protected by reactive armor.
So that means the precursor charge penetrates 150mm on its own.
I've been showing this as 6dx2(10) cr ex follow-up 6dx10(10) cr ex linked 6dx5 cr ex.
It comes out the same on RHA, but penetrates better when there's ERA than the rules as written.
Some write ups comparing the fire control of the M60A3 and M1 make it seem like there's no reason to use the M1 fire control system.
Both are fully stabilized.
Both use laser range finders.
Both have wind sensors.
Fruit, fruit. Tits, tits.
The M1 computer has more processing power and does the job faster, but it doesn't make a big difference when the time choke-point is the loader.
The gun is slaved to the sight.
What this means is when I'm tracking a target and stab the lase button, my view, and the crosshairs stay on the target and the turret shifts.
But what makes the M1 system better?
In a word, integration.
The M1, and it's fire control computer, were designed together.
The M60's system is an add-on that had to work with existing hardware and that makes it a bit clunky. This article gives a decent description.
We had a HEAT round battle carried and we were pieing the corner of an alleyway when we got hit. I thought they got a 1:1mil shot down our gun tube at first.I was the loader. My gunner and TC both got peppered pretty well from the blast and I caught a bit as well.Gunner got medevac’d to Germany because of the flash burns to his face. “Ruined his modeling career” as he put it.The hole in the sponson box was actually from an earlier rpg attack, but it hit sandbags in the box and never detonated.The small hole at the lower left side under the smoke grenade box is the entrance hole of the one that did us in.Plt Sgt had me digging in the hole with needle nose pliers trying to get something out when Col. Robert Abrams (our Brigade Commander at the time) walked up and said “what the fuck are you doing?!?” Good times.”
The write up explains it's an M1A2SEP.
That makes the side turret DR 1,580L. 1,147mm RHAE v HEAT.
For a heat round to penetrate that it needs to be, at least, 6dx15(10) cr ex, for the average hit to penetrate. 6dx9(10) cr ex can penetrate with a max-damage roll.
The PG-7VR warhead can penetrate 900mm of RHA with its tandem warhead. At first you think it cannot, but the damage roll is based on an average where all the dice roll 3.5.
I'm not showing all my work here, read the rules and it's clearer.
6dx4(10) cr ex follow-up 6dx8(10) cr ex linked 6dx5 cr ex; which is treated as a single 6dx12(10) cr ex attack if there is no reactive armor. On average it penetrates DR 1,260L
So, DR is doubled for laminated armor vs HEAT. 3160.
Divided by the armor divisor of 10. 316.
Divide by 12 to find out if we can penetrate with this round, if it's more than 36, no. 26.3333.
The PG-7VR, on a good roll, can penetrate the turret side of an M1A2SEPv1.
This GURPS.
Public opinion is against Flock and other similar camera systems.
To the point that the local sheriff canceled their contract with both Flock and Axios.
Governor DeSantis banned them from FDOT right of ways.
But the press is publishing lots of articles like the picture above.
It seems very much akin to saying that since the Nazis MUST have killed a few people who deserved it, then The Holocaust is completely justified.
Some of the nearby county's sheriffs are not getting the message the public is sending and are saying that they will continue using Flock cameras that are placed on private property. I think some of them have been running unopposed for so long they've forgotten they're elected officials and subject to the opinions of their constituents.
I've noticed that the Soviets had better guns and thicker armor than the NATO nations until relatively late.
NATO didn't start getting gun parity until the British 105mm L7.
NATO didn't start pulling ahead in armor until Chobham.
NATO tanks are almost always taller and heavier than their Soviet counterparts.
So, NATO was screwed before tanks like Abrams and Leopard II hit the scene?
Maybe not.
For the gun and armor to matter, you need to hit, and the Western designers put a lot of effort and thought into fire control.
The first step in accurate fire is an accurate determination of the target's range.
You'll see little bulges on the sides of US tank turrets. These hold the objective lenses of the range finder, either coincidence or stereoscopic.
The earliest of these give the range which is called out and the appropriate stadia in the optic is aligned with the target.
The US miniaturized the mechanical fire control computers it'd been using on ships and put them in tanks. The range obtained from the rangefinder could be input into the computer, along with wind speed and the reticle would be shifted so the gunner need only align a, relatively simple and uncluttered, crosshair on the target to hit.
This is all happening while the T-55 has no rangefinder at all and the T-62 uses stadiametric ranging.
The US then automated the process by putting a linkage between the rangefinder and fire control computer.
This was in the 90mm equipped M48A2, in 1953!
The M60A1 started with this. Later versions got a solid state computer, laser rangefinder and sensors to compensate for wind muzzle droop and cant.
This is all in addition to stabilization that allowed for firing accurately on the move.
Of course, to effectively use all this fun technology requires some education and training that's, typically, absent from the Warsaw Pact and Soviet customers.
Israel vs et al kind of proves the thesis.
If we're going to count all the variations of the M1816 musket as a single service weapon, then we really should count all the variations of the AR-15 as a single weapon.
The M16 series (including the M4 series) is the king of service life, 1966 to 2022 or 56 years.
56 and counting since the M7 roll-out has not been smooth by any measure and many units, INFANTRY battalions, not support units, are still rocking the M4A1.
If we count each variation as its own weapon the M1865 is still the shortest in service, but the average number of years we stick to a specific design drops precipitously.
Even within some very short lived designs, like the Krag, there's several sub-versions.
Sometimes it's hard to tell how long a weapon was the primary infantry arm because they didn't replace the old ones, just stopped issuing them in favor of the new one.
This is true of the M1816 series and the Krag. Units might have all the same gun, they might have a few of each.
Our first service rifle was, um, not a rifle.
It was the M1795, .69 caliber flintlock musket. (19 years)
It was replaced by the .69 caliber M1812 in 1814. (2 years)
It was replaced by the .69 caliber M1816 in 1816. They didn't have an "A" designation so instead of M1816A1, we get M1822, M1835, M1840 and M1842. The M1842 being the first caplock. The Army didn't really consider them different guns, just different designations to keep track of small changes. (39 years)
Those models were technically still front line weapons all the way to 1855 when we get the .58 caliber M1855 rifle musket in 1856. Followed by the M1861, and M1863. (9 years)
The first breech-loader is the M1865 chambered in .58-60-500 rimfire. This is also the first Erskine Allin trapdoor to be type classified! (1 year)
Then we get a trapdoor chambered in .50-70-450, the M1866. Then The M1868 and M1870. (7 years)
The cost of converting old caplocks turned out to be prohibitive and since they were making all new guns anyway, they decided on, yet, another chambering for the trapdoor. The .45-70 M1873. Then M1884, and M1888. (19 years)
Smokeless supplanted black powder and the .30-40 Krag-Jørgensen M1892 hits the scene plus M1896 and M1898. (11 years)
Then the M1903 Springfield in .30-03. Then the M1903 in .30-06 in 1906. (33 years)
The M1903 was, kind of, replaced by the "Enfield" M1917, but the M1917 was replaced by the M1903 after WW1. The M1917 doesn't really count because it was a secondary standard.
We'd stopped using the year in the designation by 1936 when the M1 Garand is adopted. This "gas-trap" version only lasted 4 years when it was replaced by the M1 with a drilled gas port. (21 years)
The Garand was replaced in 1957 by the M14. (9 years).
The M14 was replaced by the XM16E1 in 1966, M16A1 in 1969. (17 years)
The M16A1 was replaced by the M16A2 in 1983. (11 years)
The M16A2 was replaced by the M4 in 1994. Then the M4 was changed to an M4A1 with a heavier barrel in 2014. (28 years)
The M4A1 was officially replaced by the M7 in 2022. (4 years)
The M7 was unofficially replaced by the XM8 in 2026.
So the all time record for shortest service life goes to the M1855 with just one year!
The longest being the 39 years of the M1816 musket and its variations.
Just for Technomad!
Lee M1895 (6mm Lee) rifle: TL 6, Dmg 5d+2 pi, Acc
4, Range 800/5,600, Weight 8.6, RoF 1, Shots 5(3), ST 9, Bulk -5, Rcl 3,
Cost $900, LC 3.
Krag-Jørgensen M1892 (.30-40) rifle: TL 6, Dmg
6d pi, Acc 5, Range 1,070/4,500, Weight 9.2/0.3, RoF 1, Shots 5+1(3i),
ST 10, Bulk -6, Rcl 3, Cost $650, LC 3.
Krag-Jørgensen M1896
(.30-40) carbine: TL 6, Dmg 6d pi, Acc 5, Range 1,030/4,300, Weight
7.8/0.3, RoF 1, Shots 5+1(3i), ST 10, Bulk -5, Rcl 4, Cost $650, LC 3.
And for fun, the Spanish Hornet!
Mauser Model 1893 (7x57mm) rifle: TL 6, Dmg 6d+1 pi, Acc 4, Range 1,150/4,800, Weight 9/0.3, Rof 1, Shots 5+1(3), ST 9, Bulk -5, Rcl 3, Cost $900, LC 3.
He's on his own to determine which is "worth it."
GURPS will not show any of the numerous real-world foibles these three actions had.
Given the choice, I'm arming my men with Mausers; but remember that the troops with the Krags won in Cuba.
Reader Technomad asks, "Why would the Navy adopt a different rifle in the first place? Wouldn't that complicate things?"
Yes and no.
Back in the late 19th century, the Navy and Army used completely different and independent supply and procurement systems.
It didn't matter that the Navy adopted a different rifle and cartridge from the Army because there was no interoperability requirement.
Small arms for the Navy was often an afterthought as well.
I would not be surprised that the reason the Navy uses the same rifle as the Army now is because they bought Army rifles when the Lee didn't live up to expectations and discovered how much cheaper they were because of the bulk discount the Army got and that they didn't have to spend any money on the development.
Or they didn't bother developing their own guns for the same costs reasons while the USMC starting growing past a ship-board infantry requirement into an expeditionary force.
It should be noted that the Jarheads have reverted to having their own rifles with their adoption of the M27, phase-out of the M4, and rejection of the M7 and XM8.
Being on the GM side of the Ford/Chevy debate in hot-rodding means that the brakes on my car came from Australia.
I noticed that on the castings for my '79 Camaro and they were present on the Biscayne SS and Corvette too.
But The Beast is running Brembo.
I bought an Australian car and for the first time in decades, my brakes aren't.
I guess having Italian brakes means continuing the tradition of the calipers being from a different nation than the car.
The Krag-Jørgensen was he official service rifle of the US Army from 1894 to 1903; until replaced by the M1903. Nine years.
The M14 was the official service rifle of the US Army from 1957 to 1966; until replaced by the XM16E1. Nine years.
Both are noted as having incredibly short lives.
The M7 was the official service rifle of the US Army from 2022 to 2026; until replaced by the XM8. Four years!
The XM8 appears to have an adoption process so truncated that it makes the rushed development of the M7 seem positively sedate.
SIGH.
I've lost track of the number of times that a .357 has been loaded with .38 Special because...
There's no reason, it's just our policy.
The first time I bumped into this was when the SEALs in Vietnam asked for S&W Model 19 revolvers.
Someone, with authority over whether such guns were purchased or not took one to the range with the issue .38 ammo he could get from the supply system and compared it with the Model 15 and decided that there was no advantage to getting the Model 19 and ordered the Model 15's.
Yeah, exactly the same if you use .38 Special and never try .357 in it...
Then I was reading about the '86 Miami shootout. McNeill and Mireles were carrying, with approval, privately owned .357 Magnum revolvers, Orrantia was (likely) packing the issue model 13 .357; and all were firing the issue .38 Special.
Then I keep bumping across stories of departments mandating the use of department issued ammo and nobody issuing .357 Magnum even if they issued or allowed guns chambered for it.
If you're not going to issue .357 ammo, then why buy guns for it?
On the cover of The Free City of Krakow is this little tidbit:
I think it says 105mm on the side there, and I don't think we ever made a nuke round for that gun.
Never mind that this is a really small box for even a 105mm howitzer round.
In GURPS: Twilight - 2000 you, too, can be a nuclear power!
An M109A4 runs $567,000. An M198 towed gun runs $530,000 and a 5-ton to drag it around adds $41,000.
A 155mm XM454 AFAP round is $4,991,250.
So you need $5,558,250 for the track and one round. $5,562,250 to go wheeled.
Starting wealth is $5,000, so you need 1112.45 times starting wealth to buy into this dream.
That's 50 points for Filthy Rich to get $500,000. Another 25 gets the first level of Multimillionaire and $5,000,000. Another couple (2) points adds another $1,000,000 getting you a total of $6,000,000 for 77 points and you now command a howitzer and a single round W48 warhead.
It's scary that this is technically possible if a player thinks ahead a little bit.
UPDATE:
The cheap route is to get a 152mm D-20 towed howitzer for $150,000, a deuce-and-a-half for $22,000 to drag it around and a 3BV3 round for $5,682,937.50. Wait; that's not cheaper at all!
Both the US and USSR had stocks of nuke shells for their howitzers when The Cold War ended.
I was kinda assured that wasn't so when I did NBC training in 1987.
We were really worried about the chemical part of NBC but with all the yapping about IRBM's like the Pershing II, they sort of assured us that normal cannon-cockers weren't involved with the N part...
Well, I have GURPS stats for them now.
The Lovely Harvey got off one shot before she became a casualty.
But she got 'im!
This was her first time out with her Sgt Barnes clone and she only had the very tip of the bottom of the butt in her shoulder.
To say that it smarted a bit GROSSLY understated the eye-watering pain she experienced and she was done shooting today.
I zeroed my Spitfire AR on Dottie. I'm out of practice, I was hitting an 8" circle at 100 yards when I confirmed my zero. I was a little distracted by Harvey hurting her shoulder, but that shouldn't have mattered this much.
Not sure I'm completely OK with the reticle on the Spitfire. The center dot is VERY small and hard to see against pretty much anything. I forgot to check to see if was better in red than green.
Using the 40 kiloton W33 warhead in high-yield mode, we do 6dx17,889 cr ex linked 6dx11,628 burn ex rad sur.
The radius of effect from p. B414 is 2x the dice in yards, or 214,668 yards or 122 miles for the explosion. 139,536 yards or 80 miles for the flash.
The average roll of 21 on 6d gets 375,669 points of crushing damage from the explosion and 244,188 for the flash.
This is at ground zero. So don't stand there if you can help it.
But the damage falls off fast!
Remember, the average 10 HP person is making death rolls after taking 20 points of damage, is automatically dead after taking 60 and is nearly unrecognizable as a corpse at 110.
Nukemap says the radius of the fire ball is just 1,270 ft or 423 yards.
You divide the crushing explosion damage by 3x the yards from ground zero. The burn explosion damage is divided by 2x the yards from ground zero.
So at 423 yards you take 296 points from the explosion and 289 from the flash.
Heavy blast damage (20 psi) goes out to 2,440 ft, or 813 yards. Thats 154 points from the explosion and 150 from the flash.
Moderate blast damage (5 psi) goes out to 0.97 miles, or 1,707 yards. That's 75 points from the explosion and 72 from the flash.
Radiation radius (500 rem) is 0.98 miles or 1,724 yards. That's 73 points from the explosion and 71 points from the flash.
Thermal radiation radius (3rd degree burns) is 1.62 miles or 2,851 yards. That's 44 points from the explosion and 43 points from the flash.
Light blast damage (1 psi) goes out to 2.5 miles or 4,400 yards. That's 28 points from the explosion and 28 from the flash.
At the theoretical max blast circle, you take 0.58 points of damage from the blast.
At the theoretical max flash circle you take 0.9 points of damage from the blast and 0.88 from the flash. Someone could punch you harder than that!
For a bit of perspective:
An M67 fragmentation grenade does 9d[2d] cr ex. That does an average of 32 points at the detonation point.
Don't be around nukes when they go off!
This, mostly, GURPS.
The W79 Mod 0 dialed all the way up does: 6x2,966 cr ex linked 6dx1,928 burn ex rad sur. Average damages of 62,286 and 40,488 each.
Fireball: 100 yards - 208 from blast, 202 from flash.
Heavy: 246 yards - 84 from blast, 82 from flash.
Moderate: 517 yards - 40 from blast, 39 from flash.
Thermal: 581 yards - 36 from blast, 35 from flash.
Radiation: 933 yards - 22 from blast, 22 from flash.
Light: 1,320 yards - 16 from blast, 15 from flash.
Dialed down it's: 6dx283 cr ex linked 6dx1,928 burn ex rad sur. Average damages of 5,943 and 40,488 each.
Fireball: 38 yards - 52 from blast, 532 from flash.
Heavy: 110 yards - 18 from blast, 184 from flash.
Moderate: 232 yards - 9 from blast, 87 from flash.
Thermal: 255 yards - 8 from blast, 79 from flash.
Light: 596 yards - 3 from blast, 34 from flash.
Radiation: 613 yards - 3 from blast, 33 from flash.
These too, GURPS!
In 1981 we developed another nuke round for the 8" howitzer.
It's something interesting.
The W79 is a radiation enhanced warhead.
Normally the burn ex rad sur damage is 65% of the cr ex damage in GURPS.
The W79 Mod 0's low yield mode gets the same burn ex rad sur damage as the full yield mode!
So the XM753 with W79 Mod 0 is a rocket assisted round that does 6dx25(0.5) pi++ linked 6dx283 cr ex linked 6dx1928 burn ex rad sur in low yield configuration.
It does 6dx25(0.5) pi++ linked 6dx2966 cr ex linked 6dx1928 burn ex rad sur in high yield configuration.
The W79 Mod 1 only has a single mode and does 6dx35(0.5) pi++ linked 6dx2530 cr ex linked 6dx1645 burn ex rad sur. (I love how it lists a damage for the projectile before the explosion, though they're all air-burst capable).
GURPS range is -/24,600. That's about 14 miles. <- Fixed!
GURPS range is -/24,600. That's about 19.7 miles. That's safe, right?
14 is a bit short of the 19 Wikipedia lists. I could be that's because they gave the velocity for a Zone 7 charge. Rocket assisted rounds usually use the heaviest launching charge, so... Using the velocity for a Zone 9 charge I get about 18 miles, which is closer (and might even be correct as the exact ranges of these things are classified.)
UPDATE: I forgot that this round was never fired from the short barreled M110 and was always used with the M110A2.
With a Zone 8 charge it gets 2,770 fps. and will go to 34,650 yards which is 19.7 miles which is nearly spot-on-close-enough to the range listed in Wikipedia!
This GURPS! Now...
As I tear into all these cannon and howitzer stats and make GURPS stats for tanks; I realize how near a thing WW3 might have been if it had started before 1988.
Our tank armor wasn't really sufficient for the guns the Soviets were going to be using against us.
Our guns weren't sufficient for the armor the Soviets were fielding.
One advantage we started accumulating was the ability to fight at night. The Soviets lagged on that.
Our fire control stuff was far better, but that doesn't matter if you can't penetrate.
We could also shoot on the move better, but again, it doesn't matter if you can't penetrate.
We'd be in a similar situation as in WW2 when our best gun wasn't punching the front armor of the enemy, and we'd have to get around to the sides and rear. Without being able to rely on the enemy's best tanks breaking down every ten meters.
The Soviets made an 8" howitzer too. It was introduced in 1975 and it's still in service.
The 2A44 gun is mounted on the 2S7 Pion self propelled gun.
The rounds weigh 227 lb. or 240 lb.
A nuke round was developed.
I have ranges from wikipedia.
Ukraine managed us US 8" projectiles.
This is just about all I know about this gun.
I assume there's an HE round, because every howitzer has one.
FASCAM? DPICM? Chem? Smoke?
Base bleed? Rocket Assist?
Who knows!
A copy of Jane's Artillery '95-96 is en route. Maybe it will have some answers.
Sort of related: There's scanty information online about the gun on the M110 and M110A2 SPG's too. Still digging there too.
Did the 8" for the M110 tonight. This gun comes up for both Twilight: 2000 and Funny New Guys.
Same green bag/white bag deal as 155mm.
M1 Charge (green bag), Zone 1 (base increment): 6.3 lb.; 806 fps.
M1 Charge (green bag), Zone 2: 7.6 lb.; 879 fps.
M1 Charge (green bag), Zone 3: 9.3 lb.; 984 fps.
M1 Charge (green bag), Zone 4: 11.7 lb.; 1,133 fps.
M1 Charge (green bag), Zone 5: 15 lb.; 1,358 fps.
M2 Charge (white bag), Zone 5 (base increment): 17.7 lb.; 1,432 fps.
M2 Charge (white bag), Zone 6: 23.1 lb.; 1,675 fps.
M2 Charge (white bag), Zone 7: 30 lb.; 1,950 fps.
M188 Charge, Zone 8: 40 lb.; 2,316 fps.
M188A1 Charge, Zone 9: 50 lb.; 2,510 fps.
The M188 charges don't come around until the mid-70's and are used with DPICM and HERA rounds.
The fun part was calculating the damage for the M422, W33 nuclear round. Pairs well with the 155mm M785!
6dx17,889 cr ex linked 6dx11,627 burn ex rad sur for the 40k-ton high yield setting.
6dx6,325 cr ex linked 6dx4,111 burn ex rad sur for the 5k-ton low yield setting.
Since I've stranded a LAV-75 in Libya fighting the Afrika Korps, how would it fare against a SdKfz 232 8-Rad?
First, armor.
The LAV has, in F, L/R, Rr, T, B order, DR 90/75/50/30/30 on the body and DR 67/60/35/35 on the turret.
The SdKfz has, with the "bumper" plate: DR 83S/33/55/14/14 on the body and DR 62/62/62/14 on the turret.
The best AP round for the KwK.30 is the PzGr.40 which is an APHC round doing 6dx3(2) pi++. That will roll an average of 63 which can penetrate DR 126. Decent penetration on the front armor.
The KwK.30 is completely manually controlled and sighted, so...
The 6dx5(2) pi++ from the M791 round punches 210 DR, so no problem nailing the front armor of the SdKfz.232.
Again, thermal sights and full weapon stabilization are in play with the LAV and a powered turret with a much faster traverse than the hand-cranked German turret.
The SAS would, literally, murder people in their sleep for the LRDG to get hold of a couple of these.
The stack of mismatched ammo from this recent post appears to be:
1x 9x19mm ball.
2x 9x19mm HP
4x 7.63x25 Luger
4x 9x19mm ball.
There are many pictures of guns seized by the cops with wildly mismatched ammo, but I think this is the first time I've seen the wrong round for the gun included.
FEMA says I need to have 72 hours of food on hand in the event of a disaster.
That'd be my generous girth, Mr Government Man.
Plus, it's impossible to forget and very difficult to steal.
Not so good for sharing with the family...
I have the part number for the bolt that holds the crash-bar to the firewall.
11588735.
That's "Multi-Purpose Bolt, M8x1.25x100."
It originally appeared in an Opel in 1986.
Full description is:
This part is a bolt, hexagon flanged head, m8x1.25x100, 22 thread, 18 outside diameter, 8.8 steel, gmw3359, m-point intake manifold, for Chevrolet, Chevrolet Trucks, Buick, Saturn, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, GMC Trucks, Opel, and Vauxhall cars. It fits for 113 Opel\Vauxhall vehicles which were sold in the U.S., Europe, and the UK from 1986 to 2013.
Really it's a bog standard Grade 8.8 bolt with zinc plating.
It's widely used too.
I am absolutely not worried about cutting 1/4" off this thing anymore.
From the Baltimore City Crime Gun Intelligence Facebook page:
On August 23, at approximately 3:40 p.m., NED DAT detectives were in the 5400 block of Sinclair Lane when they observed an individual exhibiting behavior consistent with being armed. During the investigation, detectives arrested the suspect and recovered (1) Polymer80 9mm handgun.
The gun in question:
What is "behavior consistent with being armed?"
Hey, blue states, you could have just opened up your voting rolls for inspection and proved that only eligible voters were voting.
Misrepresenting what's going on here seems to be the hallmark of the press.
I've long thought we make it too easy to get registered to vote and too easy to actually vote.
That sounds odd, doesn't it?
But what I mean by too easy is it encourages voting without considering what you're doing.
Voting is important. Your vote matters.
If we required you to apply in person to register and only allowed you to vote in person, you'd at least have to take a moment to plan that action.
It's your sovereign franchise and you put less effort into it than deciding what you're going to watch on NetFlix.
That making it too easy also makes for casual fraud to occur is secondary to me, but the fraud is what's going to give me my druthers and make voting harder for everyone and still below my threshold.
The LAV-25 is a perennial favorite of Twilight: 2000 players.
How would the 25mm Bushmaster fare in the Libyan desert against the Panzer IIIG?
It would fare well.
M791 APDS-T does 6dx5(2) pi++ that rolls 105 on average and punches 210 Dr.
M792 HEI-T's 6dx4(0.5) pi++ linked 4d+1[2d+2] cr ex isn't gonna punch.
M919 APFSDSDU-T doing 6dx8(2) pi inc will certainly punch with an average roll doing 168 before dividing the armor in half, so it'd punch DR 336.
Even the Panzer IIIH is sweating against this 8-wheel armored car.
Of course, the frontal DR 90 of the hull and DR 67 on the turret of a LAV-25 isn't putting up much resistance against the 5cm PzGr39 (see previous post for how much DR that punches).
I think the thermal sights and stabilization on the LAV will matter a great deal.
In real life the 5cm KwK 38 cannot penetrate the frontal armor of the Infantry Tank Mk.IIA, aka Matilda II (A12).
The GURPS: WW2 book All The King's Men gives DR 300 for that frontal armor on the hull and 290 on the turret.
The 5cm PzGr 39 the Germans were using in Libya does 6dx6(2) pi++ with a linked 1d-3[2d+2] cr ex.
That will roll an average of 126 which will fail to penetrate the 145 DR the turret front is reduced to by the armor divisor.
This GURPS!
Likewise the QF 2-pdr on the Matilda worked against the Pzkw III Ausf G's DR 120 hul and DR 145 turret front.
The best 2-pdr round in the desert was the Shot APCBC/T Mk.I which does 6dx4(2) pi++ and averages a roll of 84 which should punch DR 168... I say "best" but all of the AP rounds calculate to 6dx4(2) pi++ except the early AP/T Mk.IT which is what GURPS calls an SAPHE round doing 6dx6 pi++ linked 2d+1[2d] cr ex; that only punches 126 DR, barely adequate for the Ausf G.
The H has DR 230 in the front and rear and some of the G's were upgraded to the H standard by the Afrika Korps.
This GURPS!
Despite the sturm und drang over slavery, I double checked.
There's nothing that made the TL3 character from my TL Project illegal.
Thorvald is still a slaver.
He thinks of himself as a good guy, but most villains do.
Speaking of exonyms and ethnicity.
Did you know that Italians were once not considered to be White?
Italian immigrants in America faced discrimination at least as severe as anything Blacks endured or are enduring.
I hereby claim my eternal victim status!
Or not.
The Irish went through this discrimination thing too.
At least twice and sometimes from the previous wave of Irish-Americans.
But since my grand-parents were not considered "White" when they arrived in America, then I am a person of color now!
Ah, to be rid of that pesky White Privilege!
Among the changes that they virtue signaled in 4eR was eliminating Eskimo from p. B137 under Gullibility.
“Of course the Eskimos are descended from Spanish conquistadors; everyone knows that!”
Has been changed to:
“Of course the Yupik are descended from Spanish conquistadors – everyone knows that!”
On the infamous p. B2 we have:
And then there were the words we were ashamed of – exclusionary words, prejudiced words, even outright offensive words. We were guilty of perpetuating ethnic stereotypes, and using terms like “crazy,” “cripple,” and “slave” in lazy, hurtful ways. In cases where the correction was simple – a person is “Black,” not “black,” and the culture is “Inuit” or “Yupik,” not “Eskimo” – we made it and moved on.
Speaking as a cane wielding cripple, I was not offended and I am increasingly offended by the able bodied being offended for me instead of asking me if the use of crippled offended me.
If you're going to capitalize "Black" you'd damn sure better capitalize "White." Just sayin'.
But the Eskimo thing stood out.
It's not a thing in the USA. The Inuit and Yupik thing is an article of Canadian political drama concerning "what do we call the first nations people so we feel better about conquering them?"
Oh, and you clearly did not make the change and move on. If that were true I'd have only noticed that Eskimo had been replaced with Yupik if I compared the books page by page or remembered the example and tried to show it to someone else with the new book.
The two main people doing this revision are Canadian and I think their political zeitgeist is creeping in while SJ Games is being taken over by all the people they hired from Possum Creek Games.
It makes me sad to see the change because SJGames was the different company from the others way back when.
It'll be interesting to see what they do with their legacy and classic stuff.
The customer for Old West is looking to recreate movies and TV shows, not try to figure out who the fuck the Ndee are.
Never mind you can make a Gestapo agent as a character from their WW2 line.
Slavery is up front in both Greece and Rome.
Things that really happened are far harder to sanitize than a wholly fictional universe like Dark Sun.
It makes me wonder if we're going to have to call corn maize because corn is the name applied to it by Europeans.
With rumors of Wizards of the Coast bringing back the Dark Sun setting without the core tenant of everyone BUT the 12 Sorcerer Kings being a slave of some kind...
AND
The "we know this will come as a surprise to you unwashed, low born, scumbag customers, but: Slavery is wrong!" in GURPS 4eR.
It makes me think that Steve Jackson Games was trying to get ahead of the Dark Sun release and be more virtuous than them.
If WotC strips slavery from the setting, I think SJG might have gotten themselves hoisted by their own petard.
But it's got me thinking.
Two different games, from different companies widely separated geographically BOTH on an anti-slavery snit?
Group think be real, yo.
In the ongoing saga of the two bolts that GM says that I need to remove the windshield to get at...
I cracked open my old text book.
The only threads doing any holding are the ones inside the nut.
Excess thread beyond the nut does nothing. Only the engaged threads matter.
The video that got me worried about cutting them to remove them:
I don't think he knows what he's on about because he keeps saying shear. The shear force will be at the plane where the two parts meet and will break the bolt there; not cause it to slip down the nut. Threads strip in tension.
If GM had really "highly engineered" this with the idea that an extra 1/4" of thread was going to grab after the engaged thread stripped; there'd be another nut on the end of the threads as a stop.
My contention is this design decision was made to force the customer to go to the dealer to get the evaporator replaced because small shops don't have the ability to remove the glass.
But if you're really worried...
Cut the original bolt.
Replace it with all-thread rod.
Tighten it to spec with a nut at the top and use red Loctite® on that nut.
That would replicate the OE bolt.
PS: Royalty Auto Services is the only source for this worry I can find. Google cites them in the top three hits when you search for the issue. Sorry, search for this non-issue.
PPS: The engineers that designed this are also the ones that lied about why they use torque to yield fasteners. ARP proves them wrong over and over with regards of getting consistent torque. Torque to yield is so a machine can do the torquing. They're very good at counting degrees of rotation but not so much at measuring torque when you have a bolting fixture that does all of the head bolts at the same time.
PPPS: If GM designed this all to collapse in such a way to put those bolts in tension during a collision, I think anyone injured in such an accident has an excellent case for substantial financial compensation.
Got an email from a dead email account that still forwards...
It was in my spam folder.
It warns me that it's infected my operating system with malware and they used the camera on my computer to catch me doing naughty things while viewing an adult webpage.
They threaten they're going to send the video they took to everyone on my contacts list if I don't send a large amount to their bitcoin account. They helpfully provide a string for doing so.
Well, scammer...
BRING IT!
I fucking DARE you; NO I double dog dare you to send a vid of me jerking off to everyone on my contacts list.
The worst I will get is, "Why the fuck, Angus?"
My contacts don't care, so titillate them, Mr Scammer.
FuzzyGeff put his finger on why the virtue signalling in the new edition of GURPS rubs so wrong.
They really think we needed it explained that slavery was wrong.
Condescending is the word, I believe.
They're acting like they're a guiding moral compass, but they're a fucking toy company.
Thanks to all who've made helpful comments about getting a generator.
We already have one!
It's just not worth digging out for a couple hours inconvenience.
Generally, by the time it'd be up and running the power company would have service restored.
A house sized UPS is prolly more what we want, but batts on that scale are still a bit spendy.
Maybe once we've paid off the house and AC work...
First off, FUCK YOU Joe Biden and your AIM act!
Fuck all you congress creatures who suck greenie cock.
A $3,000 compressor and air handler is now $8,700 because mixing R32 with something else is better for the environment or something.
Better for some chemical company's bottom line.
It's a good thing I have good credit, because we're financing this shit.
Should even be zero cost out of MY pocket because the inlaws are going to be making the payments.
Their old system still had R22 in it, and it wasn't new when we got their place in 2019.
We had a bit of a squall run through here.
The power went out for about three hours and I now know that my uninterruptible power sources aren't good for that long.
A fan, light and radio, each powered by Ryobi One+ batts, do last for that long.
So I was reading a book when the power came back and everything came back online just like it was supposed.
I'm pretty pleased about that!
I learned that some people are better prepared for outages than me too!
I don't have the scratch for a whole house backup, but I am, officially, jealous now!
I just realized (all y'all prolly already figured it out) that I'm supposed to feel bad about the fact that there used to be slavery and hate myself because it was American White people who enslaved American Black people.
Except for one, teeny, thing.
WASN'T ME; DIDN'T DO IT
I decline to feel guilty for things I had no hand in.
I still say the 360,000 almost entirely white men who gave everything to end chattel slavery in the United States deserve a lot more credit for the accomplishment than they get. Never mind the hundreds of thousands more who fought for its ending on the battlefield.
Wasn't me, didn't do it here too. I deserve no credit for their deeds.
But it's interesting that, because I am White, I can be treated as if I had something to do with enslaving Blacks when I garner no credit for freeing them.
But I don't have any White guilt about it. My family is a bunch of Yankees and we didn't participate in slavery or Jim Crow.
So I won't wear the hair shirt and consider my purchase of the Basic Set 4eR as my license to mock the everloving shit out of Steve Jackson Games and the woke morons they hired to run the place into the ground.
I wish I could say it is my last purchase through them, but I'm miffed rather than angry and you have to do more than miff me to get a boycott out of me.
On one hand, going to the SJ Games forums to read about what others think of the 4eR rules is actively hurting my brain.
On the other hand, it's really good for stuff to blog about.
On the gripping hand, stupider mek my Brian.
Thanks to the, "Slavery's bad m'kaaay." page in the new book, p. B2 Rectification, there's a couple threads talking about historical slavery.
There are, certain, historical instances where being a slave is not a bad deal.
They are noteworthy, as in they don't occur very often.
Being a slave in almost every instance is a shitty deal and is basically manual labor under harsh or dangerous conditions without a lot of regard to the health or happiness of the laborer.
But this invariably leads to someone trying to prove that one culture's version of slavery was worse than the 19th century version in America; with the resultant reply of someone trying to prove that 19th century slavery in America was uniquely worse than all other kinds of slavery.
The thing is, Uncle Tom's Cabin has as much factual and scientific basis as Silent Spring.
What makes slavery in the US such a "unique" institution is its recency and how well it was documented. Lots of slavery happens in history without much more mention than how many amphora of olive oil were traded in a year.
And there's the rub.
Slavery was not really noteworthy for centuries, it simply was.
The United States was not the last nation to make slavery illegal, nor was it the first.
The US lagged behind Europe, but the people trying to make the US seem worse than the rest of the world fail to mention how recent Europe's bans were too.
Though it was defacto banned in England in 1772, it was not de jure banned until 1833 in England and the rest of the British Empire.
France banned it in 1848.
Spain waited until 1886, though they banned trading in slaves in the 1820's.
Italy banned it in 1866.
So the US banning it in 1865 doesn't put us too far behind the "far more enlightened" Europe.
It's also worth mentioning that slavery in the British American Colonies is British slavery and shouldn't be counted against the US ledger. Our continuing it after a rebellion sold on a sales pitch of "all men created equal" and liberty... Yeah, pin that one right on our chest.
I think something unique about the US is we fought a war over the issue. A significant portion of the population had to be forced to stop owning people. Most other places really just made a disappearing practice illegal as it faded so that it wouldn't return.
One needs to mention indentured servitude while discussing slavery in America too. Limited term slavery is still slavery and there's so many mentions of people "surviving" to the end of their indenture that it's clear it was just as harsh as any other kind of slavery.
But was it really worse to be a slave than an Irish immigrant working in a sweat-shop?
Were the conditions on a plantation worse or better than a textile or steel mill?
Or laying track for the railroad?
Or many kinds of mining done by supposedly free men who "owed their soul to the company store?"
Is being in debt peonage any better than being a slave? Is it easier to escape from?
Any Democrat that refuses to vote for Byron Donalds to be the governor of Florida is a racist.
De-genercized the bayonets in my GURPS: T2K conversion.
Now you use an M7 bayonet instead of a knife bayonet.
Derpycomputer sitting on the desk with one monitor running on the side pulls 0.045kW.
The Mac Pro, idling, with two sleeping monitors pulled 0.250kW. It pulled over 0.800kW more than once while doing something stressing the processors like a flight sim or crunching AutoCAD.
This cannot help but reduce my electric bill at the end of the month.
I made my choices in the primary today.
I was asked for and produced government issued photo ID.
Got my ballot.
Filled in the appropriate bubbles.
Got it scanned into the system.
Went home.
Less than 30 minutes from door to door.
Frank Beard, the only person in ZZ-Top without a beard, has shuffled off the mortal coil.
I met him once.
They'd ordered pizzas to their hotel after a concert and I got the plum job of delivering them.
Mr Beard is the guy who came to pay for them. Good tipper too!
And I had been upset at not being able afford tickets AND having to work even if I did have tickets!
Fair winds, Mr Beard!
It's procrastination, once again
Stalling fixin' my AC.......
I have done the research. Bought some parts.
Hit a roadblock.
Backed up.
Did more research.
Solicited shops to do the work for me at an eye watering rate...
Resigned myself to paying that rate.
Get all six shops I asked about it to turn down the job because THEY don't want to take the windshield out either.
Looks like I'm going the route I was trying to avoid and shortening the bolts so they clear the brace without pulling the windshield. The reasoning to avoid cutting those bolts sounds specious to me anyways. Besides I think I even have a way to mitigate it by going with all-thread rod and nuts of a grade higher than the piece coming out.
So I've bought a different batch of parts that should simplify the project considerably. Only four were available in the entire US parts system. It's now three.
I'm going to use the parts I already bought to refurbish the AC box I'm taking out and put it on Facebook market place for $200.
My road to being a gun owner ran through being a hot-rodder.
It also is the core of my hatred of greenies.
Do you know how much pollution I've saved by not getting a new car every 3-5 years like they do? They never count the pollution of making their new car and disposing of the old one.
It's a lot more than the pollution of driving a "dirty" car for 15-20 years.
It's amazing how many gun control things rhyme with car stuff.
California has a handgun roster and it is poised to have a tire roster.
Because rolling resistance is all that matters in a tire's design.
They're using the thin veil of "that's what came on the car" as cover for the decision and how much it's going to save the consumers in fuel. Never mind the OE tire is normally the most expensive one you can get for a given car and that costing the customer more in tires than they save in gas...
But why did the OE put that shitty tire on the car in the first place? Corporate Average Fuel Economy. The teeny increase in mileage from low rolling resistance can be enough to move the car's EPA efficiency to a different column and keep the OE from paying taxes, fees and fines to put it on the road.
They didn't do it because it's the best tire for the car and what the consumer wants to do with it; they did it to comply with a set of regulations that were never attached to reality and get further detached every legislative session.
By the way, this is the same government that decided we all need to have run-flat tires rather than insist we learn how to deal with a blow-out.
Just wait for when your rear view mirror gets replaced with a camera!
Something I consciously did with my TL project of making characters was avoiding making a soldier from each TL.
Now I am making the NPC's in detail for the campaign that FuzzyGeff and Marv will be playing in January... and they're all soldiers.
Making each one a person is the challenge.
One place it's tempting to make them individual is the weapons selection, but that'd wrong because troops are issued weapons exactly to prevent them from picking a gun that can't be supported by the logistics train.
Twilight: 2000's situation might be more eclectic because of masses of non-US troops being accepted into US formations as things become more and more ad hoc.
A NATO unit might consider itself lucky if everyone has a rifle that uses a STANAG magazine with rifling to use 5.56 NATO.
There's reserve units from the States that have M16A1's and though they can use the magazines, they can't use the NATO spec ammo.
The smart commander would try to keep them and their ammo needs in one place, but T2K is a situation where everything collapsed and everyone is scattering to the wind and getting back together randomly.
How random do I wanna get?
Did my civic duty today and voted in the primary for the least evil candidates.
Distinct from the lesser evil I get to vote for come the election, because the least evil candidate never wins the primary.
People are not being creative enough when they break the law.
I'm not saying anyone should go out and do this. But I have decades of murder-hobo wrangling that cause my mind to think about crimes and both how to commit them and how to stop them (depending on the party's law abiding level).
If one really wanted to cause issues with a Flock camera, one should do something that causes it to degrade performance over a longer period of time.
Problems have solutions. Dilemmas are never ending.
Like spraying the solar panel with a UV blocking, etching, clear primer.
This reduces the amount of power the panel provides and the etching makes them ultimately have to replace the panel instead of cleaning it off.
But they get days or weeks of trying to figure out why that camera is working intermittently.
Again: Don't do this! It's a crime to vandalize or destroy private property. The proper way is to get off your ass and start eliminating all of the elected officials who support this statist shit by electing better officials from dog-catcher up.
The police are expending a lot of resources to figure out who's cutting their little cameras down.
And I say they are their cameras because Flock doesn't install them where there's nobody paying them.
The thing the cops need to recall is something Sir Robert Peele said:
"To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect."
That sentence is almost 200 years old.
It's still true.
The cops wasting resources finding the people who are cutting these cameras down is undermining public approval of their existence at a time when half the body politic has been clamoring for their elimination.
Good show!
Getting back to Peelian Principles would go a long way towards mending the rift between the police and the citizens who've delegated their powers to them.
For the most part, Gun Stats is giving me stats that are very close to the numbers I pulled out of my ass by comparing the gun I was making to a gun that was already published.
At least these new numbers have the sanctity of being created by an official publication.
One interesting change has been the FG.42. Several sources say the Luftwaffe issued the steel-core S.m.K round, which is armor piercing.
That changes the, calculated, damage from 6d+2 pi with the s.S round to 4d+2(2) pi-.
The average hit from s.S will deal 23 points of damage.
S.m.K will roll 16 on average, but that will punch DR 32. That's better than s.S, but the pi- means that anything that gets past the armor will be halved. So it does just 8 points on an unarmored target; about a third what normal ball does!
Caught a short vid on YouTube talking about a battle in the Pacific in WW2.
The Garands were firing 3-round bursts as fast as an M16, and shooting, at least, 30 rounds with no reloading shown.
Looked good except for the that obvious flaw.
One Florida sheriff is touting their relationship with Flock and how it helped them find a missing child.
The thing they are missing is they are, in essence, saying that it's OK to enter every house in their jurisdiction without a warrant to catch a child pornographer.
The huge question is, "Does the good outweigh the bad?"
Considering the contents of the Bill of Rights, no.
The founders were firmly of the idea that it's better to let a few criminals get away with it than to trod on the rights of the innocent to catch them.
Something we're going to have to address is the issue of private organizations collecting information and then selling it to the government(s).
I suspect that if we decide that if the government buys something they cannot, legally, collect on their own is forbidden; the collection of such data by private entities will stop.
Doing the Gun Stats for the Royal Ordnance Quick-Fire 20-pounder.
I'm getting the penetration numbers I expected, but not the ranges.
I am accustomed to sabot rounds outranging the full-bore rounds.
This is not true for APDS vs AP.
APDS Mk.1 gets 6dx19(2) pi++ to 5,000/24,800.
Shot Mk. 1 an APCBC (AP in GURPS) gets 6dx11(2) pi++ to 11,600/38,000.
So I dug into it. Turns out it's correct. I did not expect that.
It repeats with the 105mm L7/M68 gun.
M392 APDS has a range of 4,300/19,000. M456 HEAT has 7,900/23,200.
"Normalcy" is restored when I did the M735 APFSDS round and got 11,500/34,000 for range.
It makes sense. The penetrator on an APDS round is relatively short and it's very light compared to the full-bore rounds. It has a poor ballistic coefficient, more drag means less range.
The court in Texas has ruled that with the tax set to zero, it cannot be justified under the taxing power.
Which means that if there was any tax at all on the NFA items, it would have been just peachy.
Even 1¢.
This is the amount we should worry about, not Congress cranking it up from the 1934 $200 to an inflation adjusted $5,000.
A penny tax justifies registration.
Of anything!
They will say, "It's only a penny, why are you being so unreasonable?"
We're going to need a 2nd Amendment ruling to end this shit, and I think that the Texas court punted on this to avoid the actual ruling that would end it on purpose.
The Boy and Harvey swung through Burger King for supper Thursday.
I have only one request from a trip to the drive-thru.
Hold the ketchup.
My Whopper, with cheese, was supposed to only be sans ketchup.
The Whopper I got was labeled "No Mayo, No Ketchup, Add Mustard." and it wasn't with cheese.
Our burgers got confused with someone else's order, our bag label had a different order number than the one on the burger boxes.
The burger I got was within my tolerance for a Whopper.
But someone else got cheese and mayo and no mustard...
Bet they were upset about that.
This just underscores that fast food is paying too much for their employees.
We were talking about winning any of several raffles giving away a hot rod and we expressed that modern engines and transmissions make life so much more bearable.
That means an engine and transmission swap on anything we might win.
We then turned to what our dream car might be and I mentioned that I like the MOPAR big cars like the Imperial and Fury.
An LS swap would be the best/cheapest, but that's a GM engine into a MOPAR and that just pisses people off.
A Hemi®™ crate engine and trans would retain the MOPAR, but it's a lot more expensive and a lot more finicky for the home-tuner.
The guy who has the money to already be building his dream car(s) says, "Put in a Coyote motor and piss everyone off!"
Then it hit me.
If you're going to be sacrilegious about engine swaps and be a heretic...
The car you put a Ford Coyote engine into is...
A Plymouth Road-Runner!
It's so damned obvious.
If I were very lucky, I could be buried in secrecy so my grave don't get violated.
Pat Harrigan (R-NC) wants LEOSA style carry for current and former Special Forces personnel.
He says he can think no finer group of people...
First, fuck you Pat.
Second, I can think of a finer group who is far more deserving of national reciprocity.
Everyone.
I've been opposed every and all LEO sop law ever proposed or passed.
We don't need more "only ones" legislation. We need more everyone's.
I especially love the quote, "If enacted, the law would represent a significant expansion of gun-carry rights for service members and veterans, creating a new nationwide benefit not currently available to most civilians."
Let me amend that:
If enacted, the law would represent a significant expansion of gun-carry rights for SOME service members and SOME veterans, creating a new nationwide benefit not currently available to most civilians.
An infinitesimally small portion of service members and veterans, I might add.
Seeing as I am a GOA member and a PSA customer, the injuction should cover me with regards to silencers, short barreled rifles and short barreled shotguns.
A silencer, according to 790.001 (9) is just another firearm.
That means it's an FDLE check away from over the counter, same day purchase.
Short barreled guns, however, have 790.221.
790.221 Possession of short-barreled rifle, short-barreled shotgun, or machine gun; penalty.—(1) It is unlawful for any person to own or to have in his or her care, custody, possession, or control any short-barreled rifle, short-barreled shotgun, or machine gun which is, or may readily be made, operable; but this section shall not apply to antique firearms.(2) A person who violates this section commits a felony of the second degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.(3) Firearms in violation hereof which are lawfully owned and possessed under provisions of federal law are excepted.
Does the injunction eliminate the provisions of the federal law, making short barreled guns illegal without a tax stamp? Or does the injunction serve as the provision going forward?
IANAL.
More murders in Chicago than all of Florida's major cities combined!
Except for one teensy problem... Jacksonville.
According to the article, Chicago has had 211 murders this year. The three cities they cite had 29. Jacksonville had 27.
The headline is still correct, but you have to include Jacksonville when you talk about major cities in Florida, especially since Jax is punching above its weight for crime.
I cannot find any news that the government appealed the ruling in Texas to the 5th circuit, so the as applied ruling stands?
Next we get to see who is actually named in this.
I remember at least one video naming Palmetto State Armory's customers, and I have been a frequent PSA customer.
We're about an hour and a half from the first transfer in Texas without a Form 4.
Are they live streaming it?
I should check.
The best way to be virtuous is to simply be so.
Live it.
If someone notices, great!
If someone praises you for it, fine.
The problem with virtue signalling is the act of seeking praise by announcing you're doing virtuous things is, well, the opposite of virtue.
Steve Jackson Games added a full page of explanation about how they changed Eskimo to Yupik and that "slavery is bad, m'kay."
They could have just made those changes without mentioning why and I doubt that anyone would have started a thread demanding that the kidnappers of the rightful king of Fnordia be named, as they were in past editions.
Eskimo isn't even as controversial as they seem to think it is, but I think that change has a lot more to do with David Pulver and Sean Punch being Canadian than a general recognition that Eskimo is a slur. Especially since it's not even certain where the word originated from!
Aside: Am I the only American who is dead sick and tired of Canadians telling us we're doing our culture wrong and demanding we change how we do things?
They still use "slave" or "enslavement" 25 times in 4eR; down from 52 times in 4e. 12 of the reductions comes from replacing "slave mentality" with "heteronomy."
Many of the deletions are changing to a term like "subject" and the deletion makes me think they've done more to sanitize it than condemn.
The eliminated mentioning that slaves were low status under the rules for status. How did that mention glorify slaving? They left in that being a serf is a low status job. Being a slave is worse than being a serf, how does mentioning that keep us from figuring out that slavery is wrong?
They had to spend extra time explaining slavery in historical context because of this.
Taking it out of the minion enhancement for familiars didn't hurt or help.
Still, these changes could have been made silently to the same effect, they just wanted to make sure they got credit from... Whomever keeps score on this.
I do know that page of virtue signalling has cost them more than one sale. That should matter to them more than it does.
PS: They even mention cleaning up use of the word "Black" and capitalizing it when referring to a Black person, and the word was never used that way in the original 4e...
DSArms aka DSA should sue the Democratic Socialists of America also aka DSA for use of their trademark.
I think they are due substantial financial compensation for the clear damage done to their reputation.
A Better Way 2A asks, "If gun rights are for everyone, why do you get upset when everyone shows up?"
They go on to explain what closed minded, anti-LGBT fools conservative gun owners are.
I think that might just be the reason... You're being rude and you're displaying prejudice.
Maybe stop?
You're not Antifa or Socialists, but you're standing with members of Antifa, the John Brown Gun Club and the Socialist Rifle Association.
Smiling.
Yeah.
There's your reason they get upset when "everyone" shows up.
First Champions/Hero then GURPS share a problem.
They are point based systems with near-zero guidance for where you should put your points.
"The good news is that nothing is decided for you. The bad news is that nothing is decided for you." - FuzzyGeff.
In OG AD&D, the RPG I cut my teeth on, you got to make two decisions in character generation: Race and class. Even so, your choices could be limited by shitty die rolls.
Traveller, even more so. Bad stats rolls could force you into the "Other" career path.
This problem was less obvious in Champions because most people had a comic book character they were trying to recreate and a clear vision of your character concept steers you through the process.
Providing you do some reading.
Which made me realize that I'd seen this kind of break before.
A player who makes a fighter in AD&D makes a few rolls and buy some gear and they're done making their character. It's a bit more complex in later editions and Pathfinder, but the player doesn't need to do much reading to get their character done and be effective.
But a player who makes a spell caster needs to select their spells. That means they need to open the Player's Handbook and learn how the spells they've chosen work. It takes a lot more effort.
People naturally gravitate towards either position.
GURPS rewards the player who cracks open the book and spends the time reading about all the skills, advantages and disadvantages. It punishes the person that doesn't. In effect, it's a game made for the person who naturally gravitates towards being a spell caster.
It's exasperating trying to get someone who just wants to play the game through the character generation process because you're constantly poking them for decisions that they don't feel, thanks to playing other games, they shouldn't have to be making.
It leads to some resentment, during play, when they cannot do something that they feel is obvious that their character should be able to do.
It's because they're unfamiliar with the choices and ended up not seeing the skill or advantage that would provide them with the ability to do the things they clearly should be able to do. Since the GM cannot read their mind, we can't help realize their vision.
GURPS introduced templates to help with this, but they only take it so far and, too often, a player will make the template to the letter with little to no individualization.
All of this is a tall, thick wall barring entry into the hobby for a lot of people. Especially people who're not interested in the fantasy genre.
Marv and I went through his Twilight character and we made enough changes that I think it's fair we re-do the fight in Złoczew.
The reason the fight went the way it did was because Marv's character didn't know how to use the bayonet he was attempting to stab a guard with.
The problem with this is the character is supposed to BE Marv, if Marv was born about 30 years later.
Making yourself as a character is a time-honored way of learning the rules and we dropped the ball with his character by missing a couple of important skills that he has in real life.
Marv was trained on the bayonet when he was in the Army.
That means his character should know how to use one and that changes the outcome of the fight significantly.
Jim Geraghty wants someone to publish how many rounds we have in our critical munitions stockpiles.
During a shooting confrontation.
Something about "aid and comfort to the enemy" comes to mind about anyone who gives Jim the "straight answer" he seeks.
I might even go so far as to include Mr Geraghty as an accessory before the fact for soliciting the information from someone who would divulge the information.
Because he likes to try new stuff he's always asking what style we want him to make.
I keep saying "scotch ale!"
Since I demanded it, he insisted I come "help".
I didn't do much helping, mostly just watching and kibbutzing.
I learned a bit about brewing too.
It only took a year and a half, but I have finally moved my Thunderbird profile from Crispy IV to DerpyPuter.
I guess it was time to admit that Derpy is the main computer.
Procrastination was more at fault.
81 years ago, Fat Man was released from Bock's Car over the Imperial Japanese city of Nagasaki.
Just in case you wanted to see, graphically, how complicated separate charge rounds can get in GURPS with Gun Stats...
This is just changing the charge and firing the same M107 HE round from an M198 howitzer.
To go with full detail, you'd need this many entries for EVERY 155mm round. Fun, huh?
Would Mr Fleetwood, who was actually there, like to comment on this video?
The Boy failed to advance to the state level at Special Olympics bowling.
We kind of expected this.
His scores were the highest he'd ever gotten in practice, and that moved him up a bracket where his scores were just above the entry level.
There's always next year!
The Hiroshima post has been time corrected for the moment of detonation, which is actually on the 5th of August at 1915 hours EDT.
This happens when recording things that happen on the other side of the planet sometimes.
The more DSA candidates win in the primaries, the more I think we shouldn't have let Germany reunite.
We should have kept East Germany as it was as a living history museum so that when anyone started to forget that every political party with socialism or socialist in the name was evil, we could point them at the Democratic Republic of Germany so they could marvel at it's success.
Of course, like all political groups with socialism in their name, the real goals are not the stated ones.
Sharia is the more apt 'S' in the DSA name.
You only get to use the D a limited number of times before they lock the gate behind themselves once they obtain enough power.
It creates the classic situation you can vote your way into and have to shoot your way out. And they do love themselves some gun control, don't they?
I also notice that DSA shares a trait with another socialist in the name group. They hate the Jews. They have a lot of overlap on the political Venn diagram with "conservative" bigots there.
Dunno if we're going to dodge this civil war. Our luck has to run out eventually.
As an armchair historian and a degreed psychologist... (What an odd thing to say).
I keep watching people trying to change the word being used for something to keep someone from being offended.
I've lived through three words to describe black people politely when the previous word had become a slur.
I used to have two editions of a textbook changing the names of specific diagnoses because the name of a diagnosis was now an insult.
I've watched an NCO reply to a Black officer with, "Sir," with little doubt that he meant, "CENSORED."
I wonder how long it will be before saying "n-word" carries the same weight as CENSORED. Especially since you can tell what word was censored there, but it's OK as long as I only allude to it without actually saying it.
But you cannot avoid people insulting other people or disparaging them.
People throw slurs.
In the long run, it's generally better to let them so you can readily identify them and avoid doing business with their like.
You cannot change the words fast enough to keep someone from being offended. It's best to let them get accustomed hearing the slur until it loses its power to offend.
Being offended for someone is the absolute least helpful thing you can do about someone being offensive. Let the target of the offense get offended, or not, as they wish. Too often I find that the target dismisses the offense because they're familiar with the source only to have a third party cause a shit storm because they're all offended for the target who doesn't really care any more.
4eR has a page on their virtuousness.
Of note:
Perhaps we should take the time to learn suffixes on Greek derived words.
Someone who has a slave mentality is heteronomous.
Someone who has been forced into slavery is being subjected to heteronomy.
Of course they'd get the vapors if you called the parts of your brakes by thier proper names.
PS:
Even more amusing is they admit on p.B518 that they're aware that slavery didn't always mean Uncle Tom's Cabin.
It must be really painful to deal with the rats racing around inside their skulls trying to reconcile the world the way they want it to be, the world as it is and the world as it was.
GOA got a great ruling from a Federal Court in Texas that appears to nuke the NFA for items where the stamp was dropped to $0 for a large swath of specific people and likely everyone!
Summation here:
The government has 7 days to file an appeal to the, generally, pro-gun 5th circuit.
81 years ago, Little Boy was released from Enola Gay over the Imperial Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Got my pdf copy of GURPS 4e Revised, 4eR from now on, today.
The biggest change is the Basic Set is now a single volume. This isn't too huge because there's several people who reformatted the two books into a single pdf a long time ago.
The big functional change is going from 3-columns to 2-columns. I'm surprised at how much more readable some sections are.
The Combat Lite section has been replaced with Addendum 1 and the pages for the index from GURPS Basic Set: Characters have been given over to Addendum 2.
They're optional rules, and I think I like a couple of them. Even if several characters will need reworked from it.
Some of the new artwork is really meh. Like throwback to OG AD&D meh.
I know there are changes to "make the game more accessible" to people looking to be offended at every turn by being "less offensive" for them.
These changes don't stand out to me because I'm not looking to be offended at every turn. It ends up being mox nix and probably should have just been done without the fucking fanfare they applied to it.
It was the fucking fanfare that was pissing people off, not the changes. People are sick of virtue signalling.
Took a... something to the left front on Moxie.
The 'T' part was encased in rubber that fell apart while I was pulling it out of the tire.
Update: Reader Red's Woodsman appears to have ID'd it. The metal parts of a bicycle brake pad.
Sadly, the plugs don't appear to have taken and the hole still leaks. Time to take it to the local ma & pa tire place for a patch. Update: Ma & Pa tire place charged me the princely sum of $25 to put a patch over the hole that the plug failed to seal.
The back-up camera on Moxie was a blurry mess. $25 plus tax replacement from Amazon and it's crisp and sharp! It's amazingly good now!
Got the oil and filter changed on my father in law's truck. We'd missed the scheduled window because... I was convinced he'd taken it to a shop to have the oil done.
He hadn't. But since we used the extended miles synthetic stuff, prolly no harm.
Having a discussion on a GURPS forum where someone asked how we'd stat out the Santa-Barbara Sistemas 106mm M-DN11 high explosive anti-personnel round.
I posted the description of the round here.
I gave two ways of doing it.
First is to just treat it like it's an HE round and let it do 6dx7(0.5) pi++, linked 6dx3[5d+1] cr ex.
Second is to come up with a new round combining shrapnel and HE which has 1,000 1d-1 pi+ balls expanding from the detonation point with a linked 6dx3 cr ex.
Them: But what about X?
Me: I accounted for X. You forgot a lot of things figuring out the weight of the projectile and your reply to that tells me you have a reading comprehension problem.
Them: But I don't like how you did it!
Me: OK, do it how you like it. I don't think that matches the description of the round and I explained why when I gave stats for the new shrapnel HE round.
Them: But I don't like that way of doing it, what about Y? This makes new rules that do a better job of describing the shape of the pattern that I'm getting wrong because I'm not accounting for the fact that the round is traveling down range at the same time it explodes. Plus, let me compare it to a round I rejected as a model for this earlier.
Me: Don't care. I've figured it out to my liking and it even "will it GURPS" OK with Argentinian and Chilean usage.
Them: But you didn't answer about Y!
Me: Not going to. I explained my reasoning, said I was happy with what I came up with, and didn't need to write new rules. There's no need for Y now that I'm done.
The thing that ticks me off the most about this is Chile and Argentina appear to be the only customers for this Spanish designed and made, German type designated round. It's just not going to come up in anything I'm going to be playing.
The whole rest of the world is using clones of the US designs.
