Interarms Mark-X & R1100R Battery

The Gentleman’s Express wouldn’t start, so I un-gear’d and made my rounds of the gun-shops by F-150, to talk about hunting with guys who had hunted. Many positive responses and good feed-backs later I was at my local shop looking at an (60’s-era?) Zastava-action Mauser Interarms Mark-X in .243 with a fixed power Weaver K8 UPDATE: Weaver K4 – that had been around the block and out in the field more than a few times but still looked pretty. It’s not as nice as this one at Cabela’s Gun Library, but has the same shape stock and is not nearly as expensive either. The old scope was clear and sharp and had a pretty wide field of view for our short-and-brushy shooting.
Interarms has an interesting history as former Cold-War CIA spook Sam Cummings was sort of the OG Merchant of Death, selling arms around the world and on occasion to both sides. One of his arms shipments to Batista (AR-10’s) was intercepted and captured by Castro. He became a British subject and moved to Monaco while running the HQ out of Alexandria, VA.
Anyhow I don’t have tine with CA’s stupid 10-day wait period to bring it up to Gunblogger Rendezvous-X and sight-it in to my eye-point, so I has a sad. Unless I get it first thing tomorrow morning and pick it up on the morning of the 20th before driving up to Reno – which could still happen…
UPDATE: Not gonna happen.
UPDATE: That’s not gonna happen, but never say never…
Sunday we had a fun time (and great food) at the Gun Club Picnic, and met some very nice people. The fabulous Donna and husband Bob, and Jean and husband ex-cop Bill were a couple of friends who invited us to sit with them, and we had a nice time chatting about all manner of things. I won ONE raffle item, a re-up to my Gun Club membership, but all my tickets on the S&W 9mm Shield didn’t pan-out. Oh well it’s to a good cause, the oldest and longest running gun-club in California.

Meanwhile after three days on the Battery Tender, the juice-pot still showed no signs of buzzy electron life, so I got under the hood and lifted the lid and removed the Yuasa 51913. It took a while because BMW (and all motorcycles, really) packages things tight, but I didn’t have to remove the entire tank, just un-do enough peripherality to lift up the ass-end — which took a while and a few screws and a 2×6 to figure-out. The juice levels are all below par and I want a gel-battery anyhow, let’s see if one can be found locally. NAPA or O’Riley’s are my main choices, or Mike’s Kawasaki might have something. There’s a LOT of small engines around here doing yeoman’s work in the field, from Husqvarna mowers to saws, to Kawasaki Mules and other quad farm-equipment, to watercraft toys, so I expect (hope) it shouldn’t be too hard.
UPDATE: Battery coming Wednesday.

Camp & Sports

So I get the new Cabela’s catalog last week, and it’s all about “Auto and ATV” – and I’m leafing through it and it occurs to me, who knew the “C” in JC Whitney stood for “Cabela’s”?? They have it all from floor-mats to seat-covers to radar-detectors to bumper-guards to light-bars to mud-guards to tow-hitches and bed-liners, battery-tenders…and a few things without hyphens too, implements straight out of the Tractor Supply catalog – sheesh.
But I’m a fan of Cabela’s, even though there’s none in California I can understand why. Besides they’re only a two-hour drive up over the big hill behind me, in Verdi, NV. I’m not even sure where JC Whitney is…

Grail-Grail, Puzzle-Pieces

When you start building a project, whether it’s a rifle or a vehicle, you need to begin with the propellant/power-plant unit in mind. I know everybody builds Fords and Chevys, but where I can find a 1918 Hispano-Suiza V-8?  – or maybe here? 300-something HP seems to be the goal for the motor, not sure about the weight… Some awesome Kiwis built a few.

After that a reproduction kit, or something. A few hundered hours spinning wrenches and slapping dope on silk, volia!
Since I live on a hill, when it’s done it will be relatively simple to get it push-started and off down to the airport below, no?
If I had a ranch in Texas and a Class III stamp (and a dozen Dillons set up for .303 British) the Lewis gun would be cool (and the synchronized Vickers too), and I could fly around with it and rat-a-tat to my hearts content.
With a few lights and some IR stuff it would be an awesome-bitchin’ night-fighter shootin’ wild hogs – as long as the exhaust and engine heat-plume didn’t make the IR bloom…
And of course it would be cool to have a ridin’/flyin’ buddy to join along. I know there’s a bunch of Aero-Gunny types out there besides Bridgid, like Murphy’s Law for instance…

Ghost in the Machine

More finery seen at the Tahoe Show.
In fact there was a bunch of plain-Jane exotica stuff laying around, including (what amounted to the wreck of) Henry J. Kaiser’s own racer-boat, the Scooter Too. Google the 24-cylinder Allison motor monster that could not run at full throttle, and think fondly of Obamacare (Kaiser Health) at the same time…

Old Hank liked to go fast and didn’t give a hoot about healthcare except it made his workers work for just him, and faster – same thing today. Must make Liberals brains bleed and boil to imagine…no, sorry, nevermind they boiled-out already. Forget it ever happened. Memory Hole has achieved equilibrium.
From Homewood Boatworks and Hydroplane History:

Kaiser chose to power his new unlimited hydroplane with the 24-cylinder V-3420 Allison. Essentially, an experimental engine designed to increase the power output and fighting capability of America’s Allison engines during World War II. Unfortunately, Jet-power was also being developed at about the same time and proved superior in performance.

It was still a bitch on water and ran at 186MPH across the lake at somewhat less than full throttle – it’s driver was too scared to push the throttle open to the stops.
I’m thinking that Henry J. and Howard H. would have had a lot to talk about over cocktails at the Ritz, but Howard got all the movie-biz attention and was younger so he couldn’t listen as well…