Bloghorn

PA EMT-B Certification

Damn straight.

Now I have to find somewhere to volunteer around here…

A couple months ago, one of the guys on the Cavalry Arms competition team was talking to me and telling me about how much fun he was having running a tactical rifle competition team. He showed me some videos of past competitions, and I was extremely interested.I have shot competitively in the Olympic style before, with stationary targets and stiff jackets, but having to coordinate moving, shooting, communication with 3 other guys, and solving problems as they came along seemed like a challenge I couldn’t pass up.

Here are a couple of the videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN_ycVrJGGY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SvMdcA0fp4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQxy5bGKQPg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTIhhOny4gM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxGNAMRxh5w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMHB7oaeWS8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNiH3-xstps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb5-BrDBR5E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLs4Rv8OHIw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGDO5Fe9n2c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BytWr0P1XnI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOaAcUef3Y4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15lxtkIaHew

One week later, I had organized not one, not two, but three full teams for a competition in Texas coming up in March. With 4 guys on each team, our 12 man group came up with the name “Awful Shooting Squad,” registered for the competition, and started practicing.

"Harry," the A.S.S. mascot

My team in the squad is the Pennsylvania team, so named because all of the members are from Pennsylvania or adjacent states. The other teams, Texas and Team USA, are also composed of geographically similar individuals, but none of them seem to have been able to organize a practice session yet.

The PA team relax after a day on the range

The plan is to leave Thursday morning from State College, PA. From there, we drive the 23 hours to Waco, Texas, where the competition is being held. Friday afternoon, we take some time to practice on the range, and then check into the hotel. The competition runs from Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon, which puts the team back in State College Monday evening.

At least, that’s the plan.

One of the nice things about being in an EMT class at Penn State is that we do awesome things with the local crews. Like today, one of the local fire companies cut cars apart for us in the morning to demonstrate how to gain access during a motor vehicle accident, and then in the afternoon we set up a landing zone and had the local medic helicopter come in and land. Here are some pictures of us hanging around the copter and talking to the pilot.

This past weekend was the WWII weekend at the Collings Foundation in Stow, MA. The Collings Foundation owns  grass airstrip west of Boston and does a WWII weekend every year. This year, for the very first time, they included Soviet troops in their battle, and invited the 3rd Rifle Div. to come and play.

Throughout the weekend, we put on 4 staged battles for the public, including Nazi and American armor, airplanes, and other vehicles. We also sat around in camp and talked to the public about our knowledge of WWII.

I was looking around trying to remember what news articles I’ve been in recently, and so to save myself from having to do it again in the future I figured I’d post them here.

Daily Collegian

• Nintendo doesn’t earn green approval
• Members of new club learn art of lock picking
• Traveling preachers draw ire

IST / Penn State Official News

• IST Student Examines New York City Taxi System
• Penn State Amateur Radio celebrates 100 years of transmission

News about HOPE talk

• IST Student Examines New York City Taxi System
• HOPE conference highlights everyday hacking
• 2600 HOPE conference bringing hacking to New York City
• The Last HOPE, Part 4 of 4

Other news articles

• Not all podcasts are worth the time