A Homemade Powder Dipper

 Reloaders have made their own dippers for measuring powder charges for decades. I made a dipper from an empty .22 Long Rifle case and some copper wire, and tried it out with three different fast burning pistol powders: Accurate No.2 (AAC-2), Alliant Bullseye, and Hodgdon Titegroup.

I was hoping to get a dipper that would throw very small charges suitable for use in small, low pressure cartridges like .32 S&W Long. However, the charge weights are a bit higher than I'd wanted.

To measure, I threw 10 charges of each powder and weighed them individually on a Frankford Arsenal digital scale. I then took the average of those 10 charges.

My results (It is likely that yours will vary, see below!):

• AAC-2: 3.08 grains
• Bullseye: 2.98 grains
• Titegroup: 3.68 grains

To put these into perspective, with AAC-2 or Bulleye, these charges are good for loading .38 Special 148 grain wadcutters. They'd be light loads under a 158 grain semiwadcutter or round nose bullet, because those aren't seated as deeply in the case, thus lowering chamber pressure.

In .32 H&R Magnum, 3.0 grains of AAC-2 would be a mild load with a 100 grain lead bullet. Likewise, 3.0 grains of Bullseye would be a mild load with 96 - 100 grain lead round nose bullet.

The Titegroup load would approximate a .38 Special (not +P) 158 grain service load. It could also be used to load 85 grain JHPs in .32 H&R Magnum.

VERY IMPORTANT WARNING:

Before you rely on this data consult with one or more loading manuals. Use at your own risk.

If you try this make sure to create your own charge table. The amount of powder a dipper will measure will vary depending on the case used, the manufacturing lot of the powder, and your technique.

Since this dipper measures out charges larger than what I was after, I plan to make another one with a .22 Short case to see what that gets me. 

Disney's "Go Away Green"

The other day I read about Disney's "Go Away Green," which is a group of dull green colors they use in their parks to help infrastructure blend into the background. There's also "Blending Blue" and "No See Um Gray." I found it interesting how they are taking camouflage concepts and applying them in civilian settings.

I suspect that using similar color palettes for civilian clothing would help for reducing how much you stand out in a crowd.

Some links about this:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Away_Green
• https://trueprepper.com/go-away-green/
• https://www.rustoleum.com/blog/go-away-green-and-blending-blue (Includes mention of paint colors they make that are applicable.)

Pipe Cleaners and .22s

I wanted to swab the chambers on this High Standard and my bag of pipe cleaners was handier than my .22 cleaning rod, so I figured I'd give it a try. Doubled over the pipe cleaner is a snug fit that still pushes through easily. You could even use it to clean a rifle bore by cutting a short section, folding it in half, and then pulling it through with a thin line. You're not going to be doing any serious scrubbing but it'll work for applying solvent or oil.

You can get pipe cleaners with embedded plastic bristles which would be slightly more aggressive but they are probably not needed unless the bore or chamber are really crusty, although I do find them handy for cleaning hard to access spots in guns.

Fixing a High Standard R-108 Sentinel Snub Revolver

One of my favorite guns is a High Standard Sentinel R-101 .22 with a nickeled finish and 3" barrel, that I bought in near-new condition about 5 years ago. It's given excellent service.

A couple years ago I found a later Sentinel R-108 snub with a 2" barrel, and the original box and papers included.I jumped on that because the shorter barrel makes it a lot more pocketable, and 9 rounds of CCI Stingers or Federal Punch .22s is nothing to sneeze at.

Unfortunately, the snub gave me problems at the outset with the cylinder binding. I tried swapping cylinder assemblies with one I grabbed off eBay but that was for nought. It needed to have the cylinder disassembled to find the problem. I figured it would be a burr or some grit had managed to work its way inside.

The problem is that the Sentinels are notoriously difficult to put back together once taken apart. They are held together with pins and you need to align all the holes just right, often under spring tension. So, the gun sat until today when I finally got tired of it occupying space.

After removing the cylinder from the frame, which isn't difficult, to get the cylinder stripped I had to remove the cylinder lock plunger pin (part # 7112). This pin is about as thick as a pencil lead and 3 or 4mm long. It's under pressure from a couple springs (#7513 and #7576).

I managed to drive it out and not shoot any parts across the room. Upon pulling everything apart I found that ejector rod spring (#7576) was splayed out on both ends, causing cylinder rotation to bind. I clipped both ends which still gives plenty of spring pressure for the ejector rod to rebound.

Now came reassembly. I had to hold three parts under spring pressure in alignment and drive that tiny pin back into place. Aside from a small diameter drift punch I found a small hook from a Harbor Freight set indispensable.

You also need to stick your tongue out at the right angle, squint correctly, cross your toes, and pray. In extreme cases you may need to sacrifice a chicken.

After reassembly and a few cylinder's worth of dry firing (safe to do with the Sentinel) it seems to be working smoothly.

Part of self reliance is being able to work on your guns. To that end, you should have a gunsmith's screwdriver kit with an assortment of bits that properly fit gun screws, a set of drift punches, a non-marring mallet, and a bench block. A vise with non-marring jaws will also be very handy. Also, magnetic parts trays help keep you from losing small parts when you've got a gun apart.

I feel like I earned a bowl of Half and Half in my Falcon pipe, along with a can of Yuengling Lager.

Hopefully I'll get to do a live fire test soon.

Graphing RF Line of Sight

I have a few friends who live within a reasonable distance for 2M simplex communications, if there is line of sight. Today I found this tool that allows you to graph LOS between two points on a map:

https://www.scadacore.com/tools/rf-path/rf-line-of-sight/

Here's a plot between my house on the left and a friend's on the right, assuming an antenna height of 10M:

Back in 2015, we were able to hold a conversation on 2M simplex, with Yagi directional antennas on both ends. In that test my antenna was only about 1M above ground, while my friend went up the hill behind his house and hung his antenna from a stick, about 1M up. See my two posts on that test, here and here.

Since there is a ridge about halfway between us, it is likely that knife edge diffraction played a role in the success of our QSO.

Expedient 10M Dipole Antenna

I whipped this up in about 15 minutes this afternoon.

I used a wire stripper/cutter and the reamer on the Victorinox Pioneer Swiss Army Knife. I could have used just the SAK.

Bill of materials:

• BNC-to-Binding post adapter
• No.36 bank line for a center hang loop (optional)
• Two lengths of 20 AWG silicone insulated wire, cut to 8 feet and 1/4" each. You may want to go a little longer and trim to length to adjust SWR as needed.
• Insulators cut from plastic dividers from a plastic parts bin organizer

The build is simple:

1. Cut the wires to length
2. Strip about 1" of the insulation of one end of each wire, twist, and put the stripped end through the hole in the binding post, one to the red and one to the black. Snug down the screw on the binding posts.
3. Cut the wire end insulators and drill two holes large enough for the 20AWG wire near one end. Drill a single hole on the other end.
4. On the end with two holes, thread the end of the wire through the hole closest to the edge then down through the second hole. Tie an overhand knot to prevent it from coming back through, then pull the wire snug. Here's a closeup:

Notes:

• I was going to crimp a ring connector onto the ends of the wires where they attach to the binding posts, but the rings weren't quite large enough. You might be able to drill them out a little with a step drill.
• Depending on what size line I use to hold up the antenna, I may need to add a small loop of bank line to either end. I didn't want to drill the third hole too large because the plastic I used was thin.

I should be able to try this out later in the week and will post a follow up. If by chance I cut the wires too short I can replace them, then repurpose them for use on a 6M dipole.

My First Whack at a Homebrew Jungle Antenna

This afternoon I made a VHF jungle antenna for the first time. 

The jungle antenna is a field expedient ground plane antenna that can be made with limited supplies and tools, under austere conditions, though I built on my dining room table (the XYL is out of town).

This antenna design is featured in military manuals, survivalist videos on YouTube, and @NCScout has a great blog post on them on his site Brushbeater and in his book, The Guerilla's Guide to the Baofeng Radio.

Materials Used:

• 18 AWG wire
• #36 bank line
• A BNC F-to-binding post adapter from Amazon
• Bamboo stakes garden stakes from Lowes, to spread out the ground plane radials.

The only tool I used for the initial build was a SOG PowerAccess multitool, leftmost in the above picture. It is 4.5" long, which I used to measure the wire and bamboo for cuts.

I first cut thee 22" long pieces of bamboo for the spreaders. These were tied into a triangle with bank line.

Three radials were cut to ~20" and one wire for the vertical radiator was cut to 18".

I attached a bank line hang loop to the end of the vertical with a sheet bend. The other end of the vertical was stripped and put into the red binding post. The three radiators were stripped on one end, combined, and attached to the black binding post. The other ends have a small overhand knot tied in them and then were tied to the corners of the triangle.

Unfortunately, SWR (Standing Wave Ratio) came out high on both VHF and UHF, measured with my NanoVNA. On 2M VHF, SWR was 2.29 at 146.5 MHz. On 70cm UHF it was a bit better, 1.86 at 450.2 MHz.

After dinner I made a couple changes. First, I replaced the 18" vertical element with one cut to 19.2", with an overhand knot tied at the top end, with my bank line hang loop tied under that with a couple half hitches.

I have it suspended from an uncut bamboo stake in my second floor home office. Yes, it's a bit cluttered.

I also improved the ground plane part by replacing the bank line securing the ends of the radials and bamboo pieces with a cable tie at each junction. This made the structure much stronger.

After reworking it I remeasured SWR with 29.5 feet of RG-174 coaxial feed line. It's much improved now.

On the 2M calling frequency of 146.52 MHz SWR is now at 1.36, and on the 446 MHz 70cm calling freq it's at 1.06.

Note that SWR will probably change some with the antenna hanging in free space but I cannot test that today because it's been raining off and on outside.

Reception of a couple local repeaters has been very good but I haven't transmitted with it yet.