Category Archives: Boomershoot

Boomershoot is a long range precision rifle event with high explosives as the targets. This is about Boomershoot in general and sometimes just explosives.

Live report from Boomershoot site

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Currently the temperature is 48F, up from 46F about 30 minutes ago. The sun is out with only a few wispy clouds in the sky.


In places there are still 16 inches of snow or more in the shooters area. I’m sure there is deeper snow near the Taj where I am now. My biggest concern now is the transportation of 400 pounds of potassium chlorate from the road to the Taj. The shooters can bring appropriate gear and will be able to cope but if we can’t make the targets in a timely manner things won’t be near as fun. Worse case I can probably bring it in via ATV and trailer in five gallon containers. But overall transportation of people and targets to/from the Taj could be an issue. Another option is to bring the bulldozer over a week before the event and clear a road through the snow. Assuming the weather is decent the exposed ground should dry out.


At this point, three weeks from the event, I’m resigned to there being significant snow in places. It could be 70F and the sun shining on the day of the event but there, almost for certain, will be more snow on the ground than there was last year. And last year was the first time we had snow on the ground for Boomershoot in all ten years there has been a Boomershoot here. And we have held Boomershoot as early as April 15th before.


Damn you Al Gore! This is all your fault! [Just kidding.]


Update: More bad news.



  • The “well” doesn’t appear to have any water in it. We will have to bring water for cleaning up the target manufacturing equipment. And I’ll have to get it fixed this summer.
  • A family of mice got into the explosives magazine and chewed up a bunch of target boxes. I didn’t have as many boxes as I finally decided I wanted anyway. I’ll probably order some more tomorrow.
  • The Internet connection is still flaky. Not as bad as I have seen it with the old equipment but it still drops out frequently even though the signal strength appears to be strong just before and just after it dies.

Accurate versus wind tolerant cartridges

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[Alternate title: Freeing my inner geek]


Over at Kevin’s place in the comments to this post Ben was wondering if he should choose a bullet with a better Ballistic Coefficient (BC) for Boomershoot. The primary reason for making that sort of decision would be because, in most cases, it would be more tolerant of cross winds. But BC isn’t the only factor to consider. Accuracy and muzzle velocity are obvious considerations as well.


What isn’t so obvious and is difficult to calculate is at what point and under what conditions do you make the choice for one cartridge or another if the low wind tolerant bullet is more accurate than the high wind tolerant bullet? For example, imagine you have two guns to choose from. One is a .223 shooting bullets that, given no wind conditions, you can shoot with 0.5 MOA accuracy. The other is a .300 Win Mag that you can shoot with 0.75 MOA accuracy.


Obviously for any reasonable load in either gun the .300 Win Mag is going to have less wind drift than the .223. But it’s not as accurate. So when do the wind errors add up to enough difference to make the .300 Win Mag the more likely gun to get a bullet on target? It depends on the range of the target, the altitude, the temperature, and how accurately you can estimate the wind. If your wind estimation skills are perfect it doesn’t matter. But if you are perfect wouldn’t be reading this blog post because you already know all the answers.


You can measure everything will good enough accuracy except the wind. But you know that you are probably within say +/- 2 MPH of the true wind speed. So now what? Which gun should you use?


It turns out I worked out the answer several years ago. The expression is not simple, but the calculation is much easier than testing at the range:



In the general case an expression for discovering wind estimation error Vw (in MPH) beyond which, at a given range (R), a less accurate but lower wind drift cartridge is the better choice.  This equation is:



Vw = 1/7563 x SQRT(( Er22 – Er12)/(1/(MV1 x (F01/R – 1.5))2 – 1/(MV2 x (F02/R – 1.5))2))


Where for each of the rifles under ideal Boomershoot conditions (3000 feet, 70F):



BCc = 1.15 x BC
F0 = 166 x BCc x SQRT(MV)
Er = Error of the rifle in MOA.
MV = Muzzle velocity in fps.


So get out your calculators and start crunching those numbers!


Or you could just download the spreadsheet I made. But that would be cheating and you wouldn’t feel good about yourself for at least a week.

Boomershoot 2009 update

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Sorry for the light blogging the last few days. Lots and lots of Boomershoot stuff to work on.


There are two positions that have just opened up. Positions 8 and 17, both in “Lowlands”, are now open. Sign up here.


Odds and ends:



  • A quick update on the weather… it has been snowing about every other day in Moscow (400 feet lower than the Boomershoot site). They got six inches yesterday.
  • I paid the deposit for the Saturday night dinner.
  • I arranged for a bartender for the social hour.
  • We have a tentative speaker for the dinner–Sean Carlock. Carlock is the shooter in this video, is a “technical advisor” for Nightforce, custom rifle builder, and former Boomershooter.
  • I’m really looking forward to seeing and chatting with all the bloggers that are showing up for Boomershoot Gun Blogger Day (schedule and outline of the events is here).

Update: April 3, 8:38 AM. Both open positions have been filled. One was taken by some people that attended regularly for a few years in the early days and were avid Blanchard Blast shooters. But I haven’t seen them in ages. I frequently look at the pictures of them on the web site (the three in the foreground) and wonder what happened to them. I got a call from one of them this morning and he was asking if he should bring hip waders to get through the mud. “No”, I told him, “But you might want to bring snowshoes.”


Update2: Sean says he can’t make it.

It wasn’t me

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Yes, this is within my range of operations but I didn’t make the device:



An Army Ordnance disposal team destroyed a homemade explosive device Friday morning along a busy on-ramp to U.S. Highway 12 just north of Yakima.

The device was described as a plastic beverage bottle with shotgun-shell powder inside. The bottle was wrapped with electrical tape and a metal chain.


While I’m sure with enough shotgun shell powder such a device would be “interesting” Boomerite is much cheaper per unit of fun.


And if you are going to play with things that go boom don’t put metal near the explosives. The rule we use is that we don’t put anything between the explosives and your body that a surgeon or the medical examiner might have to remove from your body.

Boomershoot 2009–bring snowshoes

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Boomershoot 2009 is now less than four weeks away.

Last weekend (five weeks from the event) I visited the site and found there was still lots of snow but it was melting fast. Comparing the pictures from five weeks prior last year and last weekend things looked pretty close to the same:

The difference was that it was up to 54F during the afternoon last weekend and there was a lot of runoff with culverts overflowing and the creek near flood stage:


This is the culvert I installed a few years ago.


The culvert here is running full and the excess is running over the entrance to the field.


The creek is at near maximum capacity.

In the morning I walked to the Taj Mahal figuring I wouldn’t need snowshoes because the snow by the road was only about ankle deep. As I got onto the north slope near the trees at the Taj the snow was over knee deep and because it was so warm my feet went all the way through it to the ground. It was a lot of work and in the afternoon I put on my snowshoes before walking in.

But it turns out I was trading one type of work for another. Because the top layer of snow is essentially slush it would push right through the webbing of the snowshoes and ride on the top of them.

I had what felt like 10 pounds of weight (probably more like five) above and beyond the snowshoes that I had to lift with each step.

Before reporting all this I decided I would wait a week and see if the warm weather continued. It was possible that by this weekend the snow would be, essentially, all gone.

It didn’t work out that way.

Monday it never got above 28F.

On Tuesday I received a Winter Storm Watch for Boomershoot country:

Here is a current Winter Storm Watch for Boomershoot (Lenore, ID) until 10:00pm, Wed Mar 25 2009, from your local National Weather Service office.

URGENT – WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MISSOULA MT
318 AM MDT TUE MAR 24 2009

…EARLY SPRING SNOW STORM TO IMPACT THE NORTHERN ROCKIES LATE TONIGHT THROUGH WEDNESDAY NIGHT…

.A STRONG LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM IS EXPECTED TO MOVE SOUTH FROM BRITISH COLUMBIA INTO THE NORTHERN ROCKIES THIS EVENING THROUGH WEDNESDAY EVENING. HEAVY MOUNTAIN SNOW IS POSSIBLE ACROSS NORTHWEST AND WEST CENTRAL MONTANA AS WELL AS CENTRAL IDAHO. SURFACE WINDS WILL BECOME NORTHERLY AS THE SYSTEM PASSES. THIS COULD PROVIDE GOOD UPSLOPE LIFT AND POSSIBLE MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOW ACCUMULATIONS TO THE CAMAS PRAIRIE AREA IN NORTH CENTRAL IDAHO BY LATE WEDNESDAY.

OROFINO/GRANGEVILLE REGION-LOWER HELLS CANYON/SALMON RIVER REGION- 218 AM PDT TUE MAR 24 2009 …WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM THIS EVENING THROUGH WEDNESDAY EVENING… MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOW ALONG WITH GUSTY WINDS ARE POSSIBLE WITH THIS STORM. 8 TO 12 INCHES OF SNOW ARE POSSIBLE ON THE CAMAS PRAIRIE…AS WELL AS THE THE WHITE BIRD GRADE AND GREER GRADES.

Notice that it says “through Wednesday Evening”? Wednesday morning I had received several more updates with the last saying:

…WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT UNTIL 5 AM PDT THURSDAY ABOVE 2500 FEET…

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MISSOULA HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW ABOVE 2500 FEET…WHICH IS IN EFFECT UNTIL 5 AM PDT THURSDAY. THE WINTER STORM WATCH IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT.

TOTAL SNOWFALL ACCUMULATIONS OF 6 TO 12 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE ON THE CAMAS PRAIRIE…AS WELL AS THE WHITE BIRD AND GREER GRADES. THE HEAVIEST SNOW IS EXPECTED THIS AFTERNOON AND EVENING…BUT INCREASING WESTERLY WINDS THIS MORNING WILL CAUSE BLOWING SNOW AND REDUCED VISIBILITIES AT TIMES.

Notice it says “above 2500 feet”? Boomershoot is at 3000 feet.

Thursday it warmed up again into the mid 40s.

Friday the storm warnings started coming in again with four to eight inches of snow predicted. Saturday, as I was having my snow tires removed and the summer tires put on, the snow storm hit Moscow (my home, 40 miles west of Boomershoot and 400 feet lower in elevation). This morning we had 3.5 inches of snow in Moscow and it was still snowing.

Although I didn’t visit the site this weekend I’m nearly certain we have more snow this year at four weeks out than we did last year at five weeks out. And, if you remember, last year we had a white Boomershoot.

The extended forecast for this week is for the low to be 37F on Tuesday the highs in the 50s through Monday. So the new snow and some of the old could be gone by this time next week. But I don’t trust weather forecasts more than about three days out.

It could be you will need snowshoes for Boomershoot 2009. I don’t even have enough for my own staff. You will have to bring your own.

1917 Browning for sale

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I received an email from a Boomershooter saying the 1917 Browning (here, the bottom picture in this post and picture 12 here) he had at Boomershoot 2008 “is up for sale at Cabelas gun library here in Post Falls. Boy it’s a magnet to pull people in!”

Post Falls is in north Idaho near Spokane Washington in case you are interested.

Update: Due to popular request I inquired about the price and got this reply.

Chemical dynamics of explosives

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Via Ry I found some great articles on explosives:



There are more but I have to get ready for work.

Live blogging from the Boomershoot site

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I replaced most of the Wi-Fi gear at the Boomershoot site and things appear to be working well. There have been no drop outs.


We have full signal strength on my laptop at the intersection of the creek and the road. All places that I have tested have higher signal strength than before I need to get my signal strength mapping software out here and remap the area.


Lots of snow still but it got up to 54F this afternoon and it’s still 44F at 1740. The snow is melting fast. That means there is lots of water in the low areas.

Explosives Employee Possessor update

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Last Thursday I reported the ATF responded well to my request for clearance for Boomershoot staff and gun bloggers to handle explosives at Boomershoot 2009. I have a quick update which is also positive.


The three people that had their clearances “Pending” on Thursday were all cleared by Friday.


Yesterday one of the people noticed there was a typo on his address in the clearance paperwork. I sent the ATF an email this morning informing them of the error and requesting clearances for two more people. About two hours later I received the following email:



Good morning Mr. Huffman –


I have made the correction for Mr. XXXXX and ask for a corrected print of his Letter of Clearance with the correct address. I will also get the 2 possessors added to your license.


Nice. And I sent him an email thanking him for his quick service too.


ATF still should be a convenience store instead of a regulatory agency and they still should get their wrist slapped (and others should be hanged) for some of the crap they pull. But just because someone has ATF on their business card doesn’t necessarily mean they are Gestapo.

Needs help

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I got the following email this morning. My response follows:



From: tjif tjaf
Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2009 10:36 AM
To: joeh@boomershoot.org
Subject: need help


 


Hi


 


 


Do you know a way to blow up a house just enough so nobody can live in anymore.


I mean the exploision must be big enough so it creates a hole or crack in the wall.


 


Why? whell nobody is living in it for now but it is located in a extraordinary forest with
som very rare birds and they dont like the be disturbed. so now is the chance to get rid


of this builing before somebody buys it and want to live in it. i thought to put a propane tank
in the bassement but i don’t know if it is enough or even explodes.


 


 


thanks


 





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From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2009 1:47 PM
To: ‘tjif tjaf’
Subject: RE: need help


 


I haven’t worked with propane tanks much. Maybe someone on the Belgium Explosive Ordinance team would know the answer.


 


I don’t have any contacts in Belgium but I have put some of my contacts in the U.S. (Susan and Crystal with the ATF) on the Bcc: line in hopes they know how to contact them for you.


 


-joe-


—–

The ATF was awesome this time

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A week ago today I whined about the ATF being technically challenged as I was trying to get clearance for the Boomershoot staff (and some bloggers) to handle explosives.


Last night I got a call from daughter Kim saying I got a letter from them. “Open it up!” I said. She did and told me that all of the people I requested clearance on, except for three, were approved. Those three are pending and are allowed to handle explosives until I am told otherwise.


I am flabbergasted. That was awesome “service”.


While I am of the opinion the ATF should be a convenience store rather than a regulatory agency I must admit they did their job well and without causing me pain once they actually got the paperwork in hand.


Thanks guys.

Two more Boomershoot 2009 positions available

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Last May Boomershoot donated two positions to the Friends of the NRA in King County (Seattle area). They thought they were going to have their dinner/auction before the end of April 2009 but that didn’t happen. The dinner/auction is now scheduled to be in May which is after the event. So they have put the two positions up for bid on eBay. Those positions are #41 in the main area and #51 on the berm.


You can see the view from the Main and Berm areas here:


http://entry.boomershoot.org/#Main
http://entry.boomershoot.org/#Berm


The entire proceeds go to Friends of the NRA to fund Youth Shooting programs and any amount above the fair market value ($150 for one person, $250 for two, $300 for three) is tax deductible.


Hurry, the auction ends in six and a half days.

Quote of the day–Jim Scoutten

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I’ve always thought there are some events that shouldn’t get National TV coverage.


Jim Scoutten
March 7, 2009
Producer and host of Shooting USA
Boomershoot coverage?
H/T to Ry (via email as well as his blog), followed by Kevin (email and blog), Say Uncle, Robb (email and blog), Phil, and Sebastian.
[I am a little insulted. Boomershoot got positive coverage from Newsweek, KING 5 Evening Magazine (Seattle television show), Outside Magazine, and numerous other media outlets (that list is just a partial listing). If he doesn’t think we are appropriate for national TV coverage he is mistaken. We can and have handled national media before and done quite well.


It just so happens another national TV show is planning to attend this year anyway. I also got a request for permission from a participant doing a video with smaller audience. Boomershoot should be well represented in the media this year. The gun blogger list of participants alone is impressive.


Like I said, I’m a little insulted but Scoutten is missing out more than Boomershoot by his decision.


Thanks for all the support guys but I don’t really think it’s necessary to do a Zumbo on him. He’s not saying Boomershoot should be banned or anything. He just doesn’t think it is something he wants to present to the public.


In his followup comment he says he doesn’t want put anything “on TV that could alarm the anti-gunners”. I disagree. I am of the opinion that alarming them over Boomershoot then making fools of them is the more appropriate tactic (ask me sometime in private how we have baited them but they failed to take the bait). But if he doesn’t want to do that I don’t see a reason to attack him over that judgment call.–Joe]

Boomershoot site in the snow.

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Ry and I visited the Boomershoot site on Saturday. I checked the power supply and verified the batteries were fully charged and the inverters were working. The Wi-Fi was working just fine too but the last time I was there it wasn’t working so I plan to replace some of the components the next time I go out there.


Ry and I both took pictures of the snow. I had not tried a Photosythn before and I thought this would be kinda neat to try. So I took hundreds of pictures. The first attempt failed and the second attempt is here. I learned quite a bit from the effort and will try some more later on but the result is still pretty interesting.


Ry has his take on the snow.


I think it’s still a little early to tell. We are seven weeks from the event. I needed snow shoes to make it out the Taj Mahal but the deepest snow I could find at the shooting line near the berm was only about 17 inches deep.


We have more snow now at seven week out that last year at six weeks and five weeks out. We also had snow on the ground for the actual event too. After I visit next time we will have a better comparison to previous years.

Attention Boomershoot 2009 Gun Bloggers!

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It’s a long story but I deleted the list of Gun Bloggers planning to attend Boomershoot 2009.


I have reconstructed the list as best I could and sent an email to those people. If you are a gun blogger planning to atttend Boomershoot 2009 and did not get an email please let me know and I’ll add you to my list.

Quote of the day–Tamara K.

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I’m still a long way from going up a clock tower with a scoped rifle and a sack lunch.


Tamara K.
February 22, 2009
Blah
[I thought this would be appropriate after my frustrations with the ATF yesterday.–Joe]

We didn’t do it! No one can prove a thing!

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Although Boomershoot has an ATF approved explosive handler in Memphis she didn’t blow up this car with someone in it today.

Technology and the ATF

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The ATF explosives examiner for Idaho said I could just email the scans of the copies I kept. But after two days of getting neither confirmation or bounced email messages about the “Employee Possessor Questionnaires” (background check paperwork for handling explosives) I was about to call him when he emailed me. He said he hadn’t received any emails from me after the first one. I had actually sent him two emails in that time frame. The first had bounced and I presumed it was because the attachment was too large. So I put the 9 Mbyte .ZIP file on the boomershoot.org website (the .ZIP file has now been deleted and my logs indicate only I had attempted to download it) and sent him a link to that. That email did not bounce.


But I noticed something, the email address he used was different than the one I had originally used to contact him. I originally used @atf.gov and the one he responded with was @usdoj.gov. So I sent the same two emails again. One with the attachment and one with the link. Then a couple hours ago I called him. He hadn’t received anything.


We verified the email addresses. The first one (which, on Tuesday, made it through to him) was wrong. The other, which I had done a “reply to” from his email was the correct one. He would not download a file from a website (“We don’t do that”). Okay, so I’ll try sending a plain text test message from a different email account to his preferred email address. That worked. Okay, now the 9 Mbyte .ZIP file. He’s not sure what a .ZIP file is. He knows about .PDF files. .JPG files? Yeah, kinda.


The 9 Mbyte .ZIP bounced. The message:



The original message was received at Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:15:40 -0800


—– The following addresses had permanent fatal errors —– “somethingelse@usdoj.gov”


—– Transcript of session follows —– .. while talking to mailsc20.usdoj.gov


>>> DATA <<< 550 5.7.0 Maximum Attachment Size (12M) Violation


Yeah, my 9 Mbyte .ZIP file exceeded their maximum attachment size restriction of 12 M.


Maybe this is a test to see if I’m calm enough to be trusted with explosives.


I broke the 9 Mbyte file into five .ZIP files the largest being 1.95 Mbytes and sent them as attachments to five plain text emails from my alternate email address to his second email address.


About 15 minutes later he called back. He had received them but it was going to “take a while” to get them from “picture viewer” to the printer. He would start work on that the first thing in the morning.


Apparently I passed the test.


I’m going out to the Boomershoot site this weekend. I think I need to blow something up.

Boomershoot chemicals and ATF paperwork

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At 0526 this morning I got a call from my potassium chlorate supplier. Normally I would be sound asleep or in somewhat more rare cases had not gone to bed yet (I’m a night person). This morning I had been up for several hours and had gone to bed only a minute or two earlier. I have been sick and I have been sleeping for a few hours then read stuff on the web for a while then sleep some more. My sleep schedule is really whacked now.


The supplier wanted to know if I wanted the 142 pounds (see my previous post on the topic) sent ASAP. I had explained it to the other person I had talked to but this woman wanted to make sure. No, that isn’t necessary. Sending it all in one shipment would be fine. I’ve have been dealing with this woman for several years and I get the impression that, well… it sometimes takes several attempts to explain things to her. I think this same “characteristic” caused her to fail to realize there was a significant time difference between her place of employment and that of her customer.


After getting the logistics straightened out she did mention something interesting. The reason the packaging changed is because the previous potassium chlorate I have been purchasing from them came from Spain. That company has gone completely out of the business and the new manufacture is in Sweden. The new manufacture packages it in a different manner. The packaging isn’t a big deal but the new manufacture means as soon as I get the material in my hands I need to do tests to make sure Boomerite still works and is safe. In the past when we have changed what we thought were very minor variables the mix would not detonate as easily.


Oh well, it’s easy to get volunteers to do help do the tests.


After going back to bed and sleeping for a few hours I got up, checked my email, and found a response to a query I made to the ATF yesterday. It was about why none of the explosive handlers who I sent in the paperwork for last November had heard anything back from the ATF. The response I got (after being forwarded around a bit) told me who I really needed to contact and I sent them an email. I received a call about 90 minutes later and we had a nice chat. The address on the back of the form is incorrect and paperwork sent to that address tends to disappear. He said I could just scan the copies I had kept (hooray for being paranoid about the government messing things up!) and email them to him. He would expedite the processing and there shouldn’t be a problem with getting the approvals completed in time for Boomershoot 2009.

Boomerite supplies ordered

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I have a pounding headache and a stuffed up nose but I managed to order 392 pounds of potassium chlorate this morning. Potassium chlorate is one of the main ingredients in Boomerite. It’s also the most expensive (in the past it has accounted for almost 65% of the cost) and it’s hard to find suppliers who can deliver it in the quantities we need.


Last Thursday I started the process of ordering and ran into some obstacles.


First, they wanted a copy of my ATF type 20 license to manufacture high explosives. The one they had on file had expired. I had expected that and wasn’t concerned.


Second, I estimate we have about 100 pounds left over from last year and we need about 350 pounds for Boomershoot 2009. I wanted to order the usual 275 pound drum which would have given me a little bit left over for testing and other things during the year. But my supplier told me they only had 142 pounds on hand. Larger quantities will be available in two to three weeks. Also they changed their packaging and they now only sell in 250 pound increments. And the worst part was the price has doubled since last year. Ouch!


But, if I ordered just the 250 pounds then, at best, I wouldn’t have any extra for testing purposes during the year. 500 pounds would be more than enough for Boomershoot 2009 but the expense!


I told them I would think about what I wanted to do, FAX them a copy of the license on Friday, and call them back on Monday (today). Over the weekend it occurred to me–they have 142 pound on hand why not buy that plus a 250 pound package? I called today and they said it works for them so it should be just fine. I’m not looking forward to paying the steep price but getting 392 pounds is better than not having enough with 250 pounds and better than paying for 500 pounds of which half will sit around for year.


The cardboard boxes used for the target containers have arrived and are safely stored away. There are just a very few minor supplies that need to be picked up locally now.