Thermal scopes are getting into affordable territory, so I may get one in the next year or two. It was a game changer when I was a Grunt.
300BLK is an amazing cartridge but didn’t gain popularity until I was already done with reloading. I just didn’t have the time for it to be worthwhile and sold it all and bought plenty of boxed ammo when I needed it. But I was mainly reloading 45ACP 40S&W and 300 WM. I regret selling it now though…
I never got into competitive shooting, how did you enjoy it? Did you have to spend a lot to be competitive?
Yeah, it’s crazy how much cheaper they’ve gotten. The thermal scope is definitely fun and if you’ve had experience with them then you’ll likely have less of a learning curve than I did. My main issue is that on something with so much arc like .22LR, the amount that you’re off-axis with the bore is brutal for zeroing. For my purposes (rabbits, possums), I need to be so much better at ranging. It’s something I only use a couple of times a year so I’m struggling to get the best out of it. Last few times I’ve used it I’ve just used it as a spotting scope and then used a spotlight and the EOTech to actually work.
Yeah, I vaguely recall something about people moving away from 300 BLK to something that was a bit more forgiving of neck thickness so you could use .223 as the parent case rather than .300 whisper, but then it got popular enough to no longer be an issue. It was never high enough volume for me to be too concerning, though.
I had a lot of fun with it. I’d say it’s likely very different here vs in the US, it’s very precise and procedural here where people I know who have competed in the US say it’s remarkable how much more laid back it is there. You really don’t need to spend much at all to get started. Plenty of people start out with a Glock 17 and a cheap kydex holster. From my decade as the training officer for my club, I try desperately to steer people away from that so I don’t have to spend months coaching them on how to overcome the appalling triggers, but plenty of people do well with them. Thankfully CZ has a big presence here in NZ so there are plenty of opportunity to give people a taste of both.
Production division is where it’s easiest/cheapest, that’s no optics, most people shooting just regular 9mm because there’s no requirement to meet a certain muzzle energy for scoring, limited options for crazy holster setups etc. The other side is that because it’s so accessible, it’s extremely competitive and the scoring heavily punishes lower precision in the shooting. Beyond that, you can go ham and spend thousands, although I guess the limit isn’t ‘that’ high compared to other sports. I was looking at importing a race gun and it was going to end up being sub $10k for a full rig that would have been on par with national champ winning setups in my division. A bit more if you go open and end up with red-dot optics and running something awful like 9mm super where ammo costs get spicy.
So if you’re trying to win something, it pays to spend a bit, but if you’re just doing it for fun and only competing with yourself, it can be an absolute blast with a setup that costs less than a case of ammo.
Wow - I knew this was a cool crew to associate with. Most of you have many more hobbies than me.
I’m a duffer at golf, but generally have fun. High handicapper for sure. My youngest son and I go to the driving range a fair bit (not really sure it helps. )
My oldest is the Engineering student and we’ve gotten into building little boards for WLED, Home Assistant and similar. We haven’t burnt anything down yet, so that’s good. The holiday light display is getting more technical anyway. Amazing what a resource JLCPCB or other services are for DIY electronics.
I play an Electronic Wind Instrument from time to time. An Akai EWI4000s. I do run it through a cool little Yamaha device that models the waveform. I purchased a separate specialized chip for it that allows me to generate a wide variety of instrumental sounds, complete with some of the artifacts you might get from playing poorly. I did play a church for a while, but I “retired” from that a while back.
When Zeroing thermals, we used to use what was called “reverse polarity tape” which was coated with something that reflected IR instead of absorbing it. We’d put a little 1” square piece on a 10m target and bore light the barrel to adjust the thermal scope. Then we’d zero at 25m but we had a ballistic reticle on ours, so we could account for the drop of 5.56, 7.62, 40mm and.50 cal. Thermal scopes usually have a pretty tight FOV, so that can make it challenging when zeroing.
When I was a kid, I used to use radio shack all of the time, but then they went out of business. It wasn’t until I got into 3DP that I found AliExpress, and the likes. I’m amazed with how easy WLED is to setup and how much you can do with it.
That’s a neat way to do it. I just used a nail in the middle and gave it a quick lick with a lighter, that seemed to work well. (Edit: I bet you could do the same thing as that tape with something like just strips of tinfoil or metallized foil tape… Anything reflective at IR, I’ll have to give that a shot.)
Definitely agreed with the narrow FOV. Now that I’ve played with it, I think the ideal situation would be a wider FOV thermal spotting scope to find them and then the good old red dot or laser for the rest. The best nights I’ve ever had have been with a cheap crappy .22 bolt action and an aliexpress laser sight clamped to the muzzle…
I think mine has the ability to set multiple reticles so I could do a DIY ballistic reticle, the problem is more that when you’re damn near 75mm above the bore on a .22LR with subsonics, the POI at 25m vs 30m is enough to be problematic so you need to know the range quite accurately. With .223/5.56 it’d be a lot different. I’ve seen a few thermal sights with built-in rangefinders, that’d be the dream… There are some cheap laser rangefinders now that could be an interesting addition.
I don’t use centerfire for hunting because most of what I’m doing is pest control of Australian brushtail possums which tend to be in trees. So the best recipe is subsonics to avoid bothering the neighbours and then the apalling ballstics of the .22LR help a LOT when it comes to down-range safety.
Bushtail possums? I’m going to have to look them up. In Idaho we had whistle pigs or Townsend ground squirrels.
22sub sounds perfect for lil guys like that!
We’re getting to the point where smart optics are almost within reach of professional shooters. There’s one out there that may be released recently that laser range finds and tracks multiple targets, and applies lead and range to the reticle for each of up to 3 targets. I don’t think it was night vision or thermal, but it could track those targets without them staying within the FOV. Pretty cool stuff I think. On the M2A3s we had thermal tracking of up to 3 targets similar to fighter jets.
It’s pretty funny, they’re an Australian native where they’re quite beloved. On the other hand, they’ve an invasive species that is hugely detrimental to New Zealand’s natural environment. The trees we have here suffer greatly from them eating the leaves, they will steal eggs and chicks from nests with birds, they’ve even recently been shown to predate some of our native insects like Wetas etc. They also quite like the citrus trees on my deck and they freak the cats out. Maybe once every few years we get one on the deck looking in at us through the sliding doors. They usually bail pretty quickly when I get up, but they never go far…
It’s a pretty common culture shock for Australians to come here and get traumatised by the average Kiwi’s gleeful attempts to run them over when they’re frequently found on roads at night, while Kiwis in Australia get wildly confused when people are there leaving out food for them and giving their kids possum stuffed toys etc.
They’re a big enough problem that we are one of the few countries left using 1080 poison baits because we don’t have any native mammals. We drop it into our native bush from helicopters by the ton to keep the populations low. The native forest that my parents live next to has a charitable trust that operates several thousand traps spread over several hundred km of trap lines trying to keep them at bay. In 2021 they caught 3,400 of them in traps, apparently.
Interesting about the smart optics, that’s something I haven’t had looked at at all. I remember ages ago seeing a video on a smart optic setup for Cheytac Intervention and thinking that there’s actually nothing that complicated about that… We’re well within the range now of that being doable with a raspberry pi, a decent camera and a screen. That’ll be a very interesting thing to see. Also moderately terrifying, but oh well.
Woodworking like most here. 3D printing, pluck a bango (rather poorly), some raspberry pi and Arduino board tinkering.
Astronomy, I have a couple scopes, just starting into astrophotography. I teach a course in Chile every other year so I do some astronomy tourism at the big scopes down there.
I play around with off-grid solar on an old barn in my backyard, I don’t need to, I just wanted to learn how to set up a system make my own battery etc.
My day job is being a scientist, but I do some science advocacy in my spare time.
I used to run half marathons, then I broke my back, but that’s titanium now so I’m slowing getting back into that.
Sourdough bread and some cooking (big green egghead).
I have too many hobbies, but I find I need a couple hours or more of a hobby time a night to turn my brain off.
Home Lab (I like to run servers in docker containers on my own machines. Not AWS. If it fits in that bin, I like to try it out)
Designing electronics. At a hobby level. Although I do have an education in that sort of thing.
Strategic board games. This is mostly so I can have something in common with my wife. I have some very competitive friends. So I lose at least as often as I win. But I enjoy learning a new game and developing good strategies. Don’t come to me with a board game that is just random. Like monopoly or sorry.
Video Games. I have been leaning into strategy or calm building games more than action/FPS these days. I played through the Sandustry demo yesterday and I have been enjoying Oddsparks recently.
I thoroughly enjoyed RMRRF and Open Sauce last year and I would love to do more solo traveling for things like that. Everyone I met was so passionate.
Physical:
Hockey. I play roller once per week in the summer and Ice twice per week year round (I will get 7 games this week. Thanks to a tournament). I am not great at it. I didn’t learn until after college. But I am better now than when I was in my 20s.
Mountain biking in the summer. I live in a great place for it. I don’t like biking near cars. But a nice flowing trail and I could spend all day there.
Skiing. I grew up skiing occasionally but never took it too seriously. I have started going 1/week this year and I’m enjoying it and getting a lot better. I tried snowboarding in my 20s and hated how much learning was involved.
Spiritual (at least to me):
Hiking. Great for my mental health and a fun thing to do with my kids year round.
Camping. I used to go backpacking. But I haven’t since my kids were born. Car camping has been more our speed. Last summer we took a 3 day canoe camping trip on the Gunnison river and had a great time.
Breadmaking. I switch between a fococcia, bagels, and a long rise loaf (like a sourdough). I make one of them at least every week.
I also like a good todo list. I like the bullet journal method. I feel like dumbledore pulling concerns out of my mind when I make a todo list. BuJo has a great combination of Daily, Monthly, and Future logs. I don’t get as into the analog and colorful lists as some people do.
It’s no wonder I feel like I don’t have any time. How do I quit hobbies?
This is more my wife’s thing. But I help her volunteer at the school for this too. We are both engineers. But we have physics undergrads. So that counts as a hard science, right? The kids seem impressed enough to listen.
Computer games, currently playing lots of ONI
Motorcycles
Camping
metalwork
woodworking
some gardening
Home theater ( which hasn’t changed much. need a new receiver and they’re expensive )
embedded design
fish keeping
Hunting and fishing: I grew up doing these with my dad and continue with my kids and grandkids. Since I’ve retired, I can go to North Dakota with my brother in law in October to hunt upland birds.
SCUBA diving and snow skiing. I’m going to Tahoe in 2 weeks to ski with my brother and his family.
Traveling: My favorite destinations are Alaska (fishing), North Dakota (hunting) and Hawaii (SCUBA diving).
Flying RC airplanes. This is what got me to build my first MPCNC. I used it with a needle cutter to cut out FliteTest foamboard gliders and airplanes.
Gardening: I have a summer and winter garden every year.
Cooking: I enjoy cooking with my Traeger. I like making sourdough bread also.
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