Monthly Archives: March 2011

Underwhelmed

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Called Para at 8:35 AM central time. Their system is set up so you have to leave a message and they will call you back. 🙁 ….I left a detailed message and a phone number.

Now they don’t promise you when they will call back, and so at 4:30 central time I called them back…same message. Perhaps tomorrow.

I am underwhelmed. It would have been nice to get a real person to speak to the first time……Failing that, a return phone call would have been nice…Perhaps they have had a great deal of calls as this is a Monday.

Either way, it strikes me as less than desirable levels of customer service.

 Now I have to expect them to call back when I will not be able to answer. I do, after all, sometimes have to work and all that.

This, again, sucks.

On Penetration:

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Once upon a time……many years ago, someone, I will not use his name (I promised), had an ND (Negligent Discharge*) happen in my house. Luckily, no one was hurt, nothing was damaged, and things went forward….

This Sunday, I finished removing the old carpeting from that room. As the bullet from the ND had never been found, and no exit or other bullet hole had ever been found, it was assumed that it was somewhere in the floor……I found it today.

The bullet, which was a 200 grain lead semi-wadcutter, was lodged in the particle board underlayment, beneath the carpeting and padding. I was actually surprised to find that the bullet had not penetrated farther.

Actual penetration (at a very shallow angle) was just under 3/4 of an inch.

This was a reload, 200g LSWC, loaded to about 750 FPS. I would have thought that it would  be able to penetrate the floor, even at this angle….

But nope. just made it to the layer of plywood under the particle board….and it was between the joists. The plywood backing the particle board is also 3/4 inch… I really would have expected the bullet to have penetrated the flooring and gone into the basement.

The bullet was surprisingly un-deformed. I could load it and shoot it again, I think.

But I’ll keep it instead, as a reminder to be careful and always follow the Rules…Or I might send it to that person, perhaps cast in acrylic, just as a memento… and as a reminder of how stupid lucky we were that day that no one was hurt.

Lesson learned that day. One neither of us will ever forget. 

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* ND (Negligent) rather than AD (Accidental) because the person, could have been anyone, even me….was field stripping an XD and when they pulled the trigger to get the slide off the frame, found out that they had not checked the chamber enough times…..

Para update

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It’s broke.

As I wrote here, it died at 437 rounds.

The end (claw) of the extractor broke off. I am hoping that Para will just send me a new one. It’ll be easier (and likely faster) to strip the slide and repair/replace the thing than to send it back to them and wait for them to decide to fix it. It’s not like replacing the part will be hard to do or anything. This is a part of normal cleaning after every 300-500 rounds or so anyway…

I am disappointed though. I had expected better from Para. I own several other firearms from them, and some of these have round counts nearing 10,000, with nothing breaking, and only new recoil springs after 5,000 rounds or so.

This is a failure that should not have happened. And it shakes my belief that Para makes a good firearm. Perhaps the complaints about Para letting quality slide have some merit. Then again, maybe this was a fluke…. I dunno…. I have the alloy framed brother of this pistol, and it has 5,800 rounds through it with no issues, and no parts besides the aforementioned  recoil spring(s). Below is the broken extractor, still in the slide:

Broken extractor (click to embiggenize)

and another view:

broken extractor 2 (click to embiggenize)

And here is the extractor from the other LDA, unbroken…Just so you can see what it should look like (this one has extracted over 5800 rounds with no issues):

unbroken extractor (klick to make big)

This is why we should shoot our carry firearms. Not only practice……Find the weak link, and either get it fixed, or replace the pistol…or learn when to change parts that break regularly BEFORE they break when you really really need them (such as recoil springs).

The issue is that had this broken anywhere outside of the range, this could have been very serious. This was not something that could be fixed with “tap, rack, bang“. Failure drills do not fix this sort of issue. Essentially, this is (right now) an expensive single shot firearm until I get it fixed.

I hope I never need my firearm…I hope I never shoot it except on a range of some sort, and only in practice. But should I need it to, I want it to go Bang every time I pull the trigger….Not fail like this one did. 

This sucks. And then I gotta shoot it some more (and then some more after that) to verify reliability after it is fixed.

Just got back

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…….And re-tuned into the news cycle. Was out of decent contact with any real news except for radio, which was somewhat less than overwhelming in its coverage of….well, anything really useful. (All I had was net news via a cell phone, and I was driving, so reading news wasn’t really an option).

I am watching coverage as to just how badly the forces of nature have kicked the Japanese people in the testicles.

I hope they find most of the missing and that they don’t starve nor end up glowing in the dark due to the ever escalating issues at their nuclear power plants. The fact that they are flooding the reactor(s) with seawater (and by some reports, seawater deliberately contaminated with boron) tells me that they have a real emergency and are willing to write off the plants in order to prevent a catastrophe. This could be bad. Even for us in a few days.

This incident (yeah, I know to them it is a catastrophe, but to the rest of the world, it is just an incident) shows exactly why I preach (and practice) preparation for emergencies. Yeah, some folks have had their homes washed away, and therefore even if they had prepped, they would have none at this time. But many (most) still have homes, even if they are filled with foul smelling mud and water. Had those folks had preps, they’d be able to dig them out and open them and would at least have food and water for a few days or weeks. It’s better than starving or dying from dehydration.You have to be alive in order to be miserable.

Which kind of person would you rather be? one with options, or without?

How about if after that you had the additional fear of radiation? Just the not knowing (even if you were not directly affected by the destruction of the quake or were high enough that the following tsunami didn’t directly affect your home) if there was life threatening levels of radiation would affect your performance. Would you be as willing to help others?

Do you have a weeks worth of food and water? Do you have a means to detect radiation? How about durable storage of supplies? A tent or other shelter? KI/KIO3?

Bet that many folks in Japan would give you 50 times what you would pay for those things today, just to have them. Think about it.  

And while you are thinking about it, thank whatever higher power(s) you believe in that it isn’t you, and that you have time to make better choices in your preps….and ask him/her/it/them to give the Japanese a bit of mercy.

It is a good thing

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That the Tea Party folks don’t act this childish, or with this sort of callous disregard for the rule of law.

As many of us tea partiers have (and carry) firearms, there would likely have been blood, except for the fact that we all acted like responsible, adult, law abiding citizens.

Not to mention the property damage we could have done with all of our pickups.

I wonder how many of the riotersdemonstrators are from Wisconsin?

Via Insty

ETA: From the comments : “Remember the riots by the Tea Party folks when the Obamacare bill passed?…..nah, me either”

437 rounds

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Took the new Para to the range again tonight.

At the start of the evening, the round count was 400.

37 rounds later, had my first failure to extract. As I was shooting reloads, I thought that it might be my handiwork causing the failure, so I cleared the malf and continued. Round 438 fired and ejected cleanly, but round 439 failed to extract. The slide would move back, but leave the empty cartridge in the chamber.

After clearing that malf, I had 2 rounds fire and eject properly then failure after failure to extract after that. I swabbed the bore, but no joy. The extractor is either broken or just gunked up (a technical term, for you non gunnies).

I dunno….might just be dirt. The firearm has fired 400+ rounds (some reloads with extremely dirty powder (Winchester 231)) with absolutely ZERO maintenance, so I’ll detail strip the slide and clean it and see what is what.

If it is only dirt, and cleaning fixes the issue, then its off to the gunsmith for tritium sights and then onto my belt for daily carry. If it is something else, like a broken extractor or whatever, then off to Para for a fix, and then the whole process starts over.

We shall see.

Either way, I got more range time. Turning money into smoke, noise, and tattered paper is always good for my blood pressure. And that is never bad.