helotaxi

I won't provide my opinion of those guys. If that's what you want, congrats!

You do mean "Security Forces" when you say SF, right? That is the standard AF usage of those two letters. There is a Tactical Security Element here as well. They work the convoys/patrols for OSI when they are out doing their thing, if that's more your style...I work with those guys a decent amount, too. They have a detachment IN my office.

The Dan Wesson Razorback was resurrected in 10mm as well; Kimber makes one, too. As far as the Kimber warranty thing, yep that's BS. That would explain why every dealer I've seen that carrys Kimber keeps one in stock (that's not for sale) and places the order for the customer's gun when the gun is purchased. I've heard of problems with every brand of gun mentioned, FWIW. Have a big enough sample population and the problems will show up. Of course you rarely hear from the satisfied customers, it's the small percentage that have problem that tell the world. It's that way with everything. Heard of lots of problems with a lot of the S&W handguns though I've heard also that they've fixed most of their QC issues. A compact M&P is on my short list of 9mm's. Taurus has a bit of a reputation for inconsistency. A weapon from them is usually either superb or a total POS. I've been considering one of the 24/7 OSS 9s as well as one of their 1911s but I'll do more some more research to see what kind of problems have been cropping up especially since the PT 1911 is so new. I know that the first several batches of the OSS in .45 had some serious feed problems (magazine related). The nice thing about Taurus is that they will make it right, the bad thing is that it might take a LONG time. I would say regardless, do some research on the gun forums. You do have to take a lot of what you read on there with a grain of salt because each of the boards has their sacred brand and their pariah brand just like the car audio forums. Find the size a caliber weapon that you want and then start doing research. in all honesty, it's pretty hard to go genuinely wrong with any of the big name makers anymore. After the purchase, if you're planning on carrying the gun wring it out pretty good. Run some good ammo through it to make sure that it will cycle reliably (at least 100 round preferably more). Then run some of the ammo you plan to carry through it to make sure that it shoots where you aim and cycles well. Disassemble and inspect the stressed parts several times during this process. This is where any casting/forging flaws will appear. The gun should still be under warranty at this point so take it back and let the maker make it right. Check all your mags for reliability as well; the gun may be perfect but insert a crappy mag and even the best guns become little more than expensive, short awkward clubs.

I was planning to order one if for no other reason than to play with it. Vas is fairly to simple to test with something like that IIRC. Simply a matter of loading it into a known enclosure and seeing how the parameters shift from the free-air parameters.

There's nothing wrong with them and the level of radiated noise in the car environment is a joke. For the price (the Knu Klarity's are some of the cheapest on the market), I don't see how you could beat them. I'm trying to figure out what the big deal is on this actually. They are twisted pair, right? If the shielding were grounded, it COULD in fact act like an antenna if the amp were to use differential inputs. Anything picked up by the shield could then be referenced with the audio signal and turned into noise. Of course the issue of radiated noise in the car, like I said, is a joke.

^^^Yup. We've got a detatchment sitting right outside my office actually.

Fan of the Kimbers myself. They're hard to beat for the money. Can you get a nicer 1911? Sure, but you're looking at a about 2x the coin for it. The likes of a Wilson Combat, Novak Custom, Dan Wesson or Les Baer is going to run you upward of 2 large. The difference is only in the accuracy department and the Kimbers are more than accurate enough as a defensive carry weapon. I also like tha fact that Kimber makes compact 1911s in 9mm. The single stack STIs are really nice 1911s, as well, for a pretty good price. The double stacks cost a lot. As far as pure reliability, Sig Sauer is really hard to beat. They even make a 1911 now.

Not implying that there was anything functional about the dustcap/cone, just that it looked cool. Just like the flatcone As looked cool.

My truck was also about 10yrs old when I got it cut up. Wouldn't dream of doing that with my new truck. There's still not a firm date on the BMs as far as I know. I'm waiting for them for my truck, I'm about 99% sure, though.

Find Star Tracks, Bachbusters and Time Warp from Telarc. I have Time Warp and find myself flinching for the safety of my subs with some of the low frequency content.

Thanks, guys.

I'm at Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan. I wish we had "sand" here. Just talcum powder dust.

The FBI ballisitics protocols: http://www.greent.com/40Page/general/fbitest.htm The expansion properties of .45 JHP rounds (or lack thereof) was discussed in this month's issue of Combat Handguns. Other than the Barnes X-bullet (loaded by CorBon only unless you reload) the basic concensus is that the normal .45 JHP simply doesn't move fast enough to reliably expand, that this is made worse by using a short barrel handgun, but that the round itself is large enough that it doesn't need to expand much. There is a reason that John Browning made the 1911 with a 5" barrel. There was an article a few months ago in Handgunner (gun mags are about the only reading material that I can get over here) talking about the history of the bad rep that the 9mm has for being a manstopper and how that was all based on a single recent incident (where you could see through the assailant he had been shot so many times, ie a shotgun blast wouldn't have stopped him either) and the ineffectiveness of the 9mm FMJ (terrible about through-and-through wounds but no worse than .45 FMJ) and older ammo designs. The bottom line of that article was that with modern ammo the 9mm has a street record about 1% lower (most effective load to most effective load) than the .45 ACP in achieving 1 shot stops. Both are in the mid 90% range.

Depends on how low you tune the box. Most rap doesn't have very low bass in it.

^^^Gonna guess cooling...if the inner section of that is neodymium with a ceramic magnet around it, you can't tell me that the gap isn't far beyond saturated long before the ceramic magnet is added. I'm not an expert but if there is any neo in that motor, I'm gonna go ahead and say that it was wasted. I will say that the cones look cool.

You'd have to hack the toolbox up pretty good to get that to work, but that could be an option. I just had a tonneau cover and that took care of hiding it. Another option is to wait until the Stereo Integrity BM subs come out. They should fit behind the seat no problem. They won't be as loud as the L7s but they'll sound night and day better and should have pretty good output, especially considering that they're only 3.5" deep and only need a half cubic foot or airspace to work optimally.

Depends on what you think i meant you were compensating for, now doesn't it? I could have meant your ability to hit your target... And the second directly contributes to the first and really is the crux of my argument. If the gun is going to be easily concealable and light enough for all-day carry, chambering it in a heavy caliber doesn't make the most snese from the point of view of being able to deal with the recoil and shoot the gun accurately. You don't develop the skills needed to survive and do the right thing in a very stressful situation by seeking out stressful situations and hoping that you survive them to gain the experience. You survive by honing the basic skills in a fairly low stress (or at least low threat) environment to the point that drawing, aiming and shooting to desired point of aim is reflex, not conscious act. So am I, but I'm still going to fire two to center of mass regardless of the weapon that I'm shooting. The most important part of achieving a one shot stop is hitting the target on the first shot. The only way that will happen is with practice. If the weapon is not conducive to the amount of practice needed, it doesn't matter if it's a .50AE it will be a crappy weapon to rely on. Ammo that I carry is one thing, I may never use a round of that except to confirm that the gun will feed it well. Ammo that I practice with is a totally different story, I want it to be cheap. Cheaper the ammo the more practice I can afford to get. The moe practice I can get the more reliable I'll be in a high stress situation. If you can't at least think clearly enough under stress to pick your point of aim, you don't need to be carrying a weapon. Hitting the point of aim, trigger control and the rest should be practiced to the point of reflex. Actually for REAL situations, the 9mm is MORE than adequate for 95% of the situations. The guys that use a handgun and rely on it for their life regularly in combat always use a full size gun as their primary handgun. It is usually chambered in .45 or .40. Notice that I said it was full sized. In a full sized weapon, yeah, I'll take a .45 every day and twice on Sunday. In a full sized/weight weapon, the .45 ACP cartridge is very controllable. Reduce the siz/weight of the weapon and the story changes dramatically. Guys that carry backup (cops) carry a smaller gun chambered for a smaller cartridge. Why? because it has enough power for an emergency (which is the only time it will be used...just like a concealed carry piece) and it has the right combination of being easy to conceal and still manageable to shoot. Good 9mm hollowpoints are actually less likely to overpenetrate than .45. They expand more violently and expand to a greater extend compared to their original size than a .45 round which actually don't expand very well at all because of their low velocity. If you don't practice, for whatever reason and don't hit what you're shooting at, overpenetration is moot.Everyone has to choose what's right for them. I feel a lot better about my ability to stop a fight (should I be unfortunate enough to get into one) with a weapon that I'm comfortable shooting and have practiced enough with to be able to reliably hit what I'm shooting at every time. It just so happens that for a compact carry gun, that pretty much rules out most of the .45s on the market. I have a full size 1911 .45 that I love and while I have a big enough frame to conceal it and it's comfortable to shoot and combined with a .22 conversion kit, it's cheap to practice with, it's too heavy to carry regularly. My dad has a Glock 21 .45. It's full sized and I still hate shooting it. It shoots nicely enough with a full magazine but once the mag starts to empty out, it ceases to be nice to shoot, the CG of the weapon shifts way up and muzzle flip gets ridiculous. A Glock 9mm (as much as I dislike the Glocks anyway) doesn't suffer from the same problem. FOR ME, a compact carry piece in 9mm is the right balance. It has enough power to stop a fight and it can be packaged such that it is small and light enough to carry all the time (that's the point, right?) and still be easy enough to shoot that you practice with it regularly, not to mention that 9mm ammo is less than 50% the cost of .45 or .40.

Ain't exactly pleasant here. Around 120. At least it isn't humid, though the place I'm headed next week is. It also cools off at night and my shift runs well into the night/early morning. Actually nice when I get off work. Now if the wind would just quit blowing and the dust would die down...

Important to note that "flanged" and "flared" are not even remotely the same. Flanged means that the end of the port is flush with a flat surface like an outside face of the box, whereas a free end is just the port sticking out into space like the open end of a PVC port inside a box withnothing around it. Flared means that there is a flare (like the bell on a trumpet) on one or both ends of the port. There are equations for that as well and they are somewhere in this forum. I built a fairly simple Excel spreadsheet for flared port calcs that DevilDriver hosted somewhere. Again there should be a link in that thread.

Refresh my memory on the term "vertical biamplifying" please.

As long as you don't play a lot of loud material well below the tuning freq, nothing happens. Depending on the sub, nothing will happen anyway. I've only run ported boxes recently and I've yet to really use a infrasonic filter (you're welcome Neil). I've had sealed enclosures where the sub was more likely to bottom on really low stuff than most of the ported boxes I've used.

MDF is not very strong at all. It's used for enclosures because it is easy to cut and shape, has a uniform density, is pretty acoustically inert and is cheap. Birch ply is lighter and stronger. The good stuff has most of the good properties of MDF as well other than the "cheap" thing.

Like I said on CA.com, you're either gonna have to be really short so you can slide the seat ALL the way forward or you have to cut. I had 6 10s in a reg cab Ranger many years ago and it took a LOT of cutting. Basically gave up the front 18" of my bed.

And unavailable for the foreseeable future. That paragraph contradicts itself. You state that the goal is "pure SPL" but you also state that you want SQ. The two are not the same. Which is it? 2 10s ported should give you the output that you want and the box only needs to be 11" high. Pick up a pair of CVRs or Comps and tune them failry high (for both more output and a smaller port and smaller box). They'll not sound very good but they'll be fairly loud. If you want SQ that can get fairly loud, you need cone area, and it sounds like you don't have the room for that.

You forgot running the power wire and RCA's on the opposite sides of the car Well that's obvious... Don't forget that you have to keep the ground wire aboslutely as short as possible and you have to spend at least $100 per RCA and a line driver makes your amp not have to work as hard...