SHOT Show Technology Transfer

I spent some time at the SHOT Show last week at the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas.  It started off being a "Shooting Hunting Outdoor" show but with 9/11 and all the terrorism concern, a Law Enforcement section has been added.  Besides hundreds of firearms and accessory manufacturers, I visited several thermal imaging vendors and one of them, Torrey Pines Logic, had an interesting product called the Mirage 1200.  Basically it detects optical lens stacks like in a rifle scope or camera.  It's the item at the bottom of this picture.  The operater looks in one end, like a telescope, and besides displaying the general lay of the land, a laser beam is emitted and if it reflects off an optical lens stack, that location blinks on the display.   The R2D2 looking thing is called a Beam 1000 and it's the permanently mounted version of the Mirage 1200.  I wonder if any Hollywood celebrities use these to deal with paparazzi?   The Mirage 1200 has a max range of 1200 meters and the Beam 1000, yep, a max range of 1000 meters.  The Mirage costs around $40,000.

Here's a fun picture of a sniper rig at the show.  They added a cup holder for grins.

There's Got to be a Morning After...

I slept well and first thing in the morning I hiked back to the car and headed home without incident. If there were any road blocks they must have been taken down after several hours. I wondered what kind of a search radius or perimeter was used to try and find me? Did it include the parking lot where I left my car? Even if it did and the police recorded all the license plates, I had a decent cover. No worries for now...

What I had done was all over the news. Some called it terrorism or cold blooded murder. Others alluded to Robin Hood or even John Dillinger. How ironic. While I would agree that like Dillinger, I am also a Depression-era criminal, I'd rather surrender or be shot rather than shoot at law enforcement. And I'm not taking the money but shooting at the guys who are.

If anything, I'd go with twisting a line from Candide by Voltaire -- "in this country, it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others." Of course instead of "admiral" I mean captains of the financial industry and "by encourage" I mean "wise up." R.I.P. Admiral Byng.

So what form should my next act of encouragement take?

First Blood - Part 7

Damn, what happened to my air? My thoughts raced over both what caused this and what I should do next?.  How could all the air have leaked out that fast without my noticing?  With no more air I would have to continue on the surface and if the police weren't checking the water, I'd be okay.  Or should I head directly to shore, walk back and hope for no searchers there.   I was about a mile and a half to two miles from my pack and hiking gear and another 2 miles to the car.  I could walk that in less than 2 hours.  It was just about 8 o'clock so I still had lots of time.  It would stay dark until at least 4:30 in the morning.

Doh, I'm such an idiot.  I wasn't out of air.  I just hadn't opened the air valve on the tank.   I reached back to turn the valve knob and Mr. Murphy kicked in again with a sharp, vicious cramp in my right shoulder.  I put my arm back down and wiggled the shoulder.  Damn, it was a bad one.  I should have figured this would be likely to happen from being cold and tired.   I wiggled out of the BC, opened the valve, then struggled back in.  It hurt like hell when I tried to move into position with the dive scooter.

Time for plan B.  Definitely nothing fancy. Just back to basics - an energy boosting snack.  I pulled off my left glove and then pulled an energy gel packet out of the fanny pack and sucked it down.  These normally taste like crap but right now I was like a baby on a teat.  It was pretty amazing how quickly I could feel the sugars kicking in.   While it took the edge off my shoulder cramp, the muscle was tightly knotted.  Still, I could now hold position on the dive scooter.  I dumped some air from the BC, ditched the ditch duffle and resumed scootering.

My scooter battery died before I ran out of air. It was almost 9 o'clock and I was about half a mile and half an hour away.  I still had plenty of time. I could have crawled to my hiking gear with the time I had left.  So it was more a question of what would look more suspicious - me walking on shore in a wet suit and running into someone or being spotted by helicopter snorkeling at night, alone and not using a dive light.

I decided to stay in the water and swim for it.  The exercise would warm me up.  I unstrapped the fanny pack and then ditched the scooter.
I also figured I'd use up my remaining air now and then ditch the tank and BC and snorkel the rest of the way in.  This way the tank and BC would end up in deeper water further from shore.  I sucked the second tank dry about 10 minutes later and dumped it and the BC.

I took a break and had another energy gel.  In retrospect I should have slurped one of these about half an hour after I hit the water.  With more energy, I might not have forgotten to open the air valve and avoided the cramp. Bah. Coulda Woulda Shoulda.   I made it to shore at 10:23.  It was dead quiet all around.  Nothing on shore and I didn't see anything in the air.   I swam back out a couple of hundred feet and ditched my diving mask then came ashore.

I circled around to my shore gear and everything still looked clear.  I hunkered down by my pack, pulled out some energy bars and ate them. 
I pulled off my hood, rinsed off my face, toweled off and put on a hat.  Then I jogged in place to build up some body heat.  If I wasn't such a wuss about the cold, I would have changed out of the wetsuit right away and become the weekend hiker.  I finally stopped fooling around and squirmed out of the wet suit and into dry clothes.  I still had an extend session of the deep shivers and sure enough several days later I would be sick in bed with a head cold.

My next task was to dispose of the wetsuit and fins.  I couldn't just throw them in the ocean.  The wet suit was too buoyant and while the fins would sink, with all that surface area I could see them getting pushed ashore eventually.  I considered burying them, and even coming back weeks later to recover them (I told you I'm a cheap bastard) but I decided to ditch the fins in the water but burn the wetsuit. The tradeoffs never end - do this or that - which branch of the decision tree would lower the odds of my coming under suspicion or leaving traceable evidence?

If a dive mask or swim fins washes up on shore, hey somebody must have dropped them or they fell off a boat -- that happens.  But an entire wetsuit floating ashore, that's kind of odd.  It also gives a fairly good size of the owner and perhaps even some DNA.   And how odd is it if someone finds a wetsuit buried in the ground?  How accidental is that?  That can't be accidental.  It's a sure sign someone was trying to hiding something.

So I sliced up the wetsuit, put the bits in a trash bag, then gathered some driftwood and built a campfire.  Yeah, the fire gives away my position, but I'm just an innocent camper who got cold and has nothing to hide.  Fortunately there was a gentle breeze blowing out to sea so no one on shore would smell burnt rubber.   About  45 minutes later almost everything was gone.  I just needed to pick out the metal remnants when the fire cooled off.   I ate some more food, real food, and I was ready go to sleep.    I hadn't dwelled very much on today's events while I was in the water but my thoughts would catch up with me while I slept and over the next few days.  And I wasn't sure how it would ultimately settle and what I would do next...

First Blood - Part 6

I reloaded the rifle then gathered the 12 empty shell casings laying on the thin plastic sheet I had laid down, wadded it up and headed back down to the dive gear.  I didn't hear or see anyone nearby. 

I put the 2 ammo boxes and the cell phone in my SCUBA buoyancy compensator vest pockets.  The balled up plastic sheet with empty brass went into my "ditch" duffle and I laid the rifle on top of it for now.  I checked the SCUBA tank air pressure, took one breath off the regulator then put the BC vest on and then my face mask. My swim fins were bungeed to the dive scooter and a small fanny pack holding my wetsuit hood and gloves was also strapped on.  My car and house key were around my neck on a cord along with a compass and flashlight.

I put the rifle on safe then put it in the "ditch" duffle which also held my second SCUBA tank and zipped it up.  My bike was laying on the ground and I hooked the duffle carry grips on the bike handle bars.  I moved the dive scooter so the back end was near the bike seat and the front end by the handle bars.  Then I stood the bike up while cradling and guiding the dive scooter and this also lifted the ditch duffle off the ground.  I took a quick look around then awkwardly pushed the bike down to the rocky beach.

I rolled into the water and stopped when I was chest deep. I looked and listened again -- nothing. I leaned the bike and scooter against me, took off my face mask and put my arm throught the strap.  I took the wetsuit hood out of the fanny pack and put it on then put my mask back on followed by the gloves.  I picked up the regulator, put it in my mouth and then started walking again.  About 30 seconds later I was underwater and finally feeling safe.  I kept walking and pushing the bike for another 5 minutes until I was in about 20 feet of water.  I pulled the ditch duffle off the handle bars and clipped the grab handle on the end of the duffle onto my BC.  I ditched the bike and cell phone, gripped the dive scooter, turned it on and started cruising away on a course of 160 degrees.

I maintained a depth of about 20 feet for 15 minutes then slowly angled up to about 10 feet and turned off the scooter and listened.  I didn't hear any boat motors.  Now if I was jinxed and truly unlucky, I'd get nailed by either a sailboat on a night sail or come smack center under a helicopter.  I turned the scooter back on, angled up to the surface, stuck my head out and checked my position relative to the lights on shore .  I was heading pretty much as expected so I submerged again and continued on my original course and speed but a bit shallower at 15 feet. After 30  minutes I surfaced for another position check and a sky scan.  All good so damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.


I had a 90 cubic foot SCUBA tank on my back and another in the duffle that I was cradling with my legs. I needed to go about 3 miles and if I traveled at about 1 knot for 3 hours that should do it.  My air consumption would increase as I got cold and tired so I figured I'd just cruise closer to the surface to make the tank last longer.   At 45 minutes total, I was about half way through my first tank which was pretty much on plan and it looked like I was about right for distance traveled too.  I hope my scooter battery would go the distance.  At this point stopped and ditched my rifle.  Several minutes later I dumped the 2 ammo boxes.

I emptied the first tank at 80 minutes which was about 10 minutes sooner than I would have liked.  To do the tank switch, I clipped the dive scooter tether to my BC, surfaced then puffed enough air into the BC so everything would float if it got away from me.

I shucked off the BC, undid the tank strap and let the tank, regulator and gauge sink away.  I pulled the second tank out, slipped it into the BC, secured the strap and wiggled it back on.   I put this regulator to my mouth and sucked.   Nothing.  Crap this regulator was the same as the one I just ditched.  I took a look at the air pressure gauge - zero.  Mr. Murphy had finally caught up with me...