Bikerscum - Patrick St. Jean

I met Alex and a friend from Finland over at Bass Pro Shops for an evening of target practice. I got to try out that little .380 I picked up at Dallas Market Hall as well as some practice with some other pistols. That little .380 is a mean handgun. It's got quite a kick, a 20 pound trigger pull that's about a mile long, but for all that it still groups really tightly. It's definitely not something I'd take out every day, but it's good to know how it performs. Long term it's going to get replaced with something else in .380, probably a Walther PPK, but for now it'll do it's job.

After enduring much ribbing from friends about having never attended a gun show before, I picked up Alex and headed down to Dallas Market Hall to do a little shopping. I met a couple other friends there and proceeded to nose around. Definitely some good deals, but boy were the rip-off artists out in force! At the end of the day I picked up a couple LED flashlights, bright, cheap, and reasonably waterproof. One's going in the Sportster's saddlebags and the other's in the Jeep. I also managed to score a .22 caliber air rifle cheap. That one will be fun for dealing with garden pests. And the pièce de résistance was a small, cheap .380 automatic for those times when concealing a full sized 9mm is just out of the question.

I've been enjoying the CZ-85B that I picked up late last year, but the Wolf ammo that I've been using has become suspect. I've had persistent misfeeds with it. Nothing that simply pulling back on the slide wouldn't cure, but still. So that brings me to the point of today's post. I've got before me three 9mm cartridges, one each from Wolf, Winchester, and Remington. Using my trusty digital calipers, here are the dimensions of each one:

It looks like the Wolf's a little outsized versus the other two so I'm going to run a bunch of rounds of each of them through and see if my feed issues go away.

I finished my state mandated CHL training class today, down at DFW Gun Range. It was both enjoyable and informative. Between the ten hours of classroom instruction and the range qualification, it was a full day's adventure. Now I've got to get the packet put together and sent off to the state for processing.

Windows Networking is done. Interesting class, I learned a lot about Active Directory that I didn't know. I've done LDAP rollouts so I already understood some of it.

I've got a week off and then I start WEB/410 Web Programming I.

Link: http://www.pat-st-jean.com/gallery/v/Fun-Stuff/Tac-Pro-22-Jan-2005/

Wow! Alex and I went out to the Tac-Pro range today to shoot his Serbu BFG-50 .50 caliber rifle. What can I say but oh my freaking God! Until today I had never fired at a target more than 100 yards out, but that was to change quickly. After zeroing the scope in at 100 yards we moved to the 300 yard position where I was still grouping well. Then on to the 500 yard position, and finally the 1000 yard position. Shooting at a target that is over a half a mile away is incredibly challenging, but the satisfaction of hearing the target get hit is immense. I passed the range qualification and can now go out there and shoot long distance whenever I want.

Wow, it was warm today so I decided to get some more of the shack rebuild done. So, I went about stringing 200 feet of wire around the house and connecting up the AH-4 tuner. This is the first antenna that I've actually gotten completely hooked up. Too bad the radios aren't ready yet or I'd be able to get back on the air.

And in the evening I met my godfather and a friend of his at an indoor pistol range for an evening of shooting. I'm a touch on the rusty side, but I'm really enjoying the Ruger Mk. 1 that he gave me. That is one sweet pistol! I shot about 60 rounds with it and then switched to the .357 and shot about 100 more. I've really got to start practicing more!