The Blue Collar Prepping staff are on vacation until January 4th.
Be safe, have a merry holiday season, and hopefully Santa will leave some preps in your stockings!
The Blue Collar Prepping staff are on vacation until January 4th.
Be safe, have a merry holiday season, and hopefully Santa will leave some preps in your stockings!
Not actually Erin. & is used with permission. |
Earlier this month, Body Armor Outlet published a video of that very armor being shot by 30-06 M2 armor piercing rounds, 5.56mm M855 rounds, and 7.62x39 rounds.
As a refresher, here are the NIJ standards for this armor:
As you can see for yourself in this video, these armor plates held up in excess of NIJ standards.
The red bottles are Power Service 911, and that is used to fix already gelled fuel. The normal method is to remove the fuel filter and pour the 911 into the canister, where it can dissolve the congealed wax and allow fuel flow. The rest of the container, or another one, is dumped into the fuel tank and left to sit for an hour or two so it can do the same to the fuel there.
The clear bottles of brown liquid are Howes Diesel Treat, our best seller. Howes does everything that the Power Serve does, but backs it up with a guarantee that if you run six bottles of it through your equipment and it still gels, they will pay for the tow to get you fixed up. The two-quart bottles shown will treat up to 320 gallons of fuel, which is easier to use in storage tanks and commercial vehicles with large fuel tanks.
If you have a diesel generator or vehicle, winter can make life more difficult. Keep them warm if you can and treat your fuel so they will start when you need them.
* As a point of interest, home heating oil is basically #3 diesel and has even more wax content. This provides more heat per gallon, but gels up faster if unheated.
https://amzn.to/38fbBEJ |
Not actually Erin. & is used with permission. |
https://www.abelard.org/sums/four_figure_log_tables.php |
log 4.096 + log 10^3
since we're working with the base of 10, the log of 10^3 is 3, and looking at a table tells me that the log of 4.096 is 0.6124. That makes the log 4096=3.6124
Doing the same to 32 gives me: log 32=1.5051
Courtesy of https://www.pepysdiary.com/encyclopedia/6104/ |
Bolt, Bar and Latch |
AK Optic Mount |
Base, Mount and Red Dot |
Not actually Erin. & is used with permission. |
Disclaimer: In order to write a useful post about this subject, I need to talk about things which a lot of people find distasteful and/or embarrassing. Everybody poops and everybody needs to wipe, so let's just be adults about this.
https://amzn.to/3mMPjQC |
https://amzn.to/3gmPFuY |
A quick way to make a right angle is to use this theory and use sides that are 3, 4, and 5 units (whatever units you want to use; feet, inches, meters, dollar bills, cans of beans, etc.) to make a triangle. 3^2=9, 4^2=16, 5^2=25 and if you put those numbers into the Theorem you do get a true statement that 9+16=25.You now have a basic right triangle to build from, and the rest of plane geometry follows from that building block. This works well in the field when trying to lay out fence corners and other things that need to be square.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_triangle |
(Editor's Note: You can remember these using the mnemonic SOH CAH TOA.
- Sine = Opposite * Hypotenuse
- Cosine = Adjacent * Hypotenuse
- Tangent = Opposite * Adjacent
The Hypotenuse doesn't change, but the Opposite and Adjacent sides are always relative to the angle from which you are measuring. -- Erin)
The dust has settled and the First 72 Hours have passed. Follow along as I build a long term plan via Prudent Prepping.
Due to technical difficulties, further posts on map reading and distance measurements will be delayed; the compass I ordered was damaged in shipping and needs to be returned and a different model ordered.
However, what did come in were the parts necessary to make aiming a firearm easier! Look at this:
All The Things! |
AK-303M w/mount |
What I didn't realize (from failing to read the complete catalog) is that I needed a separate mount for the red dot I have. The red dot sight has a picatinny mount included, you see, and from looking at the catalog that seemed to be all I needed.
How wrong I was! The AK-303M rail is a proprietary 1/4 width rail, which doesn't really show in the pictures. That's why the actual RS Regulate mount has such an odd extension.
AKMR |
I was able to find a friend who did the legwork and the paperwork, and then attempted to forward the mount to me at cost. Unfortunately, that didn't fly; shipping and handling was added to the invoice.
By this point you're probably wondering what kind of sight is worth this much effort.
Kingslayer |
From the Swampfox Kingslayer web page:
Mounting was extremely easy with all the different screws supplied by Swampfox. Not only do they include screws, they sent four of each, for those of us that tend to magically make screws disappear.
Another cool feature is the battery drawer can be opened without removing the optic from the mounting plate.
I also need to mention the box and how everything is packed. All parts are in separate slots and cut in some of the densest foam I've seen. There is no way for any parts to be damaged in shipping.
I am more than impressed with the Kingslayer and everything included in the box. All in all I'm extremely happy with how everything works and went together. I need an open range to actually sight everything in and I will be golden!
Recap And Takeaway
I love to fish, but in a survival situation, it's far from the easiest way to get food. This week, I look at a far more efficient way to get fish.
Not actually Erin. & is used with permission. |
https://amzn.to/2KGZPus |
Since I usually write on Thursdays, I get every Thanksgiving. It looks like I'll get Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve this year as well.
Thanksgiving is an American holiday, a celebration of harvest and a day for giving thanks to whoever or whatever you credit with the blessings you've accumulated over the year. It doesn't matter if it's a deity or three, or just the person who puts food on your table. Maybe it's yourself for getting out of bed every morning and making sure you're taking care of yourself. Be thankful and give thanks to the sources of good in your life.This year has been a mess on a lot of levels, but we should all be able to find something to be thankful for. Family, friends, food, shelter, or just surviving another year, it doesn't matter what you're thankful for as long as you can recognize that you do have blessings in your life. If you can't think of anything to be thankful for, drop me a note and I'll see if we can't find at least one blessing in your life.
Look around and see how many things went right this year instead of focusing on all of the things that went wrong. A now-departed friend used to always say that "No matter how bad your life is, someone out there has it worse," and we'd look for those poor souls. Working in 100°F heat in an open field with no shade? Yeah, at least I'm not cleaning porta-potties at a construction site in the same heat. Driving across three states for 16 hours to get to a job with no radio or air conditioning? At least I'm not stuck behind a desk in a windowless cubicle farm. Boss is a jerk and an idiot? At least I have a job that pays some of the bills while I'm looking for a better one.
Life is what you make of it. Learn from the bad parts and cherish the good parts; it'll help you be mentally prepared for the next bad part that comes along.
Have a happy Thanksgiving, and I'll see you next week.
I recently added very good optics to my gear, and so the topic of "How do I figure out long to very long distances in the field without a rangefinder?" came up, and by long distance I mean "How far is that hill, and how long will it take to hike there?"
Luckily for me, one of my roommates is a math tutor and was able to answer the question in terms that I, the World's Worst Math Student (tm), am able to understand.
Working It Out
My friend started out by telling me how easy it is, using words like Cosines and Tangents. After doing my deer in the headlights impression, we got out a piece of paper and made these really easy to understand pictures.
This is what was drawn for me:
I can do this! |
First things first: I was told that the more accurately the angles can be measured, the better the distance calculation will be.
So the answer to the question of "If I know the distance to point X, how can I find the distance to point Y?" is to take the tangent of the angle between X and Y -- this is known as an azimuth -- and multiply it by the known distance. In other words, Distance to Y = Distance to X times the Tangent of the Azimuth.
My next question was "How do I figure this equation?" and I was told use my phone's calculator app to get the tangent. Looking at my phone and not finding any key marked 'Tangent', I was told to hold my Android phone sideways.
Yeah, I didn't know there were other functions.
So, after looking at the diagram and doing some simple calculations with my phone*, I think I will be able to estimate long distances easily. I will need to learn how to use a lensatic compass to find an azimuth, but that is a cheap and worthwhile addition to my gear. Guess what I'm doing next week?
*This can be done without cell service or a phone, if you have a small solar-powered calculator with the proper function keys.
Recap And Takeaway