Shooting – Shooting Starr Sports

Fun Days

December 20, 2014/0 Comments/in Shooting /by Dale Starr

Good Morning World

Well yesterday was a blast (ok a lot of them;-) Went to the range to try out my new toys, a Remington model 700 in 30-.06 and a Marlin model 336 in of course 30-30. Of course took the family and a great friend along and we all got to play with them as well as our trusty Marlin model 60 in 22 L.R. (you know the kind that is really hard to find ammo for now days:-). But thanks to Cabello’s my 22 stock pile is being refreshed again after months of not being able to get any. So things are improving in a lot of areas in the Gun world finally.

Both rifles shoot very well the Remington looks like it will be a 1 MOA shooter once I get used to it. It probably is already and it is the trigger puller who is throwing it off at least for now. Going to try it out at the 200 yard range next time just to see how well it reaches out that far and then beyond. Well who knows, what lies in the great beyond anyway. The Marlin seemed to shoot high for us, but after thinking about it last night I think the problem is probably not being used to the big old Buckhorn sight and probably not having the correct sight picture for it. Have to test my theory next week just to be sure. Ok just another reason to go play but hey that’s what being a gun guy is all about anyway.

Today I get to do my other favorite type of shooting and give my Canon camera a good workout. I will be photographing the Jacksonville Children’s Chorus Christmas concert today. The Cool Side of Yule. This is always a great concert and this will be the first year I get to shoot it, which to me even beats just listening too it. Which is awesome but to be even a small part of that incredible group is an honor and always a ton of fun for a photographer.

So truly fun days for sure.

Take care out there and stay safe this Holiday Season.

S3

This is under the category of interesting, but don’t try it at home!

October 24, 2014/0 Comments/in Safety /by Dale Starr

Good Morning and greetings

I don’t usually pull things to post from Reddit but I saw this one and thought it was unusual enough to share. However, I do not recommend trying this at home and I certainly would not bet my life on it by really using them for this purpose. But in case of the Zombie Apocalypse it could come in handy ;-)???

Either way it is one of those things that make you go “say what?”

take care and be safe out there

S3

cutting board armor test – Imgur.

Magazine or Catalog?

October 13, 2014/0 Comments/in Shooting /by Dale Starr

13 October 2014

Good morning out there in Cyberspace

Over the weekend I picked up my first issue of “Recoil” magazine which bills itself as a “Gun Lifestyle” periodical. It was Issue #15 the Nov/Dec. 2014 edition, currently on sale now if you want to check it out. I have seen it on the magazine racks around town for a while and as I had $9.00 worth of coupons to use up at my local pharmacy, I picked one up. By the way the cover price is $8.99 so I only paid sales tax for it. For that price I got my money’s worth.

I got it home and quickly flipped through it. And then the confusion set in. My first impression was did I buy a magazine or a catalog?

So, later I sat down to really look through it and read some of the articles. On page 14, I found what normally would be called the Editor’s page and read it as I usually do to get a general feeling for the magazine. Within this editorial write up was the following statement: “The $9.00 you fork over every time you purchase RECOIL enables us to do that, as it means we’re not dependent on advertising revenue to keep the lights on – in fact, we deliberately keep our ad rates low, so that companies have less influence than our individual readership.” Now that sounds really good to me, as many magazines seem to always talk about the good things when they do a product review and skip the not so good ones.

But if this is the case, why did I think this is a catalog and not a magazine? So I thought I would dig a little deeper and investigate. What I found is very interesting.

The magazine shows it has 168 pages, plus a “Special advertising section” which adds another 10 pages inside the mag covers. By the way, 3 out of the 4 pages of the actual cover pages also have advertising on them.
The front cover states that there are 2 buyers guides in this issue.
1. First is on “Body armor” and it covers 11 pages.
2. Second is on “Corrosion-Resistant Knives” which is 3 pages long.
3. Total pages of official “Buyers guides” is 14 pages or 8.3% of the total magazine.
When I counted the pages with ads on them it came to 79 pages or 47.03% of the magazines total pages.
Now I am no math wiz in any way shape or form so my math could be off a percentage point or so. But when I add this up it comes to 168 pages plus the special add section of 10 pages plus 4 cover pages totaling 182 pages in total.
Of the 182 total pages, 133 of them have some type of advertising on them! That equals 73.08 % of this magazine contains ads of some type.

So good readers, I ask you, would you call this a magazine or a catalog? Please let me know what you think about this. FYI, I am going to send this as a letter to the editor just to see what they have to say about it. I will let you know if I get a response back.

Now for the record, I am not saying it is a bad magazine the few articles it does contain are well written and the photography is very good. But I really wonder about their advertising policy and how it ties into the statement the editor made about not depending upon advertising revenues. Because when you look at the numbers RECOIL is very advertising heavy for a magazine. So I will buy at least one more, just to see if they are all this advertising heavy or not? If they are, I probably won’t buy any more. Because when I want a catalog, I will just get one.
Thanks all. Take care out there in Cyberspace and here in the mean streets of reality.

S3.

Tragedy in Arizona

August 28, 2014/0 Comments/in General /by Dale Starr

By now I am sure you have all heard about the Terrible accident at the shooting range in Arizona. First, our thoughts and prayers go out to the both families. May the good Lord give them the strength to get through this ordeal.

Obviously, this was a preventable accident from all accounts. And there is more than enough blame to go around. The only blameless person involved is the 9 year old girl! Because she did not know any better and is physically not capable of handling that gun in full-auto mode. She should not have been put into that position in the first place. Even if her parents did not know better, the Range Safety Officer and the Instructor should have. Unfortunately, the instructor paid the ultimate price for his lack of judgement.

As an Instructor and a father I would never put my kids, or anyone else’s, in that situation. To me there is no acceptable justification for handing a brand new shooter a fully automatic firearm such as the Uzi. Any new shooter does not understand tigger control enough to handle a fully automatic firearm. Safe and controllable full-auto firing requires trigger control and the understanding of what the gun is going to do when you squeeze the trigger. Any full-auto firearm will try to climb as it is fired. Sorry, that’s just basic physics. That whole “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” thing. In order to fire and control the firearm so you hit the target, you must use short bursts (3 to 5 rounds at a time). In other words, pull the trigger and then let go. Sounds simple. And, in theory it is. But it takes trigger control, and that takes practice. The practice must be slow and controlled. One shot at a time. Not just pull the trigger and try to hold on. That is the wrong approach. It is a bad approach to training, and as this terrible accident shows, it is also a very unsafe practice.

For those out there who will use this accident to call for another round of gun control laws, I will say this: “our country does not need more gun laws”. What we do need, apparently, is a big dose of Common Sense! So accidents like this don’t happen anymore! Because Gun Control is about “hitting your target”.

This seems like a good time to review the late Col. Jeff Cooper’s 4 Universal Gun Safety Rules:

1. Treat all guns as though they are loaded!

2, Never point a gun at anything you are not willing to destroy!

3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your are on target and made the decision to shoot!

4. Always be sure of your target and what’s behind it!

These are the fundamental rules we should all be living by when it comes to firearms.

So stay safe out there in Cyberspace, and here in Reality, especially when you are around or handling firearms.

S3

Perspective

August 17, 2014/0 Comments/in General /by Dale Starr

17 August 2014
How “Perspective” changes what we can see for example take our Field of View (FOV) of the camera lens or a telescopic sight on your favorite firearm. Simply stated the wider the field of field the father away your subject (target) appears to be from you. Appears is the operative word here. A 1 power (1X) power lens of scope is approximately equal to the normal vision of the human eye, and in camera terms that is a 40 to 50 MM lens for a 35MM camera or it’s modern digital equivalent. Len’s less than the standard focal length give you a larger field of view but the subject appears further away and conversely a longer more powerful lens brings your subject closer while reducing the field of view (narrowing the width of your vision range). Of course this is assuming that both you and your subject/target are not moving.

The following photos taken at Mount Rushmore provide a great visual presentation on the effects of perspective as it relates to your field of view and the magnification power of your optical instrument be it a camera lens or your favorite scope. The photos below were taken with my Canon 70D with the Canon 18-200 MM zoom lens.

From the Grand Viewing Plaza 18MM Lens

From the same location at 50MM or normal viewing.

Now at 100MM

At this point I changed to the Super Telephoto lens my Sigma 150 to 500 MM Zoom lens these were shot from the same location as before using the Canon 70D and below are the photos as I zoomed up close and personal on George.

Same location but now at 300 MM

Really 500 MM or a 10X scope.

Now you notice that you get a real close up of George Washington’s carved face but the Field of View is now reduced to the point his face is all that you can see. The photos went from the width of the mountain down to just a little more than the width of George’s face. But how big is his face really. Tune in again tomorrow to find out.

Take care out there in Cyberspace and here in Reality.

S3

The Travel Report part 1

August 15, 2014/2 Comments/in General /by Dale Starr

15 August 2014

Well folks I am back on line as many of you know we took a trip out to the Wild West this summer. One of the things I was not expecting was that the Wild West is also technology challenged or at least the camp grounds we stopped out were for the most part. So this blog has been seriously lacking of late, but never fear I am not working hard to correct this lack of inputs on my part;-).

Now for an update for you,

We were on the road for about 7 weeks,

Our F150 North Rim Grand Canyon

We traveled 9133 miles in total and 5435 miles of that was towing our 20 ft. Travel Trailer,

This used a total of 757.1 gals of gas, most of which was Premium straight gas as Ethanol just did not have the power to get us up the mountains the way I wanted. (more on the evils of Ethanol to follow).

Now the average price of Unleaded Premium straight gas was @ $ 4.00 per gallon. The highest we paid was $ 4.39 and the lowest was $ 3.35. Our average miles per gal overall was 12 MPG. The figures above were all recorded by my truck except of course for the cost per gallon, my wallet covered that one.

According to my 2012 Ford’s owner’s manual the use of Ethanol fuel will reduce MPG as well as overall power, in addition at higher elevations (over 4000 ft.) there is an additional loss of power regardless of fuel type.

Short version using Ethanol premium gas my average MPG towing the trailer above 4000 feet was down from around 12 MPG to 8.5 to 9 MPG. That’s between 25 to 30 % overall reduction, to me that’s a lot of loss plus the truck had to work harder you could literally hear the difference in the engine noise levels, as well as feel it.

Now 25% of 757 gals is @ 189.25 gals at $ 4.00 per equals $ 757.00 dollars more in fuel cost by having to burn the less efficient Ethanol gas, folks that hurts the old wallet. Just food for thought if you are considering pulling a trailer of even driving your vehicle up to the higher elevations.

Yes it does have an impact down here at Sea Level for us Floridians but it is not as bad as at higher elevations. But one note about our local area, the price for Pure Unleaded Gas without Ethanol is on the average a Dollar more a gallon that the gas with Ethanol. I think because Pure Gas is used more in the boating world here than in cars and trucks and we all know that a boater has to pay more for their fuel that the rest of us. I don’t know why and I don’t think that’s right, but it seems to be the way it is around here at least. But I can tell you out West in the mountains the price difference is a lot less than a dollar even in the Mid-West in the Corn Belt Ethanol Free Gas was only about $ .30 cents more a gallon that regular. Right about now you are wondering why it costs more, well because the Government subsidized alternative fuels and in this case the farmers who grow the corn for the Ethanol are also subsidized by our tax dollars. Just something to think about in this election year?

Well now on to a more entertaining topic with a lot less talking as a picture is worth a thousand words as they say, take a look at a few from our trip for now.

Left facing view from Marble point

Straight ahead view

RIght view from Marble Point

Thanks and Take Care out there in Cyberspace and in Reality.

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