"Unpacking"

I had a rather unorthodox Thanksgiving. I was invited to the coast to see some really good friends. We had a good time and the hospitality and conversation were excellent! Weather was fantastic with the high yesterday pushing 70+.

I am a gregarious loner, (thanks B. for the perfect term!) but it still helps to jump out there once in a while.

Now I have to unpack!

 

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and whatever it means to you and yours that you celebrated it well!

Happy Thanksgiving to All!

 

Friends have invited me to spend Thanksgiving with them on the coast. Be back Friday!

Happy Thanksgiving to all and remember what this Holiday is all about. I have much to be thankful for!

(Extra credit for what appears to be a Sunbeam Mixmaster in that image)

They fought for us.....

Help?

Anybody have a Colt Defender? If you do how is it? The S&W Bodyguard is off to the mothership for tweaking. My Colt Combat Commander is STILL at Trijicon for night sights. Coming up on a month up there, GRRR!

Random thoughts......

First, Fall has arrived at humble abode:

 

Second, basic pistol training and concealed carry training summary:

Basic pistol: 4 hours in the classroom saying: "Keep your finger off the trigger until you have acquired your target and have made the decision to fire." 30 minutes on the range during live fire saying: "GET YOUR FINGER OFF OF THAT TRIGGER!"

CCH: 8 hours in the classroom saying: "Keep your finger off the trigger until you have acquired your target and have made the decision to fire." 30 minutes on the range during live fire saying: "GET YOUR FINGER OFF OF THAT TRIGGER!" 

Seriously though, congratulations to my 8 students that have never shot a pistol before and to my 3 newly minted CCH permit holders!

Amazing that some students have never actually held a revolver!

Shots for Tots!

No not immunizations, a bowling pin match event for the USMC Toys for Tots campaign!

Event information here.

If you would like to donate your time to help host the event or donate a toy, please let me know! 

I get to go get a toy out of the "regular" toy section of a store instead of filling out a ATF 4473! I am thinking Hot Wheels!

Wow, what a great weekend that will be! First go run a train and then this!

Back on the line!

Busy weekend ahead! Basic pistol class tomorrow followed with a Concealed Carry Handgun class Sunday.

New shooter on the line! I truly love this task. More than the monetary compensation, I am truly passionate about getting new shooters trained. Even more important is the Sunday class!

I am packed and ready to go!

Shameless plug, classes are here and slots are still available!

Why I carry

Over at Lawyer with a gun are his thoughts on why he carries a handgun. Well said!

Internet Plumbing

China appears to have rerouted 15% of the worlds Internet traffic to it last April for 18 minutes. Link from National Defence Magazine here.

Uh, wow. the amount of data had to be staggering. Is that what they needed this for?

Range Report- Bodyguard 380

Ok, first the preamble. Manual says to field strip and clean before firing. Easy to do!

Then we are off to the range!

Laser works, but not as intuitive as the Crimson Trace jobs. It has usable iron sights that are adjustable for windage at the rear. No adjustment needed, sights and laser seem to be OK at 30 ft. Thumb safety on a DAO with this trigger pull seems superfluous to me, but I am used to seeing them. It has a loaded chamber peephole.

So now to the bad part. The trigger was extremely heavy with an unusually long pull. Even coming off of rest it seemed to be like taking a car out of park. I am calling S&W tomorrow. I don't like to hear a recreation of a gravel truck when I am pulling a trigger!

Bottom line: I like it better than the Kel-Tec P3AT if the trigger can be a little more user friendly!

I will keep you updated! So for now we are back to the old standby. The Colt Detective Special .38 revolver is back on the line.

Range Report Preview

I have mentioned my problems with my Kel-Tec .380 before. I would really rather have my Colt .45 with me but sometimes to just pick up something on the way to the store for a quick trip is nice. So today I finally got this:

Range report tomorrow after I run "cough cough" several rounds through it.

How can you do this to Bacon?

Another sign of the impending apocalypse. Rachael Ray actually has a recipe for microwave bacon here. No EVOO was used! That is not the best part of it though. The reviews are right up there in Three Wolf Moon shirt territory. A sampling:

Tried this recipe last night. The bacon was great, but the paper towels tasted awful.
By LocalBoyMakesGoo on November 11, 2010

That's not what "late night bacon" means in my house.
By Crazy Uncle Dan on November 09, 2010

I don't stay up very late. Can you post a recipe for early morning bacon? Also I'm new to the whole microwave thing. Do you have a recipe for microwave popcorn? The bag says to stop when the interval between pops is 2-3 seconds, but the pops always happen too fast for me to start counting.
By sammy_hagar_pork_n_b on November 10, 2010 

  

Veterans Day

A moving video from the NRA. Thanks to all that have served.

Update! Whew!--I have to do this!

I'm IN! Saturday December 12 at 2:30! Do guys squeeeee? 


One more night of teaching to finish out the week! Missed y'all this week! Happy Veterans Day to everyone.

I have to do this:

"At The Throttle" Puts You In the Cab of a Steam Locomotive

            The N.C. Transportation Museum invites you to run a steam locomotive for a once in a lifetime opportunity.  With the return of the Flagg 75 coal engine, the museum is offering a new program called, "At the Throttle".

            This November and December, thirty minute sessions will be available for those purchasing a ticket to power the Flagg 75 engine across the south end of the N.C. Transportation Museum, the former Spencer Shops steam locomotive repair facility.  Additional dates in March and April, 2011 are also planned. 

            No previous locomotive experience is required.  The program is a unique opportunity for rail fans to live their dream of piloting a steam engine, taking a trip back in time to the golden age of railroading.  A qualified engineer will be in the cab at all times, but participants will be operating the engine, following a 30 minute safety and operation session.

Looks like fun huh? Where is my engineer's hat? Sorry I don't have any coveralls and I don't know if you can still get the Pointer brand anyway. 

UPDATE: You sure can still get Pointer Brand coveralls! Out of Bristol, TN no less! Perfectly fitting for the railroad who's slogan was "The Southern Serves the South"!

Blogus Interrruptis

This week for some reason I decided to pick up a CCE (Corporate and Continuing Ed) class to teach. 8 hours split between Monday and Wednesday night.  That coupled with the curriculum classes I teach on Tuesday and Thursday at the same times as the CCE class in addition to the "real job" mean I have a long week ahead.

See you soon!

Retro Sunday -The Mustang GT Part III

So lets get started! Here is a commercial from the New York Worlds Fair and I do have to say in response to Jay when he said "Hey old guys does this still work?" I can say yes.



Lets get to it! Step one drivetrain (Click on any picture to enlarge):

 

You are looking as if you opened the hood and looking at the engine. Note the attempt to get to the right hand upper control arm by cutting into the shock tower. BZZZT! wrong! But now something to be fixed.

Engine parts below. Engine is in good shape!

 

Engine done and sporting the correct color, Ford Corporate Blue!

From the front:

Engine is sporting original TriY headers and is ready to go!

Meanwhile other things require attention. The heater box is always a problem:

 

The pile of crap in the upper center is pine needles, leaves, bugs, and anything else that got sucked into the heater box. Heater core is lower center. Rule one on any old Mustang bypass or replace that immediately!

Meanwhile, transmission gets some care:

Salvageable interior parts are cleaned and panted:

Parts are gathered. Little known fact back then that many NOS (New Old Stock) parts were readily available from Ford, but you had to have the part number to order them from a Ford dealer. Many thanks to an old friend of mine Phil, parts manager of a Lincoln Mercury dealership! He had the knowledge! The love of Mustangs helped too! So I can say that virtually every part replaced was original FoMoCo.

Uh, yeah that is a 1968 Shelby in the background!

So now the fun begins. Strip everything!

 

 

Nice interior shot. Notice the hole in the rear drivers floorboard! Left hand side in this ride has not had a good life!


Tam asked about the rear shock towers. Here is the look for the rear access to them:

 

The left rear quarter was toast as predicted:

 

 

Outer fender well toast, inner is marginal and the left rear frame rail toast.

Spot blast what can be saved:

 

Fix the interior dash from the 8-Track:

 

Replace the wiring harnesses and the entire left hand floorboard and seat riser:

 

Epoxy primer and wet sand your shoulder off and then this with no paint booth and in old school enamel:

 

Now put it back together!

 

Bonus points if you can pick me out of this picture!

Exterior and interior work going on less than 10 hours away from its first show!

It won!

And now a gratuitous car shot!

 

I hope everyone has a great week! Stay safe!

Air Show!

Warriors and Warbirds Air show here today. Got to watch a lot of it from my porch! Beautiful Fall day for this and they will do it again tomorrow. The Tora, Tora, Tora show was here and they really put on a great show, see them if you get a chance!

Here are some snippets, sorry for the quality, this came from my PhD camera (push here dummy).



Oh, look! 2 of the 4 P-51 Mustangs at the show showing their stuff!




And yes that is a B-25 on the Tarmac.

Great fun!

Here is a recreation of sounding of General Quarters on an AA gun on the USS Kidd.



Veterans Day is this Thursday, go thank one!

It is time!

First frost here tonight, hard freeze after that. So it was time to bring this out:

 

A quilt. Not just any quilt, one that was made for me by family in 2007. Sadly one of this team has passed, but I do have this heirloom. I will treasure it as it reminds me of a time where the coal stove and the wood kitchen stove were the only sources of heat until you got under one of these!

The feeling of heaviness as you crawled into one is very comforting, the fact that your body was warm and yet you breathed cold air is something I will never forget.

So I am pretty crazy here. I will run the heat down on the HVAC and relive those moments from so long ago. I no longer have to go get kindling for the stove when I get up though!

Some assembly required!

My UPS driver delivered this today:

 

I cheated after looking at one of Brigid's posts and got one of these. Anybody have any words of wisdom before I hook this thing up?

 

Chrysler Retro Encabulator

In a previous post I linked to a video of the Rockwell Retro Encabulator. It is a old running joke that started some time ago.

So running around today I found the Chrysler version. Listen carefully! Diagnostic manual and song-book? Ha!

Trainwreck

LOL! Company party last night maybe!

So Today I get this....

Someone cross linked to this post. OK, fair enough. We get this comment post on their blog....


"Shotgun and blinding light. They first get to see the shotgun, then you dazzle them with the blinding light for the rest of the time they’re on your porch. The one you’re dazzling will be unable to respond effectively, and the home invasion has then lost it’s point man.
As for me, I’ll risk being an asshole (get called one almost everyday on my blog anyway), and order the oh-dark-thirty guy off my porch and out of my yard, on penalty of arrest and worse. I WILL inform the interloper that I have a gun and am prepared to use it.
If it was me, I’d NOT have lit up the house: you’ve just backlighted yourself, a tactical no-no.
In earlier times, I’d have slipped out the back or side door and made ninja-war in my darkened yard, but I’m getting a bit old for that sort of thing."

WOW! Ninja! Shades of some other stuff. I usually do not feed the trolls, but traffic was such I felt I had to respond. Here is my comment back:

"I do not work for the door manufacturer, but info on the door is: http://www.larsondoors.com/storm_doors/products/349_20

I DO have honest people looking for help here occasionally. I want to do right by them. The use of deadly force to repel a trespasser is not allowed here, nor would I want to. The act of pointing a firearm here can be construed at best simple assault and at worse use of deadly force. I don’t need to risk all of that if I do not have to.

If I leave the house it is because I must. Why would I leave the surroundings I am most familiar with and an intruder does not?

Rivrdog, do as you see fit for your situation as will I.

“To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”
-Sun Tzu, the Art of War

You experienced bloggers deal with this stuff every day?

If you do, thanks for your support for my humble efforts!

And when I am blue..

I always turn to my ray of sunshine!

Here he is!  

Unfortunately he is probably right!

German Engineering

Ok, I am not a VW fan, but I did work on some really high tech German stuff in a previous life. Here is this commercial, I do love it! The 1994 Mustang killed a coffee can muffler Honda and although totaled by the insurance company lived to fight another day! The Honda did not!