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He's completely his old self!
All three cats like the new urinary and hairball food.
All three cats LOVE the expensive prescription food.
If we get to the end of the prescription food without a recurrence I think we're out of the woods, but I'll get another bag or two to be sure.
It's interesting that both The Lovely Harvey and I settled on flat dark earth for our go-to home defense carbines.
She more by choice than I.
I locked into FDE because the KP-15 blem lower was on sale in that color.
We fully expect no need of them at all because Elsa doesn't look to be all that strong (at the moment).
I've been saving the boxes for the ammo that's loaded in the magazines around here.
Because if something catastrophic happens, and it's the ammo, the manufacturer of that ammo will wanna know what lot the problem was in.
It occurred to me that I don't need to keep the boxes if I record the lot number in some other manner.
There's a lot more space on my little gun-shelf now.
Having mentioned my old Mini-14... I checked to see what the $400 not-an-AR from 25 years ago was going for.
$1,500 to $3,000?
Are you kidding me?
I really shouldn't be surprised, the current production Mini is a lot more expensive than the average AR, so it stands to reason that the vintage models would be raised by the same tide.
FuzzyGeff put it very well when I told him about the dramatic increase in value, "Only because we sold them already."
Ain't that the truth?
That's a bolt lock cover plate p/n MS06700 from a Mini-14 I have not owned in 25 years.
It was replaced on the rifle with a plate from Square-B to mount a weaver base to the gun. That plate and the base went with the rifle to its new owner.
I found it hiding in the bottom of a ammo can when I was organizing and inventorying.
Every once and a while I get a nostalgia hit and want an old 181 to 186 series Mini-14. It passes quickly.
I was a fairly early adopter of 6.8x43mm in SPCII spec.
Dottie was the second AR I ever pieced together.
She doesn't get out much any more.
I couldn't think of a better excuse to drag her out and take some pics.
It's a damn fine round and it's dropped every animal I've shot with it, dead right there.
One animal, total, in fact.
A growling and advancing pit-pull that had just shredded a cat adjacent to my driveway. At all of five yards. Got a "good shootin'!" from the responding deputy who also wrote citations to the owners of the dog rather than arresting me as they demanded.
The whole story there was them not getting their yard dog-proofed and the dogs running the neighborhood.
One morning a friend who lived down the block was pounding on my door asking if one of my cats had gotten out, because the dogs were shredding one that looked like Licorice. Licorice was safe, but the other kitty was toast.
The dogs were defending their kill when I tried to see if it was the next-door neighbor's cat.
Plus!
K-6 grade kids were starting to accumulate at the end of my drive opposite the dead kitty and the dogs were threatening them.
My friend and I corralled the kids into my house and I grabbed Dottie then tried to shoe them away.
That got the smaller one to give the "I'm gonna get you" body language and that got her shot. The male ran off.
Cops called, accolades received, citations written.
Two weeks later the cops showed up at my door again. This time asking if I shot the other dog. "Nope." I replied.
It'd been found shot dead and draped over the owner's fence-gate.
I still have the deputy's card he gave me when he said, "have your lawyer contact me if they sue." They never did. It's been 12 and some years, I don't think they're gonna.
They moved out about a month later.
The things that I'm ready for never seem to happen.
So we're all set for the incoming tropical storm, Elsa.
The local weatherman we're following is comparing it to Eta late last year.
That was pretty much a non-event here as we're high enough that tropical storm flooding is a not a threat.
The Aimpoint Comp M4s and Vortex Strikefire II red-dots have the same threads for the Killflash anti-reflection device.
Aimpoint wants $50 for theirs, and Vortex wants $35.
I'd get the Vortex and an(other) PMAG.
Are you looking for a BUIS to complete your clone of a modern USGI rifle or carbine?
Then you need a Matech BUIS!
They're $100.
But on Ebay, you can find them much cheaper.
BUT...
Nothing before the but matters...
Look at the pictures carefully.
Do they show the sight with the rear aperture folded down?
If not, stay away.
The Matech is known for two flaws. First is the screw on the clamp breaking, the second is for the latch that holds the aperture stowed wearing down.
If it won't stay stowed, it's a spring loaded rear sight, not a back up iron sight.
Pay attention out there!
My M16A4 clone is no longer chasing the willow-d-wisp of being any sort of period correct.
This configuration suits me just fine. Except for the optic, I'd call it legal (and maybe even with the optic if a CO was being nice).
The people in the A4 clone world are farb catchers like the worst of the flight-sim rivet-counters.
They basically only allow the fire control group and a semi-auto lower to be anything but genuine real deal parts. And Gods save you if you put an M150 ACOG with a KAC rear BUIS!
I'm not dropping another two grand on the rifle to get complete authenticity.
What I had pictured here:
Meets my personal standards and you can't tell the optic isn't the correct sub-model from farther than you can read 8-point font anyway!
Imagine the vapors if I'd just used a green illuminated TA31 BAC instead of a TA31-F RCO M150 here!
One bonus of going my own way is to completely ignore the absolutely retarded sling and buttstock magazine pouch that's on every Jarhead A4.
If you look hard at it and think, "if a three-prong flash-hider was dropped for snagging on shit..." you've got to wonder what all the yards of loose 1-1/4" webbing will grab onto.
Ironically taken with my cell phone...
But that rig took this:
Focus is jacked because of high-level haze. It's been cloudy as heck lately making it near impossible give that tripod a good test drive on celestial stuff.
WOW is it a nice tripod head. I can hit the 50x zoom in the display and make the fine adjustments on stuff like the sun, and smoothly move it to track while it slowly creeps out of frame.
It was a fine Prime Day deal too. Half price!
I have finished inventorying the ammo supply here at Casa McThag.
Three times.
I keep bumping into more stashes where boxes got tucked because the cans of the main stash are full.
I'm chasing it down, but...
Buying an extra box every time I went shooting appears to have paid off.
Something very irritating has been finding several boxes of something contain not a single round of what's on the box. Like a box of .38 Special Winchester White Box that has 10 rounds of Remington and 20 rounds of Magtech in it.
I think this is from buying ammo from the Deer Hunter's "ammo that came with a gun a customer sold us" section. Things get mixed up down that end of the counter.
Marv drilled a hole through one of the screws holding the ocular housing to his FACOG and we bought some thicker fishing lead line and sleeves.
Some clipping, threading and crimping later...
...just like the real thing!
So I grabbed the Primary Arms PAC5X and drilled some holes in one of the screws...
I broke one of Marv's 1mm bits, but was able to finish with a burr mill in a Dremel!
If only Primary Arms would have sold me the rubber bikini tethers they still use on the SLx Gen III 5x scope...
No.
Primary Arms 5x Prism scope is not just as good as an ACOG for 1/3 the price.
But it might be good enough.
I don't abuse my stuff, but the PAC5X has lived on two different guns now and never had a hiccup.
It's never lost zero.
Never failed to light up, a feature I don't use often thanks to the reticle being perfectly visible in normal light.
Never fogged over.
I like the ACSS reticle slightly better than the chevron and a LOT better than the cross.
The range finding mark is handy.
But...
It's bigger.
It's heavier.
The range markings are much smaller.
It has a much narrower field of view.
I am not so well heeled as to start tossing either sight down the driveway, but I do remember someone freezing a PAC5X in a block of ice, then SHOOTING it out to find it intact and working.
Marv says,
I did well at 100 yards. Usually I'm all old and shaky.
I really like the KE Arms lower and the FACOG seems to be working well for me.
Midway has the best price on a new 4x32 TA31 BAC ACOG.
Green chevron .223/5.56 reticle, no flippy caps or killflash.
That's NEW. Full warranty, fresh H3.
$1,029.99.
This puts a lot of used ACOGs into perspective.
$900 to $950 simply isn't enough discount to take the risk of no warranty or the additional expense of refreshing the tritium.
Take note: If the milsurp ACOG you're looking at has a Bible verse, it was made before 2010 and your tritium WILL need refreshed.
How can you tell if that ACOG used to be mil? If the serial starts with a 'D' then goes 'Cage Code" "Model" then "Serial"... That was sold to the DoD originally. I asked.
The Bible verse is not a definitive marker for age, but Trijicon is responsive to giving you the born-on date via their contact link on their web page. That's how I asked.
If it's 10 years or older, because of the tritium renewal, I'd steer clear of anything more than $800; and that top end better be a nearly unused sight.
In general, I'd steer clear of former gov't sights because they're just stolen too often or the agency that dumped it routinely doesn't get it off the books properly. That makes getting your warranty honored sticky.
Caveat Emptor!
A test I will never perform for fear of having my fears confirmed.
I'm always the friend who initiates contact and suggests things to do.
It's vanishingly rare for my friends to contact me and say, "let's do something!"
The test is to stop making contact for a while and see who calls if only to ask, "where have you been?"
I suspect that if I did that I'd find that I didn't have any friends at all.
That's not entirely true, but it's mostly true. It's a bit depressing, actually.
I've made a couple of tentative experiments, selectively, with other friends.
It's going on years now without them even attempting to contact me.
It's very sobering to think that you're so easy to let out of someone's life.
The ACOG Mr Fleetwood purchased is the M150 variation of the TA31 RCO.
Being that it was government surplus it was missing $50 worth of kill-flash and flippy-covers.
$795 shipped.
Because it was surplus, no warranty.
Because of its age, the tritium is on borrowed time.
$180 to $300 to fix that.
If you fix the tritium, the rumor is you will then get the warranty. This is not confirmed.
More than one place says that just the tritium is $180 and $300 is more in line with fixing a stuck prism.
$1,035 total to replace the tritium and killflash.
MSRP is $1,779.
B&H Photography carries it for $1,239.
Still saved $200! $380 if you leave the tritium alone.
PS: Sellers on Ebay: You might want to check what retailers are selling brand new ones for before setting your reserve. If you filled out that warranty card, you've voided the warranty for the second owner, and thus devalued the scope even if it's in brand new condition.
The ACOG worked as advertised.
Exactly as advertised.
That is the sole surprise. One becomes accustomed to ads being synonymous with lies.
Now that I've verified that, it's off to its rightful owner.
Whenever he can be troubled to come get it.
First, I thought that I didn't like ACOGs.
Thinking back, the one I used before was a TA01 or TA11.
No light pipe.
It was carry-handle mounted on a friend's A2 type upper, and too far forward.
This one is a TA31 and mounted on a flat-top where it's supposed to be for proper eye relief.
Second, there's no tinting evident. The colors through the lens are the same as without. The only other scopes that I've played with like this are my Nikon on my .270 and the long-sold SUIT.
The others all have a green/blue tinting to them. Some worse than others.
The FACOG is much more green than the ACOG.
Third, it was kind of nice to not need a coin or even the turret cap to make zero adjustments. If you think about it, with the cap on, what need is there to prevent turning the adjustment by hand?
Fourth, so far the light getting to the chevron has been correct for the ambient lighting. It's never been too bright or too dim, though when your in the dark and shooting into the light the red can disappear without problem because it's an etched reticle.
Others have indicated that spending the money on service also puts it back into warranty for the second owner.
Marv was able to get his FACOG zeroed at 100 yards as well. Shot a smaller group than me too (asshole). :)
Considering how small our 25m groups are, I think we've just picked up bad habits from shooting rifles at pistol ranges. We're setting ourselves to extending our range.
Mr Bear scared me today.
He puked up his entire breakfast without a hairball and then seemed ill.
Off to the vet, because that kind of puking can be a sign of the bladder being blocked again.
Temperature normal, small bladder.
We're still good.
The vet theorizes that he simply overate because I broke the routine and kept the other two away from his medicinal food. They all love the expensive medicinal food.
The ACOG came with this handy carry pouch and a paper copy of the TM. Stuffed into the TM was the Change 1 for it.
Almost reflexively, I pulled the staple and replaced the affected pages with the one from the change.
I haven't updated a TM for thirty years...
What were the changes? Mostly boilerplate about tritium.
The tape switch for the M951 light is no longer secured by friction and prayer!
It is now secured by Archimedes and Loctite!
The ACOG that Mr Fleetwood generously paid for has arrived!
At 14.8 oz. it's substantially lighter than the Primary Arms PAC5X's 18.2 oz. Much wider field of view, though slightly less magnified.
The illumination is shockingly bright. The tritium is still hanging in there, but very dim. The TM says that your eyes should be dark adjusted before using it, so I think that dim is intentional.
Killflash and front flippy covers on order from B&H Photography. LT100 mount after the 1st when the VA dumps into my account.
The recent case where a cop rolls up on a dead active shooter and the armed citizen who ended the active shooting; then wastes the INNOCENT armed citizen is NOT A GOOD SHOOT.
How can I tell?
Because if YOU or I rolled up on that exact same scenario and shot the armed citizen, we'd (rightfully) be facing murder charges.
The cops shoot the wrong person far too often.
All in the name of "officer safety".
I've railed on this shit before. Great powers, no responsibility.
Kill anyone you want, you're cop, no consequences of you follow the departmental policy.
Departmental policy and training which doesn't care about innocent civilians as long as the cop gets home alive.
The State has a DUTY to not murder its innocent citizens. The State has a DUTY to make sure of whom is who before opening fire.
Even if that costs a few agents of the state to do so.
You wanted the job, Officer, these are the risks you must assume when you take it. When you put on the uniform you stop being you and become a small piece of The State. The State will survive and even thrive if it loses you. The innocent citizen, you were supposed to be protecting, died because of your failure to do any sort of investigation. Did you even yell, "Stop! Police!" before you opened fire without understanding what was going on?
Maybe if your professional organizations and unions weren't so Hell bent on fucking my rights over every time someone hints at expanding carry rights in Florida I'd have a modicum of sympathy.
It's high time we on the pro-rights side of things start getting it through our thick skulls that the cops are The State and not us.
The State should always be held to a higher standard on the use of force than a citizen, not a lower one; because The State is not in mortal danger even if 20 cops die rushing into an active shooting.
With gun and ammo sales skyrocketing like they are I need to ask:
Has anyone seen Pete Brownell and Joe Biden together at the same time?
I have done a long, complicated and math heavy comparison between 5.56x45mm NATO and 7.62x51mm NATO in GURPS terms.
7.62 does more damage (24.5 v 15.5) per shot, but thanks to the lower Rcl number, 5.56 will hit more often; thus doing more damage overall.
When you couple that with being able to carry more than twice the ammo 5.56 wins, hands down.
I am proud to say that when you start servicing the beaten zone, 7.62 comes back into the fore thanks to rules which tend to level the weapon specific reason you'd pic a 5.56 gun.
I've set myself to learning how the 7.8 lb.(loaded with a 30-round magazine) M16A1 morphed into the 11.3 lb. M16A4 (loaded with optics and light).
The entire point of the AR-15 was to make a lightweight rifle.
The M16A4, and accouterments, is heavier than the 10.9 lb. M14!
Mr Fleetwood, being of unquestionable generosity, has fronted the funds for a 2011 model year Trijicon ACOG TA31RCO M150.
We will be comparing the genuine article to Marv's GENUINE Chinesium FACOG.
We are absolutely certain that the $66 Chinese version will be superior to the $1,800 American competition in every way.
He's not hiding under the bed or in his carrier any more.
He's even informing Beeper (our youngest) that HE will NOT be backing down from her any more.
He's got double the mass on her and the same speed.
When I had my accident off the tank turret, my left leg was the far more damaged.
But ever since I completed therapy, my right leg has hurt more.
Not that long ago they confirmed that my left was still in worse shape.
Especially the hip.
The physical therapist who issued my cane suggested walking differently and now that it's been a year or two...
It worked. Less pain in that hip and the right leg.
What I had been doing is leaning on my cane in my right hand when I was putting weight on my right leg. This put more load on the bad left hip!
The new way is to lean on the cane with my weight on my left leg with the cane still in my right hand.
Small changes make big differences.
Now! To lose 100 lb.!
Unless someone gets REALLY generous and donates an ACOG or the money to purchase one, this is where Valentine will sit.
She's quite the porky girl.
The base rifle is 9.2 lb. with a loaded PMAG M3, 1x 11-rib panel, 2x 5-rib panels, VFG and the tape switch.
The light is 0.5 lb. The scope is 1.1 lb. The sling is 0.3 lb.
Grand total of 11.1 lb.
FuzzyGeff's heavy barreled AR is the only one of similar mass.
Base rifle is 9.3 lb. loaded with a PMAG MOE.
Scope is 1.3 lb. Bipod is 0.7 lb. Sling is 0.3 lb.
Grand total is 11.6 lb. and we had regarded Olga as being unreasonably heavy. At least it's a full featured rifle, unlike my A4 clone.
The Marines toted something like Valentine as an everyday rifle?
Every little good-to-have item you clamp onto a rifle adds mass. Someone thinks it's worth it, they got downright snippy when the idea of issuing M4A1 carbines came up.
Do I need nukes and F-15's to take over the government; or just a buffalo hat and some tattoos?
Because if it's the latter, I don't think it matters that the government has nukes and F-15's of their own.
In fact, if it's the latter, it's prolly going to fall over on its own in a light breeze.
Brownell's Aluma-Hyde flat dark earth is still not a match for Magpul's.
It's the closest paint match yet, though!
Here it is compared with the USGI issue tan magazines:
He's a searcher. Medium coyote tan is close enough (literally) for Government Work®™ to me.
Upgraded the Behind Every Blade of Grass carbine with a KE Arms trapdoor buttplate.
To remove the genuine plastic (don't settle for imitation) solid buttplate you will need one each of 5/32" and 1/8" Allen wrenches.
Check the inside of your stock for flash from the receiver half joining operation.
Installation of the new buttplate is the reverse of removal!
It feels exactly the same on the shoulder, But I like having a storage compartment.
Cast out the unclean!
This picture made a poster in an M16A4 clone thread "throw up in their mouth" because of the Chinese homologue to an ACOG.
VICTORY!
I only have what real-deal stuff is already on Valentine because there's lots of cheap surplus and I am patient with my bidding on ebay and GunBroker.
Such deals just don't exist on a real-deal ACOG. Even with depleted tritium, they run over $700.
It makes me wonder, again, what's the goal of a clone?
He is far more his normal self than he's been in a long time.
He must have had trouble longer than we thought.
We're feeling guilty about not noticing.
He's been going to the pan like he should, big improvement.
The expensive, prescription, food is to his liking.
The not near as expensive low-ash food is a hit with the other two.
Dingus likes to sneak Bear's leftovers; the joke is on him. It's good for him too!
I had the M16A4 clone out to double check the weights.
I noticed that the RAS has a threaded hole every 4th slot.
"What size threads are those?" I wondered.
After a brief search I discover they're 1/4-20 threads.
What else around here uses a 1/4-20 thread?
Yes, you can use them to mount your rifle on a camera tripod.
Now I'm wondering if the Amazon Basics tripod is actually rated for the near 11 lb. of Valentine.
Marv is far more willing than I am to spend little money on a cheap scope and see how it goes.
He bought a fake EOTech that only died because the batteries leaked.
That thing survived everything we threw at it.
Being submerged, tossed across the room, frozen... even several hundred rounds from his 6.8.
Now he's got a FACOG to mess with.
I'm eager to see if it survives
