Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Went up to CostCo to check things out for myself. Indeed, there were Mountain House freezedrieds there. Two different types.

First up was a ten-pack of their ‘two serving’-size entrees. I forget the flavors…lasagna, teriyaki, stroganoff and something else. Price was $39.99 or $3.99 per pouch.

Next up was this package of ‘Kirkland’ brand fruit. Kirkland is CostCo’s ‘in-house’ branding. Buy a few million dollars worth of any product and the manufacturer will slap whatever name you want on it. (You really think Sears made all those .30-30 rifles we see on the used rack?)

Notice on the corner of the box where it says Oregon Freeze Dried? That’s the parent company of Mountain House. Apparently CostCo contracted to buy enough of this product to get OFD to package it up as Kirkland. Reasonable price, by the way, for a little snack size of freeze dried fruit. Winds up at something like eightysix cents per package. A nice addition to your morning oatmeal when out in the boonies.

Speaking of Mountain House, I received an email from thm other day. It says they are re-introducing the #10 cans to their dealer network. In my opinion MH was a jerk to their lesser-volume dealers over the last couple years. They basically only released the #10 cans to their highest volume dealers while letting the little guy get virtually none. That’s not how you build brand loyalty. In fact, I would bet that MH’s behavior and HK-like attitude (“Because you suck. And we hate you.”) is one thing that has put Augason Farms on the map in terms of food storage. Mountain House sells some great product, and has a few things that are hard to find elsewhere, but before plunking down coin with them I’d check AF and see if they have a similar product.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Wandering the gunshops with an out-of-town visitor today. At the gunshop a fella came in to buy a lower to match an upper he’d purchased. He opened the gun case to show the upper to the gun store guy. Oh it was an upper all right…..14.5″ barrel, M4 cut, and a full-auto bolt carrier as well as Knight’s rails and some cool flip up rear sight. Yup…it appeared to be stolen mil property. (and the story I overheard was “…bought it from a guy in the army…”) I was half expecting the guy behind the counter to say “Close that up and get it out of my store…NOW.” But he calmly explained to the guy that he might wanna call ATF and turn it in before he shows it to the wrong person (or assembles the damn thing) and steps on his own dick. I heard the term “I urge you…” more than once.

Moral: stuff like that is out there. And although this guy may have bought it in a cloud of blissful ignorance about the law, it’s also just as possible someone there had a microphone taped under their jacket lapel. No matter how tempting, how good the price, or how well you know the guy….walk the frak away and do not look back.

Nice looking upper though………

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

As you may remember, I tested out a drum magazine for the HK-91 made by Allied Armament (AA). It worked flawlessly, looked awesome, and just generally made me feel like some sort of ballistic superman by having 50 rounds of .308 on tap. I told the evil genius from Allied Armament that he had a great product and while I appreciated having one for my PTR-91, there were probably more sales to be made for the other, more commonly found, .308 rilfes out there like the FAL. I naively suggested that just making the magazine drum a modular part with interchangeable feed towers would be the way to go. Shows what I know.

X-FAL? Excellent!

I received an Allied Armament drum for the FAL a few weeks ago. It casually resembles the drum for the HK-91 series of rifles, but it has a few changes…the cartridge followers are steel, the winding knob is slightly different, and there are a few differences to allow it to work in the FAL series of rifles. At first blush, they look the same but in reality the FAL drum is quite different and necessarily so.

From a magazine development standpoint the HK series of rifles must be pretty easy to design a magazine for….there’s no bolt hold open system to plan for and the bolt and carrier don’t rotate or do any other gymnastics. The FAL system, though, not only has a bolt hold open to factor in, but there are two distinct magazine flavors…metric or inch pattern, and each one uses a somewhat unique magazine catch. Rather than have two different styles of drums, there is a small interchangeable part at the front of the drum feed tower…swap out the part depending on if your gun is metric or inch pattern. Clever.

There is one huge (to me) difference between this drum and the HK drum. The metric FALs must be ‘modified’ to accept the drum.The bolt release on the metric FALs has to either be removed or replaced with an L1A1 bolt release for the drum to fit the gun. The metric release has a little projection on it that the L1A1 version does not. For the drum to fit in the well and lock in place you have to either remove the bolt release or replace it with the L1A1 part which is, according to the video from AA, a six dollar part. Now, anytime you have to replace a part of your gun to enable it to function with an accessory I get nervous. I think its an acceptable ‘modification’ to the gun, and calling it a modification is probably an overstatement since its really just swapping out one OEM part for another. You decide. Personally, swapping one genuine military part for a slightly different but genuine military part that lets me have 50 rounds of .308 on tap seems like an acceptable change. Doing this part swap will leave you with a gun that will not lock open on the last shot from a 20-rd magazine, but you will be able to manually lock the bolt back. This is pretty much the same procedure the HK series of guns had…you could lock them open manually, but otherwise had no last-shot hold open.

Loading the drum was pretty much what you’d expect after loading the HK drum – give the winding knob a bit of a turn to pull the follower back, drop in some rounds, regrip the knob to turn it some more, and repeat until the magazine is filled. A big change from the X-91 drum I received is that the FAL drum required a bit of creative engineering to overcome the problem of upward pressure of cartridges from the magazine against a moving/rotating bolt. In the makers own words:

The pinball flipper or what we call the kicker device was designed and patented out of necessity, as the drum would never work in it’s original configuration with the FAL platform. The HK’s delayed blowback bolt is unlike any other bolt design, it does not rotate when operating therefore there is no downward pressure on the magazine when the bolt head passes the ammunition. Almost all firearms however have a rotating bolt head that interacts with the magazine, as a result we had to create a device that would relieve magazine tension when the bolt passed by, and -voila- there you have the kicker device. The kicker device is essentially the same thing that sits on the front of the motor of a car and allows for consistent tension while the motor operates.

-The increased spring tension and larger handwheel are for three reasons. One due to the increased drag of the kicker device, more spring tension was needed. Secondly larger tower lengths like the X-25 (sr-25 platform rifles) and the M14 model, require more spring tension to feed ammunition up the larger tower. A third aspect that is quite interesting is because the kicker removes the majority of spring tension when operating we can run almost infinite spring pressure in the main body allowing the magazine to perform with weapons that run well into 800 plus rounds per minute. Before this device single stack magazines were always limited by the direct force they exerted on a bolt.

And here I was foolishly thinking that all that was involved would be modifying the feed tower to accommodate the FAL magazine well geometry. This is why I’m not in the magazine business. Well, that and a brilliant idea like his never occurred to me.

Test guns for this little adventure were a SAR-4800 from Springfield Armory, an StG58 built on a DSA FAL receiver, and an early Springfield Armory Israeli model….and let me tell you, that Israeli heavy-barrel model is exactly the kind of gun this drum was meant for. Fold down the bipod legs, insert a drum, drop the bipod on the hood of a car, get comfortable behind the stock and you are a one-man roadblock. Unfortunately the X-FAL did not fit in the magazine well of the Israeli model…just a bit too snug a fit. If your history is a little fuzzy, let me recap – the Israeli heavy-barrel FALs were put together by Springfield Armory years and years ago from military parts kits. Since the lower receiver was a former military product made in Israel it may have been a little off in it’s tolerances. :::shrug::: Such is the world of parts-kit guns using GI parts. In the SAR-4800 (Imbel receiver) and the DSA (DSA receiver) the magazine locked in place just fine. Very little play and no problems removing the mag from the well

Testing followed the same procedure as for the HK drum. Load it up, fire one shot every second until empty. According to AA, there are two versions of this drum…one for semiautos and one for full-autos. The difference, apparently, is in the spring system. Since I’m not fortunate enough to have access to a full-auto FAL this particular distinction was wasted on me.

Ammo for this testing was the glorious South African batlepack stuff that used to be so common at the gun shows. It’s a good performer and an excellent example of military ball ammo. As I expected the drum never missed a beat (get it? Drum? Beat?). Slow fire, rapid fire, whatever…it just chugged along like a champ.

Is it fun? Absolutely. Is it practical? Well, I suppose that depends on what you’re expecting out of your life. Since my interest is in being prepared for the uncertain future, I’ll take every advantage I can get and this drum is definitely something that can give you an advantage in some scenarios. I’ll leave it up to your imagination what those scenarios might be, but I doubt there has ever been anyone who got into a violent encounter and thought to himself “geez, I wish the magazine in my rifle held less ammo”. If you’re the kind of guy who thinks that the future may involve armed gangs roaming the countryside looting and pillaging…well, two or three buddies armed with rifles with a few of these drums are going to do more to deter that sort of behavior than any social program ever would. Big magazines are no solution all on their own…training, tactics, maneuverability, etc, all are valuable in a violent encounter, but everything else being equal I’d like to have as many rounds in my rifle as possible. I don’t mind hauling the unfired ones back to the bunker.

It was pointed out to me that Beta has jumped on the .308 drum bandwagon and is offering a 100-rd drum for the G3/HK91 series of rifles. Twice the firepower, twice the price of the AA product. I have mixed feelings about the Beta drums…on the one hand, hey, 100 rounds! On the other, plastic magazine loaded with five pounds of ammo dropped on a hard surface = $470 flushed down the crapper. The AA product is a far more robust design. In fact, I think AA should do a YouTube video of their mag versus the plastic Beta product in a rough-n-tumble head-to-head comparison and see which one wins.

The folks at AA have done an amazing job of bringing a product to market with a level of quality and innovation that is rarely seen outside of huge manufacturers with larger budgets for R&D. These magazines are solid, dependable, and practical. This is the second one I’ve gotten to play with and if anything it’s even better than the last one I reviewed…and I’m a big fan of that HK drum.

If you’ve got an FAL (or PTR-91 / HK clone) and you want something to give you a bit more capacity than your average 20-round magazine, you may need to get yourself these drums from Allied Armament. Even if the world doesn’t come to an end, they’re excellent accessories and, probably, good investments.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Apparently CostCo is also selling, under their Kirkland house branding, varieties of freeze-dried fruit produced by…surprise…Oregon Freeze Dried – MH’s parent company.

I knew OFD had gotten a huge contract from ’someone’ and used a giant wad of cash to ramp up their capacity….looks like some of the side benefit to that will be OFD moving more product into other markets like this.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Hmm…received a phone call from an LMI this afternoon alerting me to our local CostCo carrying Mountain House freeze drieds. Must investigate.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

The wool mitts I ordered arrived. They arent as thick as the USGI ones, but they are much more comfortable and fit better with the outer shells that I got earlier this year. In fact, I’m going to have to spend about an hour or so getting all the liners mated up with shells and then packed away. Do I really need forty(!) pairs of this sort of ting. No, I absolutely do not. But…some will be given away to LMI friends and that sort of thing. in practice, I’ll probably keep two sets in the emergency bag in the truck, two sets at the shop, two sets in my Cold Weather Module, three sets for every day use, and then maybe another dozen in storage. That’ll still leave me with about..uhm…twenty sets to give away or cache elsewhere.

$1.75 for winter trigger mitts and wool liners? Sign me up!

Cost? The outer mitts (LXM-182900X – German Trigger Finger Mitts) are $0.75 per pair, the wool liners I received today (WX2-193252 – 20 Prs. New Swiss Mil. Trigger Finger Mitten Liners) were $1 per pair. Mate ‘em together and you’ve got a good pair of mitts and liners for the amazing price of $1.75. Go. Order now. I’ll wait. (Having said that, I bet you’ll hit the ‘out of stock’ flag when you get there.)

Anyway, the wool mitts are very nice…more..hmm…’refined’..than the USGI ones. Theyre stretchier so they fit nicer, especially under an overmitt. Priced cheap enough to buy a whole bunch for yourself and your cadre. Best of all, for the price it doesnt matter if you lose a pair..or five.

Snag yourself a discount code for SG…just head to Google and enter “sportsmans guide discount codes”. I found one for $10 off on orders made by members so the shipping was basically free.

Although I’ve never had problems with moths or other critters (except, oddly, my dog) eating my wool mitts I’ll probably vacuum seal the extras to save space and protect them from any potential damage.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

It’s another dreary day in the post-apocalyptic world. The radio is nothing but static and pre-recorded FEMA announcements, trying the lightswitches shows that the electricity is still off, peering outside shows no traffic on the streets..unsurprising since the gas stations are all looted and burned, and there is the sounds in the distance of infrequent gunfire and screaming. So…..whats for breakfast? Well, as it turns out, the post-apocalyptic breakfast menu around here is actually better than what it is before the collapse. If you were so inclined, you could have a breakfast featuring:

Orange drink, scrambled eggs, oatmeal (choice of four flavors), pork chops, strawberries, bananas, pancakes, biscuits, corned beef hash, and granola with milk.

Everything a growing lad needs to rebuild the world after it implodes.

I’m dong a semi-annual re-inventory and update of whats in the food storage and so far have determined that, come the apocalypse, we might do pretty fair for ourselves. At the moment, just in #10 cans of dehydrated and freeze dried, theres 40 different foods from various sources including Auguson Farms, Mountain House and the LDS Cannery.

Further packed away in 5-gallon buckets are salt, sugar, oats, corn, rice, pasta, wheat, and a few other bulk items. Then theres the shelves full of wet-pack (‘canned’) vegetables and things like soups, stews, sauces, condiments, oils, meats, etc, etc. So, all in all, I think we’re doing pretty fair. The real headache is keeping track of all of it…hence todays adventure in organization. Someday I’ll have an iPad so I can just stand there and update my spreadsheets in realtime, but for now a clipboard and pen will have to do. By the by, I have a date-stamper that I use for just this occasion…after I crack open the boxes and check everything the box gets stamped with “REVIEWED SEP 26 2011″ on the box so I know its at least been checked on this year to make sure nothing bad occurred during its patient wait.

Now, realistically, do I expect that someday something will happen and there will be nothing available save what I have on hand? Nope. But here’s what I do believe: having a large stock of food onhand will offset or reduce the hardships and stresses caused by unemployment, underemployment, short-term disasters, inflation, and a host of other ‘more likely’ events.

Which do you think will happen first: your employer lays you off or cuts your hours in half…..or…….the Chinese invade along with a UN occupying force of ‘peacekeepers’? I dunno about you, but I’m more confident in the need to have a Plan B in case of a change in employment status than I am in the need to suddenly learn Mandarin. The way I figure it, we budget around $400/month for groceries (what can I say, we have some expensive tastes) and if we can be prepared enough to live off of what we have stored in a crisis, well, thats $400 a month we don’t have to worry about when every dollar counts.

Anyway, today is Pull Stuff Off The Shelf And Make Sure It’s Logged Properly Day. When that’s done, an updated copy of the spreadsheets will be dumped into my phone and into my email so I can access it from just about anywhere. This way when I wander over to Rosauers and am torn about whether to purchase more egg mix or dehydrated apples I can check my figures and see if we really need more or if the resources can be better used elsewhere.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Much like how Hunter Thompson tried to develop a strain of cold-hardy peacocks, a friend of mine is attempting to grow a plumeria here in western Montana. He was out of town for a week and asked mt to mind his stuff while he was gone. One of the instructions that was made quite clear was that if there was even a suggestion that the temperature might get down towards freezing, bring the plant indoors. Well, I like to err on the side of caution and brought it in the other day…..good thing, too. It’s been right at freezing or a few degrees above these last few mornings. So, in addition to playing conservator to a plant that really has no business being in this part of the country, it is also time to break out the winter gear…especially the cold weather module for the backpack.

Since I made that original post about 6 years ago I’ve changed a few things. I added an extra set of mitts, an extra neck gaiter and an extra hat (because someone always forgets theirs). Otherwise, its the same stuff. Theres just barely enough room left for an UnderArmor undershirt which comes in handy when you really underestimate the weather.

As I was repacking things I noticed that, dammit, I’m having trouble finding the surplus wool mitts I purchased about a year or so ago. I bought enough that I vacuum sealed several individual pairs and tucked them away fro long term storage, but I also left at least a half dozen pairs loose for casual use. No big deal. A quick trip to Sportsmans Guide turned up these well-reviewed wool mitts. $19.97 for twenty pair. But, if youre a member of their buyers club you can shave off another $2/pair. So far so good. A quick Google of “sportsman’s guide discount code” brought me to coupon code #SN323 which shaved off another $10. So, what woulda been around $46 with shipping came out to $36. And I’ll have forty pairs of wool mitts to work with. As is SOP, half will go into deep storage and the remaining half will be left out for immediate use, although I might send a few pairs to some LMI as thoughtful gifts.

I usually dont link to threads from the various forums because some are closed to non-members and some arent and I dont feel like keeping track of that sort of thing. However, I think this one should be open. There was a thread about the canned beef from CostCo under thier house brand of Kirkland. I had seen this stuff up there the last few times we went to CostCo but I am always leery of canned meats…especially since much of it these days is from non-US sources. But, after reading the post on arfcom I decided to take a swing at it. Worst case, Nuke gets some awesome dog food. So I headed up to CostCo to pick some up.

Now, I have a freezerfull of dead bovine at the moment, and quite a few cans of freeze-dried dead bovine, but freezers die and freeze-dried meats are spendy. If theres some cow that comes in a can that is actually pretty good..well, I wanna know about it.

Turns out, its really good. To me, all canned meat smells and looks like cat food when you open the can. I absolutely hate that smell. But, after draining the meat a bit, putting the contents into a covered bowl, and microwaving it for 90 seconds it smelled wonderful. Meat was lean, very tender, and pulls apart quite easily…primo material for doing anything where shredded beef would be nice. Shelf life is about two years but in the real world its gonna be several times that.

I’m going to have to spend some time in the kitchen experimenting with this stuff. It seems like it would be an excellent staple for cooking with long-term storage food. I can definitely see this with some rice, Mexican seasoning of some kind, maybe some canned chiles, etc, etc. I can also see this working great tossed into the last two minutes of a stir fry with some peppers.

Anyway, if you have a CostCo near you, you might wanna try some of this stuff. Like any canned meat, it smells wierd and looks unappetizing when you open the can but if you can get past that and get it heated up and on a plate I think you’ll like it.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Remember this post? It’s back….kinda.

Theres a small endcap that featured the dairy products, a couple fruits and some soups. What was interesting was that it also featured something that was not there the last time they had this stuff – five gallon buckets of wheat and oats. This means that this isnt a small endcap to get rid of what was left over from the last sale, this is the vanguard, I think, of a new shipment. You’d be silly to buy the oats, wheat and apple slices when you can get them cheaper from the local LDS cannery but the egg powder is the real jewel in this assortment.

Local LMI, it’s the Rosauers on Reserve and South. Not much there at the moment but what is there should be fairly useful. Be sure to lean on the customer service guy at the desk and ask when more will be available. I was told they have to order in a trailerload to meet minimum so if they think theres a demand……..