Mid-March Mornings

It's 24 degrees and mostly cloudy this morning, with a forecast high near 40 again today. Everyone has been enjoying the sunshine, but that's coming to an end for now. Our friendly weather gurus are split on the weekend's climate, so we'll just wait ... as if we had any other choice.

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There's a little problem with the "deem and pass" (demon pass?) procedure that Nancy Pelosi has been bleating about: in 1998, the Supreme Court ruled that:

"(1) a bill containing its exact text was approved by a majority of the Members of the House of Representatives; (2) the Senate approved precisely the same text; and (3) that text was signed into law by the President. The Constitution explicitly requires that each of those three steps be taken before a bill may “become a law.” Art. I, §7. [Without that procedure, the law] would not have been validly enacted." (emphasis added)

Congress is about to knowingly violate the Constitution and a recent SCOTUS ruling. STOP THEM. Call your Congressmen again.

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The State is calling off its hunt for more wolves that might have been involved in last week's killing of a teacher near Chignik Lake, for a simple reason: they killed two, and can't find any others. The residents there aren't happy about stopping, and remain on the lookout for more.

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I am (slowly) losing weight, and a side-effect has become an issue for me: my gun belt sags, allowing the holster to slide south. I'm at that in-between stage where I haven't quite lost enough to comfortably wear a smaller waistband ... but I suppose it's a good problem to have. I'll switch to a shoulder rig for now, which isn't my favorite carry, and kick myself for not having gotten that IWB holster I was looking at, last summer. (Availability can be an issue, here, and I just have to keep looking until one appears on local shelves again.)

My other option is to carry a much lighter pistol for now. So do I go with the full-size 1911, or downsize to the S&W 442 in .38 Spl +P?

Decisions, decisions.

Playing with the Camera

Just mucking about with the close-up feature.

When I saw the enlarged photo, I realized how much lint was on the pistol, so I cleaned & oiled it again.

Oops. Keep a closer eye on that, I must.

Sunday at the Range, and other things

Waiting for good weather during an Alaskan October is kinda like standing in the shower, hoping to stay dry. Come to think of it, it's exactly like that. It was still raining this morning, and appeared to be snowing above 3,000 feet. But I needed to practice with my pistol, having neglected it for awhile, in favor of sighting in my new rifle.

Off I went to the range this a.m., and it seems all the hunters are out of town. I only saw three people with long guns, but the pistol range was quite busy. It was early enough to get my favorite station, and this time I wanted to work on my grip and sight picture. I suspected that much of my recent problems had more to do with me than with the pistol.

Using the "Common Shooting Errors" chart from DeGrata Tactical, which I first saw on Brigid's blog, I was able to straighten the pistol in my hand, and stop anticipating the recoil.

At first my shots were all over an 8" target, but I reminded myself of what I'd learned, and concentrated on what I was doing. "Focus on the front sight, not the target ... use the tip of my finger, not the first joint ..."

When I was confident I knew where I was shooting, I put orange dots on the target I'd been using, plus two paper plates left behind by the previous shooter.

The results speak for themselves; you can see here where I put the last six rounds. I still need a lot of practice to be consistent, and shoot this way without having to concentrate to the point of nosebleed.

But this range trip was a LOT more fun, now that I can hit what I'm aiming at. Thanks also to all who have either posted comments or sent e-mails with helpful suggestions.

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My favorite store had a 30%-off coupon in this morning's paper, so I went back and cleaned them out of rifle ammo in my caliber (my wife said it was okay!). I'm set now for the winter, and don't have to be stingy at the range for fear I'll run out.

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More than half of the leaves are down now, and so we're ready for the first snow of the season, now.

I hope you've had a great weekend; thanks for stopping by.

Range Report

I finally made it to the range, with youngest daughter in tow. She and I had talked it over, and she's not quite ready to pull a trigger, but she did serve as photographer.

It was about 14 degrees and breezy, with bright sun when we arrived at opening time. There were rather more shooters there today than I've seen before, probably because it's not as cold as it has been.

The firing line is sheltered from the breeze, so things aren't too cold. My daughter positions herself, behind and to the left - I warned her about standing where spent casings might rain around her.

We set up at about 10 yards, give or take. I'm still fighting a tendency to squeeze the trigger at an angle, causing the shots to group to the right. The pistol itself shoots low, and I wanted things close enough that I could compensate & bring it back up.

Safety glasses in place, earplugs inserted; it's time to shoot.

It doesn't take long to go through 100 rounds, which is what I'm usually willing to expend. With ammo being so dear and increasingly hard to find, I'm a bit more miserly with it than I used to be.

I started out aiming dead on at the bull's-eye, and observed that the shots were about 2 1/2" low and to the right. I walked the placement back up toward the center, and the last 30 rounds were going more-or-less where I wanted them. Still hitting to the right, though.

I thought momentarily about placing a new target for the last 20 shots, to get a clean target for including in this post. By this time, there were enough folks along the firing line that I decided it wouldn't be too popular to stop them for target replacement, and then stop again only a few minutes later to retrieve the target.

My daughter's photos turned out pretty well and as usually happens, the hard part is deciding which pics to include. These will do.

I'm not thrilled with my accuracy yet, but I'm improving. I need to talk to someone about the adjustment for height; horizontal adjustments aren't that hard. I'm not going to be truly happy, though, until I'm as accurate as I used to be. The 1911 is a lot different from the large single-action revolver I used for 15 years, and I'm just starting the retrain the muscle memory.

I took this picture from the firing line, using the zoom.

The last shot has faded into memory, and pistol is cleaned, reloaded, and resting comfortably in the holster once more. The smell of Hoppe's No. 9 Solvent lingers in the room, and I've removed all the black spots & oil from my hands.

I'm enjoying the shooting more with each trip to the range, and getting more reluctant to leave each time. I'd nearly forgotten how much I like it.

The temp is up to 27 now, and it's still bright and sunny. I can get used to this, too. Have a great day!

Friday Morning Ramble

Good morning, out there! Like most Alaskans, I occasionally feel a trifle claustrophobic here in southcentral, knowing there's only one road in or out of town. We have to drive 7 hours to reach the state line and our nearest neighbor - the Yukon Territory. Unless you're willing to drive around the clock, it's a 3-day trip to Seattle, some 1400 miles away by road ... or 3 1/2 hours by air.

I do sometimes miss the ability to drive for an hour or two & be with family ... but that's part of living here. You accept a certain isolation. No, life here is not primitive. Anchorage hasn't been "frontier" for many years; but we are on the edge of the frontier. It's not always for the faint of heart.

None of this is a "woe is me" party - it's just part and parcel of living here, on a different piece of the planet from the Lower 48. There is a prevailing sentiment here that we're barely a part of the U.S., being so far away from everything "down there."

Enough of that. Our weather is warmish - some 23 degrees this morning, or about our regular daytime high already. We'll get into the upper 20s today, and perhaps hit 30 tomorrow, with a chance of more snow moving in. I'm hoping for an "Alaskan" snow, where the individual flakes are silver-dollar sized, and a quarter-inch thick. Those pile up in a hurry!

Our acting mayor (sitting in for Mark Begich, who is now in the U.S. Senate) is having to make some tough choices due to a $17 million budget shortfall. He and seven others have filed for the job, with an election coming up in April (I think).

My younger daughter (13) has decided she wants to accompany me to the pistol range tomorrow, and "shoot the pistol at least once." Good for her. Safety lesson tonight, and some target practice tomorrow.

I had given her Brigid's post on self-defense (here), and she's now serious about learning how to fire the gun, which she was previously a bit scared of. I told her that once she learns how it works, it will cease to be a "scary" object, and become just another tool - like a drill or a pair of pliers.

That's about it for now - y'all be good, and if you can't be good, be careful!

Saturday Afternoon - Range Report

I spent a productive hour or so at the range, pushing another 100 rounds through the pistol. It was only 2 degrees above zero, but without any wind, so the conditions in the unheated firing line were tolerable ... at least for awhile. I did notice that very few people were there today.

Another guy & I arrived at opening time, and set up about 20' apart, to aid in communications. This particular range rule is that the first to arrive is the range officer, and being somewhat close just made things easier.

I neglected to take along a new target, so I wound up making more holes in a used one. The other fella finally said, "I can't see what you're hitting, but it's throwing up snow on the backstop in the same place each time."

I couldn't really tell, either; I know that the majority of my shots were within a 6" circle at 40 feet. I did see a couple of flyers hit outside the circle, but not too many. I also noticed that I was grouping many shots in a fairly tight pattern, with each clip, but the patterns tended to move around.

That probably had more to do with my grip than anything else. As I've mentioned, I carried a revolver for years. After the slide or beaver-tail on the 1911 whacked me on the knuckle of my weak-hand thumb, this morning, I changed my grip. I may be a trifle slow, but I'm not that dumb.

After 45 minutes of shooting, my hands suddenly got cold - it had gone up to 3 degrees; I can't understand what happened - so I fired the last 8 rounds in the current box and called it a morning.

Note to self: put some fresh targets in the range bag.

I also discovered that the Remington ammo I used today is WAY cleaner than the CCI Blazer (aluminum casing) rounds that I fired last time. That time, the pistol innards looked like they'd been dunked in muddy water. This time, there was just normal powder residue. Clean-up, once I got home, didn't take nearly as long.

One thing struck me as odd: I've been using the 230-gr. hardball ammo for the range. I've been reading Massad Ayoob's books, though, and he cautions that because of the tendency of those rounds to over-penetrate and/or ricochet, it's not considered particularly defensible in court.

He recommended 185-gr. JHP instead, so I got some. I checked out what the ballistics of each round are reported to be, and then tried an experiment.

I put both the FMJ and JHP rounds in the same magazine, two of one, then two of the other, and so on, just to see how they compared in terms of my perception when firing them.

The part that puzzles me is that I could barely tell the difference. I expected that the lighter rounds would produce a noticeably lighter recoil, but that didn't really happen. It was a very slight difference, but only just. Anyone else have this experience?

That's about it for now. It remains sunny with blue skies, and has rocketed up to 8.4 degrees - just about what AccuHunch predicted.

A Wonderful Saturday

My older daughter & I went to the range down the road, and had a perfectly good time putting the first 100 rounds through my new pistol. She shot about 45 rounds, and seemed to enjoy herself.

The pistol is a Taurus PT 1911B, just for the record - a pretty nice 1911 clone.

I discovered a few things:

a) I probably shouldn't have had three cups of coffee before shooting, 'cause it made my hands shake a bit for the first 20 minutes.
b) It has been nearly six years since I fired a handgun, and I found myself flinching each time I started to squeeze the trigger.
c) After about 30 rounds, I settled down and started really concentrating on making the holes appear where I thought I was aiming.

My last handgun was a very large revolver (16" long, 4 1/2 pounds, .44 caliber). This .45 auto is about half the length, half the weight, and generally half the size. It took some getting used to. I have big hands, and discovered that even on this large-frame pistol, the trigger was a lot closer to my palm than I'm used to.

I realized I was trying to "lollipop" the bulls-eye, 'cause that's what my wheelgun did. This new gun works best with the front sight directly on, just obscuring the target.

With the last couple of magazines, I started getting all the shots within the center ring, including two that clipped the bulls-eye, and one shot just above dead center.

I like this new pistol a lot, and can now be confident once again that I can hit what I'm aiming at. Of course, I also need to keep practicing, to gain consistency.

It shoots just fine - like most everyone says - and we had no problems whatsoever with it - like most everyone says. I read several comments on-line from people who talked about how inferior the Taurus is, or how they broke something right away, or ... well, whatever. Mine works fine; I'm sorry they're having trouble with theirs.

Anyway, the weather - which was supposed to be pretty awful today - has been clear & sunny, with reasonably mild temperatures. It has been holding pretty steady at 41 degrees, despite a forecast for mid-30s, windy, and a rain/snow mix. At 1 p.m., we still have mostly clear and sunny. I'm sure the deteriorating conditions will get here any time now; Accu-Hunch insists that it will.

In fact, they now say we'll get a couple of inches of wet snow tonight, and another couple tomorrow the snow has been taken out of the forecast, and they're talking about rain. Whatever. A lot of the existing snow has left during this "heat wave" - we've set a record for the warmest January day ever, yesterday, at 50 - and now we have some major flooding from snow-melt going on in low spots in town. There are intersections under water, because we don't have any storm drains to speak of.

That's about all for now - enjoy your weekend, and be safe.

Sunday Again

They just keep coming around, don't they? I suppose that beats the alternative, though.

We've been out & done some shopping - wife & younger daughter to Sam's Club, and I to Sportsman's Warehouse, which is quickly becoming a favorite haunt. I was very heavily into recreational shooting (which I've been doing since the age of 6, at my father's side) up until about six years ago. That's when we started preparing for our move up here.

The drive to Alaska required us to spend four days and nights in Canada, which was a nice experience whereby we met some delightful people. However, their gun laws, being so much more restrictive, made me wary of trying to transport an entire gun safe & contents across the border. Rather than go through all the paperwork hoops, I decided to sell or give away all of my guns, ammo, and other supplies.

What with one thing or another, I never got around to starting up again until this past Christmas. Now I get to re-supply, which is fun for me.

The weather here is just below zero, and Accu-Hunch is still guessing we'll get as high as 15 today, with light snow moving in ... perhaps to the tune of a few inches by tomorrow. Nothing major, but the north wind is rather raw. After the last two weeks, we've acclimated somewhat to the severe cold, and don't need terribly heavy coats. Any exposed skin, however, still pays the price.

So I picked up a shoulder rig and some safety glasses. With the weather returning to normal, I can finally schedule a visit to the local range & see how my new pistol behaves.

I've had some nice conversations with my old friend in Missouri - the one who was best man at our wedding, lo these many moons ago - and it seems he & his new wife want to come see us. That will be nice.

Not so many folks want to visit here in the winter, thinking that it's perpetual night, and frigid. Well, they're wrong: it's not dark. After the last two weeks, however, I'm not so sure they're wrong about the frigid part.

The perception that we have ice and snow year-round is false, of course. You've seen lots of pictures of the greenery which I've posted. Our summers are rather short, but very green and lush due to the long days (22 hours of sunlight in June). And we don't live in an igloo. Nor do we have a pet moose or polar bear. And when we run low on gas, we don't tap into the pipeline. It doesn't have gasoline in it, anyway ...

So we're happy to hear that someone wants to visit while it's white outside. It will be nice to get reacquainted with Dana, and get to know Sandi-with-an-i. (She made sure to mention that to me, so I'm reproducing it here.)

It's starting to look grey and snowy out there, so I'm going to wrap this up & try to do something productive with my afternoon.

Don't be a stranger - come on back!

Brrr

Our weather: It's 6 degrees this morning, with winds varying from 10 to 15 mph. My original intention was to drive to the Rabbit Creek range & do some recreational plinking. I received a new pistol for Christmas (thanks, Honey!) and would love to start breaking it in.

I have to ask myself whether I really want to stand outside & risk frostbite on my fingers ... and yes, I do (except for the frostbite part). However, I will let discretion have its way, and wait until next weekend when it is supposed to be 10 degrees warmer. There is a huge difference between 6 and 15, in terms of comfort & how long one can remain more or less sedentary while shooting. C'est la vie.

I may still go to the range - I have plenty of warm clothes, and a desire to punch holes in a paper target. It would be nice to find an indoor range that's less than 40 miles away.

More weather: My friend Doug in Missouri told me with was over 60 at his place yesterday. That's just too warm, and it's not right that it should be that warm in late December. There's always a risk, too, of violent thunderstorms (read flash flooding and tornados) when temps are all over the place, like that.

Of course, by relocating to Alaska, we've traded thunderstorms, flooding, and tornados for blizzards, earthquakes, and the occasional volcanic eruption. I personally believe we got the better deal, although your opinion may differ.

In other news: As a result of the snowfall on Christmas day, there were over 70 accidents, including a lot of ditch-divers, yesterday. Winds along Turnagain Arm were gusting to 75 mph, which doesn't aid in traction when the roads are already slippery.

I hope you have a great day - stay warm if the weather isn't, and let me hear from you.