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SJ

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Everything posted by SJ

  1. That's all you need to say. Although her "only a while back" on Battlestar Galactica was pretty good too.
  2. Very interesting story, a good adult balance of action, humor, and drama. And anything with mobile infantry suits is a win for me, although these suits kind of sucked compared to most (so... probably realistic )
  3. Kinda boring this week until the end. Two single-shot revolver accuracy tests in a row, yawn. And spending 40% of the show on self-guided practice is also a yawn. Good ending contest with the tubes, but the editing was annoying. Didn't help my fav Jamie was knocked out.
  4. Cheat Sheet Hopes of the remaining are Gabby -> Kelly -> Jamie. A real sleeper like Alex or Joe would be good too, they are just out there being quietly competent. The only one I'd be annoyed with winning is Adam, he just drives me crazy. We say we like the shooting-only style but this season has generated about 10% of the talk as the others...
  5. Good episode last week. Always like to see traditional bows, that is on my short list for new hobbies. Gabby was scaring me but pulled through with a very good effort. Love those gatlings. Sad to see Alan Alda go but Jamie is one of my favorites and did have a better plan. "Honey, can I get $25k for a gatling gun? I already reload .45-70!" Hopefully the producers do come up with at least a few new guns and events this year. I can't call it a shoestring budget, and you can claim the all-stars season should revisit the best challenges, but something new would be nice.
  6. Guy uses a clay flipper to lauch a facehugger at the shooter
  7. spoilers . . . . Enjoyed it, especially the scenes in the last quarter - "Welcome to Scotland". Early parts dragged at times and were a bit over-artistic. Gunplay was Bond-standard impractical. Bardem certainly has the creepy badguy role nailed. Needed more skin from Eve and Severine My wife and I were thinking it would have been a hoot to have the Kindaid character played by a disguised Sean Connery I viewed this as Craig's last time as 007, they have rebooted the series back to the new M and Moneypenny. But my opinion has little weight since I thought Timothy Dalton was a great Bond - another one that wasn't afraid to get bloody.
  8. You can definitely shoot something nearly every weekend day as long as you're willing to drive a bit, and some weekday stuff too. New RZR range north of McKinney looks good but having trouble getting out of the gate, and there's rumblings of some other ranges too. Multigun of various flavors a couple times a month plus big stuff like FB3G. I'm frankly burned out on multigun and priced out of the bigger local match entries ($15-$30 per stage really?), but the matches are full and get good reviews, so more power to them. I've cut back to plate matches and only a local fun range instead of the good practice place, and spend my range days mostly taking newbies out from work. For your daily life you need to really check your work and house locations, some commutes can be a real time beating or $$ in tolls, the whole metroplex is an hour across anyways. Depends what your idea of fun is
  9. First off, welcome to Texas. Dallas is the home of a gun show every weekend (sometimes two), but places to actually shoot are getting leaner. Check out dfwshooters.org for the local competition message boards. With your own vehicle and a relatively small collection I would just take them in your vehicle. CCW on you, the others at the bottom of the presumable pile of personal stuff you'll have in the trunk. Hopefully your car will not look like the okies in Grapes of Wrath. When stopping, inside your room is best, but not if it makes a scene getting inside. In a golf bag with a cover works pretty well Shipping to yourself is legal but $$ and problematic since you don't really have a address to receive them unless you know someone or a sympathetic business. I would not want to ship to a hotel and have them sitting in their back room unattended, for example. Pistols need to go overnight IIRC, long guns can go ground, using UPS or FedEx. No USPS unless to/from a FFL. You could ship to a gun shop but I believe you have to transfer them out as if you were buying them. I am not yet up on NFA stuff but there is an ATF travelling form to be filed, check it out. I believe stops are covered as long as you are reasonably en route. Don't know carry rules off hand, check them out state by state to be sure. Texas CHL is pretty easy to deal with. There's a specific sign to watch for if the business doesn't want your money, but it's rare to see. Bars post a 51% sign for no carry. Declare to a police officer if you come in contact and get asked for ID. Lots of government offices off-limits due to courts etc.
  10. I just saw this thread, interesting... I don't have my rulebook with me, do disappearing targets really have to disappear? I have seen notes that certain targets disappear in local written stage briefings to cover movers that don't get 100% covered when at rest. Seems to me you could have a stage where you picked one side or the other, and the WSB just says "All targets are disappearing targets". Go down one side and get hits, the other side is non-penalty misses. Can't remember if failure to engage applies to disappearing ones though, darn I'm slow today. If so cover that with a note as well, or start the stage by throwing a grenade over the wall so that the unused side is all engaged The weird part is the available points would be really high, so the stage is essentially weighted 2x of its normal size since there are twice the targets. I wanted to take this concept even farther. The two sides could even have different numbers of targets. Highest hit factor wins 100% of the available points. The short side may be fewer available points but if you can do it faster... You could do some cool stuff with balancing # of targets, shot difficulty, and distance travelled.
  11. A guy at our club has had that 2 ALPHA plate for over 10 years , I keep asking him when he is going to give it up ?? Now that Texas has the 7-digit plates, I can finally get my usual 1A1M1NS
  12. The KelTec guys have been out at the last two TacPro matches, shooting a KSG. The first time was a bit awkward but this last match they were obviously more practiced and much smoother. For gun games though I think the standard pump user will generally come out ahead just due to the simplicity of reloading. That recessed loading port and the switching is just harder to do in a hurry. If you can load all 14 though, or have to maneuver in small spaces, it would make a difference. Also, don't hang the vertical grip over a barricade lip when shooting slugs, it doesn't like that.
  13. Quoting myself to say the next USPSA multi-gun match is May 26! From Tim:
  14. TDSA range in Ferris is putting on a 3-gun match every 2nd Saturday, check their web page. They've had two now, I haven't been yet, or seen any reviews, so no report on what it's like. The USPSA club at TDSA (very good 4th Saturday pistol match) also does an occasional USPSA multi-gun match. TacPro near Stephenville does a 3-gun tactical match in May and October, you just missed May 5, next one is October 13.
  15. When my dad wants you to sign something, he'll say "Put your John Henry on here".
  16. I'm more than a little annoyed at this episode, and not just for my favorite Chee getting knocked out. Both challenges were boring timed events rather than head-to-head matchups. Chee is a great shooter but doesn't seem as fluid or practiced at moving around and transitioning. When watching the SWAT challenge I commented that Gary looked like he had run a field course in his time, and later did find that Gary is a USPSA shooter in addition to his "renactor" title that History uses for him. Then the speed-unloading parts of the tower challenge. Very silly. It's just a misplaced emphasis, asking the wrong question of what skills are useful and used in the real world. Rapid-firing a sniper rifle to walk rounds into a target is another bad example lately. I'll add "movement with a loaded gun" to my complaint since Season 1 that the TS directors are deathly afraid of showing USPSA-style shooting multiple rounds at multiple targets at speed. I think they believe it would be "too scary" for the public. Other than the carnival zip lines, vehicles, or wheel-thingy from last year, there's only been one occasion where competitors actually shot while moving (the Red eminination challenge where they shot through the port in the moving wall), and it was so controlled as to be laughable.
  17. Quoting myself for a correction, Wiki shows the original Royal Army drill was 12" targets at 300 yards. I'd like to see a period drill book to be sure, but if so my respect just went up about 20 notches for the old Tommies. That's the same 4 MOA range that 3-gun rifle targets often use. So for Top Shot the targets were 3x bigger. I had thought the original drill was 36" targets at 300, so Top Shot using 24" at 200 made sense, at least the same level of precision.
  18. I think with 12 MOA targets like this you could make it work, a pure accuracy challenge would be different. Worth the effort to get a more interesting challenge. Check out Enfields to find two that are similar, then draw lots for who gets which. It would let each shooter set it up the way he liked, too. Set up the two targets to give off a burst of flame or something big with each hit, so both can see how their opponent is doing for more pressure. It is good to see the show finally get some distance to it. Shooting rifles at large targets at 75 and 100 yards is kind of silly for these "expert" shooters, even offhand.
  19. Great team challenge. Enfield challenge was good for being historical, but should have been head-to-head. Kind of lame that they both did relatively poorly, and it was decided on number of shots. Hopefully they will get Ian to do a real mad minute in the Top Guns episode.
  20. I am a traffic engineer and am tremendously excited about the self-driving car. If it works there are so many opportunities from basic stuff like congestion management (freeway traffic automated at Nascar spacing would quadruple capacity) to things like painless car sharing. Having my own personal car is great, but to pay the bills I wouldn't mind renting it out the 90% of the day I'm not using it. It comes back to me when I need it, I don't have to worry about people hot-dogging it or crashing, etc. Many of my colleagues are skeptical, especially in the delicate phase where some are automated and some are not. To be fair there have been many claims in the past, but I think the tech is finally getting there. The crucial point is not the tech but how it gets applied and controlled at the political level. Some other videos can be found on Brad Templeton's page: Google's Robocar Explained Video. Check out the second part of the video on the technical aspects, some interesting stuff on how it "sees" things. I still would like to see more on marging and other judgement scenarios.
  21. I was hating on Alan Alda (Kyle) for most of the show, but after this show and how he solved the Tim problem I am a fan of his. Tim was just way too sensitive, at least what was presented in the team meeting wasn't worth fussing over. I have been asking for an atl-atl since season 1 so I was happy to see it. What an interesting and subtle technique. Unfortunately with the alternating shots there wasn't much tension in the elimination challenge. I think a head-to-head challenge against balloons or something would have been more dynamic, and gotten even more stress out of the participants (which guy that would help is unclear, both had yips at different times). The team challenge was a cool gun, neat to see a bridge between blackpowder frontstuffers and smokeless breechloaders. Great camera work to see the rifling on the projectile. Unfortunately again by going alternately any tension was solely a result of editing. The show was described as a test of teamwork but with no time pressure who cared how the team worked? At least give them a 2-minute limit or something to clean, aim, load and fire each shot. I would have preferred a 10 or so minute time for each team to shoot as much as they could, best shot on one or most hits on a variety of targets wins. Heck, make that a point-based challenge out to 2000 yards or so, to really show off the cannon. I know this is against my usual request for head-to-head competition, but that would let them dial it in, and really show the team differences in organization reflected in loading speed. I have to assume safety concerns were the reason for much of the slow pace. That doesn't bode well for my idea of each team running a real blackpowder naval cannon for time and accuracy (hey, they already have the ships built for the pirate-theme challenge last episode).
  22. She has been posting over on Arfcom, she seems like a very good person and a real shooter. Hates Hugo Chavez so that's a big plus. This week's review: Team challenge = head-to-head = win Elimination = take turns = only editing tension = fail Can't wait for the cannon next week, looks awesome, although the range seems too short. They need to be going 2000 yards or something historic. I've often thought they should do a blackpowder cannon as a team event, talk about relying on people, but I guess this is the closest they could do without blowing anybody up.
  23. "If you're good enough to shoot a double, you're good enough to spread them out a little so we can score 'em"
  24. Cute video for Firefly fans/nerds: She Don't Like Firefly www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-yHSaP0Dyg (Significant movie spoilers!! If you are sad enough not to have seen it)
  25. Good episode. Fun team challenge, love the BAR. As long as the elimination challenge is head-to-head I nearly always like it. I'm not a fan of Alan Alda but he made his shots when it counted to stay. I was surprised Gabby had trouble with the pistol at the elimination range, when she went and picked it up she looked a lot more familiar with it than some of the other competitors. Just how you can usually tell a competition shooter from an average joe by their gun handling.
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