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.

Last week I ordered some supplies. I picked up the cardboard boxes for the targets last Thursday and the Potassium Chlorate was just delivered (as in Barb is on the phone this very second asking where to put it). Everything is on schedule.

Ry was on site this weekend, took some pictures, and reported “The Boomershoot site was a snowy marsh”.

Yup. It sure is. And with Boomershoot only six weeks away one might be quite reasonably be concerned about the conditions we will have for the event. Will it be nothing but mud or even still have some snow?

Anything is possible but here are some pictures from 1999 to give us some hints about how things dried up back then:

Boomershoot target area March 7^th 1999.

Target area April 25^th 1999

Shooting area April 25 1999.

In 1999, seven weeks prior to the event, the ground was covered with snow and even more “in the deep freeze” than this year. Yet by the day of the event the ground was ground was damp (I remember the picture above being taken*) but clearly it wasn’t so muddy that people couldn’t shoot directly from the ground. Hence there is nothing to be particularly worried about at this time.

I probably will take some more pictures this coming weekend and examine the site two weeks and probably one week before the event. I’ll keep you posted.

* I was trying to connect with a half-pint milk carton at 600 yards away with my AR-15 to see if the .223 could detonate the targets at that range. It was particularly challenging because of the wind (see the streamer flying essentially horizontal?). I fired about 60 rounds without getting a detonation. Later examination of the target showed that I had gotten one solid hit and a couple of nicks. It did not detonate. The target recipe has been modified extensively since then although at 600 yards the .223 is still marginal for both wind and ability to detonation the targets.

Just a couple of minutes ago I ordered the last of the critical items for Boomershoot 2008. I now have another 275 pounds of potassium chlorate scheduled to arrive within a week or 10 days. Over the weekend I ordered 1100 cardboard boxes.

The only remaining items are small things like air horn cartridges, wooden stakes, and garbage sacks.

Combined with the existing materials we have stored in the Taj Mahal we plan to build over 1600 reactive targets for Boomershoot 2008. This will require over 1700 pounds of high explosives which we will be manufacturing on-site in the two days prior to the event.

It’s going to be a real blast.

Another person canceled and position 41 will become available at 8:00 AM Tuesday March 11th. See details of the position here. Refresh the page at 8:00 AM tomorrow to sign up. Remember, once you press the button for that position you have taken the position.

Stephanie, of Boomershoot fame, has been trying to get Dave Barry (yes, the Dave Barry) to attend Boomershoot 2008. To further entice him she offered to blow up a low-flow (or whatever they are called) toilet for him. She received a call from an assistant who told her that Mr. Barry was already committed for the weekend. Then we received a postcard from Mr. Barry a few days ago:

It turns out there is more than one Dave Barry in the world and we will have a Dave Barry attending Boomershoot 2008. But not nearly as many people know of him as the one from Miami.

Sunday morning, February 24th, position 49 will become available at 8:00 AM.

Sign up here: http://entry.boomershoot.org/. Only online entries will be accepted. Call if you have questions, but you must sign up via that web page.