In may last full-match opportunity to practice for Finnish Brutality, I brought my WWSD Commando (10.5″ barrel) and an Arex Delta out (my guns for Finland are already on their way across the Atlantic). The stages today were truly awful (awfully fun!) to really push us as a last practice session. It hit about 108F by the third stage, and I think I drank about a gallon of water over the course of three stages.
A few notes…
In stage 2, the kettlebell was 40lb / 18kg.
My plate carrier is from Beez Combat Systems. I get asked about it a lot, and I find it a very functional, simple plate carrier. It carries plates, and nothing else. I bought it years ago, and I use it when I want to wear heavy plates for training, be it at matches or during a workout. the plates inside are simple AR500 steel (I don’t recall the specific brand). I would not recommend them for using as actual armor, but they are great for training, as they were cheap at the time and are properly heavy (10 pounds each).
The WWSD Commando is an experiment I put together. You can see a full video on it here:
Remember when forgotten weapons used to be an interesting informative channel instead of an infomercial?
At least he’s not joined Leviathan Tribe yet. It does seem that most of the 2-gun modern stuff used to be on InRange.
Yes. Like the song says, it’s money that matters.
While I personally prefer episodes about the history and design / engineering of obscure old firearms – and hate some slickster trying to sell me something – I didn’t get that sense from this video at all. Even in the video describing the rifle, Ian was honest about its flaws as well as the personal preferences behind each component, rather than trying to present them as amazing and perfect for everyone.
you guys do realize that it has surpassed the hobby phase and is now a business. and what do business do?
besides, there is only so much to cover that hasn’t been done already or no good examples or access.
Make a time machine. Go back in time and create hundreds of prototype firearms. Get some into limited production. Maybe a few will be successful, but become obsolete over time. Then come back to the present and Ian will have lots more content. You do realize there’s a finite number of “Forgotten Weapons” and Ian has been making daily videos for 11 years? Have you watched all of them?
Look, that’s a bit unreasonable.
It’s Ian’s show, and it’s his life.
He makes the content he makes, for whatever reasons he has, and we watch it if we wish.
It never ceases to amaze me how some people have such deliciously entitled mindsets. If you don’t like what Ian is doing, go somewhere else.
Frankly, the site and his YouTube channel have changed a lot, since the early days. So what? It’s what the market wants; you don’t like it, don’t come here. It’s obvious that Ian has a lot of people who like what he’s doing, so…?
I enjoy the content. The range stuff is a little less my cup of tea, but it’s plain a lot of people like it. And, if the networking it enables leads to stuff like Ian’s trips to Finland and Slovenia, I’ll happily put up with some range segments.
If someone wants more technical content, they’re free to go create their own. Or, better yet, pay Ian to do it.
Lay you medium money that most of the complainers don’t actually contribute spit to either Patreon or Utreon.
Good shooting, Ian!
New and old…shooting a 45 bushmaster or VRAP then an original Trapdoor provides a contrast and an appreciation of both.
108F = ~45C. That’s how Ian trains for Finland. Got it.
Now tell me, why not a night event for those who have the equipment? It would still be hot, but not quite heatstroke country.
Night matches are really tricky to organize, between ranges being closed at night, local ordnances prohibiting shooting after dark, and the massive safety concerns of lots of people running around with guns in the dark.
When you talk “night ranges”, you’re really talking about two different affairs. A range lit up like a kid’s soccer field ain’t really a “night range”, it’s just damn hard to find. I’m unsure that there are any in the US, to be honest. It could be done, but the expense would be damnable.
A true military-style “night range” where there’s no light other than ambient…? Yikes. I’ve run those, and they’re not a barrel of larfs, even when it’s just the usual “line up and fire a magazine for familiarization” sort of affair that was all they did for most of my career. The amount of coordination and so forth that is required to prevent people shooting each other is mind-numbing, and no sort of fun at all.
Now, what would be interesting would be to take IR lasers and night vision out for IPSC-style shooting. You’d have to kit up everyone with night vision goggles, have the opportunity to zero all the lasers to a fare-thee-well, and then be willing to spend a lot of time on admin doing it, but it would be doable, I think. I shudder to think about running that sort of thing, outside the military infrastructure.
Sad to say, most of what the military does in this regard is restricted to the really high-end units who get a lot of time doing live-fire with their gear. The average unit gets to do most of their marksmanship training in daylight, and has their night-fire with the lasers and what-not restricted to lock-step ranges and blank-fire force-on-force.
It’s challenging as all hell, a lot of fun when it goes right, but… Man, can it go really wrong, really fast. If I remember right, when General Petraeus got himself shot, it was on a night live-fire range. I’ve also spent a bunch of time trying to make things like AN/PVS-4 night vision scopes work the way the manuals say they do on top of machine guns, and let us just say that I don’t have a lot of nice words for the people who wrote some of those manuals… There ain’t nothing quite like following the guidance in the manual with religious fervor, getting nothing but failure, and then having to stand up in front of people you work for and explain why you have only three crews of thirty-odd night-qualified.
A little voice was telling me that night shooting matches are not much favored by the authorities, but I kept typing anyway. Perhaps we can look forward to a more sedate FW episode on night vision devices and their effect on shooting.
Who needs a desert just come to south west France. Friday at 17 h/5 in the afternoon it was 37c in the shade 49c in full sun here in the South Charente.Solder or fire fighter its just too hot to function