"Failure To Fire" Is Going Offline

One of the more, uh...."interesting" webcomics has published it's final episode today.

Yep, "Failure To Fire" is going dark.

The author might do a few "afterword" comics, but for the most part he's decided to close up shop and get on with his other projects, and life in general.

I don't remember when I first started reading "Failure To Fire", but it sure was a fun ride while it lasted.

NRA Basic Pistol Class AAR

Well, we taught another 14 people the NRA Basic Pistol class yesterday.

We started with 15, but one young lady vanished after about an hour. She's an LPN, so we figured maybe she was called in to work or something.

As usual, we had quite a wide variety of people, from Patent Attorneys to web designers, to a retired Navy Officer who brought her son with her.

 Some of the students had prior shooting experience and were taking the class to improve their skills, while others had never handled a gun before.

They were all very interested, followed directions well, and we had no safety or firearms handling issues at all.

After the classroom session was over, we headed out to the range to let the students get some hands-on practice.

The basic format of this is to fire 20 rounds at a blank sheet of 8-1/2x10 paper, then 20 rounds at a target, and then 10 rounds at a fresh target for scoring.

The blank paper is used so we can get a feel for the students handle the gun, and correct any errors they might have with stance, grip, and sighting in. I always tell them to try and hit the center of the paper, and then use you first hole as a target and try to get the rest of the rounds "in the same hole", or if you're really off, then try and get your next shot closer to the center.

We had one little Ruger Mark-II malfunction (magazine wouldn't go in), and some ammo problems, mostly failure-to-feeds. The lead instructor told me the Mark-II's are a bit finicky about what ammo works in them, and with 22LR still being a bit scarce, we just try and live with it.

We also saw a bunch of stove-pipes which I assumed was from limp wristing, but after instructing the student who was having the problem to grip the pistol tighter, the problem lessened.

The 20 rounds on a target went well, with ALL of the students shooting 100% in the black target area, and a several getting 100% in the orange bull's eye!

Te retired Navy Officer had some problems with her stance (she was shooting her own pistol, a Taurus clone of a Beretta 92), and once I corrected her, she came right on target.

The 10 rounds on target was a bit different, as the students felt some "pressure" for being in competition.

Two scored 100%, so we had a 3 round shoot-off, with one young lady getting 100%, and the guy she was up against getting two in the orange, and one on the edge.

All-in-all, it was a great day, and we trained 14 more people in the proper handling and the basics of shooting.

"An OBLIGATION To Defend Ourselves"

Latest from Bill Whittle.

He says the title of this post at 3:03 into the video.

I'm going to assist with another "NRA Basic Pistol" class tomorrow.

Hopefully it goes as well as the last one I helped with.

Coming Soon To A City Near YOU!

Enough said.......

When I got my flu shot yesterday I asked if it also protected against Ebola.

Half the staff busted up, and the other half didn't know what to make of it.

James May at the Edge of Space

"Top Gear" (the English one, not that poseur American version) is one of my favorite TV programs.

One of the presenters, James May, is an avid Space enthusiast.

He did a spectacular show a few years ago on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landings.

He's also one of the few civilians to get a ride on the trainer version of the U2 aircraft, and did a film about it.

It's quite entertaining in a low-key sort of way, and I found it quite enjoyable to watch.

These days, 70,000 feet isn't considered the "Edge of Space", but he also explains that.

Enjoy!

Knives

I've almost always carried some kind of knife. I'm not a knife aficionado or anything, but in all the jobs I've worked at, having a decent knife, in your pocket, has come in handy more times than I can count.

I really like my Benchmade knives, but sadly they need to be sent back to sharpen, as I just can't seem to put a decent edge on them.

Something else I need to learn!

My second most recent purchase was a Gerber. A nice, sharp knife with a "Tanto" blade, but I just HATE that damn stupid mechanism they have on it to fold the blade back in. It takes both hands for a clumsy doofus like me to fold the blade back, and that's just unacceptable for me.

So, I recently purchased a nice little SOG knife. It has assisted opening, and a release button like my Benchmade knives, so I can easily fold it back when I finished using it.

It's one of the "Rescue" knives, with a blunt tip, perfect for sawing through seat belts and such without putting a 22 stitch wound in the person you're trying to save!

And I've also got some serious "Survival" knives that I keep "just in case", and a sweet little Cold Steel tomahawk, just in case the Zombies show up.

So what brings me to talk about knives?

This hilarious post over at Tam's place.

Genius that woman is!

"Good News" From Bill Whittle.

Found this over at "90 Miles From Tyranny".


Thanks for posting it, Mike!

 

Shit You See At The Range

Found this over at "Every Day No Days Off", and it's absolutely hilarious.

I'm sure some of you have seen the video, and if you hang out at a range long enough, you'll see it in person.

During last week's training class, I was joking with the Range Master about how he'd always said if you worked at a range long enough, you'd see a wide cross-section of weirdness.

He laughed and said "Yeah, about two weeks".

Busy Wednesday Again

Spent most of the day on the Iowa again, reading documents, and tracing down wire markers.

We're beginning to get a handle on how some of the cabling is done, and thanks to our good friends on the Missouri, the New Jersey, and the Midway, we're slowly getting our own set of manuals for the transmitters, receivers, antenna couplers, and most of the other equipment we have.

Long day, lots of running around, and I'm beat.

G'Night, all!

"NRA Basic Pistol Class" AAR

Well, the lead instructor and three assistants brought another 8 people into the realm of pistol shooters today.

Why FOUR instructors?

Well, 16 people signed up (and paid!), but only 8 showed up, so as a bonus, each instructor only had two people to help, and we got extra range and classroom time.

The two young people I worked with were a brother and sister, 17 and 15 years old, respectively.

The girl was kinda bummed at first because "My parents own firearms, and they INSISTED we both take this course!".

She considered it more of a waste of a beautiful Saturday morning and afternoon than anything else, but she was attentive, asked excellent questions, took direction extremely well, and wonder-of-wonders, wound up WINNING the "10 Shot Showdown" with a score of 98!

Her older brother was seen muttering something about "I'll never live this down....", but he was a good sport about it, and proud of his sister.

As I was coaching these two young people, I kept noticing an older couple outside the range, watching through the glass with huge smiles, but didn't think much of it as I was busy.

Turns out it was Mom and Dad watching their kids have a great time, and thanked us all profusely after the class was over.

Always good to introduce some new people to shooting, and this was one of the better classes I assisted with.

Four of the students stayed to take their California "Handgun Safety Certificate" test, and were issued their HSC on the spot.

And they ALL want to come back and take the NRA "Personal Protection in the Home" class!

Groan....Finally Recovered From Wednesday's Trip To "Broadway" On The Iowa

I spent most of Wednesday on the Iowa, getting my feet wet with the "Grey Radio Gang", the group of us that are slooooowly restoring the original receivers, and attempting to get the transmitters back on line.

So, the first thing I did was to get a tour of "Broadway", the passageway that runs from one end of the armored box to the other.

To get down to Broadway, we went down one deck, to the armored hatch that leads down to the third deck:

The beveled edges of the hatch fit in to a matching bevel on the deck:

The door to your left leads into one of the Machine Shops, and is where the table with all the people present on V-J Day in Tokyo Bay stamped their names into the metal table top.

Down through the hatch, on a very steep ladder (the steepest one I've seen so far), and we're "On Broadway".




This is looking forward, with the steep ladder to your left:

And my escort leads the way:

The valves on the left have to do with some of the tanks on the ship, but since my friend is a "Radio Guy" like myself, he wasn't sure exactly what they were for. The red box to the right held a Halon bottle, one of MANY along the sides of the passageway.




This is looking aft of where we were:

The transmitter room is located off Broadway, across from the #2 Engine Room:

I thought I took a picture of the #2 Engine Room, but guess not. Engine Room access is NOT allowed unless you have a very good reason to go there, but sticking my head through the hatch showed another ladder leading WAY down, with lots of steel grating about 8' down, and the reduction gears (so I was told) were visible beneath the grating.




We unlocked the hatch, reached in and turned on the lights, and there it was.....the Transmitter Room:

Each complete transmitter consists of an exciter (puts out about 10 Watts), with a power amplifier beneath it (runs 1000 Watts output forever), and a power supply for the exciter on the bottom. These are nominally used for 2~30 MHz operation, the exciters are manually tuned, and generally get their audio/data input from "Radio Central", which is where we operate the Amateur radio station from. The exciters also have a jack for a push-to-talk handset, and a CW (Morse Code) key on the front panel, although my escort, who served on the USS Wisconsin, says he doesn't remember them ever using CW.

Across from each transmitter is the Antenna Coupler. From the writing and Dymo label (remember Dymo labels?) this coupler is for the 2~6MHz range, and connected to the "Twin Fan" antenna. The Twin Fan antenna disappeared at sometime during the Iowa's stay at Suisun Bay, and we're working on getting it replaced. Strangely enough, all of the parts to rebuild it are readily available, but he cost is something like $25,000, which is money we just don't have. The guys on the New Jersey, BB-62, have been most generous with sending us spares for just the cost of shipping, and while they have some spares for the Twin Fan antenna, wed still be out-of-pocket quite a bit of money to replace the antenna with a exact duplicate. We might just scratch our heads a bit to see if we can come up with something that looks the same, and functions the same, but for a lot less cost.

These are what you see in the picture looking in to the Transmitter Room, all located to your right:

To connect one of the transmitter/coupler pairs to a particular antenna, or a dummy load, these patch bays are used:

There's a special "Break Out" or Patch cable used that has a large, rectangular box on one end that slips into the rectangular black sockets, and then connects to the Type-N RF connector, and "Amphenol" connector in the center of the panel:

Here's one of the dry Dummy Loads sitting by the hatch leading in to the Transmitter Room:

Off to one side, is this "stand alone" transmitter unit. The additional box on the top with the two round meters is an antenna auto-coupler. We still have to trace out the cabling for this unit to see where it goes. I found one whip antenna with the remote coupling unit mounted at its base the other day, and it's possible that this transmitter is connected to it. Until we look at the wire number tags on this unit, and the coupler at the base of the antenna, it's a mystery where this one is connected to, and what it's use was:

Further down the row, on the side where the Antenna Couplers are, are these WSC-3, "Whiskey-3", UHF radios, used for SatCom:

And between the racks of WSC-3 radios is this rack containing what appears to be an Antenna Coupler for them:

I know next to nothing about these radios, and as it's highly unlikely we'd ever get a license to use them, they're probably just going to quietly sit there for a long, long time.




Back on the other side of the room are some radios and amplifiers I've actually owned in the distant, dusty past, the famous AN/ART-21 and AN/GRR-23(V), along with the AM-6153 RF Power Amplifier.

The AM-6154 amp was quite popular 'back in the day' to convert to 2 Meter Amateur radio operation. Fair Radio Sales used to have truckloads of them, but these days they command a very high price.

These radios were used to communicate with aircraft in the VHF Aircraft Band.

This is the entire rack, from top to bottom:

One very interesting radio set I found was a"Green Radio" like the ground forces use(d), the RT-524A.

I'm guessing this radio was used to communicate with our ground forces who requested Naval Gunfire Support:

Power Supply:

And a complete set, the second one in this rack:

These appear to be some type of coupler/tuning unit/SWR bridge, and since they're green, and located next to the RT-524's, I'm guessing they're part of that system:

And since we'll be working on the HF transmitters, here's a shot of where the circuit breakers for all the HF Transmitters are located:

One of my tasks as "Lead Technician" for getting the HF transmitters going again (don't ask me how I was chosen as 'lead tech', as I'm clueless!) is to photo document where things are, and the process used to get these big guys going again, so this is just a start of the many pictures I'll be taking as I spend more time down there. The guys on the New Jersey and Missouri loaned us the Technical Manuals, which we had photocopied and then returned, so we have fairly complete documentation. HOWEVER....I'm told each one of the Iowa class ships wound up a bit different, so just because we have the TM's for the equipment doesn't mean we're out of the woods!


On our way back out, I took a few more pictures of the 1930's technology that made the ship operate.

Looking down Broadway:

I think the grey hose is left from when she was in storage, as I know there are many others like this in some of the "off limits" areas, and look just like it.


Some valves used to control "Flooding The Wing Tanks":

A close-up for any Steampunkers out there:

More valves:

Close-up:

I spent about three hours down in the Transmitter Room, and we went through all of the filing and storage cabinets. We found lots of patch cables, boxes full of spare modules, a lot of miscellaneous JUNQUE, and a bunch of spare 8122 ceramic power tubes, condition unknown.


After spending the time down below, I went up to where I normally hangout, and helped a retired PhD from MIT troubleshoot one of the URR-74(V)2 Watkins-Johnson LF/MF/HF receivers.
We have three of these receivers, and only one operates correctly. The other two seem "deaf", so we're starting at the antenna using KNX 1070 for a test signal, and tracing the signal out.

Looks like there's a problem in the "A3 Module", which is the front-end of the receiver with the 1st and 2nd mixer and IF stages in it.


.....Sigh......So much for being "retired"!