Greetings Me Droogs N Droogettes!
TELL me this’s a parody mnn-kay?
H/T DiveMedic:
Oh FFS
You have -got- to be shitting me…
Now, MOST interestingly, the link and the BNN Website are down.
It always makes me a bit …I dunno… not nervous, but it IS odd that this story comes out and -suddenly- the page that had it up crashes or shuts down?
The story link was/is HERE if’n you want to skip Area Ocho’s place. I opened it earlier to write about it, and then when I went to refresh, I get an error stating the website is down-down and that the Wayback Machine might be the route to go…
Why do I get a sinking/bad feeling on this?
Ugh.
So, Other things going on.
One of the things I was doing the other night was watching some vidyas on Yewtoob. One of the channels I occasionally watch is Garand Thumb. My watching him is an occasional thing, primarily because he’s Air Force (on active duty no less!?! how the hell does -that- work?) He’s got some good videos out there, however, my primary annoyance with him is his “bashing” of what some folks refer to as the “poors” i.e. Palmetto State and other less-pricey gear.
Back a few iterations of the blogg ago… might have even been the first IR Blogg, I did a writeup about this exact subject. I’m still a bit brain-fuzzed so forgive me if my clarity isn’t what it should be.
What I’m trying to say is Garand Thumb routinely shits on less-pricey gear. And it irritates me to no end. My main reason is that the majority of pieces parts for an AR of any stripe has the same exact ‘stuff’ as any of the other higher pricey ’boutique’ ARs. That lower you’re running on a Daniel Defense? Provided you aren’t buying a specialized weapon, the lower, with the exception of the branding, is identical to a Palmetto State Armory made lower
Right down to the fucking metallurgy.
Same goes for the upper, the BCG… shit… ALL the ARs, and as I said before barring some exceptionally pricey upgrades, they’re all. the. same. Barrels start getting into a whole different area, what with cold forging, chrome lining and shit like that…
Hell DiveMedic at our last Bleggshoot? Dude has an AR-10 that weighs about as much as my 6 inch Taurus Bull Barreled Model 66 .357… like featherweight. Of course I’m exaggerating, but not by much. Skeletonized -everything-… gorgeous weapon. However, kicked like a fucking pissed off mule with no counterweight to offset the 7.62. I think his ACOG weighed as much as the rifle I swear. (the BIG ACOG, not the regular 4x one)
So, I was watching his “Weapons of the Kraine” vidya, primarily ‘cos he was running some sweet assed WW2 weapons like the STG-44, the great grandaddy of “Assault Rifles”
Truly a bad ass rifle. Supposedly Palmetto State is supposed to come out with a repro-model in the next year or two, one that offers three interchangeable barrels/calibers one in AR, one in AK and one in the Original… 5.56mm, 7.62 Russkie and der Cherman 7.92 Kurz.
THAT I might have to sell the wife for… or at least rent her out.
Shhhh don’t tell her I said that.
Seriously, I’ve always, as a soldier and a historian love the STG.
One of the other ones was a Russian PPSh-41. Fucking bullet hose man… I swear. I had one of those that my guys had found in Iraq. Anywhoo…
So, watching the vidya, I was struck by something:
Just how much shit do you need on your helmet to do a vidya?
Just looking at it, looks like a newer Above The Ear cut… now, his? Not sure if it’s a ballistic helmet or an OPSCORE Bump Helmet. Difference between the two is a Ballistic Helmet will stop/slow down a bullet whereas a Bump Helmet is literally a lightweight nugget cover to stop your squash from being dented lightly.
Now me? I run a Hard Head Veterans helmet that’s similar, with a Ballistic rating of NIJ Level IIIA with Above The Ear (ATE) or high cut design.
And nope, no monies for showing…
I got mine back before the Kung Flu kicked in overboard. Soem of y’all may remember that I had a new gig in 2020 back in Kuwait/Iraq, so I invested in a new skullbucket. Even nicer was at the time? Sezzle financed that sucker.
Which, BTW: IF you happen over to the Sezzle website, there’s quite a few companies that you can get some hi-speed low drag gear financed on… VERY nice if your budget doesn’t allow for a large-ish purchase.
Now, looking at GT’s nugget cover…
Dayyyum if’nt that boy doesn’t have the Kitchen Sink on there. Looks like from my guess, is a Peltor COMTAC III ARC headset (about $1k for that alone) Also, looks like what’s probably a battery pack on the back, as well as a counterweight pouch, and even a damned Surefire flashlight it looks like…
Which gets me to this:
The weight.
The Hard Head Ballistic helmet, on its own that -I- roll with comes in at 3 pounds. So, let’s give him the same. The Peltors? 1.89 pounds. Call it 2 pounds once you add batteries as well as the specialized mounting kit to mount it on the rails. The battery pack he’s got, looks like a L3Harris battery pack that’s used in conjunction with a pair of AN-PVS31s, which are what GT usually has clipped on there.
The shape is what makes me think it’s that model…
That weighs in at 7.25 oz with batteries and cable (4 lithium AAs). Then the Surefire and mount? I’d say b/c it’s got ‘mountability’, that he’s got the Scout light, which is designed to be mounted on a helmet:
Shape is about right, might be a bit long BUT it might be an older model? Tough call. 5oz with Batteries. He’s also, despite having the battery pack, has a counter balance pack as well. The counter balance bag is just small piece of metal, held in a pouch that velcros to the bottom of the back of the helmet.
I -normally- keep 20 rounds of 5.56mm in there as “Oh I’m sooooo fucked” ammo… 2 rounds go thru each of the loops nicely as currently, outside of some not-real NVGs ($200 digital wannabe specials) better to ‘have’ than ‘want/need’ After all, NVGs are going to be high on the list of ‘retrieve during scrounging off the dead’ mode
Jes’ Sayin’
Then he apparently has the “Kool Kid” Wilcox NVG Mount. And again, Me? I run the Notoros GI Issue ‘Rhino Horn’…
I –had– a PVS 14 from Iraq, but that got sold to make a mortgage payment many years back… Le Sigh… I got about 2-3 of the rhino horns laying around here as I used to scrounge up anything I could in Iraq… not like the shit ain’t ever go bad or something amiright?
So… point is
3 Pounds for the Helmet
2 Pounds for the Comm Headset
Call it 22 oz for the flashlight, the battery pack and the counter balance… makes it about 1.4 pounds… and the top thing on the very top of the helmet? No idea what that is. Might be a IR Beacon as he is Air Force TACP.
6 pounds for a helmet. WITHOUT adding the PVS31’s.
(One Pound BTW)
Let me give you a comparison
That heavy, hot First Generation Kevlar Helmet? The one when you took it off, dropped it to the ground and went “OMFG it’s good to get that fucker off!”
Yeeeeah. A Small one weighed in a 3.1 pounds. An XL 4.2.
I can’t even imagine if you strapped all that gee-whiz-bang-boom wundergear to an Original Fritz-Style Skullbucket. It’d be like almost 10+/- pounds. That’s a lot to be rollin’ and strollin’ with, resting/crushing in your squash.
Jes’ Sayin’
Never mind for making a vidya on the yewtoobz.
You’d have thought that the whole point to making the K-Pot, MICH and the IMICH and ATE cut buckets that’d make it better for the troops… I mean besides switching from the Steel Pot, as in adding ‘bulletproofing’ by making it out of Kevlar, it was also
supposed to be lighter.
Heh. Notsomucho I guess.
Yeah, as I ‘age up’ I’m realizing that weight matters. Between the fucked up neck, the blown spine? Yeah, ALL the ounces matter. PT or not, man, these are things to keep in mind Aye?
So, Jeopardy Time!
Gotta Bail to sit with Gretch! Holler atcha all
Big Country
Fucking steel pot mo fos… you will never know how heavy it is wearing one all fucking day! 3.1 pounds? I would give my left nut back then to have that weight bearing down on my head flagging asswipes at the gate for a 12 hour shift… Chromed no less.
My neck always hurt after hours in the Ole Steel pot. Take it off and some DI or NCO would tell “Get yer steel pot on!”
That AR-10 you are talking about? I made it a bit lighter by putting a LVPO scope on it. It weighs right at 8.8 pounds, and shoots 3.5 inch groups at 100 yards with factory ammo. Recoil is a bit snappy, but with a good buffer and that lightweight BCG, it seems to kick a bit less than my M1A.
It looks and shoots good.
https://areaocho.com/range-report-3/
“Snappy” he sez… LOL That thing (for an AR-10) was a beast to shoot
Well, the link the the article from Divemedic is *live* again, but doesn’t link to the story it’s supposed to. They must have their ‘404’ page be ‘redirect to home’ or some such. So they removed or renamed the article w/o putting a proper redirect in for it. Glad you at least got a screen shot of it…
My M1A kicks a lot less than the standard PAS-10 I had. Hated that PSA-10.
GT was medicaled out of the Chair Force a while back, he’s not active duty any longer. He was a Combat Controller, if memory serves.
Questions over parts quality used to be a thing back in the early 2000s, as everyone jumped into the AR game due to the expiration of the 1994 AWB. You could build a real turd of a rifle for a while there, the training community talked about it constantly. They were constantly dealing with rifles on the line that would shit the bed.
Things have gotten much better now, parts quality has really stabilized, and you don’t see out of spec parts much now. Everyone had the proper spring and insert on their extractor, and crap tacticool stuff has fallen off.
I still run the same gear I ran in 2010, pretty much. My thinking cap is a MICH 2001, the high cut version, and it is bare, since XL helmet accessories are a bit thin on the ground. I have Team Wendy H-Nape pads and straps, and a Surefire 5 lumen utility light on it, and that’s it.
The PPsh is a shoot and scoot as it leaves a tremendous cloud of smoke.
Once outshot a buddy with a Colt Commander using a Llama budget 45acp.
He is a surrogate son of the local world class gun shop owner and traded in for the AK pistol which was a bruiser to shoot.
The MG34 is where the double drum mag started and it was originally used by the Luftwaffe.
I follow the Am-Part NC Scout school of training not gear.
There is an MP40 remake and the last original one I saw at the fairgrounds gun show was almost $40,000.
Come on dive medic, and Big Country that would just be us giving them back their nukes we took away years ago. Doesn’t everybody know that Ukraine used to have nukes?
FYI.
GT did a whole vidya of his helmet set up with trex
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sr-PqXJ0YRE
LGM-30 is a Silo-Launched Strategic Missile, and to Move one requires Dis-Assembly and Crating of each Stage (and Warhead). Its Range is such that it Couldn’t be Launched in the ‘Kraine and then Hit anywhere in there. Plus, how long before Ivan put a few Khinzal Missiles into the Construction of a Launch Site?
I think this is just more Propaganda; to what end (or Audience) is hard to tell… seems that die (((spinnmeisters))) are ‘losing the narrative’ so to speak, and following Joe Goebbels’ first principle of Propaganda, they have to keep coming up with bigger and more outlandish Lies in order to distract from the Previous Lies….
-Gryphon
BNN “yanked” the article, but in a way that admits it once existed:
If you go to that link, it redirects to their home page, but if you randomly change the end of the link you get a 404.
They’re admitting that they did find the page, and it now redirects to the top… morons.
WTF, who the hell are these bnn.network clowns?
The DNS is “redacted” by godaddy, which screams “small fish”, but their mailserver is Google, and their web pages are in cloudflare, which screams “big fish”. They claim they’re all over the world in every language.
Deep state ops?
you know it is a bit weird reading shit like this. in a sane world, no one in their right mind would give that clown a slingshot. let alone all of the hardware they sent there already.
but given the fact that the clown in charge would rather start WW3 rather than go to prison for all of
the shit and deals he done over the last 50 years. why not ? what would piss me off a lot is the fact that
I moved here because of reading the old nuke maps and finding a spot far from the so called targets
and to get hit with a nuke fired by a moron ?
but if it all ends by the stupid, so be it. at least there is good rainfall here, the land is good form farming
and the locals are not as bad as in the cities and burbs. and it a fair hike from the closest city.
Who makes your AR lower? Go here and scroll down to “Miscellaneous Information”.
https://www.frfrogspad.com/ar.htm
Check out the rest of his website. Lotsa good stuff there.