I’ve been on the road for most of the last 2+ weeks. We went out West to see family, and to do some private training. On the return trip last week, I drove 22.5 hours, straight, through one night and day, slept for about six hours, and then drove 12+ hours straight through the rest of the trip. I had limited Internet on the trip. I managed to get the Patreon articles up the first week, but last week they didn’t get them until today, along with today’s articles. I’ve also not checked emails. As soon as these articles are up, I will start digging through emails. If you have an email you’re waiting for a response to, please have patience. It will probably take me a bit to get through them. John Enjoying your website. Lots if good info from a fresh perspective. I also hold onto my 30-30. I am old and nostalgic. Anyway I have been following Mark Rippetoe and Jim Wendler for a long time. You may want to check out Dan John and a Russian guy named Pavel (kettlebell guy). They have quite a lot of good info on fitness. Andy Baker and Jonathan Sullivan also extend Rippetoe’s work but for older guys. I’ve been reading Dan John longer than Rippetoe, and I’ve been reading Dan, Ripp, and Pavel longer than I’ve been reading Wendler. I just discussed Pavel in a couple of articles on Patreon today, in fact. While his presentation is pretty over-the-top, his science makes sense, to me (but then, I’m not a physiologist. I’ve read a lot, but ultimately, my knowledge is “Bro-Science”), and everything he’s written that I’ve tried has worked out really well for me. —————————————– In reply to comments on the Patreon section: Yes, we as humans aren’t hardwired to look to the sky for predators. However, in my very limited personal experience, drones are less than subtle. One of my wife’s friends had a three day long wedding. Part of this overly elaborate wedding involved drone photography. Imagine for a moment that a flying weed whacker is trying to sneak up on you to take your photo. How close do you think it would get before you looked up and saw it? I think in the future, humans might spot drones before drones spot the humans. I don’t picture a drone getting very close to a hostile armed force before someone takes a successful potshot at it. Would I send a drone with a normal camera to do surveillance? Maybe, but the surveillance would not be covert by any stretch of the imagination, and the drone would be disposable (even if I didn’t want it to be). Maybe if you have 100 acres of wooded land, then knowing precisely where your low flying patrol drone was shot down is exactly what you want. If on the other hand, you wanted to be covert about the drone surveillance then you’d need a camera with optical zoom. The purpose of the drone would not be to help get your camera close to a target, only to get your camera high enough to have a line of sight to the target. The Z30 Camera by DJI is probably good enough to do this. If I add the price of the camera and the drone together, it looks like slightly less than the price of a new car. If information is that important to you, it might be more cost-effective to invest in a network of paid informants first (like Lord Varys from Game of Thrones) The research I’ve done so far tends to correlate with this. I’ve seen drones that went high enough, and were quiet enough to not be noticed with magnification and/or magnified hearing, but they tend to cost multiple thousands of dollars. If Uncle Sugar was paying my bills still, I might not have a problem with that, but thousands of dollars on something that has limited applications…..(fair weather, low or no winds, limited range, etc) is probably not going to pencil out for me. I like the IDEA of an unmanned, aerial FO, but…..what’s my threat matrix look like, and is it worth the cost/benefit payoff? So far, as far as I can tell, the answer to that is no. For me, at least, lots of LP/OP along expected, or likely avenues of approach, combined with patrols covering possible avenues seems to pencil out a lot better. —————————————————————– Is there an AK equivalent to Colt AR ( not too expensive, not too cheap)? Windham Weaponry in Maine makes a fine 7.62×39 AR style rifle. I’ve heard Windham makes decent AR15s, and I know the history of the company, which I dig, but I will point out two issues with this response: An AR in 7.62×39 is NOT an AK equivalent. While I know people who swear “mine works great for me! I’ve never had a misfire!” I’ve never actually seen one that would fire reliably without massive, repeated malfunctions. It’s a feed angle issue, generally. Look at the shape of an AK magazine, and then look at the shape of an AR magazine….Now, if Windham is doing what a couple other companies are doing, and removing the magazine well of the AR, so the AK-type magazine/shape will feed reliably, that’s fine, but that’s also NOT an AR. It’s not an AR or an AK. It’s some post-Cold War bastard love child. ————————————————————— When I was a private, my team leader fixed my flinch with the Ball and Dummy Drill. The shooter remains on the firing line while his assistant loads the gun, one bullet at a time. He loads the gun with either a live round or a snap cap (fake bullet used for training). Obviously the assistant varies and does not set a pattern. It’s so embarrassing to flinch, you fix it quickly. If you have no assistant, dry-fire to build the muscle memory of not flinching. Obviously, I’m intimately familiar with ball-and-dummy. It CAN work, but I’ve seen it not fix anything as many times as I’ve seen it fix flinching and jerking. Ultimately, even with ball-and-dummy, the fix is in just having the willpower to force yourself not to flinch anymore. Dry-fire can help. It’s why we do dry-fire, but it’s also naive to think that your brain doesn’t know the difference between “I loaded this magazine with live rounds,” and “I have an empty gun, because I’m doing dry-fire.” Ultimately, I stand by my previous suggestions, that the best way to cure a “flinch” is to will yourself to quit being a bitch about it, and to grip the gun tight enough that even if you do flinch, the gun can’t move. ————————————————————- Where is the link to your Patreon sign up ? Www.patreon.com/mountainguerrillablog ————————————————————— The reason I no longer have the Ted Benson house is divorce. I have a lesser house now, but a better home(stead)! I’ve been through a divorce. I get it. I’d have given up a Ted Benson house to get rid of the bitch too. —————————————————————— Dies The Fire was refreshing after indulging in more recent survival/prepper fiction. I remember this, every single time I re-read Dies the Fire. ——————————————————————— If you’re wanting to build a log structure I’d recommend NOT hewing the logs. I’ve take a log home building course, and one thing pointed out is that squaring a log off exposes all the layers to decay. Overall I’d suggest the Butt and Pass method, with rebar pins driven through the log and halfway into the one below every 3 ft. Use a Milwaukee Hole Hog to drill a 1/2 in hole through the top log, then drive the rebar pin (length equal to dia of top log + 1/2 dia bottom log) through with an electric demolition hammer. Do not try to keep the pins perfectly plumb, you want them to be at a slight angle. This technique eliminates issues with settling as the logs dry out (yes, use green logs) as logs shrink to center and will “grip” the rebar pins, and due to the slight angle of the rebar the log will be held in place. Check out LHBA (Log Home Builders Association). On the hewing thing…..we discussed this in one of today’s Patreon articles, actually, but I’ve been inside buildings, built with hew timbers, that have stood for 500-1000 years, in daily public use. If you’re using new growth, plantation raised pine, that might be an issue, but good oak or other hardwoods? Meh. I think it’s way less of a problem than supposed. Hell, we’ve got a house, down the mountain from us, that is the original homestead of the fella that started the village. It’s been there since like 1814. They just re-roofed it, and the old couple that own it are getting ready to move into it (it was in daily household use until about 20 years ago, when the last old lady that lived there passed). I wouldn’t do butt-and-pass on any house my name was attached to. First of all, there’s a lot of extra gaps for water to get in between the logs. Second, normal shrinkage, of anything other than kiln-dried and sealed timbers, is going to open those gaps up. I’d also stay far away from anything except absolutely necessary metal-to-wood contact. As the metal changes temperatures, any ambient moisture is going to condense on the metal, and then get absorbed into the wood, leading to rot issues. Check out Charles McRaven’s work, and Ted Benson’s (both of whom I think I’ve recommended before on this blog…and I KNOW I’ve recommended Benson’s work). ———————————————————————- Continue reading...
