Month: April 2019

Good buddy Carl…

Our good buddy Carl Mungenast was in town yesterday and Susie and I had dinner with him and his grandson, Jason.   It was awesome.

I know what you’re thinking, and no, we don’t use the same barber!

I’ve known Carl for about 10 years now, and it all started about the time I hooked up with CSC Motorcycles.   Carl had an interest in the original Mustangs and he quickly signed on as an advisor to CSC.  I mentioned him several times in CSC blog, and one of the best things ever was the Baja trip Carl, his charming wife Mary, and I did in the Starship Subaru.  The company, the conversation, the scenery, and the whale watching were  fantastic.

Carl and Mary, who officially became Bajaenos in 2012.

Good times and good company, and it was grand seeing Carl again last night.

Hey, I just got off an A380 after 17 hours in the air, so it’s just a short blog tonight (or should that be today?).  Later, my friends.

The Early Machine Guns and modern Gatlings

A scan of a photo of a photo. I handled the original while researching the Gatling gun in the Colt archives at the Connecticut State Library and Museum in Hartford.

Yeah, I know…a Gatling gun is not a machine gun.  It was a hand-cranked weapon back in the day, but it’s still a fascinating a bit of machinery and this Civil War weapon concept is the principle behind modern high-rate-of-fire systems on combat aircraft, helicopters, naval vessels, and more.  I was so captivated by the Gatling design and how it extended from the Civil War to modern gun systems that I wrote a book about it (The Gatling Gun).   You may have already known that.

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The Gatling gun and its transition from the 1860s to today’s modern combat applications is fascinating.  To get that full story, you might want to pick up a copy of The Gatling Gun.

So how did it come to be that modern high-rate-of-fire gun systems use the Gatling principle?

Here’s the deal:  Around the end of World War II, jet aircraft entered service, and the old .50-caliber M2 Browning simply didn’t fire fast enough.  With the new jets, aircraft closing speeds in a dogfight might exceed 1000 mph (two jets coming at each other over 500 mph), and what was needed was a shot pattern rather than a steady stream of bullets.   In searching for higher firing rates, the Army discovered that Dr. Gatling and the U.S. Navy had both experimented with Gatling guns powered by electric motors, and way back in 1898 they attained firing rates over 1000 shots per minute.  In 1898, a firing rate that high was a solution looking for a problem that did not yet exist.  So, the concept was shelved for the next half century.  But after World War II, it was the answer to the Army Air Corps’ jet fighter gunnery dilemma.  The U.S. military dusted off the concept of an electrically-driven Gatling, gave a contract to General Electric, and the modern Vulcan was born.

Like I said earlier, the Gatling gun and its variants are used on many different combat systems.   One of the earlier ones was immortalized by Puff, the Magic Dragon, in The Green Berets.  The Green Berets is one of my all time favorite movies and the scene I’m describing shows up at around 1:20:

The first Vietnam-era gunship used old World War II C-47s (that’s what you see in the video above).  Then the Air Force went to the C-130, a much larger aircraft, because it could carry more cannon.  Then, because they couldn’t get C-130s fast enough, they turned to old C-119s.   When the Air Force did a range firing demo to convince the folks who needed convincing at Eglin AFB, the gunship Gatlings fired continuously until they had no more ammo, and I’m told it was so impressive the project managers secured an immediate okay to proceed.  The bigwigs viewing the demo firing thought the sustained burst was all part of the plan; what they didn’t know is the control system malfunctioned and the aircrew couldn’t turn the Gatlings off.  Hey, sometimes things happen for a reason.

I know a fascination with Gatlings is unusual, and you might wonder how it came to be.   It goes like this:  When I was in the Army, my first assignment was to a Vulcan unit in Korea.   To ready me for that, I had orders to the US Army Air Defense School’s Vulcan course in Fort Bliss, Texas.  Vulcans were the Army’s 20mm anti-aircraft guns, and on the first day of class, the sergeant explained to us that the Vulcan gun system was based on the old Gatlings.  Whaddaya know, I thought.  The Gatling gun.

Then things got better.  After a few weeks of classroom instruction, we went to Dona Ana Range in New Mexico to fire the Vulcan.  I thought the Vulcan would sound like a machine gun…you know, ratatat-tat and all that.  Nope.  Not even close.  When I first heard a Vulcan fire I was shocked.  If you’ve ever been to a drag race and heard a AA fuelie, that’s exactly what a Vulcan sounds like.  I heard one short BAAAAAARRRKKK as the first Vulcan fired a 100-round burst at 3,000 shots per minute.  Jiminy!  The effect was electrifying.  We were a bunch of kids yammering away, and then the Vulcan spoke.  Everyone fell silent.  We were in awe.

At the Dona Ana range, the effect was even more dramatic…there was the soul-searing bark of the actual firing, and then an echo as the Vulcan’s report bounced off the distant Dona Ana mountains.   Then another as the next gun fired, and another echo.  And another.  Cool doesn’t begin to describe it.

A Vulcan firing at night. Think that shot pattern is impressive? Hey, you’re only seeing every 7th round (the combat mix was one tracer every 7 rounds).  This is a US Army photo included in The Gatling Gun (along with many others).

After I left the Army, my next job was on the F-16 Air Combat Fighter, and it used the same 20mm Gatling as did the Vulcan.  After that it was General Dynamics in Pomona, where I worked on the Phalanx (a 20mm shipborne Vulcan).  Then it was on to Aerojet, where we made 30mm ammo for the A-10 Warthog’s GAU-8/A Gatling.  It seemed that every job I had was somehow tied to a Gatling gun variant, and that was fine by me.  I loved working with these systems.

And there you have it.  If you’d like to more about the different systems using Gatlings today and the early history of the Gatling gun, you can purchase The Gatling Gun here.

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My Optical Illusion

The Harley Electra-Glide Classic, as seen in Harley’s 1979 sales brochure.

It was beautiful, it was something I always dreamed about owning, and I couldn’t ride a hundred miles on it without something breaking. I paid more for it than anything I had ever purchased, I sold it in disgust two years later for half that amount, and today it’s worth maybe five times the original purchase price. I wish I still had it. I’m talking about my 1979 Harley-Davidson Electra-Glide, of course. That’s the tan-and-cream motorcycle you see in the photo above, scanned from my original 1979 Harley brochure.  The motorcycle is long gone.  I had the foresight to hang on to the brochure.

All of the photos in this blog are from that brochure. I wasn’t into photography in those days, but I wish now that I had been. The Harley’s inability to go a hundred miles without a breakdown notwithstanding, I hit a lot of scenic spots in the Great State of Texas back in 1979. The Harley’s colors would have photographed well. The only photo I can remember now is one of me working on the Harley with the cylinder heads off. It seems that’s how the Harley liked to be seen. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The 1979 Harley brochure cover.

So the year was 1979, I was young and single, and I was an engineer on the F-16 at General Dynamics in Fort Worth doing the things that well-compensated, single young guys did in those days: Drinking, riding (not at the same time), chasing young women, and dreaming about motorcycles. If you had mentioned gender-neutral bathrooms, man bun hairstyles, a universal basic income, democratic socialism, sanctuary cities, the Internet, or something called email in those days (especially in Texas), no one would have had any idea what you were talking about, and if you took the time to explain such things, you would have been run out of town after being shot a few times.  Texas in 1979 was a good time and a good place.

I stopped often at the Fort Worth Harley dealer, and Harley was just starting to get into the nostalgia thing. I had sold my ’78 Bonneville and I had the urge to ride again. Harley had a bike called the Café Racer and I liked it a lot, but I took a pass on that one. Then they introduced the Low Rider and I loved it, but when sitting on the showroom Low Rider I turned the handlebars and one of the handlebar risers fractured (Harleys had a few quality issues in those days). Nope, it wouldn’t be a Low Rider. Then they introduced the Electra-Glide Classic, that stunning bike you see in the photos here.  It was a dagger that went straight to my heart.  I was stricken.

The Electra-Glide Classic was Harley’s first big push into the nostalgia shtick and it stuck. At least for me it did. My first memory of ever being stopped dead in my tracks by a visually-arresting motorcycle was with a Harley Duo-Glide full dresser when I was a kid (it was blue and white), and the Classic brought that memory home for me. The Classic’s two-tone tan-and-cream pastels were evocative of the ‘50s, maybe a Chevy Bel Air (even though those were turquoise and white, a color Harley later adopted in the early ‘90s with its Heritage Softails).  The whole thing just worked for me.  I had to have it.

I sat on the Classic and it was all over for me. I fell in love. I knew at that instant that I was meant to be a Harley man. I turned the handlebars and nothing broke. There was a cool old sales guy there named Marvin, and I asked what the bike would cost out the door. He already knew the answer: $5,998.30.

A two-page spread featuring the bike I bought.

Hmmm.  $5,998.30.  That was a lot of money. I was riding around in a new CB-equipped Ford F-150 that had cost less than that amount (hey, it was Texas; Breaker One Nine and all that).  My internal struggle (extreme want versus $5,998.30) was apparent to old Marvin.

“You know you want it,” Marvin said, smiling an oily, used-car-salesman, Brylcreem smile (these guys all went to the same clothing stores and barbers, I think).  “What’s holding you back?”

“I’m trying to get my head wrapped around spending $6,000 for a motorcycle,” I said.

Marvin knew the drill. He was good at what he did. He probably made a lot more money than I did.

“Are you single?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“Working?”

“Yep.”

“Got any debt?”

“Nope.”

“So what’s your problem?”

“It’s like I said, Marvin,” I answered. “I’m trying to justify spending six grand on a motorcycle.”

“You’re single, right?”

“Yep.”

“Well, who do you need to justify it to?”

And, as Tom Hanks would say 30 years later in Forrest Gump, just like that I became a Harley rider.

Another two-page spread in the ’79 brochure, showing the entire Harley line. They were beautiful motorcycles.

Yeah, the bike had a lot of quality issues, the most bothersome being a well-known (after you bought one, that is) tendency for the new 80-cubic-inch Shovelhead valves to stick. I first stuck a valve at around 4,000 miles (all of a sudden my Classic was a 40-cubic-inch single, and Harley fixed it on the warranty). I asked Marvin about that, and the answer was, “Yeah, this unleaded gas thing don’t work too good with the new motors. Put a little Marvel Mystery Oil in each of the tanks, or maybe a dime’s worth of diesel, and you’ll be okay…”

Seriously?  Marvel Mystery Oil?  Diesel fuel?

But I wanted to be good guy, and I did as directed.  It wasn’t enough.  A valve stuck again at 8,000 miles, Marvel Mystery Oil and that dime’s worth of diesel notwithstanding.  Another trip to the dealer, and another valve job. I could see where this was going. The bike had a 12,000 mile warranty.

“So, Marvin,” I began, “what happens the next time a valve hangs up?”

Marvin smiled a knowing smile. “It all depends which side of that 12,000 miles you’re on.”  Somehow, Marvin’s Texas accent made it not hurt as much.

Sure enough, at 12,473 miles, a valve stuck for a third time. This one was on me. I pulled the heads, brought them to the dealer, and paid for that valve job. You know, you can just about fix anything on a Harley with a 9/16 wrench and a screwdriver. It was easy to work on. But it wasn’t just the valves sticking. The rear disk brake had problems. The primary cover leaked incessantly. And a bunch of other little things. I’m not kidding. The mean time between failures on that bike was about a hundred miles, and I’d had enough.  I called the bike my Optical Illusion.  It looked like a motorcycle.

One other thing about the Harley sticks out.  I took it with me when I moved to California, and at one of the dealers one of the many times when it was in for service, the dealer’s mascot did what I suddenly realized I had wanted to do.  That mascot was a huge, slobbering St. Bernard.  It sauntered over to my bike and took a leak on the rear wheel.  “Oooh, better hose that down,” the service manager said.  “That will eat up the aluminum wheel.”   I had to laugh (hell, everyone else was) as the guy sprayed water from a garden hose all over the bike.   That dog had beat me to it.  He did what I had felt like doing the entire time I owned the bike.  The kicker is that even though the service manager sprayed the bejesus out of the bike in a vain attempt to remove all traces of the St. Bernard’s territorial claims, it was all for naught.  From that day on wherever I went if there was a dog within a hundred yards, it did the same thing.  My Harley was a two-tone tan-and-cream traveling fire hydrant.

Good Lord, though, that Harley was beautiful. Park it anywhere and it would draw a crowd. Half the people who saw it wanted a ride, and if they were female I was happy to oblige. It was big and heavy and it didn’t handle worth a damn, but it sure was pretty. The only time I almost crashed I was riding through a strip mall parking lot admiring my reflection in the store windows.  That’s how good-looking it was.  I wish I kept it.

Read about our other Dream Bikes!

The 7mm Weatherby Magnum

This is a hot rifle with a cool story. Folks, check out this left hand 7mm Weatherby Mark V…

A 7mm Mk V Weatherby. Note the left hand bolt and the exquisite walnut.

It’s one of the great ones, and the story behind it goes like this. About 35 years ago I was an engineer working for Aerojet (we manufactured cluster bombs and artillery ammunition) and the Weatherby plant was just up the road from us in Southgate, California. Weatherby had a retail sales outlet there, too.   It was awesome.  Hunting trophies (including an enormous full body mount of a standing polar bear that must have been 10 feet tall), all kinds of shooting gear, beautiful Weatherby rifles…you get the idea.

I stopped in one day and mentioned to Pat, the sales guy I had come to know, that I wanted to buy a Weatherby in 7mm Weatherby Magnum for my Dad.  I told him it had to be a left handed action (Dad was a southpaw), and I wanted a rifle with exceptional walnut.  “If you see one that has particularly nice wood, let me know,” I said.

Pat’s answer was immediate:  “Let’s go in the back and pick one out now,” he said.  In those days, they would take you into the Weatherby warehouse deep in the facility to select the rifle you wanted.

It was awesome.  Imagine being in an Army armory, you know, the ones with the plain wood racks and zillions of rifles stacked in them.   Now imagine those same plain wood racks filled with Weatherby Mk V rifles.   That’s what it was like.  I could have spent a year in that room, but after an hour I got it down to two rifles and I told Pat it would be cool if I could tell Dad that Roy Weatherby helped me select the rifle.

“Let’s go,” he said, and that’s exactly what happened. In two minutes I was in Roy Weatherby’s office and there he was.  I remembered my father and I studying the Weatherby catalogs when I was a kid.   They all had this photo of Roy Weatherby in his office, surrounded by animal skins, his personal gun collection, and hunting trophies.  Suddenly, Pat and I were in that photo.  And there was Mr. Weatherby.

Roy Weatherby, in his office. I was there. Photo from the Weatherby catalog.

Roy Weatherby was one hell of a man.  He spoke to me like we had known each other for years, and I guess in a sense we had.  He knew his customer base, and I had read about Mr. Weatherby growing up.  He wanted to know about the velocities of the 25mm ammo we manufactured at Aerojet, he wanted to know about me, and he wanted to know about my father.  Dad was a world-class trapshooter, and Roy wanted to know all about that, too.  The entire time we chatted (maybe 30 minutes), Pat and I were holding the two Weatherby rifles I had selected.

Finally, Mr. Weatherby said to me, “Joe, I understand you’re buying a Weatherby for your Dad and you need help selecting the rifle.”  We hadn’t told Mr. Weatherby that yet, but he knew.   Then he said to Pat, “Pat, let’s put those two rifles up here on my desk,” and we did.

“You know, from this side I like that one best,” old Roy said.  “Let’s turn them over.” We did, and then he said, “Oh, I see the problem.  From this side, I like this one best,” pointing to the other rifle.

Then he looked at me and said, “Joe, which one do you like best?”

“I like this one,” I said, pointing to the rifle in the photo on top of this blog.

“That’s the one I would have selected,” Roy said, with a knowing smile.

Mr. Weatherby obviously had done this before. He had helped in the selection, but it was my choice.  This was a wise man.  In a different time, I could imagine him suggesting slicing the baby in half like old King Solomon.  Just being in his presence was an amazing experience. Like I said, he was one hell of a man.  It was easy to understand why he was successful.  My guess is everyone who met Roy Weatherby loved the guy.

“Do you think your Dad would like a Weatherby catalog?” Roy asked.  Would he ever, I thought.  I still have memories of Dad reading those Weatherby catalogs when I was a kid.  They were big, glossy, full color affairs showing Weatherby custom rifles, famous people who hunted with Weatherby rifles, and more.   Roy pulled open a desk drawer, took a catalog from it, and inscribed the inside cover with a big Roy Weatherby signature.  It was a moment I’ll remember for the rest of my life.  The he gave me a Weatherby hat and a Weatherby belt buckle, and he said, “Give these to your Dad, too.”  It was an incredible day.

I was a Weatherby fan when I went in; when I left I was even more so. On the way out, I bought a Weatherby scope and a Weatherby rifle case.  Pat, the sales guy, told me they had other cases and other scopes that cost less, but I knew that wouldn’t do for me.  It had to be a Weatherby product.  If they had a guy there offering Weatherby tattoos, I would have opted for one of those, too.

I gave the rifle to Dad and he loved it. We spent several days on the range shooting the Weatherby, and then shortly after that, Dad’s number came up and he was gone.  Dad had heart disease, and it was his time.  That was a tough pill to swallow, but life goes on.  It was one of the lowest and saddest times of my life, but I will forever be grateful that I was able to give Dad the Weatherby and see him enjoy owning and shooting it.

The Weatherby had not been out of my safe since then, other than to run a patch through the bore and to keep it oiled. I didn’t shoot it because it’s left handed (I’m a righty), and then one day recently I was thinking about that. My Dad was left handed and he shot right hand bolt action rifles, so I reasoned that as a righty I could shoot a left hand rifle. And last year, I did.

Me, with Dad’s Weatherby.  Dark striped walnut runs the length of the stock on both sides.

That 7mm Weatherby Magnum cartridge is a real powerhouse. It’s hotter than the 7mm Remington Magnum by about 200 feet per second and the bark is ferocious. The recoil is significant, but truth be told, when I’m hunting I never feel the recoil and I never hear the shot.  That’s because my concentration is elsewhere.

My reloaded 7mm Weatherby Magnum ammunition. Weatherby cartridges have a unique double radius shoulder. The theory is it provides higher projectile velocities.

I’m working on different loads trying to zero in on the secret sauce that will provide the tightest groups in his magnificent old rifle. And I’m having a lot of fun doing it.  Every time I head to the range with the 7mm Weatherby Magnum, I’m thinking of Dad and that day with Roy Weatherby.

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Back in the Day: The Honda Cub

I enjoyed this video.  I think you will, too.

Good buddy TK sent this to me a day or two ago (thanks, TK). I didn’t know the Honda Cub was the best-selling vehicle on the planet or that Honda had produced a cool 100 million of the things, and I think that number is all the more significant because several manufacturers make copies of the Cub not included in the total described in the video above.  One of the other  manufacturers producing a Cub variant is Zongshen.   I saw several of Zongshen’s production lines during my many visits to Chongqing.

On the Zongshen production line.
Another shot of Zongshen’s modern Cub production line. Folks who criticize Chinese motorcycles are doing little other than displaying their ignorance.

I owned a 50cc Cub back in the day.  I was a teenager and a guy down the street had one he picked up in a trade of some sort.  He just wanted to get rid of it and $50 later it was mine.   It was fun, and it was incredibly well built.  I wish I still had it.

Hey, on another note, I have a new article in print this month.   It’s in the June 2019 issue of RoadRUNNER magazine, and it’s on the Chinese motorcycle industry.  I know a bit about that world, and yeah, I’m an unabashed fan of the Chinese.  I’ve been in Chinese factories and I’ve ridden their motorcycles.   The Chinese motorcycle industry’s process control and production capabilities are as good as or better than any in the world, and folks who recoil at the idea of a Chinese motorcycle are simply displaying antiquated prejudices and ignorance.  I expect I’ll get a few emails and maybe a few comments on that last statement, and we welcome them.   The June ’19 issue will be on the newsstands in a few more days, and for those of you who subscribe to RoadRUNNER, you are receiving your copies now.  My copy arrived in the mail yesterday, and I am enjoying it enormously.  The travel and other stories (and the accompanying photography) are just outstanding.    If you’re not already subscribing to RoadRUNNER, you should be, and you can sign on here.

Flippers

In all passions you will find lovers and users. The vintage motorcycle passion, looking backwards towards a rose-tinted youth seems to have more than its share of both. Most vintage motorcycle enthusiasts are into the hobby because they either had a particular model or dreamed of owning a particular model way back when they were freshly weaned from the teat of childhood. Powerful first impressions drill that Yamaha RT1 or Kawasaki Z1B into a youngster’s brain like the clean, soapy scent of their first girlfriend’s hair.

Dreamers will spare no expense to make the fantasy whole, a living breathing relic of their past that they can ride today. The sounds of an old two-stroke twin can bring tears; the fierce kickback from an ancient thumper calls forth the rare, crystal clear memory along with an aching foot. When the time comes that they must sell their pride and joy to pay for an assisted living facility, Dreamers care about the motorcycle going to a good home, to someone who will appreciate the motorcycle as much as they did.

Not so the Flipper. The Flipper sees everything in dollars and cents. His only concern is extracting the maximum amount of cash from the Dreamers. The Flipper appears to share our enthusiasm and in fact may be knowledgeable about old motorcycles but his is a clinical, product knowledge. The Flipper could be selling Pokémon cards or Barbie dolls still in the original packaging and feel nothing for any of it.

The Flipper, egged on by TV shows glorifying the act of preying on the uneducated, scavenges the countryside looking for old motorcycles to buy at below market rates. Or steal in real terms. He then raises the price to astronomical levels and pops the thing on eBay to watch the Dreamers bid the thing even higher. Widows, children settling an estate or ex-wives exacting revenge on unfaithful husbands fuel the Flipper’s trade in misery.

Some Flippers don’t bother to learn their product line. You’ll see them on vintage motorcycle chat sites posting up a part or an entire motorcycle and asking, “What is this and what’s it worth?” They actually want to know model and year so they can eBay the thing. It’s a lazy Flipper that buys on appearance alone.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the buy low-sell high business model except when passion enters into the process. Flippers, through their actions, drive up the cost of vintage motorcycling for the Dreamers. His great financial gains encourage other Dreamers to sell out their childhood memories and become Flippers themselves. With a finite supply of product this process of devouring our own eventually attracts the Collectors.

Collectors have a Flipper’s business sense along with the money to back it up. They don’t need to sell anything ever. When a collector dies an auction house usually disposes of his motorcycles to an audience comprised of 90% Collectors and 10% Dreamers. Flippers know there are no good deals at an auction. By withholding product from the market the Collector also helps drive up costs for those of us who just want an old motorcycle to ride.

This cycle of driving up costs continues until people who don’t really give a crap about them own all the old motorcycles. The Dreamers are priced out of the market and go on to other hobbies like heart surgery or knee replacement. As the generations that originally desired the motorcycles begin to die off the prices will drop and the Flippers, seeing a contracting market, will move on to destroy another fun, economical hobby. Like model trains.

There is no solution to the Flipper problem. Events must follow their course and human nature cannot be denied. Profit wins over passion every time. It’s enough that we loved the old bikes for what they were. Our memories will not be for sale.

Bob weighs in…

Good buddy Bob, who won our moto book drawing last quarter, sent this nice note to us a couple of days ago and we wanted to share it with you…

Hey, Joe, just wanted to drop you a quick line to thank you for the Destinations book. I can see it’s a compilation of your articles from Motorcycle Classics (one of my favorite motorcycle periodicals, the other being Motorcycles for Sport and Leisure, from the UK). You’ve done a lot of two-wheel travel, a lot more than I have, as I re-entered riding about 12 years ago after being off two wheels for several decades. I enjoyed your writeups on some of the places I’ve been on two wheels and other places I haven’t ridden, but have driven on family trips. I’m in NorCal and, as you know, there are many, many fantastic places to ride up here.

Thank you for your promotion of motorcycling on machines which don’t weigh 900 pounds. The smaller bikes are very capable and I say that although I am by no means a small dude. I think your development of the CSC bikes is great and I also have interests in the REs, Janus, Genuine 400 and the Yamaha SR400. Maybe it’s just a retro frame of mind, I don’t know, but I like proper motorcycles like those.

Thanks once again for the book and best wishes in your endeavors. Here are a few photos from my moto expeditions in the area, just for fun:

Bob, that’s awesome.  We’re glad you’re enjoying Destinations, and thanks for the kind note and the great photos.   Ride safe, good buddy!

If you’d like to order your own copy of Destinations, you can do so here.

And don’t forget to sign up for our quarterly motobook giveaway.  All you need to do is enter your email address to receive automatic email updates, and you’re entered into our contest.  The next drawing will be at the end of June, and we’d like to see you win!

Fixing MotoAmerica

Motorcycle road racing in America has not met expectations for quite a while now. Our guys are no longer dominating GP racing as they did in decades past. MotoAmerica, our premier road racing league has made strides by reinstalling the 1000cc bikes as the premier class and bumping the 600’s down to B-team. Hiring my Internet-buddy Andrew Capone as rainmaker for the series is another great move towards professional sponsorship and revenue generation. I’ve never raced on pavement but I rank as an expert spectator due to the sheer number of road races I’ve attended. I’ve got a few ideas on how to make MotoAmerica better and I’m not shy about cranking them out.

From my cheap seats way in the back of the bleachers the first thing that needs doing is to make all racers have large, flat, standard size number plates with a stark contrast between the background and the number. These plates should be situated so that they are legible when the motorcycle is upright or leaned over. Copy how AMA flat track does it. I have no problem seeing the plates they use. So many times at Daytona I’ve lost interest in a race because the stylized graphics on the motorcycles obscure identifying marks. Numbers that are fairly easy to read in a still photo become much more difficult to read when the motorcycles are trotting past at 100 miles per hour and the view is 100 yards away with a barrier fence between you and the action. A hard to follow race is a boring race.

American road racers are never going to get back atop the pinnacle of GP racing until they test themselves against the world’s best. It’s expensive for a US rider to got to Europe so why not bring Europe to the USA? What if all the contract issues could be solved and MotoAmerica paid start money to a few of the GP guys? Pay Rossi to start a few races, Marquez or Dovizioso would be a huge draw. I’m guessing the increased gate alone would pay for Rossi. This harkens back to when European motocross stars were paid to compete over here. American racers gained first hand experience on where they needed to be in order to defeat the best. There is no physical barrier preventing our top AMA racers from competing on even terms with world-class GP racers. Show our greyhounds the European rabbit and they will move heaven and earth to stay on their tail.

Paying start money to stars will cost a lot so MotoAmerica should welcome any advertiser with money into the road racing world. Alcohol, cigarettes, recently legalized medical pot growers, even trailer park Oxycodone dealers should be allowed access to the audience for a price. MotoAmerica can be the expensive venue for all manner of sin-tax products to sell their wares. The squeaky-clean motorcycle racer thing cannot work. The general public will never engage with MotoAmerica because they think all motorcyclists are riff-raff. MotoAmerica should embrace the outlaw buried deep within every rider’s heart.

I have more ideas for MotoAmerica, lots more. Some of them un-publishable, some of them illegal or require three people. How about free programs to go with that expensive ticket? What if a few road races counted towards the flat track championship? Wouldn’t it be a crowd pleaser to see a circle of FT guys show up to battle on pavement in a close flat track championship? Anyway, I’ll wait here at Tinfiny Ranch for the inevitable MotoAmerica call asking me to join the team. I’ll have to decline; monsoon season is coming and I’ve got a lot of concrete work to do in preparation.

375 H&H Loads…

A couple of folks wrote to me asking about the loads I used for the recent blog about the Model 375 H&H Model 700.  Say what you will, but most folks are fascinated by these big bore rifles (including me), and I figure if a couple of guys took the time to write, there are probably a bunch more out there with the same question.

When I shot the 375 H&H Model 700 last weekend, I wanted to work up some loads for it but I ran out of time. I grabbed what I had in the ammo locker, but I couldn’t find a record of having developed specific loads for this rifle earlier. Maybe I did and the loads were ones I had tested already (you’ll see from the dates on the load labels that I preppred this ammo a few years ago), or maybe I loaded them and just never got around to trying them.  In any event, these were the loads that went to the range with me last weekend.

I did all my shooting off the bench at 50 yards, and here are the results…

I used a 6:00 hold on all the targets.   All of the loads were accurate.  The recoil on the Trail Boss loads was light, about like shooting a .223.  The full power loads (the ones with 66.0 grains of IMR 4320 propellant) was accurate, but recoil was significant.  It’s probably okay as a hunting load (no one notices recoil when hunting), but shooting off the bench with this load didn’t quite move the needle into the fun range.  The 33.0 grains of SR4759 was potent, but recoil was manageable, and it was very accurate.  It’s the one I’m going to use.

These .375 H&H rifles are normally big ticket items, but Weatherby recently introduced their synthetic-stocked Vanguards (with iron sights) in a .375 H&H chambering.  You can pick these up for around $600, and that’s a phenomenal deal.

See our other Tales of the Gun stories here.

Get Out: Kilbourne Crater

If you roll along dusty, unpaved county road A011 through the desert shrubbery of New Mexico’s south-central region, and you roll with purpose, you will fetch up on the shores of Kilbourne Crater. Kilbourne was formed by a maars-type volcanic eruption. In a maars eruption a crater is created by hot magma coming into contact with the water table. When the two meet, the rapidly heated water turns to steam, expands and blows huge chunks of ground skyward. By huge I mean 2.5 kilometers across 1.8 kilometers wide and 125 meters deep. It’s a big hole and it must have made quite a racket when it blew its stack 20,000 to 80,000 years ago.

Maars volcanic eruptions don’t form the classic Hanna-Barbera, cinder cone shape or leave behind crowd-pleasing lava flows. At first I thought a meteor caused the crater but the crew at Southwest Expeditions had several guest speakers situated under a billowing tent to set me straight. They also had a van if you didn’t want to burn your own fuel to get to the crater. I saved $2.57. In addition to downloading a heck of a lot of information about volcanism into the assembled masses they served us a fine chicken-taco lunch.

Lunch was fabulous except for one thing. That thing being a giant jar of sliced jalapenos. No one was eating them because the lid was too tight. I gave it a good twist but the lid would not budge. I’m not the strongest guy in the world but I can open a damn jalapeno jar, you know? I finally gave up and handed it to this big guy that looked like Chief from the movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. I swear, he took the lid in his fingertips and the lid spun off easy as pie.

It put a damper on my lunch I tell you. I ate moody qua-moody. Am I getting old? Will I need a Clap-On soon? Life Alert? After the jar debacle it was probably best that Southwest Expeditions canceled our hike down into the crater. The temperature was 92 degrees and the wind was howling. No sense crushing anyone else’s sense of self-worth.

After lunch we assembled to participate in an art project with Tim Fitzpatrick and Jeff Erwin. Fitzpatrick had a long swatch of bright red cloth that he wanted to juxtaposition against Kilbourne’s vast, earth-colored sweep. It was something to do with the wavelength of light and spectra. I’m not sure because Fitzpatrick lost me after he said, “Hold this red cloth.” While we marched around Erwin flew a drone to capture footage of the cloth snaking across the rim of the crater.

After piercing Kilbourne’s visual solitude with our happy, marching red-band the artists had each of us recite one line of John F. Kennedy’s, “We choose to go to the Moon” speech and took headshots of the readers. I’ll let you know when the thing pops up on you tube.

Surrounding Kilbourne are ash dunes and surprisingly little lava. What lava pieces you do find at the site are more block-shaped and are pieces the explosion ejected from an older layer of lava that had covered the area long before Kilbourne was born from pressurized steam. There’s also a lot of ammunition shell casing scattered around. I imagine the lead-to-lava ratio will approach 50:50 by the year 2234.

The reason for all of this activity in the middle of nowhere was the 50th anniversary of astronauts Conrad, Bean, Gibson, Carr, Irwin and Schmitt training in Kilbourne Crater for their upcoming Apollo 12 Moon mission. That would be the second Moon landing. Kilbourne was chosen for its dust, the rough terrain and the multitude of geologic examples found at the site.

Other Apollo missions trained at Kilbourne: Apollo 13, 14, 15 (canceled), 16 (renamed 15) and 17 crews all did their time in the hole. NASA’s budget and our will to explore the Moon waned and the Apollo missions kind of ran out of steam. Which, in a suitable ending is what created their moon-mission training ground those many years ago. Maybe one day NASA will return to Kilbourne and use its dusty, rocky landscape to train another generation of astronauts. I hope to see America once again become a space-faring nation and that those astronauts will be heading to Mars.