Position 31 for Boomershoot 2008 will become available tomorrow morning, Tuesday February 19th, at 6:00 AM PST (I think I have my alarm set correctly this time).
Shooting benches are recommended for this position. See http://entry.boomershoot.org/#Main for pictures of the location. Assuming your fingers are fast enough you can sign up for this postion via the online entry webpage of the previous link.
I don’t have the final information available yet but this is the premliminary report from the auction last night:
I’m not sure of the actual selling price, I thought it was $450 each but someone I spoke with said they went for $500 each.
Wow! $450 or $500 for participating in Boomershoot (and donating money to FONRA).
I gave them two positions but was asked to only mention there was one available. The plan was to auction off the one then offer the other position to the second place bidder for the same price.
Boomershoot Precision Rifle Instructor Gene Econ reports:
I can take four more guys for coaching on each day and a good twenty more for field fire.
Sign up here.
This clinic is such a great value that people have come in from out of state just to attend the clinic and don’t bother to stay for Boomershoot the next day.
If you do sign up for the clinic and don’t have a position in Boomershoot but would like to participate let me know and I’ll try to find a place for you. Depending on the weather some of the places that can be a swamp are dry and usable. It all depends on the ratio of rain to sun in the previous week or so.
I’ve long ranted about the futility of restricting explosive materials. Most of the time I’m a little circumspect on the details but after this massive explosion some news sources aren’t so circumspect:
Sugar dust is just one of a variety of forms of dust that can, under the right circumstances, combust and cause an explosion.
Explosions are not uncommon in places like grain silos, but have been known to happen in sugar factories in the U.S. and abroad, much like the one in Georgia Thursday.
The dust itself can be created in a variety of ways during the refining process.
Anything from sparks from machinery to a lit cigarette could have ignited the blaze.
The dust also has to have a certain concentration to support combustion fast enough to maintain the explosion.
Those are 100 foot high silos in the picture below.
Lets see them restrict access to sugar! It’s for the children…
I just created a new Boomershoot email list.
People planning to be spectators sign up for emails about the event by sending an email to spectators-subscribe@boomershoot.org. There is no requirement to sign up in order to be a spectator but it will get them information about the Saturday night dinner and weather forecasts when the information becomes available.
The pass was still closed (they are saying maybe by midnight one of them will be open) when I woke up this morning. I chatted with Barb for a few minutes and was reading a few blogs and posting my QOTD when I got a text message from Ry:
We went to Beth’s and I finally got on the outside of one of their six egg omelets (they have two sizes, six and 12 egg, both come with all the hash browns you can eat).
I took a couple pictures of drawings on the wall:
From there we went to Kerry Park and took some pictures:
We left the park to visit Glazer’s.
At Glazer’s I bought a new camera bag and some minor camera accessories.
We then continued south to Cabela’s in Lacy. I have never been in a Cabela’s before and Ry had only been to the original store in the Midwest. The store was pretty amazing.
The most amazing thing happened there. Someone recognized our Boomershoot coats and my hat and said hi. He said he reads my blog!
I bought a bunch of strange flavored licorice (Piña Colada and blue raspberry among others) some bullets (not loaded ammo, just the Berger, .30 caliber, 210 grain VLD bullets). Wow! Those have gone up by a factor of two since I last bought some. But I figured they weren’t going to get any cheaper.
From way down south in Lacy we went way north to Monroe for the “Fun Show” as Ry likes to call them. Actually it was one of the WAC events. I walked by all the tables and didn’t really see anything of much interest.
We then headed out of town a little way to visit a friend of Ry’s that has a rifle range Ry has permission to use. “A couple hundred yards”, Ry said. Things were in the process of changing. Soon it will be over 850 yards! We stood around and talked with the owner and a friend of his for probably an hour. Maybe next spring when there is more daylight in a day and the longer range is available I might visit again with a long range rifle.
Next we ate dinner at the Old Country Buffet and I dropped him off back at his place and came back to my bunker.
That was a nice day. It was much better than moping around writing buggy code for The Borg like I had planned. Thanks Ry.
But the bummer part of it was Barb had an extremely light day at work and would have been able to spend a lot of time with me at lunch and then gotten off work early to spend more time with me had I been able to make it over the pass and back to Moscow last night.
Lots of people are suggesting you buy a firearm if you get a rebate. There are numerous suggestions (partial listing):
I have another suggestion and I’ll even make the deal sweeter for you. Buy a rifle and ammo for Boomershoot and I’ll give you a free entry into Boomershoot 2009. Limit of one entry per rifle and no more than five free positions will be given away. You must purchase the rifle between now and June 1, 2008. The rifle and ammo must be capable of at least regularly connecting with the boomers at the 375 yard line. This means your ordinary hunting rifle, carbines, and pistol caliber rifles won’t qualify. Heavy barrel AR-15’s will. It should have at least a 4X (10X or greater is recommended) scope on it but I won’t be holding that against you because people have connected with red-dots and iron sights, it’s just not easy. Ammo is going to have to be match grade.
If you decide you want to participate in Joe’s evil plan then scan a copy of your receipts, send the scanned image and one or more pictures of you new rifle to me. First come, first serve, limit five prizes total.
Update: At the suggestion of Mopar in comments I’ve created a Boomershoot web page on rifle selection and threw in a little about ammo too. See also Choosing Optics (from 2001).
I am going to make Position 3 (in the .50 Caliber Ghetto) available at 6:00 PM Pacific time tonight.
It is not required that you shoot a .50 caliber from this position but you will be somewhat limited on the available targets. And any targets at the 375 yard line are off limits to .50 caliber guns.
Because of the extreme angle for some of the 375 yard targets you will be limited to only about half of them. Only the targets on the berm to the left of the three trees in the picture below are available:
For more details about the position see the description here:
If you have any questions send an email or give me a call at 208-301-4254.
At 6:00 PM refresh the page in your browser to see the button for position #3 become available.
Joe Huffman
Boomershoot Event Director
A couple of people sent me an email yesterday asking about the caliber of rifle required for Boomershoot, other general questions, and said they planned to be spectators this year and participate next year. I gave them the best advice I could and encouraged them to attend, ask questions, etc.
What was interesting to me was the domain for email address QueerArms.com. They have a website and it appears they don’t get a lot of traffic but it’s a decent site.
They even have a link to Boomershoot under “Games”. Cool! I’ve only received one referral from them but, hey, it’s the thought that counts. I don’t know if it was Tammy that put the link there, but whoever it was, thanks!
If you missed out on getting a shooting position for Boomershoot 2008 here is another chance.
Last May Boomershoot donated a position to the King County Friends of NRA to be auctioned off at the 2008 Seattle Sportsmen’s Convention:
http://www.working4wildlife.com/
Show up at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, WA February 15th and 16th to get another shot at Boomershoot 2008 and know your entry fee will go to a good cause.
One of the Burning Man organizers wrote me last week saying he wanted to participate in Boomershoot 2007. We got to chatting and he sent me at link to this video of the fireworks show they put on for Burning Man 2007. He also gave some technical details:
The fireball was about 600 feet high and probably 500 in diameter or more as it expanded. I think it had somewhere around 1200 gallons of fuel shot into the air from the four tanks. Then several thousand gallons of liquid propane were shot up the middle of the 99 foot tall derrick.
Boomershoot’s biggest fireballs have used four gallons of gasoline. Of course most of our viewers were within 20 yards, but still…
This is in regard to the old blow up the dead whale on the beach video.
Phil asks some questions. My answer:
Pound for pound Boomerite is not much different from what they used. So about 1000 pounds (which is less than what we typically use at
Like this:
The DOJ (the ATF is under the DOJ so it could be them) apparently is interested in what their subjects think about new regulations on AN. My blog posting is number six on Google for their query.
I should have mentioned in my previous post that I have several thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate that I plan to make into explosives. The people at the DOJ need something to get their blood pumping on a Monday, right?
| Domain Name | usdoj.gov ? (U.S. Government) | |||||||||||||||||||
| IP Address | 149.101.1.# (US Dept of Justice) | |||||||||||||||||||
| ISP | US Dept of Justice | |||||||||||||||||||
| Location |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
| Language | English (U.S.) en-us |
|||||||||||||||||||
| Operating System | Microsoft WinXP | |||||||||||||||||||
| Browser | Internet Explorer 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; DOJ3jx7bf; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) |
|||||||||||||||||||
| Javascript | version 1.3 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Monitor |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
| Time of Visit | Jan 7 2008 10:46:36 am | |||||||||||||||||||
| Last Page View | Jan 7 2008 10:46:46 am | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Length | 10 seconds | |||||||||||||||||||
| Page Views | 1 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Referring URL | http://www.google.co…ing ammonium nitrate | |||||||||||||||||||
| Search Engine | google.com | |||||||||||||||||||
| Search Words | bush signs law regulating ammonium nitrate | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Entry Page | https://blog.joehuffman.org/2007/12/31/new-ammonium-nitrate-regulations/ | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Exit Page | https://blog.joehuffman.org/2007/12/31/new-ammonium-nitrate-regulations/ | |||||||||||||||||||
| Out Click | here http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.1680: |
|||||||||||||||||||
| Time Zone | UTC-5:00 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visitor’s Time | Jan 7 2008 1:46:36 pm | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Number | 230,817 |
I just deleted another unpaid Boomershoot 2008 entry when they didn’t answer his email or voice mail. I then sent out an email to the Boomershoot announcement list that a position was open.
It lasted 12 minutes again. It must the minimum time it takes the Yahoo groups email list server to deliver the open position notification, someone to enter in their data, and push the button.
I just finished some more tools for my web based management of Boomershoot. This time it was some statistics.
These number will probably change a little by the time of the actual 2008 event. But as it currently stands:
|
|
Total |
Average per position |
|
Participants |
130 |
1.71 |
|
Shooters |
120 |
1.58 |
|
Spotters |
10 |
0.13 |
|
Cleanup participants |
42 |
0.55 |
At 15:56 PST I sent out an email that a position had opened up for Boomershoot 2008. At 16:08 PST, just 12 minutes later, the position was filled.
There are two other positions that might be opening up soon. They haven’t paid for them, they haven’t been answering their email, and I just left voice mail that had better be answered soon.
Yesterday my daughters, my son-in-law, and I went out to the Boomershoot site and built a snowman.
It’s a 43 Mbyte .WMV file. Don’t even think about it unless you have a high speed connection.
Crank the volume up. There are some subtle sounds.
Update: I just updated the video. There were some very significant changes. The slow parts were sped up, the interesting parts were slowed down and a lot more detail added.
Some technical details: Five gallons of gasoline, ten pounds of Boomerite, and one shot from an AR-15 chambered in .223.
Update2: One of the reasons to make this video was for America’s Funniest Home Videos who requested people make videos of building then destroying a snowmen in “creative” ways. Reading the fine print for the submission I discovered I must take the video off the web when I submit it. I’m giving everyone until Midnight January 2nd to view it. Then it’s coming down. Sorry about that.
Update3: I’ve removed the link to the video. Send me an email if you want to view a private copy.
Last Wednesday Bush signed into law a new restriction on our freedom which does nothing but create another bureaucracy. The Los Angles Times has a pretty good write up on it but the tone is “the Feds should have done more”:
Ammonium nitrate regulated — sort of
The fertilizer can be used in explosives. Some in law enforcement and counter-terrorism wanted much tighter controls than Congress passed.
More than 12 years after Timothy J. McVeigh used ammonium nitrate fertilizer to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building, Congress quietly passed legislation this month to regulate sales of the explosive.
But the Secure Handling of Ammonium Nitrate Act of 2007, part of an appropriations measure signed Wednesday by President Bush, falls far short of the strict law that some in the counter-terrorism community and federal law enforcement were hoping for.
[…]
Outside groups are asking for tougher action. “Congress simply didn’t understand what it was doing,” said Peter Stockton, senior investigator for one of the groups, the Project on Government Oversight, which is a watchdog on national security issues.
“Maybe they thought doing something was better than nothing.”
The text of the actual law is here. Assuming I’m reading the version of the bill that was actually signed there is an exemption for people with an explosives license (me). The biggest impact I see to most readers of this blog is that if you want to buy Target Master Exploding Targets or Tannerite maybe you should do it now. Both of those products use ammonium nitrate as their primary ingredient.
This law also affects farmers in a big way.
Under the new law you will be required to register with “Homeland Security” before you can manufacture, sell, or buy, AN. The seller will be required to maintain records. If anyone violates these new regulations they can be fined up to $50,000 per violation.
There will be regulations implemented which will provide “guidance” on storage and sales which of course will do nothing but harass the innocent. Just like the regulations on firearms do nothing the terrorists that want to do evil will steal their materials or use a strawman. Or if they are suicide bombers they will just go through the registration process and buy it just like legitimate users. It’s not that difficult to manufacture either. The chemical formula is NH4NO3. The elements to manufacture it can all be obtained from the air. Try regulating those precursor chemicals.
Like Stockton, above, I think they just wanted to “do something”. And as I pointed out in my QOTD today even “experts” (I hesitate to call anyone who works for the government an expert on anything other than government) don’t think it does anything for security. It’s nothing but more security theater for the masses.
Poor guy. Assuming it wasn’t stolen, if he had just let me store it everything would have turned out so much better:
Authorities raid barn filled with military-grade explosives
SUFFOLK, Va. – Authorities are questioning an ex-Navy SEAL this evening after a raid that officials say turned up enough military-grade explosives to damage an entire Suffolk neighborhood.
Suffolk fire and rescue spokesman Jim Judkins says police secured a warrant yesterday and raided a barn on Ferry Point Road after receiving a tip.
Police have been joined investigating the barn by FBI and ATF agents, and the Virginia State Police this evening.
The unidentified former SEAL is in custody and is cooperating with authorities.
Judkins didn’t specify just how much explosive material was in the barn.
But he says it was enough to do damage to houses about one-third of a mile in any direction.
You can be sure the barn wasn’t “filled”. Based on the information I have he probably had about 1000 pounds of high explosives. Most explosives are within a factor of two of the density of water so you could put that much explosives in a car that is capable of holding five large men. It wouldn’t have filled the barn. I wish I knew where it was on Ferry Point Road. If it was actually greater than 320 feet of the road or 800 feet of inhabited building (halve that if it was in the woods out of sight of the buildings or road) then the distances were acceptable according to ATF regulations. But it doesn’t sound like he had an appropriate storage magazine for the materials. [heavy sigh]
Uncle gives us the all the info available from the NRA-ILA on H.R. 4900 the “Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Reform and Firearms Modernization Act of 2007.” I just wish Thomas had the actual bill so I could look to see if they reformed any of the explosives stuff that bug me.
Update: Uncle pointed me at a different source which at least is aware of the bills existence. There is still no text of the bill available but it’s a start.
