Caleb and I visited the Boomershoot site today. The two pictures below are the view that greeted us as we arrived. There was a dusting of snow on the north slopes with some drifts still remaining in the deepest shadows. The road into the parking area was completely dry.

Target area and 50 Caliber Ghetto Shooting area.

The road into the parking area.

The grass in the shooting area was surprisingly dry and firm. It wasn’t at all muddy. But it was cold. At noon it was 30F. By the time we left at about 17:30 it had warmed up to 39F. In between there was alternate periods of sun and snow. This schizophrenic weather is exemplified by the following two pictures of the same area. The first was taken at 11:26 and the second one at 17:11. Notice the snow in the first picture is completely gone by the time the second picture was taken less than six hours later.

The Taj Mahal and work area at 11:26.

Work area at 17:11.

As I mentioned earlier the shooting area was surprisingly good. The ground was damp but very firm. Unless there are major rain storms between now and next weekend the ground should be fine. The weather forecasts are varied but none predict heavy precipitation. I do not think it will be muddy unless it rains during the event.

The area just behind the shooting berm.

Snow was coming down at various times during the day.

There were three major accomplishments today.

1. We delivered the surveyors stakes and the last of the boxes used for targets.
2. We got the WiFi working well. While at the most remote location I set my computer up to ping the Boomershoot.org server and it ran for several hours and lost only 2% of the packets with no extended drop outs. This sort of accomplishment was unheard of previously.
3. We have about 1000 of boxes for the 1590 planned targets folded (they are shipped to us flat) and in crates ready for filling with explosives.

The magazine is nearly full of empty target boxes.

The Taj Mahal prepped for Boomershoot 2008.

Update: I forgot to mention that AT&T has cell phone service at the Boomershoot site now. Coverage is a little spotty behind neighboring hills and such but at the site itself the signal is fairly strong.

Today I picked up the last of the supplies for Boomershoot 2008. 1200 surveyors stakes, 100 pounds of lime, and three air-horn cartridges. When I was getting the stakes the guy behind the counter asked, “Are you going vampire hunting?” I wish I had been quick enough to answer something like, “Not exactly. I’m the regional supplier for Buffy.” But instead I told him the truth. “No. I’m going put cardboard boxes filled with high explosives on them and people will shoot at them.” I’m not sure if he thought that story was any more plausible than the vampire one but he didn’t question me further.

As a side note, 1200 stakes isn’t enough for Boomershoot 2008. We have some left over from last year that we will be using.

Last night I talked to a couple people that live within two miles of the Boomershoot site. They said that over the last few days the temperature got up to 70F and the wind was blowing. The snow just disappeared and the ground dried out enough that a few farmers were out in their fields on Sunday.

Then there was a 40 degree drop in temperature between Sunday and Monday and it snowed.

The weather and conditions for Boomershoot still could be anything. Current forecasts for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of the event are for cloudy, rain, and rainy. I have no idea what the difference is between “rain” and “rainy” but that is what the website says.

I won’t have much faith in the forecasts until we get within about three or four days of the event. In the mean time participants should be prepared for any type of weather except tornadoes (extremely rare but not unheard of in this part of the country) and hurricanes.

The details for the Boomershoot Dinner have been finalized. Please see the details and sign up here.

There is a discount if you RSVP early so do it soon. There is very little time left.

There will also be a raffle to benefit Project Valour-IT of Soldiers Angels. You don’t need to attend the dinner to participate in the raffle. Please go to the above link to read the details. We are also asking for donations to raffle off. Please contribute to this very worthy cause.

We are only 15 days from the big event and weather forecasts are starting to have some validity. I was on site last Sunday and there was still a lot of snow and mud. Since then we have had some more snow as well as a few days of warm weather. I doubt it has dried out much.

Looking out two weeks is subject to a lot of error but currently the forecast for April 24, 25, 26 (Thursday->Saturday) is, respectfully, for rain, snow, and mostly cloudy with showers. Prior to that there is supposed to be a fair amount of cloudy weather mixed with some sun. I’ll visit the site next weekend and will know more but my guess is that we are going to have some mud and perhaps even snow drifts to deal with. This will affect the Boomershoot staff more than the shooters but spectators and shooters should make appropriate plans.

Position 18 has opened up. If you know someone who would like to participate and has not signed up please send them here.

It has just confirmed that Brian Doherty will be attending Boomershoot 2008. Here are the details:

Brian Doherty, author of the books Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern Libertarian Movement and This Is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground, is writing a book about the current DC vs. Heller case and its ramifications. Doherty plans to attend Boomershoot, and, if anything at the event sparks his interest, he may include it in his upcoming book. Doherty is also Senior Editor of Reason magazine/Reason.com. His excellent video summary about DC vs. Heller can be viewed here, at reason.tv.

Also the Saturday night dinner planning committee has confirmed the guest speaker will be a representative from Nightforce.

Even if you do not plan on participating in Boomershoot on Sunday you are welcome attend the dinner. Sign up as a spectator by sending an email to spectators-subscribe@boomershoot.org to be notified of dinner and last minute weather details etc.

I already posted the pictures from yesterday morning at the Boomershoot site. In the afternoon things were a little better. And if you compare to what things looked like two weeks ago they are significantly better:

The shooters berm. The deepest snow I could find was only ten inches deep.

The target area from the shooters berm.

The target construction area has significantly less snow than before.

This is the “Tree-Line” target area and where I get worried.

The weather forecast doesn’t look terrible. But it is a long way from great as well. In the next 15 days only three days are forecast to have precipitation. And three days are forecast to reach a high of 70F (this is an Orofino forecast so subtract a couple degrees for the Boomershoot site). If the forecast is correct and then we get bright sun for the last week of the month it could be beautiful Boomershoot conditions.

But don’t count on it.

In other news I completed what little bit had to be done on the water supply. As if we needed that this year! We might be able to wash our equipment in the nearest snow drift.

I brought a new inverter but the old one was behaving this time so I just left the new one wrapped up and left it there as a spare. We could swap it out in less than a minute so it’s not a big deal if it dies while we are in the middle of building targets.

I spent most of my time trying to get the WiFi working. There were numerous things wrong with the access point at the shed and once I got all those fixed everything started working just fine. I made one final tweak, changing the router configuration to follow Daylight Savings Time and when the router rebooted there was no wireless signal. I walked back to the neighbors to get physical access to the router and the hardwired connection was just fine. It was just the wireless that was dead. I poked around in the configuration a little bit, and without ever changing anything the wireless started working again. I rebooted the router again and the wireless went away and I was unable to get to come back up again.

I was out of time and I concluded that it must be the external power amplifier being flaky. I would suspect the router but that is the third router I have put there with similar symptoms from all three. The power amp is the only thing left that can be causing the problem.

In other news I was surprised with a dog came into the shed while I was working on the WiFi. I poked my head out the door and found I had company:

Rhonda and my brother Doug came out while training their search dogs.
They were looking for a dead body (actually a training aid) Doug had buried last November.

These are their dogs.

We talked for 15 or 20 minutes and then we all went back to work.

Oh, one last thing. When I came home Friday night I found Caleb had left this Boomershoot 2008 accessory in the driveway:

Guess what (and who) this is for.

It is less than three weeks until the big event. I visited the site yesterday to do some prep. I’ll post more tonight but here are a couple pictures indicating the existing conditions and weather:

The road just to the north of the site.

The actual site. The hillside in the distance is the main target area. That is not fog in the air. It is snow.

Boomershoot 2008 shirts, caps, mugs, etc. are now available.

Update: The link has been updated. I had a private link before.

Position 75 just opened up. This is a position that requires a shooting bench. You can see the pictures and sign up to take the position here.

The shooter in position 76 lost his spotter and:

I need a single entrant from Seattle area that can share gas and lodging expenses. I will be leaving Friday morning and returning Sunday night.

If you would like to be that person send me an email with your contact information and I will forward the information on.

On Saturday Caleb and I visited the Boomershoot site to do some maintenance, explosive experiments, and to inspect the site.

The maintenance went fairly well. I discovered why one of the WiFi access points wasn’t working. It will take another trip out there to verify my fix but I’m pretty confident it will work. The new inverter I had installed last fall didn’t want to start up until after we fiddled with it for quite a while and I don’t trust it. I’m going to get another one. And finally we installed a petcock on the pipe for our “well” so we could easily drain the water out of it.

The explosive experiments went well enough. We mixed up two batches of Boomerite. One was made with the old fertilizer grade ammonium nitrate. The other batch used the new explosive grade ammonium nitrate I purchased last June. We did a quick test with the new stuff last September and suspected it was not as sensitive as the older material. Our tests on Saturday confirmed those suspicions.

Using CCI Stinger .22LR ammo from about 65 yards the old would detonate reliable but the new would only detonate about one out of three hits.

Using American Eagle .22LR ammo at 12 yards the old would detonate about one out of three hits but the new would not detonate even one out of five or six hits. At 10 yards the old would detonate every time and the new only about one out three hits.

Our conclusion is to get the same probability of detonation the new material requires about another 10 fps of velocity. This is measurable but not a big enough deal to spend the effort to try and improve the mix.

The biggest issue I have concerns about is the condition of the site. It was five weeks from the big day (April 27^th) and there are still drifts well over knee deep in places.

View of most of the target area and part of the .50 Caliber Ghetto.

This is the road leading into the parking area and a neighbor’s car.

This is The Berm shooters use for prone shooting. That snow drift is probably two to three feet deep.

This is the hillside shooting area where targets in the 500 to 700 range are placed. There are some big drifts out there.

I’m really glad we paved the target construction area with concrete blocks last fall. This will keep us out of the mud.

This is the 375 yard target area. It is very, very wet and muddy.

Caleb next to one of the snow piles at my parents and brothers farm.

I spent some time talking to my brother about the ground conditions.

My brother Doug and I talked for a while about the weather. He is of the opinion it would take about three weeks of good weather to dry up to the point where they could start farming. If they can be in the fields we would have excellent conditions for Boomershoot. However, the weather forecast for the next ten days is for rain and cloudy weather. Therefore my best guess is that Boomershoot 2008 will be on the damp side. I’ll visit the site again at two weeks and one week prior to the event and have better information. Attendees should have contingency plans for muddy ground unless I give a better report just before the event.

Caleb spotted ten wild turkeys as we were headed home.