Bilge pump or bucket?

Getting back to a bit of a nautical theme I submitted a 'Myth' to the famous Mythbusters yesterday. So, for the record, here it is. I hope they test this one out.

On a sinking boat is a bucket better than a bilge pump?

There's an old sailor's axiom that states: 'On a sinking boat there's no better bilge pump than a frightened sailor with a bucket.'

I think it would be a fair test with a hand powered bilge pump (Whale type/bicycle type) and a 2 quart (2 litre) milk jug cut into a bucket (common). Some of the major variables would be:

1. The size of the boat
2. The size of the hole in the boat
3. The depth below waterline of the hole in the boat
4. The physical capability (fitness) of the sailors

Reference:  Boat flooding rate in gpm

http://www.whsyc.org/Flooding/Flooding.html

Secondary question would be 'how long can you keep your boat afloat? For instance if you were flooding at the maximum capacity of your particular bilge pump. Would you have enough time to get to shore if you were say 1 NM from shore?

Reference: Different types of bilge pumps that could be used.

A Whale manual bilge pump. Capacity: 89 L/m (19.5 g/m) @ 60 strokes per minute

A typical 'bicycle type' bilge pump. 0.5l per stroke and 673mm in length, approx. 30 - 40 lt per minute.

A milk jug bailer. Unknown capacity.

I retired in November of 2012 after almost 33 years in the Canadian Coast Guard. My time is now spent building a 31' diesel trawler and that's the reason I thought this would make a great myth to test (or bust). Wouldn't it be great if you could enlist the help of some US vs Canadian Coast Guard Cadets making it into a bit of a competition?  :-)

Thanks for producing the best shows on TV. I've been a fan since episode #1 and will be until the bitter end! I would give my eye teeth to be there to see this myth tested! (hint hint)

Yours Aye!

Lil' too chilly to be playing outside today

So back into the indoor range with the air rifle. I moved the shooters box all the way back to the 25 yd mark this time. I was reasonably sighted in at about 17.5 yds before. Here's the shooters box we have to use.

It's on wheels so you use a pallet jack and move it fwd/bkwd to the desired distance. There's only two shooting lanes. The rest of the facility is for archery. This is a new facility only opened after the new year. Doesn't get used much by shooters because of the requirement for non-toxic ammo. The pellets I've been using are lead free Stoeger's. They cost 2.5 times as much as .22's. *scratching head*

The view from inside the shooters box. At 25 yds I can't see where the pellets hit the paper so that's why there's binoc's there! ;-)  The black foam thingies are something I found in the basement out of a laptop box and use them as a gun rest. They work ok and were the right price! :-)

Here's the results. Five shots at each target.

I shot them in order. A&B were pretty decent with one dropping way down on target B. Shots at C went a lot to the left for some reason. I think the scope is moving around quite a bit. I tightened it up and made a few adjustments and got back on track with D. If I can stay that consistent with this cheap air rifle & scope at this range I'll be happy.

The ole' Gunslinger

The ole' Gunslinger, Yosemite Sam, still had some fight in him but his six-shooters couldn't match the modern semi-automatic technology!  :-)

I was a lil' wonky off the start, I knew the pistol was shooting high so I adjusted the sights all the way down and got much better results.

I was running the Federal American Eagles again today and got quite a few hiccups. A lot failed to eject and more failed to feed. I ran a magazine of CCI Blazers through the pistol and it worked perfectly. The difference is the Blazers are lubricated the Eagles aren't. The next few magazines I loaded I put in 8 Eagles and topped it off with two Blazers. This seemed to work perfectly. I'll make some inquiries to see if guys actually lubricate their ammunition.

Less than a week to go before Spring officially arrives. Standby..... 

I give up!

Mother Nature's sending us another 12" of snow over the next day or so. :-(

A quick trip to the range

Temps appeared to be ok, 0 deg C. But man was it damp. I was there for about half an hour and my poor ole' knees started to ache!

I wanted to test out some ammo that I have. Three different kinds. I had had some issues with the Winchester X-22 ammo not working too well in my pistol and just picked up 1000 rounds of Federal American Eagle .22's.

I shot 40 rounds of each kind I had. Left to right:  CCI Blazers, Winchester X-22 & Federal American Eagle.

I was a little farther back than usual and wasn't really shooting for accuracy. I was trying to see which ammo seems to work best in my pistol. The results of this 120 round test are:

The CCI's worked perfectly, no FTL, no FTE no FTF
The Winchester X-22, 2 FTL, 3 FTE and 1 FTF
The Federal American Eagle, 2 FTL, 2 FTE no FTF

Legend:  FTL - Failed to Load, FTE - Failed to Eject, FTF - Failed to Fire

I was expecting more from the Federal Ammo hoping it would be comparable to the CCI Blazers. I'm going to try the same test tomorrow with my rifle and see how it goes.