Frag the mayor, winterizing, generator, AK red dot, learning curve, MiniMag LED assembly

Posted on by

Its like a horrific traffic accident that I cant look away from. The mayor of New Orleans demands everyone leave, sends goons to reinforce that position, then a few days later starts letting folks back in and now he’s telling ’em to leave again. If this were Vietnam he’d have been killed by one of his own men by now.
=====
Winter approaches here in the Land O’ Mountains. Soon it’ll be time to start toting my Cold Weather Module around in my backpack, make sure the winter survival gear is in the truck, and generally take a few precautions to prevent freezing to death. One nice thing about winter, if the power goes out my freezer full of meat just gets emptied to an outside location where it’ll stay frozen. Hell, alot of the time its warmer in the freezer than it is outside.
=====
Still, I do need to get a small generator for the freezer. Actually, just a small generator for general purpose. My anticipated power needs during an outage are quite small. Some 12v lighting (LED mostly), radios, a battery charger for the handhelds and thats about it. It wouldnt be too hard to draw up a list of requirements in terms of usage, pad it a bit, and match it to a small generator. A large generator, would of course, be nice but that demon money is always souring the sweetest intentions. With the exception of the freezer, almost all of my needs are DC rather than AC and are fairly small draw…so a bank of batteries charged from either house AC, solar panels, or a small generator might be the way to go.
====
One of the LMI picked up a side-mount (mounts on the siderail) AK red dot sight. We’re going to take it out and see how it does. I’ll do some with/without shooting and see how much of a difference it makes. Stay tuned.
=====
I’m sure I’ll have a longer (much longer) post on this subject later but one thing I’ve learned as far as preparedness goes  is that you cant learn just one thing as far as preparedness goes. Its a huuuuuuuuge skill set…just off the top of my head: compass skills, small unit tactics, first aid, sewing, radio theory and practice, rappeliing and ropework, plumbing, electrical, gun handling, carpentry, camping, hunting, fishing, computer skills, cryptography, map reading, spreadsheet usage, reloading, food preservation and canning, bicycle repair, fuel handling, urban survival skills, gardening, wilderness survival skills, organization, etc, etc, etc…and always logistics. Talk about being a well rounded individual….

Yeah, I know – whine, whine, whine.
=====
Was in the local sporting goods shop and found an LED replacement bulb assembly for the MinMag. Only $10. I love the MiniMag for its durability and wide availability. If I can get it to run using LED’s and get the associated battery life then this may be a good ting indeed. Will probably pick it up in the next few days and give an evaluation of it here and on the website.

15 thoughts on “Frag the mayor, winterizing, generator, AK red dot, learning curve, MiniMag LED assembly”

  1. I’ve had a lot of experience with small generators over the last couple of years. In terms of small generators, the Honda inverter series are the best. They’re very quiet and very reliable. They also provide 12VDC for charging things and running those type of loads. Unfortunately, they’re expensive as hell. Specifically, I’ve used a couple of the EU2000I generators a fair amount. They’re cool in that they can be paralleled together with very little difficulty. I’ve also used several of the larger, cheap gas-powered generators. Two that I’ve used are Dayton units, I think with B&S Vanguard engines, one 4.5kw unit, and one 6kw unit. The engines worked great, but both generator heads died after about 100 hours of use. This seems to be a reasonable expectation for emergency power generators for consumer use. I’ve used a Coleman 4KW generator. Again, the engine still runs, but not so well as the others and the head has died. For Field Day every year, I use a 6KW gas-powered Multiquip that is very reliable. It’s equipped with a Honda OHV engine. For Burning Man, we use a 15KW diesel-powered (Kubota, I think), trailer-towed Multiquip that we bought used from Hertz rentals for about $4500. It is the ultimate in reliability. It’s never had an issue, starts like a dream, puts out well-beyond it’s rated capacity and gets run non-stop for a week in the hot desert every year. For emergency power this winter, I’ve scored a Honda EX5500 electric-start, gas-powered generator. It’s 10 years old, but it only has about 3 hours on it, so I expect that it will be very reliable.

  4. I second ‘s Honda recommendation. I have an EM2200 that has a 120v and 12vdc output.

    For you maglight, I recommend the MiniStar2. I have them in all my MiniMags.

    I also replaced the end caps with push-button back switches. uses a different kind of switch. He could tell you what that one is. It’s important for me to be able to blip the light on and off to maximize battery life and for other, more tactical reasons, and without a push-button switch, I’d hate the MiniMag.

  5. Woops —

    The push-button end caps are here. uses a different kind. Without push-button back switches, I’d hate the MiniMag. Turning them on and off is cumbersome, but with the momentary feature of the back switches, it’s easy to minimize battery drain, signal, etc.

  6. Luxeon LEDs are ‘effing AWESOME.

    I was almost sold on the LED kit the Commander linked to, until I saw your suggestion. I now know where a bit of my discretionary income is going…

  8. Groovy. I’ve been looking to retro-fit my two Minimags with leds when i get the cash. Now if I can just figure out where the second one is hiding…

  9. Definitely look at a generator with a low oil detection system.

    I’ve been eyeing honda’s small but expensive line of generators. The advantage is they’re small, quiet and have a low noise signature that says (come steal me, I’m a generator). Larger generators are of corse noisier.

    If you expect sun over part of that time, you could see about a solar array with a battery charging/inverter system.

  10. Most modern generators have low oil detections systems, whether the generator themselves are of questionable quality or not. I’ve got two good horizontal shaft engines sitting around right now that have the low-oil detection system and broken generator heads.

    I’ll reiterate my experience with the Honda EU2000I. I love that little generator. It’s about the same size, shape, and weight of a 5-gallon can of gas, quiet as hell, and takes pretty hard service.

  14. If you kept your power needs reasonable, you could always use the Ranger to charge up the home battery bank. Pick up some surplus welding cable, attach each end to quick-release jumper cable plugs, equip the Ranger and the battery bank enclosure with mating plugs and you’d be set. Make each of the cable plugs the same gender so you wouldn’t have to worry about which end goes where.

Comments are closed.