Pre Paint

With pouches and gear, front.

With pouches and gear, back.  With RPG-2 rounds standing in for Energa grenades.

Overall from the rear.

Paint is the next step!  Actually, basing is next, then paint.  Still have a bit of sculpting to get done on the snake body.  I am actually rather pleased with the effect that an allen wrench created to make the scale texture on the body.  I have a lot to remove on his rattle.

The hat looks too much like an Elmer Fudd hat.

So I tried the Russian version of the boonie hat.

It doesn't look right in person.

Since Robert is a Vietnam veteran, I decided to give him a battlefield pick-up NVA hat!

Much more like how I envisioned him when I was allocating the points!

Robert Jenkins

Mr Jenkins is a Rhodesian mercenary.  Well, from an alternate Rhodesia in a world called "Merlin".

Merlin is part of the GURPS 4e meta-universe detailed in Infinite Worlds and got a whole book in 3e called Technomancer.

These are works in progress of making a 1/35 scale representation of him.

First we make the body from Sclupey plastic.

Then we add a torso from a Shanghai/Dragon Soviet Spetsnaz kit.

Then the arms and a nice L1A1 from the Dragon Vietnam Weapons kit.

Next we're going to add pouches and do some more sculpting to the snake body.  Pics as the come!

I should probably get ahead of the question.  Why Spetsnaz?  The cut of the blouse and the hat is pretty similar to what the Rhodesians were using.  When you add paint of the correct colors, it blends even better.

Beetus

The Boy is apparently suffering, not from high blood sugar, but from severe dehydration.

Home glucometers kind of rely on a certain level of flow and dilution in the capillaries to get the correct reading.  Since as you get more dehydrated, capillary flow is retarded, blood chemicals like the enzymes that note high blood sugar collect in the extremities, like finger tips where you draw the blood for a home glucometer.

At the emergency room, he took two bags of saline and reported that he felt much better.

Now all we need is a solution to our horse being led to water and refusing to drink.

CLEO Sign Off

A fellow resident of my county wrote my sheriff to see if he'd sign off on NFA items.

The response from the Pasco County Sheriff's Office:

Good afternoon Mr. *******:

Sheriff Nocco believes in the second amendment and does sign off on most ATF requests as long as the background check done on the requester meets his approval. The two instances where he has not, is for sawed off shotguns and suppressors.

With the changes of late, he said he would consider such requests, but would require that the requestor pay for a psychological exam from a licensed psychologist in good standing in addition to a thorough background check. Once those are completed he would consider. There are never any guarantees that he will sign. When he signs those forms, along comes a huge responsibility.

Terry Phayre, Executive Director
Office of the Sheriff
8700 Citizens Drive
New Port Richey, Florida 34654
(727) 844-7700

In other words, he doesn't believe in the 2nd amendment at all.  If he truly did, then he'd recognize that it's a right and not subject to the whims of appointed or elected officials.

I am not a fan.  I think the deputies should look like cops, not soldiers.  I am terrified at the new slogan on the new cars, "We Fight Together".

Time to wander down to the Republican party office and get to work on a primary challenge.  If that fails, we cannot do worse than this with a Democrat.

A personal observation about this guy, he's built like a tank.  I can't but help but think of roid-rage when I look at him.  Not that I've ever seen him, even once, lose his temper; it's just that once you've been the victim of bullies you tend to spot the predators on the horizon.  Predator with a badge!  Yaaaaa!

Can't Catch A Break

The Boy's last blood-work showed a little high on blood sugar.

The Lovely Harvey used her glucometer to check tonight.  401!

Normal is around 100.

Off to the e-room!

Score

Just out of curiosity, how many points does a hover conversion cost you in the NCRS?

Baking A Snake

I am making a 1/35 scale figurine of one of my characters!

He's a snake chimera.

I've made two snake-chimera characters.

Do I make the SEAL with the M60 or the Rhodesian mercenary with the FAL?

I could go either way.

What's Shut Down Again

The mail is still being delivered.

My VA disability check was deposited.

The VA clinic was open.

Except for some nutcase in a VW Golf GTI wearing a plastic colander on his head with what had to be a fake M2HB on the roof, the roads are clear (almost as if they were locally operated).

Not seeing the down side to the shut down.

Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Update: Stolen from Arfcom:

On Champions

The ancient and hoary know it as Champions.

Implacable yutes will think of it as The Hero System.

I remember making oh so many characters.

I read comics, I played RPG's, so of course making a super-hero character was a perfect fit.

I was a super fan of the Byrne/Claremont days of X-Men, so I wanted to do something like that.

I was not very good at realizing my ideas so none of my "mutant" characters ever gelled.

Because I was a Byrne fan, I picked up Alpha Flight.

Guardian really resonated with me.  So I started making "dudes in suits".  The obvious inaccessible focus limitation also gave a point break on the powers, so it was a win.

I liked speed, strong defense, moderate attack strength and flight.

This was the Tomcat suit.  Like Iron Man, the Tomcat suit had numerous marks (named after Grumman planes).  Some of the parallels with Iron Man were interesting since I didn't actually READ Iron Man at the time.

Things that never changed.  Force field for defense.  Energy blast for attack.  Flight.  And a hand to hand killing attack (claws).

The relative ratios of those things changed a lot.  A teleport was added in quite often.

The suit enhanced the wearer's physical attributes (again with the OIF focus making them cheaper) and I always bought more Speed.  Speed was your number of actions per turn (up to 12) and I always took at least a 6.  I realized early on that it was effectively a multiplier for all of your powers.  Doubling your speed doubled the number of attacks and doubled how far you could travel.  It made me more effective.

That was the niche in the team I preferred.

Nothing underlined it more than when I made a brick.

Bricks are strong, tough and slow.  S-L-O-W.

Speed of 3 tops.  But all the points I wasn't spending on movement and speed went into defense.  Super high PD and ED (no so much on defense from mind control).  A hand to hand attack that was nearly unstoppable.  But I had to walk up to whom I was going to hit and then hit them.

I was OK with the character until I realized that with a speed of 3, you sit at the table and do nothing most of the time.  Since the bad guys with a 4 or 5 speed went more often they definitely made sure they used a bit of move to stay out of reach.  Yeah.

Group politics meant that the Brick slot was the only one open on the team.  The GM's policies ensured that a brick would not move out of the defined mold.  Bricks don't fly!  Bricks don't have ranged attacks.  Bricks don't have high Dex or Speed!

If you want me to keep playing in your group I have to be enjoying myself, and I wasn't.  The capper with this group is they're the ones who taught me to never tell anyone if you're carrying.

I was polite about it.  Informed them there was a gun in my bag.  They insisted that it be stored in a cabinet, but that's OK you know where it is.  When we got done I went to the cabinet to recover my pistol and it wasn't there.  They'd moved it while I was in the bathroom.  Perhaps I was paranoid and there was no need to carry.  But if the need had arisen, the gun was not where it was promised.

That's not about Champions at all though.

One thing about Champions that I am happy about is that it got me used to building a character with a point system.  That left my mind open to the idea of trying GURPS.  Honestly, I've never looked back since I started with GURPS.

Time and again I've made worlds where there's a genre mix.  Or someone wants to use a weapon that's outside the present genre (like a sword in Twilight 2000).  GURPS is the first RPG where I could have that Walker Colt on my belt with a katana.

But GURPS fell the fuck apart when you tried to make a super hero!  The way to make a kick-ass super in GURPS 3e was levels of wealth and levels of high TL.  Then buy a TL10 battlesuit from Ultra-Tech.  I still played Champions to scratch the comic hero itch.  GURPS 4th Edition addressed the problem and you can now make super heroes that don't make you look for ways around the rules.

It's a little ironic to me that when GURPS hit third edition it was considered overly complicated and cumbrous.  Fourth edition simplified and unified the powers.  Current edition Hero is a mess, every bit as bloated and cumbersome as GURPS was purported to be.

I am Angus, and I am a geek.

Last Day Begins

2013 KTKC wraps up today and I've done better this year than I have done in the previous two years combined!

I feel like I, no WE, deserve some sort of "most improved" award; I made my stated goal for the first time and having met that goal, surpassed it by more than the entire donation from last year.  We got $45 the first year, $250 last year and so far (still time to donate!) $775 this year.

Truly, everyone who contributed rocks!

Shut It Down

Shut it down.

Shut it all down.

Time to let the Free Shit Army get screwed over...

But wait, they won't.

Congress doesn't pass anything for the entitlement checks to be written.  This is about cutting discretionary funds.

This only hurts people who pay taxes or are paying for a government service.  Like wanting NFA paperwork to go through.  Like wanting to vacation in one of our OUR national parks.

The people "laid off" by a shut down will be unaffected since the resumption of .gov always includes their back pay.

However.

Everyone being all happy that the republicans have screwed themselves about this...  If they find a spine and stick to it long enough; people might just notice that they're getting by just fine without all of the "non-essential" government that was shut down.  When they notice that, you're going to have a lot of trouble convincing them they want government started back up.

Gun Show Meh

I was so excited about the gun show at the county fairgrounds I couldn't even muster the energy to get dressed.

I'm not in a buying mood, so it would have been like reading a book in a whorehouse.

Not ACA

October first marks the day when, traditionally, Florida Corvette owners with the dual top option can place the solid top in storage and put the clear top on the car because the temperatures will have dropped enough that the sun will not kill you.

Not Synonymous

Affirmation of one thing is not automatically defamation of another, even if they are diametrically opposed.

Common Refrain

Very commonly I appear to be expected to help people out with things I have no interest in.

Just as commonly when I learn about the thing I am not interested in I find the person I am supposed to be helping doesn't really want my damn help; they want to climb up on their cross in righteous indignation about how they've been screwed over by the vendor/manufacturer.

Have fun up there, wave at Jeebus!

Of note is the fact that prior to being asked if I will help, I had no knowledge of the thing at hand.  Presumably you obtained the product because of your interest.  Why then did I discover the product you selected is not what you wanted when you're the one who's supposed to know about this stuff?

Related.  It is not my fault that the free/cheap product doesn't work.  It is not my fault that their customer support is worthless.  It is not my fault that the product/service that will readily perform the task you wish performed is "too expensive".  It is not my fault if a given product has prerequisites that you don't meet.

In short it's a problem of your making and I have been burned too many times trying to help.

I refuse to own the problem once I have helped because you didn't understand my explanation.  I refuse to own the problem because I did not say what you wanted to hear.  I most especially will not take the blame if you don't take my advice or follow my instructions!

It's too the point with some topics and some people that they get a brusque response.  "Why doesn't this work?"  Based on past experience, because you're using it.

Am I talking about you?

It sure is a sunny day today.

KTKC Is A Bit Short

Despite getting my personal best ever level of donations, the charity drive this year is far short of its overall goals.

AD wants to hit $10k and it's hovering at about $1,500 below that.

Could you see your way fit to donate a little more to help this along?

Two $25 donations would be about perfect!

Demonstration

Got a $5 LED flashlight from ebay.  It uses a 14500 3.7v rechargeable li-ion battery and is 7w powerful.

It's easily as bright as a similar form factor Surefire which retails for $220.

The Surefire is easily much tougher than the no-name Cree Q5 light.  Definitely more waterproof.

But is a Surefire better than a $5 flashlight?  Especially since it's the price of 44 $5 lights!

The ebay light is waterproof enough to survive in the rain, which is what I need it to survive.  I don't need a dive-light to keep in my glove box.

One thing you can do with a $5 light is slam it down on the asphalt as hard as you can, shattering the poor thing to bits and go, "oh well, I need a new light."  As opposed to not daring to do the same thing with your $220 light where if you do break it you go, "oh FUCK!  My expensive light is ruined!"

I have seen this demonstrated.  The person who put me onto the cheapo light is more than willing to break one.  The owner of the $220 Surefire declined to emulate the destructive testing regimen.

The light thing reminds me of so many "tactical" things.

$300 for a pair dockers?  Are you fucking high?  Yet people buy them and extoll their virtues and they cannot be told from the $15 Wal Mart captive store brand at 15 feet.  You paid 20x as much for a pair of pants!  Even worse is you didn't even avoid them being made in China.  I've been known to pay a premium for American made goods, but your extra $285 doesn't get that.

Will your $300 pair of slacks outlast a $15 pair?  Most assuredly.  Will it outlast twenty pairs of $15 slacks?  Probably not.

The next question about pants is really one of style.  There are places I would not wear dockers.  Dockers are associated with dress-code in my mind; you wear them because you must look a certain way and the environments where this is true preclude a necessity for requisite level of ruggedity.

What do I wear for rugged use?  Jeans.  Good old fashioned denim.  $10-30 at Wal-Mart, $20-50 at Target.  Considering it was expansion of my waist and not wear that retired the last ten pairs of jeans, I'd be really mad if I'd spent more than $25 on them.

I admit that I am forgoing secret pockets for my carry gun, but I don't need them and certainly don't think they're worth an extra $250 over the expensive "high falootin'" Target brand.

Am I being cheap?  You're darn tootin'!  I am also being frugal and pragmatic.  I am being honest about my needs and the demands I put my stuff to.

I will certainly spend more money to get better quality where there's a benefit to me for doing so.  You may notice in a couple of pics that I have genuine Chuck Taylor All-Stars for sneakers.  Because of my particular orthopedic problems, normal tennies are painful and wear out in six months.  I get a couple of years from a pair of Chuck's and without the pain.  $60 for two years or $20 four times?

Dealer Accounts

Mailed off a copy of my C&R to Midway today.

I hear tell Brownells has a similar deal, but their web page is obtuse about how to go about it.

AIM Surplus' upload an image deal is a fail too works once you don't try to force feed it the gigantic jpg your scanner defaults to.

Century Arms' online registration demands that I format my FFL number exactly as I entered it but still declines.

Gentlemen Mind The Felt

It's toss away lines like that which make me enjoy Deadwood.

Yes Daddy

Dottie, Kaylee and the shotgun are now alike.

They have sling mounts for the Magpul MSA3 1-QD sling.

They have a bit-o-rail for my light.

Now when I fumble in the dark I only have to remember how one sling works and how one light works.

Magpul is very much the Apple of the firearms world.  Rabid followers and a tendency to have a single name for endless revisions of the same name.

Today's case in point is the "Sling Mount Kit".  Originally just an item for the ACS stock.  Now there are three different Sling Mount Kits, imaginatively termed Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3.  Guess which one the original is now...  That's right! the original Sling Mount Kit for the ACS is now the Type 3!

HEADDESK

Midway is unaware there's more than one kind, so I got the type 3 with my order.

Brownells knows there's a type 1 and 2, but doesn't seem to know about the type 3.  I should have ordered from them, but they didn't have the MOE sling mount I needed for Kaylee.  I wasn't about to pay shipping twice!

To get your Type 3 kit to work in your SGA stock, cut the supplied screw in half and discard the provided nut.  Install like you would the Type 1.

Gotta Love It

In Strike Fighters 2: Vietnam there are three campaigns, all historical.

Rolling Thunder, Linebacker I and Linebacker II.

Rolling Thunder is the longest one since it covers from 1965 thru 1968.

Actually, it's not all that historical.  The mission and target selection is a lot more like "lessons learned" from Vietnam and applied to Vietnam than how it really was.  Still, it's fun.

What happens when you apply modern tactics to this war is the historically accurate number of targets dwindle to nothing very quickly.  Imagine applying Desert Storm to Rolling Thunder.  Imagine that the lessons of TOPGUN and Red Flag had been taught and absorbed long before President Kennedy sent in advisors let alone air power.

That is how this game progresses for me.  Because I studied these lessons and can apply them.

Technological developments still happen according to the historical calendar.  If the AIM-9E doesn't make it to the unit you're playing until 1967, you have to make do with the AIM-9B until then.  It's not so bad, really.  Using modern tactics and rules of engagement allow you to actually employ the AIM-7E effectively and you just don't leave home without your SUU-23 gun pod (although it really should be an SUU-16 which is similar but powered differently but isn't included in the game).

At any rate by the time I get access to the improved AIM-9E I am all out of MiGs!  It's just not fair!

If you look close you can see those are AIM-9E under the wings.

Traveller Two Day

I have two things on my plate for Traveller.

I am writing a brief, "how to think like a Hiver" piece for Erin.  It's proving to be rewarding and frustrating.  Should be done with what I want to say sometime today and have it be readable by next week.  Some input from Fuzzygeff would be welcome since he's played one a lot more than I have.

This project also has me thinking of making a K'Kree character just to see if I could manage to make one that I'd be willing to actually play.  I think that's going to be a lot harder than the Hiver!

Moving Parts

When describing the look and feel of the Traveller universe, the ships in particular, I fall back on what I know.

Planes and ships.

Aircraft do not have an engine room.  Modern aircraft don't even have an engineer anymore.  Damn computers anyway!

Ships have engine rooms and engineers.

The bridge of my Traveller ships tend to be more like a cockpit, and everyone accepts this because spaceships have an affinity to airplanes.

But what does the engineering space look like?

Not many of us have spent any time in a genuine ship's engine room.

What got me thinking HARD on the topic was Galaxy Quest and the chompers.  It was reinforced by the depiction in the newer Battlestar Galactica of the jump drive with huge piston things slamming back and forth.

I've spent a teeny amount of time in an engine room of a ship underway.

Nothing moves except the shaft.  Things vibrate, make noise, get hot but they don't move.  Moving parts are under covers where you can't see them.

Why?

Cynical people might say OSHA.  The real answer is up on the bridge.  There's an inclinometer there.  It's super simple, it's a ball in a curved glass tube; marked in degrees, that tells how far the ship is rolling.  On a simple WW2 freighter that thing is marked to 60˚!

What happens below decks in the engine room when the ship unexpectedly rolls even 20˚?  It's not like you can see the wave coming while you're down in the bowels of the ship.  You'll stumble around like a drunk is what you'll do and you'll be grabbing onto and bracing against everything you can.  Thus, everything that moves is covered!  It's embarrassing to catch yourself on something that's going to grab your hands and pull you into it to be mangled into a bloody pulp!

As for looks?

I see a maze of piping for running coolant and fuel around (Traveller uses liquid hydrogen for fuel so it can also be coolant).  I see conduits for some serious power transmission lines because the maneuver drive is reactionless and fed right from the power plant in GURPS terms.  I see an acceleration seat and a terminal for the engineer.  I see a giant tool box with a work bench and mill, because you're on your own in deep space for anything what breaks.

Other details.  The hydrogen lines are marked.  In the GURPS Traveller universe the only thing that needs the fuel is the jump drive.  The jump engine includes a cryogenic plant that circulates the fuel and keeps it cold.  So there's a set of lines that go from the cryo plant to and from the fuel bunkers.  Since the H2 is handy, there a set of lines that runs from the bunker to the jump drive to cool it and then from the drive to the cryo plant then back to the bunker.  Then there's the fuel feed itself which leads from the bunker to the drive where it's consumed and leaves the ship.  There are also transfer lines between bunkers, feed pumps, transfer pumps and valves everywhere.

The life support system has water tankage and lines for potable, non-potable and waste water.  With their associated valves and pumps.

There are tanks and bottles of all the various gasses and fluids used by the drives and life support system.

Everything is labelled and color coded.

The valves have a motor for remote operation and a wheel for manual use.

It is well lit.

There are railings and grab bars all over the place and it's one of the few spaces that's designed with the assumption that there will be no gravity and people must still move around.  There are also ladders which are useless when the ship is operating normally, but are essential to move forward under thrust without the grav compensation gear running (the bow is "up" under thrust).

Places where you'd hit your head are padded.

But nothing is flinging back and forth like a steam engine power arm!

Cones

Or getting the damn sidewinder to do something besides make pretty smoke trails.

The AIM-9B was commissioned by the US Navy and adopted by the US Air Force to arm its fighters and interceptors to attack bombers.

Theses were the perceived threats of the day and fighters had guns to deal with other fighters, just like WW1, WW2 and Korea.

The problem begins some time after Korea when speed becomes ever more important in the design and an attitude that ACM (air combat maneuvering) or dogfighting will be supplanted by missiles and this whole thing will culminate with unmanned aircraft anyways so why make traditional fighters?

Yeah, about that.  It seems the Soviets didn't get the memo.  They kept making traditional fighters.

We didn't worry much about it since we really didn't expect to meet those short ranged things while defending ourselves agains the looming bomber threat.

Then there was Vietnam.  There our optimized for an entirely different role and theater planes met aircraft being used precisely in the role they were intended and designed for.

Oops!

A side note about one fighter we sent to Vietnam that got a bad shake.  The F-104C didn't get much air-to-air time.  It seems (now) that the Soviets had fully compromised our defense industry and had very accurate performance numbers on the Starfighter and they apparently told the NVAF to avoid them.  It's an unsubstantiated claim from a normally solid author.  Update: Found my notes, but not my references.  Project Feather Duster was a study on dissimilar ACM with all of the various planes the USAF could muster.  It showed that the F-104 was nigh unbeatable in ACM, despite the relatively short range and small weapons carriage.  IIRC the author in question named names about whom got hold of the Feather Duster report and how it got into Soviet hands.

At any rate cones.

The seeker looks forward in a cone that gets wider to the front of the missile.  Because of limited sensitivity, it can't see things that are colder than a certain temperature.  This means that it needs to see the tail pipe of the target directly.  This projects behind the target aircraft in a cone widening to its rear.

With the AIM-9B this is a 4˚ cone looking forward.  This cone must be inside an approximately 60˚ cone behind the target for the seeker to begin tracking.  The good news is the seeker is gimbaled so that it can point the center of the 4˚ cone 12.5˚ off the centerline of the missile.  The bad news is that this is still a very narrow cone!  Even worse that 12.5˚ is constrained by a 11˚ per second tracking rate.  So if a target can get out of the 4˚ cone faster than the head can slew, then missile loses lock and he escapes even it it's still inside the nominal 25˚ cone of the gimbaled head.

The missile also turns, adding its turn rate to the speed of the tracking head.  Because the missile is going much faster than the target, it needs to turn at a much higher g to follow.

In fighter terms this is a 3g break to get out of that cone and get away.  A Cessna can perform such maneuvers!  (A Cessna wouldn't need to since its internal combustion engine isn't hot enough for an AIM-9B to see).

How do you score kills with an AIM-9B?

Option A: fight like Baron Richthofen.  Sneak up behind him while he's not looking and shoot him before he realizes your shooting.  The AIM-9B is excellent if the target is not wagging its ass around.

Option B: because if they know you're there they don't sit still for it you get him into a situation where he can't put 3g on the plane anymore and has to helplessly look over his shoulder as the missile relentlessly bores in on his fragile pink body.  That is all about airspeed.

And this is why you don't wanna be in an F-4B or C over Vietnam and armed with AIM-9B.  By the time the fight slows down to the point where a MiG-17F can't pull 3g, you can't keep your nose on him and thus can't get the initial lock, assuming you don't stall or depart for trying to maneuver at such low speeds.  But there's another airspeed where a MiG-17 can't pull 3g!  Above a certain speed (500 kias or so) the Fresco's controls get too heavy for the muscles of the pilot to deflect the control surfaces enough to pull serious g!  The bad news about this is that it takes serious work to get 500+ knots on in a dogfight and remember what we said before, "don't fight how your enemy fights!"  High speed fights are where the Phantom wants to be, so don't go fast!

And they didn't.

We never did come up with effective tactics to employ the AIM-9B against fighters.  The Navy had a Come-To-Jeebus moment and founded TOPGUN to teach some ACM tactics to its interceptor thinking aviators, but another change preceded those students entering the fight: this was a new version of the Sidewinder; the AIM-9D.

The Navy looked at the problem and came away with the notion that the missile just wasn't intended to do what they were trying to use it for.  A smaller group in the fighter community also acknowledged that they didn't really know what they were doing either.  This led to a two prong attack on the problem with improved missiles reaching the fleet first.

The D model 'Winder has a greatly improved seeker head.  At first glance it doesn't seem much better.  The field of view is reduced to 2.5˚.  The limit is extended to 15˚ off center and the tracking rate is just a bit better at 12˚ per second.  Sounds like it's just as easy to defeat as the B model, huh?  It probably would be, except that it can see the target pretty much as long as it can see the back of the plane at all.  It took 4-5g to escape which was still readily available to most MiGs, the fight could be dragged to a point where a Phantom could still fly and the MiG didn't have enough energy to get it's rear arc out of the seeker's view.  Additionally the increased sensitivity of the new head also allowed it to be fired from farther away, more than three times as far!  The biggest improvement from a firing point of view was increasing the maximum launch g from 2 to 4g and the missile was also able to turn harder increasing from 14 to 24g.  The AIM-9D was a lot more effective than the AIM-9B.

Plus, by the time that TOPGUN was bearing fruit, a further improved Sidewinder was reaching the fleet.  The AIM-9G.  What the AIM-9G had that the D didn't was SEAM (Sidewinder Enhanced Acquisition Mode), this slaved the seeker head to the firing aircraft's radar and got it to begin tracking farther from "boresight".  Better tactics, better missiles, better kill ratios!

Something else worth mentioning, the D and G were also more reliable as solid state electronics replaced tube and both benefitted from a more than doubled warhead with improved fragmentation performance.  It's all win!

One would think that the Air Force would have been paying attention to what the Navy was up to and implementing a similar plan, right?

Not really.

It took them a lot longer to realize that no amount of improved procedure was going to change the reality of the cone situation.  Then, rather than adopt the Navy's improved missile, they opted for a new version of their own.  This is the AIM-9E.  Like the D, the seeker was made more sensitive and the FoV was reduced to 2.5˚; but the limit was increased to 20˚ off center and the tracking rate was cranked up to 16.5˚/sec.  The range where you could get a lock was almost doubled and the motor burned longer giving a much longer range than the B.  The E wasn't as maneuverable as the D and was more limited in its launch conditions though.  2.5g max launch g and it only pulled 18g following the target.  It was still a vast improvement and kill ratios did get better, but not as much as the Navy so the Air Force grudgingly emulated their sister service.

Still, it's all about cones and making the cones bigger makes it easier to hit.

Two Things

First, John Norman is still alive.

Second, he's still cranking out Gor novels?

Holy Hanna!

I thought those all must have been spawned in the '70's and died with disco.

I never actually read one, but I had a friend who enjoyed them a lot.

It makes me so very sad to know he didn't live to see the end of one of his favorite series of novels.

Golly

I've decided to add a light to the side of the house.

Marv, being an electrical engineer, told me how.  I said to him, "I can tell you think you've explained how; but you didn't really."

His retort:

Magpul Whore

Hi.

My name is Angus McThag and I am a Magpul whore.

It started so easy.  First a pistol grip.  Then a stock...

Suddenly there are several guns replete in Magpul accessories.

Stock, grip, handguard, QD mounts, sling loops, add-rails and even slings!

At first I told myself that I could quit whenever I wanted, but now I know the truth.

I am Magpul's bitch.

The truth is, I am not sure I should stop or even want to.

It's Official

My Curio and Relic FFL showed up today!

Like a dog with a bumper in their mouth, I have no idea what to do now.

Do I make copies?

Dare I head for the Lakeland Gun Show?

A Little More Each Day

Officer safety has officially jumped the shark.

You now have to roll your window down all the way for them to pass you a ticket?

For "officer safety".

BULLSHIT

I tested this one at home.

A ticket is a piece of paper, it's about 0.005" thick for the excellent paper I have and the paper that ticket is printed on is MUCH thinner.

Guess how far the window needs to be opened to pass a piece of paper?

Not very damn far.

Guess how much my hand has to get twixt the glass and the jamb to get that ticket inside the car?

None.

Dropping the window couple of inches allows communication and is more than enough to pass notes to your new BFF Officer Friendly.  Even if it's attached to the adorable little clipboard.

Here's another jaw-dropper for you Officer.  You work for the community and when a member of the community asks why you're demanding they do something, you have to answer.  Be polite.  If there's no law requiring that a citizen follow your command, guess what!  The citizen doesn't have to obey no matter how that makes you feel.

Why are the citizens hostile to you?  In brief it's because you don't seem to be doing anything but cracking down hard on chickenshit fines with an eye to escalating the situation to an equally chickenshit arrest when a citizen is trying to figure out what crawled up your ass today.

A citizen in a free society has every right to demand why you are commanding them to do something and be answered.  Or is it your considered opinion that this isn't a free society?

KTKC

Again, just because we shattered my goal doesn't mean you should not make a donation or even not give a second time.

It's a worthy cause.

If you need a baser motivation:  Just think of what JayG and the other big dogs saying, "WHO?" if I snagged a top-three spot!

Trust

It doesn't cost much to hang out your internet shingle and start doing testing and evaluation.

It takes a great deal of work to establish yourself as knowledgable and thorough.

It takes an instant to destroy all of that and introduce doubt.

Read this.  Be sure to check WHY he's not using or testing Frog Lube.

On one hand, I understand.  With my misophonia, Kit Kat's ads with all the crunching bug the snot out of me, and I avoid buying them because of this.

But I have not established myself as an impartial and thorough reviewer of candy bars whose opinion on their flavor matters.

Mr Touhy has his own blog and he's a contributor to The Firearm Blog.  He's done some interesting work and now I wonder if I can trust his recommendations because I see that he can be made to avoid a product with mere bright colors and shallow ad copy.  The doubt that is introduced is "what else is he not mentioning?"

All I want to know from an overview of gun lubricants is "does the product work?"

He mentioned the product in his article then engaged his inner five year old with monosyllabic replies for a while.  Dude, you brought it up!

I know that my little post will not be widely read or heeded.  Remember how much contempt we have regarding the influence of advertisers in the dead-tree gun press?  This is the opposite side of that coin.

Gell-Mann amnesia will kick in even if you do read this.

Arrrrrrr Me Heartys!

Fifteen Men on a dead man's chest. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
the mate was fixed by the sosun's pike
The bosun brained with a marlinspike
And cookey's throat was marked belike
It had been gripped by fingrs ten;
And there they lay, all good dead men
Like break o'day in a boozing ken, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of the whole ship's list, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Dead and be damned and the rest gone whist!
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
The skipper lay with his nob in gore
Where the scullion's axe his cheek had shore
And the scullion he was stabbed times four
And there they lay, and the soggy skies
Dripped down in up-staring eyes
In murk sunset and foul sunrise, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

Fifteen men of 'em stiff and stark, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Ten of the crew had the murder mark! Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
'Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead
Or a oawing hole in a battered head
And the scuppers' glut with a rotting red
And there they lay, aye, d@mn my eyes
Looking up at paradise
All souls bound just contrawise, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of 'em good and true, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Ev'ry man jack could ha' sailed with Old Pew,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
There was chest on chest of Spanish gold
With a ton of plate in the middle hold
And the cabins riot of stuff untold,
And they lay there that took the plum
With sightless glare and their lips struck dumb
While we shared all by the rule of thumb,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

More was seen through a sternlight screen...
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Chartings undoubt where a woman had been
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
'Twas a flimsy shift on a bunker cot
With a dirk slit sheer through the bosom spot
And the lace stiff dry in a purplish blot
Oh was she wench or some shudderin' maid
That dared the knife and took the blade
By God! she had stuff for a plucky jade, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

Fifteen men on a dead man's chest, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
We wrapped 'em all in a mains'l tight
With twice ten turns of a hawser's bight
And we heaved 'em over and out of sight
With a Yo-Heave-Ho! and a fare-you-well
And a sudden plunge in the sullen swell
Ten fathoms deep on the road to hell, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Arc

Since I did the Starbucks appreciation thing...

The last appreciation day I mentioned to The Wife that Starbucks is something of an innocent bystander in this fight and I was buying a cup of coffee to thank them for staying out of the fight.

Also, as Jennifer reminds me, to offset the supposed boycotts from the anti-gun side.

For whatever reason their CEO has asked gun owners to leave the guns elsewhere.  The tone from gunbloggers is, "OK, since the gun comes with me, then no me at your store."

Mr Schultz, what you've created is a gun free zone.  You very publicly announced it to the world.

You might notice that those mass shootings happen where guns are banned and never seem to happen where open carry advocates are "making people uncomfortable."

Oh Boy

I've agreed to do something and I might have bit off more than I can chew.

First, the relevant synapses are corroded and covered in dust.

Second.  The alien in question has senses I do not and I have senses it doesn't.

Yet I must still crawl into its brain case and give its perspective.

!!!!

I don' know you, but a $250 donation is stunning!

You rock, whomever you are!

Special Election

Today is the day I am supposed to go vote for one of three potential candidates in a special primary.

The guy who actually lives in the district primaried the candidate who just vacated the position and lost last election.  He's barely got signs out and no mailers.

The other two guys did not live in the district they purport to want to represent when the slot became vacant.  We just had a redistricting, so that could account for it.  If they get the nomination they have to move before the actual election in October.

One of these guys has been a mailing fool.  I could heat my house with all the flyers.  The NRA likes him.  Well, the NRA likes Harry Reid too.

He's good buddies with our sheriff, and I am not sure I am happy about that.

For the first time since I've been old enough to vote I sit here and think, "why bother?"

Not What I Expect

On a whim I bought me some Frog Lube CLP.

It smells like those pink wintergreen mints our parents and grandparents kept around the house.  I did not expect that.

On the whole, being a hidebound shooter, I am happy with Shooter's Choice for a solvent and LSA for lubricant.

I have a visceral hatred of Break-Free CLP because it was the worst "solvent" I've ever used.  We had white glove weapons inspection and CLP didn't work on the carbon fast enough to get it all when we were cleaning after coming back from the range.  The light coat we left on the weapons kept right on working on that carbon until a week later, during inspection, it came off on the probing finger of the inspecting officer.

Couple that with issue cleaning gear...  It's amazing that we ever got anything clean.

Now that I am older and wiser I know that my unit wanted the guns cleaned well past the point where it was wise.  Some residue doesn't hurt anything.

So, overcoming my skepticism about all-in-one solvent and lubricants, I've bought a bottle of the minty fresh amphibian juice.

Out the gate we have a problem.

Worst.  Bottle.  Evah.

I want the drip to go where I aim it, not cling to the side of the cap and run down the bottle.

I will be transferring it to a different bottle as soon as I remember where I put the bag of 20 I had...

Maneuver Monday

"Use The Vertical"

What the hell does that mean?

It's simple and complicated.

Fighters are talked about in terms of how many g they can pull.

At a given speed, a given g load will make a given circle.  The math is out there should you wish to hurt your brain.

So if I rolled 90˚ and pulled on the stick I would make an arc defined by my speed and g-load.

The vertical is adding the earth's 1g to your maneuver (again calculus to explain).

What the stupid books on the topic don't tell you is how much.

What I had been doing is trying to loop, that's a way to kill off a lot of precious airspeed going up and can be deadly going down if you're too low.

You actually get a lot of benefit from rolling the wings to about 75˚.

If you were looking down on the maneuver, it would look more like an ellipse and the plane doing the maneuver has changed heading faster than if it had performed a purely horizontal turn.  It also tends to complete the turn with more airspeed remaining.

All of this is so very important with the Strike Fighters era jets.  The most maneuverable planes have the worst thrust to weight ratios.  The powerful later jets have angle of attack issues that keep them from pulling enough g to keep on the tail of the smaller, lighter MiGs.

Of course in an F-4C being right on the tail of a MiG-17F does you not one bit of good in 1965.  You don't have a gun and your AIM-9B sidewinders are simply an expensive device for making an irritating noise in your headset or pretty smoke trails in the sky.  They are nearly useless as weapons against a fighter.

Since the game makes the AIM-7E sparrow better than in real life because it omits it's alarming tendency to just not work when launched (did you know that tube electronics don't LIKE to be treated like a missile is by the ground crew?).  So what the Phantom does is to use the vertical to get a good escape angle on the Fresco, firewall the burners, put some distance on then come back for a radar lock and sparrow kill.

Glad

I had the nastiest most vicious post I'd ever conceived lined up and ready to post.

I did not.

It was unfair, petty and small.

The world is better place because I deleted the draft.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL

As they say during futbol games.

I've made my $500 goal for the first time!

Happy Dance!

Thanks to everyone who contributed!

To everyone who hasn't, but was waiting for payday or something similar, there's no reason to not contribute past the goal; it is a worthy cause.

I didn't set a stretch goal for this moment, I despaired of making it, but I will put my mind to it and see if I can come up with a photo or something to commemorate it properly.

Thanks!