Now just imagine a "weather" balloon floating across all of the major farmland in the US, dumping micro-clusters full of fungus-laden biological material across hundreds of millions of acres, all while the news makes up cover stories of why the US government refuses to do anything about said balloon because "it's just a friendly happy weather balloon that got a little lost!" and "it's too dangerous to shoot down over land, it might land on a tree or something!". It would never happen, never!
Democrats must not be allowed to win again, hopefully they can be disbanded as well. The last balloon that the media turned into a weeklong circus was one too much already. It could have done an awful lot of damage while it made two loops over our entire Rocky Mountain states and Canada. YouTube hobbyists have been building IR laser blasters for years that can instantly set a wet tree trunk ablaze from 50 yards away. There is no reason why we cannot have larger ones mounted onto select fighter planes used for domestic airspace patrols. The payload bays of any potential unidentified balloons need to be IR lased thoroughly before interception so any biological agents carried inside can be sterilized by the high temperature first, or the shootdown will scatter the stuff and cause a bigger problem.
My grandfather served on the USS Melvin (DD-680) 1944-45. He ended up participating in just about every island-hopping campaign, as well as Leyte Gulf and the Surigao Strait, where the USS Melvin was one of the ships that hit the mighty Japanese Fuso battleship with a torpedo and caused her to sink. I got to go through one of his old photo albums once, and there were a ton of photos that he took (he basically was an ammo runner for the AA guns during combat) and a quartermaster otherwise. He did finally confide some of his stories to me when I was a senior in high school and had enlisted in the Marines. I guess I earned the privilege at that point. Those photos were absolutely awesome... I have no idea where they ended up. My mom still has his uniform though neatly preserved in one of her chests.
PTSD wasn't a thing really back then. My grandfather never went to sleep without 3-4 whiskies on the rocks first. However, he was never abusive, never acted drunk, and was always such a polite and humble man. He ended up being a professor of anthropology in the California state university program, and wrote books in English, Spanish, and German (he was originally born in Germany in 1922... which is why he fought in the pacific). A Fulbright Scholarship recipient in 1962-63. I just looked him up on their website, and there is his name. Awesome man.
Just starting to break in a 25x47 barrel - 26" Bart, 1:7.5. Using Lapua brass. First 20 rounds, I loaded w/ Berger 133s, cause I had a partial box, so why not. 35.0gr N150, CCI450, bullet at literally a random jump, yielded 2712fps 4.1 SD (rounds 11-20). I expect that'll end up in the 2750 neighborhood once it's broken in, using 135s.
Thanks for that Deny. I wonder if the glass is similar to the floride Ed that Kowa uses, which is known to be among the best money can buy.
I spent a summer at atterbury before going to Iraq and that place is brutal that time of year. Mirage in an ACOG was nasty at 300m so I can only imagine at distance.
I have a new ZCO 840 getting delivered next week but it sounds like I need to snag one of these new March PRS scopes to give a spin. The mirage was horrible last weekend with a zco527.
Kowa is unique it the spotter world because they grow their own pure fluorite crystal glass (CaF2, one calcium and 2 fluorine atoms.) CaF2 glass is somewhat fragile and subject to environmental conditions (heat and cold). The Super ED glass used by DEON has a lot of fluorite crystal in the formula but is also formulated to resist changes in the environmental conditions. This is explained in detail in news items at the marchscopes.com website. The Super ED glass in the 5-42X56 HM, the 10-60X56 HM, the 4.5-28X52 HM and the Majesta is made with that glass.
The F-Class Nationals at Atterbury were an eye opener in terms of mirage at 1000 yards. My 10-60X56 HM stayed at 50X that morning and I scored a 198-10X, highest X-score for that match, but only good enough for fourth place. Sigh. Only way to do that was with the 10-60X56 HM.
More shooting videos for you muppets because y'all want to see more shooting.
This was recorded in September 2024 while trying to find ammo that the Lothar-Walther 1:12 twist 20" barrel actually liked, and shows the groups at 100 and 300 yards, while I was also still trying to get comfortable behind the Accuracy International AT308 itself. Its some interesting data, and a clean day of shooting. Just only now deciding to make a full edited video of it.
I actually started making videos of myself shooting so I could critique my own skills (nunchuk skills, bowstaff skills etc...). Not having anyone around makes it amazingly easy to start degrading my own fundamentals. Sure enough, I don't like my trigger manipulation a lot of the time. The targets show reasonable proficiency... but I know from watching myself that I am leaving some consistency on the table.
Knowing how bad American torpedoes were for most of the war, those torpedo bomber pilots had some massive balls - not just to fly the missions they did, but knowing there was a very good chance that the torpedo they were going to drop wouldn't even work.
It took the US some time to recover from that huge sucker punch we received at Pearl Harbor and be technologically up to par with Imperial Japan and the Third Reich. Prior to Pearl Harbor, we had been WAY behind Japan and Germany technologically. At one point both of the Axis giants were enriching uranium fuel for future weapon development while we were still just carrying out university experiments with fissionables. The Mitsubishi Zero had been the apex fighter craft for a few years until we shot one down over Alaska in 1943 with great difficulty. That Zero crashed into the snow and was relatively undamaged, the US pilot managing to get a great lead on the enemy plane and hit it with a burst that mainly shredded the cockpit and Swiss-cheesing the occupant. From that one Zero, Northrop-Grumman reverse engineered the thing and produced the F6F Hellcat which surpassed the Zero in speed and maneuverability. From 1943 onward it was a direct straight line uphill climb for us. All of the top secret Tier 1 tech agencies like the Skunk Works and JPL, the holy of holies throughout the intense moments of the Cold War right up to this day, started during this time whose original missions were to capture and reverse engineer Axis tech.
Going to have to start paying attention and asking more questions here to the "my Nightforce isn't tracking" posts etc...
That sucks, but caveat emptor when you find a 'hell of a deal'. In the era of the internet, everyone knows what they have and want top dollar. Exceptions should be scrutinized.
Even a caveman can put two and two together to see what's up. While you are looking at this, go check out the prevailing wind patterns over these areas during growing and harvest seasons and figure the rest out.
Other countries' agents routinely vanish or suffer fatal 'accidents' in Chinese custody. Don't we have a hantavirus vaccine that needs to be tested? Could save a lot of lives of farmers and ranchers who live in the western states where hantavirus carrying rodents are present. We have two subjects now.
