SpecOps and ALICE legacy gear

Posted on by

Ah, the joys of legacy gear. Back in The Day™, and by BITD I mean the mid to late ’80’s, your milsurp gear came in one color – OD – and your attachment system was ALICE. Fastex buckles, MOLLE webbing, and MultiCam were still unknown and not quite ready for prime time. As a result, some of the longer-in-the-tooth survivalists like yours truly tend to have quite a bit of legacy gear laying around.

I mention it because I was trying (and failing) to clean up the mountain of ballistic nylon that is sitting next to my desk. In it was this wonderful little pack from SpecOps. (And, yes, it’s quite overpriced on Amazon.) It’s basically a modernized version of the medium ALICE pack. The medium ALICE pack was capable of being used with or without the frame. (The large ALICE pack, on the other hand, must be used with a frame.) I picked thse packs up years ago on closeout, I believe, so I got a fairly decent deal on them. They were purchased with the notion these would be the packs to keep in the vehicle ‘just in case’.

While the ALICE packs had a lot of flaws, most notably being wildly uncomfortable, their low price and universal availability made them a good choice for tucking a pack away somewhere and not caring what happened to it. The SpecOps bag having compatability with the older ALICE frame was a nice feature for guys who have a buncha old ALICE packs and frames laying around.

As an aside, one of the things I love about the ALICE pack is its ability to be used, with the shelf attachment, to haul jerry cans and ammo crates. Do not underestimate how handy that can be. Would you rather carry 5-gallons of gas by can handle for a mile, or would you rather have it on your back leaving your hands free?

SpecOps isn’t the first outfit to modernize/upgrade the ALICE platform. The guys at Tactical Tailor had their Malice pack for quite a few years. But, ALICE gear has faded into the past and is actually getting a little harder to find as it is awash in the mountains of surplus MOLLE/PALS gear from the last twenty years of military activities.

The new MOLLE packs are, from what I am told, quite the improvement although early generations suffered from frames that tended to be a bit brittle. Being someone who loves gear, I wound up picking one up from the folks at Old Grouch Surplus a few years back. The nice thing about the MOLLE pack is it has a separate internal compartment that holds the military sleep system, which make this a good pack for throwing in the vehicle in the winter when you want to have all that I-guess-Im-gonna-be-here-a-while gear in one place.

By the by, I don’t know if SpecOps is still a going concern or what. Their various social media outlets havent been updated in years, and the selection on their website keeps dwindling. I hope they get some new blood and start putting out more products…I’ve been rather pleased with their offerings.

Anyway, I was putting those packs away and thought it was worth a post.

The circular firing squad

Posted on by

I made the mistake of watching the Democrat debates the other day and was amazed at how virtually all the candidates not only are no longer trying to hide their extreme leftist views, they are actually stampeding over each other to see who can be furthest to the left. It was utterly amazing. Joe Biden actually came out of it looking like the most centrist of the bunch.

There isn’t a single person in that group of idiots I’d feel comfortable having in the White House. Especially that Elizabeth Ocasio-Warren broad. I mean, sure, she’d be our first Native American president, but….healthcare for illegal immigrants? What the hell?

Wasn’t it Napoleon who said to never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake?

I had purchased a few(!) AR’s earlier this year in anticipation of reselling them for a healthy profit as the election approached. But now…hmmm..I’m thinking I may just keep them. Just in case the Dems get their act together.

Leaking money

Posted on by

You know how sometimes when your car is acting up and you take it to the mechanic you consider yourself ‘lucky’ if you get out of there without spending $xxx? Yeah. Another adventure in plumbing today.

I was going down to the basement to put away some ammo and right off the bat I knew something was wrong. I could smell water. Sure enough, theres a puddle on the floor. I hate plumbing problems. Hate them. An ancient gate valve had decided now was a good time to go ahead and give up the ghost. Trouble is, it could never be in an easy-to-access area. Nope. There’s ductwork hanging from the ceiling and, of course, the valve in question is right behind the duct. And, not just any duct. A duct that has another duct coming into it form the side. So thats a three-point F.U. to deal with.

Now, it wasn’t all bad. I managed to find a plumber who could show up today, rather than next Tuesday (looking at you Garden City Plumbing & Heating), and the kid did the job pretty well it appears, and so far everythign seems to be holding together. Replaced the ancient valve with a nice new ball valve (why, oh why, would anyone use anything else???) and now life can go on. I was expecting to drop between $500-$1000 because there’s always something that keeps it from being a straightforward and simple fix. But, knock on wood, it looks like escaped with only $175 left behind.

Fortunately, part of my preps include an emergency fund. So, it was just a matter of paying the man and life goes back to somewhat normal. Except…I have to try and put the ductwork back together.

The emergency fund, however, turned a potential Big Deal into an inconvenience. I deprive myself of some luxuries in life… new car, fancy clothes, latest electronics, basic medical care…just so I can have something in the bank for when these sorts of events happen. For those keeping track, this was another case where the crisis required greenbacks and not an AR and plates. Oh, someday the crisis will happen that does require M855 and that sort of thing, but by the time that happens there will have been a hundred crises that required the greenbacks.

So…prepare for The End Of The World, but also prepare for the smaller, more mundane and localized end-of-the-worlds…and that is almost always remedied with cash.

ETA: I was right. Complications. :::sigh::: Plumber is on his way back.

The host with the most…guns

Posted on by

Nope..not dead. Nor in a FEMA camp somewhere. It’s tourist season in Montana which means entertaining people from outtastate. And…thats what I’ve been up to this last week.

We shall now return to our regularly unscheduled brain droppings.

Oh, and by the by, I actually had a couple people complain about the relative silence for the last week. Really? We’re all sovereign individuals here, guys. I have no obligation to anyone that I have not voluntarily undertaken to have. And, as I recall, I never undertook an obligation to post a particular amount of posts, within a particular period of time, to anyone.

So…beggars can’t be choosers. Some weeks you get four or five posts, some weeks you get two or three, and once in a while there’s a rare week of radio silence. In a world where preparedness blogs come and go after fairly short runs, barking at me over a weeks worth of silence kinda seems an ungrateful act considering I’ve been doing this longer than pretty much any other blog on the subject.

They won’t make that mistake twice

Posted on by

The preening for the 2020 election has begun. And, as usual, I look at it from a gun perspective.

After Trump won when virtually everyone expected a Clinton  victory, gun manufacturers were loaded down with inventory hey had produced in the run up to the election anticipating some crazy panic sales when Clinton won the election. As we know, that didn’t happen and businesses were stuck sitting on mountains of inventory.

Its great to have inventory in reserve to smooth out little bumps or hiccups in the manufacturing  or delivery process. Receiver milling machine #11 broke down and will take two days to fix? No problem, we have enough extras on hand to keep on schedule. Thats how it works.. But if you have too much inventory on hand, like, say, three thousand AR-15s when you normally only keep 200 in the warehouse….well, thats a problem. You’re tying up all that money, paying interest on that money, paying on the warehouse storage, and exposing yourself to the risk that the market could go soft and those rifles become worth a lot less. And…that’s exactly what happened.

You and I saw some amazing sales in the world of guns for the year or so after the election as distributors and manufacturers tried desperately to turn that inventory back into cash. And, half a loaf is better than none, so a lot of guns got sold at a loss or break-even price. Great for you and me, not so great for some of the vendors who got caught without a chair when the music stopped. (Most notably, US Sporting Co which owns Ellet Bros.)

So, what do you think will happen this next election? Gun industry folks will be very, very cautious about getting too deep into inventory or manufacturing. And that means …scarcity. Which means….Econ 101, people..anyone? ..Bueller? Bueller?…it means you will not be seeing $399 AR’s after the election. Even if the the race looks tight, and a panic buying market emerges, I think there will still be a huge reluctance on the part of manufacturers to ‘go long’ on production like they did in 2016.

The practical up shot, as I see it, is this: if there’s gun stuff you want, buy it before the election season really heats up because the usual every-four-years panic buying will occur and with reduced availability of product there will be some higher prices.

 

Run day

Posted on by

Its Generator Run Day. It’s also Snowblower Run Day. Because those are two items that get used infrequently, I try to run them once a month so nothing gums up, goes bad, dried out, goes dead, or otherwise malfunctions.

Interestingly, it’s also Battery Inspection day in a another week. Same reason.

Yeah, it’s kind of a pain the butt to spend an hour checking batteries in a dozen devices and running a couple engines for no practical reason. BUT… what’s the alternative? The alternative is a power outage and me wandering around with dead flashlights, a generator that won’t start, radios that don’t work, and that sort of thing. And while I am the laziest person you will ever meet, I am in no hurry to self-demote myself to Sheeple by failing to inspect my gear periodically.

Not to tell you what to do, but…… those expensive bits of preparedness gear that you bought but never use? Take ’em out, wind ’em up, make sure they run. And do that every other month or so.

I spent about a grand on the EU2000 and its money well spent IF it works when I need it. Otherwise its just taking up space and wasting money. And I am too cheap to let a $1000 generator turn into a $200 you-fix-it garage sale special.

Its not just generators though….radios, flashlights, camp stoves, electric anything, etc, etc. At some point you realize that there are things that just cannot be put away and forgotten about…you have to exercise them, or at least inspect them, once in a while or you amy as well not have them at all because when you need them they ain’t gonna work.

So…take advantage of the nice June weather this weekend and go fire up the generator for a half hour.

Scope blues

Posted on by

Hmmm. I’m trying to find a scope for the big Ruger .338 and I’m hitting walls.

I’m looking for a fixed-power scope somewhere between 15x and 20x, with as big an objective as I can find.

Closest thing I can find is the IOR Valdada 16x-56mm which is pretty much exactly what I’m looking for. Problem is, no one has it in stock. They also make a 16x-42mm but why would I get that when I could get a 56mm?

I prefer a fixed-power scope for the long range stuff because, to me, it’s one less thing to worry about. Yes, I’m sure the so-n-so brand of variable scopes are 100% repeatable and all that. But…I want fixed-power.  Having said that, I’ll get fifteen comments to this post – two will tell me where there is a scope in stock somewhere, the other 13 will be people trying to tell me to get a variable scope. No means no, dude. No variable.

I cant find any other major manufacturer who makes a scope in that 15-20x range, fixed power, with a large objective. I can find a few fixed 10x scopes, and plenty of fixed 25x, 40x, 50x scopes but thats too much magnification. Leupold, Nikokn, Zeiss, etc… nada.

So, it looks like I’m on a unicorn hunt until I find this 16x-56mm. I’m not married to that particular scope, its just that so far I can’t find anything similar.

I can see its gonna be a while before I get this .338 up and shooting.

 

ATFE Weirdness

Posted on by

I’ve been selling guns on and off for almost thirty years. Just when I think there’s not much out there to surprise me, something comes along I havent seen before.

Today, I got the following email in my box:

ATF.FFL.Alert@usdoj.gov <ATF.FFL.Alert@usdoj.gov>
Jun 6 at 10:27 AM

This is an important message from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. A suspicious individual attempted to purchase a “precision rifle” firearm that “could make a 1000 yard shot in order to shoot children, then adults” from an FFL in Broadwater county, MT. The suspect is described as a white male, mid to late 50’s, 5’10”, 180-200 lbs., brown/grey hair, brown eyes, wearing a long sleeve orange t-shirt (“Staff”/”Support”?) dark jeans, green hat. See photo below. The suspect was driving a dark sedan (possibly a Buick/Ford) late 1990’s-2000, Montana plate beginning with “4”. If you come into contact with this individual, please contact the Broadwater County Sheriff’s Office at (406) 266-3441 or ATF Helena at (406) 441-3140.

Ok, thats a bit odd. Here’s where it gets really weird. About five minutes after I got that email, my phone rings and I get a robocall from ATFE with the exact same message. I have never heard of ATFE sending out BOLO robocalls before. Also, I suspect that with all this effort being made by ATFE there is more to this story than meets the eye.

But…first time I ever got a robocall about something suspicious from the goons at F Troop.

Background.

Poll – Should I stay or should I go?

Posted on by

Not a minor event, like a hurricane or power outage….but The Big Deal. You know, the scenario where the cities are in flames, the escaped convicts are running loose, the supermarkets are stripped bare, the communications are out, and it’s like every bad survivalist novel come to life. THAT sort of scenario. Stay where you are or head to the hills?

[yop_poll id=”19″]

Article – Outlaw Country

Posted on by

A fascinating article about someone who, admittedly a ‘hard luck case’, moves to ‘survivalist country’ and winds up in the sort of situation that has no good resolution.

The takeaway here, as I see it, is that while we like the idea of a place out in the middle of nowhere, that middle of nowhere also appeals to another subset of people that we may not particularly want to share oxygen with. In short, the ‘wide open spaces’ and ‘lack of oversight’ that make a place appealing to you and I also appeal to some less savory types who might be your neighbors. And, sometimes, it can turn ugly in a big way.

Whatever terms he initially plugged into Google or Facebook or YouTube, he was soon frequenting websites promoting far-right conspiracy theories, watching videos predicting imminent social collapse, and reading how-to guides on survival preparedness. Over a few months in late 2012, the content of Taylor’s Facebook posts shifted from topics like trucks and music to videos from the hacktivist group Anonymous and posts about pandemic disease, the threat of GMO foods, the rise of Islam, and the Obama administration’s purported plans to confiscate everyone’s guns. Taylor devoured TV shows like Doomsday Preppers, Survivor Man, Live Free or Die, and Man, Woman, Wild. The notion of living off the land allowed him to imagine ways he might escape the wage economy and finally make something of himself.

RTWT.