They're Baaack...

This is one of my favorite times of the year, when the Collings Warbirds return to Moffett Field like the swallows to Capistrano.
This year we again have the last remaining B-25 Liberator Witchcraft paired with the evergreen B-17G Nine-O-Nine, and much to our delight this year a new song-bird accompanies them, the lovely and throaty B-25J Mitchell Tondelayo, fresh from her engagement off Rabul and the coast of New Caledonia.
We look forward to this evening's Six-O'Clock Symphony when they take flight with paying ($425-per) guests while we earthbound listeners get to enjoy the concert-roar of multiple Pratt & Whitney R-1830 engines, and Wright R-2600's.

My dad recounts an experience late in the War when he got leave from Annapolis and hitched a ride part-way cross-country in a B-25 Mitchell, to see his Mom at home in San Jose. "That thing was so loud, you couldn't even hear yourself think!" He took his leave from the aircraft somewhere in Nebraska, and continued on by train... With the engines as close as they are to the body, and with open exhaust ports, the B-25 is one of our Nation's true WWII noise and vibration-makers - such wonderful stuff!
The original Tondelayo artwork was carried by a B-25 Mitchell operated by the 500th Bomb Squadron, 345th Bomb Group, one of the famed Air Apaches that terrorized the Japanese in the Pacific as described in Warpath Across the Pacific, the Illustrated History of the 345th Bombardment Group During World War II.
The original b-17G "Nine-O-Nine" was assigned to combat on February 25, 1944. By April 1945, she had made eighteen trips to Berlin, dropped 562,000 pounds of bombs, and flown 1,129 hours. She had twenty-one engine changes, four wing panel changes, fifteen main gas tank changes, and 18 Tokyo tank changes (long-range fuel tanks). She also suffered from considerable flak damage.
The original Ford Motors-produced B-24 Witchcraft represents the most famous B-24 ever, flown by the 467th Bomb Group in the 8th Air Force out of Rackheath, England in 1944. On April 10, 1944, Witchcraft saw its first combat mission, and over 130 combat missions were flown with not one loss of life - the last mission on April 25, 1945.

This is a belated Memorial Day celebration - they're here till the 5th. Today while I was there an incredibly spry 85-yr. old former B-25 pilot was walking (bouncing, more like a 20-yr old.) around the plane with a buddy of his, telling all kinds of amazing stories from his European Theater experience bombing bridges in the Brenner Pass. Amazing stuff, I'm going back.

More on the old KTM 300

It's a '97 MX/C. And oh yeh, this is what she looked like when I had some minor sponsorship and was trying to compete in enduro racing:

I was lucky to get the sponsors because I wasn't very good, but it was also a marriage of convenience that simply afforded me a minor discount on boots, pants, a jersey and a helmet. In turn my responsibility was to show up at races with stickers slathered on everything, including my truck.
When the season was over, given my points placing they were satisfied to let me go. All that time away traveling to events and being self-centered on this goal-thing was also taking a toll on my primary relationship, and my unspectacular results convinced me that what I enjoyed about off road riding wasn't the racing. It was great being outdoors and enjoying nature in the hinterland, but not on a schedule or in a points chase.
The Suomy helmet was and still is nice, but the Diadora boots now hurt my foot. The right foot - the left is fine. They are wonderfully made Italian boots with a nice heavy gaiter that closes and keeps water out, and massive protection easily as good as any Alpinestar. I wound with a pair a half-size too small for my size twelve-something ground pounders - but it was the biggest boot in the weird Euroweenie sizes the importer/sponsor had at the time. Once after a 90-something-mile ride up in the Idaho Sawtooths a few years ago, I was in so much pain that I tossed them angrily into the trees after we finally reached out vehicles. Fortunately another rider retrieved them so I could ride again - but the day after that when everybody went riding I went fishing down by a creek, my feets needed a break and some nice cold water. I never catch anything when I fish and this was no exception.

Happy Memorial Day

Seems like "happy" is a weird thing to say on Memorial Day.
Anyhow I'm going riding.
Oh yeh, the rip-snorting earth-shattering KTM 300 isn't so clean and hasn't been in a while, that was just after her bath. UPDATE: Since nobody cares, I'm editing out the shiny-bike picture. Here's what she really looks like mostly.

The riding was good, a lot of feet-up stuff in the single track, a bunch of rocks, and not too much dust.
UPDATE STUFF: Tracy got herself stuck in the middle of a long hill when the Pampera's carb-float starved her out. Mike needs to adjust that, but the quick fix was to flip the little bike onto reserve.
I chased Mike around Metcalf, and Cindy's boyfriend got himself reacquainted with riding after a 9-year layoff. It took a while since he had an Iron Piglet before, an XT350 four-stroke no-suspension slug-slow beheamoth. That's is quite a bit different riding experience from the thoroughbred, well-suspended (Ohlins), Gas-Gas 300 two-stroke that Mike loaned him.
He was a bit anxious in the beginning when the bike would rapidly pick up speed in 2nd gear when it came on the pipe so quickly that he was afraid to upshift. We managed to get him to click-up and ride it in 3rd, lug the motor down, and abuse the clutch - it's a juice clutch and takes the abuse - my KTM's cable actuated 18th Century mechanism doesn't fare as well at the end of the day and gets grabby, just when my hand gets tired hangin' on - and that can lead to OTE's - Off Trail Excursions...

C-ya.


Update: Ibuprofen is good for aching muscles.

The NPM cleaned-up

So here's a quick shot of the Postal Meter carbine, click to enlarge.



Next we'll see how she shoots.

Sharp...!

UPDATE-UPDATE: Damn and blast! Simple errors in addition by the scorer, now corrected, reveal a 396 - not a 406. Still only a Marksman. More work to do.

UPDATE:

The rain that fell Friday afternoon and evening took a break for us down at the range, and with a light turnout we decided to speed the process - so I set up on targets #3 (sighters and off-hand) and #4 (rapid seated) for the first stages.

...Shooter   Woo-hoo I shot a 406!
Compared to the previous match...(below)


I managed to keep my rapid-seated 9-group a little closer together (except for the one that down there who wanted to be a 10):



And during rapid prone more of 'em in the black:



And in slow prone more in the middle in the black...

All with the humble Remington core-lokt 150-grainers.

The scores are unofficial still, but Maryanne (who cares about Ginger?) was over by the cleaning bench toting up the scores, when I took my rifle there to run some patches and Hoppes #9 through it.
Making conversation she spoke up and said, "Everybody is shooting really well today, better than last month!" I asked about my targets she said that the guy shooting on numbers 3-4 had shot a 406. Woo-hooo!! I made my goal, and sooner than anticipated too - Sharpshooter! I was all excited and told the Eric, the club President who replied, "That's great! Now you are back at the bottom of the stinkin' barrel! Gotta break 450 next to make Expert..."
This old 1944 gun qualified.

Thank you, Mr. John Cantius Garand.

150-grain Mystery Spire-Points.

The index card only goes up to three, but this is the fourth batch I'm working on.
The one in the middle is a mystery 150-grain spire-point. Remington? They were donated by my shooting-mentor, and came loose in a cardboard box - I've got over a hundred of 'em so I thought I'd give 'em a shot - no pun intended.
On the left are the sweet and chubby Nosler 168-grainers and on the right the superbly lean 155-grain Sierra Palma Match.
But I thought I'd try this homely one. Sparked with a Remington #9-1/2 primer and loaded with 46 grains of H4895 it should rattle down the barrel at about 2700fps. I don't have a chronograph yet, so can't say for sure.
It's kinda what the Garand was built around - or visa versa.

Priming...

It be gettin' a bit tiresome.

Mystery Campus

Down the street and around the corner and across the freeway overpass, in what was the original heart of Silicon Valley where National Semiconductor stood and Shockley spun-off his cadres of discontented engineers spawning more innovation, there stands a new campus.

They have their own block-long tree-lined driveway with a flagpole at the end. On either side are parking lots and buildings.


With a Big Flag on the flagpole in front of their headquarters which they call The Quad. The flagpole-street is in the middle of a block, and at the other end they have their own traffic-light onto Whisman street.
It's gotta be a bunch of Stanford guys.
The single-noun named company expresses a mysterious verbiage of gobbledygook and business technology words, ... solutions for automated software quality management, performance testing, application management, and IT governance .... to optimize the quality, performance, and availability of their existing applications to ensure they are delivering the value expected ... committed to helping customers optimize the business value of information technology...
Whatever.
With some wicked scary job-descriptions, I didn't see any jobs that I could apply-for anyhow.

Fighting 101st T-Shirts!

Thanks to Combs we are notified of the Freedom Dog t-shirts!
They have Pay-Pal setup and I bought one.

Carnival de la Cordito Numero Cincuenta Nueve!

If we don't get immigration reform soon, that's how this is gonna look - if it still exists under a patriarchal benevolent Oligarchy of seven corrupt Familia who run (and ruin) the country.
Ha, if Feminists think, spout, and spew that it's bad for 'em now, wait till they get a load of the REAL Partiarchy... On your knees with the scrub-brush!!

Anyhow, go check it out!

Chrysalis

Before:

After:

Emerging from the crusty cocoon, a Monarch Postal Meter spitting-butterfly displays its I-cut pattern of Trimble orange and black...

Yeh there's still a bunch of work to do but it's a lot better now with all the crud cleaned out!

Dug this out of my Carbine

The recoil plate was stuck in there with some kind of yellow-orange glue-like stuff. It appears an early attempt at bedding, that finally softened up with some heat from

a big-ass old soldering iron stuck in a vise - leaving scraps and crust attached to the cut-out in the carbine stock. The wooden stock seeped some centuries-old oil while the jammed screw sat resting on the tip of the iron gathering heat into it.
On the side a tiny mark was struck, PR-B that indicates the recoil-plate originally belonged to an IBM 3.6-million carbine. But nothing in Carbine World stayed static or in its place for long, as behind-the-lines REMF's who were responsible cleaning a mass of interchangeable parts, threw everything together into a tank and grabbed parts and pieces as necessary to reassemble from whatever pile of clean stuff emerged. It's believed by many with some certainty that there are really no original as-built Carbines, with all their original parts, actually remaining - maybe .001% survived - and they were Presentation Carbines for the civilian bigwigs at Rock-Ola , Underwood, Inland, Standard Products, and the like.

Carnival of Cordite #58

Despite enormous pressures, Gullyborg is again hosting our beloved Carnival! Go check it out!

Practice Match - watching the hills turn brown.

Saturday was a practice that I was eagerly anticipating, what with those shiny little 168-grain Nosler gems prepared to lob with astringency by means of H-4895 at insolent stands of paper and my sighters proved their mettle with three nines and an X...
Alas my offhand sucked as usual with only a smattering of visible hits (scoring hasn't been posted yet) and then disaster struck during the rapids - having failed to triple-check it, my sight screw loosened itself and dropped the ghost-ring and my ghost-of-a-chance to the bottom, and I shot each glistening round into the dirt... DAMN!!
With the virgin target staring back at me blankly, I realized my error and wound the screw in tight and clicked fourteen clicks back up to elevation.
DOUBLE-DAMN!! There went any possibility of a good score. Now I was just shooting for practice, for real.
The prone rapids went off well, with a nice cluster of Nines's and a grouping in the Seven-Six ring.
I sighed with some consolation and relief, gulping down some water. It was getting hot and the sun beat down on the hills that seemed to be turning from green to brown before our eyes.

In prone I went up and down.
First shot came the Seven at 11-O'clock, then the Nine about 9-O'clock, then an Eight cutting that ring at 6-O'clock low.
I was diving to the bottom but I stopped, then shot up to the Seven at 12-O'clock high, nearly opposite the last shot on the target and then bumping up a bit next shot to the Six above it, before reversing course again and retreating down into the center, right by the X. I'd found my place and then spent shots mucking around in the black Nines a bit...
The best part about it was I didn't throw any Fives or visible misses, in fact only two shots were out of the black.


UPDATE: With scores posted, in the rapid-seated stage at lest I scored a 37, so some 5's and a few 6's took hits...

Join the Fighting 101st!

The chicken hawks have come home to roost, and you liberal chickens better watch out!

Thanks to Combs Spouts Off I figured out just where to get the kewl service patch too:

As Combs notes: Certain elements of the anti-war left -- the 98% who can't or won't use rational argument and thus give the rest of them a bad name -- like to sneer at people like me as "chicken hawks" and "fighting keyboardists." Their point, apparently, is that the military, not elected civilians, should determine U.S. foreign policy.
Or maybe their point is that if you oppose crime, you're morally obligated to join the police force.

Or maybe it's just that calling people names is much easier and way more fun than critical thinking.

That's a chicken hawk on the right.
Pretty cool bird, actually. Not really much of an insult. [Yeah, I've heard of the urban slang term "chickenhawk" (one word); but that's not this chicken hawk (two words). So there.]

Cool bird, cool objective, stupid hippies - sic 'em!

As Frank explains in his FAQ

Q. So why do supporters of the war get called "chicken hawks" like its an insult?
A. Well, the short answer is some people are morons.

Q. What's the long answer?
A. Back when man first started to learn to use tools, certain spears were made using...

Q. What's the medium-length answer?
A. Many liberals, in their diminished mental capacities, like to have a word or phrase to shout over and over in lieu of the mental preparedness needed for an actual debate of issues. Fighting tyranny is a complicated issue, and, rather than admit they’re on the side of tyranny, many liberals will try to avoid debate altogether in any way possible.

Q. Liberals seem to use the phrase "chicken hawk" against people who aren't in the military? Do liberals want a government where decisions are only made by those in the military?
A. No, they hate the military.

Q. But they say they support the troops!
A. And you can train a parrot to say the same thing. That doesn't mean anything.

Go you bird of prey!

More bits from the old NPM

While I'm working to clean up the stock (steam out a lot of little dents, but otherwise leave it in peace) here are the just-for-fun detail and type-bits:

Here's the "N" on the bolt, the "14" indicates a sequence in construction but I'm not sure how to date it. It's a flat, type-II bolt. Inside the bolt lives an Inland type-III firing pin marked "I-I", assisted by a Winchester type-III extractor with a tiny "IW" on it.

The H in the shield on the milled type-II rear sight the is the stamp of Hemphill Mfg. Co., and the sight is consistent with an Ogden Arsenal re-build profile.
From reading-around in the Carbine Forum I learned that Hemphill also made butt-plates for the M-4 carbine bayonet.

The type-IV inland slide has the heart-cut lug pattern.

Textbook Indoctrination

Thanks to Difster and my laziness I have a ready-made post, complete with picture!


California legislators would make even the best Cold War era propagandist proud. The social-engineers of the California Senate Judiciary Committee have already approved SB1437 which mandates that California schools buy books that portray "the sexual diversity of our society," which was also approved by the Senate Education Committee.

The bill would, among other things, remove those ugly and biased terms such as "mom" and "dad" from the text books in favor of sexually unbiased terms for the custodians of our young Cadre-Comrades. The bill would also require that students be taught history related to "the contributions of people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender to the economic, political, and social development of California and the United States of America."

Naturally gays portrayed in this history will almost certainly be leftists, and whatever quality of culture they posses that makes them worthy of mention, whatever creative, artistic, or scientific skill they contribute will naturally be attributed to their Gayness. Sheesh. For the purposes of equality, should everyone mentioned in the history books either be labeled as hetero, homo, or whatever-sexual? Wouldn't that be fair? Wouldn't equality demand that we also teach the history of straight people? While we're at it, lets teach the sexuality of everything! Electricity for example! Gay, Straight or Bi-??

What can you do? Well here's what. Call the office of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and use the automated system to register your protest. I don't care where in the country (or world) you live, please do this. It's possible they filter out the votes from people calling from non-California area codes but try it anyway. It's also likely that they filter out multiple votes from the same number so try to call from a variety of phone numbers as possible. Call all you want.

Call - 916-445-2841
Press 2 to voice your opinion on legislation
Press 1 for Senate Bill SB1437
Press 2 to oppose the legislation

That's all you have to do. Make sure you listen to the prompts though in case they change things.

You can also use this form to send an email. Make sure you reference SB1437 and that you are opposed to it.

I have never asked folks to repost anything on your own blogs, but I stole this by authority of the writer, and with a small bit of copy-editing suggest you do likewise.

Feel free to simply copy and paste this post in to your own blog with or without proper attribution. California, because we are such a large purchaser of textbooks affect the books that are purchased by other states. Don't think that just because you're not in California that you won't be affected by this if it passes. Do this even if you don't have kids, it could affect us for generations.

What I wrote in the email: I am so strongly opposed to this Socialist piece of legislative dung it makes my head hurt.
This kind of propagandizing of educational material would make even the best Cold War era Stalinist jealous.
The bill would, among other things, remove those ugly and biased terms such as "mom" and "dad" from the text books in favor of sexually unbiased terms for the custodians of our young Comrades.
It's unambiguously anti-Family, destructive and degenerative, and has no place in education or in California.

Give it a try.

Kroil - saves toil and trouble.

May First - an ancient Spring-Day full of yearning, celebrating the turning of the Seasons, turned into a boring red-flag marching-and-missile-truck day by the equally boring and unimaginative Communists. These deadened people have only the power of their mind-numbing rhetoric and incessant chanting-drivel, to take the fun out of anything. Bah.
I went looking for Kroil today, but not even Olander's had it - why? The weather was fine and warm, it was a beautiful clear day. A couple of firetrucks with their lights flashing were parked in the parking-lot of a business down the road, and a bunch of employees stood around chatting to each other - those were the only people I saw not-working.