The editor at Western Shooting Journal gave me permission to publish the article I wrote for them the history of Boomershoot here are my blog. The .pdf files for the various pages in the March 2013 issue are:
Category Archives: Boomershoot
Vampire season
Barb L. and I just got back from the lumber store after purchasing 1000 stakes:
I really wanted someone to ask why we were buying so many stakes. The checkout clerk “had that look”. You just knew he was wondering but he didn’t ask.
Barb and I were ready with answers. Her answer was, “We run a tourist business of vampire hunts.”
I planned to make him work a little more and get his brain engaged before delivering the punch line. I envisioned it would go something like this:
Clerk: What are you going to do with all those stakes?
Joe: Hunting season opens next weekend in Idaho and we are going to be there for opening day.
Clerk: Okay. <pause> Uh… what are you hunting?
Joe: Vampires.
More blog posts about stake purchases and vampires are here (2006), here (2007), and here (2008). All are about this time of year and all are related to Boomershoot.
Boomershoot Patch Update
OK, here are the updated patches. Two versions, and various rockers that you could put above and /or below. I would REALLY like feedback from people what you are interested in, as I’m ordering them on my own dime on spec, and there are significant price breaks at various production numbers. I’d like to not order a metric boat-load, and only have three buyers of two each (being currently unemployed that would REALLY suck), but I ALSO don’t want to send people away empty handed. I don’t need money up front – I’ll have them at Boomershoot, and anyone who can’t make it or send someone to get them there I’ll make arrangements with after I see what’s left over. They will be 100% stitched, and iron-on backing for those that are sewing-impaired. 4″ circle, matching rockers. If I can buy in reasonable quantity, they will likely be $3 a patch or two for $5, and $1.50 a rocker, perhaps even less. Let me know ASAP. Order is going in next week.
Date for Boomershoot 2014
I have the dates for Boomershoot 2014 now. I’m pretty sure I told some people that the date was at the end of April and I had the Best Western Conference room reserved for then. But yesterday I discovered it was the same weekend as the NRA convention so I changed it to be May 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.
Boomershoot article update
There is a post up on the Western Shooting Journal blog promoting the Boomershoot article appearing in the March issue. You get to see a couple of the pictures that will be in the article and some reworded portions of the text.
Night walk in the snow
This past weekend Barb L. and I attended a community dinner for the area where I grew up. It has been over 35 years since I lived there so I didn’t know a lot of the people. But it was nice to see the ones I did know and catch up a little with them.
After leaving we stopped by the Boomershoot site to shoot a few tracers. It was way past dark but with a nearly full moon and the ground was covered with snow. Both the scenery and the tracers were really pretty.
After shooting the tracers we went for a walk on top of the hill where the 700 yard targets are placed. There is a great view from there. I took a bunch of pictures but they just didn’t capture what we experienced. “It’s magical!”, is how Barb described it. I’m not sure magical is quite right. Perhaps surreal.
Here are a few of the better, but still poor, pictures.
Boomershoot 2013 prep
Barb L. and I spent most of the day working at Boomershoot Mecca. We (mostly she) folded hundreds of the boxes we use for targets and stacked them on the new shelves:
We also put in more of the supporting brackets for some of the shelves where they were a little weak. They are awesome now!
While Barb was folding boxes I finished grinding (Kitchen Aid blenders rock!) the last of the Potassium Chlorate that was of the wrong particle size. It isn’t as good as it comes from the factory but it is good enough that we can used it for the high intensity event where the bullet velocities are so much higher.
We tested the targets I made the last time I was on site and were stored for several days with the new packaging method of putting the Boomerite directly in the cardboard boxes then sealing the boxes with heat shrunk plastic on the outside of the box. Six out of seven targets detonated exactly as expected. The seventh made a half-hearted pop that spread the contents all over the snow. That sometimes happens anyway so I don’t think the one sort of dud can be attributed to the packaging technique.
All systems are go for the new packaging method.
Boomershoot history article
As I mentioned a few days ago I wrote a article for a magazine about the history of Boomershoot.
The editor sent me the final layout of the pages of the article in the magazine (well, at least the first few, some were missing) and it looks nice. There are few typo/grammar errors that both the editor and I missed but it’s good enough.
It will appear in the March issue of Western Shooting Journal starting on page 78.
Exploding targets in the news
Boomershoot Patches
I’m looking at ordering a bunch of patches for Boomershoot. They will be 4 inches across. I’ve not finalized the order in terms of numbers and text. Here are the current working ideas, and I’m certainly open to suggestion on preferred mods. Let me know how many you might be interested in buying, so that I can get a specific price – the more people want, the less they will be per item. I am not certain the surrounding text is exactly what I want, though I like the bottom text on all of them (with the possible exception of “medieval,” but I couldn’t think of anything better that sounds good with “minion,” which I really like.) If I make the top more generic, they anyone can get any of them; if I make the top text more “rank” oriented (explosive handlers “henchmen”, helpers “crony”, shooters “minion”, supporters “unindicted”) then there are fewer people might want to buy, but it might encourage “working up through the ranks” to earn them.
By the way, they make great presents and commemoratives, and you can buy more than one, even if it’s not a “rank” you have earned yet
Boomershoot history
I just completed writing, by request, an overview of the history of Boomershoot. It probably will appear in a magazine next month. If it is accepted I’ll let you know which magazine.
In the process of doing that I reviewed a lot of pictures and watched the Boomershoot history video I made in early 2005. It’s about 30 minutes long but it brought back a lot of memories and I’m pretty pleased with it.
The magazine article could not include all the pictures, video, and nearly as much detail. So if you are really interested in the history of Boomershoot watch the video as well as read the article when it comes out next month.
Not an epic fail
Last week on Facebook Larry Correia corrected those people that think shooting a .50 BMG from the shoulder will knock them on down. As he says it really isn’t that bad. In terms of recoil it’s about like shooting a 12 gauge shotgun.
I was going through my old Boomershoot pictures and found a picture of me shooting one from the shoulder at Boomershoot 2000 so I thought I would share:
It’s so heavy that it’s tough to support it. The arm of my support hand was against my body for additional steadiness. No. I did not fall down. I don’t think I even had to take a step back to catch my balance.
Boomershoot and the Vatican
Background:
And back to present day for a comment from Katy Zatsick on Facebook:
Barbara, don’t know if you remember when I asked Joe to help me get Pink Smoke? 2005. There is now a movie called “Pink Smoke over the Vatican” which is the herstory of our RC women priest movement (a movement for justice and authority in the most misogynist institution to exist). The Pink Smoke in Chicago is in it! I get to tell the story of how it came to be as I have shown the movie to 3 groups so far and it is scheduled to be shown here in SCC next Sunday! And it all came to be because of the boomer shoot.
If you watch the slide show here long enough you will see a pot of pink smoke. I helped make that happen.
Multiple failures
In December I noticed there was a small amount of snow dusting a table in the back end of the shipping container (aka Boomershoot Mecca) we use for Boomershoot target manufacturing. It had come in through a vent in the ceiling.
The vent is to keep it from getting too hot in the summer time. If the ammonium nitrate gets too hot it will undergo a phase change and change from prills to dust. We require prills for easy detonation.
I figured plugging the vent for the winter shouldn’t be a problem. So I plugged it and didn’t give it a second thought.
I didn’t count on a leak in the roof at the opposite end of the shipping container.
Even if I had imagined the leak I wouldn’t have thought it through.
What happened was the shipping container got a fair amount of water on the floor near the door. The shipping container gets pretty warm (maybe a 15 F increase above ambient on a windless sunny day) inside. This drove a lot of moisture into the air. The air probably stayed in the 80% to 90% relative humidity because there was no venting with the cool dry air from the outside. When the sun went down the interior temperature dropped and the air became supersaturated with water. It condensed on essentially everything. Not good.
I had thought things through enough when placing the container that I had about four inches of drop between the back end and the door. This meant the water drained toward the door rather than back to the cardboard target boxes and the chemicals. It destroyed one cardboard box that had stuff that was essentially immune to moisture like tie-wraps, wires, and bungee cords. But because of the lack of venting the water was migrating to all interior surfaces as the temperature cycled. All because I had not thought through the consequences of not having a vent in the winter simultaneous with a roof leak.
I think I caught it soon enough that it didn’t do any serious damage. One mixer was acting strange but I think I can fix it.
I fixed the roof leak and removed the plug from the vent. Then I put a tarp over the “drop zone” for the snow that might blow in through the vent.
I’ll inspect again when Barb L. and I go back for a visit later this month.
Charge imbalance
The contents of the cottage cheese container is Boomerite surrounding a cardboard tube containing glass frit around a copper bar. The bottom of the cardboard tube makes contact with the bottom of the cottage cheese container.
Take a guess which direction the bar will travel when the Boomerite detonates.
If you guessed slightly up and to the right you would be correct. See the red circle in the picture above.
The backstory is that Ry was trying to make a piece of art. It was mostly a failure.
Next time it will be a five gallon bucket instead of a three pound cottage cheese container. Oh, and we will be about 250 yards away so Ry won’t have to worry about it coming out of orbit on top of him.
It’s linear but does it scale?
Paraphrasing Ry as we discuss the fireball for Boomershoot 2013:
One pound explosives one gallon gasoline, no problem. 14 pounds explosives, 14 gallons gasoline no problem. The gasoline is damping the explosion and it’s not breaking any windows. It’s linear! So, 1000 pounds of explosives and 1000 gallons of gasoline should be fine. Right? What could go wrong?
As Barb L. said when Ry and I were leaving for Idaho, “I suspect that you and Ry together equal trouble, sort of like Ruth and me together equal trouble. And it is Superbowl weekend again.
Ry has a history with Superbowl weekend.
Boomershoot Patches
I was thinking it would be nice to have some shoulder-patches made for Boomershoot. Size would most likely a 3″ or 3.5″ round patch. I figure the basic style would be, of course, a red/yellow/black fireball, dark green and blue background (field and sky) with a couple of different options for surrounding text.
I thought that “Boomershoot Target Maker” across the top, with “Henchmen” below for those licensed to handle explosives, Just “Boomershoot Experience” with “Minion” below for those that help with things but never had the explosives license. A possible 3rd type, with “Boomershoot Long Distance” across the top, and “Crony” across the bottom, for the shooters / spotters / attendees / dudes who went there once.
I figure an evil hidden conspiracy mastermind MUST have henchmen, minions, and cronies, right? I mean “STAFF” and an org chart just seem so, so, so… official.
Anyway, what do people think? Any interest? Thoughts? Early orders? Preferred titles like “flunkey” or “accomplice” or something? Spitwads? Job offers?
Obviously, the price would depend on the level of interest.
Gun geek writing exercise
Yesterday I received an email from a book author wanting to know what a homemade bomb used to assassinate someone would look like. She didn’t want to know the details of how to build it. She just wanted to know what it would look like so she could describe it well. She more than adequately distinguished herself from the usual bomb help losers so I agreed to help her.
Then as almost an aside she asked, since Boomershoot was about guns as well as explosives, if I could read over her long range shot scene and comment on it. After I read it, and finished laughing, I agreed to help with that too.
I totally rewrote it for her. Apparently she liked it because she responded with, “I really like the scene, have you ever thought of doing some story writing yourself?”
I included Barb L. on the Bcc line and she gushed (I suspect a bias), “Wow. Yours is really good. Ok, yet another thing you should do professionally, technical and writing consultant for ballistics and guns.”
So, here is the result of my writing exercise from last night. I did this instead of something productive like unpack some boxes, finish the cleanup from the mess of the blog conversion, or organize the contents of my multiple hard drives:
She rolled up a corner of the blanket to get a steady rest for her range finder at eye level when she laid down. As she prepared she let her mind ease into the “bubble” where everything else outside of her task at hand disappeared. It became just another very careful shot like a thousand others she had made into paper targets. The importance of this one being a live target was pushed from her mind. Her beating heart had to be calmed so that even the pulse present in her hands was diminished. At this range each pulse of blood in her limbs moved the gun enough to change the point of impact by several inches.
She moved slowly and calmly as she went through the almost ritual of making her first shot through the cold clean bore a direct hit. As she laid down she automatically pointed her feet with the toes to the sides so that both heels and toes would lie flat to the ground. Any wiggle would be transmitted to the gun and reduce the accuracy. She pointed the laser range finder at her target and she could see the jiggle from her pulse in reticle of the magnified optic of the instrument. She put a rock under the rolled up blanket and made the base steady enough to get a good reading. At this range bouncing the laser off of something just 10 yards further away could cause her to overcompensate for the drop and make the shot high by nearly 10 inches. Just an error of 5 yards would move the shot out of the vitals–the triangle formed by his nipples and the top of his sternum. After getting three readings in a row that agreed with each other she entered the data into her exterior ballistics app on her smart phone. It already had the altitude from the GPS and the weather conditions from the weather service. It still needed the incline, her rifle had an incline meter on it but with her new rangefinder she found herself using that instead. She punch in that number too. Her rifle was zeroed for 200 yards at standard sea level conditions. She had to adjust her point of aim to shoot 24.25 minutes of angle (MOA) higher. There were four clicks per MOA on her Leupold scope. That meant 97 clicks. She was glad she didn’t have to count them off individually. The target turrets were numbered with 15 minutes per complete revolution. She did the math in her head and cranked on the elevation she needed.
The windage was a tougher problem. The anemometer gave her the wind here but it did told her nothing about the 993 yards between her and her target. Being on a hill meant the majority of the bullet’s path would be high above the tall grass, bushes, and trees she would normally use for judging the wind speed. The trees at the far end of the bullet path would help some but that wind would only cause a slight deflection compared to the wind in the first half of its 1.4 second journey. What she needed was the wind 100 feet in the air 200 to 500 yards ahead of her. For that she needed to look through her scope. She put the gun in position with its short bipod extended. A small bean bag was put under the butt of the rifle.
She moved into position behind her rifle. Again she lay her entire body flat on the ground. She scooted the rifle forward an back to get the bipod on firm ground. She then shifted and squeezed the bean bag until the crosshairs found their place. “Find your natural point of aim!”, she heard her instructor of a decade ago bark at her. No muscle could be straining to make the shot. Everything had to be relaxed so the tremors would not be transmitted to the rifle. She adjusted her body position until she could close her eyes, relax, and open them again and the cross hairs would still be resting on the target the same as before she closed her eyes. She adjusted the focus back from infinity and watched the shimmering of the air against the out of focus straight vertical edge of the bench the target was sitting on. It was called mirage. You can see it with the naked eye on a hot summer day just above the surface of a road or other hot objects. If you know what to look for and you have the right optics you can see it in cold open air as well. The angle at which the mirage moved and wiggled was a good clue as to the wind at the range the scope was focused at. It was a little bit of science and a lot of art as she adjusted for the 2 MPH left to right wind here on top of the hill, 5 MPH out at 500 yards and judging from the bushes near the target and the ripples on the lake, a 3 MPH right to left wind at the target. She dialed in a correction of 1.75 MOA left.
She confirmed she still had her natural point of aim and the wind hadn’t changed. As she adjusted the focus on her scope back to the target she felt her awareness “bubble” tighten into a universe composed only of her scope reticle and the target. Her awareness of even her trigger finger faded away. She would find that perfect Zen moment when the two pound trigger on her Remington “just went off” without her consciously thinking about it. It was all about the focusing of the jiggling cross hair on the distant target. The bubble settled in tight and her sense of hearing disappeared as did her sense of touch and pressure from the rocks under her blanket. The smell of the crushed plants faded to nothing and even her vision narrowed within the tiny window of vision granted her from the 14 power scope. The cross hairs did their random dance of six inches or so about the chest of the target. He tossed a piece of bread to a duck so she waited as he leaned back and put his elbows on the back of the bench on either side of him. It was like he was making himself a wider and more stable target for her. The cross hairs hung in the exact center of the triangle for just a moment and the gun recoiled. She had no recollection of pulling the trigger and only a dim sense of the muzzle blast through her hearing protection. It was a very clean trigger break. A half second later the gun came back down almost into the same position as before it fired. She quickly squeezed the bean bag to get her line of sight a little bit lower and “waited” for the remaining quarter second for the bullet to arrive. She could see the trace, the distortion in the air from the supersonic shock wave, as it arced down into her target and hit it at 1600 feet per second. That delivered more than half again the momentum of a .45 fired from 10 feet away and the target showed the effects. It was a good shot, maybe three inches to the right of her point of aim. Not quite enough adjustment for wind but the elevation was right on.
Supremacy clause
An email exchange with lawyer/lobbyist Mike B. (with minor corrections and additions):
Joe: How about putting this on the agenda?
Mike: Won’t work: See supremacy clause.
Joe: Isn’t that the equivalent of saying, “The Fed can’t do that: See 2nd Amendment.”?
Mike: The 2nd Amendment doesn’t have its own tanks. See: Grant v. Lee (1865).
Joe: Vyacheslav Molotov mixes my cocktails: See Finland v. Soviet Union (1939).
You should know that Molotov cocktails have a difficult time with modern tanks. The proper application of Boomerite, thermite, and steel bars into the treads may also be required.
Conversations with special forces trained in improvised anti-tank methods are also useful. I kept my notes from the late 1990s.
Why there is no cell service in Westlake tunnel
It has always annoyed me that I don’t have cell service while waiting for the bus at Westlake Station (downtown Seattle). Many times the bus or I will be late and I need to tell someone I’m not going to be on time but I have to wait until the bus arrives and gets me out of the tunnel. Or I could leave the tunnel on my own and risk missing the bus and being even later.
Yes, it’s in a tunnel 80 (?) feet underground but I put in my own microcell in the middle of a field in Idaho something like 30 miles from the nearest cell tower and have good service for myself and my Boomershoot “customers” using AT&T. Why couldn’t the cell companies get service 80 feet?
Now I know the answer:
The reason you don’t have cell coverage in Westlake Station is because the Three Stooges refused to allow the carriers to ride on the radio system without paying substantial fees for the privilege. Verizon, T-Mobil, Sprint, et al gave a collective “Eff You” to the Stooges when they demanded the fees, and now the populace is denied cell coverage.
Governments don’t have customers to make happy. They have subjects.