Can you do that? Review a book that you wrote? Hey, Gresh and I write the blog. Why am I even asking?
The book is Unleashing Engineering Creativity, and it came about as the result of a course I teach on engineering creativity. The cover photo you see above popped up on my Facebook feed yesterday (there’s old Zuckerberg, thinking of me again). So I shared the picture, and somebody made a comment that they didn’t understand the photos.
Okay, here’s the deal. Paul Mauser is widely credited as the guy who invented the bolt action rifle, and as he told the story, the idea came to him when he observed a simple gate latch (like you see on the book cover above). That led to a long line of Mauser and other bolt action rifles (but Mauser was the first). The one in the photo above is a Modelo 1909 Argentino Mauser, arguably the best version ever of the famed Model 98 Mauser (I have one and it is phenomenally accurate). The gate latch? That came from Lowe’s. I bought it to shoot the above photo.
You might think that engineers sit around in white lab coats and think deep thoughts when they need to invent something. It actually doesn’t work that way. No engineer worth a damn sits around very much, and when we have to invent things on demand, we’re usually not very good at it. In most companies, engineers just spitball it. You know, what we euphemistically call brainstorming (it’s no accident that the initials are so appropriate; it’s not a very effective way to come up with new designs).
The bad news is that we (as human beings) are at our most creative when we’re about 5 years old, and we lose much of our natural creativity (over 90%, according to the experts) by the time we finish high school. More bad news is that our creativity continues to erode after that. Bad news indeed, but the good news is that there are a bunch of great techniques we can use to get our creativity back.
One such technique is called TRIZ. It’s an acronym for a bunch of Russian words I can’t pronounce, but basically it means we define the problem we are trying to solve and then we look into other areas in other fields to see how they solved the problem. Like Paul Mauser did when he invented the bolt action rifle. TRIZ is a little more complicated that, but you get the idea.
Unleashing Engineering Creativity has 17 different approaches for improving creativity. It’s an expensive book, but if you’re looking to make the next technological breakthrough, the book’s cost is trivial. Like I always tell people: Don’t wait for the movie. I suppose I could do a YouTube video on some of the concepts. Maybe later. That YooHoo review still needs doing.
Last year we wrote a blog about The Warning, a statue honoing two motor officers who came to be known as the Paul Reveres of Santa Paula. The statue was an unanticipated discovery on a motorcycle ride through Santa Paula, and it had my attention because it’s not the kind of monument you see every day.
The other night Sue and I were flipping through the movies on Amazon Prime, and to my great surprise one I had not seen before popped up: The Forgotten Tragedy: The Story of the St. Francis Dam.
You know, I’m embarrassed to admit that when I first saw that statue in Santa Paula 10 years ago, I had never heard of the St. Francis Dam and its collapse. I grew up on the east coast, and there’s a lot we never heard about back there. It took a little digging for me to learn about California’s second largest disaster ever (the only event involving greater loss of life in the Golden State was the San Francisco earthquake), so the idea of a movie on the St. Francis Dam and its collapse had my immediate attention. The Forgotten Tragedy is a documentary and it’s very well done. It even included a bit about the motorcycle officers in the above statue (although it only mentioned one).
Trust me on this, my friends. The Forgotten Tragedy: The Story of the St. Francis Dam is worth viewing.
If I had to guess, and I really can’t imagine why I’d ever have to, I would say New Mexico has two or three times as many dirt roads as paved roads. I’m not getting on those trails at anywhere near the frequency I should be so I called up my moto-buddy Mike and asked him to show me the volcanoes. With the morning temperature hovering around 30 degrees Fahrenheit it didn’t take much convincing to get Mike to ride along in Brumby, the 1992 YJ Jeep.
There is a huge expanse of territory encircled by Highway 380 to the south, Interstate 25 on the western edge, Highway 60 up north and Highway 54 marks the eastern edge. Roughly 50 miles square, this land has hundreds of miles of dirt roads crisscrossing in all directions. These roads lead to huge cattle ranches and as such are kept in pretty decent condition. In dry weather you could run most of them in a two-wheel drive sedan. In wet weather they become much more challenging.
With the Jeep heater on high, we turned north off 380 and headed 25 miles into the outback to find the volcanoes. I didn’t really see a traditional cone-shaped volcano; at the volcanoes it’s more a lava field with an impressive variety of colorful minerals scattered about. Rust reds, crumbling ochers, and black lava dominate. The area is pockmarked with sinkholes several feet deep. What looks like broken beer bottles is actually exposed glass fused between layers of lava. I need to quick-learn geology because this spot is interesting and needs further exploration.
Forty miles from the volcanoes are the Gran Quivira ruins. The Spanish have a long history in the area. If you are a Native American you probably don’t think highly of the Spanish. The ruins of three large churches with pueblos built around them are thirty to forty miles apart. The southernmost one, Gran Quivira dips into our loop and it’s worth taking a trip just to see the masterful stonework.
The ranches out here have a loosey-goosey cow containment policy. Since the land is so dry it takes many acres to support one cow. Fencing huge amounts of land is not cheap so you get just a bit of fence near the road and the cows wander around doing cow-like things. It’s best to drive past slowly. If a cow hits your truck at 30 MPH things will get compressed rapidly.
After the ruins we ran for many miles on a slippery mud road that seemed to be the final drainage point for 50,000 acres. I put Brumby in 4WD because the little Jeep wanted to spinout when we sunk into the really muddy bits. Having the front wheels pulling seemed to make the truck go straighter.
In Corona we pulled up to the only good Mexican restaurant in town, also the only restaurant in town. As soon as I managed to unfurl my body and escape the Jeep’s door the neon “Open” sign went dark. I looked inside and the chairs were leg-high on the tables and staff was cleaning up.
I cracked the door and stuck my head inside, “Are you guys really closed?” The Senorita in charge said, “Yes, but it will take us a while to clean up, come in.” Not wanting to create more trouble, Mike had a burger with un-sweet tea and I seconded the order.
After a late lunch we ran the county-maintained dirt roads all the way back to Carrizozo. With the setting sun illuminating Brumby’s bug and mud splattered windshield I nearly overcooked a few turns, but only because I couldn’t see them.
All told we did over a hundred miles of off road exploring and we only scratched the surface of this one tiny section of New Mexico. It will take many lifetimes to see all this state has to offer and next time I’m bringing a metal detector.
It’s not every day you get to see a new 2020 Suzuki Katana for the first time, and it’s certainly not every day you get living legend and motojournalist extraordinaire Kevin Duke to take a photo of you standing next to it. Yesterday was that day for me, and the photo you see above was a shot Kevin grabbed of yours truly with the new Katana. I was visiting with the boys at CSC Motorcycles, Kevin was there, and he volunteered to let me take a ride on the Katana. I took a pass on that, but when he asked me to pose with the bike, hey, I figured Suzuki needs all the help they can get. Not that they need any from me. The new Katana is a stunning motorcycle. Visually arresting, I would call it.
We wrote about the 2020 Katana in our Dream Bikes series last year, and at that time, I mentioned that I owned one of the original Katanas in 1982. Mine was Serial Number 241 of the first batch of 500 Suzuki built.
There’s 38 years between those two photos. Wow, that’s a scary thought. I think me and my good buddy Jack Daniel’s will have a talk about that later tonight.
Yours truly with my Triumph Tiger in Palomar, about 200 miles south of the border along Baja’s Transpeninsular Highway. I had a little bit of hair back in the day, and it was still brown. What’s left now is mostly gray.
Wow, here’s a find…a bunch of older print photos from a Baja trip my old Baja buddy John Welker and I did back in 2006. Man, times were different back then. We both rode big road bikes and we were both working for a living. What a difference 14 years can make. It was a quick 1100-mile weekend ride to Bahia de Los Angeles in the Baja peninsula. John has a house on the Sea of Cortez down there. He still owns it, and he spends several months each year in Mexico. I took my Triumph Tiger for its first long ride, John took his Yamaha Virago, and we had a great time. I guess that goes without saying. Any motorcycle trip to Baja is going to be great.
A Mexican truck driver on the Transpeninsular Highway, who was actually pretty friendly.
We stayed in San Vincente on the way down. It’s a cool little agricultural town along the Transpeninsular Highway, one of many in the agricultural district north of El Rosario. We saw a guy trying to buy beer in the restaurant in San Vincente that Friday night. There was a BMW GS in the hotel parking lot and I asked if it was his. Yep, it was, and Peter introduced himself to me. The restaurant didn’t serve beer, but I went across the street to pick up a couple of sixpacks of Tecate. I asked Peter to join us for dinner, and he did. He’s from Canada (eh?), and he was touring Mexico and the US for a month or two.
Our new GS-mounted good buddy Peter in San Vincente, along with good buddy Annie. Peter said he was looking for a Starbuck’s and got lost. I think there may be a Starbuck’s down there now.That’s Deema, Annie, John, and Peter. It was a grand dinner. Deema and Annie drove down in Annie’s car on this trip.
On Saturday, the next morning, John and I ran into a fog bank about 250 miles south of the border. Visibility was so bad I couldn’t see the ground beneath me, so I pulled over to wait it out.
I grabbed this shot of my Triumph in the fog.And another. There was nothing else to do until the fog lifted. The Tiger was a very photogenic motorcycle.
Mexico’s Highway 1 (the Transpeninsular Highway) follows the Pacific coast and then turns inland at El Rosario. Mama Espinoza’s is a classic Mexican restaurant known for their lobster burritos. I had a chicken burrito for lunch and, as always, it was the best one I ever had. I made it a point to stop there on the way back the next day and I had the same thing.
We always feel welcome at Mama Espinoza’s.A sculpture outside Mama Espinoza’s.
South of El Rosario, it gets real desolate real fast. That’s the Valle de los Cirios, and it’s one of the prettiest spots on the peninsula. The roads are spectacular. Fast sweepers, long straights, and no traffic. There’s just the odd cow or wild burro in the road.
A typical view in the Valle de los Cirios.Another stop along the Transpeninsular Highway. The Triumph Tiger was a great machine for this kind of riding, especially with its comfortable riding position and a range exceeding 200 miles.
After the Valle de Los Cirios, it was desert down to Catavina and beyond. There are remote truck stops, lots of desert, and just great riding. I’ve got to get back down there again sometime soon.
A truck stop out in the middle of nowhere.We stopped briefly in Catavina, where John couldn’t tear himself away from this rather talkative guy. John and I have put a lot of miles on our motorcycles in Mexico. The scenery is great. The people you might are even more fun.
At Punta Prieta, after traveling on Highway 1 for about 360 miles, we made a left turn and headed east across the Baja peninsula.
This was our destination…Bahia de Los Angeles.Triumph called the Tiger’s color Caspian Blue, presumably named after the Caspian Sea. This wasn’t the Caspian Sea (it’s the Sea of Cortez), but I’d say the color match is pretty good.
John’s house on the Sea of Cortez. John picked a moonless weekend so that we could take in the stars, and the night sky was awesome.
Every motorcycle trip needs an obligatory artsy fartsy shot. This was mine from our 2006 Bahia de Los Angeles ride.
John’s house is literally right on the Sea of Cortez. It’s a pretty cool place.
Casa de Welker, on Bahia de Los Angeles.John telling a fish story in his front yard.Our dinner choice that Saturday night. The fish tacos were impressive, as was the Tecate. Life is good down there in Baja.
John keeps an old VW microbus in Bahia de Los Angeles that came with the house when he bought it. The lights on the VW didn’t work back in 2006 (I imagine John has them working now). We had dinner in town and realized the sun had set. No lights. No moon. Dirt roads through the Baja desert. We realized we were in a pickle. But, John had an idea. And a flashlight. Annie hung out the window with that flashlight and sort of lit the way. It was an old flashlight with a limp battery, and it didn’t really light up anything. But we didn’t care. It was a fun evening.
The original Baja bug. LIghts? We don’t need no stinkin’ lights!Candy, the Chihuaha from Peru. In Mexico. That little pup ran the show.A sculpture on John’s house.
There’s no light pollution down there in Bahia de Los Angeles. I slept on the roof and it was magnificent. I’ve never seen stars as vivid nor as plentiful as they were that night. And the next morning, I was up before sunrise, so I was able to set up my camera and get a cool photo of the sun rising over the Sea of Cortez.
A shot from John’s roof looking east over the Sea of Cortez.
I rode back the next morning by myself…John was staying at his place a couple of extra days, but I had to get back for work. Work. Man, those days seem so far in the past now.
The ride back was a good one. It’s nice to ride with friends; it’s also nice to ride on your own. I do some of my best thinking when I’m riding by myself. I need to do more of it.
I grabbed this shot in one of the agricultural towns along Highway 1 on the way back to the US.
I shot all of the photos on this page with my F5 Nikon, and the 24-120 Nikon and 17-35 Sigma lenses. Back in the day, as film cameras went the Nikon F5 was a good as it ever got, and I got a lot of great shots with that camera. The thing was a tank and I don’t think I would want to lug it around today, but back then it was really something.
So there you have it. I’ve got a standing invitation from Baja John to ride down to Bahia de Los Angeles, and as I put this blog together and looked at these photos again, I think that’s what I’m going to do.
Two 5-shot groups I shot with my Compact RIA 1911 at 50 feet this weekend. I love the load, I love the Rock 1911, and I love the Pachmayr grips. These little snubbie 1911s are surprisingly accurate.
It’s no secret I’ve become a big admirer of the .45 ACP Rock Island Compact 1911. I worked through literally thousands of rounds and a number of personal preferences on mine and about the only thing left to mess around with was the grips. The standard wood grips on the Compact are okay, but I wanted better. The best grips I’d ever tried on any 1911 are the ones made by Pachmayr, and that’s what I wanted for my Rock.
It had been quite a few years since I bought a set of Pachmayr grips, and when I searched for them online I found that they appeared under the Lyman site. So I called Lyman. I learned Lyman acquired Pachmayr about 20 years go (shows how much I know, I guess). The guy on the phone was nice and he was able to answer my question, which was would their shorter grips fit the Rock Island Armory Compact’s frame (and the answer was yes).
Good buddy Greg had also purchased a Rock Compact based on my raving about it, and after Greg shot mine, he immediately purchased one for himself. Greg’s 1911 is completely unaltered (it has not had the custom work I had done on mine by good buddy TJ), but it shoots just as well. I had a few issues on mine; Greg’s had no issues or failures of any kind with his Compact 1911.
I told Greg a couple of weeks ago that I had ordered a set of Pachmayr grips for my Rock, and he ordered a set, too. I was out of town, so Greg got to shoot his Pachmayr-equipped Compact first. One of the Pachmayr grip emblems fell off on Greg’s gun his first time at the range with the new grips. That was not a good start. Greg has another full-sized 1911 with Hogue grips and he likes those, so he ordered a set of Hogues for the Compact. The Hogue grips have finger grooves in them, and Greg likes that feature. I don’t, but hey, different strokes for different folks.
Greg’s RIA Compact with Pachmayr grips.On his first range session with the Pachmayr grips, one of Greg’s grip emblems popped out. Mine hasn’t done that.Greg’s Compact 1911 with Hogue grips. Note the finger grooves. Note also that there’s no emblem to fall out.
I’ve been shooting my Compact 1911 with the Pachmayr grips and I love them. They give me a better grip on the little 1911 and I think they make the gun easier to shoot. And wow, it sure shoots well, especially with that 185-grain SWC bullet and the Bullseye load. That’s my go to load for this gun.
Where I’m going with all this is that this weekend I was able to try both Compact 1911s; one with the Pachmayr grips (that’s my gun) and one with the Hogue grips (Greg’s gun). Both feel great, but for me, the Pachmayr grips get the nod. They’re what I’m used to, I don’t care for finger grooves, and I like the checkered texture of the Pachmayr style. My grip emblems are staying put, so I haven’t had the issue Greg (and others, if you poke around a bit on the Internet) have had with theirs.
I shot a few targets on this past cold and windy Sunday morning at 50 feet, and I continue to be amazed at just how accurate the Compact 1911 is with my newly-discovered accuracy load (and that’s a 185-grain cast semi-wadcutter bullet over 5.0 grains of Bullseye with a CCI 300 primer). Surprisingly, Greg’s Compact fed the SWC bullets just as well as mine (my gun is throated and polished; Greg’s is in “as delivered” factory condition).
The bottom line? Either set of aftermarket grips is good (both the Hogues and the Pachmayrs). You wouldn’t be making a mistake with either.
One more thought: I think it would be cool if Rock Island offered the Pachmayr grips as an option with an inlaid Rock Island Armory emblem. That would work for me, and I’d buy the first pair if they ever offered them.
Want to see more on the Rock Compact, reloading .45 ACP ammo, and other shooting topics? There’s more good stuff here: Tales of the Gun!
The 1956 Mustang Colt. I had posted this on Facebook several years ago and forgot about it. Mr. Zuckerberg jogged my memory.
I’ll bet with that title you’re thinking I’m going to write about a couple of guns.
Nope. The subject is Colts, but these are Colts that were manufactured by the Mustang Motor Products Corporation. And the few of us who know what that means would just call the company “Mustang.”
The idea popped into my mind with one of those Facebook photos on my feed. You know, it’s one of the things Facebook does when they’re not spying on you…they suggest you repost a photo you posted in the past. They did, and that beautiful turquoise 1956 Colt you see above popped up on my Facebook account. I had posted it 6 or 7 years ago. Mark remembered.
Mustang is the company that made the hottest mini-motorcycles back in the 1950s. There were a lot of companies making small motorcycles in America back then, and then they all disappeared by the early 1960s. Mustang hung on into the 1960s, but they were done in by all those nice people you met on Hondas. And when Mustang went out of business, a young Ford exec named Lee Iacocca swept in to grab the Mustang name. A lot of folks thought that was weird in 1962. What was Ford going to do with a name like Mustang? What were they thinking?
The very first iteration of the Mustang…the 1946 Greeves-powered Colt.
There were actually two Mustang Colts. The first was the very first bike Mustang made in the late 1940s. It was a tiny little bike with a tiny little Greeves two-stroke motor, and that’s what did it in the first Colt. In those post-war years, Greeves needed every engine they could make for their own bikes in merry old England, and they cut Mustang off. Undeterred, Mustang bought the Busy Bee engine company in the US and they redesigned a new Mustang around the larger Busy Bee 322cc flathead 4-stroke single. The Busy Bee engine was actually used to power cement mixers before that, but Mustang wanted Busy Bee engines for their motorcycles, unaware of and uncaring about any future impact to Joe Gresh’s future concrete endeavors.
Another view of the ’46 Mustang Colt. It’s stunning, isn’t it?
Mustang revived the Colt moniker for the ’56 model (the one you see in the photo at the top of this blog and in the photo below), but it didn’t sell well and the folks who made Mustangs in California didn’t like the bike. The Mustang was a premium product, and the idea of a cheapened Mustang (no transmission, a centrifugal clutch, and no telescopic forks) didn’t set well with the customer base or the folks in the Mustang factory.
The ’56 Colt again. I love the colors and the look.
You might be wondering how I know the folks in the Mustang factory didn’t like the ’56 Colt. I heard it straight from the late Jim Cavanaugh, who was an advisor to CSC Motorcycles and the Production Superintendent at the original Mustang Motor Products Corporation.
A young Jim Cavanaugh in front of the Mustang factory.Another view of Jim and his crew back in the day…Jim is on the left in the second row.Jim Cavanaugh a few years before he passed away. Jim is on a custom CSC 150 Mustang replica, his personal bike.
Steve Seidner revived the Mustang concept with his line of CSC 150 and CSC 250 motorcycles. They were awesome. I rode mine along with a few of my friends (including Baja John) to Cabo San Lucas and back. Many of the CSC bikes were highly customized, including this 250 Steve thought was going to be his personal bike:
CSC called this one the P-51. It fit the motorcycle’s aviation motif and Mustang lineage.World War nose art on the P-51’s fuel tank. This motorcycle was going to be Steve Seidner’s bike, but when we put this photo on the CSC blog a guy called within minutes and made Steve an offer he couldn’t refuse. The CSC Mustangs went for high dollars. Folks would point out you could buy a Harley for that kind of money, but they just didn’t get it.
So, back to the original Colt Mustangs…I think both Colts are stunning motorcycles. What do you think?
Want to read about our trip to Cabo and back and CSC 150 motorcycles? It’s right here. And would you like to read the article Jim Cavanaugh and I wrote for Motorcycle Classics magazine on the original Mustangs? You can get to that one here.
A great riding group on a Baja ride: From left to right, it’s British novelist and world traveler Simon Gandolfi, Go Go Gear CEO Arlene Battishill, hunting buddy J Brandon, Baja John, and yours truly. John loves Baja so much he lives down there. This photo is in Santa Rosalia. That’s the Sea of Cortez in the background.
Yep, based on the Chinese zodiac, 2020 is the Year of the Rat. I suppose there are all kinds of jokes, organized crime and otherwise, that could be made of that, but let’s set all that aside. Good buddy Baja John (who wrote to me from Bahia de Los Angeles in Baja just a few days ago) had this much better suggestion:
Hey Joe,
So, I’m calling this year the “Year of Hindsight.” I was thinking that might be good fodder for a blog entry. Lessons to pass to younger readers or lessons that have helped you live happier in your senior years. Who knows. Popped into my head and thought I’d share.
John
I think that’s a grand idea, John, and I’m hoping our readers do, too. Hey, it’s 2020, and everyone knows that hindsight is 20-20. So, to all our readers (and our year end report tells us that our key demographic for ExhaustNotes readership is men aged 55 and over), you have the benefit of years of experience in all kinds of things. Let’s have your comments, please. What advice on any topic (love, life, money, politics, 9mm vs. .45, motorcycles, whatever) would you give younger folks?
The 147-grain 9mm Speer bullet next to a 124-grain cast roundnose bullet. Cool, huh?
Well, ol’ Gresh sure stirred up a hornet’s nest with that flat track blog yesterday. We nearly ran out of bandwidth!
On to a more metric subject: 9mm ammo.
I started the PRK 10-day cooling off period (you know, the People’s Republik of Kalifornia) for my new SIG P226 a couple of days ago. Let me tell you, if anybody thinks they are going to outlaw guns in California, they need to think again. I had to wait an hour and a half at our local Turner’s Sporting Goods store just to start the process. There were five guys working the gun counter and customers were lined up five deep. There were a ton of folks buying and picking up guns. Trying to outlaw guns in America is a nonstarter, even here in looney leftwing California.
This man had some of the best comments ever. “They know so much that just isn’t so” ranks high on my list.
Okay, enough of the rant about my friends who know so much that just isn’t so, to borrow a phrase from one of the greats, and on to the subject of this blog: Getting ready for the 9mm accuracy load development program I spoke about a few days ago. Like I said earlier, my standard 9mm accuracy load for years has been 5.0 grains of Unique behind a 125-grain cast bullet, but as part of my New Year’s resolutions I am moving in two directions simultaneously: I’m expanding my horizons in the 9mm world and I’m reducing my waistline. The waistline story can wait for another day; today’s topic is the loads I’m crafting for inclusion in the 9mm Comparo.
I’m going to evaluate three or four different 9mm handguns and several different loads, and I’ve started reloading the ammo for that. The first four loads I’ve already crafted are with two different bullets I haven’t tried before: The 147-grain Speer truncated metal jacket bullet, and the 115-grain Armscor FMJ bullet. The 147-grain Speer bullets are really cool looking. If they shoot half as good as they look I’ll be driving tacks with my new SIG!
A box of Speer 147-grain TMJ bullets. These are long bullets compared to what I normally shoot. They do look good.One of the 147-grain Speers ready for seating in a charged 9mm case.Another angle. Some of you folks get it. Stuff like this is beautiful. I mean, look at it: Polished brass, Unique propellant, and full metal jacket, heavy-for-caliber bullets. Life is good, folks. These loads are at 3.9 grains and 4.4 grains.
Seating the bullets is always cool, too. It’s where it all comes together.
On the way up, Rockchucker style……and on the way down. A new cartridge is born!
The finished rounds look great. Now the question is: Are they accurate? We’ll see. This is the first time I’ve tried a bullet this heavy in a 9mm.
You can’t think about the time you spend reloading ammo compared to the cost of factory 9mm ammo. It would be too depressing. We do it for the sheer enjoyment of making something. We’re recyclers. Maybe that’s why RCBS reloading gear is green. Al Gore and Ms. Thunberg have nothing on us!
I seated the Speer bullets to the recommended depth for an overall cartridge length of 1.120 inches. I’m trying a couple of different propellant charges. I can experiment with seating depth to find the best accuracy later if this combo shows promise.
I know. It’s an obsession. But it’s fun.
But wait: There’s more! I also picked up another bullet I had not tried yet, the Armscor 115 FMJ (full metal jacket) roundnose bullets. They are cool, too, and they were only $10 for a bag of 100 pills.
Armscor is the same company that makes Rock Island Armory guns, like my Compact 1911.
I’ve shot brass-jacketed FMJ bullets before, but that was in my .45 when I bought bulk Remington ammo just to get the brass cases (you know, so I could shoot them up and reload them later). These are good looking bullets, too.
Brass jacketed Armscor 9mm bullets. We’ll see how these do. I like the look..
The charges listed in my loading manuals for a 115-grain jacketed bullet with Unique propellant seemed to hover around a max of 5.5 grains with a minimum of 4.8 grains, so I prepped two loads, one at 5.4 grains and one at 5.0 grains.
5.4 grains of Unique in primed 9mm cases. You can’t load too much more; this charge nearly takes up the entire case volume. With the bullets seated, this will become what we call a compressed load. Unique is what is known as a flake powder…the individual grains are tiny flakes of propellant.
Here’s a cool shot of the finished Armscor load. I like the way these look. It’s like being the Lone Ranger, but with gold instead of silver bullets. Hi Yo SIG, away! (Cue in the William Tell Overture.)
Ready for accuracy testing. This, too, is nice looking ammunition.
If you are not a reloader yet, you might want to think about getting into it. To me, reloading is as much fun as shooting. And if you want to learn how to do it, take a look at our series on reloading .45 ACP ammo on the Tales of the Gun page!
Fresh off a couple years of record attendance and wild popularity for flat track racing the AMA has decided to destroy the successful formula that has created all that positive buzz. Whenever a race series becomes popular the AMA cannot stop itself from diluting and dividing it into numerically more, yet overall weaker championships. They are doing just that in flat track with the new Supertwins class.
The historic, fabulous, drama-filled heat race format is no more. You’ll not see a lightly sponsored privateer like No. 23 Carver on an obsolete XR750 whip the asses of the best factory riders and teams like he did a few years ago. You’ll not see it because the AMA has limited entries to 18 pre-approved teams. No more heat races, no more last chance qualifiers, no more excitement.
The AMA hopes that we won’t notice that the game is rigged but flat track fans know a setup when we see one. To get in the Elite 18 it will take lots of money along with co-branding with the AMA and your chances of getting picked are much better if you have a really nice race transport semi-truck and branded pit barriers. Rider talent only comes into play after all the other barriers have been surmounted.
The chosen few will run two semis and if I know the AMA and the power of money I’m guessing the first nine places of each semi will make the main. It’s NASCAR thinking run amok. The AMA wants a more professional product to sell to television audiences. They want recognizable teams and popular riders spoon fed to an audience they feel are too stupid to appreciate a couple of privateers pitching a heated battle for 8th place. They want us to be like NASCAR fans cheering on personalities and products rather than effort. To achieve this end they are tossing out the very things that have made AMA flat track the premier motorcycle race series in America.
The AMA has it backwards. Fancy transporters and branded awnings don’t mean shit to flat track fans when the flag drops. AMA flat track is popular because of the unpredictable rough and tumble racing, not in spite of it. It’s popular because of the lone wolf in his van taking on the biggest motorcycle manufacturers in spite of the fact that it seems hopeless. It’s popular because no matter how out-gunned any expert rider on any night can ride his ass off and make the main event or even win the whole shebang. It has happened more than once.
You haven’t heard a crowd roar like the throat-rattling cheer flat track fans make when an underdog rider beats the big guns in a main event. It restores your faith in hard work, man. I hear you when you tell me the same guys win all the races anyway. That’s because they are the best riders on the best bikes. It’s always been that way in motorcycle racing, but flat track fans still hope to see the improbable and we don’t need to dumb down flat track to make our hopes impossible.
The legalese mumbo-jumbo in the document above is the rider’s path to the Main Event now. Replace grit, determination and talent with money and you have the new rules pretty well down. Teams will need to be partners with the AMA, it’s so not like it used to be and frustrating as hell. What utter and complete bullshit.
The list of eligible engines for Supertwins is longer than the number of eligible teams!
Ah well, it was an exciting, if short-lived resurgence in American Flat Track racing. At least we still have the singles class and an interesting, if sporadic, ATF Production Twins class (the true Class C Championship). The powers that be cannot leave well enough alone. Success is not enough for today’s bottom-line economy. Branding, sponsorship and tight control of the final product are paramount. It won’t be long before the AMA sells the racing rights to an engine manufacturer and Supertwins becomes a one-design spec class. I guess nothing ever stays the same and we all get sold out in the end. Welcome to AMA Flat track 2020.
It’s not every day you get to see a new 2020 Suzuki Katana for the first time, and it’s certainly not every day you get living legend and motojournalist extraordinaire Kevin Duke to take a photo of you standing next to it. Yesterday was that day for me, and the photo you see above was a shot Kevin grabbed of yours truly with the new Katana. I was visiting with the boys at 
grips. These little snubbie 1911s are surprisingly accurate.
