donnorum

GORUCK FAD Rifle 002 AAR

February 22, 2015October 30, 2017 donnorum1 Comment

Update 2016-05-13: If you’re interested in GORUCK Firearms Gear and missed out on the latest pre-order, my brother’s put together a quick tutorial about upgrading a regular rucksack into a Shooter-style Ruck:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Goruck/comments/4ipyk9/homemade_ruckshooter_ruck_upgrade/

Note – I wrote this up for my own reference from my scrawled notes the week after the FAD. If anything ended up misremembered or flat-out wrong, that’s on me.

No idea how long it’ll be up, but the Facebook page with pictures and such is here.

Introduction:

We started off hanging out in the parking lot for a few minutes as people trickled in – lots of GORUCK gear in evidence, obviously, and mostly young to younger-middle-aged males. An interesting contrast to the mostly older men and women showing up in equal numbers for the handgun class being put on by the range the same morning.

Snow started falling fairly heavily and, as fun as it would have been to see the vortex trails from the full firing line, I’d foregone a base layer of tights and was just in jeans… Fortunately, it let up by the time we came back outside after the briefing.

The Cadre called everyone into the clubhouse and introduced themselves (there had been a brief delay due to three or four traffic stops by State Police on the way over). Cadre Machine was leading the course, with Cadres Jesse and Logan assisting.

Everyone confirmed their name, age, occupation, GORUCK experience, and firearms experience. As you might expect, mostly male, mostly young – thirty plus ten minus five, a preponderance of police / EMT / firefighters / forensics scientists, a few techies, and most had done several GORUCK events.

There were several, though, who hadn’t done any GORUCK events, and several who hadn’t fired a gun before. Only a couple had serious experience with the AR platform (besides the Cadre, of course), though most had some pistol and general firearms experience.

Standard uniform was Arc’teryx jacket and cargo pants, supplemented with sweatshirts and morale patches. Apart from a couple of guys with chest rigs or battle belts and one guy running drop-leg, the tacticool-aid was at a minimum.

Scene set, we drove over to the club’s law enforcement range and got out our kit, set our stuff up underneath the shelter, and then joined Cadre Machine in classroom formation out on the range.

Continue reading “GORUCK FAD Rifle 002 AAR” →

GoRuck Team Weight

February 27, 2014October 30, 2017 donnorumLeave a comment

Each GoRuck challenge requires a team weight – 25# for the Challenge, 15# for the Light. Ideally awesome. For Light 002 with Cadre Devin, our weight was a lead-filled bulldog wearing a backpack filled with tiny, red-white-and-blue wrapped bricks. Time for a new team weight for the upcoming back-to-back Challenge-Light in Charlottesville.

Requirements:

1) Awesome.

2) Modular – able to be pared down for the Light without having to take a saw to it.

3) Portable – not just small enough to carry, but convenient to handle while buddy-carrying, crawling, running, etc. Also will need to be passed from person to person easily.

4) Awesome.

Solution:

Chest rig with magazines.

In addition to it costing a ton for the PMAGs and ammo, I don’t really want to carry around that much live ammo in a non-zombie scenario.

So – fill the magazines with lead.

After carefully figuring out the internal volume of a STANAG 4179 30-round magazine, I didn’t do any of that and bought a stack of metal 30-round magazines. (The cheapest and worst-rated I could find.)

Stack of magazines. — Stack of magazines soon to be filled with lead. (One was already done as a test run.)

Now to fill them with lead. First, I stripped out the springs and followers.

Springs & Followers. — Springs and followers stripped out of magazines.

Then I melted some lead. Pieces of lead brick left over from previous weights went into the pot.

Workbench — Vise for holding magazines while pouring, melting pot with lead, pot with more lead, hammer, cold chisel, and dipper.

Holding the magazine in a bench vise, I hit it with a blowtorch to preheat the metal.

Preheating. — Preheating the magazines with a blowtorch. Also burns off some of the coating.

The magazines had holes in the base and for the magazine catch, so I held a flathead screwdriver against them as I poured that level. (The cold metal cooled the lead quickly enough to plug the holes. I still had some leaks, though, requiring re-melting and re-pouring.)

Mag Catch. — Covering the mag catch with a cold chisel. Still sprang a leak every now and then.

I ladled each magazine full of lead, then refilled the pot and let the melt heat up again while the magazine cooled. Finished product – a stack of magazines, each one weighing a touch over 5 pounds.