Monthly Archives: March 2026

Improving future performance

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So, after the Cavalcade of Fail, it was time to strategize for next weekend. Right off the bat, if the weather is uncooperative, I’ll stay in town. I understand that the apocalypse will not happen on a sunny day, but for right now I’m not taking any more chances than I have to.

So, first order of business is to remediate some of the fails from last weekend. A couple of them were rather standout failures.

The HiLift jack. If I had brought the HiLift jack I would have had a way to ‘winch’ myself out if I hadn’t figured out the winch. The reason I didn’t bring it is because it really didn’t fit into the SxS in any meaningful way. The jack is 5′ long and the SxS is exactly 5′ wide. So, I have ordered a set of brackets to mount the jack across one of the bars on the cage of the SxS. In addition to the HiLift jack, I also have the base plate for it and a few other attachments. I keep chains, tow straps, ropes, and snatch blocks in my Unstuck Kit and used in conjunction with the HiLift jack I think I would have gotten better results than I did just trying to shovel things out with an e-tool.

Speaking of e-tool, I left behind my full size shovel for the same reason I left the HiLift jack behind. And, as with the solution for the HiLift, the solution for the shovel is a rollbar-mounted bracket to hold a D-handle shovel. The Glock e-tool did a really great job and it s a product I recommend, but it is not a substitute for a ‘real’ shovel. To that end, I also ordered up a set of brackets to mount a shovel along one of the roll bars on the cage as well.

Recovery boards. If you don’t know what these are, I suggest familiarizing yourself with them. Its basically a surfboard with a rough cats-tongue pattern to it to provide traction. Beats the crap out of throwing branches, floormats, and passengers under the wheels for traction.

Another failure point was that I broke one of the great commandments of preparedness: I relied on a piece of gear that was unproven and I had not practiced or familiarized myself with. I knew the SxS came with a winch. Thats all I knew. I spent hours digging out the SxS that could have been avoided if I knew where to plug the wired remote into. But…I had never actually hooked it up and tested its function. Unbelievable rookie mistake. I’ll be swapping out the steel cable-of-questionable-age-and-condition for a brand new synthetic rope and carry a spare of the rope as well.

Footwear. I was so excited about getting to take the SxS to the Beta Site that I overlooked all sorts of things…including changing into suitable footwear. The solution is to add ‘Change shoes’ into my pre-trip checklist…and believe me, buddy, there’s gonna be a pre-trip checklist.

I was smart enough to bring my Unstuck Kit, but I need to put in some longer towstraps. And some more clevises (Clevis’? Clevi?) I made a buncha mistakes this last time, but bringing the Unstuck Kit was not one of them. I was able to use the long tow strap that was in the kit to loop to a tree and feed back to the winch hook.

Now, keep in mind, this is a list of what I did wrong. A list of what I did right is a separate list. So if you feel like chiming in with “you should have had x, you should have has y” keep in mind I may have already had those….this is a list of things I didn’t have or do properly.

I’ve spent the last two days researching various gear and ordering it up. Recovery boards will be here today and more goodies throughout the week.

 

Article – Why Every High School Student in Latvia Is Learning to Shoot a Gun

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In addition, both Latvia and Estonia have introduced a compulsory “National Defense Education” for students in secondary school. The syllabus includes military history, marching and drilling, land navigation, first aid, crisis response and weapons handling. Students who want more can spend part of the summer in camp, in uniform.

Of the three counties, Latvia goes the farthest in mandating military training to high school students. In Estonia, the mandatory classroom course is 35 hours. In Latvia, it runs 112 hours over two years.

I wonder if there’s a History and Moral Philosophy component to the sylabus as well.Personally, I see nothing wrong with this sort of instruction. I think there should be an ‘opt out’ option if someone doesn’t want to partake of this training, but otherwise I see no problem with it. Coupled with some strong educational and historical emphasis on liberty and duty, I think it would only create better, more responsible citizens.

I find it interesting that states that were formerly under the heel of the Communists take very pro-active steps to prevent it from happening again (looking at you, Poland) while in this country we have people earnestly telling us that socialism just ‘hasn’t been done right’. Yeah, one or two more genocides and I’m sure we’ll have it all worked out, comrade.

Smallbore rifle practice in a converted school hallway. Those were the days.

And why stop at smallbore? Local varsity indoor RPG championship winner …two years running.

It’s easy to make fun of Starship Troopers if you’ve only seen the horrible movies, but if you read the book theres some very interesting discussions about civilian vs. citizen, duty, liberty, and a few other topics that are worth examining.

 

So much fail

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Well, the plan was to head up to the Beta Site in the side by side this weekend and change the camera batteries, add more cameras, and set up the game feeders. That was the plan.What happened was a cavalcade of fail. Lessons to be learned, yeah. But I’d really rather not have the fail.

So, starting at the top……

First thing was to rent a trailer to haul the side by side to a starting point for the journey. Okay, lets get that taken care of.

That part seemed to work okay. Gassed the thing up, loaded my gear into the truck, loaded the side by side on the trailer, and hit the highway. That part seemed to go okay. Got to my exit, pulled off, and onto the dirt road leading to the Beta Site.

Now, the road to the Beta Site covers a distance of between ten and twenty miles. (Obviously I need to be a tad vague. You understand.) Getting off the interstate, I had no idea of the road conditions ahead. Coulda been solid and dry. Coulda been muddy and rutted. Since I didnt want to go out there with a rented trailer and have a bad experience, I figured I’d just drop the truck and trailer at the exit and continue on with the side by side (now abbreviated to SxS). So it gets unloaded, gear is transfered into it from the truck, and we’re off. The road starts out as dry but rutted, and as altitude gains it becomes wet, muddy, and rutted. So far the SxS handles it like a champ. Im pleased. On the way up, we pass, of all things, this poor bastard:

Its a dead baby moose. Don’t ask me, I have no idea. I wasn’t about to stop and play Quincy M.E. on it. It hadn’t been picked apart by predators yet, but it was also clearly soaked through which makes me wonder if it had just been revealed under melting snow. Regardless, moving on.

So as elevation increases, there’s more snow. I made it to the switchback that has foiled my last several attempts to get up there and made it through just fine. At this point, though, while the switchback would have been doable in my truck the rest of the road definitely would not have worked out. But…the SxS continued on.

Finally, I get to the ‘driveway’ from the ‘main road’ that goes onto the property. It is, of course, under snow and has no signs of activity.

And this is when things become…frustrating. The SxS did a marvelous job on the rutted snowy roads. Shouldnt have a problem with this, right?

Well, not so much. And here’s where the whole adventure flew off the rails. See, the carrying capacity of the SxS is smaller than that of my truck, As a result, I left a few things behind…like my Hi-Lift jack and full size shovel. I still had my tow straps, rope, shackles, pulleys, and everything I’d need to whip up a z-rig to try to pull things out but it was high centered on the snow. Didnt have a shovel, but did have a Glock e-tool. Guess that’ll have to do. But it didn’t. Spent about three hours trying all sorts of machinations but the simple fact was the tires were not even touching the ground. It was high centered.

Now, there was a winch on the front of the SxS but the direction that was needed was backwards, not forwards. But, perhaps I could pull forward and then dig out the space behind me. Here’s where SuperMegaFail #1 comes into play. There is, indeed, a winch on the front of the SxS. The cabled remote for it is in the glovebox. Had I ever used it before? Nope. Did I even know if it worked? Nope. And most importantly, did I know where the heck the frakkin’ socket for the remote was? Nope.

So without a winch to offer assistance, it was shovel, throw branches under the wheels, hook up pulleys and try pulling, etc. This went on for about three hours. I was starting to think spending the night out there might be in order. I had gear for that, but wasnt looking forward to it. And, by the way, no cell phone out there.

As I was sweating to death and getting soaked in snow trying to dig out the SxS, my brain started turning. I had examined the winch closely and saw no socket for the remote, therefore the remote had to be somewhere in the SxS. Looking everywhere, found nothing. But…the socket would be somewhere close to the driver since if one person was using it, they’d want to be near the steeering controls as they use the winch, right? So I really got into the details and, surprise, found the socket tucked into the side of one of the console compartments on the dashboard. Hard to find, indeed.

So, would it work? Turns out, yes. Now we were getting somewhere. Put a tow strap around a tree about thrity feet in front of the SxS hooked  the cable to the winch and started pulling. The SxS heaved forward and up, clearing the spot it had previously been in. Having given my self some room, I could do a little back-n-forth until the thing was back on the tracks it had made coming in.

By the way, the distance from where I was stuck and the cleared ‘main road’? Maybe fifty yards.

So,, now that Im unstuck things are great, right? Nope. It’s now mid afternoon and all my time is gone. I had no time left to do anything and I was way annoyed. I was going to salvage at least one thing outta this trip and that was changing out the battery in the game cam. SuperMegaFail#2 came into play at this point. I had been so busy getting all my gear together, and so excited to go up to the Beta Site, that I forgot to change my shoes. So, there I am, post-holing though snow that, at time, was up to my crotch and I’m doing it in tennis shoes. My level of irritation was off the charts at this point.

So, I get the battery changed and head back to the SxS. The trip down and back to the trailer was uneventful but I was furious with myself for the failure that could have been completely avoided with better planning. The SxS did well, although by the end of the adventure there was mud and dirt everywhere.

Got back to town, dropped the SxS at the storage unit, returned the trailer, unloaded the truck, got something to eat, and then passed out from exhaustion. Today I am sore and achy from all that exertion.

When I returned the trailer I told them Id need it again next weekend. Having Learned My Lesson, I fully intend on making next weekend what this weekend should have been. And I will be doing a lot of things differently….which will be the subject of the next post. Sort of a ‘lessons learned’ thing.

 

What to store

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Caching guns is always a tricky business because any gun that you hide under a rock somewhere is highly susceptible to not being there when you need it. Because of that heightened possibility of loss, its tempting to make your off-site cache of boomtoys using guns of..shall we say…’lesser value’. Personally, I think its a false economy. So, I’m wondering what to store away at the Beta Site, secure in its little burial vault, until that day when I show up, ‘socially naked’ as they say in ‘Pallas‘, and need to heel myself against whatever chased me to the Beta Site to begin with.

On the one hand, it’s nice to be ready for anything. On the other hand, there needs to be a good measure of practicality and realism. I mean, the obvious answer seems to be a rifle of some type (AR,AK,G3) and a Glock 9mm. That seems like a reasonable minimum, I’d imagine. It fits neatly into a Pelican rifle case, isn’t a huge financial risk, and provides a level of security that seems…adequate.

Or, theres Option B which is an AR, Glock, 10/22, and an 870, A veritable Whitmans Sampler of guns. (Really, more like a Charles Whitman Sampler.) The problem there is that you can really talk yourself into ‘needing’ so many arms hidden away that you wind up with a Mel Tappanesque level of hunting guns, defensive guns, working guns, etc, etc.

Security is always a concern. I would think that if you bury something, and you do a good job of it, unless someone saw you bury it anything you’d bury would be safe from unauthorized access. May not be safe from environmental concerns, depending on how well you packed things up, but from security concerns it seems sound.

And, yeah, I’ll probably keep a pistol case with a handful of P95DC’s up there regardless of what I decide. I mean, thats kinda one of the reasons I bought so many of the darn things. But somewhere between “A glock and an AR” and “everything” there’s gotta be a sweet spot. And then theres the whole exercise of extra guns for whomever is coming with you or meets you there. And ammo. And support gear. Starts to add up.

 

Looking at the larger picture

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Its easy to get so wrapped up in my own little projects (namely the Beta Site) that I forget that theres a ‘real world’ out there that is shakily balanced on a tightrope over a big ol’ pit of Not Good.

All of these things going on in the world right now affect me, no two ways about it, but I don’t affect them. I’m too small. As Kosh said, once the avalanche has started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote.

I can’t change the course of the ship, all I can do is be prepared for when it hits the iceberg. The key to stoicism, as I understand it, is summed up as ‘You cannot control external events or other people’s behavior, but you have total control over your thoughts, emotions, and actions in response’. So, while I can do nothing to change the current global situation, theres a ton of stuff I can do to control my response to it.

What is that response? Same as it’s been to any potential crisis – food, ammo, fuel, meds, cash, gold, silver, information. I’ve already got a decent amount of food on hand, but theres never a reason to not have more. Fuel prices are on the upswing, but I still have alot of stored fuel, and I can ride my bike more. Gold and silver are coming down and I plan on returning to a weekly puchase paln to dollar-cost-average.

And, amidst all this, I plan to get a basic, foundational stash of gear and supplied up to the Beta Site in the next month or two so that if, Crom forbid, I have to leave my primary residence I at least have a chunk of dirt to hide at rather than become a refugee.

My mental bandwidth is so preoccupied with the Beta Site these days that I often overlook the fact that there’s an alarming amount of tension going on in the world right now. But, as I said, I cant do anything about it except to be ready. Mayhap I need to dial back my spending on things for the Beta Site and divert some resources to things like more fuel storage to offset current price volatility, more silver and gold to hedge against the resulting economic uncertainty, and a tad more storage food ‘just in case’.

 

More denial

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Fate really does not want me getting up to the Beta Site.

It dumped a couple feet of snow up there the other day. Today? Darn near 60 degrees up there and the snow is melting fast. The forecast is to be almost 70 degrees this weekend. And this would, normally, suggest that this weekend might be a good one to head up there. And I was absolutely willing to do that. RIght up until my truck decided to let me know that some attention to the brakes was definitely in order.

My original plan was to go rent a 6×12 trailer at Uhaul, throw the sidebyside in the back, head to the Beta Site, park the truck/trailer at the bottom of the mountain, and take the sidebyside to the property. Unfortunately I’m not hauling a trailer full of ATV on the highway with a truck that is having brake issues.

So, truck goes in Monday for work. I am hopeful that the next weekend will have similar weather.

There are a buncha things I need to do up there when I finally get there. Most importantly, I need to replace the batteries in the trailcam. After that I need to install the other three trailcams, put in the game feeders, take some pictures and GPS coords, and look at some possible cache sites. A full day. Just….gotta get up there.

And I’ll use the weekend to wargame the things I’d like to pre-position up there for those ‘just in case’ moments. The summer promises to be very interesting and busy. I foresee spending pretty much every weekend up there. But, for now, i’d really like to get up there if circumstances would just line the heck up.

Fun gun

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You guys may recall that back in December I came into a deal for a TC Encore with a 7mm Rem. Mag. barrel and a .50 muzzleloader barrel. Neither barrel did much for me, but they came with scopes I wanted and I figured I’d eventually trade into some barrels that were more useful for me.

And…that happened. Traded out for two barrels – a 26″ .308 Win. barrel which will cover pretty much everything in Montana and fits into my logistics table. The other barrel was a 16″ .357 Magnum threaded barrel. Well, it’s threaded so….lets order up a tri-lug mount, thread it on there, and see what fits.

My Dead Air Mojave9 goes right on the end. And, before you ask, yes, a 9mm suppressor will work with a .357″ caliber cartridge like the .38/357. Some heavy (200 gr.) subsonic .357 loads should make this a very interesting gun. Most .38 Special is natively subsonic, so just dropping .38 Special in there, along with this suppressor, should result in a rather quiet package.

Purpose? Well, let’s ignore the obvious and dark answer. Beyond that, it’d be a dandy little number for quietly popping deer or smaller game at less than a hundred yards. (Although I have a couple .300 Blackout bolt guns that will also do that.) It’d make a nice combo package with one of my GP-100’s out in the woods.

Once I got it dialed in (4x Leupold) I started shooting for group. I only shot on paper at fifty yards because the drop at a hundred is gonna be pretty interesting. But, three-shot groups that you could cover with a half-dollar were the norm. Threw on the suppressor and shot some .38 Specials and managed a cloverleaf. So, fun gun indeed.

Food storage…literally II

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A couple of posts back I asked for opinions on food that was suitable for long-term storage but would be impervious (or at least highly resistant) to any issues from a freeze/thaw cycle. The premise was that you make it to your remote hideout which has been left unmanned and unheated for the last several months into the winter. What food you have stored there must be long-term, obviously, but it has to be of a kind that is not going to have a problem with being frozen and thawed and couple times over, and has to be packaged in a manner that is also conducive to surviving that sort of situation. The things people came up with in comments was interesting, and while technically they might have been correct they didn’t really grasp the nature of what I was asking. The two most suggested food items were pemmican and peanut butter. Thats great and all, but imagine the scenario that would unfold: you make it to your hideyhole after hours of driving, ditching your vehicle, hiking in the snow for another hour and arriving soaking wet and cold….but alive. You change clothes from the bin of stored clothing you kept on  hand for just such an occasion, fire up the small woodstove to keep you warm, and break into your stored food supply for the next few days. You scarf down some pemmican and peanut butter, feel the energy return to your tired frame, and after making sure your gear is secured, you hit the rack for a some sleep. Next day. Whats for breakfast? Pemmican and peanut  butter. Whats for lunch? Pemmican and peanut butter. Whats for dinner? Pemmican and peanut butter.

You’re absolutely right, I asked for foods that were long-term and could be stored through freeze/thaw cycles without unacceptable damage. What I should have said, it seems, is “what sort of menu could you put together with foods that were long-term and could be stored through freeze/thaw cycles without unacceptable damage”. Let me give an example:

Breakfast: Instant oatmeal, dehydrated eggs, dehydrated hash browns, instant coffee, orange drink, pancakes from mix, etc.

Thats really more along the lines of what I was thinking when I asked that question.

Security cam planning

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So, my plan is to have the gametrail cams (and for the sake of brevity we shall just call them trailcams from here on in) positioned at a few strategic points around the Beta Site for when I’m not there. Problem is, they rely on periodic battery swaps or recharging, and require a cell signal to send me updates and info. Now, I’m good with this for the time being. I picked up the solar panel and lithium battery pack to try out and I’ll be setting that up on my next trip up there. The ultimate plan, however, is, once something gets built, to put in a multicam DVR system like I have here in town. The drawback, of course, is going to be the power requirements. I currently run nine cameras here at the house. Each camera has its own 12v power requirement. Additionally, the DVR runs on AC power as does the computer monitor I use to watch the feeds. The ideal is to have a camera setup that goes to StarLink so I can monitor things remotely, including one camera pointed at a screen full of metrics like temperature, battery charge, etc, so I can make sure things are running smoothly when Im not there. Thing is, there is no power up there. Zero. So any system has to run on whatever power can be made available.

My understanding is that things will be more efficient if I can run everything natively on DC. (“Natively”, in this context, means that the devices were originally made to run on DC rather than AC devices that are running on AC that is coming from a DC transformer. Such arrangements, as I understand it, are not efficient.)

The cameras are DC, which means they can be run off of a battery system. And I can run a laptop monitor off of DC as well. (More on that in a few paragraphs.) StarLink, also, can be run on DC. So that leaves the one holdout being the DVR itself. I have to go hunt down if such things are available. But I also need to do some math and calculate what kind of power draw running, say, nine cameras 24/7, a DVR, a monitor, and StarLink will accrue. Then I need to imagine a battery system capable of running that type of thing and factoring how long it can run before the  batteries get to , say, 50% charge. And then its a matter of calculating what kind of power input from a solar panel system is required and than scaling that to the anticipated need.

Perusing the internet has shown that many people are using PoE (power over ethernet) systems. It appears, though, that these require 48v and since power will be at a bit of a premium it may mean that a less modern 12v system of cameras and DVR will have to be the way to go.

On the bright side, I think I may have figured out one part of the equation. I was wondering about powering a computer monitor and I remembered that portable laptop monitors were a thing. I picked one up and and figured that since they were designed for use with a laptop, which is a portable DC device, perhaps I could have it simply run off a laptop-type battery.

Turns out, the particular one I picked up, runs off USB-C and mini-HDMI. Googled the specs on it and it says that it uses 9.4 watts of power. Asking Google what size battery would be required to run a 9.4 watt device for 24 hours gave me the answer that “To run a 9.4-watt device for 24 hours, you need a battery with at least 225.6 watt-hours (Wh) of capacity ( ). For practical usage, accounting for efficiency losses, you should use a 12V 20Ah Lithium (LiFePO4) battery or a 12V 40Ah Lead-Acid battery.”

Hmm. Well, a while back I picked up a large lithium power pack to charge my phones and radios. Specifically, this guy. The listing says 288watt-hours. So, in theory, one 24-hour cycle of use would reduce the battery by about 78%. Thats fine, I’ll worry about capacity later, right now I want to see if this will work as-is without any weird messing around with things.

Well, yeah, of course I dithered out the images from the security cams. What are you, new here?

So, I unplugged the HDMI-HDMI cable from my DVR and plugged in the HDMI-miniHDMI cable that came with the laptop monitor. Then I grabbed a USB-C-to-USB-C cable and plugged one end into the monitor and one end into the battery pack. And it worked.So thats one part of the equation that I at least have a handle on.