Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Bilge pump or bucket?

Getting back to a bit of a nautical theme I submitted a 'Myth' to the famous Mythbusters yesterday. So, for the record, here it is. I hope they test this one out.

On a sinking boat is a bucket better than a bilge pump?

There's an old sailor's axiom that states: 'On a sinking boat there's no better bilge pump than a frightened sailor with a bucket.'

I think it would be a fair test with a hand powered bilge pump (Whale type/bicycle type) and a 2 quart (2 litre) milk jug cut into a bucket (common). Some of the major variables would be:

1. The size of the boat
2. The size of the hole in the boat
3. The depth below waterline of the hole in the boat
4. The physical capability (fitness) of the sailors

Reference:  Boat flooding rate in gpm

http://www.whsyc.org/Flooding/Flooding.html

Secondary question would be 'how long can you keep your boat afloat? For instance if you were flooding at the maximum capacity of your particular bilge pump. Would you have enough time to get to shore if you were say 1 NM from shore?

Reference: Different types of bilge pumps that could be used.

A Whale manual bilge pump. Capacity: 89 L/m (19.5 g/m) @ 60 strokes per minute

A typical 'bicycle type' bilge pump. 0.5l per stroke and 673mm in length, approx. 30 - 40 lt per minute.

A milk jug bailer. Unknown capacity.

I retired in November of 2012 after almost 33 years in the Canadian Coast Guard. My time is now spent building a 31' diesel trawler and that's the reason I thought this would make a great myth to test (or bust). Wouldn't it be great if you could enlist the help of some US vs Canadian Coast Guard Cadets making it into a bit of a competition?  :-)

Thanks for producing the best shows on TV. I've been a fan since episode #1 and will be until the bitter end! I would give my eye teeth to be there to see this myth tested! (hint hint)

Yours Aye!

Monday, March 17, 2014

Lil' too chilly to be playing outside today

So back into the indoor range with the air rifle. I moved the shooters box all the way back to the 25 yd mark this time. I was reasonably sighted in at about 17.5 yds before. Here's the shooters box we have to use.

It's on wheels so you use a pallet jack and move it fwd/bkwd to the desired distance. There's only two shooting lanes. The rest of the facility is for archery. This is a new facility only opened after the new year. Doesn't get used much by shooters because of the requirement for non-toxic ammo. The pellets I've been using are lead free Stoeger's. They cost 2.5 times as much as .22's. *scratching head*

The view from inside the shooters box. At 25 yds I can't see where the pellets hit the paper so that's why there's binoc's there! ;-)  The black foam thingies are something I found in the basement out of a laptop box and use them as a gun rest. They work ok and were the right price! :-)

Here's the results. Five shots at each target.

I shot them in order. A&B were pretty decent with one dropping way down on target B. Shots at C went a lot to the left for some reason. I think the scope is moving around quite a bit. I tightened it up and made a few adjustments and got back on track with D. If I can stay that consistent with this cheap air rifle & scope at this range I'll be happy.

Friday, March 14, 2014

The ole' Gunslinger

The ole' Gunslinger, Yosemite Sam, still had some fight in him but his six-shooters couldn't match the modern semi-automatic technology!  :-)

I was a lil' wonky off the start, I knew the pistol was shooting high so I adjusted the sights all the way down and got much better results.

I was running the Federal American Eagles again today and got quite a few hiccups. A lot failed to eject and more failed to feed. I ran a magazine of CCI Blazers through the pistol and it worked perfectly. The difference is the Blazers are lubricated the Eagles aren't. The next few magazines I loaded I put in 8 Eagles and topped it off with two Blazers. This seemed to work perfectly. I'll make some inquiries to see if guys actually lubricate their ammunition.

Less than a week to go before Spring officially arrives. Standby..... 




Wednesday, March 12, 2014

I give up!

Mother Nature's sending us another 12" of snow over the next day or so. :-(


Monday, March 10, 2014

A quick trip to the range

Temps appeared to be ok, 0 deg C. But man was it damp. I was there for about half an hour and my poor ole' knees started to ache!

I wanted to test out some ammo that I have. Three different kinds. I had had some issues with the Winchester X-22 ammo not working too well in my pistol and just picked up 1000 rounds of Federal American Eagle .22's.

I shot 40 rounds of each kind I had. Left to right:  CCI Blazers, Winchester X-22 & Federal American Eagle.

I was a little farther back than usual and wasn't really shooting for accuracy. I was trying to see which ammo seems to work best in my pistol. The results of this 120 round test are:

The CCI's worked perfectly, no FTL, no FTE no FTF
The Winchester X-22, 2 FTL, 3 FTE and 1 FTF
The Federal American Eagle, 2 FTL, 2 FTE no FTF

Legend:  FTL - Failed to Load, FTE - Failed to Eject, FTF - Failed to Fire

I was expecting more from the Federal Ammo hoping it would be comparable to the CCI Blazers. I'm going to try the same test tomorrow with my rifle and see how it goes.

Friday, March 7, 2014

For the little cowboy in all of us

Mother Nature gave us a lovely day today to get out and do some more shooting. This time it was warm enough to be outside so Fred brought along his Ruger Vaqueros 38 Spl revolvers that he uses in Cowboy Action competition. Now I have to admit I'm not too familiar with larger caliber handguns but these are FUN FUN FUN to shoot! They're single action so you have to cock the hammer each time. It takes a lil' getting used to but they are ohhhhhhhh so smooth!

That's my Smith & Wesson M&P .22 on top. We lobbed quite a few rounds downrange with it today too. It's also a tremendous amount of fun to shoot. I know Fred sure enjoys it! :-)

Here's Fred unloading one of his revolvers!


Thanks Fred, another great day! C'mon Spring!

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Lil' bit better results

Ventured back into the indoor range with the air rifle yesterday. Settled down a bit, me and the gun so the results were slightly better. I found some foam block out of a laptop box that worked pretty well as a gun rest too.

First grouping at same distance as the other day (17.5 yds). Not too bad. I stuck with the Stoeger X-Speed 5.56 gr pellets this time.

After about another 20 shots or so the grouping got a little tighter.

And my last 10 shot target before I left for the day.

It's nice being able to shoot inside even though it was cold (-13C outside). Absolutely no wind makes it pretty comfortable. It's just nice to get out of the house and away from the cats! :-)

Been waiting for delivery of the Flexi-cat tool. It's been on order since early December. The company moved manufacturing facilities and that caused the delay. Hope to have it delivered soon. Getting really anxious to get back to the boat project once all this winter nonsense is finished.

Standby.






Sunday, March 2, 2014

Pump It Up

Some plinkin' of a different kind this time. Our gun club has a brand new indoor range. The CFO for Ontario has set some pretty high requirements for the use of this facility namely only Lead Free ammo is allowed. Now I agree with the premise of using lead free ammo but it places those wanting to use the facility in a very difficult position, finding it! I've googled to death sources for lead free rimfire ammo and came up blank. (I apologize for the pun). Apparently it's made but every source I could find is sold out.

Wanting to get at least some use out of the indoor range this winter (it suks standing outside freezing your gronicles off just to punch holes in paper targets) I purchased an air rifle. This seemed like a good bet for shooting indoors in the winter. Lead Free pellets appear to be more readily available (not locally though) so it was off to Ottawa the other day to find some, which I did. Three kinds actually so I stocked up a bit.

The rifle is a Ruger Blackhawk. Listed at Canadian Tire for $249.00.  I paid $99 and apparently it's on clearance now for that price. I think that's fair because $99USD is what they sell for in the States. The pellets I found that were lead free are: Stoeger X-Speed 5.56gr ($14.99/200), Powershot Penetrators 8.5gr. ($11.99/125) & Crosman SSP Hyper Velocity 4.0 gr.($13.52/250).

The scope supplied with the rifle is a 4X Ruger. Pretty basic. The rings that hold it to the rifle are pretty poor and I think they moved quite a bit while I was trying to dial it in. The rifle has a pretty good kick to it. The lighter pellets seem to fly all over the place and the Stoegers were the most consistent. The Powershot Penetrators seemed to pull down and to the right likely due to their weight. All shots were at 17.5 yds.

All in all I think it'll be fun and I really like the indoor shooting range. The one thing I can't figure is why the pellets are 2.5 X more expensive than .22 LR's? *Scratching Head*

Standby.