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  1. #851
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    Default Re: Meanwhile back in Finland...

    Another storm is hitting us, this time harder. While waiting for TEOTWAWKI happen, I got myself a lightweight pistol light: Olight Valkyrie PL-Mini. It's rechargeable which is fine until the mains power don't happen anymore, but the price is pretty decent. I'll report here if it won't take the beating...



    The Olight text and model scribble on the other side were painted in BRIGHT white paint which didn't dissolve with xylene, so I painted those areas with matte black spray paint. Crude, but works for me.

  2. #852
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    Default Re: Meanwhile back in Finland...

    Today I happened to pop in an old mom and pop gun store back in Helsinki and my eye spied something starting with a B...


    An old Bianchi #7/7L holster for Glock 17/19. Never been used, just some minor scratches from been left on the shelves for a three or four decades. It was bone dry, didn't even try to stuff a pistol in it before I gave the holster a hefty diet of leather balm. Now it works perfectly and makes a gunslinging old-timer like me feel.....old... and quite nostalgic in a positive way. Besides, this holster is a perfect match for my 30 year old tan Bianchi B10 gun belt I wear daily was I carrying or not. It's all about the looks, function is overrated




    Also, there was something waiting for me in the mailbox: the license card for my G19. Took seven days to be printed and to arrive from the moment I visited the police station last Wednesday to have the G19 checked if it meets the classification of a "pistol, 9mm, self loading" and to be added to the police records as my pistol. I like the system when it works.


  3. #853
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    Default Re: Meanwhile back in Finland...

    Love reading your posts, AKG!

    Wow, am sure all of my fellow Saffers are so envious that your licence applications in Finland only take only about a week (or so) to be processed and approved... Brilliant (and rather like the UK's licencing time periods when we used to live there and I bought and sold double-barrelled shotguns (for my personal use for sport shooting and hunting)).

    Re your comments about preferring the Glock Gen 3's trigger better than that of the Gen 4's. I totally agree with this and, as a rather active sport shooter, (who owns 3x Glocks, mainly Gen 4's but also an old G26, Gen 2.5) wanted to just let you know that I (and many of my team mates and fellow sport shooters here) tend to replace the Gen 4 trigger and trigger bar with that of a Gen 3 (this is an easy, drop-in replacement) and then tend to change the connector to a "minus" connector. Of course, we also change the stock Glocks sights which are generally regarded as terrible, either to sport shooting sights (like Warren Tacticals (with a fibre optic front) or similar) or to more self-defensive sights (like Trijicon HD's (with tritium inserts which glow in the dark) or similar)!! Of course, since you are on the military and training side of things, I am sure that you already know what you prefer/what works best for you from a self defence and offensive perspective!

    Good luck with the winter/early spring storms :-)

  4. #854
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    Default Re: Meanwhile back in Finland...

    Thank you for the feedback Tayls: it's good to hear somebody actually reads my scribbling, makes it worth the effort Well, after over 72.000 unique reads on this thread I must bow all the way to the floor: thank you guys for your continuing interest in the life of a dude from way up north




    Since I found that nice Bianchi holster which is a perfect match for my likewise Bianchi belt, I took a long look at my as well made by Bianchi, #30 magazine pouch I painted black twenty odd years ago because those days I mostly wore black suits when I was carrying a sidearm, pondering why not add it to my newly found Tan Leather gestalt.

    The pouch used to be the very same Tan color the new to me holster is, alas not anymore for the previously stated reasons. Late last evening I though I'll give it a go and try to remove the paint with some minute amount of acetylene in my garage. Yes, inside, it's pretty darn cold outside and it'll just take a minute or two...right?

    Wrong. After twenty(ish) minutes of frantic cleaning with an acetylene soaked rag, I needed all my concentration not to puke violently and heard...no... FELT all those thousands of ill fated brain cells scream in horror and agony dying in the toxic acetylene-fumes I just kept inhaling like the dork I am. Oops, I did it again...

    But most of the black color is gone now and the mag pouch is something remotely tan-like or thereaboutswhatnot.



    Was it worth it? I don't know, but it'll do for now...


    Today was my Send Them Bloody Bills -day, which is always an important part of trying to make your business profitable, but got utterly bored during the process and went out to practice some shooting basics with the G19: draw-aim-send, 76 repetitions and boy, it felt good. I really like this pistol. Now even more than before...

    Well, there was a wee little anomaly bothering me: ejection was incoherent empty shells hitting my face, stovepipe stoppage every 30 to 40 rounds and empty shells flying all over. I had heard of such problems, but come on, this is 2015 gun, the Gen 4 with an enhanced ejector had been out for over five years, so why should this pistol have the questionable original ejector? Because of corporate greed, I suppose.

    This pistol had the problem causing ejector installed as factory original, ejector number 336. Bugger. A couple of friends of mine have Gen 4 pistols with the next version ejector, 30274, but they also had some occasional problems with stovepiping and a tendency to brass-to-facing. So I ordered a Gen 5 ejector, part number 47021 and behold: no more brass between my glasses and eyes and the ejected brass were easily found about one meter to the right from me.

    Now I really like this pistol, but I must say Glock shouldn't use up all old components before upgrading the pistols on the production line, that's not the way to adhere to the slogan of Glock Perfection. Just saying.



    About perfection. Remember I painted the texts on the Olight tactical light? Well, now after a bit of careful use of solvents and a q-tip the outcome looks much prettier:






    ...and since I do like the touch of leather on my skin, I manually redid some stitches on an old PWL pancake holster to make it accept a Glock with the Olight Mini attached. Film Noir meets Science Fiction. Extremely comfortable to carry, but rigid enough to be safe to use with a pistol without an external safety device.





    Oh btw, next weekend there will be a third big storm wreaking havoc in here. I'll just restore the electrical grid, fix the Internet and send some reports after the fact...

  5. #855
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    Default Re: Meanwhile back in Finland...

    Nice going, there is something so satisfying about a leather holster. Even if it’s frowned upon.


    Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

  6. #856

    Default Re: Meanwhile back in Finland...

    Keep the post coming AK. Always looking forward to what you get up to.

    Sent from my SM-G955F using Tapatalk

  7. #857
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    Default Re: Meanwhile back in Finland...

    Indeed, mostly I don't comment because it's like a guy with a hot girlfriend, ogle ok but commenting can go south. I like to Ogle.

  8. #858
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    Default Re: Meanwhile back in Finland...

    To ogle is just fine

    Quote Originally Posted by Tayls View Post
    Of course, we also change the stock Glocks sights which are generally regarded as terrible, either to sport shooting sights (like Warren Tacticals (with a fibre optic front) or similar) or to more self-defensive sights (like Trijicon HD's (with tritium inserts which glow in the dark) or similar)!! Of course, since you are on the military and training side of things, I am sure that you already know what you prefer/what works best for you from a self defence and offensive perspective!
    Most of the people who carry a gun as professional military personnel are issued their gear "as is" with no option to fine tune their weapons or any other gadgets. That said, those who are working as the spearhead of tactical ops enjoy the luxury of tweaking their tools more or less as much they like, fully compensated by the employer. That's why you can see tritium sights, fancy optics on rifles and pistols, NV-gear, lasers, white light WMLs...the whole spectrum of add-ons to make you and your unit more efficient.


    In many ways sports shooters and door-kicking professionals have very similar solutions on how to succeed on their adjacent avenues. And both serve each other as test beds for equipment, since even if the paper targets don't shoot back, the same root principles apply to both disciplines: strategy, tactics and tempo. Fast paced, focused inexorable action calls for robust but technologically advanced equipment were you a top competitor shooting for a title, or a team's member storming into rooms filled with innocent bystanders and people with guns willing to hurt you and everyone in the said room: those guns and gadgets and you better work every time or you either lose your match or somebody loses his or her life.

    There are people who dislike my way of comparing "real gunmen" with sports shooters. To a professional competition shooter winning or losing may be a "life or death" situation professionally and sometimes only winning is an option if you are standing in a proverbial crossroads where you'll have to make big career changing decisions affecting your life and ultimately the life of your loved ones. Nobody's going to literally die, but courses of lives may divert from previous plans according to your and your equipment performance. Just like it's the case with live confrontations with the equally proverbial bad guys, except for somebody dying is an option.

    Hope I make sense.



  9. #859
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    Default Re: Meanwhile back in Finland...

    Today was an interesting day in a totally different way: our band was invited to perform a piece of our original music and to act as a club band on a Sino-Finnish movie production One Day. The female protagonist is lovely Angela Yeung Wing aka. Angelababy from Hong Kong, quite famous actress in Asia, so the movie may make a renminbi or two.


    I stole this photo of her from the Internets. Hope the mods will forgive me...




    The production took place on a floating restaurant Rantapaviljonki in Helsinki




    There it is, a huge high tech camera mounted on a exoskeleton-like dolly pointed at yours truly... The director is sitting on the far right.



    The scene begins camera with a tight zoom at me ("oh crap, hope my hair looks good"), after "action" I started playing the intro of our song camera zooming out, the rest of the band starts to play and finally the camera made a dolly out to focus on the two main characters sitting on opposite sides of a table us being blurred in the background playing the tune ever so softly. The tune is an instrumental version of our song Forgiveness, Mercy and Love and the director thought it's fitting for this particular movie. Good for us. We abbreviate the song as FML and there has been known to be other meanings to this particular set of three letters...

    Aww, young lust...love... which turns into dramatic climax of the scene: we had to do some on-the-fly arranging since the director had a clear vision of how to combine drama and high points of our tune. He wanted it, we delivered it.

    This was really an interesting day





    And now waiting for the corona to hit.

  10. #860
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    Default Re: Meanwhile back in Finland...

    Surprise, another winter storm hit Finland yesterday, this time the southern part got the worst of winds and some serious kak from the sky. Lucky me I've got my classic (it's not a 22 years old Datsun, it's a classic Nissan!) 4x4 bakkie with none of those super-smart computer aided three letter abbreviated systems prohibiting me driving with my own skill was there traction or not.

    People are forgetting how to drive, since their computers fool them into thinking they are excellent drivers. That is until their CPU overloads and then it's all up to you how to handle the situation. There were way too many nice 4x4 BMWs and Volvos crashing each other to blame it on the weather or your car, it's usually the driver who fails to understand his/her limitations and also fails to respect the weather.




    But not the ghastly weather, nor all the slush all over is an excuse to skip your training...and you've got the range all to yourself This time I was bothering my neighbours shooting paper and steel on my own slushyard.



    There are obvious benefits to being able to train on your own property, but I think one of the most important ones is you can train in shorter sessions than when going to the outdoor range, to which you might drive for an hour or more, hence you might want to spend some time on the range and shoot for at least two hours every time you go there. But shooting for long periods isn't always efficacious depending on what you are training for.

    Today I shot 68 shots: 20 times draw plus double to the center mass, 28 slow fire shots to a plate on 20 meters. From the moment I stepped outside to coming back inside it took me a total of 55 minutes, of which setting up targets and picking up brass was maybe 15 to 20 minutes. I felt like the session was effective and I documented it for later review and evolution analysis.

    Last week I was in a range with a shooting buddy, shot 180 rounds (vs. 237 my buddy needed to hit them plates, he's still climbing on the steep side of the learning curve) in two hours, setting up included. This session was all about pushing the envelope, to go with your speed to the outer limits still being able to make solid hits every time you yank the trigger. Different goals call for a different kind of session and this session was more metering than learning.

    Today I was wearing gloves, but last week I left them home. And in the heat of the action I occasionally failed to have a proper grip on my pistol, enter once again the dreaded Glock Bite:




    Pain is a potent teacher...


    We ended this session with a half hour 8 x 5 shots slow fire training from 25 meters shooting at ISSF 25 m pistol targets to cool us down and to recuperate from the fast action, just to bring us back to the mental zone of being accurate with no haste.

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