The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Failure Was Always An Option

Episode Date: November 16, 2025

http://www.mofpodcast.com/http://www.pbnfamily.comhttps://www.facebook.com/matteroffactspodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/mofpodcastgroup/https://rumble.com/user/Mofpodcastwww.youtube.com/user/philrabhttps://www.instagram.com/mofpodcasthttps://twitter.com/themofpodcasthttps://www.cypresssurvivalist.org/Support the showMerch at: https://southerngalscrafts.myshopify.com/Shop at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ora9riPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mofpodcastPurchase American Insurgent by Phil Rabalais: https://amzn.to/2FvSLMLShop at MantisX: http://www.mantisx.com/ref?id=173*The views and opinions of guests do not reflect the opinions of Phil Rabalais, Andrew Bobo, Nic Emricson, or the Matter of Facts Podcast*As Phil preps the family for a weekend camping trip, the MoF boys reminisce about those times when some project spectacularly blew up in their faces. If the old adage that you learn more from failure than from success holds true, you should sit down and take some notes this episode while the boys lay bare their screw ups and troubles as preppers and homeowners.Matter of Facts is now live-streaming our podcast on our YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Rumble at 7:30 PM Central on Thursdays . See the links above, join in the live chat, and see the faces behind the voices. Intro and Outro Music by Phil Rabalais All rights reserved, no commercial or non-commercial use without permission of creator prepper, prep, preparedness, prepared, emergency, survival, survive, self defense, 2nd amendment, 2a, gun rights, constitution, individual rights, train like you fight, firearms training, medical training, matter of facts podcast, mof podcast, reloading, handloading, ammo, ammunition, bullets, magazines, ar-15, ak-47, cz 75, cz, cz scorpion, bugout, bugout bag, get home bag, military, tactical Get Prepared with Our Incredible Sponsors! Survival Bags, kits, gear www.limatangosurvival.comEMP Proof Shipping Containers www.fardaycontainers.comThe Prepper's Medical Handbook Build Your Medical Cache – Welcome PBN FamilyPack Fresh USA www.packfreshusa.comSupport PBN with a Donation https://bit.ly/3SICxEq

Welcome back to the Matterfax podcast on the Prepar Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MOFpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host Phil Ravley, Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. And welcome back to Matter Facts podcast. I'm here. I am horribly unprepared.

I had a last minute thing pop up. And it was only by the grace of my co-host that I managed to show up just barely on time. Behold, my panic at being alone. Like, oh, God. I don't know what Phil was going to talk about. I know what I was going to talk about. I mean, I'm fairly confident you could have carried the show by yourself. It had been fine.

It had been fine. I can carry a great many things, but me trying to do an impersonation of a Louisiana accent is not going to be pretty. Let's be honest here. I mean, just, like, touch your tongue to the back of your top front teeth and mumble a bunch. It'll work out. Well, there are nine more beers upstairs. We might be able to accomplish that. Intoxication also helps.

Let's do the admin work, and then we'll get to the topic, which will be a fun one. All right. Patrons, if you're not a patron, you really ought to consider doing so. It supports sociopathy, psychopathy, and general bad behavior. And it also supports this podcast. I mean, there is that, too. Secret Santa. So if you're a patron, every year, one of our illustrious patrons, Stuart, the Texas redneck,

I won't call him a dumb ass because he's one of the smarter people I know, but he calls himself dumbass, so it'd be fair. But he runs the Secret Santa for the patron group. If you're a patron and you have not already opted in, you should consider it. Nick has totally started a freaking arms race in the Secret Santa every year because he has a lathe and machining tools at his house. I'm currently cutting trunnion pins for the cannon. A literal arms race.

A tiny arms race, but a literal arm's race. Well, it's in the Lord's caliber, so it's not that miniature of an arms race. Yeah, so I'm just going to keep inciting you until you Upsize one of those to 12 gauge Well, we could Raggle says our screen is small Braggle I'm not sure It looks normal

On our end I didn't touch anything This time, guys I swear to God I did come in and they said this weird show vertical button I don't know what that means So what that does is that is for um that is for well no that that is for viewers like youtube if you hold your phone vertical

then it displays vertically if you hold it horizontally does that but um you know if it i use the recommended settings because this literally just became a thing recently but if it's screwed up then we won't do that again that's interesting you know what's interesting when i hit show vertical, your volume doubles. That's odd. So if there's weird things in the show audio, that might be my bad.

I mean, it might just be, I would say beta testing, but this wasn't a beta test type of thing. Stream Yard might have some vertical. Yeah, so raggle-fraggle. Yeah, if you are, if you're holding your phone

vertically watching the stream, then turn it horizontally, and that should square things back away. And if not, I'll adjust settings on our end next time. I've not just YouTube changing that. But all right. It was in the setup. You wouldn't have seen it because it was all what I did. All right.

It's the back end work that you take care of. That's important work. Anyway, if you're a patron, Secret Santa, if you don't want to be, if you don't want to be involved in the Secret Santa, just ignore all this bull crap. If you want to support a small business and the podcast, merch at the Southern Gouse, the link is in the show. description. You will be directly supporting a young man

who just bought his daughter, I have it on good faith, a rifle and a four-wheeler, and that is purely because he works his butt off, not because he's making that kind of money off of shirts and coosies. Honestly, his daughter, adorable.

Can't wait to see pictures of her out of the range. I've met her in person. She is ten times as precocious as you're imagining she is. Apparently, we have two streams going on. at YouTube? I don't know, but I can tell you that whatever setting I did to cause this will not happen again next time.

We're going to figure this one out, guys. We're doing it live. Unfortunately, I don't think it's anything I can fool with on the fly. There's this, yeah, no, I'm pretty sure those settings are only available prior to us putting the stream out. Though that does explain why when I said good evening to raggle earlier, it gave me two comments instead of one. Yeah, and probably why Dr. Scary Guy is giving two comments as well. Interesting.

Anyway. Huh. Well, we're learning. Yeah, Cypress Survivalist. So, this weekend was the Cypress Survivalist family camping trip. Unfortunately, we had a last-minute pullout from two of the board members, because long story made short, one of them decided to take a promotion at work and be a living hell for the next few weeks to months so they had to pull out so my wife and myself and my daughter heading up tomorrow actually and as I understand it we actually have one local who's going to come out to meet us and I think I was actually talking about coming out Saturday to see us nice and we appreciate your guys's feedback letting us know about anywhere on the stream. Yeah.

Software updates. I'll be sure not to do that again next time. Yeah. All right. Last but not least, code M-O-F at disaster coffee. Get you a little discount. You get some good coffee. I don't make, I don't make

warlord money off of disaster coffee. Honestly, the only thing I get out of the business are then being able to provide really good coffee to people is I get to buy coffee at cost. And that doesn't cost you all anything. thing. But if you like really good coffee, you should consider going there. And please use the promo code. Save yourself a couple of bucks. Here we go. Oh, this stream is vertical like a

cell phone. The other is landscape. So maybe I think I understand it now. So I'm betting what you two did is it actually set up two different streams, one vertical, one horizontal. I don't like that. And I'm not going to do that next time. I'm not sure. there's anything we can do without ending and restarting everything, which may dick around with the recording. Yeah, it feels life harder. We're not going to do that because I have to get this sewed up and punted out the door tonight because we're going

out of town tomorrow. So file that under Live and Learn. Follow that over oops. Speaking of the topic, failure was always an option. That's what we're going to talk about today is stuff that didn't work starting with this stream

never ever ever engage never ever do new stuff with streams without first testing your stuff let's start it'll be all right although it's we have at least one stream that's better than none thanks Nick you eternal optimist

hey I try I gotta do something other than bludgeon myself over the head of the two by four yeah but this is honestly even these foibles with the streams and everything does not even come close to some of the calamity that uh andrew and i dealt with back in the day when we were when this whole streaming online recording thing platform wasn't really you know wasn't well flushed out at that point we were using another interface that was audio only and i won't name it because i'm not trying to throw shade but um it was pre it was stream yard might have been in its infancy at the time. It kept losing your audio, didn't it? Yeah, like the cloud recordings

would get aborted. Sometimes the interface would fail midstream. It did all kinds of stuff. Like, it was bad enough that Andrew and I both wound up investing in hardware recorders specifically so that if the cloud recordings aborted, we had backups.

And eventually, we got to the point where that became our default way of doing things, was that I'd record on my end, he'd record on his end, he would send me his file through Google Drive. And I'd marry him back together in Audacity. And that was like the only way to get really good quality audio for years until Stream Yard. Stream Yard, the audio recording capabilities are so much better. It's so much more reliable than at this point, like my hardware recorder is basically a backup. Yeah, I've had, I've had no issues other than with my personal internet

service, which is always a crapshoot when you're living out in the country. Some days it's bright and sunny and someone decides to hit the telephone lines with a car. You know, whatever. These things happen. These things do happen. But other than foibles in podcasting, there are no banners for this, by the way, because I was late to the party. Also, it depends on how rapidly we can get through the horrible failures. Well, and some of these, like we've talked about on this show before, so these are just recaps.

But, yeah, I used to have a tent that's no longer waterproof. I forgot about that. Yeah, my in-laws lost the tent the same way. Yeah, so for the listeners who are fairly new, years ago, we unpacked our stuff at a campground only to realize that there was a horde of like swamp mosquitoes that were running around in a war party, beating drums and carrying torches.

And they were so bad. we host ourselves down with off we sprayed off on top of the mosquitoes and they just kept sucking it they were awful but in the midst of all this they were like they were coating the front door of the tent so my wife in an effort to get them to buzz off pun intended sprayed the front of the tent down in deep woods off and that was not a good idea because off dissolves the waterproof coating on nylon tents It does. It will also do that to Gortex, by the way. Any DWR type coding, whatever's in, I think it's the DEET. We'll eat that stuff. So if you're going to put DWR and anything, do not spray it then with DEET later, it will suddenly become not as waterproof. Yeah. So we didn't learn this initially. Several months after that, that experience, we went camping with my parents. And we knew there was a chance. to rain in the middle of night, but weren't that worried about it. Well, we woke up in the middle of the night to a lake inside the tent. The bathtub-style tent, the bottom of it

was, the bottom of it was plenty of waterproof, but I thought like there was a rip in the tent or something, and we carry a roll of duct tapes or like good duct tape, specifically to patch holes like that very quickly. And as I shine the flashlight in the tent, I can see the water. It's bleeding

through the nylon. And that's when the problem. started. Yeah. Speaking of camping, Phil, are you familiar with the cell phone battery banks with the Wii solar panel on the backside of them?

That little like one by two inch jobber? I'm familiar with the ones that don't work. Yeah, they don't. They don't at all. And that was what I was going to bring up. I bought one of those back in the day because we were going to go camp with a bunch of friends. When I was in Boy Scouts, cell phones, not really a thing.

But after college, got back. into camping and all that and i thought yeah it'd be nice to be able to keep my cell phone charged just for whatever reason well at the time that little battery pack would charge my cell phone twice so i thought great it's got a little solar panel on it i'll just leave it out on the picnic table in the bright sun middle of summer around here it's probably going to get about six to eight hours where the sun thought all right maybe it'll give it another another charge i get through my three or four days. And then?

No. That thing might have given itself enough to overwhelm the parasitic discharge from just the weather. So what I ended up replacing it with was one of these. That go zero solar. These, these do work. Great. And if you notice, kind of hard to see because of the glare, that's about, each panel is about six times the size of that stupid little solar panel on the back of the battery bank.

This sucker, it has been heavily abused and is not as efficient as it once was because solar panels do degrade over time. They do. This thing here in about two hours will charge up a cell phone. And that's what about a 40 or 60 watt panel? You know, this is a Nomad 7.

I want to say it's got it back here. Gosh, no. You know what it doesn't say anymore. The label's worn entirely off of it. Ah, but this is an opportunity for an experiment. It is. You know how many million amps of power your battery is and you get it down to about 50% power and then you plug it up to that for an hour.

However many watts of power you calculate is the number of watts it generates. It is. I do know that if I set that out on a picnic table over an afternoon, my cell phone's topped off. It's not really, it's never really been an issue. And thanks to the ultimate power saving that, these things do where it basically turns it into a brick with a flashlight on it. The battery lasts a lot longer than it

is still, which is great. All right, so I got one for you, and I promise you, every single person who has ever tuned into the show for five seconds has had this experience at least once. Carburetors are the devil. This is why I have a propane

generator instead of a gasoline-powered generator. So, over the course of my adult life. I have had, um, a lawn. I've had a lawn mower that now has given me trouble twice. Uh, let me, let me get the whole story out first. Then I'll go in a lawn more specifically because that was most recent one. That's what caused me to put that on this list. Um, my chain, my steel chainsaw has actually been freaking beautiful. My steel weed eater has also been pretty good. Um, the carburetor on my generator went tits up right at during Hurricane Ida. And, um, we limped it through and I've since replaced it.

It's been much, it's much, much better now. And I have a whole spare carburetor just in case. But most recently. So earlier in the cutting season, I had an issue one day where my lawnmower was like loping and surging and being stupid.

So I pulled off the air filter housing and, you know, got it running, put a square to carb cleaner or two in its throat. And that seemed to sort it out. It got its mind right. I was like, okay. A little bit of bad gas or something.

You know, pour it out, refilled it, put it up for a couple of weeks because it's actually, the grass hasn't been growing super fast. Or again, to the end of the cutting season. And my wife asked me, could you please mow the lawn one more time? So I pulled it out and it was a bastard to start, first of all. And then when I finally did get started, it was loping and it was surging, doing all kinds of dumb stuff. Carp cleaner wouldn't clean it out. I wouldn't fix it. I fool with it for a bit here.

and there, couldn't get it to behave itself. I assume we tried resetting the jets. Don't beat me to the punchline. So I got frustrated. I put it in the shade, came inside, cooled off for a little bit, thought to myself, I'm like, I could just order a new carburetor.

It'll take a week or so to get here. Whatever. But then I thought to myself, I'm like, it's already broke. It's not like breaking it more is going to appreciably alter the problem. I have to order parts for it regardless, so what the hell? So I literally yank the carburetor off, disassemble that bastard on my workbench, clean the crap out of it, put it all back together, put it back on the lawnmower, it had to pull it about 10 or 11, 12 times to get the bowl refilled, and that when I finally pulled it and it started like, you know, chugging and popping, it purred like

a kitten. I have no earthly idea what I fixed. Everything in the carburetor, like everything that was supposed to pass fuel, past carb cleaner, just fine. Nothing looked broken. The needle looked perfect on it. I cannot figure out what on earth I did other than I blew a lot of carb cleaner through all the little holes and orifices and I pulled the jet out in the emulsion tube. But I couldn't find anything, I couldn't find any obvious like varnish or trash, but very obviously something I did fixed it because it behaved itself perfectly fine for the rest of the, for the rest of the mo.

and then before I put it away I left it running turn the fuel pet cock off let it sit there at like surge and buck and everything until it starved itself to death but carburetors are the devil I hate them I have been pulling with

carburetors for years I do not like carburetors they are simple they're easy to work on but I freaking hate them well the thing about carburetors especially on small engines like that is the jet size is so small that if you get even the littlest bit of particulate matter clogging up that jet

you're it's not going to run appropriately you know it's just sometimes resetting the jets is enough to like if you turn twist them all the way in bring them back out to three quarter and then one half turn for high and low usually

I've found that that'll get you through the mo that'll get you through relip and whatever you got to do but there are no adjustments on this carburetor you can't adjust the jets None that I can find Oh I unscrewed the jet

And the emulsion tube fell out But there is There is no There's no screwdriver tuning on this thing It's literally just a jet with a hole in the middle Okay Well I would buy a new carburetor if I were you

Because if those jets get washed out Then you're screwed I mean all I did was I pulled I put yeah I probably need to buy a spare to just be on the safe side, but I think Jeff is right. Sometimes a machine god just needs a sacrifice of sweat or blood.

Usually both. I didn't bleed on it, so there is that. No, that's good. But yeah, carburetors, just carburetors are the freaking devil. And there's somebody out there's like, I love carburetors, and you can love them. I can't stand the stupid things. Well, there's, to be fair, to carburetors.

I don't want to be fair. I hate carburetors. Carboretes. Like, there's a difference between small engine carburetors and large engine carburetors that large engine carburetors do not suffer the same issues as often as the small versions but i understand but i hate them all my first car my first car was fuel injected i've been messing with fuel injected cars and if i my entire like teenage all through adulthood you know when i started messing with carburetors when i was working out on flight lines

and all of our tugs had carburetors. Of course they shit the bed exactly when you needed them. Well, yeah, especially because you know, you're filling the stupid things up with freaking avgas and the tanks are half-rusted. Every one of them is 30 freaking years old. The main tug we used had a Ford flat six in it with a single barrel. Well, at least the engine itself is basically bulletproof

because there's only six moving parts in that whole damn thing. Yeah, but the really impressive one was the, the big the big tug that had like several hundred pounds worth of lead ballast over the bat over the duly back tires and uh apparently had a small block Chrysler under the hood that one had a two barrel it would have to yeah if you if you got the on the gas pedal a little too uh it down a jump it would it oh dude it pulled the front wheels off the ground awesome that's fantastic So, failure guys, does not always have to mean that the thing went to shit, or it broke, or it didn't work. Bill, do you know what this is?

That appears to be a rucksack. It is. It's an I-L-B-E-2, I think it is. Main pack. I've got the main pack, the assault pack, the water bladder thing, the stupid top thing. if you guys are not familiar with military backpacks very much they are heavier than they ever possibly should be this backpack in particular is uh uh give or take six to seven pounds empty completely empty six to seven pounds for reference a modern construction or semi-modern

construction, like a Kelty Red Wing, so like a bottom of the barrel, mid-range hiking backpack, 50-liter, is about three and a half pounds. So the damn thing weighs twice as much empty as a reasonably comparable modern hiking-style backpack. This thing has never broken. Not once. I've not had to sew anything on it. I've not had to replace any buckles. But good God, is it heavy. Well, it's private proof that weighs more. You'd like to think it would be, but I've known a couple of those. I used to be one. Right? Look, I bought this backpack thinking, great. It's going to be extremely durable. It's

never going to fail. Well, it's made by the lowest bidder, though. Always better that in mind. True. And to be fair, I was right. It has never failed. It has never broken. I I have put way too much weight in it than I probably should to be putting on my back, let alone anybody else's. I mean, if things rated to carry 120 pounds, I'm not going to do that. But hiking with this thing is an absolute bastard compared to modern hiking packs. And this is one of the things that I see a little bit, especially on Reddit, bug out bags that people make. It's either going to be a Rush

72, it's going to be an old Alice pack with the shitty old straps. Ooh, I've got one of those back there. Oh, grab it. We can illustrate a point. Or it's going to be like one of these newer infantry fighting systems, the Malice packs, something like that. The things are

ungodly heavy and ungodly overbuilt. Now, one thing I do love about the Alice packs is, without the frame, they're phenomenally useful. there's basically nothing that can go wrong with them but the straps on alice packs are horrible horrible uncomfortable with any kind of load in them they're not a standout feature but i have to say like i haven't had bad experiences with a medium alice pack i mean i'm literally going to fill it up with camping stuff probably the same year tomorrow so for a i would say for a day pack around

the camp pack light hiking medium alice is fine large alice with the frame number one that frame is terrible it's way too heavy for what it does there are so many better materials of the stamped aluminum anymore the kidney belt

for anyone that's bigger than a stick figure does not wrap around your kidneys the padding is not great in defense of the alice pack though like you have to bear in mind with the vintage of that pack is. Oh, I agree.

Like, this pack suffers some of the same problems. I mean, it doesn't suffer the problem of the padding being insufficient. I mean, Jesus Christ, look at this stuff. It's just, it's way more than is going to be required or comfortable. Can't argue that. It's two, it's two similar problems, I guess, in that you can get far better for the money. Like, I think right now, this pack that I picked up here, I think a medium alice is like 60 bucks. This pack here is like 260.

You can walk into REI right now and buy a, I think my Gregory's, uh, 50, 40 liter, a 40 liter Gregory for like 200 bucks. I mean, two pounds, 11 ounces. If we twist Rebel's arm hard enough, we might see Phoenixes, one day. I mean, I will continue to twist that arm because I want to test that pack. It looks like a fantastic like truck bag. I am all for

bullying the hell out of him. Okay, we will bully him to do more capitalism. I will pay you more money than you're asking for that back. Like, we've had him on the show twice. You know, like I very shamelessly pushed his frigging pre-order real hard because I like his products and I believe in the guy.

I talk to him like a carrienne. I talk to him like twice a week. nice he's a good dude yeah i mean like not even like not even like oh well big podcaster promote gear bullshit but like dude we just bull crap about stuff like he'll post a meme and i think it's hilarious and i don't know we just he's just he's a normal guy and i relate to him because like he reminds me so much of me 10 15 years ago you know like when i was fresh out of the military about the same age he is. Like I said,

I talk to him all the time just because he's hilarious. Oh, yeah, he's absolutely hilarious. Jeff brings up a point. Gregory's aren't designed to go over armor, though. That's true. How many of you get home plans involve you wearing hard armor? Nope. Does not.

Period. In discussion. Right. Because if I have to, flatwalk 50 miles to, to, you know, get home. And by the way, my get home plan if I'm at work involves walking 45 to 50 miles and walking across a 10 plus mile long bridge, which I will be doing at night. So it's one of those things where it's like, yeah, hard armor is a zero percent chance non-starter.

I'm going to be light and I'm going to be conservant energy and I'm not going to be packing extra weight on my body. happening. And you know, Jeff does bring a good point. If you do want to use a pack with armor, you need a pack that is designed to work with armor. But I'm willing to bet I can get that Gregory pack to work over my armor. I will try that out if I have time this weekend. And I'll let you guys know next week if I was able to get that to work out. Yeah, I mean, test it to see what happens. I mean, it's probably not going to be ideal. But you know what? Neither is this So I've got two, and they kind of relate to each other. So I'm going to try to do them back to back.

They're both radio related. Good. So when I very, very first build, you can't see it because it's out of the frames. It's way over there. But it's my man pack, which is a little misleading. It's not like a put in the back of your, put in your rucksack and, like, walk five miles for the woods, talk to your idiot friends with the radio. It's not that.

this is a like 30 pound deploy out of the back of a truck base station on a battery type of man-pad. Yeah, portable base station, basically. Yeah, I mean, and that's what it's sized for. That's what the battery is sized for. That's the antenna set up. That's the repeater capability, the kind of repeater capabilities built into it.

If anybody's curious about that contraption, like I've done content on it. But like, it's not the walk around of the woods, talk to your idiot friends. It's not that. This is a deploy base station in the woods, independent of outside power type of type of scenario. But when I very first started testing that,

I had this weird situation where the battery would shut the BMS off sometimes. And initially, I thought, despite the fact that the BMS is rated for X amount of power and my radio should be pulling much less than that, I thought maybe I was hitting like a current limitation and the BMS was just freaking out because of the sudden on from come of power and it was shutting the BMS off.

And I determined through testing the BMS was definitely turning itself off because like if you checked power at the battery leads when the radio wouldn't power up, the battery leads were reading zero volts. So the BMS was turning the battery off. It's a lithium iron phosphate battery. They are a little more particular.

Yeah. Well, and then as I did more testing, I began to realize this wasn't a real, this wasn't a consistent failure. Sometimes it would work. Sometimes it wouldn't. And the more I tested, the more I tested, I think I figured out what the problem was. Okay.

So, initially I thought it was power power draw related because it would only happen at high power. If I was on one of the mid or the low power channels or if I selected mid or low power manually on the radio, it would never happen, only at high power. And then I started to realize

it would, it would, the radio would run at high power. If I was using the roll of J-Pole antenna, which I usually have at the top of like a 20 or a 30 foot mast, further away from the radio. Tell me you see where I'm going with this. Oh.

I did some research and came across another YouTuber who built a he actually built, it was one of those briefcase repeaters. Yeah. And he was having a weird problem with the BMS on his lithium iron phosphate battery where the

antenna that was on the outside of the case was broadcasting enough power at about the right frequency range and he was also using GMRS that the BMS would shut itself off and what he did to fix it was he extended he basically like built a little uh he built an extension just to push the the the antenna like an extra foot or two away from the from the repeater worked fine after that he didn't want to put in some electric he did want to putting some electronic shielding around the battery and around the top of the bMS and it was never a problem after that so i think what i stumbled into was it wasn't that it was a power draw problem it was that i was pushing out so much power so close to the battery the bMS was freaking out the electromagnetic interference

from the radio it makes sense and since i've and since since i've like continued to push that testing a full round the more like it seems to kind of bear that out But it was one of those weird situations where, like, this is why you test your stuff and you play with it and you fool around with it. And I learned over time, like, okay, if I'm using my short-range antenna plugged into the top of the man pack, I cannot go over midpower. Sure. Like, you really wouldn't want to throw 50 watts through an antenna of this tall that close to your head in the first place. But you really can't do it because the BMS will freak out. And then you have to disconnect or reconnect the BMS, you know, the battery.

It's just stupid. I wonder if that has to do with the charge protection features on the BMS. It's possible, but from what I've been able to suss and talking to people that are smarter with electronics than I am, the general consensus seems to be that the circuitry of the BMS was reacting to the influx of RF, and that's what was causing the problem. In other words, it's not that the BMS was like mistaking, the RF for a power surge. Right.

It's that it was literally like causing the B.M. Causing the battery management system to stop. It was shutting. It was turning, it was telling, it was taking, turning the BMS off. Now, you only found this with GMRS, right? Yeah, well, me, that's the only radio service I play with. And you said the other guy also found this with GMRS. Yes, which GMRS is close enough to like 70 centimeter ham UHF that.

that conceivably it'd be the same. Whether or not it would do it with VHF or HF, I don't know. Although usually with HF, you're throwing so much less power than 50 watts into the air. And like... Might that be a problem then.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like if it's not the frequency range, it's just the amount of power I was throwing. Because when I threw 20 watts into the air, nothing. Battery didn't even blank. 50 watts, it got pissed off. Interesting.

And in that vein... to see if somebody could test that with a with the UHF VHF and in that vein of radio problems so over the course of now in the name full disclosure like for practice and for familiarity with my gear I regularly use my GMRS radio in my truck like usually I check in first thing in the morning when I'm on way to work I actually live far enough away from work that about halfway there I'll clear channel on one repeater and switch to another and then do the same thing when I'm coming back across the lake. Like usually as soon as I'm feet wet over the lake coming north,

I clear channel on the New Orleans repeater switch over to the look home repeater. Just it's good manners to let everybody know, hey, I'm going or, you know, whatever else. And sometimes people will actually like follow me to the other repeater because I've announced where I'm going. But I also keep in touch with people on both sides of the lake doing that. But the thing that I'm particular about doing is doing it on a regular basis so that I now know there are certain spots in the city where it's kind of a dead zone. Like I know I can't be on the Lecomber-Peter when, say, I'm on Lakeshore Boulevard or Leon C. Simon, because there's this freaking levee as tall as a two-story building next to me, and it's right between me and where I'm trying to go to the Lecombeer.

If I go just a little bit north, then I've got reception. But it's those kinds of things that I use to teach myself. I can get to the repeater here. I can't get to the repeater there. And if ever I needed to talk to my wife without cell service, I'd have to be able to get to the Lecombe repeater. So it's useful to know those kinds of things. Absolutely.

But in the process of programming in the Lecombe Repeater, when it first came on board, I don't remember what I was fooling with. I think maybe I loaded it up my program and I was changing a couple of defaults here and there. And I pushed that program back into my train. truck and then the next day I had this really weird situation where when I would key up only on that repeater channel I came to find out when I would key up on the channel and I would release I would go to squelch zero huh so as long as somebody was transmitting on that channel I'd hear

the repeater just fine but as soon as that that voice would drop out and I wasn't transmitting I'd just get burned out by radio static, just like my squelch was set to zero. Huh. Or, like, if you're familiar with the terminology, like, if you have a monitor button that temporarily set your squelch zero, it was like somebody was holding down the monitor button on my radio. That's weird. It was only that repeater channel. Well, you wouldn't know that without trying it. The New Orleans repeater was going just fine.

I actually switched to repeater channels 15 through 20. which don't have they don't have a tones or anything set on them. They're just dummy, you know, like they're just your stock defaults. It was working fine on those. It worked fine on Simplex. And the weird

part was that if I started off on the Lecomer-Repeater and it started doing that and I hit channel up, channel down to go back to the channel, it would reset. My squelch segments would come back. Did you ever figure out what cost that? Oh, yes, I did. So apparently, buried in the

settings that you can only access with a computer by the way, there is a little tick box or it's a little window and I'm trying to think of exactly what it was. It basically it dictated what the squelch was key to. So

it's supposed to be set to the tone so that the tone of that repeater is taken into account, but I had it on some other setting, just screwed something up so that when I would key up, it would access a repeater, but when I would take, when I would drop it was leaving the channel wide open without the squelch it was something weird i've never

i still for the life making i figure it out i figured it out by like taking a screenshot of the the interface on that screen and then holding that side by side with another repeater channel that was behaving itself and just like one at a time feel by field looking between the two until i was like that's not the way this is fixed it push the program work perfect after that Had a very weird aggravating experience that afternoon, though, because the whole way home, like, it was, I would talk on the repeater and I'd let it go and channel up, channel down to, like, reset it. And then the weird part was, every time somebody would speak, as soon as they would stop, it would leave the channel wide open without a squelch. So then I'd have to channel up, channel down again. It would be a long drive home.

It was, I wound up turning the repeater off eventually because I'd have, or I turn my radio off because I'd have enough of that. foolishness but yeah it was a it was a very interesting moment where i was trying to trying to diagnosis at 70 miles an hour and i i wound up having to like you know shut it all down and figure that nonsense out that makes sense all right i've got two more what you got all right so fire starters you know you're familiar with this style film Oh, yeah. Magnesium block with a ferro rod in it. How much of these tiny little ferro rods suck?

Maybe I've just gotten lucky. I actually haven't had awful luck with them. You ever try one of these? Oh, yeah. I have several. Yeah. So for those of you that are not familiar with these, essentially what this is,

it is a block of powdered magnesium that's been recompressed together. It works very excellent for starting fire. when it's wet, works very excellent for starting fires and wet wood. Magnesium burns incredibly hot and it's fairly easy to get to ignite with a ferro rod. A lot of them come with these embedded little tiny ferro rods. As you can see this one has been abused. There's almost, there's very little of it left on top of the magnesium anymore. And I've used almost none of the magnesium on here.

Yeah. For about the same price, you can get it. you can get one of these ferro rods. They're about three-eighths of an inch diameter. They're, you know, three and a half, four inches long, depending on what you get. You can get them even bigger than this. I like this size because you can take like an old leatherman pouch

or something like that and throw your magnesium block in with one of these. And then you've got your magnesium and you've got a better ferro rod. Those little tiny ferro rods don't throw sparks quite as well as the larger ferrow rods. um i think for two reasons one there's just like black coating that they put on the outside of ferro rods you have to get through that before you get any kind of reasonable spark and there tends to be like a little bit of like almost an oxide layer that builds up on these it's i have an easier time getting it shaved off in order to get good spark and the larger ones than the smaller ones and honestly you've just got something better to hold on to yeah yeah it just

it's not that these things are bad per se, it's that for the same price, you can get just the block of magnesium ones without the ferro rod, and you can get the bigger, better ferro rod. I do have to say, the one thing I usually recommend,

first of all, I love the magnesium blocks because there have been times where I've had those nice big three-eighths inch ferro rods and I can get a shower of sparks going, but I have the hardest time getting it to land, especially down here in southeast Louisiana,

where like, I hate to say it that way, because it sounds like a cop out, but literally like the wrong time of a year, you're going to have a hell of the time, fine, and dry anything. That's true. And the nice thing about magnesium is when magnesium's wet, it still burns. It burns just as hot, just as easily. But I was going to, I was going to pass along something that a guy used to know that he ran a survival school actually over on the East Coast. I haven't talked to him in a couple of years.

but um he used to he so he used to teach primitive survival skills including a fire starting class and he would go through like you know your bow drill and he'd end up teaching people ferrol rods because everybody wanted to you know try it once and at the end of the class he made everyone like pick your favorite method bow drill scrubbing sticks together whatever make a bird's nest get a fire going and then he said every time he did that it was a 95% failure rate. Yep. Because like it's your first day learning most of this stuff, and it takes practice. And then after almost everyone failed, he would come by with a, he'd come by and drop a bick lighter in their hand and said, light that fire. And that was his ultimate, that was his ultimate sage wisdom was knowing how to light a fire without, you know, a lighter or a torch or something is a really useful skill.

But having a freaking bick lighter in the woods is only smart. The only thing I don't like about BIC lighters is they tend to lock themselves up, just sitting around. I agree with you. This is why I prefer cigar torches. They also have the benefit of being able to light cigars. They do. They do. Boutane lighters in general, Pisa electric lighters.

The BIC lighters are cheap and disposable for a reason. They're built out of cheap disposable materials. They leak fuel. Pretty much all the time whenever they're in something, something's hitting that button and letting a little bit of fuel out. I'm not sure what makes their pharaoh striker different than these big, thick feral rods, other than they are smaller and more fine.

But they seem to jam up with pretty decent regularity. I find that when that happens, sometimes you can free them by either rotating them backwards. Yeah, you can sometimes. Or very, like, go find like a rock or a piece of concrete or something. And you don't, well, you don't want to hit it really, really hard, but, like, whack the actual spark wheel on that rock. Like, just, you know, some sharp path kind of shock together. Yeah, I mean, it's something like that.

But, I mean, the thing I, like I said, the thing I like about that is that if you have that magnesium block, you get yourself a little pile of magnesium shavings, you hit it with that cigar torchlighter. It's going to flare up immediately. Oh, absolutely. Fair rods are nice, but I'm a cigar. or a smoker. I always have a torch with me out in the woods. I like to keep, I like to keep barrel rod and the magnesium block. I keep storm matches and then I'll keep a lighter. Because I think I've only encountered one time where storm matches were not, did, we're not able to get a fire going for me. And that was in a fairly severe snowstorm.

no this is not the follically challenge channel you jerk and neck didn't even partially bald well nick didn't even say anything but um shaved your head yeah so after after years of um after years of slowly going bald i finally decided like okay time's enough because like i'm reaching a point where like my wife and i we've kept my hair short of the years but i'm reaching a point where like within a week of a fresh haircut the bald spot is just glaring because the rest of the hair starts to grow in i could get away with it when my hair was thin but it was still there but now it's just it was time to just shave it all off be done with it and no stewart we're not starting over we're talking about screwing up which you could go back and rewind this and listen to it and cackle wildly because i'm we're talking about all the things we've screwed up over the years uh ragel uh i do have a zippo i have found that that damn thing is pretty much always evaporated out of fuel anytime i go to use it pretty much every time i i like them because they're fun to fiddle with fantastic uh i really like butane lighters butane lighters have been fantastic for me

they don't seem to the quality butane lighters don't seem to parasitically leak fuel like zippos or Bix. Yeah, they cost a little bit more, but whereas I tend to find my Bick lighters at least once a year have gone bad. I've yet to have one of my halfway decent Boutain lighters go

bad, just sitting there. Yeah, I will say that, like, I keep my Boutain lighter for lighting cigars, but like I have... You get a Bucin insert for your Zippo? All right, I don't like that. You can. But, um, personally, I have like I have Bix

anything that takes a flame. I have a BIC like stashed down in the kit with it. I got a couple of Bix in a Ziploc bag with my camp stove. I got a couple I got a pair of the mini Bix in the case with my MSR pocket rocket because it doesn't include a lighter or a striker

or anything with it. Yeah. And like the the pocket rocket in the little red case it comes in is perfectly sized where you can fit two mini Bix down in the case with it. I'm 100 percent getting one of these butane inserts for my Zippo because I just love playing

with that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm 100% getting a butane insert for my Zippo. That's going to the Amazon car. I did not know that was a thing. Thank you for guys for bringing that to my attention. For anybody that's a Pipe Smoker, they all, Zipo

also makes, they make a Zipo insert that has like a hole inside of it for a side flame so you can like light a torch with it. That is how one of my Zippos is specifically for my pipe. Yeah. All right.

I just got two things left. And one of them, well, both of these we've talked about before. But Nick, have you ever run like a roof rack or roof bag on top of the vehicle? Ladder rack on my truck.

Yes. Okay. Ladder rack, not, not going to illustrate this point. No, but I've always had trucks. So it's either been in the bed or slung under the roof rack. So it makes sense to you that trucks have the air dynamics of a tool shed, right?

Yes. Okay. You know the only thing you can do to make the air dynamics of a pickup truck worse than they already are? Toss random shit on your roof. Toss random shit on the roof. Unfortunately, when you're trying to go camping over, you know, for like several days with a family of three, I reached a point, I'm reaching a point where like if I'm going out for just like this weekend, like we're gonna be out like two nights

who cares I just won't pack as heavy but if we're going out for like a week like you know the MOF camping trip I really need some stuff yeah I really do need especially with like tent with sleeping bags with cods with you know all the glamping stuff that comes along with I mean

we're still in tents but we're really making tent Mahal at this point yeah it's easy to run into that but I run a roof roof bag sometimes on top of roof rack Now, I, the first time I really did this over a distance, you know, on the way up to the campsite, I was really industrious. I packed the roof bag strategically and I hoisted everything down nice and tight.

And I wanted to minimize, you know, wind noise. So I got this thing packed down just perfect. It was nice and tight. And I think my, uh, the truck totally unloaded naked roof makes about 19 miles per gallon on the interstate. Sounds about right I was doing 18 with the roof rack on Okay And 16 to 17

Closer to 17 with the roof bag on Because most of the roof bag was down behind The wind deflector of the roof rack On the way home, however It was raining when we had to pack up So I was not packing with the same level of care I was kind of like Throw the bag open stuff shit inside of it

hurry up before it filled up with water that type of scenario um did not take the time to like you know press all the air out and get strapped down super tight i mean it was secure and i had ratchet straps over the top of it to make sure it stayed put but i didn't pack it with near the same level of care because i was in a hurry and the rain was getting worse and uh on the way home that afternoon remember i said 17 miles per gallon on the way up there i was making 14 all the way home that's notable because the roof bag was no longer tucked down nice and tight behind the wind deflector

it was billowing up above the wind deflector and all the loose fabric was buffeting around which was very evident based on the wind noise sure definitely didn't didn't come off the roof rack that's causing any problems just

except for yeah like probably increasing the gas consumption by like 15% yeah I mean if you want to know how you make it toward a Tacoma make the same gas mileage a toward a tundra, that's a good way to do it. You know, it's got a funny, my RAM 1500 now gets 20 miles to the gallon now that I got a tonal cover on my bed.

Dude, I'm telling you, like, putting the soft topper on my truck, putting the soft topper on my truck, putting the soft topper on my truck didn't help the fuel economy, but it didn't hurt it a bit. But the fact that I can, but the fact that I can pack that bed, like literally up to, even with the top of the cab now, and I don't have to run the roof rack sometimes. Like, nowadays, even if I've got six, seven hundred pounds in the bed of the truck. Right. Loaded up heavy for a camping trip. Like, heavy enough that I have helper springs on the back of the truck now.

I mean, yeah, the truck might get 18 miles per gallon. Nice. But one mile per gallon difference, hauling two adults, a teenager, and 600 pounds, I don't feel like that's bad. No, that's really not bad at all. I mean, a lot of, a lot of the issue with pickups is. the gear ratio and the aerodynamics of the vehicle. The weight is not usually an issue until you're getting pretty high up there in weight. Yeah, but aerodynamics of a tool shed.

Yeah, pretty much. But you know what? It halls all of the things, and that's why I bought a truck. I didn't buy a truck for aerodynamic efficiency. If I wanted that, I bought a sports car. Let's just say that I'm not going to make a camping trip with the three of us in our stuff in a tour de Corolla. Matter of fact, the very last camping trip we made in my old Mastra 3 hatchback.

Oh, that's pretty impressive. Yeah, Piper was in a car seat. The back seat was filled up to the roof right next to her. The entire hatch was filled up to the roof. You couldn't see out of the back of the car. Billion had stuff on the floorboards under her feet. like we we um to the gills yeah we we we pretty well and this was before you know this is when we were sleeping on the floor of the tent in sleeping bags this was before the cots and the ice

co i can't remember if we have the jack we or not i don't think so so needless say we carry a lot more stuff now but yeah i actually pulled i actually pulled into prepper camp that first year or two in the Mazda, but I made that trip by myself, so I'm pretty, pretty low maintenance when I'm by myself. Yeah, I mean, I have found that if me and a buddy are going camping, me and another guy, a lot more limited supplies than bringing a wife along with, I would assume a kid bringing a kid along with would be even more, because, well, you know, the kids, they need the things. well I mean

I have two women in my life one's just 13 and the other one's my age but they both require some special care in handling that's true it's true

but yeah gotta throw Stewart's thing in here 10 miles per gallon towing or not that is actually the one thing that's been interesting to me having two friends of ours with Toyota Tundras with the 5.7 V8

is that they both told me that they make the exact same fuel economy loaded, loaded down, and empty. That's one thing I've noticed with my RAM-1500 as well. I've got the 5-7 hemie. It doesn't seem to notice however much weight I put in the bed.

Now, pulling a trailer with like an old cutlass caprice on the trailer, that cratered my fuel economy. That cratered it bad. But, you know, my grandfather had a, for many years, had a three-quarter-ton Chevy

with Chevy 2,500 with the I think is the 8-1 in it. That thing, 11 miles to the gallon. You could pull a skid-loader with it, or you could go get milk. Didn't matter. 11 miles to the gallon. That sounds like large trucks.

They are... Oh, yeah. They just get 11 because we're using all of the fuel and your gear ratios are not meant for speed. So we'll get there eventually. Nope. Big engine, short gears.

Mm-hmm. Tends to be the way. It does. All right. I've only got one left. What you got? I got one left. Knives.

Hmm. So what I've got here are two extremely commonly recommended knives in quite the price range. The black plastic one there is a more carbon. phenomenal knife especially for the money my god phenomenal knife for the money the one of the leather sheath you can see the little bench made logo on there that's like a two hundred and forty dollar bench made i have no idea what model it is because i've used it so much that the labeling that may have been on there at one point is gone um then you'll notice about the bench made knife full tang knife very beefy

tang on that knife. The mora. Much narrower blade, significantly narrower, but probably about half the tang width. The mora is a full tang knife, or at least a semi-full-tang knife, I think

they consider it. It's not one of the rat tail knives. I have batonned as much wood with this mora as I have with this bench made. The only difference I have notice performance wise between these two, this is more comfortable in my hand. It just fits my hand better. This I have to sharpen ever so slightly more often. So you will see some of these, I'm going to call them Rambo knives, the hollow handle, rat tail, tang. They just

don't seem to hold up. Not really a quality steel. Well, that's a nice knife. That's about a quarter inch thick in the tang, isn't it? Yeah, that's solid quarter inch thick. This one's like 316s. So you probably can't make this out on the camera, but there is ever so slight of a maker's mark right about there.

Yeah, I can't see it. A friend of the show years and years ago, Matt Critsberg. He, um, he makes knives for a fee, but, you know, it's kind of his, uh, his woo saw time in the garage. And my wife, smooth talked him into making this for me for Christmas years ago because I was trying to sell him on the idea of I wanted a modern booey knife. Yeah. And I wanted a booey knife, but I wanted it like, you know, a modern take on it. And I, I talked to him mad about it and told Mike look like you know full house booie knife is a gigantic damn there or damn they're a bastard sword i wanted something a little smaller and handier beefy something you could you know you

could use for camp chores you could baton with it you could do whatever you wanted small enough but beefy enough to use for pretty much anything like the one knife you put on your hip and you take out into the woods honestly that's this one for me i've skinned with it i've flayed fish with it, I baton wood with it. Honestly, can do the same thing, it's more carbon. Yeah, this one's O-1 tool steel.

This one, let's see, the Benchmate is It holds an edge, but it takes some effort to sharpen this thing. Yeah, that's the same. That's the other thing I've noticed with the bench made. It's kind of a bear to get it to sharpen. The carbon steel knives, they do sharpen better, but

even taking pretty good care of this one, you might be able to see it. It gets corrosion on it crazy easily. But, let's see, let's see what we got here. Jeff says, OpenL number eight for everything on the ranch.

Great folding pocket knife. Cut Co's outdoor knives. Did not know they made outdoor knives. My parents still have a set of cut-co knives. They bought when I was, like, 10. So if their outdoor knives are, and they're still sharp. I mean, if their outdoor knives are anywhere near as good as their kitchen knives, I might have to try one.

But, man, you know, I bought one of these moreas when I was getting back into camping and backpacking. It's more carbon. I think my wife's got a moro stainless of her backpack. She doesn't use her knives as hard as I do. But, gosh, man, I've had this thing since I was, like, 20. And aside from a little bit of corrosion, and it's definitely a thinner blade than it was, it's been fantastic. But everybody talks up moros, and they're right to.

But I have had some of the other cheaper knives fail on me. I've had them break at the tang. I've had the handles go to shit on me, especially some of these polymer handles, Phil. Have you ever noticed that? The oil from your hands makes that polymer almost fall apart. on some of the cheaper knives i actually don't think i have a knife with a polymer oh really well i mean that that that one's got g10 scales on it right that's a polymer yeah this is this is like uh i don't know how to describe it it's it's not a rubber it's not really

squishy but man in wet conditions this thing doesn't slip in your hand at all it's it's almost like it wants to stick to your skin it's fantastic all right last one of my more recent foibles so recently um my dad and i took on a project to overhaul my uh my one of my younger brother's uh wedding presents he was given an a or his first a r by a friend of his g tennis cloth and epoxy not polymer i'll go with that yeah i i don't know I thought it was some kind of polymer-based composite, but in any case. So I tore the AR part, when to figure out what was inside of it, came to realize it was a palmedistate Armory life from tip to butt.

So that wasn't a knock against. It wasn't a bad thing. It wasn't a good thing. It was just a, okay, I know. They make a quality fire. I know what it is now. It's not some random, you know. There's a couple of torque specs I would have checked.

It's not somebody's garage special that I have to be really concerned. about you know it should be a known quantity put it that way and um when dad and i i think we put we put a rear side on it because it came with like the front site post and block but no rear sides at all so we put a a rear um a rear flip flip up site on it got some mags got some ammo i want to say i tried to swing dad into getting a sling. I don't remember if he did or not. I mean, you know how I feel about slings on rifles, but anyway.

Slings are required equipment on rifles. Yeah, but neither here nor there. At the end of the day, Dad and I, we were taking this thing out. Dad wanted to get it zeroed before we gave it back to Mike. And we went out there and I brought my tools

because every time I take a rifle out with me for the first time or a handgun, I bring tools. I bring hammers and punches and screwdrivers. And I bring everything I might need to tear a weapon apart if it begins to misbehave. I even brought some can of ballastole. My favorite all-purpose fix everything. It does tend to work pretty much on everything.

You know the one thing I didn't bring with me, Nick? A goddamn cleaning kit. Because I clean this thing at Dad's House. And the chamber was spotless. The barrel was spotless. the inside of the receivers were spotless I cleaned this son of a bitch that my dad

Oh is that the one that you The very pop the round of the very first round We went to jack into the chamber Somehow this thing got hung up on the feed ramp Smash the bullet down the throat of the round Burped gunpowder Into the chamber and down into the receiver And there's Phil with all the tools in the world

And no cleaning kit no chamber brush, not even a toothbrush to my name. Whoops. Whoops. So the next thing, the next round, I clear that. I, you know, mortar it a couple times, shaking around real good, tried to get all the junk out of it. But since I was so intent on cleaning the freaking rifle before my dad brought it out there,

it had this nice, light sheen of ballastol all over it. So all the powder immediately turned a freaking mud in the chamber. So the next round I went to stick in there Got about two-thirds the way in and stopped hard That'll happen And I had to take the tip of a knife And encourage it backwards out of the chamber And that's when I asked my dad

Please go to your truck and get a napkin or something Because old people have napkins in their glove boxes Thank God because their sons are too much of a moron I do but we weren't in my truck We were in my dad I said, I've got napkins in my truck. I have napkins in my truck because I have a child. It's a thing.

Right. But I am a child. Yeah. But I told my dad, go get a napkin because, like, I don't, I'm too much of a moron to bring a cleaning kit with a virgin rifle. Like, why would I? That just makes sense. So he comes back with a napkin. And I twist this thing up and I squared down with ball stall and I shove it up in there and turn a couple times.

And I spend the next 10 minutes while he's talking to one of his fellow range officers buddies. I spend 10 minutes fooling with this stupid thing, cleaning the chamber, reached it up in there with the tip of my finger, behind the locking lugs, trying to get all the junk out of it. I do everything except pray to the machine gods to make the bolt or freaking behave itself.

And finally, I drop the frigging bolt and the round goes all the way into the chamber. So I shoulder it, pull the trigger, and I hear click. And I'm like, Oh, so I open it back up, pull the round out. It's got the tiniest little dimple on the, on the primer.

So I drop another one in the chamber, pull the trigger, and it goes bang. And from that moment forward, it's just fine. Might have been a little bit of too much oil in the firing pin. Could have been that. It could have also been the fact that the bolt was just ever so slightly out of battery. It could have been more junk wrapped around the fire control group. Who freaking knows? but please for the love of Christ

don't ever go to the range especially with a brand new weapon without a complete cleaning kit like good on me for bringing tools in case I had to tear this stupid thing apart right there on the bench but stupid me for not bringing the cleaning kit which is what would have really saved me some aggravation I definitely would have at the very least saved aggravation if not saved time I mean at least you would have had the right tools for the job

I mean, this is, you know, these things happen, and these are the lessons you've got to learn from, I mean, one of the big reasons why I keep a little bottle of lactite in my range bag with my cleaning kit. When I was at a class about two hours away, and for whatever ungodly reason, despite having a torque wrench and having torqued all of the things to appropriate specs, and applied appropriate locktite, my red dot kept shaking loose off the top of my receiver. I have never had that problem since. I have never had that problem before. That's suboptimal. It is, and it was in the middle of a class. And I went from shooting respectable groups for the times we were going to,

to not hitting a torso with a carbine at 20 yards. not appropriate not appropriate at all and you know I flip my rifle down to take a look to check the chamber and I

and my red dot just goes clack clack across the range also suboptimal to throw your electronics down the range I mean it depends

if you're trying to if you're trying to torture test them that could be an effective method I have to say the Vortex spitfire

I think it's a Spitfire 1X survived being chucked 15 feet down the range just fine little scuffs on the aluminum but whatever a little sharper took care of that yeah so to kind of wrap this up

here are my thoughts test your stuff well here are my thoughts yeah first of all test your stuff because you really really want to find out stuff's not working right before you have to bet your life on it but here are kind of my my takeaways um first of all fix and troubleshoot shit in the field whenever possible and i say

that because i cannot be the only person that has had this experience of something is misbehaving and you think to yourself oh i'm going to take it home and fix it there and when you get it home it stops misbehaving fix the problem in the field of at all human possible or at a minimum diagnose it in the field like at the moment it is misbehaving figure out what the problem is So I just got back from that fishing trip a while back, Phil. You know what happened the second I walked in the door from that fishing trip? Something broke? There were two trees laying down in my yard that I had to address.

Now, I'm pretty sure I was having problems with one of my reels on that trip. I can't remember which reel it was. Because I put all my stuff away. I got out the chainsaw. I spent the next two weeks worth of after work and weekends running a chipper, running a chainsaw, running a log splitter. I can't remember which reel it was or what the problem was, and I'm probably not going to figure this out until next spring when I attempt to go fishing. Whoops. So, yeah, should have made a note to myself or something, but had I taken more time to diagnose it, order a parts kit maybe?

even i would at least know what real it went to that's actually my next point have spare parts spare parts are a freaking god send i have uh think i showed to you before i've got the little battery puck sitting up there on the wall it's literally a little plastic dude ad is about looks like a big thick hockey puck but it stores extra batteries and it goes with me to the range every time because if i have a battery go down i like to have a spare battery i've got spare batteries in both my ars i've got spare fuses in a case underneath that man pack like I have spare

fuses in the truck actually AutoZone sells like vehicle specific like if you have a Toyota they sell you a box and it's all the common Toyota fuses. I should do that for my truck. I have some of them, not all of them. You should

and you should have at least one, preferably two of every fuse in that vehicle and you know why you need to? Because if you have a problem and you stuff a fresh fuse into it and it blows up immediately. You now need a second fuse plus some troubleshooting steps. Yep.

Or a penny, but I'm not recommending that fix. That causes additional problems. Don't, don't. It's better than a 22. Oh, Jesus Christ. Which I've also seen. But have spare parts, have spare fuses, have spare stuff. It will save you a pain

in the butt in the future. The one time I went to a Project Appleseed event, I brought an entire spare AR. because I wasn't driving eight and a half hours to go to this thing and then have my primary AR go down on me. I wanted to have a whole spare rifle to either cannibalize for parts or worst case scenario, I ripped the scope off the second rifle, transpose over the iron sights, and then re-zero it,

and I'd have been back in business with a different rifle. Makes sense. Wouldn't have been the preferred method because I had to be, well, I mean, I brought an 18-inch rifle and I also brought like a 10.5 inch pistol. My neighbors would have been pissed at me if I'd have been next to him with a 10.5 inch AR. But...

Not as bad as they would... Not as mad as they would be if you were running the muscle break that I tend to run. You ought to try that land tech on a 20-inch. It sounds like a scar heavy. There's a reason why I have a 16-inch barrel on that weapon now and it's been converted back into a carbine. much much much nicer to shoot

and besides it's nice to shoot besides bare parts that must have been your boiler yeah my boiler yeah my boiler pick down so having

I tried to hit the mute I wasn't fast enough it's fine flexibility and use so one of the things I planned in this man pack and it's kind of a good cautionary note is I built

you know it's primary battery primary power source is battery I also have leads and everything in this man pack runs off Anderson connectors so I can hot swap from one thing to another very quickly but I also have a set of leads that connect to a cigarette lighter adapter I have a set of leads to have alligator leads on the end so if I like have like a car battery or something I can just clip onto it and go um yeah so that gives me the ability to be

like kind of flexible with how where I harvest power for my man pack from this thing but the whole thought process always was if I can't get power from here I can get power from here I can get power from there and all these things all these different leads are all fused they have their own fuse on them pretty close to wherever the you know the positive terminal would be but the point remains is that I built that whole system with as much flexibility as possible so that if at any point time. If my battery goes dead, I can run this thing off my jackery. If that's dead, I could run this thing off my truck because I got a 12-volt power panel on the back of the truck. Worst come to worst, and let's say the wire burns up or something goes bad, I can literally hot, I can hotly

directly onto my car, my truck's battery. I wouldn't do that if I was going to pull a full 20 amps because a little bit alligator leads to get a little smoky, but I would do it at low power. The point is that I have I plan for some flexibility in these And if you have the opportunity With a system or a piece of gear To build flexibility into it So it can adapt

That then means if you have a partial failure You can adapt the gear around the partial failure You build something to specialize And the minute it starts misbehaving You're kind of stuck with it You know what I mean? Yeah, it can absolutely be a problem Because the more specialized it is

the harder spare parts are to find the more spare parts you should have on the shell, and the less it can be applied to more than one thing. This, by the way, is also the reason why I am so particular about having spare batteries for my vortex strike fire red dot, because most of your red dots out there, most of your firearm optics use, like, what is it, a 2032 little, the big flat, little coin batteries. Or they use a CR-123. Yep. Or they'll use a double A.

Yes. In my experience. The Vortex Strikefire uses a CR2. Why? To be a pain in my ass. Which is the reason why I have a spare battery in the pistol grip and I have six of the things in my wall safe for one optic. Because it's a weird battery and I can't. It is a weird battery.

I mean, at least 2032s, you can grab a damn near every gas station. Well, and here's the thing of it is I buy, so with my common firearm-related batteries, I buy in bulk. I buy bulk packs of not cheap, Energizer Ultimate Lithuums. Yeah, the quality battery. Which are not cheap, and they cost a lot, but they last a long time, and they store for very long time. But I buy bulk packs of the stupid things. I've got 20 or so 2032s. I've got, I don't know, 5 or 6, 20, 2.

20 packs of CR123 is lying around. When I bought my PBS 14 because it runs on double A's, I think every time I went to the, the CVS is not far from my house. They stocked them. And every time I went in there for weeks, I buy a four pack of Energizer Ultimate Lithium.

Yes, they recommend you use it, isn't it? And at this point, I think I've got, I don't know, 20, 25, 30 of those double A's line around for one PBS 14. I'm not going to run at any time soon. I mean, what's the runtime on one battery? I'll let you know when I run the first one down. Oh.

So, excellent. Well, it's worth the money then. Yeah. Especially if, I mean, let's be honest here, Night Vision is not cheap. My first car costs less than your Night Vision set up debt. My first car and almost my second car. Right? I mean, it's not an inconsequential amount of money here.

talking through $4,000 on a lot of these. So, yeah, buy a little bit higher quality battery. Yeah, I overpaid because, honestly, that was the only place I could reliably find them on my end of town. And you have to understand, Stuart, there's a certain amount of my shopping habits that are dictated by my hatred of human beings. And this CVS, kind of on my side of town, where it's kind of outside of town, I'll pay a little bit more. I don't have to deal with crowds. I don't have to deal with people. I don't have

to go to Walmart. And yes, I buy in bulk online, but if I need something like right now, I go there. I mean, that makes sense. Regalus is it advisable to use rechargeable batteries at night? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I believe the voltages are not quite the same as not rechargeable. I don't care what anyone will tell you. Do not use rechargeable batteries in a

in a vision system. Period. And discussion. The manufacturer and the Department of Defense all recommend Energizer Ultimate Lithuums. They have a cage code that the DOD orders those stupid things by specifically for PBS 14s.

That's what the manufacturer recommends you put in them. And when you're talking about, okay, like not to brag, but I've got 4Gs tied up in a PBS 14, just the optic, not anything else. I'm not risking it for, I refuse to risk that investment over a cheap battery. So it looks like Stewart's got an answer for us. Rechargeable batteries are about 1.25 volts, whereas alkalines are about 1.5. Yeah. I've talked to people that have run them.

I just refuse to. There are so many places I would rather save money than batteries in a $4,000 piece of equipment. And you've still not gone through the first one, correct? And you've had that thing for a few years now. Yeah. Now, I mean, admittedly, I'm not taking it out all the time, but I've had it out for a good handful of times. Not to mention I've done a fair bit of stargazing with it, where I'll literally, like, hook a camera up to it and just point at the sky and let it eat for like an hour straight. So, like, it has some pretty good runtime on a single battery,

and I just can't justify trying to save money on batteries for something like that. You know, it's like buying a C8 Corvette and then putting, you know, like the cheapest crappiest 87 octane you can't in it. Oh, so that's actually even more significant difference than I thought. He said that AA lithiums are 1.8 volts, and the rechargeables being 1.25, that's a half of both difference. That's pretty significant. Yeah.

And understand, like, I'm not a battery snob with a lot of things, because, like, if I smoke $150 or $200 red dot, I don't care. Throw the stupid thing in the trash, get another one. It's a totally different scale of expense to replace it. Well, I mean, you and I had this conversation recently when I made the mistake of adding up everything I have in one AR. And I realize that half the cost in this one AR-15 is just the crap to play around in the dark. Yep.

That was sobering. It is. This is why I tell everybody, I'm like, you know, if you get, like, the miracle PVS-14 with decent specs for like $2,600 bucks, like, you just get a screaming deal on it, be prepared to spend that much money again. Yeah. Because you're going to want a helmet, and then you're going to want to put cool guy stuff on the hell. helmet and then you're going to want a laser for your weapon and you're going to want the light and the switch that all works together and the minute you utter the words night vision everything gets a zero added on to the end does well it's it's got to do a lot with the

economy of scale really it does because your white lights are easy white lights are cheap everybody makes a white light infrared lights and lasers now it's a special to get there's a slight problem in that analogy though nick because yes white lights are kind of a dime a dozen, but if you want to use the cool guy switch like the Unity ones I use that engage your light and your laser from a single switch, then

you have to have something that's surefire compatible. Yep. And for me, that was an Air Saka body with a Malkoff head and a surefire DS00 tail cap and like it's a $400 freaking flashlight. Yes. Now, it's a

really impressive 400R flashlight. Like you could microwave something with Oh, yeah, you actually can't. But, I mean, you're still talking specialty items, though. Yeah. Oh, look. I mean, you can get a very decent quality weapon-mounted light for 100 bucks. Dude, it is not going to do all the fancy specialty things for 100 bucks.

It's just not going to do. I'm going to tell you that the Streamlight Pro Tech that's on my Breda A-300 is the same one that's been on two different AR-15s. It's it's been kicking around on my weapons for a lot of years. I had it on my freaking AK back in the day. They're awful hard to ruin. They are. Dude, it's a tough. It's a tough little flashlight.

I finally wound up, um, shoring up the, um, the electrical wire sheathing right where it goes into the body of the switch. Like it, it, it, it started to pull free a little bit. I wound up some tape around on, just kind of sure it up. I'm sure sooner or later might have to replace some poor thing. But, I mean, if, uh, if, uh, if, this is any indication, streamlights take a beating, and that's not paint,

that's anodizing, that's worn off of this light body from God knows how many years. Like, StreamRR makes a good product, but the sheer difference in power between that and what I have on that AR-15

now is shocking. It's so shocking. I kind of want to get another one for my shotgun, not because I need it, but just to burn somebody's retinas down before I throw a half ounce of lead in their lap. That's fair.

I mean, quality sense. Quality is nice to have. But the important takeaway, I think the most important takeaway from here is test all your stuff, test it often. And if you do test it to the point of failure,

ask yourself, is that an acceptable point of failure for you? And if it's not, then maybe it'll get stepping up and quality. Yeah. And really the only thing that we haven't talked about that I'll throw in here at the end right as we get ready to walk out. But like, don't just test yourself one time to test it frequently. Like I make a habit of every time I take a weapon out to the range, I take it home, I clean it. I inspect it for parts wear or breakage.

Any fastener on it gets get at least gets a screwdriver put on it. and I'll just, like, bump it to see if it's going to move. If you want to go the extra step, like, you could get, there's actually this stuff I know from the aviation industry called torque stripe, and it's literally like a little tube, looks like threadlocker, but it's like a paint, and you paint it over the head of the bolt of a bolt, so that way the bolt or the nut starts to back off, it'll break that torque stripe. You know it works really good for that?

Paint pen. Paint pen, if you want to go. Well, there's paint. paint pen. Yep. You could also stake. You could also stake your fasteners just to try to give them an opportunity not to move in the first place. You can stake your fasteners. That can cause problems in the future if you ever need to take the stuff off. It's one of the reasons I like paint pen. Yeah. But one way or the other, like that that's kind of my personal mantra is like check your stuff often. I would say every time you touch it, that's an opportunity to stop, look at it, make sure it's not misbehaving. Make sure it's loosening up. because like and I find that not only like some people will say that it's overkill just like some people say well it's overkill to clean your guns every single time you shoot them and I agree with you they don't require it but it's an opportunity to look at the firearm and function check it and check it for wear parts breakage and corrosion every single time I touch it which is the reason why and familiarizing yourself and that to me is the key every time I touch it it's an opportunity to get reacquainted with it especially for a piece of gear like you know the man pack or this jackery, like a whole bunch stuff I pulled out behind me because we're going camping this

weekend, but it's stuff that doesn't get used every day, it doesn't get used every month, it gets used when we go out camping or we have a hurricane. So it pays to pull this stuff off the shelf and make sure that everything is still as it should be. Matter of fact, I was quite impressed when I pulled everything

off the shelf yesterday and started running everything through charge cycles. Almost everything was already like topped off 100% battery. And I don't remember why, because I usually store things like you know 60 to 80% like you're supposed to uh charge him before the camping summer camping trip um i don't i might have raggle um last time i pulled out my AK it's been a hot minute well yeah you've got an AR now they're just

better well the AK at this point is a fun gun like I put the ARs are primary home defense firearm so the AK usually gets pulled out when somebody wants to shoot an AK and And I'm like, here's an AK and a 75 round drum. Go have a, go, go for this. I mean, if you're going to go hog wild, you might as well. I'm going to tell you that anybody that has an AK and hasn't gone looking for an RPK drum, you are missing out on life. You really are. I had a Warsaw folder for a while that I had a 75 round drum for.

It was just a lot of fun. It was a vibe, man. I mean, it was just too cool. But it was terrible. It was god-awful, unorganomical, not very accurate. Yeah, there's not really a good reason to, except that it will put a smile on your face. And that's really all it is. It makes for some cool pictures for somebody that's shooting a gun for the first time.

You get a big drum bag on there, but other than that, it's just so damn heavy. Yes. All right, let's go ahead and punt this out of the door. I have to download, edit, and upload this. Hopefully tonight, if it all humanely possible. If not, I'll have to do it tomorrow early in the morning. Best of luck. But, yeah, camping trip this weekend.

Raggle said he might come out and meet us. That'd be fun. And talk to y'all in another week. Maybe we'll have some, hopefully we won't have mayhem on this camping trip. I'm honestly planning just to go camping and smoke cigars and drink bourbon and just chill because it's been a corker of a week at work. well the government's back open so that should get worse almost certainly will took the words out of my mouth

all right matter of facts going out the door bye y'all take care stay out of trouble get in trouble get back out of trouble bye good night I'm going to be able to be. Fyneux B. B.

B. Fyne, B. Fyne, B. Fy, Baxter. Bhop,

B, B, I'm going to be able to be.