Got our car back!!!

That only took a month and a half…  Anyway today I went to pick up our Toyota Matrix and woo I’m glad we have it back.  Yeah I had a rental but it’s not the same driving someone else’s car, the total bill ended up being $7,300+, of it I only had to pay $400 thanks to insurance.  I guess that also means my insurance is going to increase in price when I’m up for renewal in March, lol maybe Maggie should get her own insurance as she seems to be having all the mishaps.

Anyway the car looks great and we’re happy that it’s back, lol later in the year I’ll buy another car so we’re not as “stuck” if something like this happens.

After picking up Brandon from school, I swung by Al Flaherty’s to pick up some 9mm ammo I ordered online.

20150123_182120

I split 1,000 rounds of steel cased Barnaul 9mm ammo with Brayden, we both needed more 9mm and figured we’d give this a try.  It’s slightly cheaper than the brass cased ammo we’ve been shooting and since neither of us reload, if we can save some money with steel cased ammo why not right.  At $260, it wasn’t expensive so I could have bought it outright myself but if for some reason my Glock 17 doesn’t like it, I didn’t want to be stuck with a lot of ammo I couldn’t use.

While I was there, I was eyeing another crate of Norinco 5.56×45 but I couldn’t justify it as I have probably around 2,500 round at home and am more in need of 7.62×39.  Bring on the zombies, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. 😉

Expensive but fun

Last week I ordered a couple of HK45 compact 8 round .45ACP magazines from Wanstalls and woo I received them today.  They certainly look a lot better in the HK45CT than the 10 round magazines with the stupid elephant foot bottom, yeah I’m vain I care about the way my guns look when I’m at home and have nothing to do. 😉

HK45CT

Just wanted to point out that while the spare 8 round magazine is loaded, there are no cartridges in the HK45CT itself.  I think I’ll sell the two 10 round magazines and pick up another three 8 round mags down the line for five in total.  Truth be told, I’m not very good at shooting this one yet so I need a lot of practice…  Too bad .45ACP is expensive but that’s the price one has to pay when participating in shooting sports right.

Lots of bang bang

This morning Maggie and I went to Battlefield Las Vegas and it was so great.  I purchased a gun package that let me shoot a MP5 SD6, M4A1 & M249 LMG and boy was it fun.  Maggie wasn’t really interested in giving it a go so I shot everything.   You use their indoor range which is pretty short maybe 20 yards but who cares full auto is freaking great!

Unfortunately the pictures we took are too large to upload so I’ll get then up after I return home but here is a link to a video that Maggie took. Not the best angle but that’s the best she could do.

We shopped the rest of the day, haha neither Maggie or I gamble so we have to keep ourselves entertained.  After dinner we’re going to see a magic show woo that’ll be fun.

Tomorrow will be fun as we’re going to the Grand Canyon and to see Hoover dam.

Pew, pew & bang, bang

So the last few days we’ve been busy with various things, nothing too much to report on other than I went to play airsoft with Stephen & Jason yesterday at Mach 1.  It was fun, the reffing was much better this time around and the games moved very swiftly.  At the beginning there were maybe 15 players and that topped out at around 25 mid to late afternoon Sunday and I had absolutely no problems.  Here’s a quick video of the first game we played, first team to put the tire in the car wins.  I was late for briefing so I didn’t know what the tire looked like, as the video indicates.

The second video is from Jason’s point of view for one of the hostage rescue games we were playing.  Pretty ridiculous especially after being hit with a 40mm, that doesn’t feel like a riccochet at all…  Anyway despite that we all had a good time and we played a solid 5 hours or so but called it early as we wanted to get back to our families and I had to pack for to go to the range.

Today I went to Silverdale in the morning with Laura and her father, they went to the 50 yard range to shoot their 22LR rifles and I went to the action range to practice more with the Glock 17.  It was nice, there was no one else around me for the first two hours so I could do whatever I wanted, I practiced shooting my steel plate a lot and am now up to around 7/10 which ain’t bad for a beginner.  I shot the CSA vz-58 a bit as well as the AR-15, haha I love the action range because there I can do double taps and faster shooting. 😉

We left the range around 11AM and I got home by 1, after I cleaned my guns and picked up Brandon early from day care.  He won’t be going in tomorrow either as I’m going to be taking him to Ripley’s Aquarium, yeah we went there last year but he enjoys looking at animals and he’s my son so I wanted to do something special with him.  Too bad Maggie can’t go so it’s going to be just him and I but we’ll have a good time none the less.

Fun range time

Hehe I’m off for the next two weeks so yesterday I dragged Mario to Silverdale with me, shooting is fun but shooting with friends is even better!  He loves airsoft AKs and really enjoyed shooting the CSA vz-58, which is cosmetically as close as you can get to a real AK.  The 7.62×39 round is a lot of fun and best of all cheap so we shot that rifle a lot.  He also liked the Norinco CQ-A (AR-15), who doesn’t like ARs right but he didn’t do as well with the Glock 17 or HK45CT.  Not a big deal though, pistols are much more difficult to shoot for newbies and experienced people alike.

Hehe I always like to take pictures when I’m at the range and lol we didn’t have an uptight RO hanging over us today which was nice.  I love to see when the casings are flying through the air and Mario did a good job at capturing the action of the rifles.  Here are two videos of me that I got him to take, I took some videos of him shooting too but they’re his to do with. 😉

Mario tried shooting the metal plate I had and lol went 0/10 but again shooting handguns is very difficult so that’s not really a surprise. Myself the best I did was 6/10 at a 6″ target at 30′.

The weather was perfect and I’m glad I went, today I get to stay home and even though I’m officially off for the holidays I need to take a call later in the morning and do a bit of work. Oh well at least I’m at home right. 🙂

Awesome, belt fed!

This morning Brayden and I hit up Silverdale, it’s been a while since either of us went to the range and man shooting real guns was sorely missed by the both of us!  The weather was alright, temperature wise it was great but the range itself was very watery and muddy but that’s to be expected.  There was no one at the action range when we got there so we got to play all by ourselves for the first hour or so.

I was super stoked to shoot the CSA VZ-58 and when I fired the first round, ouch!  The AKM style slant muzzle brake pushes the gasses upwards, the barrel goes down which means the stock goes up right into your cheek and into your jaw!  Puzzled I tried it a few more times and after removing the slant muzzle brake the VZ-58 was enjoyable to shoot again.  Sigh, too bad I really like the look of the gun with that thing but ugh it makes the gun painful to shoot.

A little bit later the range started to fill out and one guy brought a belt fed M1919 belt fed Browning machine gun to the range!!!  It fired the heavy 30.06 caliber cartridge and my god when it goes, it’s a big BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!  I don’t know what the guy does for a living but he must be rich because 30.06 is very expensive and he must have gone through 200 rounds while we were there.  Probably more throughout the day but we wouldn’t know as we left around 11:20 AM.

With some advice from Brayden I was able to shoot my Glock 17 better, I really enjoy shooting pistols but man was I rusty!

Shooting rifles is relatively easy and I shot the VZ-58 & AR-15 well but ya took me a while to get half decent with a pistol again.

We left just after 11AM, both of us had things to do in the afternoon and that’s one thing I love about shooting real guns.  I can go shoot for a few hours, come back and still have my afternoon.  I got back around 1:40PM, Maggie took Brandon to see Big Hero 6 so it gave me some time to clean my guns which was nice.  It’s important for me to take care of the VZ-58 quickly because I’m shooting surplus corrosive ammo, so if I don’t want my gun to rust up I have to clean it out. That’s alright at the moment I still enjoy cleaning my guns because it’s still novel haha ask me that next year and maybe I’ll change my tune.

After the movie was done I went to pick them up at Fairview then we hung out around home the rest of the day/evening.  Need to work tomorrow so it’ll be a quiet night for us, Maggie’s neck is still a bit stiff but much better than the previous couple of days and she feels up to returning to the office.

VZ railed up!

I forgot to post this earlier but last week while I was sick I received my FAB Defence fore grip for my VZ-58. 🙂  I was too sick to play with it on Tuesday when I received it but I did install it later in the week and now I’m debating with myself if I should get some sort of optic for it.

CSAVZ-58_2500It’s pretty much done and I can’t wait to bring it to the range to test out.  Soon…

Nice!

Today I received my Dlask Arms AKM style muzzle brake for my CSA vz.58 rifle and now it looks even more like an AKM. I also purchased a rail handguard which should be here next week, after that all I need is an optic and I’m set. 😀

The rifle is already pretty mild to shoot so I wonder how much this will dampen recoil, oh well I guess every little bit helps. Initially I was suppose to go to Silverdale with Megan but we decided against it because it’ll rain heavily on Sunday. 🙁 Ahh well next time I’ll have a range report.

Lots of fun this weekend!

Saturday Maggie didn’t feel like bringing Brandon to soccer class for some reason so we bailed on that but we did still have a pretty busy day. We went out for dim sum and that’s always yummy, brought Brandon to go swimming and he’s making some decent progress there. He doesn’t kick very well yet but at least he can lay down on his back and float properly and is willing to put his face into the water.

Later when we went to skating class, Maggie and I were very happy with the effort that Brandon put in. He seemed to be really engaged and as a parent I don’t care if he’s good, all I want him to do is try and he made me proud. 🙂 For dinner we went to this new Chinese BBQ place and the skewered lamb was awesome. Thankfully Brandon went to bed pretty easily so I could pack and get my stuff ready for the range.

20141101_11201820141101_11203720141101_183022

Hehe yeah lots of eating out but meh it’s the weekend and that’s what families do. 😉

Sunday I got some extra sleep due to the day lights saving switching back to regular time which was nice and left the house around 7:30AM to go pick up Laura to go to Silverdale. We were both excited to go as she had a new GSG 1911-22 to try and of course I dying to shoot the CSA VZ58 Sporter. It’s a good thing we got there nice and early because the action range (and all the other ranges) filled up very quickly and by the time Brian T met up with us, about 30 minutes later the place was packed.

20141102_09463120141102_09463620141102_09464320141102_094651
20141102_10501820141102_10022520141102_104659

The CSA VZ58 Sporter was amazing to shoot, the gun is lighter so it has ever so slightly more recoil than the SKS-D but the ergonomics and usability of the rifle is many times greater. I got comfortable with the rifle very quickly, loading the rifle was a snap (though it may be more difficult if I were to shoot left handed) and the gun was very pointy and easy to aim with. I only shot the gun on the action range which was 10 yards and lol I could keep 5 round groupings within 2 cm though to be fair I could probably throw the bullets and have them land pretty close to one another lol.

I’ll do some longer range testing next time, this outing all I wanted to do was break the gun in and put a lot of bullets down the barrel and I succeeded in that as I must have shot close to 400 rounds of the surplus 7.62×39 ammo that I have laying around.

Poor Laura, she was having a lot of difficulties with the GSG 1911-22. She had a few failure to extract and many stove pipes, I thought she may be limp wristing with the thing as she’s new to shooting but her gun gave me issues as well. Unfortunately we’re using the same 22LR ammo and she only had one magazine so I suggested that she buy some different brands of ammo and get additional magazines to test with.

We left the range just before 12PM and after dropping her off I went home to clean my guns. Since I’m shooting corrosive ammo with the CSA VZ58 Sporter, it’s a good idea to clean it out quickly though with many parts chrome lined the task is relatively easy. Breaking the gun down is a breeze, even easier than the SKS which was nice. Flushed out the chamber and barrel with a lot of hot water, cleaned out the gas system (the carbon wiped off the chromed short stroke piston rod) and reassembled. 🙂

Need to get more magazines and accessories to tacticool it out, haha yeah I’m going to get a rail system for the handguard and optics for the gun to make it more fun. 😉

While I was cleaning my guns, I watched the F1 US grand prix and was happy that Lewis Hamilton won as he’s my favorite racer. In the late afternoon/evening I played with Brandon and spent a lot of time with my boy, while I always have fun when I go shooting I miss him very much too. Can’t wait till he’s older and we can make it a family event!

Now just relaxing with the few remaining hours I have left before the new work week and it was a very fun weekend.

New rifle woo

Last week I purchased a CSA VZ58 sporter with chrome lined barrel off CGN and it arrived on Monday. There were a couple of bigger things to post so I sat on this till today. 😉 Anyway while I loved the SKS-D, I found it quite heavy and difficult to modernize but it’s the complete opposite with the VZ-58 though I guess that’s due to it being a newer and more modern design.

CSA_VZ-58_2_2500CSA_VZ-1_58_2500

It fires the same 7.62×39 ammo as the SKS and while it cosmetically resembles an AK47/AKM internally it’s completely different and nothing between the rifles is cross compatible. With that said I’ve always wanted an AK and this is as close as I’ll ever get… It’s a striker fired weapon (no hammer) short stroke gas piston system and thankfully to modernize it with rails and other goodies (because that’s part of the fun) will be relatively inexpensive. I don’t like the pistol grip much, I have small hands and the lower portion feels a bit big to me but I haven’t found anything smaller online.

Anyway yeah I just wanted to post my new toy, going to the range on Sunday with Laura and I also get to drag Neil along, I know he’ll have a lot of fun. 🙂 Will report how it shoots later.