Analog Kid at Random Nuclear Strike posts about  “Senor Mollbot” at What Hath I Wrought picking up his new rifle to be used at Boomershoot 2005.  They are shooting partners for the event and sent in their entry for the May 2005 event in late July of 2004–the very first entry I received.  I won’t go into the details on all mishaps that happened with their check (some my fault, some Analog Kid’s).  And also note there is a Boomershoot 2005 banner up over there.

Then Kirk over at Limpidity.org says his entry is “in the mail”, he has his hotel reserved, and is in the process of getting his airplane tickets.  There is also a Boomershoot banner and link up on his site for which I am very grateful.

I also would like to note that all three of these guys are buying/building new rifles for Boomershoot 2005.  It looks like my secret plan is working…

Last week I received entries from five people for Boomershoot 2005. Heather and Ed are coming down from Alaska again–following a great circle route that is a 2040 mile journey!  And in the last three days I got email representing at least another four people saying they were or had sent in their entries.  Just counting the actual entries in hand I’m running ahead of any other Boomershoot ever at this time of year.  It’s a good thing we have added more shooting positions or we would be full by the end January or the first of February.  As it is my guess is that we will just have enough positions to accomodate people.

Speaking of travel distances to Boomershoot 2005.  Kim du Toit is planning on driving with Son&Heir the 1950 road miles (1400 great circle mile).  Stephanie Sailor came over 2100 great circle miles last year and I expect will be here again this year, although it’s possible she will have moved somewhat closer by then.  And I believe one of the people that says he is coming lives in central Florida which is about 2250 great circle miles. I don’t want to hear people whining about “It’s too far away.“ when they tell me they won’t be attending. Especially with the great airfares available now.

And as these pictures demonstrate, without Mrs. du Toit around this year I’ll probably have to have one of my range officiers watching Kim extra close this year.  Not for safety violations but with a camera so I can subsidize the payback of all the personal loans I made last year for the new explosives magazine with blackmail income.

Coming in second overall to Adam, who was shooting an open gun, was quite pleasing.  It was stage 3, which we shot last, where I lost the most points.  But even if I had shot it more in line with my potential I wouldn’t have caught up to Adam.  If Adam doesn’t make any mistakes, as he is often prone to, I can’t touch him in speed although I usually do better in accuracy than he does.  This time he was shooting an open gun which gives him about a 10 or 15% advantage right off the top and although there were lots of no-shoot targets available he didn’t hit any which is rather uncommon for him on stages like these.  He did make a couple mistakes however.  On stage 1 his time would have been at least one and a half seconds, if not two seconds faster had he not managed to insert an extra reload into it.  Notice that he already has the fastest time for that stage, 9.81 seconds.  He would have shot those 12 rounds, including one mandatory reload in right at eight seconds.  On stage 2 he forgot to “turn his television on” (his battery powered red-dot scope) which cost him probably two seconds but he still ended up with the best time.

Ry and I, with the help of a few spectators, tested four different mixes this afternoon.  One was a control, the same stuff we used at Boomershoot 2004.  We could only get one of six targets with the mix with the new fuel to go off with the .22 LR.  None of the old fuel without or without grit would detonate with the .22 LR.  However with the silica grit we did get smoke from all of them.  The coarse iron grit didn’t do anything interesting at all.  I still have a free source of very fine iron grit that I plan to test out sometime.  Everything detonated just fine, assuming I got a solid hit, with the .223.  Of course I was only about 10 to 15 yards away so the .223 was just a means of “disposal“.

As always, “More tests are needed.”

I think I did fairly well on the IPSC match. I did poorly on the last stage but it wasn’t exactly a catastrophe either. I expect I’ll be #2 or #3. There is a small chance of coming in #1.

Tomorrow after the IPSC match Ry and I are going to be testing a modification for the recipe used at Boomershoot 2005.  I sort of stumbled upon an ingredient to use for the fuel in our explosives that at first glance looked to be cheap and easily available at the local hardware store.  In addition it has a lower auto ignition temperature and a higher heat of combustion.  Good things for making the explosive a little more sensitive and more powerful.  But looking closer it appears what we can get at the local store is mixed with water.  Water will be a problem for us.  I distalled out a few ounces for test purposes but unless it does surprisingly well it won’t be used.  Ignoring the cost of the distallation the price for the end product will be the same as what we are currently paying.  And buying the pure product isn’t any cheaper–at least from a quick survey of some chemical supply web sites.

Oh, well.  We have another thing to test as well.  We are going to add some iron “filings” (actually from a bandsaw) to see if it will make things easier to detonate and/or give us some cool sparks.

Anyone in the neighborhood (Moscow/Lewiston Idaho) is welcome to stop by and watch.  I expect we will start on the reactive target stuff about 13:00 or so.