The View From North Central Idaho

Barron and I drove out to the Boomershoot site today for some more testing of the potassium chlorate. There was a large snow berm blocking the road out to Mecca and the snow was too deep to drive across anyway. We parked at my cousin Dennis’ place, packed up our stuff and started to walk. It is only 789 yards (I wrote an app for that!) but the crust on the snow was weak enough that I broke through about every other step and Barron broke through almost up to his knees with each step.

The wind was coming up and it was starting to snow and I decided (after getting confirmation from Barron) that this wasn’t a good idea. It was going to be a lot of work getting out there and back. So much work that it was bordering stupid to even try. We drove back to Moscow without doing the testing.

I’ll be back in town in two weeks. Maybe the weather will be more cooperative and if not we’ll bring snowshoes and we will win the battle with the snow.

For people in the Lewiston, Clarkston, Moscow, Pullman area this may be of interest. Others, not so much.

If any Boomershoot staff wish to attend the class Boomershoot will pay the class fee (but not the USPSA membership fee) and provide transportation between Moscow and Lewiston on the days of the class.

If you are interested but don't have John's email address send me an email (ROClass@joehuffman.org) and I'll forward your email on to him.

I’ll be attending the class if that makes any difference to you.

From: John Grimes
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2012 4:37 PM
Subject: USPSA Range Officer 1 class in Lewiston on March 24 & 25!

Hi folks,

The Lewiston Pistol Club will be hosting a USPSA Ranger Officer 1 training by our own Kevin Imel, the newest instructor for the National Range Officers Institute, on March 24 & 25, 2012 at the LPC Indoor Range (2419 16th Ave., Lewiston, ID). 

Those who complete the RO training will become official USPSA certified Range Officers.  For those who don't know, ROs are the ones who run each shooter and do all the shouting at our monthly matches (the shouting is my favorite part).  Here are some more details: http://www.uspsa.org/about_NROI_new.php.

You do have to be a USPSA member to become a USPSA Range Officer when the class begins ($40, https://www.uspsa.org/uspsa-join-renew.php). You will be able to join or renew and pay for a USPSA membership on the morning of the class (via a separate check made out to USPSA).  There are some other advantages in joining the USPSA, most importantly, showing the number, variety and integrity of people who shoot.  The magazine's kind of nice, too.

This is also a great opportunity for seasoned ROs who have let their credentials slide to get right with the Range Gods.  You know who you are.

The class itself is $40 payable by cash or check made out to the Lewiston Pistol Club at the door on March 24th.  The class starts on Saturday at 8:30 AM sharp and runs through about 5 PM.  The Sunday class start time will be set by the instructor and will end in the afternoon, probably before 5. 

All participants will need to bring a rulebook and a notebook for use during the seminar.  You can print your own copy from here: http://www.uspsa.org/rules/2010HandgunRulesProof3web.pdf.

The Sunday class includes some hands on practice running shooters, so you will also need your eyes and ears, firearm and 100 rounds of ammo.  You will not need your own timer for the class, but in practice, most ROs buy them at some point.  We have examples of all three main brands at our monthly matches.

[…]

Questions - send them in.

John Grimes
LPC Action Match Director

As Ry reported yesterday we verified the KClO₃ we currently have in Boomershoot storage has much larger particle size than what we know has worked in the past. I purchased a cheap blender and tested a sample of KClO₃ to see if we could reduce the particle size.

I'm happy to report that it appears "blending" it did reduce the particle size significantly. Looking at it under the microscope shows there are still some particles that are larger than the "old stuff" but most of the particles are more like powdered sugar than granulated sugar.

Further evidence that we are on the right track is the dust generated. Even after a minute or two of waiting for the dust to settle in the blender just gently taking the lid off the blender gets a cloud of dust flowing through the air from the blender to the air cleaner:

Another interesting thing is that the volume increased significantly. My guess is that it about occupies about 40% more volume than previously. The container on the left had about 1.5 inches of air above the KClO₃ before blending. After blending it would not fit and I had to put some of the material in a different container.

It blends, but will it detonate? We have more tests to run the next time I visit Idaho.

Dave has a bunch of nice things to say, along with some great pictures, about Boomershoot.

Update: Link fixed. Sorry about that.

Yesterday Barron and I went out to do more tests on our Boomerite mixture and packaging. It failed the last time we tried it and we want to get the problem solved.

We tried both the new packaging and the old from about 20 yards with .223 Wolf hollow points. All were complete duds. There was not even a hint of reactivity.

We were quite perplexed. What could have changed? Thinking that maybe some water had gotten into the old stuff we mixed up a new batch with some fresh ethylene glycol. Still absolutely nothing.

Barron was measuring the KClO3 and reported the powder didn't seem quite right to him. There was no dust! I had three air cleaners in the shipping container because we knew the KClO3 generated a lot of dust and it wasn't healthy to breath it. But there was no dust. Something was wrong. Could it have gotten wet? Maybe it could have drawn moisture from the air.

We took a couple of pounds to my parents house and dried it in the kitchen oven. Still no dust when handling it.

We ground some in the mortar and pestle. There was a little bit of dust but I could tell it still wasn't as fine as what we usually have. Usually it it is so fine you cannot feel any grittiness. With this you could.

The Boomerite we made with the dried and ground KClO3 didn't go boom with Wolf 60 grain .223 HP's from Barron's rifle. I had him try some 50 grain VMAX that I had. With the non-dried (or ground) we got a little bit of detonation but still not normal. With the ground and dried it went boom.

I put some of the KClO3 under the microscope. The crystals are average about 1/3 as large as granulated sugar. It should be much smaller than that.

It turns out there even though I was getting "MIL-SPEC" KClO3 "just like" always before there are various "Classes" within that spec. I strongly suspect we got a different class with this drum of KClO3. That could explain, rather than the plastic deli containers, why we had problems with a lot of the targets at Boomershoot. At the private party we had last summer it didn't detonate very well either. We used the 50 grain VMAX bullets from fairly close and about 20% did not detonate properly.

Barron has more details on our experiments.

Ry posted a video on YouTube of the new shooter shooting our defective boomerite:

I'll probably be doing more testing tomorrow.

The potential new shooter I mentioned yesterday actually came through. It is a friend of Ry’s daughter Arden. So today Ry and I took Arden and Megan for a small private Boomershoot party.

The new shooter aspect went very well. Once she figured out a couple things with the first magazine she nailed three clay targets in a row from about 40 feet away then started nailing the steel swinger target we had set up. That was with a suppressed .22 LR with a red-dot scope. She probably went through 30 or 40 rounds with my iron sighted Ruger Mark II as well. She fired a couple magazines from the AK (and took the USPSA target home) . She went through another magazine with the AR-15, two rounds from the 12-gauge Saiga (she said she really liked it but the recoil was a little more than what was comfortable), and about 15 rounds from my STI in .40 S&W.

On the Boomershoot side we tried a new packaging method. We put the Boomerite directly into the cardboard boxes then wrapped them in Saran Wrap for protection from air and moisture. The packaging didn’t go as smoothly/quickly as I had hoped but I think with the proper equipment it could work. We didn’t bother to make up any of the old style targets with the Boomerite in a zip-lock bag and putting the bag inside the cardboard box. What could go wrong?

Megan hit her target on the first shot and it went off with a boom that wasn’t much more than the muzzle blast from a shotgun. Hmmm… almost a dud. Well, the others will probably be better. They were all worse. Some of them just barely popped and blew off a corner of the box.

Ry’s guess was that we had messed up the mix some way or another. Perhaps the batteries were bad on one of the scales (which we didn’t bother to check the calibration on). I wasn’t so sure. The mix looked normal to me. I’ve seen many thousands of pounds of the stuff and I can usually tell when something isn’t quite right just from looking at it.

Ry then did a very “Ry thing” (he has an extremely powerful CPU but it’s running a buggy software). He asked me to put some of the spilled Boomerite in a position where he could shoot directly at the cup or so that was in a corner of a box without going through the Saran Wrap or the cardboard box. I figured he would do this from 10 yards away or so. Nope, he walked up and got far more than “Entertainingly Close”. I’m not going to say how close but I will say that I was evaluating the ground near where he was shooting to make sure I could get my vehicle in there to roll the remaining body parts into the back and haul them to the hospital. The cup or so of Boomerite detonated with the normal BOOM! we all know and love. Ry still had all his limbs attached but he said his head hurt. He asked if the left side of his face was bleeding. It was red but not bleeding. He did have what looked a lot like a zit on his forehead that was bleeding slightly.

What we concluded from this admittedly small sample is that the packaging made a difference. How having a few layers of Saran Wrap on the outside of the box instead a zip-lock bag on the inside of box makes such a big difference is something we don’t understand. More tests are needed to confirm the results and that the old packaging works as expected with the same batches of material used with the new packaging methods. Assuming the weather cooperates I’ll do that next weekend.

As we have said many, many times before, “We don’t have enough columns on our spreadsheet to model this behavior correctly”.

My blogging activity has been pretty meager the last few days. First it was the guests we had for the holidays then I spent a lot of time on Boomershoot stuff. This is a post about some of the Boomershoot stuff.

I purchased an ATT Microcell to put on site so that I could have cell service at Boomershoot without switching carriers. It requires a solid high speed Internet connection with low latency. The existing connection was via satellite and it wasn’t even close to good enough. My brother Gary has a good connection a mile or so away and while I didn’t have line of sight to his place from Boomershoot I did have the ability to pick up the Wi-Fi signal from the T.V. antenna mast of the neighbors house. I spent all day Wednesday (December 28^th) in the rain climbing up and down the roof of my brother’s house putting up a Nanostation 2. This was more challenging that most roofs because it was very steep and made of slick steel. Smooth steel in the cold rain. That little exercise involved parking my vehicle on the other side of the house to attach a rope to, using two ladders, and laying face down on the wet roof. I got soaking wet. In North Central Idaho. In late December. But it was going to be worth it. Right?

I first measured the signal strength with the unit attached to the top of a ladder. It was good, about -55 dBm. I need at least -75 dBm to get a semi-reliable connection. After I had it all mounted and powered it up again the signal strength was about -82 dBm. What? How could that be? It was higher than on the ladder and even though it still wasn’t high enough to get line of site to the neighbor’s house it should have been better.

I moved the vehicle back around to the other side of the house did the thing with the rope and two ladders and getting soaking wet again to tweak the position. I turned the antenna a little bit and the signal strength looked great again. I came back down. Still good. Nice.

I came back the next day (Thursday) to finish up on the inside of the house with putting an end on the Ethernet cable I pushed through the wall and routing the cable on the inside in a neat and tidy manner. I connected it all up and tried connecting to the Wi-Fi access point at Mecca two hops away. Pings were erratic. Sometimes they were 4 mS and sometimes they would time out. I measured the signal strength again. It was bouncing all over. -85 sometimes and the mid -60s at others. I rebooted units, changed antenna polarizations, and all kinds of things on both units involved. Nothing helped. The signal strength was just not dependable.

Friday (yesterday) morning I visited the only non-satellite high speed Internet provider office for that location (their office is in Moscow, where I live) to talk to them about getting a direct connection. They wanted an address.

It’s in the middle of a field:

There is no “address”.

This seemed to be a bit of a problem for them. I told them it was a shipping container where I had solar charged batteries for electricity. I finally allowed them to believe it was a construction site (we construct targets there, right?). Then they wanted to know how long construction would be going on. “Several years” seemed to suck the brains right out of them because they stood there with slack faces without saying a word. I finally explained that I hold a shooting event there every year and we construct the targets for the event there. I run the event with web based software, I need a good Internet connection to run the AT&T Microcell so I could make emergency services calls if needed, and a large number of bloggers attend and they appreciate having free Wi-Fi. I go out there several times a year to check on things and do tests. I use the Internet a lot and will continue to do so.

The blank stares slowly faded and they started talking again. After about 20 minutes they agreed to send someone out “sometime soon” to do a “site survey”. I had requested one back in August or September without them following through so I wasn’t exactly convinced they were wanting my business so I pushed them pretty hard for a firm date. They told me I was about number 94 on their list and it would be a while.

It was now my turn to be speechless for a few seconds.

I then told them the site had a great view of the mountain top where their access point is and it is closer than my brother Gary who subscribes to their service. The site survey really isn’t necessary. Could they just send someone out right now, while I was going to be there, and connect me up? And I’m almost never around on weekdays since I work in Seattle… Nope. That was impossible.

More pushing for a date and they said maybe in a couple weeks. And they might even be able to do it on a weekend when I was there. They took my number and promised to get back in touch when they had a firm date.

I then went back to Mecca and confirmed my connection was flakey. From Mecca to the neighbors house I had about 15 to 20 Mbs transfer rates. From Mecca to the outside world it was about 15 Kbs—when it was connected at all. Good enough to sometimes get email to come through and some web pages to eventually load but the satellite connection was actually better.

I spent the rest of the day tidying up Mecca. I put in the RIGrunner and routed wires a little neater and more permanently (still much to be done). I unpacked all the mixing table stuff and spread it out on the tables to see how it might work with the new layout. This was potentially important to get done yesterday because Ry thought he might be bringing over a new shooter today. I wanted the place ready to produce targets with minimal time spent unpacking and getting ready to actually make targets. It turns out the new shooter backed out so it didn’t matter that much.

Here are some pictures:

The boxes would normally be folded and ready to be filled but the layout was good enough to see that it should work out.

We will probably go back out with a small crew sometime in the next couple of months and do some testing just to make sure but so far, except for the Internet connection, I’m very pleased with the new explosives production facility.

The guys at the music store showed this to me.  It's been up a while, and there are several others.  It's not like hunting prey animals like deer, in that the deer rarely try, and even if they do they can't kill you as easily as a lion can kill you.  I don't know these guys, but someone had very good concentration and clear purpose for a bit;

That's about as close as it gets I guess.  I didn't know how to categorize it, so I put it under "Boomershoot" (aim small, miss small) though at Boomershoot we don't aim at moving targets that are very capable, and determined, to kill us.  I have a very long hunting story I'll bore you with later, which includes missing some very easy shots that I was, up until that point, convinced I could never miss.  The point being that missing an easy shot didn't get me or anyone else killed, but only delayed getting meat on the table.

Barb and I went to Boomershoot Mecca today. I installed a 3/8” U-bolt on the solar panel mount and made a plate to replace the conduit clamps I had used to secure the pole to the top edge of the shipping container. I just didn’t trust the previous configuration. Barb and I raised the pole and secured it in place:

Then I did some more wiring and tested out the transfer switch (it automatically switches from the external generator to the battery powered inverter):

I moved some shelves into the proper position and started putting things away.

But by then Barb was cold and tired and wanted to go home. I had a 1750 Watt heater at her feet with my coat over her lap but it’s getting cold enough that you have to be moving or else be in a warm environment to keep form getting hypothermia.

I still have a little bit more wiring to do such as connecting the 115 VAC battery charger to the generator side of the transfer switch, installing an Anderson Powerpole and securing the cables and flexible conduit to the wall. Then I want to arrange all the boxes, chemicals, mixer, air cleaners and other stuff in prep for Boomershoot 2012.

The solar panel seems to be working well. At one point the charge controller indicated 7.1 amps which is getting close to 100 W (the panel is rated at 130 W under ideal conditions). As we were leaving the sun was lower and the battery was nearing full charge and the amperage dropped down to the four amp range. Still that is far more than enough to run Wi-Fi and a web cam without generator backup.

On Sunday Barron and I went to Boomershoot Mecca and mounted the solar panel on the pole and did most of the wiring for the power transfer switch and the solar panel. I was not happy with the mounting of the solar panel to the steel pipe with just two hose clamps. The panel has quite a bit of surface (wind) area, clamps are very thin with holes (weak spots) ready made from the factory. After we had it mounted it we trivial to rotate it on the pole. It just didn’t have enough grip. And if it would rotate that probably meant it could slide down the pole as well. We drove to Orofino for lunch and bought some friction tape at the hardware store. I wasn’t entirely happy with this solution but it was better than what we had.

I ultimately realized what were really needed was a U-bolt in addition to the factory provided clamps. The hardware store was closed by then and so we used the friction tape and cobbled something together that was better than nothing.

Also the conduit clamps I planned to hold the 1” pipe to the side of the shipping container started looking weak to me when I thought about the panel being pushed around in the wind. I installed two but figured four would really be better. It took a lot of time to bore and tap the holes into the corner of the shipping container so I decided the other two could wait until the next time I came out.

It was decided that I would look at the weather forecasts and if there was no high winds I would take care of it on Thursday when Barb and I go to my parents place a couple miles away for Thanksgiving. If there were winds forecast I would get up early Monday morning, buy the parts at the local hardware store, drive out to the site, finish it up, and still be able to get back to Moscow without being excessively late in my “work from home” week at my Seattle job.

The wind forecast looked good and I didn’t even bother to purchase the parts. Then about 9:30 last night I checked my email on my phone and found (in part):

Joe,

Here is a current Wind Advisory for Boomershoot (Lenore, ID) until 8:00am, Wed Nov 23 2011, from your local National Weather Service office.

…

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MISSOULA MT
940 PM MST MON NOV 21 2011
OROFINO/GRANGEVILLE REGION-
840 PM PST MON NOV 21 2011

...WIND ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM TUESDAY TO 8 AM PST WEDNESDAY...

A WIND ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM TUESDAY TO 8 AM PST WEDNESDAY.

* IMPACTS/TIMING: SOUTH WINDS WILL BECOME QUITE STRONG AFTER
MIDNIGHT. STRONG SOUTH WINDS WILL CONTINUE INTO WEDNESDAY
MORNING.

* WINDS: SOUTH 15 TO 25 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 35 MPH...INCREASING TO
25 TO 35 MPH WITH GUSTS UP 50 MPH AFTER MIDNIGHT TONIGHT INTO
WEDNESDAY MORNING.

I am already in bed, ready to go to sleep shortly and now I have 50 MPH winds forecast for Boomershoot in about three hours. Even 25 MPH winds would have made it difficult to sleep without taking some action to prevent the loss of the solar panel. I drove out to the site which is normally one hour each way but last night the roads had snow and ice on them. I used a rope to safely lower the pipe and solar panel to the ground and tie it to a couple of railroad ties (thanks Matt!) so it wouldn’t blow around and bang into some nearby rocks:

I made it back to bed by a little after 1:00 AM.

My Tweets for the little adventure were (minor grammar errors corrected):

We needed one more bolt to secure the solar panel against high winds.

I could have done it this morning but no winds were in the forecast so I could do it on Thursday when I was going to be there anyway.

A few minutes ago I got a wind warning for Boomershoot. Up to 50 MPH winds starting at 1:00 AM. On my way out to the site.

On site at #Boomershoot Mecca. Not much wind yet. Glad I didn't try to drive across the field. It was very soft and muddy.

I'm going to take down the mast with the solar panel and Wifi AP. No cell service so this is the last Tweet until I get back home.

#Boomershoot Mecca solar panel is secure and I'm back home and in bed with @BoomershootWife where I belong.

This morning I received another wind warning for Boomershoot:

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MISSOULA MT
815 AM MST TUE NOV 22 2011
OROFINO/GRANGEVILLE REGION-
715 AM PST TUE NOV 22 2011

...WIND ADVISORY NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL 4 AM PST THURSDAY

The winds are going to last until 4 AM Thursday? I’m really, really glad I took it all the way down rather than just tried to lash it together a little better with the rope or paracord. I’ll get the parts tonight and get the panel back up later this week after the winds have died down.

Wife Barbara went back to work on Saturday after breaking her ankle in August.

At the end of the day her ankle was sore but she went off to work again yesterday. She has today and tomorrow off but starts her regular schedule of six days on, eight days off again on Wednesday.

It was tough leaving her behind in Idaho yesterday. It was really nice living together full time again but we have our duty to support all those other people who need the time to camp out in the parks and protest people having more money than them so it’s back to work for us.

In somewhat related news Ry drove his van to Idaho this weekend to deliver stuff for Boomershoot I had purchased in the Seattle area. Life is always an adventure when riding with Ry and this weekend was no different. This was the drive across the field to the new explosives production site:

The first voice you hear is mine. The laughter is Barron, who gave Ry QOTD status for that little adventure. The last voice is son-in-law Caleb.

I rode back to the Seattle area with Ry yesterday. We had the left front tire blow out on the van while on I-90. It was a very interesting hole in the tire. We had never seen anything like this before:

We got the limited service spare put on without getting hit by another vehicle and limped on in to Ellensburg, Since it was Sunday all the tire shops were closed. Ry paid the $100 to get someone to open up the Ellensburg Tire Center on Sunday and we arrived back in the Seattle area about 18:30 after leaving Idaho at 09:30. That was a nine hour journey that usually takes only five hours.

It could have been worse. On the way to Idaho Barb and I were a few minute ahead of Ry and had stop and go traffic over snow covered Snoqualmie pass on I-90. We weaved our way around the stopped, crosswise, and even backward facing cars, RVs, and trucks. Ry, probably less than 10 minutes behind us, found the pass closed. After it was opened up again he was an hour behind us.

Barb and I had bare and wet and even bare and dry conditions the rest of the way to Idaho. Ry had black ice:

Saturday son-in-law Caleb, Barron, Ry and I did some more prep for Boomershoot 2012.

Ry has pictures and an overview. Barron has a bit more.

I was tempted to make Ry's comment just before we left Mecca my QOTD, "I'm doing you a favor." Barron said he agreed with that sentiment then Ry threw my 8" crescent wrench over the hill. Sunday morning Ry gave me three new crescent wrenches in various sizes and told me they had lifetime warranties and to take them back if I ever had problems with them.

There is still a lot of work to be done. I had hoped to get the solar panel operational but we didn't quite get there. There is still more wiring to do but most importantly the pole it mounts on needs to be secured to the shipping container with something more than zip-ties.

Ry reports on Boomershoot 2012 Sunday lunch.

I have ordered the cardboard boxes for Boomershoot 2012. I stress cardboard because for Boomershoot 2011 we mostly used plastic “deli” boxes. This was, essentially, a disaster. For reasons we are not entirely certain about (probably the additional confinement provided by the extra mass of the cardboard) the cardboard box targets detonated as expected and the plastic ones had a very high percentage of duds.

Next weekend I will deliver the 500 7”x7”, 800 4”x4”, and 900 3”x3” boxes to Mecca (and here) along with the new 130 W solar panel, new tables, and miscellaneous other stuff. I think I have enough reclosable (“Zip Lock”) bags for next year but I have an idea for a new method of sealing the targets which I will do some tests on someday soon. This new method will eliminate the slow process of putting the Boomerite in the plastic bags. The small bags for the 3”x3” and “4x4” targets are a real pain.

Son-in-law Caleb says he will be able (he broke his leg a few weeks ago and hasn’t completely healed yet) to go with me and help do the installation of the solar panel, wiring, and the Wi-Fi.

The last time I visited Mecca (October 15^th) I had numerous problems and did not get done nearly as much as I had hoped. Weather and soil is getting to the point where it will be “interesting” to delivery anything that we can’t carry by hand. Fortunately Mecca is much closer to a drivable road during the winter than the Taj. It is only about 140 yards. So even carrying a wood tabletop is doable unless you are on snowshoes or wading through knee deep mud (both of which are possible at certain times of the year).

I was updating the Boomershoot links page (about half the links were dead) and I found the stats on the last Gateway Colorado Dynamite Shoot:

WHAT A BLAST!!

With 198 shooters, 172 charges exploded!!

[sarcasm]I must be doing it wrong. We go through about 1500 targets and only get about 120 shooters.[/sarcasm]

Via The Jewish Week:

While I was recently giving a class at a Modern Orthodox synagogue in New York City on the topic of halachic approaches to weapons I asked this group of 25 people (most between 50-65 years old) how many of them owned guns. I expected 1 or 2 hands to emerge but was astonished to find that about 50-60% admitted to having a gun at home. Shortly after, I learned that there is an Orthodox organization now training Orthodox Jews to use guns and to bring them to synagogue as a form of “protection.” If the religious Jewish community in America has joined the consumers of guns then we must also enter into the national gun discourse.

Wow! This is awesome!

The rest of the article is rather negative on gun ownership with things like:

The Mishnah describes weapons as “shameful” things to be seen with (Shabbat 63a). One should be embarrassed to own a weapon, even in the case that they must.

But the important part is that it may be that U.S. Jews are recognizing the utility of possessing the skills and tools to defend themselves rather than being totally dependent  upon the government. Even though this would seem to be a “Well, DUH!” conclusion (German Police Battalion involvement in direct killing operations were responsible for at least 1 million deaths, see also this book) this is a huge change from 10 or 15 years ago.

If 50-60% possess firearms then most of the rest will be willing to have open-minded discussions about guns. This means we win as well as the Jewish community.

[Slightly off topic but one semi-famous Jewish author just signed up for the Precision Rifle Clinic at Boomershoot 2012.]

The Boomershoot 2012 Precision Rifle Clinic is now open for entries. Instructor Gene Econ reports, “Already have a number of guys signed up.”

Sign up here before it fills up.

There are still 23 positions left in the main event for Boomershoot. Sign up for Boomershoot here.

We have a speaker lined up for Boomershoot 2012 dinner.

Author Paul M. Barrett who I met in Reno at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous last month has agreed to be our speaker.

More information about the dinner and his talk, “The Ironies of Gun Control” can be found here.

I take exception with Ry saying, “Joe tried to drive the cat through the uphill side of the container, missing only by a few inches”. It was under complete control when I was within a few inches. I was out of control sliding sidewise for a few feet a minute or so earlier but it stopped before I got within five or six feet but everything else is correct.

Barron has some pictures and I will get some pictures, video, and stories (three different types of fuels failed me with the bulldozer, there was a flat tire on my vehicle, and it was HOT out there), of my own up within a few days.

On the bright side; Mecca is going to be awesome!

Oh, and those guys who stayed in bed until after 10:00 AM or 2:00 PM today are wimps. My muscles were a little sore from moving over 1300 pounds of ammonium nitrate and other stuff but I was out at the range today by 9:00 AM and shot in the Steel Challenge Pistol match with only minor complaints. I guess it must suck when you get to be as old as those other guys who didn’t make it to match. [wink]

Thanks again Ry, Barron, and son-in-law Caleb, for all the help. I couldn’t have done it without you.

I’m willing to bleed in order to own a world record.

Ry Jones
September 23, 2011
[It turns out there is a relatively easy path to make it into the Guinness Book of World Records. I questioned the wisdom of Ry’s method, which involved explosives at close ranges, and the quote above was him assured me he did not share my concern.—Joe]

Son-in-law Caleb and I went to the Boomershoot site both yesterday and today. Yesterday we removed the remains of the first Boomershoot explosives storage magazine. I had busted it up with the bulldozer last June and finally got around to hauling it off.

Today we put some old railroad ties in place for supporting a modified 40’ shipping container in place as a manufacturing site for Boomershoot reactive targets:

The shipping container should be delivered in two or three weeks. It’s going to be awesome to have a place to build the targets with lots of room and sheltered from the wind, snow, rain, hail, sleet, sun, and various combinations thereof we have endured in the past.

The railroad ties had been donated by Matthew and hauled to within a couple hundred yards by Barron and Janelle. There was a crop in the field and they couldn’t get them all the way to the site. Enough of the crop was cut last night and this morning that we got them in the rest of the way. We also brought in some gravel to position them. That turned out to be a bit of a misadventure.

I originally planned to just put down a tarp in the back of my SUV and shovel in some gravel at my brother’s place a couple miles away and carry it over like that. My brother suggested using the bucket loader on the tractor. Since one bucket full would be plenty a single trip with the loader would take less time than shoveling it into and out of my vehicle. Good idea.

The problem was that the heavy load in the bucket exposed a fatigued weld in the 35+ year old tractor and as I crossed a small ditch the front left wheel broke off:

As you can see in the second picture most of the area of the weld had been broke for some time.

We ended up shoveling the gravel we needed into the back of my SUV and delivering it the last 150 yards or so as originally planned.

My brother Doug and I looked at it fairly closely and it looks like the pieces can be taken off, tossed in a pickup, and taken back to the shop for repair. It’s probably a half-day job that is relatively inexpensive.

I was just glad that it didn’t break on the county road as I was going much faster and next to a step drop off. It could have been much more serious.

Here’s an opportunity for a caption contest:

The registration software is in good enough shape for now.

This is the schedule:

• Registration is currently open for staff
• Registration opens for previous year participants 8/29/2011 6:00:00 PM Pacific Time.
• Registration opens for everyone 9/1/2011 6:00:00 PM Pacific Time.

Go to http://entry.boomershoot.org/ to sign up.

The video was taken at Boomershoot 2003 but posted on YouTube just today. I’m not even sure who took the video. But this was when our fireballs worked fairly reliably.

Son-in-law Caleb and I went out to the Boomershoot site yesterday. Caleb staked out the four corners of where we will place the shipping container for the new reactive target production facility:

The corners stake out an area 8’ x 40’. We brought a laser level and Caleb was able to determine that I had got it level within three inches using my eyeball and the old dozer. After the crop has been taken off the surrounding field this fall we will go back in with a pickup load of gravel and put a little gravel on each of the four corner locations making the rear end about 3” higher to keep water from draining to the rear, settle the railroad ties from Matthew into the gravel, and then bring in the shipping container.

While Caleb worked on staking and leveling task I worked on getting the Wi-Fi connection set up and then did some further tests on Internet provider options. One of the options included putting an antenna on a distance hill that is visible both from Mecca (this Boomershoot production facility), my brother Doug’s home, and Teakean Butte where First Step Research has high-speed wireless link available. Doug would pay the recurring Internet bill and I would pay for the equipment and do the installation.

Currently we are getting service from a neighbor who has a satellite connection but does not have visibility of Teakean Butte. The connection is slower the a cheaper priced connection from First Step, a latency you could measure with a sundial, and “Fair Access” limits of only a few gigabytes per month. Doug does not have visibility of Teakean Butte either but if I were to put up a solar powered FSR connection on the hill at the power pole in the distance (about 0.75 miles away from the Wi-Fi access point in the foreground below) I could service both all of the Boomershoot site and my brother Doug.

The picture above was taken with a 300 mm lens which gives about a 6 X boost from a normal view.

The question was could I make the 0.75 mile connection with the current technology I have or would I need better antennas and/or higher powered transmitters. I pointed my antenna at the distance hill, connected to the neighbors satellite powered access point via the rear lobe of the directional antenna which was about 0.7 miles away through a few trees. I then went to the distance hill to measure the signal strength—with my cell phone. I could not connect from the distant hill but I could measure the signal strength. It will work. The signal strength would probably be strong enough I could even connect with some laptop computers. Propagation was very good and the noise floor was very low. That appears to be a viable option.

Today I did some more prep for the new explosives manufacturing site. This new place needed a name so a few weeks ago I asked daughter Kim and son-in-law Caleb to try and come up with some names. Caleb almost immediately suggested “New Mecca”. I thought about it some and suggested dropping the “New”. When I told others of the suggestion it received a warm welcome (especially from Barron and Janelle) so “Mecca” it is.

What I did today was put up the Wi-Fi access point. I wasn’t able to test it because the Wi-Fi access point at the provider wasn’t working and no one was home for me to get access and fix it. I think I’m probably going to get my own connection to First Step Research which will be a lot faster and more reliable than the second hand satellite connect I am currently using.

Anyway, here is a picture of the new access point:

The fence post was rather difficult to get into the “ground”. The place it really needed to be was mostly big rocks covered with a few pine needles. I got it into the ground and I hope to be able to test the connection the next time I go back. It’s over a half-mile to the source with partial blocking by the trees and that is a little bit of a concern to me.

Here are the railroad ties donated by Matt and delivered by Barron and unloaded with the help of Kim and Caleb we will use for the new production facility Ry is supervising:

Thanks again guys. We are going to have a great new place to make targets next spring.

As the anti-gun organizations implode and fade into nothingness I’m expanded Boomershoot production facilities.

Today the BoomershootBabe (daughter Kim) and Barron will be unloading materials for the Mecca for long range shooters. Thanks guys. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to help. I’m 350 miles away working on improving the entry software for Boomershoot 2012.

You enjoy this way too much.

Barbara Scott
July 2, 2011
[No. She wasn't talking about sex but almost.

I was mapping out my game plan with the ATF after they said something stupid. Except I think maybe they aren't as stupid as they appear at first glance. I asked them one little question in response and instead of getting an answer back they went silent. I suspect they realize no matter what they say next it's going to be embarrassing for them. More details if I ever get a response from them.--Joe]

The culvert I put in a few years ago needed some fill on both sides to make it more level rather than just a mound over the culvert with increasingly deep holes on either side.

But if we finish the new production facility this culvert won’t get nearly as much use as it has in the past so it might not really matter.

A couple weeks ago Barron and Janelle got their pickup stuck when they showed up to help at a private party:

All the traffic during Boomershoot left some big ruts but the stuck pickup made them even worse:

So I smoothed those out a little bit:

The first Boomershoot explosives storage magazine hasn’t been used in many years and even though I should have taken it out a long time ago I had some sort of attachment to it. When the ATF visited last month the inspector seemed to be taking more interest in it that I was really comfortable with. It hadn’t been “up to snuff” for quite some time but I didn’t think it mattered since I wasn’t using it anyway. But she was making notes even though I told her I would take it out this summer sometime. Rather than risk some sort of requirement that I repair it I decided to take it out today while I had the cat there to break up the concrete blocks.

Before:

After:

Later this summer after the hay has been taken off the field I’ll salvage what I can from the remnants and haul off the rest of the pieces.

As I mentioned yesterday I did some work on a site for a new reactive target production facility for Boomershoot.

Progress continues and I declared it “good enough for now” this afternoon:

This looking to the north and a little bit east at about 5^o.

This is looking to the northwest at about 315^o.

This is looking a little more to the west at about 290^o.

This is from the opposite end of the location looking back at the position the picture above was taken from.

You might notice in the first and last picture that there is section of disturbed earth that extends into the field in the southeast. This is where (I hope) the truck and trailer can enter the site with the shipping container. I expect we will have the dozer there when the shipping container is brought in so that changes can be made in the landscape should they be necessary so the trailer doesn’t get high centered or something. And if nothing else the can get it fairly close and then I can push or drag it into the final position with the cat.

Final leveling will probably be done with a hydraulic jack, gravel, railroad ties, and boards.

I started work on a new Boomershoot building site today:

This will be for manufacturing of the targets. In years past we have built the targets on the tailgate of my pickup, folding tables in the middle of an open field, and under a folding canopy.

We have sometimes made a few targets in the Taj Mahal but it just isn’t big enough for large scale production. This year we made a firm decision to move the manufacturing location to a location further from the storage location and improve the working conditions. We plan to put in a shipping container with lights, tables, and ventilation.

Daughter Kim “had” to be back in Moscow by 2:00 PM for the Zombie Carnival (I was sort of interested in going until Kim said head shots from 300 yards away would be frowned upon) so I didn’t get the dozer work completed. We will go back out tomorrow to finish up.

Although I think it would be very cool to have one of these and have the money to afford shooting it I don’t really have a place to shoot it. The Boomershoot site just wouldn’t be appropriate. This 155 mm Howitzer really needs 5 to 10 thousand yards to show it’s stuff.

I have seen this gun at this same location ever since I can remember but this week while Barb and I were vacationing in Orofino was the first time I looked at it closely.

I had no idea it was made in France. This really surprised me.

And from 1918! That surprised me too. I had always figured it was a WWII era gun.

See that smile? That is why we win.

What can the Brady Campaign do to compete with that?

This was a private Boomershoot party on Saturday. There were lots of smiles that day. The video below gives some hints as to how they were generated:

I received an email this morning:

From: gareth clark [mailto:deathat72land@hotmail.co.uk]
Sent: Sunday, June 05, 2011 8:45 AM
To: joeh@boomershoot.org
Subject: large bomb.

i want to make a large bomb capable of taking down a large building. i have made HMTD and some other explosives before, but what would be the easiest way to make a bomb like this? could it fit inside a large rucksack?

Huh? Really?

I forwarded it to New Scotland Yard with the following:

From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Sunday, June 05, 2011 5:19 PM
Subject: FW: large bomb.

I received an “interesting” email this morning. The email address is UK based so I presume this is your problem. The email properties with the IP address of interest are:

Received: (qmail 4964 invoked from network); 5 Jun 2011 15:45:25 –0000
Received: from unknown (HELO m1pismtp01-001.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net) ([10.8.12.1])
          (envelope-sender deathat72land@hotmail.co.uk)
          by p3plsmtp03-05.prod.phx3.secureserver.net (qmail-1.03) with SMTP
          for <joeh@boomershoot.org>; 5 Jun 2011 15:45:25 –0000
X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Aq8XADKk602dNwDbY2dsb2JhbABTglKEG5Evjh8KFwkLCBMFIqgxjmKPD4YhBJVKgQuJXw
Received: from dub0-omc1-s20.dub0.hotmail.com ([157.55.0.219])
  by m1pismtp01-001.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net with ESMTP; 05 Jun 2011 08:45:25 –0700
Received: from DUB102-W9 ([157.55.0.237]) by dub0-omc1-s20.dub0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675);
                Sun, 5 Jun 2011 08:45:24 –0700
Message-ID: DUB102-w983F450C57CD57C33B6A5F9610@phx.gbl
Return-Path: deathat72land@hotmail.co.uk
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
                boundary="_76ccd730-8744-405d-b6d5-19c72abdedaa_"
X-Originating-IP: [94.3.167.145]
From: gareth clark deathat72land@hotmail.co.uk
To: joeh@boomershoot.org
Subject: large bomb.
Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2011 16:45:23 +0100
Importance: Normal
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 05 Jun 2011 15:45:24.0199 (UTC) FILETIME=[957DDF70:01CC2397]
X-Nonspam: None

Good luck and let me know if I can be of further service.

Joe Huffman
Moscow, Idaho, USA
208-301-4254

Hi Joe this is Janelle.

I called to let you know we kinda need the tractor.

Janelle Barnett
June 4, 2011
Voice mail from 10:38 AM to me.
[Her husband, Barron, got their pickup stuck while attempting to get to the Taj Mahal to help put on a private Boomershoot party. I tried to pull them out with my Ford Escape but I couldn’t even shake them. I went and got the caterpillar tractor and pulled them out with it. Pictures and video sometime in the next day or three.—Joe]

I’m doing some maintenance at the Boomershoot site. Lots of little things:

• The oil in the generator needs to be changed (it’s warming up and charging the battery right now all charged!)
• The O/S in my Wi-Fi access points needs to be updated (one done the other in progress)
• The yellow jacket trap needed the bait replaced (done)
• There is still garbage which needs to be hauled away
• The bowling pin rack was hauled back to the shed (cousin Alan brought it down off of his hill—whoops! I was going to do that two weeks ago and didn’t make it out here)

Need to do some chronograph work and practice for the steel challenge match tomorrow while I’m out here too. And that reminds me that I need to pay a special someone for all the steel targets they brought to me at Boomershoot.

Notice the clouds of water vapor from the explosions in this time lapse video of Boomershoot 2011. The winds--they are a changing.

Peter Biddle (Twitter feed is here) shares another video of Boomershoot 2011. This one is of the opening fireball.

I think it is Barron whom you hear say, “Ry, you are a magnificent god!”

I suppose there is a first time for everything. I hope this is the last time this happens. I took no pleasure in doing this. But after hearing the reports and then getting the emails it was very clear what had to be done. The situation was very bad. Every year I think I will do some training with my range officers and make sure they know they have the authority to kick someone out on the spot and I will back them up. Had they been kicked out on the second offense I might not have had to permanently ban them. As it is I didn’t see that I had a choice. I had numerous people report the same incidents and all strongly recommend the ban.

I sent the following email today and will be making modifications to the online entry software to help enforce this:

From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Subject: We have a problem.

After Boomershoot this year I had two of my range officers tell me of some persistent and severe rule violations by one of our participants. I then received email from several participants describing the events reported by my range officers and naming you as the offender.

I cannot in good conscious allow you to participate at Boomershoot again. If an injury were to occur as a result of your actions I would be bear some of the responsibility since it was known to me that you repeatedly violated the safety rules even after being told many times.

I am sorry to do this but while you are welcome as a spectator you are permanently banned from participating in Boomershoot.

There is no appeal.

Joe Huffman
Boomershoot Event Director

In addition to the boomers people shoot we do a few special things as well. The opening fireball (when it worked) and anvil launch have been regular features for years. For a couple of years we had a bowling ball mortar. This year we had three bowling ball mortars.

Here is a video of the special features:

I didn't realize the fireball set off a car alarm until I viewed this video.

I figure it’s like when you go to a Gallagher show and sit in the front row. You bring your rain coat because you know what is going to happen with those watermelons. Well… the Boomershoot fireball is like that. Those people don’t have anything to complain about.

Ry Jones
May 12, 2011
[Ry and I had an “after action” discussion about Boomershoot 2011. The opening fireball was among the topics discussed.

What most people don’t know about that fireball is that it almost didn’t work. If you play back the video frame-by-frame you will find that nearly all the road flares went out. You can also see this from the pictures afterward. There are only about three or four flares still burning. Which leads us to the runner up for the QOTD, by Ry again, “If you had told me a week ago I would be putting out road flares with gasoline I would never have believed you.”—Joe]

Every year we have a raffle at the Boomershoot dinner. The raffle items are donated by various companies and individuals. This year NightForce donated a rifle scope which was the highlight of the raffle. There were also items such as a shooting bench, AR-15 magazines, shooting glasses, and many, many other items.

The proceeds of the raffle went to Soldier’s Angels. Here is the report from my bank on the donation:

For those of you who listened closely at the dinner this is more than the amount actually raised and given to me. A Boomershooter quietly slipped me another $230 to give to Soldier’s Angels and Gene Econ added another $100.

I haven’t posted much recently. Boomershoot is pretty much all consuming for me. Last night was the first opportunity to get a full nights sleep since last Wednesday. I slept almost 12 hours. I feel much better now.

There will be more regular blog posts in the near future.

Ry topped his last whooper of a fireball which was in 2007. This was the most awesome one yet. There was 7.5 gallons of gasoline, 12 pounds of Boomerite, 16 road flares, many feet of PVC pipe and one bullet involved. Click on the pictures below to get higher resolution versions.

Lyle@UltiMak and Ry ignited the flares. Then Lyle shot the explosives.

Ry speculated the PVC pipe would survive to be used again next year.

 
 
 
 

Ry took a bow to all the cheers and applause.

Ry was wrong about the PVC pipe.

Update: Ry has comments and this video:

Update2: Nice picture and automated .GIF here (along with a general Boomershoot 2011 report from some of my staff that put in the most hours). And more video:

I want to take a nap just from listening to you talk.

Erica@ATF
May 2, 2011
[Erica@ATF showed up at my house at 8:44 this morning. That was 16 minutes early and I wasn’t quite ready for her but it worked out okay. We went out to the Boomershoot site and she did her measurements of steel thicknesses and distances to houses and roads. The only deficiency she asked me to correct was the insect screen on a vent (which I told her about before we got to the magazine and the unpainted steel bolts poking into the “Meadow One” (original at the tree line). The repair of the insect screen will take about five minutes to fix and I told her I would just remove the old magazine since we don’t really use it anyway.

As to the nap comment above at first I thought she was saying I was boring but then she said something about all the things I had been doing for Boomershoot and still had to get done before I could drive back to the Seattle area this evening.

Yes. Boomershoot sucks up a lot of time. The last several days I would wake at 4:00 AM get then finally give up on going back to sleep at 6:00 AM and work until roughly 5:00 PM. Then socialize with the staff and Boomershooters until late. I would finally get to bed about 11:00 PM to start all over again.

It was worth it. I’ll link to some of the blog posts others have been making in a day or three. Making people happy and Brady Campaign creatures unhappy makes me happy.—Joe]

After going to sleep about 11:30 last night I woke up about 4:00 AM and couldn’t go back to sleep. Last night I told son-in-law Caleb that we should leave by 7:00 AM so I have a little time to blog before loading the last of my stuff in my 4x4 and heading out to the Boomershoot site. I will probably continue to lack sleep until Sunday night when I will also have very sore muscles and have lost eight to ten pounds (I checked in a 202.8 pounds last night before going to bed). And friends and co-workers keep telling me, “Have fun at Boomershoot!” It’s not “fun” for me. “Rewarding” is a better word.

Four of my staff from out of state have checked in and will be ready to start preparing the site for the shooters shortly after I arrive. Others will arrive at various times throughout the day. My biggest task is delegating and communicating what I want done. It helps that I have staff that have done this for several years and don’t need much direction. But still, just keeping the tasks queued up is sometimes challenging because I want to do something just a little bit different than previously and I need to explain it or they need materials I haven’t got delivered to the proper location yet.

The site got more rain last night than I expected but the forecast is looking pretty good. It will be wet and messy out there for a few hours and perhaps all day today. The winds will be up to 15 MPH today too. That will help dry out the ground but it will be cold with the temperature never getting about 43F.

Joe (calling the local auto repair shop): Hello, my name is Joe Huffman, I have a 2004 Chevy Aveo that…
Repair guy interrupts: Hi Joe! How was Boomershoot this year?
[discussion of Boomershoot]
Repair guy: Someone was pushing Boomershoot at the last Tea Party meeting we had in town.

I think I might have met him four or five years ago. Daughter Kim takes the car in more frequently than I do and gets similar questions about Boomershoot.

It’s a small town.

I’ve decided rubber bands are the magic ingredient that made it possible for successful Boomershoot events. Each year we use many hundreds of them. This year I thought our usage would decrease and perhaps nearly disappear by 2012. But this morning I realized they might come to the rescue yet again in the way we attach targets to the “clothes lines” (“Boomer Line”?).

Here is a “clothes line” (from Saturday):

And here is close up of a target:

We are attaching the target with a plastic bag tied around the parachute cord which is suspended between steel fence posts. This knot is hard to tie quickly and puts the target closer to the paracord than I’m comfortable with. It worked last year but it still worries me that a shooter will clip the line or the explosion will damage the line.

I think we can use rubber bands to fasten the plastic bag to the line. The key is finding the correct knot and implementing it correctly such that the target maintains it’s orientation correctly. I think I have figured out the knot. I’ll test my hypothesis with the knots on Thursday.

This means I have to buy more rubber bands now. [shrug] Rubber bands are cheap.

I just wish they sold rubber bands by quantity rather than by the pound. It makes purchasing the correct number more difficult.

When it is dry enough to farm Boomershoot is dry enough to be pleasant. This year things are still wet.

My brother sent me an email late last week. He hasn’t started farming yet this spring because it has been too cold and wet. He came back to the farm 25 years ago and kept records of various dates such as when he planted, fertilized, and harvested various crops. In those 25 years the latest he has ever started the spring work was April 21^st. Hence every day he can’t get into the field it is setting a new record for him.

I was on site last weekend on both Saturday and Sunday. It was dry enough to get around okay in my 4x4 but the ground was very soft in places and I cut into the mud when driving to/from the Taj. There is also a small draw between the “Main” and “Lowlands” shooting positions. The range officers (and others) cross this area many, many times during the event. It had standing water in it and was very soft. If it is still wet on Sunday I will bring some concrete “stepping stones” to help keep people’s feet dry.

Both Saturday and Sunday it was warm and sunny and I’m sure it dried up a lot of the water but even at the end of the day on Sunday it was still wet enough that driving across the field multiple times to do build and place targets will create deep ruts. Yesterday was cloudy and it rained some in Moscow (my home) but the weather radar indicated the Boomershoot site missed most of the rain. The forecast for today is still on the cool side with a high of 47F but the sun is shining bright and the wind is blowing. That will help some.

The forecasts for the rest of the week indicate very little precipitation except for early Thursday morning (2:00 –> 5:00 AM). And possibly on Friday (with a chance of snow as well). Saturday and Sunday are forecast to be partly sunny and partly cloudy with highs of 53F and 59F. I expect this will result in a minor but net move toward dryness from what I saw last weekend.

I predict Boomershoot 2011 will be mostly comfortable but people are going get mud on their shoes and I wouldn’t be too surprised to see some vehicles get stuck in the mud.

I’ve been cleared hot to spend some money for the enjoyment of Boomershoot attendees; in one case, you’ll see something this year: a different fireball! I’ll probably spend a couple hundred or so making this year’s fireball much more interesting. The smart money will be on standing back; I’m either going to fail spectacularly (spectators set alight, tents engulfed in flames), fail miserably (spend a bunch of money and have another sucky fireball), or succeed spectacularly (spectators almost set alight, tents almost engulfed in flames).

Ry Jones
April 24, 2011
In which money is turned into smoke, dust, blood
[The smart money is to tell Ry to keep the fireball further from the shooting line. I’m thinking maybe 30+ yards this time. The 2007 “flaming sticks falling from the sky” event was at 18 yards.—Joe]

Yesterday Ry, his daughter Arden, my son-in-law Caleb, and I went out to the Boomershoot site. We did tests of a new target type invented and built by Ry. It was a little disappointing. I’ll put video up someday. I’m just too tired right now.

Most importantly though is that Caleb put in nearly 500 stakes at the tree line for targets. I put in the fence posts to create “clothes lines” to support more targets in the air above (sort of, they are offset some) the ground targets. This will give us space for about 1000 targets at the tree line. The tree line is about 375 yards from the shooting line and these targets always go fast and are completely consumed. By utilizing the vertical dimension we can put more targets in front of the same linear foot of berm (backstop) space.

I also worked on getting the extra Wi-Fi access point on the shooting line working. I was not successful and in fact just before I left I managed to get the configuration set such that I couldn’t access the network via Wi-Fi.

Today I went back out and finally got the Wi-Fi working. With the three access points I can now get on the net with my cell phone (my laptop had pretty good access already) from the tree line to the shooting line to the Taj. There are very few points on the normally traveled areas of that 40 acres that I can’t get access.

I also put up some fences posts for aerial targets on the hillside. I put them at the bottom of the hill probably closer than we have ever had hillside targets before. By suspending them we get the bullets hitting more into the hillside behind the target rather than bouncing off the ground with a shallow angle of attack on that range.

These two guys in black coats walked into Bartell’s Drug store tonight. They went to the aisle with the hair straightener equipment and carefully studied all the options. Finally the bald guy went to checkout with one that had a temperature setting that went all the way to 25 (presumably because 11 wasn’t enough). He just knew the clerk was going to ask what he was going to do with a flat iron.

“Pubic hair” was going to be answer because sealing plastic boxes filled with explosives just wouldn’t have worked out very well.

But no one asked.

Ry hints at what happened in the next hour or so.

Update: I have been informed that “hair straightener” is the term used for the chemicals that straighten hair and the heating tool is called a “flat iron”. It’s fixed now. Sorry, but what do you expect from a guy that almost doesn’t have any hair on his head?

Barron has pictures of what “entertainingly close” really means. Near the end of the video here is what I think is the same explosion.

Don’t do this at home kids. I don’t even do this.

I just finished up the target distribution plan for Boomershoot 2011. I didn’t get to it this weekend and it is after 4:00 AM as I finish this up.

Tree line (375 yards):

Hillside (550 to 700 yards):

This is more at the tree line than last year (~550) and fewer on the hillside (~500 last year) with the total number being greater this year.

The High Intensity Events on Friday and Saturday will both have 210 targets (for 27 and 26 people) with 105 pounds of explosives.

I’m reserving 210 targets (about 125 pounds) for the Precision Rifle Clinic.

Time for some sleep.

The nightmares about Boomershoot are much rarer than they used to be but I had one this morning.

It was raining hard. Really hard. The visibility was only a couple hundred yards and the wind was strong and cold. But the worst was the sticky mud. My size 14 shoes must have had 20 pounds stuck to each of them. Vehicles couldn’t get out to the Taj Mahal and I was the only one to walk in to make the ton of explosives and many hundreds of targets.

Recently I’ve been very busy with work and Boomershoot 2011 prep. Here is a partial list of the Boomershoot stuff I have done in the last week:

• Updated the number of guests and paid the deposit for the Boomershoot dinner on Saturday night (sign up here if you wish to attend)
• Confirmed we will have food available for the Sunday lunch from CD’s Smoke Pit and emailed the menu to Boomershoot participants
• Asked for confirmation of bloggers planning to attend “Media Day” (essentially zero this year so I’m going to cancel it)
• Handled several cancelations and sent out one refund (the others wanted to be automatically signed up for next year). There are five positions available now.
• Paid for 2011 Internet access at the Boomershoot site
• Configured the new Wi-Fi access point for the shooting line. Previous coverage was acceptable for laptops but many cell phones couldn’t get a connection so I’m adding another access point.
• Requested the sizes for Boomershoot staff t-shirts
• Purchased Yellow “Caution” Barricade Tape, 1000-Feet by 3-Inch
• Ordered Red "Danger" Barricade Tape, 1000-Feet by 3-Inch
• Ordered 1000 9” x 14” 1.5 mil Clear LDPE bags
• Ordered 1000 13” x 16” 1.5 mil Clear LDPE bags
• Ordered 1000 Fluorescent Green Circle Labels 3" Diameter
• Ordered 1000 Fluorescent Red Circle Labels 3" Diameter
• Ordered 1000 Fluorescent Pink Circle Labels 3" Diameter
• Ordered 1000 Blue Circle Labels 3" Diameter
• Ordered 100 48 oz. Rectangle Containers- Corn Compostable
• Ordered 600 32 oz. Rectangle Containers- Corn Compostable
• Ordered 900 8 oz. Rectangle Containers- Corn Compostable
• Ordered 1000' Foot Black Parachute Cord Paracord Type III Military Specification 550
• Ordered 100 Dynarex Black Nitrile Exam Gloves, Heavy-Duty, Powder Free, (in sizes Small, Medium and Large)

This weekend I’m going to add some code to my Boomershoot management software to send email to people that have signed up for spectator announcements, order more staff t-shirts, compute the number of targets to be made, allocate targets to various target areas, and print the badges.

It seems like there was some other stuff too, but that is most of it. Ten days from now it gets really busy as many of those items and others are prepared for being reduced to their molecular components in rapidly expanding clouds of water vapor and CO2 amid yells of joy.

If you made it through all that boring stuff above here is a reward; Barron has been posting Boomershoot pictures every day on his blog:

• 21 Days of Boomershoot–Day 1 (2011)
• 21 Days of Boomershoot–Day 2 (2011)
• 21 Days of Boomershoot–Day 3 (2011)
• 21 Days of Boomershoot–Day 4 (2011)
• 21 Days of Boomershoot–Day 5 (2011)
• 21 Days of Boomershoot–Day 6 (2011)
• 21 Days of Boomershoot–Day 7 (2011)
• 21 Days of Boomershoot–Day 8 (2011)

Yeah. I meant to do that.

Not!

There are now a total of five positions available for Boomershoot 2011. Sign up here.

At about 6:00 PM PDT this evening (Wednesday, March 30) positions 33 and 59 for Boomershoot 2011 will be made available to the general public because the current holders of those positions canceled.

After 6:00 PM go to http://entry.boomershoot.org/ to sign up.

Yesterday I delivered some more materials to the Taj Mahal, did some non explosive tests, took inventory, and did some maintenance.

One of the first things I did was test the new electric sifter. They claim a pound a minute for flour. If this translated to a 454 grams (one pound) per minute of KClO₃ (potassium chlorate) then it would meet our needs. At our peak production rate we produce a single batch of explosives in 1.5 minutes. A single batch uses 400 grams of KClO₃.

Last Thursday Ry and I had spent a considerable amount of time brainstorming how we might be able to make some modifications to it to “just let it run all day” so that even if it didn’t process the KClO₃ as fast as the flour we could probably use it to our advantage because it could continue to run when we took breaks and production was slowed for other reasons.

I was very pleasantly surprised to find it would sift nearly 2 kg per minute. Although there might still be some modification which will enhance its utility I think it will be a very useful addition even unmodified.

The other items I delivered were five gallons of ethylene glycol (car antifreeze), the 50 pounds of <X> I bought on Friday, and a few dozen plastic containers to be used as a new target.

I still have to deliver the 275 pound drum of KClO3 in my garage and the electrical generator, but those will have to wait until the ground is drier.

I knew the ground would be wet and soft and I was prepared to carry most of the items (not the 50 pound item) by hand or in my backpack the 0.4 of mile from the road.

I parked by the road inspected the ground out past the main target area by the tree line and figured that if I chose the correct path I could make it. I was correct but it was much slicker than I expected and I spent a considerable amount of the time sliding sideways through the mud as I tried to change directions to hit the drier and more firm ground.

After crossing the field used for shooting I proceeded across the waste land to the Taj Mahal. There is one area without a culvert where the ground gets very soft with water running over it during spring runoff. I hit that spot as fast as I dared. Immediately after crossing it you must make a turn or you will drive head on into some trees. I again spent considerably more time sideways that I would have liked but I made the turn and tried to continue up the hill to the Taj. No luck. The ground was greasy slick and my four wheel drive vehicle  barely clawed its way out of the trees. Had I not been able to get clear of the trees I probably would have been stuck. I would have not been able to turn around or get sufficient speed to make it back through the standing water.

Here are some pictures:

The last 100 feet probably took close to a full minute as the vehicle slowly continued to moved forward throwing mud and digging into the ground until if finally stopped in the snow.

Here is a picture after I made it back to the road:

Coming back out was relatively uneventful in terms of risk of getting stuck but the muddy water splashed on the windshield which made for some interesting times as I tried to clear it and maintain sufficient control of the vehicle to keep it out of the swampy areas that would have meant an embarrassing call to my brother for help. He had advised me it was too wet to make it out there and back.

Costco Employee: “What are you going to do with all that <X>?”

Joe: “Make explosives out of it.”

Costco Employee: “Good to know.”

March 25, 2011
[”<X>” is mystery ingredient number four in Boomerite. There are three ingredients listed in the recipe on the website but what we actually use is one generation ahead of what we post on the website.

Whenever I am so completely open and honest about what I am doing with some large quantity of something (like a shopping cart full of zip lock bags) I always wonder if the police got a call as I was walking out the door. If so, I always managed to get out of town before the cops caught up with me.—Joe]

The Potassium Chlorate needed for Boomershoot 2011 Boomerite was delivered to my home in Idaho a few hours ago. Assuming the ground dries out enough to get it to the Taj Mahal by the end of April we just need some more target boxes, a few gallons of ethylene glycol, and the mystery ingredient (readily available from Costco in 50 pound bags) and we will have all the supplies we need for the next event.

On our recent trip to the Boomershoot site I walked the 150 meters from the road to clean up some left over targets while Ry waited in my vehicle. My size 14 shoes were close enough to snowshoes that I didn’t break through the crust on the snow and it was like walking on a sidewalk for me while Ry broke through and went in half way to his knees.

The first target I detonated was composed of the spill from another 850 gram target, a complete 850 gram target and a 200 gram target. Assuming half of the spill detonated that was about 1500 grams or about 3.3 pounds of Boomerite. This is a little larger than usual but not all that much. I shot it from 25 yards away and when it went off blobs of mud landed all around me and I was impressed with the thump I received from the explosion. Previously we had been setting off 200 gram targets from 25 yards and I was concerned that it didn’t seem that there was as much thump as I had expected. The only previous 850 gram target detonation had been from 470 yards and Ry reported it had the biggest flash he had ever seen and the thump seemed to be typical.

When I got back to the vehicle Ry reported the first explosion was quite remarkable. It was very thumpy. He also felt it before he heard it and he counted at least six echoes from it. He felt it before he heard it? Hmm… the shock wave had to be transmitted through the ground for that to happen. I did have that target on the ground as opposed to on a stake so the spilled Boomerite would get the maximum shock from the target so the ground coupling would be greater than normal. But how much faster does the shock wave travel through the wet ground than through the air? Would the 150 meters be far enough for the difference between the air and ground waves to be discernible?

A quick Bing search didn’t pop up anything for the speed of sound in water soaked earth but the speed of sound in water is about 1.5 km/s. The speed of sound in hard rock is between 5 and 7 km/s and the speed of sound in the air is about 330 m/s. Assuming the speed of sound in the wet earth was no faster than the speed of sound in water then the time to Ry from the explosion would have been about 0.1 seconds through the earth and 0.45 seconds through the air for a difference of about 0.35 seconds. This is easily discernible by a human. If the speed of sound is greater than the 1.5 km/s the difference increases.

Years ago when I had time to shoot targets at Boomershoot events I would shoot from the ground and it always seemed I could feel the thump from the explosion in my chest through the ground but I wasn’t quite sure. The thump through the air was quite noticeable too. This new data point confirms my impression from years ago.

I have been sick for days but Ry came over to Idaho with me on Friday night and yesterday we went to the Boomershoot site to do some tests. Boomershoot is May 1^st and time is getting short to make any last minute changes in the event. Ry has his own thoughts about the day on site and other ideas of potential here. I thought I would add a little more from my perspective.

At Ry’s suggestion, via conversations with http://www.ultimak.com/ (who blogs here), I found and purchased 100 each of some plastic containers to use for targets. These containers are actually made of a corn starch resin and are compostable. I was hoping that “compostable” would also mean “biodegradable”. Further research has revealed this is not the case:

PLA is not biodegradable in its “as-extruded” state. Instead, it must first be hydrolyzed before it becomes biodegradable. To achieve hydrolysis of PLA at significant levels, both a relative humidity at or above 98% and a temperature at or above 60°C are required.

I expected that UV light would break it down but again further research proves (from the previously linked document) that hypothesis is also incorrect:

PLA is also highly resistant to degradation by ultraviolet radiation, with no loss in elongation after 100 hours in Xenon arc testing, and minimal losses at longer exposure. Amazingly for a polymer that is readily consumed by microbes in composting, PLA does not support bacterial growth before composting.

This means that if we use these target containers we will have to pick up all the pieces of the targets that were broken but not detonated. As Ry pointed out in his post from yesterday the detonated targets are reduced to very fine shard less than 2 mm long and perhaps 1/10 that diameter. We were only able to find them because the paper labels we used to secure the lids retained a few of them throughout the explosion.

Another downside of the targets is that if you get an hit that does not detonate the target the back side of the target is blown completely open and the contents are dumped as shown in the picture below. But on the other hand it was easy for the shooter and spotter to see the target was dead.

This was a hit from a 50 grain Hornady V-MAX^TM traveling at about 1625 fps. Another target detonated from a similar hit (I had forgotten the satisfaction of seeing the view in the scope suddenly and silently completely fill with smoke followed by the ground shaking thump as the sound reached you 1.25 seconds later). And a third target received an edge hit without detonating. This is consistent with other tests on other target containers.

From the manufacturing and storage viewpoint these targets are awesome. They can be filled in probably 1/4 the time and with increased storage density.

We tested two different size targets.

One target size tested was the “32 oz Clear Rectangle Deli” which held about 850 grams of Boomerite. This compares well to the current seven inch square targets which contain about 900 grams of Boomerite. However the “active area” of these targets is significantly less. To be considered “a solid hit” the active area is only 4” x 5” compared with the nearly 7” x 7” of the previous cardboard box targets. We can get 16 of these targets into each of our storage crates which is a 33% increase over the 12 of the 7” x 7” cardboard targets.

The other target we tested was the “8 oz Clear Rectangle Deli” which held about 200 grams of Boomerite. This compares to current 3” x 3” cardboard boxes which hold about 215 grams of Boomerite. The active area is 3.25” x 4.25” which is a little larger than the current three inch targets about the same than the four inch targets. The current four inch targets contain about 385 grams of Boomerite. We can get 48 of these targets into each of our storage crates which is the same as the current 3” x 3” cardboard boxes compared to 18 of the 4” x 4” cardboard boxes.

On our way back to Moscow we talked about the test results and our major concern was that we expect there will be more spilled targets. An edge hit or failure to detonate results in a massive spill. This material must be cleaned up at the end of the day because it can spontaneously combust and result in unpleasant interactions with the neighbors. Later that night I figured out a way to easily spray the dumped targets with water and I had convinced myself we were a go for the new targets this year. Then I did the research on the UV resistance and biodegradability and am now mostly convinced we should not use them.

As of this minute my plan is to research some other plastic boxes (Ry found some and sent me links) before making the final decision on new target containers.

Ry says he is not a total bastard. This is true. But I sometimes have to scowl at some of his ideas. You have no idea what his mind is capable of. Ice cubes and water hoses are just hints of some of the things he has suggested for Boomershoot “improvements”.

dear fraind i want make a bomb plese give me a rule of make bomb plese give me a ans

SUNIL DHAKAR
February 23, 2011
Via email to my Boomershoot address.
[I was unable to come up with anything snarky to say in reply. I could not find words that I thought he would understand beyond a simple “No.”—Joe]

I just got an email from Cafepress saying that if you use the coupon code FFEB1145 on orders more than $45 through tomorrow to get 15% off. Fine print follows:

Save 15% off for cafepress.com shop orders of $45 or more, excluding shipping charges, gift wrap charges and applicable sales tax. All orders must be added to cart from cafepress.com shops only. Excludes CafePress marketplace purchases (e.g. all products added to cart from URLs beginning with the following (i) http://shop.cafepress.com, (ii) http://t-shirts.cafepress.com and/or (iii) http://www.cafepress.com/sk/), Gift Certificates, Flip products, SIGG bottles, Thermos products, yoga mats and CafePress Make, Groups, and bulk orders. Coupon code FFEB1145 must be entered at check out. Promotion starts on February 24, 2011 at 12:00 a.m. (PST) and ends on February 25, 2011 at 11:59 p.m. (PST). Offer valid online at cafepress.com only, cannot be combined with any other coupons or promotions and may change, be modified or cancelled at anytime without notice. This promotion cannot be applied to past orders.

The Boomershoot Cafepress shop is here.

A few years ago a friend of mine and I were talking about nuclear bombs and he said something about all the scientists involved with the development of "The Bomb" were now dead. I told him, "No. Johnston is still alive." "Who is Johnston?" Johnston, I told him, was the guy that invented the detonators. After the war he was a physics professor at the University of Idaho and still lives in Moscow. I’m not sure my friend really believed me. Why would someone with a background like that end up in a backwater college like the U of I? I disputed this. The U of I has done quite well for itself and has nothing to be ashamed of—well, except for perhaps Larry "Wide Stance" Craig. Other famous graduates or professors include Sarah Palin in the class of 1987, Dan O'Brien (class of '93), and Margrit Von Braun (daughter of Wernher von Braun).

Back to Johnston—I got my undergraduate degree at the U of I and took several physics classes there. But none of them were with Johnston even though he was there at the time ('67 –> '88). But I would occasionally see mention of him in the news and I was proud to have him in my home town.

Last week wife and physical therapist Barbara called me up and excitedly asked me, "Do you know who I have as my patient?" "No. You don’t tell me that information unless you get permission from the patient and you haven't done that for several weeks now." My taking her literally somehow didn’t damping her spirits as it usually does and she went on to tell me that it was one of the scientist who worked on the first atomic bomb. "Johnston?", I asked. "Yes. How did you know?", her spirits finally dampened a tad. "Because he is the only one left and he lives in Moscow", I explained.

She went on to tell me he gave her permission to talk to me about him, he was a really nice guy, is 92 years old, is the only person to have witnessed all three of the first atomic bomb explosions (he was in the observation planes over Hiroshima and Nagasaki), and he would be interested to exchange email with me. "Uhhh…. WOW!" was about all I could say.

I did exchange email with him and he sent me a presentation he made at Los Alamos a few years ago about his experiences developing and deploying the first nuclear bombs. I found it fascinating. My QOTD tomorrow will come from that presentation. And despite the detailed info in the presentation about the explosives and detonators used and the requests for "upgrading" beyond chemical explosives at Boomershoot I have no plans to pursue that particular line of experiments at this time.

Thank you Barbara and Professor Johnston.

Mildred and Lawrence Johnston

Deception and twisting the facts are all they have left so they continue to use what they have:

The legal argument being used to try to force EPA to ban lead ammunition and fishing tackle is based on a nonsensical interpretation of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which includes a specific exclusion for ammunition.  TSCA, section 3(2)(B)(v)) precludes the EPA from regulating ammunition.  But, CBD wants a court to hold that the TSCA ammunition exclusion does not apply to bullets and shot, because neither bullets nor shot are actually “ammunition” (i.e., a shell, primer, and projectile, etc., in one cartridge or unit). CBD’s argument is founded on an inapplicable interpretation of a tax ruling issued by the IRS in 1954 that distinguished the sale of “separate parts of ammunition” and complete ammunition for taxation purposes only.

It was this sort of behavior from Handgun Control, now the Brady Campaign, that first convinced me the gun grabbers needed to be opposed and I started down the path to being a gun owner rights activist. Ruby Ridge, Waco, and, as I have explained before, Diane Feinstein helped bring the world Boomershoot.

It odd how the unintended consequences of a few relatively small lies can change the world isn’t it? Some people become activists because of a malicious act by someone with mental problems (the Brady’s for example) and others become activists against them because they lied. Others report similar stories.

I’ve heard people say, “Karma is a bitch” and this could be an example of that. Each year about 125 people acquire equipment and skills then attend Boomershoot to exercise those skills to hit pie-plate sized targets at 700 yards. This is more people than the Brady Campaign can get to attend their annual meeting.

Sebastian also has thoughts on what activates activists.

This morning the last “normal” shooting position for Boomershoot 2011 filled up. There is still one position available in the .50 Caliber Ghetto. People can and do shoot smaller caliber guns from this position it’s just that they don’t have access to the closer targets.

The .50 caliber positions are always the last to fill and frequently there will be one or more of these still available on Boomershoot day.

If you are interested in participating in Boomershoot 2011 but want some other position you should seriously taking a .50 caliber slot and let me know you really want a different position. I expect there will be more cancelations in the next month or so and people already signed up get first chance to take the open slot. If you don’t get the position you want you can still cancel and get a refund if you request it before April 1.

According to B B & Guns I’m the special (guest) tomorrow night.

The topics are security theater and “things that go boom”.

8:00 PM Eastern 5:00 PM Pacific.

Update: Breda has more to say about it. She has a nice way of saying I’m a little bit strange. Jay has thoughts on it as well.

Update2: Alan says I’m subversive and you should listen to me.

Update3: I had a great time. I was a little animated some of the time but that was probably a good thing.

I corrected the claim that I invented the term “Security Theater” in the chat window and intended to do so “on the air” but forgot to. To the best of my knowledge that honor belongs to Bruce Schneier.

There were some links I shared in chat window that probably add a little something if you listen to it as a podcast rather than live. Those were:

• I’ve been griping about TSA since before I started blogging.
• More info about the chemical markers used to make plastic explosives easily detectable.
• Why Boomershoot?
• Rifle selection for Boomershoot. I didn’t provide this link but the topic did come up in chat.
• Ammo selection for Boomershoot. I didn’t provide this link but the topic indirectly came up in chat.

Given: Ry uses his AR-15 to shoot 1200 grams of Boomerite contained in a coffee creamer container. On top of the coffee creamer container is a 60 pound steel contraption for crushing charcoal briquettes and launching the dust into the air. Joe takes a video using his Windows Phone 7 phone and puts it up on YouTube*. In the video you can see the explosion occurred at 11.18 seconds into the video. The charcoal dispenser hits the ground at 14.48 seconds into the video. Afterward Ry measures the horizontal distance the charcoal dispenser traveled. It is 13 yards. Assume the acceleration of gravity on this planet at this location is 32.174 ft/sec².

Problem: Ignoring air resistance and assuming the initial acceleration was for all practical purposes instantaneous answer the following questions:

1. How high into the air did the charcoal dispenser go?
2. At the instant after the detonation what were the horizontal and vertical velocity vectors of the charcoal dispenser?
3. At the instant after the detonation what was the total velocity vector of the charcoal dispenser?
4. What was the USPSA power factor of the charcoal dispenser at launch?
5. If used at an USPSA match does the charcoal dispenser “make Major” for both pistol and rifle competition?

Be sure to use consistent units during the calculations and give the results in English units.

Solution:

1. The total time in the air is 3.3 seconds. One half of the time is spent going up and the other half is spent going down. The equation of motion for an object dropped in a gravitational field is:
   
   d = 1/2 a t²
   
   Where d is the distance traveled in feet, a is the acceleration of the gravitational field, and t is the time in seconds.
   
   The maximum height can be expressed as:
   
   d = (32.174/2 ft/sec²) (3.3 sec/2)²
   d = (16.087 ft/sec²)(1.65 sec)²
   d = (16.087 ft/sec²)(2.7225 sec²)
   d = 43.8 ft
2. The equation of motion for an object traveling at a constant speed is:
   
   d = v t
   
   Where d is the distance traveled, v is the velocity, and t is the time.
   
   This can be used to give us the initial horizontal velocity component.
   
   Since the total time in the air was 3.3 seconds and the horizontal distance traveled was 13 yards the velocity can be solved for in the following equation:
   
   13 yards = (v)(3.3 sec)
   v = (13 yards)/(3.3 sec)
   v = 3.94 yards/sec
   
   or expressed in the more common feet per second:
   
   v = (3 ft/yard)(3.94 yards/sec)
   v = 11.8 ft/sec
   
   The vertical component at launch is the same as the final vertical velocity at the moment of impact. The equation of velocity with respect to time is:
   
   v = a t
   
   Where v is the final velocity, a is acceleration, and t is the time.
   
   Hence the initial vertical velocity is:
   
   v = (32.174 ft/sec²)(3.3/2 sec)
   v = (32.174 ft/sec²)(1.65 sec)
   v = 53.1 ft/sec
3. The total velocity is the square root of the sum of the squares of the horizontal and vertical velocities. Hence the total velocity at the instant after detonation was:
   
   v = SQRT((11.8 ft/sec)² + (53.1 ft/sec)²)
   v = 54.4 ft/sec
4. IPSC Power Factor is expressed by the following equations
   
   PF = (m v)/1000
   
   Where m is the mass of the bullet in grains and v is the velocity of the bullet in ft/sec.
   
   There are 7000 grains in one pound. Hence the mass of the “bullet” is (7000)(60) or 420,000 grains.
   
   Hence the IPSC Power Factor is:
   
   PF = (420,000)(54.4)/1000
   PF = 22,848
5. The minimum USPSA power factor required to make major with a pistol is 165. For rifle it is 320. Since 22,848 is greater than both 165 and 320 the answer is “Yes”.

Ry, Barron, and I went to the Boomershoot site today to do some more tests.

Apparently I left the glitter at my bunker in the Seattle area but we had the confetti and as we passed through Kendrick we picked up some charcoal briquettes on a whim.

The confetti was totally uninteresting:

Dispensing charcoal briquettes was more interesting:

The briquettes are far cheaper than chalk and no special packaging is required. The use of charcoal briquettes for Boomershoot 2011 is now the official plan of record.

We did manage to destroy the dispenser. In hindsight it was a stupid thing we did. There is a construction flaw in the current dispensers. The hole in the center should have the armor plate welded to the one inch plate all around the hole as instead of simply at the edges. We managed to get enough pressure build up between the two plates that we broke some of the welds. It can be repaired and I will do so the next time I go back to the farm.

I finally got access to the pictures Oleg took at Boomershoot 2010 (thanks Barron). Here are some of my family (minus son James who was in the Seattle area that weekend) that I was most interested in getting.

Keep in mind these are just the raw images without any special post processing that brings them up to the quality product standards you normally would expect from Oleg. The tweaks were by me, a non professional, which consisted only of resizing and in the case of the first picture some slight cropping.

As is usual, click on the picture for a higher resolution version.

This was me just prior to the shooters meeting and fireball demo on Sunday.

This is wife Barbara and I about halfway through the main event on Sunday.
Notice how tolerant she is of me even though I have been grouchy for days? That is simply amazing someone would put up with that.
It probably helped that she received the special edition Boomershoot jacket she is wearing from Boomershooters Fred and Bruce the night before.

Daughters Kim and Xenia.

Hundreds of years from now, it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove... But the world may be different because I did something so bafflingly crazy that my ruins become a tourist attraction.

smoakingun
From his signature line on the Fire Line Forum starting on April 25, 2009.
See also http://www.despair.com/lithographs.html.
[Of course this is a distortion of Forest E. Witcraft's version.

Sometimes I wonder about the changes I make in the world and the potential with Boomershoot.—Joe]

I received a Tweet from thumper242 requesting:

Can we get photographic proof of how ridiculous the temperature is in the Republic of Northern Idaho?

Here are some samples from the Boomershoot site last weekend. Click on them to see a higher resolution version:

The bush nearest the road at the tree line.

Looking north from just south of the creek.

The hillside we shoot into.

The Taj Mahal.

The top of the Wi-Fi antenna from a different angle.

The concrete blocks we use to put the tables on when manufacturing targets.

The snow in front of the Taj. Somehow my pictures just don’t capture how sharp, sparkly, and beautiful it was.

I dropped the plastic pitcher we use for scooping the ammonium nitrate onto the concrete floor. It fractured.

On Saturday I purchased a half pound each of three different colors of glitter. Then at the suggestion of Breda I ordered a pound of “Metallic Multi Color Mylar Confetti” this morning. The plan is to use the “Chalk Dispensers” as “Glitter/Confetti Dispensers” and see if that overcomes the problem with the powdered chalk turning into lumps.

The cost is $10/pound for the glitter and, after shipping, $15/pound for the confetti compared to about $1/pound for chalk. But a pound of confetti is going to have a much greater volume than either the glitter or the powdered chalk. The cost difference really doesn’t matter to me if we get the desired display instead of a few lumps of chalk falling, essentially unnoticed, from the sky.

Test results to follow within a month or so…

[The following story is true. The names and many of the details have been obscured to protect the guilty. The dialog has been altered to make it more readable, concise, and enhance dramatic effect.]

A few months ago I was at a social gathering and a certain couple asked me about Barb who was not in attendance. They had met her before and said they would like to see her again. I told them it was her week to work in Idaho. They expressed interest in seeing her the next time she came over to the Seattle area and I told them I would tell her. Over the following months similar encounters occurred.

When I informed Barb she said, “They aren’t interested in me. It just that you are the Boomershoot guy.” I expressed my skepticism but allowed that hypothesis contained a grain of truth. The husband of the couple had previously attended Boomershoot and expressed his enthusiasm for the event. But I couldn’t really see how that would extend to Barb and me in the manner indicated. But you don’t stay married as long as I have by arguing with your wife over issues that just don’t matter.

As the months went on the husband attended the social events less frequently and the wife continued to attend. She and I sort of hung out together some and it was pretty obvious she was expressing more “interest” in me than others at the events. Not that I minded. I enjoyed her company too. She is smart, funny, about my age, and a pleasure to be around. But I eventually asked, “Why are you so interested in me?” Her answer, “Because you are the Boomershoot guy!”

Oh!

Barbara was right. I sometimes don’t like to admit that and this was one of those times. Oh well. It doesn’t matter. Or does it?

It wasn’t too much later that I was attempting to get registration opened up for Boomershoot 2011 and I attended another social event at which the wife was there. The conversation went something like this:

Wife [in a low voice as she is stroking my shoulder]: My husband thinks I should be able to get one of those Boomershoot positions from you.

Joe: Where is your husband?

Wife [moving very close and looking me square in the eyes]: He’s at home tonight. But he helped me shave for you. Won’t that help get one of those positions?

Joe: You’ll be among the first to know when registration is opened up.

I did let them know all the details as to when registration opened up for Boomershoot and the husband got his position. For the payment I was offered “Cash, on your dresser.” I took payment online via a credit card.

The next time I attended Barbara went with me. The wife was there but didn’t hang around with Barb and I. I wonder why?

Then after the post I made mentioning the above events I received an email from the wife:

You should have told everyone sex did get my husband the position he wanted. Think of all of the propositions you would get from women and men too. Your evenings and weekends would be one, hot, lusty encounter after the other. You’d be so busy you couldn’t get ready for Boomershoot.

A groupie

She has a point. I’ll have to consider that for some other time when I no longer have an interest in being married.

I think there are some lessons to be learned here.

1. Despite what the anti-gun people would like to think, and make you think, men with access to guns and explosives attract women. I have another post I have been meaning to do for quite some time that will confirm it--nearly beyond all doubt.
2. If men are offering their wives as payment for Boomershoot then it either must be overpriced or I need to expand the number of (shooting) positions.
3. I will not have a problem getting Barb to attend each and every Boomershoot.

Is he gay?

Barbara Scott
December 4, 2010
In response to Robert Fargo saying I was “devilishly handsome”.
[I think the answer is probably no. But there are some guys out there that publically say the have “a man crush” on me. And Barb claims I have groupies of both genders.

Somewhat related is the story of the woman that offered me sex for a position at Boomershoot for her husband. What is interesting is that Barb sort of predicted it before it happened. Spoiler alert,, in part because I haven’t told Barb the story yet—she ended up acquiring the position just like everyone else and paying for the position with a credit card.—Joe]

As I posted before registration for Boomershoot 2011 was opened up for staff and 2010 participants earlier this week. Just before it was opened up for everyone at 6:00 PM Pacific time the event was 75% full.

Three fourths of 2010 participants plan to come back for the 2011 event. Wow!

At 6:00 PM registration opened to everyone and I expected it would be full within a few minutes. I was wrong. As of 9:45 PM there are still 11 positions available. So if you thought had no chance you were wrong. Please go ahead and sign up.

Here are the current registration stats (they are available, live, here):

There are a total of 76 positions available and 50 positions for each of the high intensity events. So, as you can see, there is still room for more people. There is also the Precision Rifle Clinic which probably still has openings.

One of the things I noticed in previous events was that in the early days there were an average of nearly two people per available position (three is the max allowed). In the last few years it dropped to about 1.5. This year I decided to raise the price for a single person entry. There were two reasons for this. One, I wanted more people to be able to attend. I’m pushing against some hard limits on the number of shooting positions and the only way to get more people in is to pack them tighter. And two, my gross sales dropped with the expenses remaining essentially constant. I felt guilty about raising the price so I dropped the price for the second and third shooters such that if there were two or more shooters the total price would be the same as before. But, so far, it doesn’t seem to have made much of a difference. 1.5 increased to 1.63 is probably just barely significant. Oh, well. It’s not that important.

I also find it interesting how many bloggers are attending. And the number above doesn’t include daughter Xenia and I.

But what really makes me smile is it is hundreds of miles from the nearest major airport with the nearest stop light nearly 40 miles away. Yet, almost for certain, Boomershoot has a bigger turn out that any Brady Campaign event.

I’ve been as busy as a cat on a hot tin roof yesterday and today.

Yesterday Ry, Barron, and I went out to the Boomershoot site to do some tests. We got back into town and had lunch about 2:30. Barron came back to my place to wait for his wife, Janelle, to pick him up. They stayed until almost 11:30 as we discussed Boomershoot, all the worlds problems and how to solved them (the answers are “glitter”, “guns”, and “explosives”).

Today I went to an USPSA match and then scrambled with the Boomershoot 2010 participants having minor problems signing up for Boomershoot 2011. Some people take sign up very seriously.

Anyway, I have not had time to report on the test results from yesterday beyond a short Tweet.

Barron did a great job reporting with pictures and video.

Ry also has pictures.

Tomorrow is also very, very busy for me. So rather than report on things I’ll just say, “What they said.”

(Outdoor Channel) with Michael Bane will have their Boomershoot show January 4th and 6th at 3:00 AM ET and January 5th, 3:30 PM, 7:00 PM, and 9:00 PM ET. This was with the video they took last April at Boomershoot 2010.

I don't have cable and if someone would be able to record that and get it to me I would very much appreciate it.

I’ve asked about 100 people to do this already so before you send me a 1 GByte email or put the effort into burning a DVD check with me to make sure it’s not already taken care of.

Last night I told daughter Kim, “You are going to be on national television this week.”

She glared at me.

I continued, “He spend a lot of time talking to you.”

“Did we get a copy to review first?”

“Nope.”

The glare hardened.

I think it will turn out okay. But I’m glad I’m going to be 300 miles away when it shows.

Update: Trailer for the show is here. Or below:

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift towards unparalled catastrophe.

Albert Einstein
[I sometimes give a little more than a passing thought to Boomershoot with nukes. But then I think of this quote.—Joe]

What’s the BC for a snowflake?

Ry Jones
January 1, 2011
[“BC” stands for Ballistic Coefficient. This is a measure of how much air resistance the a bullet has when it travels through the air.

We were on our way to the Boomershoot site and discussing the various tests we wanted to do. I said that someday I wanted to test explosives as a snow drift removal tool. Ry didn’t think it would work very well because the snow wouldn’t go very far. I wasn’t convinced. Above was his response.

Below was my response:

--Joe]

Assuming no more flaws appear in the registration software the schedule for registration is as follows:

Registration opens for staff 12/31/2010 7:00:00 AM Pacific Time.
Registration opens for previous year participants 1/2/2011 6:00:00 PM Pacific Time.
Registration opens for everyone 1/4/2011 6:00:00 PM Pacific Time.

Go to http://entry.boomershoot.org/ to sign up.

Update: Boomershoot weekend is April 29th through May 1st. This is a known conflict with the NRA convention. Sorry about that. I had conflicts on my end for other dates.

Massive amounts of high explosives, like little girls and butterflies, need no excuse.

Tamara K
June 11, 2010
Mother of all leaks...
[The registration schedule for Boomershoot 2011 will be announced shortly.—Joe]

I have version 3.0 of the chalk dispenser system sitting in my living room now.

The small boxes marked “RED CHALK” conveniently fit into the 3” opening on the top. They sent us some empty boxes to put the Boomerite in. The Boomerite will go in first and be exposed to gun fire through the 1.5” hole in the front.

This version also has 1/4” armor plate on the face. This should withstand the bullet impacts much better.

Ry plans to be back in Idaho on Saturday and we will visit the Boomershoot site to do our tests. The weather forecast on Saturday is for a low of -1 F and a high of 15 F. We had a blizzard last night and today and it put down several inches of snow. This may complicate things some. I’m not sure we will be able to drive all the way out to the Taj Mahal to mix the Boomerite. I may have to walk or snowshoe in, mix it up, and carry it back while Ry preps the target at the shooting berm.

Our favorite chalk dispenser designers and builders have shipped version 3.0 to our bunker in North Central Idaho. It hasn’t arrived yet but they created a video of its construction:

Assuming the weather cooperates I should be able to test it sometime late this week.

Ry has his own video of this but I took video with my Windows Phone 7 and wanted to say a few things about the results of these tests separate from other tests on his video. First the video:

We have been doing tests of steel chalk dispensers with mixed results. The chalk goes up into the air nicely but the dispensers have not had a very long life. Ry decided to test adding the chalk directly to our seven inch square cardboard box targets. The chalk was positioned in one of three different ways:

1. Behind the Boomerite
2. On top of the Boomerite
3. In front of the Boomerite

The second configuration was the most visually pleasing but for a normal target this means the top half of the target is inert as far as the shooter is concerned. They only have the bottom half of the target available for detonation. But what we could do is use this in a hybrid target. We use a steel plate with a hold in it like the existing “chalk dispenser” targets with one of these cardboard box targets a foot or so behind the steel plate. We would not have to confine ourselves to very small Boomerite charges to prevent damage to the steel and we could put a lot more chalk on top of the target. It would be a little more work to set up the targets, get the alignment just right, etc. But the steel construction part would be a lot easier and would guarantee the steel targets would be reusable.

Our favorite chalk dispenser designers and builders have done some more tests. Here is the video:

In behind the scenes email it appears we will get a Version 3 unit for test with Boomerite by New Years Day. I plan to cut the charge in half, down to 100 grams, and see if that gives us sufficient lift for the chalk.

I also plan to modify the first unit by removing the containment box in the back and just put a specially constructed (chalk inside the target) 7” target a few inches behind the metal plate with the hole in it. I think this will work just as well and will only be a slightly more work in the field and much simpler to construct.

I went to Orofino today to inspect the Riverside Room at the Best Western Lodge at River’s Edge for the Boomershoot 2011 dinner and auction for Soldiers Angels. It looked quite nice and I signed the contract.

They will also supply the food and although I haven’t signed the contract for that yet (Sandy left early for a family emergency) the plan is to have an 8 oz. Sirloin steak.

Ry and I went out to the Boomershoot site with a new version of the chalk dispenser (also known as Blastmaster 6000). An identical unit was tested in California a few days ago using Tannerite and it worked well without showing any signs of weakness. We were pretty confident that it would hold up better than version 1.0.

We used 200 grams of Boomerite in each test. By volume this one cup, which was the same amount used the designers in their first tests. They later increased the amount to a soda can full with still no structural failures. We put 500 grams of chalk dust on top of the Boomerite.

In this first pictures you can see the chalk dust on top of the Boomerite. The zip lock bag of Boomerite is just visible in the front hole.

Ry will probably have video to share in a day or three but in the picture below you can see the dispenser was moved a couple feet by the blast. The dispenser appeared to be undamaged.

The second test was essentially the same as the first. The only intentional difference was that the Boomerite wasn’t poked partially through the front and rear holes. This time the dispenser was moved several feet and there was some obvious damage:

I set it up for a third test and expected it would probably “cut loose” this time. The movement was about the same and the fractures widened. Notice the bottom of the containment area is starting to bulge and the middle “rib” is bulging out the back too.

In terms of a long lasting target this has some problems. But it survived three uses which is as much as it really needs for the Boomershoot main event. We should consider cutting the Boomershoot charge in half because I think the ejection of the chalk will be sufficient with a much smaller charge.

On the drive back to my home in Moscow we pondered why the difference between their tests and ours. We had pretty much decided that it was because of the chalk dust on top of the explosives because we just couldn’t imagine Boomerite being that much different than Tannerite. But I replayed the video from the California tests and they used chalk too. So the only other variable that I can think of are the temperature and the Boomerite. Our temperature was about 24 F with the first test done while the metal was probably significantly above that because it had been in the warm vehicle. By the time of the second and third tests the metal was probably close to ambient temperature. Could that temperature change made the metal brittle and weaker?

Update: Ry has the video and details on other tests we did.

Our favorite chalk dispenser designer reported that video of tests using Tannerite instead of Boomerite has been posted:

The results look promising. Assuming the weather allows it and the test target arrives on time Ry and I will do our own testing this Saturday.

I have heard from those involved there are plans to bring a little more firepower than usual to Boomershoot 2011.

Here is some video from the test firings:

Shirts, mugs, postcards, tote bags, water bottles, refrigerator magnets, greeting cards, prints, shorts, and thongs with the Boomershoot 2011 image are now available here.

As reported on Saturday we (Caleb, Kim, Sarah, Matt, Buddy, and I) had a small Boomershoot adventure. We made and blew up a snow castle. Here is the crew (minus me):

Kim also has some pictures on Facebook.

Kim took most of the pictures while Sarah, Matt, and Caleb built the snow castle wall and I prepped the chalk dispensing target:

The final snow castle wall just prior to destruction:

The road flares are to ignite the four gallons of gasoline located high on the left side of the wall, on top of (and behind) the 6 pounds of Boomerite.

The snow, gasoline, and dirt went flying when the Boomerite detonated:

I expected the ground to be bare beneath the explosion but that was not quite the case. Apparently the explosives were too high above the ground to clear it of snow:

Next time we should put the explosives much lower to give the snow more lift.

Today daughter Xenia sent me the image for Boomershoot 2011 t-shirts, hats, thongs, etc.

I haven’t created the Cafepress Boomershoot 2011 “store” with it yet but I will soon. That store is the one remaining item I need to complete before opening up entries for Boomershoot 2011.

For your viewing pleasure:

Defens will get a free t-shirt for his contribution of the winning idea.

Via email from Boomershooter Rich. Here is the original link.

This is pretty cool. If someone had been willing to pick up the pieces we could have used Ry’s old Aerostar van at Boomershoot for something like this:

I especially like the enthusiasm the woman has in this video. The absence of eye protection at times—not so much.

A Boomershooter sent me an email with pictures of a target he wanted to bring to Boomershoot 2011. The intent is to give the shooters something more challenging to shoot at. To be specific he wanted a 1.5” reactive target at 700 yards. The concept was a steel plate on the front with a 1.5 hole drilled in it with a open topped steel box on the back to hold a normal Boomerite target right behind the hole. On top of that box he wanted to put a baggie filled with chalk dust. The explosion should then result in a yellow, red, or blue cloud of chalk dust.

I told him I he could bring it but that it would be destroyed by the first or second use. The explosion would rip the box right off of the back. He almost could not be convinced. Here is some of the conversation:

Joe: “I’m fine with your chalk dust dispenser if you don’t mind picking up the pieces if it spontaneously disassembles.”
Boomershooter: “we got it covered . . 1" plate with 3/8 open topped box . . i will weld it myself so i don't have to worry about bill's welds scattered over the hillside...”
Joe: “My guess is that you will be lucky if the welds hold for two successful hits. Just one is my guess.”
Boomershooter: “i challenge you to be the one to break my welds...”
Joe: “My guess is the .250 chamber will be ripped in half after the first or second detonation. You are welcome to try it as long as everyone is at least 300+ yards away from it.”
Boomershooter: “i'm thinking your 4" 375 yard targets are going to be a walk in the park for this high tech explosive containment device. i'm sure if you packed it solid you might get it to bulge. but enough explosive to send a colored cloud is what we are looking for...”
Ry: “I admire your faith in your product.”
Boomershooter: “been a certified welder for 35 years . . when i see people shooting bowling balls out of a 1/4" thick argon bottle over a mile, i figure it can't be bad with no pressure build up at all . . “
Ry: “My experience was this: I put a little boomerite in a mountain dew bottle (call it a half liter), put the bottle on the round. A couple inches behind it, I put a railroad tie plate on edge. The tie plate landed about 75-80 yards away and was bent into an L shape.”
Boomershooter: “oh well . . you will be getting the explosion test dummy in a couple days . . we will find out after that...”
Joe: “There will be a LOT of pressure build up. I’m expecting pressures beyond the tensile strength of steel. The maximum (of course it is confined instead of partially open) of ANFO is about 1,500,000 PSI. Partially confined it can still reach 1/10 that. We are pretty sure our mixture is more powerful than straight ANFO. If we were to fill the box with Boomerite we could see the total force attempting to separate the tube from the plate reach a peak of (4” x 6” x 100,000 PSI) or 2.4 million pounds.You know your steels and welds better than I do, but my bet it is going at least bulge on the first shot if not get ‘opened up’.”
Boomershooter: “well . . one low tech target is on it's way . . you scared 223 bill with the 2.4 million pounds of pressure fact, so he elected to add a plate to the back of the tube to keep the bullet from penetrating the back of the tube. give it a try and let us know what you think.

The target arrived earlier this week. It is an impressive target. It weights almost 50 pounds:

While out blowing up the snow castle we tested the target as well.

We mounted it on some 3/8” rebar. It was intended to have something much larger and we couldn’t tighten up the bolts properly. Hence it hung really crooked:

We then put a very small charge of Boomerite in it. Just about 1 cup—200 grams. This was in a zip lock bag that was poked through the hole:

On top of this we put another zip lock bag with 600 grams of chalk dust:

We then got back 100 yards (I figured that with such a small charge and part of it even sticking out the front we would be safe) and shot it with a 50 gr VMAX bullet:

We should have used yellow, red, or orange chalk dust to give better contrast with the snow. But you can tell there is definitely a blue cloud in the air.

But what happened to the chalk dispenser? It wasn’t visible to the naked eye from 100 yards away. We walked up to where it was and found this:

The target had been blow backward until the rebar had bent almost in a U and the target was touching the ground underneath the snow. Notice the rectangular outline on the bottom of the target? That was the bulge from the Boomerite containment box. Do you remember he said, “i'm sure if you packed it solid you might get it to bulge”? This was FAR from packed solid.

Now let’s look at the sides of the containment box:

One dead target.

We intended to make a snowman or three and blow them up with Boomerite today. It turns out the snow was too cold (air temperature was 24 F at Noon) for making a good snowman. But there was enough of a crust and frozen snow that our crew was able to make a pretty nice wall that looked like part of a snow castle. We filled the “window” with four gallons of gasoline, 6.5 pounds of Boomerite, put some road flares out, and set off a Roman Candle.

You can hear the crackling and popping of the Roman Candle in this video (taken with a Windows Phone 7):

We also have about 450 still photos from today’s adventure. I’ll have more up soon.

Nice:

I got another begging letter from the BC, and in this one Paul Helmke says they have a $250,000 deficit:

Dear (friendly_iconoclast),

I am writing to you today as one of the Brady Campaign's most loyal friends because we really need your help...

...But the truth is, because we've been fighting so hard on so many fronts, we're facing a serious financial shortfall.

I need to make up a $250,000 budget shortfall before the end of the year....

Maybe they should ask the NRA for a loan. After all, the Brady Campaign has done wonders for their fundraising…

If they were a publically traded company I would consider attempting a hostile takeover (I could get a NRA range grant to build a Brady Campaign Memorial Boomershoot East, couldn’t I?). I would hire Tamara to write all their media releases for month or two as we liquidated every asset and did Boomerite experiments in the ashes.

About a month ago I received an email from Steven Otterbacher at BulkAmmo.com:

Hi Joe,
I really appreciate your posting about our opening a few weeks ago (http://blog.joehuffman.org/2010/08/31/BulkAmmo.aspx) ; things are going well and I appreciate your help!

I have an idea I wanted to run past you:

We just started carrying Fiocchi ammo and are trying to get the word out about it.  If we shipped you a box, would you be willing to give it a fair try and post a review about it?

As long as you link back to the category page on our website (i.e. http://www.bulkammo.com/handgun/bulk-.40-s-w-ammo - maybe with anchor-text like “Bulk 40 cal ammo” or “bulk 40 S&W ammo”), not the product page, we are 100% fine with a positive or negative review – whatever is truthful based on your experience – we just want you to give it a chance!
If you are interested, which product/caliber do you prefer:

•         http://www.bulkammo.com/bulk-9mm-ammo-9mm158fmjsubfiocchi-50
•         http://www.bulkammo.com/bulk-223-ammo-223rem40hvmaxfiocchi-50
•         http://www.bulkammo.com/bulk-40-s-w-ammo-40sw180jhpxtpfiocchi-50

If you are interested, just confirm you are on board, let me know which caliber you prefer, and then give me your shipping information (and confirm that you meet are terms of sale – i.e. you are over 21, are legally able to own this ammo, etc, etc) and I will get this ammo shipped out to you ASAP!

If this goes well, we might even be able to do a few more as time goes on!

I appreciate your time and look forward to hearing from you soon!

Thanks,
Steven

I accepted his offer and asked for the .40 S&W 180 grain ammo. I was on vacation at the time and there were various things like blowing up pumpkins that kept me from getting to the ammo testing until today. I don’t have a good place to do this type of testing in the Seattle area and had to wait until I could get out to the Boomershoot site.

Since I was going to have everything set up for group and velocity testing I decided to test some other ammo at the same time.

The ammo I actually received was not the JHPs but FMJ. I didn’t realize that until I got out on the range with all the JHPs I was ready to compare to. I did the comparisons anyway.

Rounds fired: 10
Gun: STI Eagle 5.1 with a KKM Precision barrel.
Temperature: 30 F
Elevation: 3000 feet
Chronograph: CED Millennium
Distance to Chronograph: 11’ to first screen
Distance between screens: 2’
Distance to target: 25’
Bullet mass: 180 grains (except the Remington Golden Sabers which were 165 grains)

Here is my setup and the ammo used:

The bag of lentils was torn by the muzzle blast on the first shot and I switched to a roll of paper towels to replace the leather sandbag I had left at home.

The handloads were assembled in 1998 for bowling pin shoots. I used Winchester cases with Rainer Restrike JHP bullets over 6.4 grains of VV N350 powder.

The following table describes the velocity performance at 12’ from the muzzle. If you want velocity at the muzzle add about 4.5 fps to the numbers below.

Feeding was perfect with all ammo types.

Accuracy information can be derived from the picture below (click to enbiggen enough to see the bullet holes and the ammo names on the targets). The target on the top right is the BVAC. I didn’t label that target in the field because I couldn’t remember the name of the ammo. It was a bulk buy and I had transferred it from the original boxes (of 500 each) into ammo cans.

The accuracy was acceptable for everything except my handloads and perhaps the BVAC remanufactured FMJs. The Black Hills and the Fiocchi ammo did the best.

I was aiming at the bottom edge of the black to get the maximum contrast with the sights as that sliver of “white” disappeared into the black. The order in which the targets were shot is as in the table above.

For self-defense ammo I don’t really care much if the group size is one inch or three inches at 25 feet. Nearly all self-defense shootings are at ranges less than that and the nearly all ammo is going to have enough accuracy to hit the target. The shooter is going to be the dominate factor.

What is important is the velocity of the bullet, the expansion diameter, and depth of penetration. The penetration depth is also affected by the covering of the target. Shirts, jackets, windshield glass, etc. all make a difference. I didn’t have the time or enough ammo to do a full scale test of everything but I planned to do an expansion test with water.

I put a concrete paving stone in the bottom of a old diaper container that was laying around in the garage and put five gallons of water on top of it. This gave me about 15 inches of water to shoot into. I put the paving stone in the bottom to make sure the bullet wouldn’t punch a hole in the bottom if the water wasn’t deep enough.

As I prepared to fire into the container I tried to remember what had happened when Myth Busters did similar tests. I remembered that the 9mm FMJ had surprising depth of penetration and that the water splash was impressive. I keep thinking there was something more I should remember... what was it?

I anticipated getting severely splashed with water but that wasn’t the thing I should have worried about. I fired from about four feet above the container and only my hand and the gun got a little wet. After firing I was pretty sure I just relearned with Myth Busters had learned. The outward pressure of the water is quite strong. The pictures below tell the store:

Yes. The container was blown completely in two and split down the side. The bullet fully penetrated the water and impacted the paving stone.

The bullet jacket completely separated from the core. Here are the bullet pictures (click to see higher resolution versions):

If you know your bullets the jacket in the first picture will tell you which bullet it was. If you can’t guess I’ll put the answer in the comments by EOD on Monday.

I get the most unusual email:

From: timi top [mailto:timitop_007@yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, November 14, 2010 9:12 AM
To: joeh@boomershoot.org
Subject: how can i build a bomb!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello sir,

                                    My name is temitope and I recite in Nigerian, it’s being a long time have been searching in other to know about how I can build bomb, it not just for fun, but for people in my area to know me that am one of the researcher, I will like you to put me through so people in my area will be doing that in my memory when I grow old and die, and I will be able to generate money from there, please sir I love it if you can help me through and also help me to buy some materials that can be use for it  because am not in usa and I will need someone to help me in other to purchase this items and send it to Nigerian, you can reach me by my mobile number or my e-mail address, am on timitop_007@yahoo.com or call me on +2348169640844 I will be looking for to read from you soon bye and do have a lovely weekend aheard

TEMITOPE

I’m not sure I could find law enforcement in Nigeria but I may not need to because all the IP addresses in the email header are from New York. So I might as well play the fish for a while:

From: Joe Huffman [mailto:joeh@boomershoot.org]
Sent: Sunday, November 14, 2010 10:21 AM
To: 'timi top'
Subject: RE: how can i build a bomb!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What do you want to do with the bomb? What does it need to be able to destroy? How big does it need to be?

-joe-

Update (11/15/2010 05:16): I received a response.

From: timi top [mailto:timitop_007@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2010 5:09 AM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: RE: thanks for your reply sir

hello sir
            thanks for your respond , i want to generate money from there, by selling to my country military people, not that i want to use it for harm or for any dirty game, is just to know know that am one of the people that develop technology in Nigerian please help me out sir, cos we have already have people that is building guns and bullet, but i want to be first  person in Nigerian  to build bomb and one of the people that develop Nigerian technology...... i will be looking forward to read from you again bye

TEMITOPE

I replied:

From: Joe Huffman [mailto:joeh@boomershoot.org]
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2010 5:16 AM
To: 'timi top'
Subject: RE: thanks for your reply sir

I am sorry but I don’t have any experience in building those types of bombs. The difficulties are as much or more about the accurate delivery of the bomb than about the explosives which is where I have a little bit of expertise.

-joe-

That was the best thing about turning 16 years old. I could drive a car by myself and buy dynamite without my parents knowing about it.

Ry Jones
November 6, 2010
[A bunch of us were talking about how things used to be back when our country was a little freer. The quote above was one of Ry’s contribution to the conversation. This was said while making explosives to blow up some pumpkins.—Joe]

I’m trying to come up with a slogan for the Boomershoot 2011 t-shirts, hats, etc..

My current list of possibilities are:

• A wholesome alternative to a practical day at work.
• Famous potatoes explosives
• Freedom smells like gunpowder
• Get a big BANG for your buck.
• Good marksmanship has EXPLOSIVE rewards!
• Guns, Explosives, and the Pursuit of Happiness
• Life, liberty, and the pursuit of kaboom.
• Peace Through Superior Marksmanship [I think I would change this to "Freedom Through Superior Marksmanship"—Joe]
• Prometheus suffered so you could do stuff like this. Don't be ungrateful.
• Too early to shoot the bastards but not too soon to practice.
• The smell of cordite. The sound of thunder.
• This is my target. There are many like it.  But this one explodes! [based on the Rifleman's Creed]
• Turning money into smoke, heat, and NOISE!

I’m open to suggestions and voting in the comments. If someone suggests one that I really like and end up using I’ll send them a free Boomershoot 2011 t-shirt, hat, or (or even thong) with the winning slogan on it.

When they left this afternoon, Randy said Dan insisted on being the last one out out of the house. He locked the door behind him ending 62 years of residence on the place.

Doug Huffman
October 30, 2010
[In the spring of 1927 our Dad was not quite four years old but he remembers coming back to Idaho with his Aunt Pet and Uncle Walt. His mother had died two years earlier from T.B. and his aunt and uncle took him to California for the winter while his Dad, Cecil, stayed in Idaho to complete the purchase of a new home and farm land. When they drove by his Uncle Frank’s home he asked why they didn’t stop because that was where they had lived before they went to California. His Aunt, Frank’s and his mother’s sister, told him they had a new home. They drove on for almost another mile and as they went around a bend in the road his aunt pointed out a house on the hill above them. “That’s our new home”, she told him. Although none of the original buildings from 1927 are still standing there are newer building visible in the map image below. On the left side of the image is the location of my Great Uncle Frank’s home. On the right side of the image there is sort of a ghost road that makes a bend through some trees to the east of some buildings. That bend in the road was the site of the county road until the early 1970’s and is the bend in the road where Dad first saw the place that was to be his home for 18 years when he was growing up.

Cecil, Walt, Pet, and Ollie (first a hired assistant and later Cecil’s wife), dad and his three cousins lived there from 1927 until 1945. The land was in another family’s hands until 1949 when Dan (Randy’s father—see the quote above) bought the land.

It’s bit off topic for this post, but Dan was a Jeep driver for General George Patten during much of WW II. I sometimes wanted to ask him about that but it always seems like there wasn’t the time to do that.

My brothers and I heard stories of the dogs, cats, cows, horses, pigs, crops, trucks, cars, and tractors of when Dad grew up on the farm. We lived about two miles west on another piece of property that Mom and Dad bought when I was five years old. A few times Dan asked Dad to come over and help fix or inspect the windmill or ask a question about the granary or another of the original structures that my grandfather and great uncle built.

In the late 1960’s Mom and Dad bought the land to the north of Great Uncle Frank’s place. It is on the northern end of this land that I build the Taj Mahal to manufacture and store the explosives for Boomershoot. The participants at Boomershoot park their vehicles and set up their shelters and shooting positions on the land adjoining the NE corner. This piece of land was given to my Grandmother Huffman, Aunt Pet, and Aunt Ada (sisters) by their father (and my Great Grandfather Carey) in about 1916.

In the map image below the shooters berm for Boomershoot is just under the “ce’ in “Nez Perce”. Shooters face almost directly south and shoot into a hillside that isn’t clearly a hillside in this image:

The pictures below are from about two weeks ago when my brothers and I walked around the farm where my Dad grew up:

This windmill was assembled and erected by my grandfather Huffman and Great Uncle Walt in 1940. It supplied the water to the farm until about 1972. Dad plans to restore it to functional condition.

This is part of the concrete foundation for the windmill.

This is the grain elevator Dad, Grandpa, and Uncle Walt built in the granary which they also built.

We found old books in the original carpenter shop which had copyright dates in the 1930’s. One book that I opened had the names of my Dad’s cousins in it. Dad frequently told us stories of some of  the things his Dad and Uncle Walt built in the shop. Things like Christmas gifts and a bobsled. Dad built a carpenter shop on our farm and when I climbed the ladder for the first time, a little over two weeks ago, into the shop my grandfather built, I knew my Dad had modeled his carpenter shop on the older one. And I recalled the bobsled Dad had built for my brothers and I.

Grandpa Huffman and Uncle Walt sold the farm because my Grandpa had heart problems caused by Scarlet Fever from much earlier and he wasn’t able to do the work the farm required. Grandpa spent the remainder of his life in California working as a carpenter, in a furniture store owned by one of his brothers, and was retired for several years before dying of a heart attack when I was about 8 years old.

Last Friday brother Doug and his wife Julie purchased the land with the buildings from Dan and his wife. The land on the south side of the road, also belonging to Dan and his wife, was purchased by my other brother Gary. This morning wife Barbara and I purchased the land from on the NW corner of South Road and Meridian Road from Randy and his wife. This land is directly south of the Boomershoot site and is part of the potential impact zone if stray bullets go over the hillside we shoot into.

This land deal is another reason for the light blog posting the last month or so.

It actually makes me as much sad as it does happy to have the land back in the family again. As Dan, Randy, and the rest of their family cleaned out the buildings and auctioned off the belongings they wouldn’t have a place to keep in their homes in town I imagined what it would feel like to do the same to the farm where I grew up. I could imagine what it would feel like to have Dad walk through the house we built when I was growing up. To have him lock the door and give the keys to someone else would be very, very painful. I know it was painful for Dan, Randy and their families. They put a lot of thought into it and rationally it was the proper decision to sell the place—Dan and his wife are at an age they can’t maintain the place anymore and have lived in town for the last few years.

They said it made it a little easier for them that it was a farm family and neighbors they had known for many decades but it was still a very hard and sad decision. They plan to come back in the spring and take pictures of the crops growing and I expect they will come back near harvest time to see that too. I know I would. And they will be welcome anytime.—Joe]

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia took fellow Justice Elena Kagan out for a lesson in skeet shooting at his shooting club in Virginia last week.

Alexis Levinson
October 25, 2010
Scalia takes Kagan to gun range, sources say
[As Say Uncle said, “Awesome”.

I wonder how I would go about inviting the entire Supreme Court to Boomershoot. Of course the end of April is a very busy time for them. Maybe I would need to do a private party sometime during the summer.

The ideal would be to follow up the next week with the Brady Campaign Board of directors and tell them all the stories of the great fun the SC had.

Hmmm… I just realized I know someone who could get the attention of and invite the SC. I’ll have to run this idea past him sometime…—Joe]

Two weeks ago some friends and I moved some dirt to improve the shooting berm and cleared some brush to make room for more parking near the Taj Mahal. Today I went back out and with the help of my two brothers planted the torn up dirt to grass.

I have now successfully completed all the Boomershoot tasks required before winter. I’ll probably go back out at least one more time to blow up some pumpkins after Halloween. If things go really well I’ll have some chemicals and target boxes to deliver to the site at the same time but that may have to wait until next spring.

It’s a happy day for the Windows Phone 7 team.

I should go celebrate or something but my chemistry set is frowned upon in Redmond.

I’ll probably get some iPhones and Androids to dispose of in Idaho after the carriers start selling in the U.S.

Alan blasphemies by questioning the word of Jeff Cooper. Sebastian follows up with similar thoughts.

The NRA put some thought into this topic many, many years ago and came up with three fundamental rules instead of Coopers four:

1. ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.
2. ALWAYS keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot.
3. ALWAYS keep the gun unloaded until ready to use.

Notice the rules are all expressed as things you must do.

The Cooper rules are a mixture of things that must and must not be done. This is not good. If you were told to not imagine pink elephants what is the first thing that enters your mind? Yeah, images of pink elephants.

The most frequent questions people have above rules are:

1. What about carrying your gun or in the nightstand while sleeping?
2. Does rule 3 mean I have to keep it unloaded until I am preparing to shoot a bad buy?

The answer is the gun is “in use” when you put it in the holster on your hip or in the nightstand. Hence, the gun may be loaded while you are carrying it.

I hate to be divisive but I’ve long been of the belief that the NRA rules are much better than the Cooper set. It is because of this I have used them as the basis for the Boomershoot rules for many years.

This day is supposed to be some sort of special environmental day. But “no pressure”. They will just blow you up and splatter your body parts all over the room if you don’t go along with their agenda.

As the UK’s Telegraph says, “The environmental movement has revealed the snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy beneath its cloak of gentle, bunny-hugging righteousness.”

I see.

I would like for the environmental movement to know that they aren’t the only ones with explosives. And guns. Don’t forget the guns. And also, I have earth moving equipment. If needed I can bury bodies very, very deep.

So, with that in mind some friends and I went out and did a little practicing.

First we dug up the dirt. This was the first time Barron had driven a bulldozer. Here he porpoises through the dirt but later he was doing fine.

Here is the end result (after I smoothed things out):

As you can see there is room for lots of bodies should the environmentalist get as aggressive as they are threatening to do. And not only can we dig up the earth to dispose of their bodies but we could use the mounds of dirt over their bodies to use as shooting positions when we release more CO₂ into the air when invite lots of people to shoot at explosives.

Here we set off some explosives, releasing CO₂ into the air, with guns which also release CO₂:

And we smiled as we did it (and don’t fail to notice the big, fuel guzzling, pickup):

how funny, two $6k rifles, two $2k rifles, $1k ammo, $1.5k worth of travel expenses going to the boomershoot, a week off work, lost $800 in winnemucca on the way up . . so about $500.00 worth of targets ??? . . i'll get back to you and let you know how many we can make out of a sheet . . and those are my expenses, there are four of us in my truck...

Ray Ash
Via email on October 4, 2010
[Ray offered to make some steel targets for Boomershoot at no charge and asked how many I wanted. I said:

Free wouldn’t be right.

An equal quantity of Pepper Poppers and Mini-Poppers coming to a total of ~$500.

He thought what I said was funny. He could be right about that even though I didn’t intend it to be.—Joe]

Most of the jet formed moves at hypersonic speed. The tip moves at 7 to 14 km/s, the jet tail at a lower velocity (1 to 3 km/s), and the slug at a still lower velocity (less than 1 km/s). The exact velocities are dependent on the charge's configuration and confinement, explosive type, materials used, and the explosive-initiation mode. At typical velocities, the penetration process generates such enormous pressures that it may be considered hydrodynamic; to a good approximation, the jet and armor may be treated as incompressible fluids, with their material strengths ignored.

Wikipedia, Shaped charge
Emphasis added.
Found while Wikiwandering from a link at Roberta’s.
[“… may be treated as incompressible fluids, with their material strengths ignored”! That statement makes me light-headed and weak at the knees. The “7 to 14 km/s” doesn’t hurt either.

7 km/s is about 23,000 feet per second. Your .220 Swift is considered a very zippy cartridge but it only gives you about 4,100 feet per second at the muzzle. Hence a shaped charge gives you velocities 5 to 10 times that of a .220 Swift at the muzzle. This is considered high-hypersonic to re-entry speeds.

I have books on computer simulation of shaped charges. I really need to write the software then do some field testing. Supposedly it is pretty easy to punch through three feet of reinforced concrete. I have some large rocks out in the middle of some fields I’d like to experiment with.—Joe]

I was considering competing in the contest (via Say Uncle) but then I saw the Judging Criteria included this:

Externalities (such as noise pollution, public relations, etc.) imposed onto other businesses which may locate aboard the same seastead and to the overall seasteading movement.

What I had in mind might have “rocked the boat” a little bit.

Now if Microsoft would set up shop offshore someplace where we wouldn’t have to pay such high taxes I’d be near the front of the line to volunteer for the transfer.

Via Mad Rocket Scientist I found some pictures of much more awesome fireballs than what we do at Boomershoot.

Although we have no plans for anything like that in the immediate future I really haven’t looked into it that much. There are certain regulatory hurdles that appear to be sufficiently high that it makes compliance unlikely in the near future.

We would need to use a different range and I suspect the entry fee would have to be prohibitively high too. All and all it just doesn’t seem like its going to happen any time soon no matter how cool it would be.

Via an email from Ry I just watched a video made up of clips from a farm on the Palouse (this particular farm was near Colton Washington) in the late 1940s.

I grew up about 40 miles directly east of there. Many of the pieces of equipment were very similar to what we had on the farm about 10 years later. We still have the old pull type combine parked behind the barn. Ours was a John-Deere model 35 instead of the one with the red paint on it. I still remember riding on it. And the D-4 Caterpillar tractor we used to pull it is still in use today. It was nearly identical to the one shown in the video at the time of the pull combine days. It the mid 1960s Dad put on a bigger fuel tank, a wider seat, and the dozer blade. We still use it several times a year even though it is coming up on 70 years old. I use it to move dirt for the Boomershoot site and my brothers use it for other things as well such as clearing snow out of the driveway during the winter. During harvest the tracks would become so clean and polished by the grain stubble that you could barely look at them if the sun was shining.

We even had an old Willy’s Jeep similar to the one in the video.

Mom and Dad have some old video of some of their farming too. We used to watch the videos once or twice a year when we were growing up. I should get that digitized before it falls apart.

I kiss the ground you walk on.

Steve Ballmer
September 10, 2010
Windows Phone 7 Ship Party

[Click the pictures to see a higher resolution version.

He also said his trademark, “I love this company.” at the top of his lungs:

He also talked about how important Window Phone 7 is to the company and how much he appreciated all the hard work and how much he really loves his Windows Phone 7 phone.

It is a really nice phone. I took three of them to the Boomershoot site this weekend and did some tests. With one of them I was able to pick up a Wi-Fi signal from an ordinary Linksys router from 1090 meters away. The other two were picking up signal from over 600 meters away. Try that with your iPhone.—Joe]

Via David I found there is a blog with nothing but videos of explosions.

I go out to the Boomershoot site every few weeks and have the opportunity to do something with some explosives. I rarely do. Mostly it is maintenance and improving the infrastructure. But if I spent 30 minutes or so setting off some explosives doing some sort of experiment (I've always wanted to know what two pounds of Boomerite does to a small body of water) and videoing it for posting on this blog it probably would be worthwhile.

I was on site Saturday but just did clean up and inventory. I took my rifle and planned to do some explosives testing but I didn't have time for it. I didn't even get all the clean up done.

The nearest houses are at least 500 yards away and I hear just the crackle of the high voltage power line, some birds and a distant combine. I have WiFi and my Windows Phone 7 to blog with. I like it here.

I dropped some stuff off and am straightening some things up. Then I have to drive back to my underground bunker near Seattle. I wish I could stay longer.

Barron gives us video and some nice stills from the private Boomershoot party.

Some people from work followed me back to Idaho on Friday night.

Saturday morning we had breakfast at the Breakfast Club in Moscow with Tim, Barron, and Janelle.

Hiep and Priyanka walking into the restaurant. Photo by Sharath.

We drove to the Boomershoot site and I told them the history, told lots of stories and gave them a tour. They found some .50 BMG bullets and seemed quite thrilled. The picture below is from on top of the berm where the 700 yard targets are placed looking back at the hay field to the shooting line.

Janelle, Barron, Tim (just barely visible behind the grass), Hiep, Sharath, and Priyanka.

I gave them a safety briefing on the chemicals (which consists mostly of telling them not to eat, drink, or snort anything) I had the people from Microsoft weigh the chemicals and my staff mix the explosives and package it into targets:

Sharath, Priyanka, Hiep.

Janelle, Tim (barely visible--he doesn't want his picture taken because cameras will steal your soul), and Barron.

Sharath, Priyanka, and Hiep putting stakes in the ground for the targets.

One of the targets had something special on it (see also here).

I gave safety and basic firearm instructions while Tim, Barron, and Janelle placed the targets on the stakes. Sharath had never shot a gun before. Hiep had only shot one once and that was after he had three years of military instruction in Vietnam. Priyanka shot a gun for the first time last September and then in March took her parents (visiting from India) to the range on her own and taught them to shoot.

Targets ready for engagement. Photo by Sharath.

We then got back a few feet and let the visitors shoot the targets. There were many smiles and much exaltation.

Joe and Hiep. Photo by Sharath.

Hiep once told me he didn't think private citizens should possess firearms. Only the police and the military should have access. I should ask if he still thinks that.

Boomershoot is a tool for teaching people from all over the world the joys of guns and explosives--the joy of freedom.

I can eat cake any day. This is the only time I can blow one up.

Priyanka
July 17, 2010
She said this a few minutes before blowing up, instead of blowing out, her birthday cake.
[The white cardboard box contains two pounds of Boomerite.

In the original of second picture (taken by Sharath) you can see bits of the cake high in the air. We were unable to find any of it later.

I expect Barron and Janelle will have video before long. I was playing range safety officer and didn't take any pictures while the rifles were out of their cases.--Joe]

I once received an award for best tonal quality in a belching contest.

Janelle Barnett
July 17, 2010
[Even though this was at the Boomershoot site we weren't wearing any hearing protection at the time.

I don't think there is anything more I should say about incident or the conversation.--Joe]

Boom!

I think I got it now.

Boom!

Yeah. I got it.

Priyanka
Shooting boomers at a private Boomershoot party.
July 17, 2010
[She was having trouble at first. Lots of misses and almost no booms. I couldn't figure out what the problem was. She did fine with dry fire. The gun stayed steady enough for the range we were at (almost entertainingly close). I think there was a problem with her sight picture even though I went over it several times with her. And it wasn't like was the first time she had shot a gun either. She did pretty well the first time so I was perplexed why she was having trouble this time. She is a smart woman and she eventually figured it out on her own.

I'll ask her more about it when I see her at the office on Monday.

Update: Priyanka reports she was concentrating on properly placing the post (front sight) of the AR-15 on the target and was neglecting to center the post in the rear peep sight. I'll have another QOTD from Priyanka and pictures from the event on Monday.--Joe]

This is a little different than most suicide watches. In this one they are in the process and we are just watching it happen.

After it completes we should all go to the wake. I'll sign up to bring my famous cookies and maybe my chemistry set.

Via Ry.

Crapshoot results in stinky day for bomb squad:

A call about a bomb turned into a crapshoot for the Lorain County Bomb Squad.

Officers found a fizzing homemade bomb planted in a portable toilet near a construction site at Turtle Bay and decided the safest way to detonate it was to shoot at it.

After five shots with a .22 caliber rifle, the bomb exploded, spraying the contents of the toilet everywhere. One of the bomb squad members was covered in feces, according to the police report.

As further evidence that laws regulating explosives are marginally effect at best is the type of explosives used:

Officers confiscated a roll of aluminum foil and a stack of 14 military-style meal heaters used to create similar bombs.

While at the NRA Annual Meeting on Saturday I wore this shirt:

It got a lot of compliments while on the exhibit floor but something happened that night while at the blogger dinner. I've been told that I might have to burn that shirt. I would have never worn that shirt to work and figured as long as I stayed away for places like that I would be okay. But censors are sometimes where you least expect them. Yes, the heavy hand of censorship is threatening me because of that shirt.

On the night in question there were about 20 or 30 bloggers at this bar having dinner, drinking a few, and trying to talk to each other (it was very loud). Alan Gura had expressed, rather forcefully, that it was too loud and wanted to go someplace else so we could talk easier. I was up moving around and trying to shepherd people in the general direction of the door and to a nearby outdoor plaza with a quiet fountain and seating. From a nearby table filled with college students two young women approached me and said they really liked my shirt and they wanted a picture of one of them with me and the shirt. I obliged them.

I later told Say Uncle about it and he quipped, "I'll bet you never thought you could use that shirt to pick up chicks, did you?" I laughed and said, "No." That would have been the end of it had I not opened my big mouth later. Later that evening as I was talking to wife Barbara and she asked how my day had gone I told her of the event and Say Uncle's joke. In the silence that followed I blissfully babbled on and told her of another funny thing that happened. This probably sealed the fate of that shirt.

As everyone was saying goodnight someone said how wonderful it was to meet and hang out with the celebrities like Michael Bane, Alan Gottlieb, and god of gods Alan Gura. I agreed and added something like, and pointing at Mike W, "But you said I was a celebrity." Mike protested, "But you are a celebrity. You are the Boomershoot guy!" Dixie was standing just to the right of me and said, "You are the Boomershoot guy?" and stretched her arms out with fingers straight, palms flat, and bowed to me.

Barb hasn't actually said it in words but I'm pretty good at reading the silence.

I think I'm going to have to burn the shirt.

In my post last night I outlined some of the work the staff does for Boomershoot after the main event is over. I said the sound in the video doesn't do it justice.

In Jason's video the sound is a much better but it still doesn't capture the THUMP that you feel throughout your body but it does hint a little better at it and give you some more clues as to what it means for Rolf to be Entertainingly Close:

After the main event is over and most of the participants have left there is still work to be done. There is trash to be picked up, trash cans to be emptied, caution tape and signs to be taken down, stakes to be pulled and put away, and the left over targets have to be burned or detonated. I drive the ATV back and forth from the field to the Taj carrying trailer loads of stuff to be put away. The staff with ATF approval to handle explosives take care of the left over and damaged targets. The ones damaged too much to be moved are detonated in place.

No sound system we have tried can really capture the experience but Barron has the rest of the story and the video from this year. At about 3:00 minutes in Rolf demonstrates his .357 and Entertainingly Close.

ATVCourse.com

I went out to the Boomershoot site today. There was some trash on the hillside that needed to be collected. Several of the signs at the nearby intersections needed to be picked up and some tools and other stuff were in our garage in Moscow which I needed to take back to the site.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining and it was 69 F:

I picked up the trash and got back in the car to drive to the Taj Mahal. I had walked the entire length of the hillside and the ground was dry and I didn't expect any trouble driving across the field. I didn't even bother to walk part way out to check it out. I slowly drove across the field enjoying the fresh air and sunshine with my window down and barely paying attention to where I was going.

I felt the car sink, slow down and heard the engine slow as the front wheels cut deep into soft ground and water barely hidden by the grass splashed. I gave it as much gas as I could without spinning the wheels out of sight in the mud as I desperately tried to pick up some speed to get through the even softer ground directly ahead that I knew I could not avoid. To stop would have been the end of it. I had to get through it to the other side and maybe turn around on the other side. I kept the wheels spinning at about 125% of my actual ground speed and the car slowed and slowed. I rolled up the window to avoid getting mud inside the car as the front wheel drive threw mud and grass into the air.

I thought I was lost as the car slowed and slowed until it was barely moving but it kept moving and it slowly crawled through and out the other side of the soft spot and onto firmer ground on the other side with another soft spot directly ahead. I was afraid to stop even where I was and turned down the hill and tried to turn completely around and hit another soft spot. I threw more mud and grass in the air and got it turned around and hit the first soft spot a littler faster and in a different place than before. The second time through was better than the first because of the additional speed and I made it through without quite the scare of the first time.

I made it back to the parking area by the road and decided I could walk and carry all the stuff to the Taj. It would take longer but not as long as it would if I got stuck and had to get help from someone.

Instead of walking to work tomorrow I'm tempted to drive and park my beat up and muddied Chevy Aveo, grass still clinging to the side mirrors, next to one of the Lamborghini's or Ferrari's in the parking garage. For some reason the thought of that amuses me greatly.

According to the annual Freedom House survey of democracy and liberty around the globe, there was almost no increase in freedom during Carter's presidency. Instead, both Iran and Nicaragua, principal targets of Carter's human rights policy, became human rights disasters; the Soviets cracked down on human rights activists Anatoly Scharansky and Aleksandr Ginzburg; and Carter's foreign policy weakness encouraged the Soviets to invade Afghanistan. The aftershocks of Carter's foreign policy failures reverberated most powerfully in the Islamic fundamentalist terrorism we have today. It was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that created the mujahadeen, who revived the idea of jihad. More important, the fall of the shah in Iran gave Islamic fundamentalist radicalism an enormous state sponsor and inspiration and made being an American ally in the Middle East seem more dangerous than being an American foe. Carter's idealism failed in confronting communism during his presidency and later in confronting communist North Korea. Carter idealism--if it can be called that--in the Middle East would have us side with the terrorist PLO rather than the democratic Israel, and would have us on a perpetual merry-go-round of talks aimed at appeasing Arab dictators rather than toppling them or challenging them to reform and cease sponsoring terrorism.

Steven F. Hayward
The Real Jimmy Carter, page 230.
[One can claim, with reasonable ability to defend the thesis, that Carter was a "nice guy" and had "good intentions". But the results of his policy are just like the "nice guys" who have "good intentions" and want infringe our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. They fail. They fail because they are naive. "Bad guys" exist. Bad guys take advantage of the weak. It is, as George Orwell said, "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

Guns in the hands of the common person allow them to sleep peaceably in your bed at night because they can do their own violence when it becomes necessary to defend themselves and other innocent life. It is hopelessly naive to believe removing the power to do violence from the innocent will ever make the world a better place. At every level from the individual through city, state, and national level the means and the will to defend the innocent will always be a requirement for a safe and just society.

H/T to Davidwhitewolf who donated the author signed copy of The Real Jimmy Carter to the Boomershoot raffle. The inscription reads "Dear Boomershooter, Thanks for supporting the 2nd Amendment, Boomershoot 2010, and Project Valor-IT, [signed] Steven F. Hayward. I put many raffle tickets in the bucker for this book but someone else got it. They brought it to me afterward and asked me to blow it up for them. "Huh? Didn't you read the find print on the jacket cover? It says, 'How our worst ex-president undermines American foreign policy, coddles dictators, and created the party of Clinton and Kerry'?" Nope. They hadn't read the fine print. I said that I would be glad to take the book and even blow it up for them if they really wanted that. But I would rather read it and use it as a source of quotes. They agreed and gave it to me.--Joe]

Last weekend I took a bunch of people from work out to the Boomershoot site for a private party.

I still haven't gotten the pictures off of my camera. Barron has been much better on reporting the latest Boomershoot news than I have. Here is his report on the private party with lots of pictures.

I really need to finish my "chicks and guns" blog post that I have been thinking about for months...

Patti from Solider's Angels left a comment on one of my blog posts:

Thank you very much from my heart.
It is things like this, people like you that make me want to be a better person.
Please if you have a chance email me the addresses of everyone involved, I would love to send a thank you.
Love
patti

I just got around to responding via private email:

I can't give you the email addresses of everyone but I can forward your email to all the people who participated in Boomershoot 2010.

I have just sent the money raised by the raffle. Here are the details:

Payee                Send On       Expected Delivery    Amount
Soliders' Angels 05/03/2010   05/10/2010             $1,300.00

Just got back into town from Boomershoot.

OH GOD SO FUN.

I have a feeling this next year is going to be a spendy one for us. Yeeeeah.

Laurel
Aprile 25, 2010
*dies of awesome*
[My evil plan is working.--Joe]

Boomershoot is very stressful for me. I usually only sleep four or five hours a night and loose about 10 pounds in the week around Boomershoot. This year's event was the least stressful of any. I had several people comment on how low key I was compared to usual. I actually enjoyed strolling up and down the line watching for safety violations holding hands with Barb. Usually I'm too keyed up for either of us to enjoy holding hands much.

I think sleeping on-site helped lower the stress. I could work late and get up early to prepare for the arrival of the rest of the crew. Even though I slept in a tent next to the Taj Mahal that got down to 29 F just before dawn one morning I got more sleep than usual. It was interesting to me that I put a small jug of milk on some ice in a small cooler Wednesday noon and the ice still hadn't all melted as of Saturday noon.

Barb seemed pleased that my appetite returned on Tuesday and I started eating normally on Monday.

I also have to give a lot of credit for the (relatively) low stress Boomershoot to our staff:

• Scott K. makes an amazing contributions by showing up early Thursday morning each year and leaving long after nearly everyone else is gone on Sunday evening. This year he drove all the way from Virginia.
• Brian and Cody worked until very late on Sunday as well. This is when I most appreciate the help. The anticipation and fun is over. It's cleaning up after the party when you are dead tired. Thanks guys.
• Mark Y. showed up Thursday morning as well and worked four solid days. He "only" had to drive an hour each way from Moscow.
• Barron and Janelle B. drove about 1:15 each way from Uniontown and were there all four days.
• Ry drove 340 miles from Seattle and was there all four days.
• Ry's daughters Anna and Arden folded boxes, stamped the ATF required markings on empty boxes, and did numerous other grunt work.
• David S. came from Seattle and worked all day Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday.
• Rolf N. came from Seattle and helped make explosives and entertained us all with his puns.
• Phil put in some time at the Taj doing some grunt work too.
• Tim S. helped not only on the day of Boomershoot but with experiments last fall.
• Daughter Kim worked long days Saturday and Sunday. She left the range at 19:22 on Sunday and looked like death warmed over. She had put away nearly everything at the Taj Mahal and even took down my tent, rolled up my sleeping bags, and stuffed them in my car. She had been up since at least 6:45 that morning. She usually makes nearly all of the Boomerite but this year Scott K. made the explosives on Friday while Kim was attending classes. Saturday she made all of it and cleaned up the production area while I and most of the others ran the High Intensity event.
• Peter V. and John S. are nurses. They bring their medical kits and shoot in the Sunday event. They seem a bit disappointed they don't get to treat and gunshot wounds or explosives injuries but they say they have a good time each year. This year John helped measure chemicals and fold target boxes on Saturday.
• Boomershoot photographer (and daughter) Xenia Joy was there on Sunday and I'll eventually go through her pictures and post some of them.
• Bruce (Squirrel Hunter), Fred, and their crew did the raffle which netted $1300 for Soldiers' Angels and distributed badges Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday morning.
• Chris T. watched the road Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and radioed back to the shooting line about approaching cars.
• Eugene Econ, Shawn W., Bill and Rob W., and Monte M. put on the Precision Rifle Clinic. In addition to all the expert shooting ability and coaching skills prep for this starts Thursday afternoon and involves moving large quantities of steel up a steep hill.
• Wife Barbara Scott put up with me being gone (physically for three nights and mentally for at least a week) and then helped so much with numerous errands, providing transportation for the cameraman, and taking care of my mom while Dad came over to do an interview with Michael Bane. And most of all she hasn't yet hit me for telling her over the megaphone that there were 150 people waiting on her to arrive so we could do the fireball. That doesn't count all the tolerance she shows all year long as I prepare for the next Boomershoot. Some of her coworkers tell her she is a celebrity because of the attention Boomershoot sometimes gets. But, as she tells them, she isn't a celebrity, she just sleeps with one. I think she means me.

Also, I would like to again thank Bruce for the matching Boomershoot jackets that he gave to Barbara and me at the Saturday night dinner. Those were awesome.

These rolling hills are Irish-Green
But those who herein dwell
Have rifles that reach a mile
To send Cromwell's hosts to hell

To them Ruby Ridge was a warning
An alert to the fair and free
Like other, more recent incursions
Against them and you and me

Enjoy rolling hills of Idaho
They look Irish but hold more lead
In case someday reason fails
And the living might envy the dead

The Federal hydra seldom
Comes into these rolling hills
To it the climate is noisome
Though the locals are dressed to kill

Plain are natives of green and beauty
Simple and rough their talk
But they have enough math to know
How far long-range bullets drop

These rolling hills are Irish-Green
But those who herein dwell
Though wishing for peace and quiet
In war would do rather well

To them you are valued visitor
By whom they strive to do right
Those who come in friendship
Need not fear the rifles' might

These rolling hills aren't Ireland
But a more formidable land
And despite all the Pharaoh's armies
These people will win in the end

Oleg Volk
April 29, 2009
Of Idaho
[Yup. There is lead in the hills and I'm not the only one in Idaho to invest in copper coated lead.--Joe]

Boomershoot is the most interesting precision rifle event in the entire world.

Michael Bane
Down Range Radio #158
April 27, 2010
[My ego is probably blocking thoughts of something far more interesting but at the moment I am inclined to agree with him.--Joe]

Joy to the world
All the boys and girls now

Hoyt Axton
From the song "Joy to the World" made popular by Three Dog Night.
[I've been having this ear worm of Three Dog Night singing this song play in my head since Wednesday. Maybe now that I have delivered another Boomershoot to the world it will stop.

David from Random Nuclear Strikes said it was the best Boomershoot ever. From my standpoint this was true. The glitches were fairly minor and things went nearly perfectly on schedule. Having Michael Bane's film crew make requests slowed us down some at times but it was for a good cause.

As this ear worm playing I kept wondering... what does the Brady Campaign and the other organizations of gun owner haters have to offer that compares? Like Robb Allen said, "what gun controllers must do for entertainment – hit up the anti-gun range or go to an anti-gun show". Boomershoot brought 125 people from all over the country to help turn money into noise. Sure, the VPC or the Brady Campaign turn money into noise too but the people spending the money are not happy doing it. We bring joy to the world and they bring hate and sadness.--Joe]

The Precision Rifle Clinic and the Friday night High Intensity event were a success last night.

The weather was absolutely perfect. Hardly a cloud in the sky and no wind. Today it is raining again and the wind is a little bit of a concern for me. The forecast for tomorrow is better. It is supposed to just be cloudy but no rain.

The HI event went a little slower than desired in part because I didn't have the badges completely ready and we broke it up into three flights in part so Oleg Volk could take more pictures. Oleg Volk at Boomershoot! How awesome is that?

Of course as near as I could tell he was only taking pictures of the women. But that's okay--a lot of the pictures were of daughter Xenia and Boomershoot staff member Janelle.

If we set the place on fire today it will mean we are really doing something right.

Ry Jones
April 22, 2010
The context was Boomershoot Gun Blogger Day during the discussion of fireball targets and the unintentional fires we have had. It was raining and cold at the time.

The batteries at the Taj Mahal will only run the Wi-Fi and a computer for about 40 hours before they discharge low enough to trigger the warning alarm on the inverter. With a typical Boomershoot schedule this figure out to be about 2:00 AM.

The inverter alarm is loud enough to wake people sleeping in a nearby tent.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

Napoleon Bonaparte
[Last night at the Boomershoot Gun BLogger dinner Rolf N. tried to remember this one when we were talking about the Brady Campaign.--Joe]

Gun Blogger Day was wet and cold. Some people did not show up because of that and we sped through the agenda and called it quits about 2:00 PM. It was about then that it stopped raining.

In other news we did got the shooting line set up and 700 stakes pounded into the hillside and other 350 or so at the tree-line.

We tested still another method of target deployment which after the first shot by David @ Random Nuclear Strikes caused nearly everyone to laugh. There is a reason we do all the testing. This was another demonstration of FAIL. If we have the time we will do more testing tomorrow and maybe get the new target deployment method perfected. If not we will revert to the stakes and put up another 150 stakes at the tree-line for Sunday.

To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.

George Washington
First annual address to Congress, 1790.
[I was reminded of this by my (and about 125 other people) preparations for Boomershoot.--Joe]

I usually keep my email on my computer in my Seattle area bunker then access it remotely. I decided not to do that for the trip to Idaho time because the battery for the uninterruptable power supply went dead. I purchased a new one but the control software says it is dead also. One power glitch and that computer is offline. So I transfered my email to my laptop. So far so good.

This morning the bunker computer went offline. Glad I moved all the critical files to the laptop. Lots of last minute email from Boomershoot people changing things like dinner plans, High Intensity participation, shooting partners etc. It was all safely on the laptop.

I was just finishing up thing at work before I left for Boomershoot country and my laptop died. It won't boot. It will try then suddenly shut off. Ouch.

I called work and filled them in with things and they will manage fine without me. But that Excell spreadsheet with all the last minute Boomershoot changes was a problem. I had things backed up one more place. An home server computer that automatically gets all of the files in certain directories of my laptop and bunker computers. Unfortunately it doesn't have Microsoft Office on it. I took the server computer with me (it's an old laptop that son James was going to throw away).

When I got to the farm I borrowed my brother's computer and printed out the spreadsheet pages I needed and I think I'm good to go again on that front.

Driving into the Taj Mahal there was one spot that was completely dry last time I was here and I didn't expect it to be filled with water and soft mud. I hit it with the car going much too slow. I threw mud all over and just barely pulled through it. I figured I can probably get back through it okay by hitting it a lot faster the next time.

I set up my tent and unloaded most of the stuff out of the car... then it started raining about 6:30 PM. It's raining hard (currently 7:07 PM). The entire area is a slip and slide now. I don't think I'm going anywhere tonight.

I had planned to get the ATV and little trailer over here tonight so I could transport all the various stuff to the shooting line and the hillside. That is going to have to wait now.

Update: It has stopped raining now (8:25 PM) and my main laptop is working again. I've sent and received email. My tester at work says she fixed one of my bugs and another tester resolved another bug of mine as "No Repro" so I'm down to just two bugs. Thanks Crystal and Satya! I'll think up something special for you guys at the Private Boomershoot Party next weekend.

The weather forecast for Boomershoot this year is looking great. There will be a few people, including myself, in tents that might get a few drops of rain early tomorrow morning:

HOUR		Wed 8AM	Wed 2PM	Wed 8PM	Thu 2AM	Thu 8AM	Thu 2PM	Thu 8PM	Fri 2AM
SKY
CHANCE OF PRECIPITATION		Little / None	Little / None	Little / None	Slight	Slight	Little / None	Little / None	Little / None
TEMP (F)		56°	59°	57°	51°	52°	62°	57°	45°
DEWPOINT (F)		44°	44°	45°	43°	40°	36°	33°	32°
HUMIDITY		64%	57%	64%	74%	63%	38%	40%	60%
WIND (MPH)		E 3	NW 9	W 7	W 5	W 3	NW 13	S 6	SW 2

But the Precision Rifle Clinic and the main event should be fine:

DAY		Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed
SKY
HI TEMP (F)		64	66	61	62	66	66	63
LO TEMP (F)		49	39	45	40	39	44	45

Forecast by My-Cast.

Here's my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose.

Ronald Reagan
[A good strategy for the "war" on gun rights as well.

This weekend is my most important "battle" for the year.--Joe]

An email from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence:

Today, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced that the District of Columbia Voting Rights Act would be pulled from consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives because of the chamber’s inability to stop a National Rifle Association (NRA) amendment that would have effectively gutted the city’s gun laws. “The price was way too high,” said Hoyer, who indicated he made the decision along with D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton.

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) applauds Majority Leader Hoyer and Delegate Norton for making this hard decision and for acknowledging that the bill was a threat to D.C. residents’ safety and democratic rights. It is a tragedy that a bill that would have extended voting representation in Congress to American citizens who richly deserve it was undermined by the NRA’s insidious agenda.

A recent decision by a federal judge upheld the District of Columbia’s new gun laws as constitutional and torpedoed the NRA’s claims that these regulations are arbitrary and tyrannical. Nonetheless, the NRA pressed ahead and put their petty, partisan agenda ahead of the civil rights of 600,000 patriotic Americans. Their goal was to drive a wedge between D.C. residents, but in the end we emerged unified and more determined than ever.

CSGV has been committed to obtaining full democracy for the District for 40 years. Our president, Mike Beard, was the first executive director of Self-Determination for D.C., a national coalition that was instrumental in passing the Home Rule Act in 1973. In recent years, we have been proud to advocate for voting representation and political autonomy for District residents.

We would like to thank the many individuals and organizations who stepped forward to protect the principle of self-determination in the District. Among them were the 13 members of the D.C. Council, ROOT (Reaching Out to Others Together), the League of Women Voters, DC for Democracy, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the D.C. Democratic Party, and—most importantly—family members who lost loved ones in the March 30 mass shooting in Southeast Washington.

I find it very telling CSGV calls the repeal of the oppressive D.C. gun laws "a threat to ... democratic rights". I didn't know we had "democratic rights". We have civil rights. We have voting rights. But "democratic rights" is something new to me. A quick Bing search indicates it is not a common U.S. phrase. My suspicion is that CSGV knew use of the more common "civil rights" would have yielded laughter and claims of ignorance and/or bigotry. And of course in the next paragraph they overlook the fact that the NRA is very concerned with civil rights. But despite all nine Supreme Court justices agreeing with the NRA that the right to keep and bear arms is a constitutionally protected individual right CSGV is willing to push for the clearly unconstitutionally representative for D.C. in the U.S. Congress. Apparently the U.S. Constitution is irrelevant to their agenda as is safety. If they were concerned with resident safety they would recognize that violence crime is much lower just across the political boundaries on all sides of D.C. where gun laws are more relaxed and that in the last year after D.C.'s fun laws were found unconstitutional violent crime reduced rather than increased as the anti-gun people predicted.

It would seem to me that a rational person would observe that the correlation between restrictive gun laws and high crime is positive in D.C. and that the relaxing of gun laws coincided with reduced violent crime. A rational person would be willing to relax the gun laws even more yet at every turn they fight for more restrictive laws. I can only conclude CSGV does not have rational people or they are not concerned with resident safety as they claim.

I have to smile at them anyway because as they whine about people being allowed restricted access to firearms I'm preparing for over 100 ordinary people to play with guns and explosives for four days. My accomplishments in the next few days will be on television (and has been before and the show was even nominated for an Emmy) and reach thousands of times more people than their pathetic news release.

I got a call from a guy in the Seattle area last night asking about Boomershoot.

KING5 Evening Magazine ran their Boomershoot 2005 video again. They put a new introduction on it and called it Blowing off steam at Boomershoot this time.

The guy that called signed up a few minutes later and will be attending on Sunday.

Update: I got another call from the Seattle area from someone else seriously considering attending.

Rivrdog has finalized the rules for the Boomershoot Mini-Match on Friday and Saturday.

He has changed the originally proposed rules such that I won't be able to game it as I had contemplated.

Barron just put up his Boomershoot 2009 video.

I would attempt to make some snarky comment about procrastination but daughter Xenia is the Queen of Procrastination and she probably inherited that trait from me.

You are in Boomershoot mode. I can sense the energy.

Barbara Scott
April 18, 2010
[Yeah. Boomershoot has been consuming nearly all my cycles and actually Barb is being a more than a little bit generous in saying she can "sense the energy". I tend to get grumpy with her.--Joe]

I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

George S. Patton, Jr.
Exhortation to troops, North Africa
[Even if we if only speak figuratively about fighting a culture "war" with the enemies of freedom the same sort of exhortation applies. "Dying" may be an economic "death" of their organizations from lack of donations. Or it may be that we starve them of media coverage because we outnumber them 10 (or 100) to 1 at rallies. But still we win the war by "killing off" their "troops" (supporters).

Think in terms of your activism doing the most damage possible to your opponents rather than sacrifice of yourself.

Also of possible interest is people attending Boomershoot this year will be within a mile or so of one of Patton's Jeep drivers who served in Europe during WW II. He has a farm nearby and lives just over the hill a little way from the Boomershoot site.--Joe]

There have been some more last minute cancelations and we now have six seven open shooting positions for Boomershoot 2010.

• Positions #2 and #4 in .50 Caliber Ghetto are open.
• Position #11 in Lowlands is open.
• Position #33 and #36 in Main are open.
• Positions #47 and #51 (this is the better position if you are going to shoot from the berm) in Berm is open.

There are lots of positions available for both the Friday and Saturday evening High Intensity events.

Sign up here: http://entry.boomershoot.org/

Update: Position 33 just opened up as well.

Boomershoot 2010 shirts, hats, framed prints, underwear, cups, tote bags, mugs, etc. Available here.

Ry has the Boomershoot 2010 schedule available for your cell phone. There are different schedules you can subscribe to such as "Precision Rifle Clinic", "Staff", "Main Event", etc. You phone will be automatically updated (assuming you have a data connection--free on-site Wi-Fi is available if nothing else) if the schedule changes.

Linoge claims one of the pictures of private Boomershoot party for Ian is "photo of the year".

I'm not entirely comfortable with that claim. But it is nice that he did say that.

It was a pretty ordinary day and event in a lot of ways. What of the days when we have 120 shooters connecting with 1 MOA reactive targets out to 700 yards? I think of those pictures as more awe inspiring to me and are probably PSH inspiring to the anti-gun people. And what of the other private parties such as this one with Shobana? (BTW, she is planning on attending another private party soon.) She is from a country that has just as restrictive laws, if not more so, than Canada. And also, the year is young still.

But it's an opinion thing. Linoge's opinion is probably just as good as mine in this case.

In any event I have uploaded the original, unedited, high resolution photo for your viewing pleasure here (just shy of 5 Mbytes).

Update: I added the link to his post. Sorry about forgetting that.

Via our professional photographer daughter Xenia who took the picture at Boomershoot last year:

Notice the target rich enviornment in the distance? Each of those little white dots is another pound or two of high explosives. The white "smoke" is actually almost all water vapor from the explosions. Yes, we try to make Boomershoot a "green" event. The daffodils? Those were planted by my grandmother and her sisters about 90 years ago.

T-shirts, cups, etc. will be available at Cafepress in a day or three.

This will be the fewest posts I have made in a single month since March of 2006.

Things are very very busy at work. I can't tell you how many nights I have stayed at the office until nearly midnight or worked from home until 02:00 or 03:00, or worked all weekend. I'm watching a build run out of the corner of my eye as I type this.

Next month isn't looking good either. The pressure will remain high for most of the month and then I will need to do a lot of stuff for Boomershoot. Please believe me that I intend to post more and will do so again. It just might not be until sometime in May.

As I have previously reported Ian is an intern at Microsoft from Canada. I took him shooting once and he enjoyed it a great deal.

Last Friday after work he and I left Redmond and headed east to Idaho where we could have some real fun. Idaho is less repressive in a number of ways than Washington. In particular the explosives law are a pain in Washington.

Saturday morning daughter Kim, Ian and I loaded up the van and went to the Boomershoot site. Barron, Janelle, and Ryan were already there when we arrived. We were going to put on a private party for Ian and do a few experiments to test out some ideas for a new target deployment method.

Some of the pictures are below see also the fireball demo pictures here.

Ian about to shoot his first boomer.

This was just after detonation. Notice the streak of something headed to the left in the tree. 

Ian preparing for the blast of debris.

Ian realizing he is going to live.

Ian realizing that was fun (debris still falling).

Ian realizing that was really fun (debris still falling).

Ian, Ryan, and Janelle (only her shadow is visible on the far right) do a miniature High Intensity Event.

Ian shooting still more boomers.

Ian seems to like this too.

Ryan brought an old laptop in need of an Idaho Stress Test.

Ryan preparing to initiate the stress test.

The test is complete in a few microseconds.

Ryan was very happy with the test results even if he did have to pick up all the pieces.

Ian, Kim, and I took the scenic route back to Moscow, picked up Barb just as she got off from work and went to VJs BBQ (there was a reason for chosing this particular place) for dinner. They have a Gadsden flag and the Declaration of Independence on the wall if that gives you a hint.

What I wonder is what the anti-freedom people in this country have to offer interns who visit. It's not like they have anti-gun ranges to go have fun at.

Update: Linoge linked to this post and claimed one of the pictures of Ian above is "Photo of the year". In the interests of completeness I have uploaded the original, untouched, photo here.

Some forms of therapy are not covered under Obamacare.

Joe Huffman
March 27, 2010
[This is going to be the slogan on the Boomershoot 2010 t-shirts.

Photos by daughter Kim yesterday.

In the last picture, yes, it was raining debris from the explosion.--Joe]

Tamara points out you may have heard of a few of gun bloggers in the list here.

I have met or talked on the phone to most of them.

Some of them will be attending Boomershoot 2010. Boomershoot Media Day is April 22^nd this year in case any more bloggers would like to attend. There are currently two open positions and I expect a third will open up soon.

For me, Boomershoot’s a bit like sex. You never forget your first sexual experience, and if it was good, you keep trying to approach or exceed that rush every time. Similarly, every shot at a Boomer has the potential to be just as exciting as your first one.

Davidwhitewolf
March 22, 2010
2010 Will Be The Best Boomershoot Yet
[I agree there are some similarities. If you have ever heard my little lecture on the definition of fun you will understand. I (and many other people, but especially Ry) put a lot of thought into making Boomershoot fun.

This weekend we will be doing some alpha testing of a new target deployment system. If it goes well there will be a beta test at Boomershoot 2010 and then perhaps a full roll out for Boomershoot 2011. If you listened to Vicious Circle 42 you'll have a hint of just how "evil" Ry is.

If things go as planned at the end of April Boomershooters will get to experience the Evil of Ry for themselves.

I just wonder if Davidwhitewolf will think the new Boomers are a big tease or do they actually "put out".--Joe]

We have had several positions open up. I will formally make the positions available at 18:00 on Wednesday March 24th. Until then existing participants will be able to trade their current positions for one of the open ones. So the currently open positions may not be available on Wednesday.

You will be able to sign up at http://entry.boomershoot.org/

The positions becoming available are:

• Position 2 in the .50 Caliber Ghetto.
• Position 26 in the Main area.
• Position 73 on the West End.

In case you have forgotten or didn't hear, Michael Bane will be attending and filming for his T.V. show on the Outdoor Channel. He will also be the speaker at the dinner on Saturday night.

Update: The positions available now are:

• Position 2 in the .50 Caliber Ghetto.
• Position 4 in the .50 Caliber Ghetto.
• Position 73 on the West End.

I just finished up participating in a Vicious Circle episode. The supposed topic was Boomershoot. In fact we basically started on Boomershoot and mostly ended up talking about Boomershoot but as it the case with all Vicious Circle podcasts there was a lot of topic drift. Also discussed were:

• The Jews In The Attic Test
• Nationalized health care
• The perfection of Lucy Lawless's nipples and how to view them
• Yet another way to blow up a plane that the TSA cannot stop
• Total world-wide economic collapse
• The Texas Navy
• Screwdrivers
• Windows Phone 7 Series
• Narcissistic personalties
• Caleb
• How many boxes of .22 ammo it will cost for a virgin after the total world-wide economic collapse

There was also a lot of giggling--particular when I told them that Barb asked me if Alan edited out the naughty words.

And that is just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head.

Update: It is available now.

If you didn't get a chance or weren't interested enough to go buy a hardcopy version the online version of Boomershoot! - Fun with Two Forms of Internal Combustion is now available.

I got a call from Oleg yesterday. He plans to attend Boomershoot this year.

Of course he wants some pretty girls to take pictures of. It just so happens I know of two who will be there. So we talked about daughters Kim and Xenia.

He will be shooting with Lyle @ UltiMAK in position #74.

Even though I'm not using the external antenna on the Taj Mahal Wi-Fi access point I still have good service at the far west end of the shooting line. I'm currently showing four out of five bars on my laptop.

As BillH posted a few days ago the Boomershoot site has zero snow. I drove all the way out to the Taj in my car without problems. Last year at this time it was snowshow conditions.

I just received an email from Michael Bane saying he will be the dinner speaker at Boomershoot this year.

Just an FYI, you don't have to participate in Boomershoot to attend the dinner. Boomershoot spectators, gun enthusiasts, and even Brady Campaign Staff (we don't discriminate) are welcome too. Both concealed and open carry are acceptable (which means we probably won't have Dennis Henigan or Paul Helmke visiting us).

Dinner details are here and if you want to sign up for dinner follow this link.

Update: The Brady Campaign (aka Handgun Control Inc.) received their invitation a few minutes ago:

Domain Name		sct.com ? (Commercial)
IP Address		65.242.56.# (HANDGUN CONTROL)
ISP		Verizon Business
Location		Continent  :  North America Country  :  United States  (Facts) State  :  District of Columbia City  :  Washington Lat/Long  :  38.9042, -77.032 (Map) Distance  :  2,071 miles
Language		English (U.S.) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinXP
Browser		Internet Explorer 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
Javascript		version 1.3
Monitor		Resolution  :  1024 x 768 Color Depth  :  32 bits
Time of Visit		Feb 12 2010 12:44:16 pm
Last Page View		Feb 12 2010 12:46:20 pm
Visit Length		2 minutes 4 seconds
Page Views		4
Referring URL		http://blogsearch.go...Henigan%22&scoring=d
Search Engine		blogsearch.google.com
Search Words		"dennis henigan"
Visit Entry Page		http://blog.joehuffm...10DinnerSpeaker.aspx
Visit Exit Page		http://blog.joehuffm...elBaneOnBigotry.aspx
Out Click
Time Zone		UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time		Feb 12 2010 3:44:16 pm
Visit Number		708,302

As others have noted Michael Bane has announced he and his film crew will be attending Boomershoot 2010. I've known about it since mid-October when he sent me an email that said, in part:

I want to give you a heads up...I would like to film Boomershoot 2010, if it works for you. It would either be for my flagship, SHOOTING GALLERY, or for a new show I have in the works under the working title of AMERICA SHOOTS! You'd rather have it be AMERICA SHOOTS! because it will be hosted by the hysterically funny an spectacularly beautiful Katie Rowe, a professional stuntwoman and obsessive shooter.

Again, if it works for you, I'd like to put together some live coverage on DOWN RANGE (www.downrange.tv).

I held back on announcing it because I wanted to the plans to be a little more firm.

I don't know his exact schedule yet but I'm hoping he will cover the target making on Saturday too.

We had another cancellation for Boomershoot 2010 yesterday.

I sent email to all the existing entries informing them they could swap their current position for the one opening up.

On Tuesday at 6:00 PM PST I will make the empty position available for the first person to sign up at http://entry.boomershoot.org/.

I don't know for certain which position will be open. The canceled position was #32 but if someone wants to swap that could change.

Some hints on signing up:

• Sometime several minutes before 6:00 PM on Tuesday go to the web page and put in your name, phone number and other entry details.
• Click on the button labeled "Update Price"-this sets the cookies in your browser so you don't have to reenter that information when you come back to the page or refresh it.
• A 6:00 PM go to the page and find the available position (I'll send out another email when I know for certain).
• Refresh the page repeatedly until the position button labeled "Position 32" or some such thing is not grayed out.
• Hit that button as soon as you can.

Last time I did this the first position to open up was snatched in 32 seconds. I don't expect it will take much, if any, longer this time.

I hope it doesn't reduce the attraction of Boomershoot but it was the lesbian couple that canceled due to one of them starting a new job and being unable to take time off so soon.

Update: Yes, I was trying to make a joke about the lesiban couple.

Also, position 32 has been take but position 74 is now available for swap.

Via email from veteran Boomershooter (he was at the FIRST Boomershoot in 1998) Steve M. and the author of the article, Jack Lewis, I found out the March 2010 issue of Motorcyclist magazine has an article about a trip to Boomershoot 2009 from the Seattle area on a motorcycle with a sidecar--a 2WD Ural Safari.

It includes a lot of photos (by Shasta Wilson) and is a great story. It includes typical Boomershoot experiences like:

Bundling Pretty Wife into fuzzy blankets, I tossed two cased rifles across her chest and we were off.

"Don't worry, " I bellowed, "It won't rain in the mountains!"

It didn't rain. It snowed.

I bought out the entire supply of the issue at the newsstand in the lobby of the Crossroads Mall in Bellevue, WA and they said they are unlikely to get any more in. The Barnes and Noble next door only had a couple of February issues when I checked on Sunday evening but if you check there now they might have one.

The article starts on page 70.

Kevin has the story.

I just want to add that my degrees are in Electrical Engineering but when I worked for the Aerospace Division at Boeing a lot of my time there was in the "Terminal Guidance Lab". Now at Microsoft I work on "location for cell phones". In my spare time I play with my chemistry set and make targets.

It's almost as if Kevin was talking about my career.

There were three positions that opened up for Boomershoot 2010 in the last couple weeks. I made them all available at precisely 6:00 PM PST.

That didn't last long.

Position 18 was gone in 32 seconds.

Position 47 was gone in 5:47.

Position 50 was gone in 8:45.

It didn't hurt that the KING 5 Evening Magazine video ran again in the last day or two. I got a calls and email about it.

I have cancellations for two positions at Boomershoot 2010. Both positions are on the Berm and will open tomorrow evening, January 26, at 6:00 PM PST (the same time as Gun Nuts Radio comes on).

The pictures for these positions may exaggerate the view of part of the tree-line (375 yards away). I extended the berm further to the left to make each position a little wider. I didn't notice it at that time but the view of the targets on the right is obstructed. I should have made the extension a little higher. You will be able to see about 1/3 of the tree-line targets and all of the hillside.

To sign up for a position visit http://entry.boomershoot.org/ tomorrow evening.

Update: Lots of changes are happening. Existing entrants have requesting positions swaps. I had another cancellation. A .50 caliber position is going to be dedicated to hourly use. Position #31 may be available as well as one Berm position.

A recent email from RivrDog contained the following:

The Rivrdog/Rockett Boomershoot camp (camped at #75/76) issues the following Challenge to those coming to this year's Boomershoot, INSTRUCTORS INCLUDED!

1. Pick any off-the-shelf HUNTING rifle out of your safe (or buy one, except no Fifties at this end of the range). Custom rifles OK, if they are custom HUNTING rifles. I'll have a scale, your rifle needs to weigh less than 10# to qualify, or you need to prove you actually tote that 17# monstrosity in the field and not just shoot it off a bench (photo of you with the elk and heavy rifle will do). I'll be firing a WIN70, myself.
2. Put any glass on it you desire.
3. Load/buy any ammo for it you desire (that doesn't conflict with Joe's rulz).
4. On Field Fire days/hours (Friday and Saturday), come on down to the Rivrdog/Rockett camp and use MY shooting table & rifle rests. The rests are elevation adjustable front and sandbag rear. Coordinate your rifle -moving to be legal during cease-fires.
5. Bring your spotter or go solo.
6. Fire 10 rounds, slow fire, at the right-end steel ON THE 380-YARD BERM. Number of hits on it is your score.

Winner receives a (new, sealed!) bottle of 12-year old Scotch, my choice (which guarantees it's quality!). As in war, no second place prizes. My guess is that it will take no less than a 9 to win, so put in some practice time. You likely will be shooting against some professionals. The steel will be about 2 MOA, if it's like last year. I may bring a 1 MOA steel for tiebreakers. Award ceremony after Field Fire/Cleanup on Saturday. I will take photos during the contest.

If I had the time that day I would show up with my 17.5 pound Spud Gun that I used the one and only season I went hunting (and got a deer). It can do this at 200 yards and hitting 2 MOA (about 8") at 375 yards is pretty easy if the wind isn't bad. I'd do it just to be pushing the envelope on the rules and winning, not because I'm interested in a bottle of Scotch. I've never tasted the stuff and am not particularly interested in trying. Besides I have two bottles of the stuff on the shelves (Xenia, you still have that one bottle, right?) given to me by friends that I haven't touched.

If you happen to think of some nifty addition to the proposal suggest it to RivrDog. This is his baby.

I'll probably get around to emailing this to all the participants sometime this weekend.

Via email from MD Creekmore I received a link to this list of survival related materials. It all seems to be pretty straight forward and obvious stuff. I found the headings on the "Survival Guns" list somewhat amusing:

I work at Wal-Mart Arsenal

1. Mosin Nagant 91 rifle
2. Single Shot .12 gauge
3. Smith&Wesson model 10

The Government Welfare Arsenal

1. Short Magazine Lee-Enfield
2. Mossberg Maverick 88 12 gauge pump
3. Smith&Wesson model 10
4. Ruger 10/22

I have a full time Job Arsenal

1. Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle or AR-15
2. Mossberg 500 12 Gauge
3. Glock Model 19
4. Ruger 10/22

Two Jobs and Maxed Credit Card Arsenal

1. Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle or AR-15
2. Remington 870 express with spare riot barrel
3. Glock 19
4. Ruger 10/22
5. Winchester Model 70 in .308 Win.
6. Taurus CIA Model 850 .38 SPL. Revolver

And Finally the Yuppie Survival Arsenal

1. L1A1 Rifle chambered in .308 Winchester
2. Remington Model 7 bolt action chambered in .223
3. Winchester Model 70 in 308 Win.
4. Remington 870 express with spare riot gun barrel
5. Colt 1911 A1 .45 ACP
6. Taurus CIA Model 850 .38 SPL. Revolver
7. Savage Model 24F .223 Remington over 12 gauge (if you can find one used)
8. Ruger 10/22

I do question the need for both a revolver and a semi-auto pistol when both perform essentially the same in terminal ballistics, range, concealability, portability, and availability of ammo.

Also of possible interest is that if you are in the Seattle or Moscow Idaho area I can get you wheat, lentils, and split peas in large quantities cheaper than you can find it almost anywhere else. People attending Boomershoot can arrange for pick up at that time as well. Send me an email with the commodities and quantities you are interested in. The smallest unit I'm interested dealing in would be 50 pounds of any one item.

Details on the Boomershoot 2010 Precision Rifle Clinic are now available. You don't have to participate in the main event to get coaching and shoot in the clinic.

The clinic fills up every year and Gene has lots of repeat attendees so you know people are getting their money's worth.

Sign up and learn how to turn money and time into earth shaking noise and smoke.

As a side note, Boomershoot statistics are here. Probably most interesting is that there are 110 participants and we have 11 bloggers-exactly 10%.

We will be having a blogger/media day again on Thursday April 22^nd.

This last week, for the first time since 2005, I had both an idea for increasing the sensitivity of Boomerite and the inclination to test it. Son-in-law Caleb was eager to go with me and we planned an experiment which I hoped would reduce the activation energy to get detonation. Tim also expressed an interest so on Saturday I loaded up the car with a lunch and my test tools (a chronograph and a Ruger 10/22).

Caleb wasn't feeling well but Tim went with me and we performed a bunch of experiments. We mixed up the standard mix for a control and got the expected results. The next mix demonstrated that my "great idea" was a total bust. It was still morning and the entire series of experiments I had planned was pointless. I looked around on the "top shelf" in the Taj and saw something I hadn't tested in the mix before-sulfur. So we first added 20 grams of sulfur to a batch of Boomerite. It seemed to help.

We added 40 grams and it was definitely more sensitive.

We added 80 grams and it didn't seem to make much, if any, difference from the 40 grams.

We mixed up a batch for storage testing and locked it in the magazine for safe keeping.

After arriving home that night, just as I drove in the driveway I remembered why I had never done those tests with sulfur before. Even minor impurities of sulfur mixed with potassium chlorate and moisture can cause a runaway reaction resulting in a fire. Spontaneous combustion of explosives just sounds so wrong. And I had forgotten that.

I rationalized that it was cold (near freezing) and that lack of moisture in the zip-lock bags probably would keep the Taj Mahal from going up in flames before morning and I was able to get some sleep.

The next morning (yesterday) Barb and I drove the hour out to the site, removed the five pounds of "New Boomerite" from the storage magazine and burned it.

Well, at least Tim and I had a little bit of fun converting money into noise.

On Friday I was in the local Safeway store when from across the produce department someone caught my eye and called out, "You're Joe Huffman, right?"

I sort of recognized him. I had bumped into him numerous times at the Seattle airport back in the late 90s when I was flying back and forth to/from Redmond/Moscow (ID). Tim lived in San Francisco then but had gone to college at the University of Idaho and his girlfriend was still there. So he frequently spent a weekend in Moscow with her and would take the same flight on the same small plane from Seattle to Moscow that I did. We had another common connection in that his buddy Seth that he went to high school and college with was then his roommate in San Francisco had worked for me when he was in college at the U of I.

Tim told me he would love to do some Boomershoot stuff sometime and if I ever wanted some help to let him know. I told him that I was thinking about going out on Saturday to do some tests and he would be welcome to come along. He sounded very interested.

Later in the day I was hitting up all the places that sold ammo in town looking for some CCI Stinger ammo. I use that for testing of the sensitivity of Boomerite. By moving closer or farther away I can adjust the impact velocity at the target and determine if the mixture is more or less sensitive that other mixtures I have used. At one of the stores I was asked what I was looking for and I told him. He said he was sorry but they didn't have any. Would one of the other products they had work instead? I told him no, I needed some very high velocity stuff. "What are you trying to kill?", he asked.

[heavy sigh]

Do I tell him the truth or avoid the question? This has happened so many times. Buying 15 boxes of zip locked bags, or a 50 pound sack of stuff at Costco can make people curious and I always worry they won't want to sell to me or they will call the cops and I'll spend an hour or five explaining to them.

I told him the truth and his eyes got big and instead of backing away he said, "Are you the Boomershoot guy?" I confirmed it and he introduced himself, shook my hand, and told me how pleased he was to meet me.

I went home and told Barb that two people in one day recognized me. With a big smile on her face she said, "I'm married to a rock star."

Somehow I was under the impression rock stars had more groupies. I'd put some effort into increasing the number but I'm afraid the number would drop from one to zero at the first indication I was making the attempt.

One of my fantasies is to be able to make Boomershoot targets completely out of very simple and easy to obtain materials. For a while I was essentially there. I could get ammonium nitrate by going over to the local fertilizer plant with the truck and telling them to "fill 'er up" and they would dump in as many tons as the truck would hold and I could pay for. The potassium chlorate was a little harder but with just my drivers license I could get that mail order without hassles. The rest could be obtained at the grocery store or Wal-Mart. Then ammonium nitrate started getting difficult to get. I had to use the leverage of my ATF type 20 license to manufacture high explosives to get my last batch of AN. And in the quantities of potassium chlorate we consume the suppliers require the ATF license as well.

But there might be something else as possible replacements.

They are making rocket fuel out of aluminum and ice:

Researchers are using aluminum and frozen water to make a propellant that could allow rockets to refuel on the moon or even Mars.

Last week researchers from Purdue and Penn State University launched a rocket that uses an unconventional propellant: aluminum-ice. The fuel mix, dubbed ALICE, is made of nano-aluminum powder and frozen water, and gets its thrust from the chemical reaction between the ingredients. The propellant is environmentally friendly, and it could perhaps allow spacecraft to refuel at locations like the moon, where water has been discovered.

That is majorerly cool from the standpoint of rocketry and space travel. But it also has implications for Boomershoot. Any high energy compound or mixture has the potential to be an explosive. Rocket fuel in particular is interesting because, like explosives, it contains both a fuel and an oxidizer.

Nano-aluminum powder might be tough to make but the precursor components of that particular mixture sure are going to be easy.

It turns out the external antenna isn't working. It could be a bad connection or cable. I just don't know for certain. I switched to the internal antenna on the station at the Taj and I got everything working. This probably will reduce the coverage at the shooting line but I can work on the external antenna problems some other time. Like next spring when the weather is a little warmer. Currently it's 36 F and my fingers are cold. And if I am going to be replacing cables I want to have warm enough weather than the rubber tape I use to seal everything up with will stick and be pliable.

I also mortared the concrete blocks for the "throne" into place.

I think I'm done with all the maintenance I want to do here. The next trip out will probably be to do some Boomerite mixture testing. If the weather is good perhaps son-in-law Caleb and I will come out on Saturday.

If you would not be forgotten
As soon as you are dead and rotten,
Either write things worthy reading,
Or do things worth the writing.

Ben Franklin
[Or both.

Boomershoot, this blog, the software I have written (some used by 100s of millions), the hardware I have designed (10s of thousands of units shipped), and my children are my attempts.--Joe]

My first chronograph was something I bought about 15 years ago from an estate sale and it was old then. It died a couple years ago and the new one I bought was a CED Millennium. Because there were times in which the light started getting low that I had problems getting readings with my old chronograph I splurged and got the Infrared Screen Set with the new unit. Today I was glad I did.

I had used the IR screens  in near total darkness just to test them and got good results. But today it was just very dark and cloudy from the snow storm coming in. I put 10 rounds from my .40 S&W over the screens and got good readings but when I tried a .22 LR there was nothing. Rats! I really wanted those numbers too. I have been thinking there is something I could try to make Boomerite a little more sensitive and the normal .22 LR ammo I use for testing (CCI Stingers) hasn't been in any of the local stores (I now see it is available some places on-line). I wanted data on some other ammo to see if I could replace the Stingers. CCI Velocitor was the prime candidate and I didn't want to make another trip to the range or waste time getting chronograph data at the Boomershoot site.

I got out the inverter (every vehicle should have one), plugged in the IR screens, and every shot recorded a velocity.

I'm now very happy with the chronograph and IR screens.

In my rifle the Stingers clock in with muzzle velocities of about 1605 fps and the Velocitors at about 1320 fps. But from looking at my notes it appears that the Velocitors should detonate the targets at 25 yards even though they are quite a bit slower than the Stingers.

The point of the exercise today is to show you that have never before seen some explosives at work.

Believe it or not, everything you saw on T.V.--not 100% correct.

Lt. David Woosley
November 2009
Bomb squad
Chattanooga Police Dept.
Video: ATF explosives demonstration
[Yup. The Boomershoot staff has learned a lot about explosives. Enough to know that it would be closer (but really correct) to say that 100% of what you seen on T.V. is not true.--Joe]

It's a little hard to tell from the article but it appears a guy was making .223 shell casings into explosive devices:

Robert J. Heintz Jr., 36, of Deep Creek Road, has been charged with risking a catastrophe, unlawful possession or manufacture of weapons of mass destruction and recklessly endangering another person in connection with Friday night's explosion. Heintz, who suffered a serious hand injury during the explosion, was arrested. He had been released from an area hospital on Sunday.

...

When authorities interviewed Heintz at the hospital, he claimed that he purchased .223 rounds off the Internet from Bulgaria and claimed that the tips were loose on the rounds, according to the arrest affidavit. Heintz allegedly claimed that he was attempting to place the tip back in place with a pliers at the time of the blast.

Heintz, according to the arrest affidavit, told police that he researched "some recipes on the Internet" and downloaded them on his computer. Heintz further claimed that he had mixed a batch using the instructions from the Internet and packed the substance into the .223 round, police alleged.

"He continued to explain that he attempted to ignite these rounds in his back yard with no success of detonation," Moyer alleged. "Heintz explained that he went back into the house to do another round at the computer table, packing the recipe into the brass when the bullet exploded."

He is being charged with possession or manufacture of weapons of mass destruction? That seems more than a bit excessive from the information I can glean from the article. I would have given him an honorable mention for a Darwin Award and told him to apologize to his wife for making a mess in the house.

Here is a hint for people that don't want my nomination for Darwin Awards in the Explosives category. Don't let metal come in contact with metal in the presence of explosives. Even if you don't use metals that can create sparks the point of contact between the two metal surfaces generates tremendous pressures. Imagine one pound of force applied to your pliers that makes contact with another piece of metal on an area that is 0.010 x 0.010 inches square. That is 10,000 PSI. Those sorts of pressures, even when confined to an exceedingly small piece of material can initiate a chain reaction. This is part of the reason so many pipe bombers end up blowing themselves up. The threads of the steel pipe create extreme pressures and start a reaction resulting in the rapid dissasembly of the bomb builder a few milliseconds later.

Two weeks ago I delivered a bunch of concrete blocks, mortar, and grass seed to the Boomershoot site. I didn't stay long enough to do anything with it because I wanted to shoot in a steel match that same day. I made the quick trip out there because I was afraid it would snow up or rain so much that it wouldn't be accessible until spring and I wanted the materials out there so I could walk (or snowshoe) in if I needed to and do any last minute prep work.

Today I drove back out and planted the last of the grass. It wouldn't have been disaster if I hadn't gotten the grass planted but it will be better that I did get it done. I would have liked to have done some work finishing off the semi-permanent toilet but I ended up spending time talking to my parents and brothers and then driving the 345 miles back to the Seattle area.

I'll probably go back out there in a couple weeks. Due to a huge office move at work I will have the entire Thanksgiving week off (extra, free, vacation!) so assuming the ground isn't knee deep in mud or waist deep in snow I will spend some of that time working on the site. But I have 2010 essential stuff done for this fall.

Say Uncle has a link to a video on how to make a fireball shooter. How cute!

But that's not a fireball. This is a fireball:

That is daughter Kim visible in the video. Her cousin Lacy, off screen, provides most of the extra sound effects.

So, do you still give chemistry lessons on the white-board in your office?

Suresh Parameshwar
October 15, 2009
[See also another time when I quoted Suresh.

Suresh was my mentor at Microsoft when I first started working there full time. Almost two years ago he left Redmond to go back to India (still working for MS). He was back in Redmond this week on business and stopped by to visit friends. A bunch of us had dinner at our old boss's house last night and stay up talking until almost midnight.

Before he went back to India on more than one occasion Suresh and I had discussions about explosives and I explained the chemistry to him on the white-board.

The above question was one of the first things he said to me when I saw him last night.--Joe]

Last Saturday daughter Kim, her husband Caleb, and I went to the Boomershoot site to deliver the last of the supplies (we still need a few thousand rubber bands but I'll wait on those) for Boomershoot 2010.

We only needed a couple more concrete blocks but I bought a bunch extra. It turned out we used all the extras and then some when I thought of a new project we could do while there.

Caleb finished up setting the steps down to the "well" in concrete. We had originally thought the hard dirt was sufficient footing but in the wet spring the steps became unsteady. This should fix the problem:

I soldered and taped the electrical connections to the new solar panel. Kim and Caleb put in the new screws that hold the panel to the side of the shed while I went and got the bulldozer.

Kim also folded several hundred more target boxes:

We now have 1595 boxes folded and ready for the event. All of our crates are full (except for one):

The plan is to fold another 500 or so after we use up targets on the Friday and Saturday evening High Intensity shoots.

I pointed out to Kim and Caleb where I had cleared some brush a few weeks ago to make a "parking area" and then later thought it would be better used as a tent site if I had only thought of it sooner. They thought the tent site was a great idea and Kim said she might even go out there camping "just for the fun of it". Caleb suggested a fire pit would be a good idea too. That was when I decided I didn't really have a choice anymore. I had to go get the cat and make the tent site.

The ground was incredibly dry. At times it was like working with flour (or as Caleb said, "Sifted potassium chlorate") and very dusty.

Kim and Caleb make a fire ring with nearby rocks in the area I had cleared which was the proper ATF specified distance from the explosives magazine:

I then thought of another thing we could do. I could make a toilet out of the extra concrete blocks we had! I dug a hole with the cat around the corner behind some trees and brush. Even down about four feet the ground was dry as a bone.

We will probably put up a tarp for better privacy when we have our entire Boomershoot crew or a private event out there. I plan to plant some trees or shrubs to make the tarp unnecessary.

We then stacked the concrete blocks into the proper shape:

We filled in around it and planted grass everywhere we had dug up the ground. I'm hoping we get some rain soon so the grass will get started a little bit this fall.

The other things we got done was that Caleb replace few broken stepping stones and added some more to our work area outside the shed and I winterized the pump and repaired the sabotage we blame on "The Dwarf" who lives nearby.

I wanted to call the simple toilet "Kimberly's Throne" but for some reason I was vetoed on that. She said I could build her a real throne if I wanted. But a "[deleted] cold concrete" toilet didn't cut it.

I received an email today from Dave Mason that I thought people might be interested in:

OPI is proud to announce the expansion of our Exploding Target line! In addition to the Rifle targets, we are now offering Rimfire, Pistol, and Exploding Clay Targets.

Our Rifle Targets are the 1 pound, and 2 pound targets everyone has come to appreciate as the ground shaking confirmation of a good shot.

Added to these traditional targets are the Rimfire and Pistol Targets. By popular demand, these targets will detonate when hit with something as small as a .22 CB round or even the fat, slow .45 round. These are available in a 10 pack, but MUST be mixed individually, on the range. These targets are $25.00 for 10 targets, shipping included to the lower 48 states.

We also have Exploding Clay Targets for the shotgun shooters out there. These targets attach to your clays and CANNOT BE USED with automatic launching equipment. You must use hand or spring launchers as you cannot stack the targets. These targets are also $25.00 for 10 targets, shipping included to the lower 48 states.

A word about our New Web-Site: The good news is that is has been completely revamped and looks amazing, including the long requested on-line shopping cart for convenience. The bad news is that it still has a few kinks and is a work in progress. Namely, a few of the pages are coming up, even on our home and business computers, with a security certificate error. There is not a security risk posed by the website, however, please feel free to contact us via e-mail at sales@ozarkpyro.com as alternative ordering method.

In the Research and Development department: Designed primarily for Patrick Flanigan (http://www.patrickflanigan.com) we are back working on explosive fireball and various colored explosions for Patrick’s shows. As soon as we can get these targets in a consumer friendly format, I’ll let you know so that you can buy them too!

Our next Thunder In The Hills was scheduled for 17 October 2009 but there is no way that we can pull it off as we are so busy at this point. We hope to have a spring shoot next year.

For business owners and entrepreneurs out there, join our growing list of distributors and purchase at wholesale prices for sales in your store and/or at gun shows. Please e-mail us for an information packet about what OPI can offer your business!

 

Sincerely,

Dave Mason
President
Ozark Pyrotechnics, Inc.
P.O. Box 118
Hartville, MO 65667-0118
417-741-1142
http://www.OzarkPyro.com
http://www.ThunderInTheHills.info

I've had lots and lots of request for "Shotgun Boomers" and I put a couple of days worth of effort into it without success. Dave apparently has it figured out and is offering them for sale. I can occasionally get a pistol to detonate the boomers but that usually requires that you be entertainingly close and I don't recommend that unless you fill out your nomination form for a Darwin award beforehand. And for rimfire detonation of our targets it requires a rifle, high velocity ammo, and close ranges.

I have this "thing" about encouraging people to learn precision long range shooting and just don't have that much interest in the shotgun and pistol side of things. The "clean up"/high-intensity events came about because it wasn't that much additional effort for me and so many people wanted to do it. I don't really "get it" like I do the long range stuff but if that gets you fired up then Dave's your man.

Please check the laws in your state/county before you decide to buy exploding targets. I would hate to have contributed to you having unexpected "quality time" with your local law enforcement officer. And please be very, very careful with them.

In just six months we have gained still more public support for regaining our civil rights:

According to Rasmussen, only 39 percent of Americans believe the country needs stricter gun laws. That’s down from 43 percent only six months ago.
Democrats still emerge as the party of gun control, with 65 percent of respondents claiming Democrat affiliation supporting tighter gun laws while 69 percent of identified Republicans and 62 percent of independents do not support more gun laws.

“It’s ironic that the Chicago case just went to the Supreme Court,” Gottlieb noted, “while Rasmussen tells us that only 20 percent of adults believe city governments have a right to prevent citizens from owning handguns.”


Sixty-nine percent say city governments do not have that authority, and 11 percent were undecided, the poll disclosed.

“This suggests that those who support a handgun ban in Chicago are way out of the mainstream,” Gottlieb said. “Gun control is a losing proposition, for the public that wants to fight back against criminals, and especially for anti-gun politicians who cling to that failed philosophy as the nation leaves them behind.”

We cannot ease off. We must make these bigots as much outcasts as the KKK is today. Have the proper state of mind and keep up the fight.

This week I'll be doing my share by taking two people to the range tonight then some people from work are going to Idaho with me this weekend for a private Boomershoot party.

As reported elsewhere Kim and Connie sent out some emails to announce their return to the Internet. Here is most of mine:

From the "Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Roam The Internet" department:

Connie and I have decided to explore this strange new technology called "radio." Starting on Saturday October 3rd, we will begin a weekend Internet radio show on BlogTalkRadio.com.

The show will run on Saturday and Sunday evenings, at 7pm Eastern/6pm Central. You can find a BlogTalkRadio widget to listen to our "preview" show at our new site: www.kimandconnie.com.

We need help getting this off the ground, and a link or mention from you would be very much appreciated.

...

Kim
P.S. I still think this Internet thing is just a passing fad. Soon we'll be back to quills and parchments, as it should be.

There is also a possibility that Kim will be attending Boomershoot 2010. The stars have to align properly for him and a position has to open up. But the odds are probably better than 50-50.

Daughter Kim and I made a quick run out to the Boomershoot site yesterday. We dropped 1200 surveyors stakes (that was all the builders supply had) for the Boomershoot 2010 targets. I'll get another 300 before the event.

I put up another solar panel for charging the batteries. The last time I was out there I concluded the existing panels were dead. But after disconnecting them and testing them a little more carefully I decided it must have just been a loose connection. The new panel puts out 6 W peak. The three old ones, which are each about the same size as the new one, combined only put out 4.2 W peak. Plus the new one works much better on cloudy days.

Kim planted a bunch of grass where I had tore up the ground with the backhoe and dozer. Then she unloaded the stakes and organized the pile of stuff we store under a tarp.

We winterized the pump and we hauled away some old potassium chlorate barrels.

In a couple weeks we'll go out there again for a private party we are putting on but we are probably about done with stuff until next spring.

Via email from Kris:

Combining two of the things that make young men happiest in one place.

http://www.explosionsandboobs.com/

If women in bras and swimsuits are safe for work then so is this site. Refresh the page for another set.

No. I didn't have anything to do with the site or any of the content. If I had both types of pictures would have been more extreme.

Last Saturday (the 5^th) I borrowed Dad's bulldozer and went playing in the dirt at the Boomershoot range. The main objectives were to make the berm the shooters use a little bit wider and deeper.

We have 22 shooting positions on the berm and prior to 2009 I only allocated six feet per position. This was a little too crowded and since everyone else had at least eight feet I wanted to expand it enough to accommodate eight feet for everyone. I tried to do that last fall for Boomershoot 2009 but didn't quite add enough space. There was only room for 7' 6" for everyone. I really should have taken my laser range finder with me. So this year I brought the laser range finder and added enough that I could give everyone an honest eight feet.

I extended the east end of the berm by about 20 feet:

I think I squared up the end a little bit after taking this picture so it didn't slope quite so much at the very end.

The other problem was that some areas of the berm were not deep enough and people had problems sliding down off the back side of the berm. Here is a before picture:

Here is during my modifications:

For reference purposes the width of the tracks is about 6' 8".

The following is after I smoothed off the top of the berm. I smoothed out the area in front of the berm a little later.

Everyone should have about eight feet of depth as well as width on the top of the berm.

The secondary objectives were to fill in the hole I had made near the Taj Mahal checking for a leak in the water barrel. Here is what it looked like after I got done with it on Saturday:

I extended the parking area into the trees some to give some more shaded area.

I dug out and pushed some big rocks out of the grain field about 1/2 mile to the west on my way back to the house.

I got very dirty. The hat, eye and ear protection left some almost clean spots.

My Gun Blog 45 also got very dirty. No. I didn't test it in this condition.

I didn't think of it at the time but I really should have made a level spot for tents instead of the parking area near the Taj Mahal. If I have time I might go back and do that this fall some time.

I didn't do as much blogging this weekend and yesterday as I normally would have. I had extra things to do at work the last few days. Plus I went out to the Boomershoot range and played in the dirt (pictures to follow) all day on Saturday.

At work yesterday afternoon I gave a short presentation and demo (actually I had Gang do the demo since his demo was completed and mine wasn't) despite mangling a few sentences got laughs and applause at all the right spots and I should be able to give blogging a little more time tonight.

I really want to say something about "Prags" v. "threepers". It appears I accidently lit a match near a powder keg with this post (see here and here). Maybe late tonight I'll have something...

Tomorrow evening, September 1, at 1700 PDT there will be an opening for Boomershoot 2010 available.

It probably will be position 4 in the .50 Caliber Ghetto. I have offered it to current entrants in the event so it is possible someone else will take it and open up a position someplace else.

Update: Gone in 92 minutes.

David has some new wall paper up on his office wall (and here). He calls it "Wall o' Freedom".

Very nice.

But I'm biased.

On Saturday daughter Kim and I went to the Boomershoot site to do some prep and infrastructure work. We also did the data reduction thing on this visit.

Kim folded another 300 boxes to be used as target containers:

That is a total of 1135 boxes we have ready for next year. We plan on making another 1007. Those numbers just boggle my mind. The first three Boomershoot combined only had about 1/10^th that number of targets.

I dug up the barrel used for cleaning water storage:

I rubbed the skin off my right thumb digging the hole. Kim offered me some gloves before I started digging but I figured my hands were tough enough to handle it. I was wrong.

I didn't dig the hole entirely by hand...

I managed to misjudge where the barrel was and mangled the barrel with the backhoe pretty badly. But I didn't damage it enough that it required repairs or replacement:

We thought we had a leak because the drain tile should have filled the tank with spring run-off but there was no water in it when we wanted it for Boomershoot 2009. As near as we could tell we did not have a leak at the outlet pipe as I suspected:

I now suspect that the tile overflow was actually more of a bypass than an overflow. We put in several gallons of water that we know went into the barrel and will go back in a couple weeks and see if there is still water in it. If there is then I will just modify the inlet/overflow and fill up the hole again.

Also on my next on-site visit I will be taking the bulldozer over to enhance the shooters berm. It needs to be made deeper and a little wider.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about evidence that niece Lisa shared genes with me.

Today she applied for a concealed weapons permit.

Which reminds me. I never mentioned that at the last Boomershoot daughter Kim was stopped by the police while driving to Orofino. I think it was a headlight that was out...

Anyway, the police officer said nice things to Kim about having a concealed weapons permit.

I'm so proud of both of them.

On Friday my officemate told me Kris had just stopped by and left something for me. I found a damaged Pocket PC with a note on it asking that I do an Idaho Stress Test on it. I contacted Kris via IM for more details. The screen had been damaged and was completely non-functional. There was company sensitive data on the device which needed to be destroyed and Kris wanted me to do this for him.

On Saturday daughter Kimberly and I went to the Boomershoot site and, among other things, destroyed the data for Kris. I also had a hard disk that was in similar need of "data reduction" and we deleted the data on both items at the same time.

Tomorrow I'll deliver the pieces Kim and I found to Kris but for the rest of you here are a few pictures assembled into a video:

If you ever heard me say I was working on an iPhone killer this wasn't what I meant:

I wouldn't do that.

I would perform an Idaho Stress Test instead.

Playing with explosives can be a lot of fun. But don't be stupid.

I don't know for certain but that what this appears to be:

Federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents continue to investigate an explosion in Harrison County on the morning of Aug. 1.

Bryan Byrne, a sergeant with the Harrison County Sheriff's Department, said multiple calls came in to Harrison County Dispatch reporting an explosion that shook houses and rattled windows in the area.

An ATF agent sent to the scene collected evidence from a blast area near Baker Hollow Road. The area where the explosion took place measured about 50 feet in diameter, with trees in the vicinity charred as high as 15 feet.

Kathy Goldman, wife of Harrison County Commissioner James Goldman, told her husband she thought a liquid propane tank had exploded.

The Goldmans live about a quarter of a mile from the site of the blast.

"I wasn't home, but my wife was. It scared her to death," James Goldman said. "It was a pretty strong explosion."

He said an ATF agent from Louisville took a sample of the ground and sent it to Washington to be tested. From what he could tell, Goldman said it appeared to be a homemade bomb made in a plastic five-gallon bucket.

If you are going to be detonating things that make house rattle then get the permission of the land owner and you might want to call the cops yourself, before someone else does. Even if no law was broken or property damaged it wastes a lot of time and money of the cops. If they find out it was you they are going to make your life miserable just because they would rather be eating donuts, writing tickets to increase government revenue, or inspecting the local strip club for touching violations.

When people do stupid stuff some nanny statists will use it as an excuse to attempt preventing people from doing something stupid. And that makes me rather grumpy. You won't like me if I get too grumpy.

I delivered over 1700 cardboard boxes and other supplies to the Boomershoot site today. I folded a couple hundred of the boxes and stored them away in crates. Then I visited my parents who live a couple miles away.

They asked how everyone was doing, did son Jamie (he used to be called Jamie rather than James and his grandparents still use that name) like his job okay? How long has he worked at Microsoft now? I told him everything was going fine, Xenia was a little depressed because her new husband is leaving for Iraq very soon. James, Kim, and Lisa (another grandchild) had housewarming party at James' new home near Seattle. Blah, blah, blah...

As it got late I told them I really had to leave so I could be home in time to eat dinner with Barb who would be getting off work soon. I had stood up, put my hat on and took a step or two toward the door when Dad told me to sit down because he had another story to tell. The following are his exact words as best I can remember them:

I got a call the other day. He said, "Hi Grandpa, this is Jamie. How are you doing?" I said I was doing okay and asked how he was doing.

He asked me if I could keep a secret. I told him I thought I probably could because I had keep a secret or two in my life. He said that he wasn't doing so well. He was in jail in Ottawa. I asked how that happened. He said that he and a friend had gone to a concert and when they came back over the border they were stopped, searched, and his friend had some marijuana in his backpack. They were both arrested and he needed $2800 to get out of jail.

He asked if I could help him out and I said I thought we probably could. He wanted the money sent via Western Union and he needed it right away. So your mom and I drove to Orofino went to the bank and got the money. But we started thinking that we should have asked a few more questions. "Why didn't he call you?", for example. But we went to the Western Union office at the IGA and told them what we wanted to do with the money and told them the story.

The woman there said to be really careful because there are a lot of people trying to commit fraud with Western Union. But we went ahead and sent the money but told them not to give it to anyone at the other end until we did some more checking. They gave us a toll-free number to call to okay the final delivery of the money.

We came back to the house and called the guy in Ottawa that was supposed to pick up the money for Jamie and I asked him, "How tall is Jamie?" He didn't answer. I asked him some other questions too but he didn't answer those questions either. He then got upset and asked, "Why are you asking me all these questions? Did you send the money or not?" I told him we didn't and he hung up the phone.

I called the Western Union number and they sent the money back. I called the Orofino office but they wouldn't do anything further until we came in and showed them picture ID. We didn't get back into town until yesterday and they wrote us three checks. The biggest check they can write is $1000 so they wrote us two checks for $1000 and another check for most of the remainder. It still cost us $139 but that wasn't too bad. It would have been a lot worse if it had been the whole $2800.

You, know if the police had been able to get together on that they could have caught them when they went to pick up the Western Union money. But he said he needed the money within two hours. I told him there wasn't any way I could get the money that fast. But he wanted it right away.

I asked if they had reported it to the police. He said no. And I said the FBI, if no one else, would be interested because it was Interstate wire fraud. Dad said he would let my brother Doug tell them. I asked if he had told Doug. He said no. Brother Gary was there and he piped up that this was the first time he had heard the story too. He had seen Mom and Dad leave for Orofino the other day but they told him they were going to the Builder's Supply. They did go there, but that wasn't the primary reason for the trip into town. They were trying to keep the secret for James.

I think Dad and Mom are a little embarrassed. They are 86 and 84 years old and not thinking quite as quick as they used to. We discussed lots of ways it could have been prevented from going as far as it did. I made sure they had the cell phone numbers for everyone in our family so they could call us directly to check things out. And I told them I didn't think James had ever been to a concert other than little things in the park and that he had never been to Canada let alone a part of Canada 2000+ miles away.

I'm writing this down so brother Doug can get the story as I heard it as well as getting the details from Dad again. Plus I'm sure my parents aren't the first people these criminals have tried to scam and if they aren't stopped and other people get some warning there will be others they are successfully with. This is to help warn others about the scam.

I expect there will be more to the story. There certainly still are a number of questions. Like how did they find out how my parents had a grandson by the name of Jamie? Facebook maybe? Probably something to do with the Internet. Perhaps even my blog (if you guys are reading this you should know I keep all my blog log files and will cooperate fully with law enforcement).

If anything further comes out that I can talk about I'll let you know.

Update: Mike sent me an email with this link to news that this scam is reasonably well known.

I just ordered 1750 cardboard boxes for Boomershoot targets. Combined with what we already have that is over 2400 boxes. That includes a few extras but still... I'm planning on a LOT of targets for next year.

Including miscellaneous other supplies that one order was nearly $760. That doesn't include the ton (literally) of chemicals, wooden stakes, and numerous other things. But do you know what?

It will be so awesome it will be worth it!