Meme Dump...

Dots Don't Go Everywhere...Yet

I'm on record as mentioning I'm not a huge fan of the 3" J-frame, and that steel J-frames in general don't have a ton of applicability in my world.

Small revolvers fall into one of two categories in my world. Either they're a pocket/ankle gun, or they're a belt gun. For me, a 3" J-frame is too long for a pocket, and a steel-framed one is too heavy for a pocket. I've pocket-carried a S&W 432 (and a 442 before it) for almost 25 years now, but a steel gun would make my winter coat hang funny.

"But you could carry a 3" J-frame in a belt holster!" you say. Well, sure. But I could also carry a Detective Special, a Taurus 856/327, or a 3" Smith & Wesson K-frame in a belt holster with no more real difficulty and get a 20% ammunition capacity boost. In fact I have been carrying an 856 TORO for a year now.

This is what makes the new R.O.C. J-frame red dot mount from Shield Arms a real head-scratcher for me. It mounts to a Smith J-frame using the sideplate screws, but all the photos show it on a Model 442. That effectively makes the gun too big for a pocket and anyone who's actually carried an ankle gun should get a good belly laugh out of the idea of sticking an MRDS in the most dirt-and-lint collecting spot where it's possible to tote a blaster. (Even IWB, the 507k on my TORO needs blowing clean every few days.)

I guess you could use it to mount a dot on a belt-carried 3" 640 or something, but all the J-frame revolvers in Smith & Wesson's current catalog lineup that could really benefit from a small red dot... think the 3" Model 60, Model 63, or Model 317 ...all have adjustable rear sights, which means that they're already compatible with an Allchin-type scope mount.

I mean, I get that red dots are awesome, but we're a ways off from a functional MRDS solution for pocket guns.

(H/T to Gorillafritz.)

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Tab Clearing...

• An extensive photographic record of a Horten Ho IV flying wing glider in Mississippi in the early post-WWII era.


• A U.S. Navy twin-engined, remotely-piloted kamikaze drone from the Second World War...that could also be flown by an on-board pilot. (For ferrying purposes, not for crashing into stuff.)


• AI isn't "hallucinating", it's just gullible. You know how Facebook's censor bots can't tell the difference between you saying "I'll kill you" jokingly to a friend and a real death threat? Well, Large Language Models have that same issue, only on an industrial scale.

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Automotif DIV...

Nikon D3 & AF Nikkor 24-85mm f/2.8-4D

For most of the '80s, the Third Generation of the Ford Mustang ran roughshod over its F-body foes from GM at the traffic lights of America. 

The 305 Chevy, even in Tuned Port Injection form, gave up too much power to the 5.0L H.O. in the Mustang, and the 350 Vette motor was only available with a slushbox (plus the Camaro's more restrictive intake and exhaust choked the 5.7 TPI to the point where it only achieved horsepower parity with the 302 Ford.)

The tables were turned in the early Nineties, when the 275hp LT1 350 in the Camaro easily overpowered the 215hp 5.0L H.O. in the SN95 Mustang GT.

In an attempt to even things up, Ford released a Mustang Cobra under their SVT banner. While the bottom end of the motor was the same as the tried and true 5.0, it got GT40 heads, a new cam and intake manifold, underdriven accessory pulleys, and other tricks to bump the output to 240 SAE net horsepower.

Nikon 1 V2 & 1 Nikkor 18.5mm f/1.8

This was the swan song of the pushrod V8 in Mustang Cobras, because the '96-'98 Cobras featured a DOHC 32V version of Ford's 4.6L Modular V-8. The hand-built versions in the SVT Cobra, like this 1996 or 1997 ragtop, were rated at 305bhp.

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Landlords From Hell

What happens when a pack of internet investors buy your apartment complex?

Things started to fall apart, though, sometime after the first months of the pandemic. Tenants moved out in the dead of night as if they didn’t want anyone to see them; eviction notices would show up on their doors long after they’d left. The gym and pool shut down for “safety” reasons; when the building was sold the summer after COVID hit, the latter turned green. According to McMullen-Clarke, phantom surcharges began showing up on every rent bill, but when she called the front office to discuss them the phone would ring and ring; she later learned they’d stopped paying the phone bill. The new management charged $40 a month for “valet” trash service, but canceled its contract with the company retained to pick up trash every evening, so the same overworked maintenance guy who did everything else on the property had to pick up trash as well, and only when he got around to it. “There was garbage everywhere, it was really tragic,” McMullen-Clarke says.

[SNIP]

Weeds grew, in which new tenants would let their dogs shit without picking it up. Management would shut the water off throughout the entire complex for hours constantly; once a week at first, then just about every other day. But when the water was on, it would leak from 100 different spots and attract ever more pestilence. The rat population exploded, eventually taking up residence in the ceiling above McMullen-Clarke’s bedroom, where they scratched and fought and made it hard to fall asleep. One day as she was ascending the stairway, she noticed a rat sitting contentedly on the handrail for which she’d been reaching. “I took a deep breath and said to myself, OK, one of us is leaving.”

RTWT

Meme Dump...

"This was your father's weapon. I took it after I chopped his legs off and left him in a volcano."

Is Novelty a Necessity?

In a post about the Heritage Roscoe on social media, a reader asked what the new offering from Heritage would do that a double-action revolver hadn't already done, or if maybe it would do it in a different or better way.

That got me to thinking on how a segment of the market demands novelty as the justification for a new model.

In the case of the Roscoe, you only have to look at the name of the manufacturer, "Heritage", to realize that cutting edge novelty isn't exactly their milieu. After all, their bread and butter offerings are inexpensive plinkers that are functional and cosmetic clones of a 151-year-old revolver design.

Sometimes the retro is the point. Colt has done reissues of their WWI and WWII era M1911 and M1911A1. Springfield Armory sold bunches of their "Milspec" model, so much so that they brought the GI, or as we called it in the shop back then, the Even Milspeccer Milspec.

In the case of the Roscoe, what it does is bring the basic blued-steel 5-shot snub-nosed revolver back to market at a reasonable price. Smith & Wesson still offers the Model 36 Classic, but the MSRP on that thing is better than double that of the Roscoe. 

Of course, fifteen or twenty years ago there would have been no call for a gat like this because its main competition would have been the ocean of used Model 36's, but these days even J-frames aren't immune to price pressures from collectibles. A Chiefs Special that's priced like the Roscoe is gonna be a beater, and one that looks like all shiny and new is going to present the owner with that classic quandary: How much do you want to shoot a gun when a turn ring on the cylinder can knock a Benjamin off the value?

You could do like a lot of collectors: Put the pristine Chiefs Special in the safe and buy a beater 36 to shoot. Or you could buy a shiny Roscoe and shoot it.

FML

Well, it’s been six months since I felt the need to jostle the tip jar suggestively with my elbow while wiping down the VFTP bar top here.

A sudden work trip popped up at the end of this month (and you’ll get the details here at View From the Porch as soon as I’m free to release them) but it’s one of those ones where the public relations agency handling things is like “…and be sure to save your receipts and we’ll reimburse them!”

Now, they’re handling airfare and a hotel and whatnot, but when I read things like that, I’m like “Dude, I’m a freelance writer. Reimbursement of expenses is nice, but I can’t just poop out a thousand bucks on command!”

If you’ve just found a twenty in the sofa cushions and can’t figure out where to spend it, the tip jar in the side bar would be much appreciated!

Short Thoughts

• William of Ockham would like you to know that flying a helicopter in pea soup fog in the mountains is all you need for a crash. Mossad didn't bag Kobe Bryant and they didn't bag Raisi, either. Get-There-itis kills more people than any other factor in general aviation.


• Keep an eye on events in New Caledonia. Guarantee that China's stirring shit there.


• E'rrbody talking about the Red Lobster bankruptcy is all "Hurr Durr Endless Shrimp", but you never have to read far into these articles to find the words "private equity": "The following year, Darden sold Red Lobster to Golden Gate Capital, a private equity firm, for $2.1 billion. To help fund the deal, Red Lobster spun off its real estate assets in a transaction known as a sale leaseback agreement. Red Lobster had long owned its own real estate but would now be paying rent to lease its restaurants."

Automotif DIII...

With the Indy 500 you have the pace car itself, then you have "pace car" special editions sold by the manufacturer that are cosmetic clones. But there are additional marketing tie-ins! You'll see SUV's, for example, sold as "official vehicles", and then you have the official cars of the 500 Festival, which is the overarching organization for the Mini-Marathon, the 500 Festival Parade, and all the other events leading up to race day here in the Circle City.

For 2018, the fifty Festival Cars were Chevrolet Camaro 2SS Convertible Hot Wheels 50th Anniversary Editions, which feature a distinctive "Orange Crush" paint job and the 455bhp 6.2 liter LT1 V-8. This one went rolling up College Avenue yesterday.

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The Airport Cultural Index

As a longtime orbital peeper using the GoogleSat, I've found something interesting about airports. In some parts of the world, they're a mess.

Check out this disorganized corner of ramp in El Alto Airport in La Paz...

...or the back forty of Quatro de Fevereiro airport in Luanda, Angola...

You don't see that kind of disorganization at Narita, or Schipol, or Heathrow. Airports in the developed world tend to be pretty organized places. The mothballed aircraft at Davis-Monthan, Kingman Field, or Pinal Airpark tend to be parked in orderly rows. Even the Libyan C-130's quietly decaying in a clearing in the woods on the grounds of the Lockeed plant in Marietta are tucked in neatly among the pines.

So the state of Russian airports often surprises me. The Apathy of Kleptocracy: It's visible from space!

Desertification, Coupification

The Sahel is the name of the belt of arid land south of the Sahara desert proper. It's also the portion of the continent that's been referred to as the "coup belt", due to the fact that in the last three years, countries from Guinea in the west to Sudan in the east have been rocked by coups d'etat. 

As north Africa dries out, the Sahel has been spreading southward. So, apparently, is the coup belt.

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Tab Clearing...

• The Connoisseur's Glock.


• The pitfalls of using blanks in scenario training.


• Marko is giving away ten signed copies of Descent. (Or you could preorder a regular old un-signed copy here.)

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Automotif DII...

Buick used the Skylark name on its midsize cars from 1964 through 1972. These were on the same GM A-body platform as the Chevrolet Chevelle and Oldsmobile Cutlass. After a brief hiatus, the nameplate returned on the smaller 1975 Skylark, which rode on the Chevy Nova/Pontiac Ventura X-body platform.

It made the jump to front-wheel drive in 1980 as the Buick flavor of the Chevy Citation and then spent the final years of the Eighties as an N-body compact, along with the Pontiac Grand Am and Olds Cutlass Calais.

For 1992, the fifth generation Skylark appeared, riding on a stretched and widened N-body. It had a weird sort of "beaked" chrome grille and came with either a SOHC version of the Olds Quad4 motor or the 3.3L GM corporate V6. The styling was weird and somewhat off-putting to Buick's normally stodgy buying demographic and so for 1996 it received a mid-cycle styling refresh with a more conventional snout, like the Bright White 1996-'98 Skylark Custom sedan in the picture above.

Available in two trim levels, Custom and Limited, the base motor was now the 150bhp DOHC version of the Olds Quad4, and either trim level could be had with a 160bhp GM 3100 pushrod V-6.

The Skylark name was retired after the 1998 model year, as was the entire idea of a compact sedan offering from Buick, unless you count the short-lived Verano model of the 2010s.

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