Context is everything when setting up a scope

A 400 yard "second-zero" on a 5.56mm NATO results in a maximum vertical rise of 15" in mid trajectory.

---My opinions, take them for what they are worth. Those of you who know more about this than I do, and there are a truckload of you out there, please feel free to chime in---

Setting up a scope on a firearm is all about "context". What is the nature of your target? What are the limitations of your weapon.

The optimum setup for shooting squirrels in the head in a mid-Western woodlot with a .22 will be different than hitting 20" tall targets in an open environment with an AR or snap-shooting deer in heavy cover.

 5.56mm NATO and bowling pin shaped targets

A normal, male human measures roughly 15" from their belt buckle to the top of their sternum. If one anticipated human sized and shaped targets, say in an IDPA three-gun scenario, then a 400 yard second-zero and a belt-buckle aimpoint is a reasonable starting point.

A potential risk to having your scope set up like this is that an over-zealous and technically savvy prosecutor might present this as evidence of intent.

It used to be common to tune a deer hunting rifle to have a max vertical excursion of 2" at mid-range. The thinking was that a deer's heart-lung region was roughly 8" high and assuming +/- 2" from point of aim left some room for aiming errors.

My friend opted for the 200 yard second zero and has a dope-sheet that tells him he needs 7 MOA, or about 14 clicks up on his scope to shift it to the 400 yard zero. His nominal targets are canine coyotes.

Look! Squirrels!

A 60 yard zero with a .22LR results in a midrange, max vertical of about a half inch.

This example was chosen to illustrate three different points.

Point Number One: The .22LR bullet leaves the muzzle of the rifle at 1200fps vs. 2900fps for our 5.56mm NATO example. It takes longer to get from here-to-there. Consequently, it has more vertical drop from here-to-there.

Point Number Two: The nominal target, a squirrel, has a much smaller vertical hit zone. On all fours, a large squirrel has a heart-lung region that is roughly 2" tall. Combined with Point Number One, the rifle has a much shorter usable operating range.

Point Number Three: It is rare to see a stationary squirrel when you can see the entire target. In the wild, the squirrel is either a blur of motion or it is in a tree with a branch between the two of you. Let me beat this to death: You will not have the entire squirrel as a target, you will have tiny pieces of it as a target.

Point Number Three will also apply to the first example if/when the targets are not cardboard.

Deer in heavy cover
Deer in heavy cover are really two, very different scenarios.

If you are snap-shooting at deer in cover than you need very fast target acquisition and scopes like a Red Dot is your best friend. Magnification is NOT your friend because it narrows field-of-view and slows target acquisition.

If you intend to shoot at slow moving or stationary deer in heavy cover than your primary challenge will be to discriminate between brown that is deer and brown that is brush. This is where magnification is your friend.

Neither fish-nor-fowl
One of my coffee drinking buddies has an AR with a 10-40X magnification scope on it. He likes to tell people, "I can lay that rifle across the back of the couch, look out the window and watch the dials on the electric meter turn at the fire station two blocks away."

Decorum prevents me from asking snarky questions about bag limits and hunting seasons for electric meters. Perhaps I should, because he is breaking the cardinal rule of gun safety, NEVER point your firearm at anything you do not intend to destroy.

But for the sake of this essay, it is difficult for me to envision a context where  a bone-stock, basic AR-15 with a stock trigger and a 16" barrel is the optimum platform for any task demanding that kind of scope.

Second-zero
You might be annoyed by my use of the term 'second-zero'. Too bad.

A couple of years ago I was at the range and the fellow next to me insisted that his .300 Winchester magnum's bullet kept rising out to infinity. Maybe he thought that is why satellites sometimes fell out of the sky.

It was a case of somebody who was illiterate in physics not taking the time to read the entire paragraph. I insist on using 'second-zero' so I am not complicit in producing more misinformed shooters.

For the newbie, scopes are typically located above the bore. The trajectory of the bullet is an upside-down parabola, like a coffee cup turned upside down.

Since the bullet is below the line-of-sight as it comes out of the end of the gun, called the muzzle, a well setup rifle-and-scope will have the bullet angling slightly upward so it first crosses the line-of-sight somewhere between 17 and 30 yards. 25 yards is generally accepted as a very good first guess. If your first-zero is not 25 yards, twiddle with the scope so it is before going on to later steps. You will thank me later.

The bullet rises above the line-of-sight after the first-zero. Somewhere in the mid-range the bullet's trajectory reaches the maximum height above the line-of-sight and then starts to drop back toward it.

Then, the bullet drops as it continues downrange until it passes through the line-of-sight at the second-zero. When a shooter says he "zeroed" his gun at 200 yards, he is referring to the second-zero. Changes to the second-zero will have very modest effects at the first-zero so it is rarely mentioned.

The "magic" of picking the proper range for the second-zero is that it controls the maximum vertical excursion at mid-range and how quickly the bullet drops off the target past the second-zero.

Recap:

• Create a mental picture of "The Mission".
• Make a realistic assessment of the height of your primary target region. Not the height of the target, but the height of the zone you will see and want to hit.
• Make a realistic assessment of the trajectory of your weapon of choice.
• Choose a maximum mid-range vertical excursion that supports your mission and tune your scope/rifle to that scope setting.
• Practice.
• Dope-sheets can provide flexibility.

Stub 9.4: Nick Pelosi

It is generally accepted by Public Health scientists that epidemics go through a “smolder” phase before they explode into exponential growth.

Exponential growth is slow in absolute terms when the base infected rate is in single digits.

Another thing that happens in the smolder phase is that the disease organisms is searching for key mutations and super-connector carriers. Sometimes those mutations enhance efficient distribution...like a mutation that infects the relatively cool mucus membranes of the mouth and nose, that cause mucous and saliva to carry viable virus and trigger sneezing and coughing.

Super-connectors are carriers that interact with many, many more potential patients than the typical carrier and interact in ways that optimize disease transmission.

In the beginning the code that Dilip released to the wild slowly replicated itself on smart phones and increased its geological footprint the old fashioned way. It was moved physically and spread by local WIFI signal rather than dashing off across the internet.

It took days for the code to get physically carried to the SanFran Bay region. Once there, the code started infiltrating Alpha-Omega databases. No alarms were raised. The people who might have raised a flag at all of the requests coming in with AJ’s key-codes were incarcerated in the same facility that he was.

Records were created and populated. One of the fundamental decisions the brothers had made was to use aggregate-family data. The oldest trick in the book is to hide income and assets under one’s wife’s or mistress’s name. And you only need remember that every room in Cali had multiple microphones with sound processing capability. A-O knew every who and every whom with which they were sleeping.

The first reported target of Tim-Tom and AJ’s code was Nick Pelosi. Nick was an inspector with the EPA and he worked the fishing docks checking catches for illegal species, checking for other code violations, issuing citations, collecting fines and so-forth.

It was the end of the evening and he was inspecting Vince Ruma’s boat.

Vince and his crew were in an exceptionally foul mood. Vince had been informed that the bank was foreclosing on his boat. Vince was being torn apart by 17 hours a day out on the ocean fishing and trying to piece together financing to hang onto his boat during the remaining hours of the day.

No matter how good the catch or exceptional the prices, he was just not able to get ahead.

Take today, for example. He had a great catch. Then the EPA puke starts writing him up for a slew of infractions and Vince has to pay with his business debit card. The icing on the cake was that Pelosi now demanded two kilos of freshly caught, chilled, prime abalone. That was a very heavy blow because a kilo of prime abalone was worth enough to buy a high-end hooker for an entire night in any Cali coastal town. Those two kg of abalone took the day’s take from a profit to a steep loss.

Vince’s phone went off as did those of his crew. Vince picked his up, hoping it was good news from the bank.

Vince saw what looked like a simplified balance sheet and income statement. He was intimately familiar with both documents because of his recent battles to obtain financing.

“Sir?” Vince addressed the EPA puke.

“What is taking so long with the abalone? It is late and I gotta get it home.” Nick snarled. Never let a captain get back on his feet was Nick’s M.O.

“Sir? Are you ‘Nick Pelosi’?” Vince asked. Vince would have checked the written citations but the signature was an illegible scrawl.

“Yeah.” he said. “Where is the abalone?”

“My cousin lives on Casuarina Drive and has a neighbor by that name. That wouldn’t be you, would it?” Vince asked.

“Could be.” Nick snapped back.

“Hey! Did you drop your wallet?” Vince asked. “There. By your foot.”

As Nick stooped over to get a better look at the dock next to his foot, Vince swung the heavy fishing gaff and the point penetrated Pelosi’s temple as if it were tissue paper. Vince regularly swung 250 pound swordfish up out of the water and onto his boat’s deck. Vince had no problem swinging Pelosi’s body out over the water and disengaging the gaff with a deft twist of his wrist. The body arched outward and struck the water fifteen feet to the starboard of Ruma’s boat.

The crew members were speechless.

Sailors, by their nature, must act decisively. Rocks, waves, shoals and thrashing fish wait for no man. They also learn to use adrenaline to their advantage and to not second guess their decisions. Equivocating can mean death on the briny blue.

“What. The. Hell.” Vince’s mate finally sputtered out. “Why did you do that?”

Vince calmly answered. “Because the tide is going out. That is how the Bay clears out the garbage.”

Then he added, “Look at your text message. That prick has 3.8 million Callors in the bank and netted 750 thousand Callors so far this year from shaking down fishermen like you and me.”

Vince swished the stainless steel hook of the gaff in the bay's waters to wash off the blood.

Even as the crew looked at their messages, the image slowly faded and disappeared as if it never was. Tim-Tom and AJ were not going to leave evidence lying around.

 Next Installment

Helping a friend with a new freedom bell

First nine shot group at 50 yards.

A friend bought a new freedom bell.

We shot it first at 25 yards to ensure we could find the paper.

Red dot scope, as mounted was 4 inches low at twenty-five yards. It took a lot of "clicks" to get first-zero at 25 yards. Those clicks were pretty darned sluggish sounding in the 25 degree weather, I might add.

I wonder how many people simply mount a scope and assume it is good-to-go?

One of my family members recently assumed they could use E-85 in their vehicle because are were no warning labels at the fuel fill door saying they can't. That was an expensive mistake. In the same vein, there are no stickers on the scope implying that it isn't perfectly adjusted from-the-factory.

We got it centered.

This group was nine shots at 50 yards.

We called it a day when the scope was adjusted so it was one inch high at fifty yards.

Let Freedom Ring!

You're killin' me, Smalls

I drove up the driveway today and saw that Kubota had borrowed my 20' long, 2' wide ratchet strap. For some reason he wanted it to be 15 feet long so he cut it.

Arrrrrgggh!!!!

Somehow it does not penetrate that every $20 (replacement cost) of equipment that gets destroyed kills two hours of my life.

Not, not just pulling the plug on my life-support machine two hours earlier. Killing two hours of me in the prime of my life.

Joe Dominguez in the book Your Money or Your Life has the reader calculate how much money they net for each hour of their life that is consumed by work. No, this is more than the net-after-taxes.

Mr Dominguez has you add up all of the hours you must devote to work, including your commute time and the work you take home...even the hour you spend at happy-hour every day that you would not otherwise need if you did not work. Then he has you subtract out the cost of "costuming" and transportation from your take-home. For many people, they end up with a net-per-hour of $10.

Mr Dominguez points out that spending $15 for lunch, for instance, just nullified 90 minutes of your life that you will never get back. Do you really want to lose 90 minutes or would you rather eat a couple of PB&J sandwiches for $3 and pocket the extra 72 minutes of your life for better purposes?

So when anybody destroys $20 of equipment, it is as if two hours of my life just vaporized.

Incidentally, the quote "You're killing me, Smalls" is from the movie Sandlot.

Cletus and Zeke in Nebo, Illinois

Cletus swore that they weren't going to take on any more gigs in Illinois but the money was just too good.

They were putting in guard rail, something that had become one of their specialties.

The crew consisted of Cletus, Zeke and a slender girl named Cheryl who they called Olive Oil. Cheryl was completely baffled by why they called her Olive Oil but she didn't think it sounded disrespectful.

Almost any kind of hard, physical labor can become beautiful, performance art if you put your mind into making the motions smooth, powerful and safe.

Cheryl really struggled at the beginning but Cletus and Zeke coached her on how to lift one end of the eight foot 6"-by-8" posts. They also showed her how to tell the difference between the pressure treated oak and the lighter, softer woods.

After working with the crew for a few weeks, Olive Oil could keep up with the two big guys as long as she stuck to the lighter posts. She dragged the post so one end was next to the hole. She lifted up that end to belly button height and then pivoted along-side of it, allowing the mid-point to bounce on her near-horizontal thigh. As the low end teeter-tottered upward she latched ahold of it and lofted it upward, neatly dropping the descending end into the waiting hole and the rest of the post pertly lofting to vertical.

The crew was working their way in front of one of Nebo's three churches.

The custodian came out and watched for about five minutes, sipping on his coffee. Then he decided to be a gentleman and "help the little lady."

While it is impossible to know what he thought he was going to do it should be noted that he did not come anywhere close to matching Olive Oil's graceful, seemingly effortless caber toss with the oak post that was next in line.

He limped back to his closet and is probably still looking for his truss.

Next

Palliative Care

We recently had a family meeting.

One advantage of having a large family is the portfolio of skills siblings bring along. My younger brother ran the meeting AND took notes. He took them by the simple expedient of recording it with his smartphone. He also graciously asked everybody's permission before recording.

One of the items on the agenda was the question of palliative care. For those who are not familiar with the term, think of it as "in home hospice". The goal is not heroic, life-saving medicine. The goal is to provide support and comfort as life winds down.

I suspect that the insurance companies love it because it has to be cheaper than plugging failing, elderly patients into multi-million dollar milking machines "for the duration".

Patients like it because they are not treated like fodder in some industrial process. They stay home with their loved ones.

Dad is resistant
Dad does not see how they fit into the medical ecosystem.

"Do they replace my regular doctor?" dad asked.

"No, you would still see Dr. Awesome on a regular basis." one of the nurses in the family informed him.

"Would they replace Tammi?" dad asked. Tammi is the woman who assists mom when one of the daughters/daughters-in-law are not available.

"No, they would not replace Tammi." we tell him.

"Would you guys stop coming?" dad asked. This may be one of his biggest fears, that we will scrape our responsibilities off on these palliative care people.

"No dad. You will still have 8-to-1 and 5-to-8 coverage from family members seven days a week." we tell him. Dad is in bed by 8 nearly every night.

"So I don't see what good they will do.  I have everything I need the way things are now." dad said.

I could see past dad and mom's face was working. Dad was so focused on the technical side of things he was not tracking mom's need to have something, some plan, to escalate the next time we had a crisis. After all, dad made it VERY clear he does not want to go back to the hospital.*

Palliative care is more for mom's need to do something more than hold dad's hand and say Hail Marys for his soul when she finds him laid out on the floor than it is for dad.

Dad is a stoic. If the family members cannot get an appointment with Dr Awesome until Wednesday then he is willing to suck-it-up.  Heck, what is a little bit of chest pain.

Mom is an empath. She feels the pain he does not. Palliative care means she can call them and know that some kind of help is on the way and will relieve her of being the pivot pin.

But before Mom can have that ability, palliative care needs to establish a professional relationship with mom and dad. She cannot call them out-of-the blue.

The resolution

We make a concerted effort to not treat our parents as fake-adults. We don't pretend to allow them control like you might pretend to give a mentally retarded adult to humor them and make it easier to manage their behaviors. We don't treat them like some goofy-but-lovable team mascot. They have actual control.

It cannot be denied that neither one of them are as mentally sharp as they were at the height of their mental powers. Dad used to keep a running tally as the groceries were checked out and correct the cashier when she double rang items or missed them.  He did that for fun.

But they are still piloting their own ship and doing a very fine job.

Dad told us that he needed to discuss the issue with mom. They weren't going to do that in front of us. I suspect it will take a week for them to sort it out.

The answer may still come back "No."

*Dad softened a little bit regarding going back to the hospital. If it were for a procedure that would improve his ability to take care of mom, like a cortisone shot for his knee, he is willing go to the hospital for the procedure. He does not want, however, to be plugged into the milking machine again.

Stub 9.3: Skillz

It is important to understand the nature of the programming that Tim-Tom and AJ did if one is to understand the nature of the program Dilip unleashed on Cali.

Tim-Tom’s specialty was to find under-utilized computer resources and to “borrow” them to run his employer’s social media apps.

The resources were abundant. Lights and microwave ovens had microprocessors embedded within them. So did every other appliance or device that could be voice activated. Then there were the smartphones in people’s pockets just twiddling their thumbs. There were swirling hordes of resources. The trick was to correctly predicting the best devices to "borrow" and to write code that minimized thrashing, excessively busy passing of data and programs.

The Social Media platform that employed Tim-Tom could not function without borrowed resources.

For instance, it is easy to predict which videos are about to go viral. They are the videos that are pre-loaded on the “borrowed” resources and then rebroadcast locally. Since bandwidth was a limiting factor, the only videos that can download at speeds that support unbuffered, real-time viewing are the ones that have already been downloaded to "borrowed" resources ahead of time. Slow video never goes viral.

Preloading data worked because memory had become free. Chips were three dimensional and bytes were alkali earth metal ions stored in zeolite garages. The byte was read by tapping it with a UV photon pulse and the capture/non-capture of the resulting 420nm radiation. Memory was written and overwritten by larger taps with the same UV pulse. Zeolites are a kind of clay. Clay and limestone are abundant and cheap. Memory became, for all practical purposes, free.

There was a symbiotic relationship, some would say mutually parasitic relationship, between the Cali government and the information technology industry, especially the social media portion. Controlling streaming rates controlled content. Controlling content controlled opinions. Controlling opinions turned citizens into domesticated animals.

Tim-Tom’s programming gift was to be able to predict who was going to be interacting with whom, when and where. And then to be able to render that intuition into concise, robust code that actually worked “in the wild”. The code he wrote worked in a seamless way that was completely invisible to the actual owners of the computer resources.  Tim-Tom’s code high-jacked millions of resources billions of times every day.

AJ’s coding gift was bent in a different direction.

AJ wrote code that wormed its way through networks and connected data in databases back to the parties that created that data. The data would be lifted and passed to the cloud. His code was also deft in its ability to substitute proxies for data that was missing.

By way of example: A person can hide income and transactions by paying cash and barter but defensible estimates can be imputed based on the value of houses in the neighborhood and “chaff” like expensive vacations and savings hidden in off-shore accounts. Residents of Cali who earned the median income were struggling to afford 2000 Calories a day. They weren’t going on cruises twice a year and shipping off a king’s ransom to accounts in the Cayman Islands.

Alpha-Omega make a pile of money advertising cheap plane fares to Switzerland to Cali government officials whose "chaff" suggested they had recently enjoyed a cruise to the Grand Cayman and had been forced to pay fees for extra luggage.

AJ’s art used fuzzy logic to draw unfuzzy conclusions.

Alpha-Omega, the corporation that AJ worked for, had databases filled with proxy and imputed data for every person on earth and AJ had the keys to those databases

Next Installment