I am officially a Montana superpower.
The Barrett M82A1 will be here next week.
Yes, it hurt. It hurt bad. But the pain fades and the gun remains.
Glad I saved a bunch of that .50 from last winter.
I’d been wanting an Icom-7200 for a while…so long a while, in fact, that the 7200 has been discontinued. Sure I can find them used but I really hate buying a product that is used unless I am intimately familiar with how it works and how to check it out to make sure it works. This is why, normally, I have no problem with used guns…Im familiar enough with thundertoys that I can tell fairly readily if a used gun is good or if its someones problem child.
The Icom-7200 was supplanted by the Icom-7300. Ok, thats at least 100 better than the 7200, right? Let’s order one up.
It’ll be here later in the week. I already have a power supply and cable for it, but I need to figure out an antennae (a word I can never spell right on the first go) for it. At the moment, I’ve no interest in transmitting…but I have a keen interest in listening.
As was said in Alas Babylon, “But Sam Hazzard’s principal hobby was listening to shortwave radio. He was not a ham operator. He had no transmitter. He listened. He did not chatter. He monitored the military frequencies and the foreign broadcasts and, with his enormous background of military and political knowledge, he kept pace with the world outside Fort Repose. Sometimes, perhaps, he was a bit ahead of everyone.”
My interest is in listening…taking in whats out there, examining it, and using that information as necessary. Maybe down the line I’d have need to send rather than receive, but for now I simply want to listen. And, yes, I need to get the license to transmit but thats a project for later.
If anyone has suggestions (and links) on the subject, I’d be very interested.
A couple people were curious what I wanted in a barbecue gun. Well, my plan was one of the following:
In a nice extra fancy floral engraved Tom Threepersons holster from El Paso Saddlery.
And, of course, a nice set of showy grips.
Now, I know an engraver here in the valley who does good work ( Mike Gouse ), but I rather prefer factory engraving even if it’s just machine done.
So, there you have it. Attend some big social function and if you see some goober with a gussied up GP-100, well, say hi ’cause its probably me.
So.. that happened:
It’ll be interesting to see which held its value more by the end of the year. This or the cash it took to buy this.
If you think being prepared is expensive, it’s downright cheap compared to the cost of being unprepared.
Oh merciful Crom….my lower back is barkin’ at me tonight. Why? Because I don’t have enough trusted guy friends to help me load 60 ammo cans of belted .30 and .50 ammo into my truck, take them to my house, and then unload them. Owwwww.
12,000 rounds of belted ammo. Ball, tracer, and AP.
The irony? I don’t even own a .50 BMG or .30-06 at the moment. But..when opportunity knocks, get a forklift.
Some goes into Deep Sleep, the rest…well…capitalism is a beautiful thing.
Someone asked me how I store all those magazines.
Answer: The same way I store anything that I feel is important, worth protecting, and might be in storage for a long time: in a hard, airtight, watertight, crushproof container.
For 99% of the things I put in the Deep Sleep, the container of choice is either a genuine GI ammo can of some kind, or a Pelican (or similar brand/quality) case.
Good, quality, name-brand, effective, just-what-the-doctor-ordered cases are not cheap. Only you know how much risk you’re willing to take to save a few dollars. Will the plastic ammo can from Harbor Freight store gear just as well as a GI ammo can? Maybe. If it’s just going to sit on the shelf in your basement for the next twenty years then all it has to do is sit there, quietly waiting in the dark for that one day when life changes in an exciting new way. And that is when the extra bucks you paid makes a difference. When you grab the can off the shelf, swing it around as you run up the stairs with it, it bounces off the doorway as you grab your backpack with your other hand. You run out the door and it’s five inches of snow and freezing rain as you literally toss the ammo can in the back of the truck into a pile of slushy snow and ice. Then its a two hour drive over bumpy roads until you get to your safe place. Then you drag your gear out of the truck, some of it falls and hits the ground, some bounces off other gear, and some just gets none-too-gently shoved into a corner of the room. Now, your headset radios, battery chargers, cables, batteries, and other gear were in those cans… which would you rather have used to store those items – the $7.50 harbor Freight made-in-China plastic “GI” ammo cans or the $65 Pelican case?
Everything I put away for the future is put away because I have concerns about those things being unavailable in the future. Maybe they are unavailable due to price..or legislative action…or simple supply/demand variations…the reason doesn’t really matter; all that matters is that this particular item is now unavailable and whatever ones I have are the only ones I’m gonna have. So…I don’t mind spending the extra money for what I feel is a heightened level of protection.
Of course, not everything requires a super-high level of protection. A Glock magazine can get dropped, bounced off the concrete, get wet/snowy/dusty/dirty and survive just fine thank you very much. Not the same story for a radio. Or your medical gear. Or your other critical-and-somewhat-fragile gear.
Only you know what is and is not important enough to you to warrant the expense of high-end protection. It’s very subjective. Personally, my opinion is that anything worth putting away for the uncertain future is worth protecting as much as possible so it’s there when I need.
You’re going to have to do some math in your head. If the Made-in-China case affords you 75% the protection of the Pelican or Hardigg case is that 25% difference in protection worth the difference in price? Does the 80/20 rule apply here? As a friend of mine said when I complained about the cost of a motorcycle helmet, “Whats your head worth?”
It seems ridiculous to spend as much on a protective case as you did on the item that you are protecting, but, again, whats it worth to you to have exactly what you need, when you need it, in perfect working condition?
As I said, I’m a bit of an evil ‘yuppie survivalist’ so I spend the dollars for the Hardigg, the Pelican, the SKB cases. Or, if they’ll do the job, the virtually new genuine GI ammo cans. It’s just not worth it to me to go through the pain and labor of buying a piece of expensive top quality gear, house it in a POS knockoff plastic ammo can, and then have the lovely surprise of having that item absolutely not work when I need it most. At that moment the last thing I’m thinking is “Man, sure glad I saved thirty bucks by buying that cheap just-as-good-as-Pelican case.”
Soooo…..that happened.
Well, if you’ve ever wondered how many 27-rd Magpul Glock mags are in a case, here’s your answer:
One hundred. Here’s the funny part – this isn’t the first case of them I’ve ordered. Here’s the scary part – I’ve lost track of how many I have. As far as 9mm Glock mags go, I’m somewhere around…mmmm….700, I think.
Because man does not live on 9mm alone, I also took the opportunity to add to this:
Funny thing is, in this market the gold is probably not as valuable as 9mm. Go figure.
And hit another milestone today (ETA: NOT my birthday…but thanks!) which reminds me that, sadly, I’m really not a kid anymore and I have to be a grownup. Darn it.
I miss Neverland.
CostCo has a little cashback program when you use their card. I hate credit cards but at the time I was under the impression you had to have the card to continue to shop there. Regardless, I wound up with this card. It ‘gives back’ a few points per year on stuff you buy at CostCo, gas purchases, etc. I use it, trot to my computer, and immediately pay the bill online. I don’t want to keep a balance.
Anyway, last year I used that card to do all my gun and magazine purchases. The ‘cash back’ on those kinds of purchases is 1%. I got the email from CostCo saying my gift card for $249 would be on the way soon. Anyone who can do simple math can, from those figures, come up with what I spent on guns, ammo, and mags last year. Before anyone’s head explodes, a portion of the money spent on guns and mags was recouped in the sale of some of those same guns and mags. Expenditures for gunstuff that I actually kept and hold is a bit less (although not a huge amount less.)
It very much did not seem like that much at the time, I assure you. Regardless, I am fairly confident 2021 will not see anything like huge gun/mag purchases like last year….Crom, I hope not.
But, on the bright side, I’ve got almost $250 to spend up at CostCo on more canned goods, TP, and chicken. Or maybe another freezer.
Yes, all these mags ain’t cheap when you add them up..but….I’m killing it today on the AirBNB IPO, so…thats nice.
