Sleep Is For The Weak

It’s time to write a little bit about the handgun I carry for personal defense, the Heckler and Koch P30.  This is a 9mm handgun, with magazines that hold 15 rounds.  It is a DA/SA gun with a decocker, and no manual safety.  Prior to the P30 I owned a Heckler and Koch USP Tactical in .45acp.  This gun was also DA/SA with both a safety and a decocker.  Unfortunately the USP Tactical is just too large to carry concealed, daily.

The P30 is a good size for concealed carry.  It is not so large as to be difficult to conceal or uncomfortable in a good holster.  It is also not so small as to be difficult to control while shooting.  The grip on the handgun fits my hand perfectly, however Heckler and Koch went a step further and made the back strap, right panel, and left panel all independently adjustable with three sizes for each piece.

I look at the P30 as an evolution that started with the USP Compact.  Then came the P2000, and finally the P30 which shares a lot more with the P2000 than it’s USP heritage.  The trigger feels unchanged from the USP which is to say it’s not a great trigger, but there are far worse out there.  The gun is typical H&K Reliable.  I’m sure you could drop it in the white river, fish it out two years later, load a fresh magazine and have it go bang.

I’ve trained with the P30 in three Defensive Handgun Courses now.  It is far more accurate than I.  It has never failed to go bang when there was a live round chambered and the trigger has been pressed.  It’s recoil isn’t any worse than any other 9mm handgun I’ve fired.  All in all it meets all the criteria of a good fighting pistol.

The sky was awesome tonight so I grabbed the camera and headed outside.

I carry a Kershaw Leek pocket knife every day.  I’ve had mine for a couple of years now and the blade shows the wear of use.  One reason I purchased the Leek is it has Kershaw’s SpeedSafe system which allows for very easy, and rapid one handed opening of the blade.

Last week my knife stopped snapping open like it should.  I took it apart to find the torsion bar had broken.  I went to Kershaw’s website to see what the warranty or repair options were and found out all I needed to do was request a replacement through an online web form.  I went ahead and submitted my request for a new torsion bar, and a replacement pocket clip.

Four days later Kershaw blew me away.  Not only did they send me what I needed, but they sent two torsion bars, and three belt clips!!!  I know the parts can’t have cost Kershaw very much, but the commitment to customer satisfaction was well above and beyond.  Rest assured Kershaw my next blade purchases will have your name on the side!

When the web hosting company I work for was getting started we went looking for a product that would make it easy for us to allow the customers to manage their own environments.  After looking at the features and prices of products like Plesk, Ensim, and cPanel, we finally settled on a product called H-Sphere.

Originally our H-Sphere environment was  a single dual core server running CentOS 5.2 with 2gb of ram.  This one server has done a pretty good job of providing services to our users.  One major drawback is a large number of the legacy customers brought over from a previous web hosting company were all written in VBScript and are hosted on a Windows Server 2003 system.  These users can not be migrated easily to the CentOS server for some obvious reasons.  However that’s all about to change.

One of the selling points of H-Sphere for me is that a single “control panel” can be used to manage a huge number of real servers.  Services such as http, and mail can be split out onto seperate machines.  Another huge selling point is that hSphere is able to be run on a Windows environment as well.  This, with a little bit of work, should allow us to migrate some of the old sites off of the non H-Sphere environment.

Tonight I get to start the process of building a Windows web server, and merge that into our server group.  I’m looking forward to doing away with the “Legacy” administration.

Here’s to easier days, after a night of reading the manual.

In the search for a holster to conceal my H&K P30 I have tried a number of different products.  I had a Hold Fast from Peter’s Custom Holsters, as well as a Hold Out.  The Hold Fast is an all  Kydex Inside the waistband holster with Leather tabs that wrap around your belt to hold it in place.  The Hold Out is an all Kydex On the belt holster.  Both held the pistol firmly in place but were not comfortable for me to wear all day long.  So back to the interwebs to search for something else.

I had read a number of positive reviews of the Comp-Tac MTAC while browsing the Defensive Carry forums.  I decided I’d give one a shot.  The MTAC is a Hybrid Leather & Kydex Holster.  The majority of the holster is leather.  The side of the holster that is away from the body, towards the pants/belt is made of Kydex.  This works out well because the Kydex doesn’t collapse like many all leather IWB holsters do when the pistol is removed, yet you don’t have hard plastic jabbing you in the soft fleshy bits like you would with an all Kydex IWB holster.  The Kydex section of the MTAC can be replaced with bodies for other pistols.  Which allows a single $80 purchase to be extended for use with other handguns down the road at $30 per additional body.  Should I want to carry a Glock 19, all I need to do is purchase the G19 body for my current MTAC, remove/replace four screws and I’m back in business.

I ordered my MTAC with a Kydex Body for the P30 and C-Clips.  These clips hook over the waistband of your pants behind the belt, and then have small hooks that grab the top and bottom edge of the belt.  The Holster has two screws that can be used to adjust the retention on the pistol.  I found them to be just about right from the factory and haven’t made many changes.  You can adjust the possitioning of the hooks on the holster to allow the gun to ride higher or lower on your waist.  I left mine in the middle as it’s a good level for me to get a firm firing grip, a smooth draw, and decient concealment.

I’ve found the Comp-Tac MTAC holster to be so comfortable that most days I forget I’m carrying a gun.  It doesn’t jab me in the side or leg while I’m walking, standing, or sitting down.  During the one day fighting pistol class put on by the Indiana Gun Owners board the MTAC served it’s purpose flawlessly.  Drawing from the holster was exactly what you expect, and re holstering didn’t require a lot of thought.

All in all Comp-Tac knocked one out of the park in my opinion.

The Yaesu VX-7R is the handheld to end all handhelds.  Where else can you get the 6m band, 2m band, 1.25m band, and 70cm band all in one hand sized package.  Add to that the fact the radio is water resistant up to three feet for an operating time of thirty minutes and you’ve got a serious radio for hiking, backpacking, kayaking, or emergency communications.

The VX-7R has two receivers that operate independantly of one another.  This allowed you to monitor two frequencies at the same time, and toggle between them for transmitting at the touch of either the Main or Sub button.  The Receiver in the VX-7R does not desense as easily as the VX-5R did which is a huge improvement.  It is a wide band receiver, working from 1MHz -> 999MHz but is cellular blocked.

There is a quick toggle to the National Weather Service band, with the standard NOAA weather radio frequencies pre-programmed.  This allows you to hit a key combination, and turn the knob at the top of the radio to tune the closest NOAA weather radio station and then toggle back to your previous two frequencies quickly.  Ther is also a high intensity multi-color LED on the front of the radio.  This displays whether you are transmitting on Main, or Sub, receiving on Main, Sub, or Both.  Which is good if the radio is across the room you can tell which receiver is active at a glance.  Also when the radio is put into “Emergency” mode the LED flashes intense white light.  This acts as a beacon.  Highly useful if you are on the side of the road to alert cars coming at you, or if you find yourself wounded somewhere and have called for help to assist rescue workers in locating you.

All in all I’d say the VX-7R is one of the Ham Radio purchases I have made that has far exceded my expectations.  It not only does a LOT of things, but it does most of them well.

I got the chance to go to the Indiana Gun Club yesterday to shoot two rounds of trap.  It was pretty windy and I’m new to the sport so I didn’t shoot terribly well.  12 of 25, and 14 of 25 in my two rounds.  I was there with friends James, Carey, Alex, and Ken.  James shot a 21 of 25, and an 18 of 25.  I think Ken shot in the twenties both rounds.  I shot better than Carey and Alex but don’t remember their scores.

A little pre-round Discussion to get Alex up to speed on Club Rules.

Left to right: Lars, James, Alex, Ken, Carey

A closer photo of me ready to shoot.

Solid hit!

First off….  I’d like to say that operating the FT-817, FT-857, and FT-897 is almost identical across all three platforms.  All three Radios are 160M –> 10M, 6M, 2M, and 70CM all Mode transceivers.

The FT-817 is QRP (5w max output) and contains internal batteries offering portable use in a package about the size of a soft cover book.  Pretty cool stuff.

The FT-857 is a 100w Mobile rig.  It competes directly with the Icom IC-706 Mk.II G.   Because of it’s price new (around $650) this makes a fantastic first radio.  It’s much more advanced technologically than the Icom IC-718 and a little bit less expensive.  I stand by the thought that this radio is something every new ham should own.  As you determine what you like/dislike in terms of operating you can move into a more specialized piece of equipment with some first hand knowledge about the hobby.  Also you didn’t waste that $650 as you can now put your FT-857 in your car and go HF Mobile.

The FT-897 is the model I’m most familiar with as I own one.  This radio operates IDENTICALLY to the FT-857 with the exception of a single rocker switch on the top.  This switch is used to choose which of two optional internal battery packs is being used.  If no internal batteries are installed the switch obviously does nothing.  Like the FT-857 the FT-897 is a 100w all band/mode Hf transceiver.   The exception to this would be while running on battery power.  While powered on the internal batteries the FT-897 has a max power output of 20w making it 4 times more powerful than the much smaller FT-817, but still not as powerful as it would be on external power (a car battery, powersupply, etc.)  The format of the FT-897 is much larger than either of the other two.  It isn’t as large as a full desktop set radio like the FT-950 or Icom IC-746pro  But it’s not nowhere near as small as the mobile radios like the FT-857, IC-706, or IC-7000.  The place the FT-897 excels is camping, and possibly backpacking.  Field day with my FT-897 in 2007 was a blast!  It’s nice to be able to easily carry the radio to a location,  toss your antenna into a tree or hook up a buddipole and you’re ready to call CQ.

I’d have a hard time suggesting the FT-817 to anyone who’s new to the hobby.  5w is awfully crippling, and the cost of the radio isn’t much better than the FT-857.

I’m sure I’ll add more to this in follow up posts.  PLEASE feel free to post questions about any of the above models.  I have access to an FT-817 and an FT-857 at a moments notice.

Another Dual Band, Cross band repeater.

Like the FT-8800r I reviewed earlier this radio can do all of that and more.  There is an integrated TNC, with GPS decoder module.  This means you can do APRS with nothing more than the Radio, and a GPS.  Really kinda cool stuff.

As for using the TM-D700A.  Being primarily a Yaesu guy, it took some getting used to the menu system.
the display hands down destroys the 8800R.  The controls are actually easier to use, and are all backlit making night time operating MUCH easier.

I only have 2 complaints regarding the D700.
1) It supports V/V. V/U, and U/U  operating (left and right side bands)  The Yaesu, and Icom IC-2720h both support…  V/V, V/U, U/V, and U/U  it likely wouldn’t make any difference, until you’ve gotten used to putting your 440 repeater on the left side, and your 2m repeater on the right.  Nitpicking?  sure.  but still a complaint.
2) The Mic.  It’s a giant slab,  It sounds nice sure,  but common man!  This is the 21st century.

If I could go back and do it all again?  I’d seriously consider owning TWO TM-D700a Radios rather than 1 Kenwood and 1 FT-8800R

This Radio for the money is a fantastic investment.  Especially if you also own a dual band HT.
Being able to crossband from a 440mhz input to a 2M output is something I use with some frequency.  I can set my VX-7R on the .5W setting while sitting at my desk at work and transmit simplex to my car, which then retransmits my signal out to the 2M repeater in town I listen to most frequently.

Controls on this radio are easy to understand.  It is fully featured.  And in my opinion very easy to use.

The only two complaints I have about the Yaesu FT-8800R are the following:
1) The buttons on the control head are not back lit.
2) the vol and sql knobs are nested one on the other. which makes adjustments more difficult while wearing gloves.

I’d certainly buy another.