Jan
02
2005
Gosh, ya do a friend a favour and they complain about it!
I am of course referring to Gregs entry about my accidentally addressing a package to “Greg ‘Bin Laden‘ Boyd” before entrusting it to the good people at CanadaPost for safe and timely delivery to the wet coast.
I can’t help it, I have a long and established tradition of goofing around on official documents. There were the rent cheques (when I lived in a communal setting) where I consistently filled in the “note” section with comments like “For sexual favours received“, “Cocaine, relatively poor quality” and “Assassination Attempt“. There was the customs declaration on the box of salad dressing mix sent to a friend in England where the description was given as “small quantity unknown white crystaline powder“, and the slew of job application forms where I listed “answering stupid questions on job application forms” under hobbies.
Every single one of these acts went unnoticed and uncommented upon, but you address one package to a terrorist mastermind at large, and suddenly you’re some kind of bad guy.
Sheesh.
Jan
01
2005
My Norinco M14S was my favorite rifle for a long time. It was my first serious .30 calibre gas gun, and the most expensive I had acquired up until that point. I lovingly (if amateurishly) refinished a USGI synthetic stock (consigning the Norinco stock to the bonfire it was intended for), improvised a mount for the Harris Bipod, and eventually decided to throw some optics onto the rifle, for some serious distance shooting.
I’m afraid I didn’t know much about scoping a rifle back then, and I went with the cheapest option available. I purchased a B-Square M1A mount from Lever Arms and added a 3-9x Bushnell scope with generic high rings. The end result was fairly mediocre optics sitting well above the receiver with questionable rigidity. This is far from an optimal arrangement, and between the inability to obtain a good stock weld, and the mount failing to hold tight against the receiver, we had an almost comical setup.
Cheek-to-Stock Weld: The stock weld should provide a natural line of sight through the center of the rear sight aperture to the front sight post and on to the target. The firer’s neck should be relaxed, allowing his cheek to fall naturally onto the stock. Through dry-fire training, the soldier practices this position until he assumes the same cheek-to-stock weld each time he assumes a given position, which provides consistency in aiming. Proper eye relief is obtained when a soldier establishes a good cheek-to-stock weld. A small change in eye relief normally occurs each time that the firer assumes a different firing position. The soldier should begin by trying to touch the charging handle with his nose when assuming a firing position. This will aid the soldier in maintaining the same cheek-to-stock weld hold each time the weapon is aimed. The soldier should be mindful of how the nose touches the charging handle and should be consistent when doing so. This should be critiqued and reinforced during dry-fire training.
(Taken from FM 3-22.9 – Rifle Marksmanship M16A1, M16A2/3, M16A4, and M4 carbine)
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