Rangetime with the FN

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Took the FN TAC3 out for a spin yesterday. I had held off on going to the range with it because I was waiting for the optic to arrive. And…it arrived yesterday.

Its an Eotech XPS2. I had been looking at various ‘dot scopes’ and wanted to give the Eotech a try. They have a reputation for durability, and I’m looking for end-of-the-world resilience. I have a dot on my MP5A2 clone, a Sig Romeo XT Pro and I like it a lot…strong recommend. I’m rapidly becoming a fan of these types of optics, but I am making sure not to like them at the expense of my iron sights. Even as durable as these things are purported to be, with battery life measured in years, I still make sure every gun has a set of sighted-in iron sights. Because.

Anyway…. Took it to the range, sighted in, and started shooting the steel plates. The FN has a military trigger but it’s got a smooth travel and good break. Actually a very nice trigger. Accuracy was also quite good, even with the 1x of the optic. I might have to get a magnifier just because. I only put about sixty rounds through it since it was getting late and I was doing this right after work…and darkness is coming earlier.

Overall, I really like this AR. I need to really sit down with it, solidly rest it, and see what it can do but so far I’m really pleased. I’ll be swapping the muzzle device for something conducive to a suppressor, drop a light on it, and that’ll be that. I really look forward to shooting this thing some more.

Do I like it better than my Colt? Well…yes, but thats because the Colt is in ‘classic’ M4 attire with front sight tower and round handguards. A capable and good rig, no doubt…but it doesn’t lend itself as easily to what I’m wanting to do. But…still a nice gun.

 

 

Hurricane aftermath

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I live in a region that, barring some wild geological experience, will never see a hurricane. I’ve been in some though, back when I lived on he east coast.

I’m watching the news out of the affected areas and I still don’t understand how, when you have several days of advance warning, you havent either A) followed the first rule of surviving a disaster (Answer: Don’ be there) or B) prepared themselves.

I’d mentioned that all these people complaining about their local governments not providing drinking water could have had several cases of the stuff from WalMart all for the price of a couple beers and packs of Marlboros. Someone opined that I was being harsh because perhaps these people were forced out of their houses and had to leave their supplies behind.

Not sure I agree with that. If youre savvy enough to lay in supplies then youre savvy enough to have some packed up for when you need to go go go. And if you’re really that on top of things then you probably have your act together enough to have left the area with your gear to begin with.

But, setting that aside, I am just unable to comprehend how many people didn’t read the blindingly obvious writing on the wall and either beat feet or stockpile supplies.

I am not entirely unsympathetic. Even Burt Gummer wound up basically a refugee when his bunker was compromised and destroyed. But Burt didn’t bitch about the .gov not helping him, and he kept on going. A fictional character, yes…but not a fictional attitude.

But…it’s easy to armchair quarterback things when I’m not the one watching my house float away, but still…where are the stories of the squared away people with their generators and supplies sitting on their porches casually performing overwatch against looters?

AR stuff

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Picked up a new AR today. I’d been wanting a slightly ‘upper tier’ AR for a while now. I’ve a stack of Palmettos, Stags, Bushmasters, Rugers, etc. but I kinda wanted something with a little more high-end quality. You can spend a lot in the AR world for a Noveske or an LMT or some other top-tier brand and I wouldn’t mind having one. But…I’m not quite there yet. I did want to get something, though, a bit better than what I have. One of my vendors was having a sale and I decided that the folks at FN have been stamping out guns for the better part of over 100 years…let’s get one of their AR’s.

Nothing terribly fancy. Its an FN TAC3 which is what the pattern for most AR carbines seems to be these days – M-lok handguard, telestock, no front sight tower, lotsa pic rail. I’m throwing an Eotech on there, some BUIS, swapping out the muzzle device for a quick mount for a suppressor, adding a light, and calling it a day.

I’ve been shooting AR’s since…mmm…the late 80’s. I think I’ve owned every brand that was extant back then and have seen some weird ones come and go. Back in the day, you didn’t have M4geries…they were called CAR-15’s. If you had an AR you most likely had a full size 20″ rifle. Back then it was Colt, Bushmaster, Olympic, and DPMS. There might have been a few outliers but those were the main brands.

Pic rail wasn’t a thing yet, and attaching a flashlight to your gun never really occurred to us. Flattops were definitely not a thing….AR’s all had carry handles. If you were tacticool you might have the Colt carry-handle scope or an Armson OEG on there. If it was a CAR-15, odds are good you had about 4″ of flash suppressor hanging off the front of your gun to make it legal length,

Mags were aluminum from Okay, Adventureline, Colt, Sierra, and a handful of other makers. If you wanted a drum there was a massive plastic 90-round monstrosity you could buy. If you wanted to really go off the deep end, the guys at LL Baston made mounts to mount an underbarrel shotgun like it was an M203. … an idea that is yet to die. I have never seen one in real life.

As time went on, the ‘rankings’ of manufacturers waxed and waned. The “ABC’s” (Armalite, Bushmaster, Colt) were the highly regarded top-tier guns (mind you this was damn near 40 years ago), and things like Olympic and DPMS were the ‘budget’ guns…much like Anderson/Palmetto today.

Also, way back then (late 80’s), Vietnam was still a relatively fresh memory. You could have a guy who had seen the elephant over there who was still less than 40 years old. The stories about the reliability issues of early M16’s were still being loudly preached. In fact, I know a guy here in town, former crew chief on a Chinook, who has nothing but venomous spite for the gun.

Calibers were strictly .223 and the flavor of the day was 55 gr. ball. Maybe 52 in some batches. Ar’s in other calibers wouldn’t be a readily available thing for a number of years.

Accessories were limited…you could buy surplus USGI 3-mag ALICE pouches and that was pretty much it.  You had a GI cleaning kit in the buttstock. A GI sling finished the ensemble.

Nowadays, of course, its a different story. The AR is a ubiquitous platform with dozens of manufacturers, hundreds of third-party accessory manufacturers, a dozen calibers, and the modualr aspect of the rifle has been amplified and improved over the sixty years this thing has been around.

Which brings me to my new FN. It’s as far a cry from one of my early CAR-15’s as you can imagine. It’s more adaptable to things like lights and optics, is probably more reliable, has a freefloated barrel, and is probably more accurate with its heavier profile.

So, long story to simply say that I’m getting to be an old dude who can say “I remember when…”.

But..new toy, so yay!

 

The Road

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A while back I looked at a piece of property that had the acreage and distance that I wanted in a piece of dirt, but one of the tings that queered the deal was the road.

See, I don’t mind a piece of property that says in its listing “have to snowmobile in in the winter”. I have no problem with that. I have a fantasy of taking a week off over Christmas and ensconcing myself in my cozy little casa and watching the snow pile up outside as I listen to the fire in the woodstove crackle and I enjoy the utter lack of people.

But the problem is, while that sounds awesome there are other things to consider. If youre buying a piece of land with the intention of building on it, you need to get things there. And while a barely-a-road is great for keeping the Golden Horde at bay, it works against you when it comes to things like well-drilling rigs, propane trucks, cement mixers, prefab concrete septic vault flatbeds, cranes, and a bunch of other rather large and cumbersome vehicles that youre probably going to want to have to make things easy.

Could you build your dream bunker using just supplies you haul in on a small trailer on the back of your four wheeler? Sure…I’m sure it’s been done. But your expenses are going to multiply at an exponential rate. A dozen ten mile round trips to haul what could otherwise have been done in one fell swoop with a large flatbed truck  is an expensive way to do business.

And so, we are back to the survivalists dilemma – you want remote enough to give you privacy and keep folks away, but you need it to have a level of accessibility that directly results in the opposite.

I suppose one tradeoff is to lower your expectations – either on the privacy and remoteness, or on the grandeur and scope of what you plan to build.

Of course, people will start mentioning in the comments how there are super 4×4 trucks that can navigate a 90-degree incline and climb hills that would freak a yak. Well, that may be true…but the odds that Billy Bob’s Well Drilling or Guido’s Concrete Pumping in the middle of Sheephump MT has those is….slim. Now, another option would be that you have a decent road to get in the vehicles and equipment you need and then once thats done you make the road indecent. There’s a thought.

And let’s not be confused…a simple dirt road is fine. There’s a lot of equipment that can be brought in on a regular dirt road. I’m talking about a road that is rutted by cattle, poor drainage, and a host of other factors…in addition to being narrow and bracketed at points by trees right up against the edge of the road.

So, what I’m saying here is that something I hadn’t thought about factoring into the decision process was the accessibility of heavy vehicles and equipment. Look, I love the idea of being far enough back in the sticks that every yahoo without a 4×4 is gonna look at the route to my place and go “Yeah, no.” But I can’t afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars doing some logistical workaround to a problem that is avoided by simply not having a goat trail for a road.

Ammo can…not ammo can’t

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Remember this post? That was where I picked up these:

Well that was about three years ago and, dang it, I need more…fortunately this guy still has a few hundred left and I picked up another 25:

Do a Facebook Marketplace search for AMMO CANS in Missoula and you should find ’em.

What am I using them for? Well, over the last few years I’ve been stocking up on magazines. I’ve got sealed cardboard cases here of Magpul P-mags and those cardboard boxes dont last forever, don’t stack well, and are subject to damage. I transfer the mags to the ammo cans, stencil a number on the side, slap a hangtag on them, update the spreadsheet, and set ’em down for the Deep Sleep.

Given that it’s an election year, I’ll probably pick up another case of Pmags and some AK mags. And…they need a nice place to spend the next decade, so there we go.

Oh…and I got in on a group purchase with some local LMI to the tune of 30,000 rounds of CCI 9mm ball ammo. Came out to $0.22 ea, shipping included, so I’ll tuck my share of that away in one of these also.

Paratus stuff

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I’d be an ungrateful person if I didn’t take time to acknowledge the several people who sent me Paratus gifts. Gifts included knitted headgear, cartridge brass, pocket notebooks, and a few other goodies. For privacy’s sake I won’t go into who sent what, but I want to make sure everyone who sent a gift knows I appreciate it. Very generous of you dudes (and dudettes).

Nope, not this one……..

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You’re not stupid, so Im pretty sure youve figured that your buddy Zero found himself a property that caught his interest. Indeed I did. It caught my interest so much, in fact, that I drove out there today to look at. Glad I did because, in case you didnt know, what you see in a Google Earth satellite pic and a real estate website gallery may not always jibe with reality. In the words of the War Department “There is no substitute for boots on the ground.”

The property in question was two 20-acre lots that butted up against a couple thousand acres of private land that was in a conservation easement. Nearest power was a long ways away. The property had two storage conexes already on it. My biggest two concerns were the terrain and the roads. I don’t mind driving a dirt road but if the road was a winding, torturous affair that precluded things like a well-drilling rig and the like….well, thats gonna be a problem.

I knew it might be a challenging drive so I packed for it…shovel, hilift, straps, chains, extra fuel, extra water, radios, flares, smoke, first aid, rations, etc. Because in Montana you just don’t know.

We’d made it about 3/4 of the way to the property (amazingly staying on course, which was an incredible accomplishment all on its own) before I had decided in my head that this was going to be a ‘hard pass’ just on the strength of the truly horrific road. There was one stretch that was such a steep downhill run that I seriously doubted my ability to climb it on the return. In rain or thaw it would have been a Slip-N-Slide. How a couple conexes made it to this property is utterly beyond me.

Once there it only took a few minutes to see that this was not gonna be the new Beta Site. Altitude was a bit up there at 6000′. Terrain was all distinctly stingy with the flat spaces. And, more importantly, there were more houses up there than my careful Google Earth reconnoitering had shown. Combine that with the Highway To Hell and I couldn’t salvage the rest of my Saturday fast enough. SO, since I am definitely not taking it…here’s a link to it.

I have almost always regretted spending money more often than I have regretted not spending it. I am certain that this will be a case where I won’t regret not spending money.

But, for the last week, while waiting to get a chance to go look at this piece, my mind had to go and start addressing concerns that I really hadn’t given too much thought to. Things like maintaining privacy in the purchase, fuel logistics, septic logistics, water logistics, fuel selection, structure type, internet access, neighbor politics, vehicle considerations,  etc, etc, etc. Some of these issues I’ll be bringing up in the blog later to get the opinion of the hivemind.

 

Paratus 2024

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AH, I know,,,it seems like we just got through taking down the decorations from the last Paratus. Yet, here we are!

So, first off, Happy Paratus to everyone. About 40 people made the list for cards/gifts this year. If you didn’t get a Paratus card, have no fear…here’s this years card:

Cover

Inside

Back

Did I get myself anything for Paratus? Well, not really….but trust me, I’ve spent enough on myself this year that it more than makes up for not buying myself a gift. Really, I spent way too much on boomtoys and whisperpickles this year. I suspect that is something that will rapidly be coming to a middle here shortly as I try to put money together for other purposes.

I hope YOU had a happy (and safe) Paratus. And I hope you got to spend Paratus the way it was meant to be spent – getting cool gear and hanging out with your like-minded friends discussing the upcoming kamalapocalypse. But feel free to tell me in comments how you made it in the gift department and if you did anything special. It is, after all, your holiday.