Weapons Man

Newspapermen always think that their country is the only one that has some particular type of human depravity. But some percentage of people everywhere are depraved. The Russians can congratulate themselves that they’re now putting them in prison, like Tamara Samsonova, instead of making them General Secretary of the Communist Party, like Iosip Dzhugashvili.

In a major exercise in and off the coast of Kaliningrad Oblast — occupied Königsberg, East Prussia, ethnically cleansed of Germans by Russians with one hell of a score to settle in 1945 — Russian Naval Aviation (Aviatsiya –VMF) ran an exercise that included live fire exercises by land- and sea-based maritime aircraft and crews from the Baltic, North, Black Sea and Pacific Fleets of the Russian Navy. Mi-24 “Hind” and Ka-27 “Hormone” helicopters fired guns and practice torpedoes, while Su-24 swing-wing bombers and An-26 multirole transports dropped bombs.

Arrrrrr!

Needed: riser mount for an Aimpoint.
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The last thing that passed through his mind seems to have been a roller coaster gondola, at approximately 57 miles per hour. Previous to that, what passed through his mind was some version of, “The hell with these ‘restricted area’ signs! I’m going in after my cell phone.”

Two USAF operators perished in a parachuting accident at Eglin AFB.

Digital files for the Liberator pistol have been ruled a casus belli by an anti-gun judge.

We’ve got a spray date with what looks like an acre of sheet metal this afternoon. It’s really just the parts for the fuselage tail cone of the RV-12 (this is the part from behind where the crew sits to the tail stinger of the airplane. We’ve already completed most of the fins that attach to this, except the rudder, which has driven us nuts with bent rivets. We’re starting to suspect the rivets should be -3.5 or -4, not -5 parts, and the excess length is why our rivets are bending. As recounted before, we’re priming all the internals in the interests of corrosion resistance. Here at stately Hog Manor, you can smell the sea when there’s an onshore breeze, and our planned test and basing airports are just as close to the Atlantic.

It’s been another busy week and for the first time in a long time, we were actually a couple days ahead for most of the week. We still managed to get the usual posting done, but after a road trip Wednesday, our lead began dwindling until Saturday we actually came up a post short — this one, which is being backdated into place.

Severe Clear was highly recommended by a guy we met at a course. On his say so, we spent an hour and a half on it.

You might ask, “What’s a tractor doing on a busy road like the A7 anyway? Does anybody really need a tractor? Can we ban tractors? Think of the Children!!1!!”

Here, in real time, NDS’s very efficient Mike polishes one of the company’s outstanding retro lowers. Polishing is necessary before blasting, which is done before anodizing, to allow the anodizing to take evenly and not be blotchy.

We’ll cover the usual subjects: Guns, Usage and Employment, Cops ‘n’ Crims, Unconventional (and current) Warfare, and Lord Love a Duck!

Rick Pearlstein likes a red flag, not this one.

Ah, the Emirates. The clean, orderly playground of all Araby. The place where the First World, the Second World, and the unique and special Arab World meet to do business, have fun, and practice that tolerance of one another that’s so hard to find when we all saddle up and go back home.

Maj. John André was tried in September, 1780, by an ad hoc commission of Continental generals. Captured in civilian disguise, his uniform was sent across the line for the trial, but his attire on capture sealed his fate. Yet, the Americans who hanged him held him in great regard. (Painting for the US Army by Don Stivers. Source).

This doesn’t have anything directly to do with the ongoing dick-measuring contest between two large auction houses, but there remains truly a plague of fakes industry-wide. Here are a few reasons we said that:

The article in the Toronto Star is long, detailed — and scathing. It’s hard to say it makes the local preparedness community look weird, because, frankly, we have only the article to go on: maybe it’s completely on the level and they all are weird.

The same animal lovers wigging out over Cecil the late lion are now about to flip their loosely fitted wigs over a yet-to-undergo-anthropomorhosis grizzly sow (scientific name: the entirely fitting Ursus horribilis), who’s about to get the ursine version of the death penalty.