The definite article.

Good news! After checking with the editor of Concealed Carry Magazine, we were able to add the following blurb to the BBTI homepage:

Magazine Coverage

The April 2009 edition of Concealed Carry Magazine (the member’s publication of the US Concealed Carry Association) contained a great article on the BBTI project.  With the permission of the editor, the entire article is available here in pdf format.

If you’re not a member of the USCCA, here’s a chance to check out the full article, complete with images.

Jim Downey

700,000

Well, April is already as good as March was, and sometime in about three or four days we’ll break 700,000 hits to the site. The Concealed Carry Magazine article clearly has had an impact, and has boosted overall daily hits by about 50%. Unfortunately, the article isn’t available online, so I am going to see whether arrangements can be made for us to repost it on Bbti.

I had promised to start giving some preliminary data from our latest sequence of tests, thinking that it would likely be several months before we had all the data crunched and be ready to make a major upgrade to the Bbti site. But Steve is working hard on getting the data compiled, and thinks that it may only be another week or so before he is done with that. With luck, we’ll be able to do the upgrade *much* sooner than I thought! So I’m going to hold off a bit – there’s no reason for me to muck around with the data (not my forte) and risk getting some bad information posted. Just be a bit more patient, and soon we’ll have it all available: .327 Magnum, .41 Magnum, 10mm and a huge addition to the “real world” data points for all the calibers.

And bets on how long it takes to break a million hits, once we do the upgrade? I bet it’ll happen within a month!

Cheers!

Jim Downey

The big list.

When we did the original round of tests, we used one or two ‘real world’ pistols for each caliber as a reference point for people to compare to the ideal platform of the T/C Encore. We thought that this would be adequate. But it quickly became evident that a lot of people wanted more data points of how ‘real world’ guns would compare at different barrel lengths.

So one of the major goals of this most recent round of testing was to revisit those calibers we had tested last year using a lot more ‘real world’ guns. In preparation for the testing, we started asking around from friends and family, until we had over 40 additional guns to test, in different lengths and quality. Here is that list:

Para LDA Carry 9 – 9mm, 3” barrel
Korth semi-auto – 9mm, 5″ barrel
Beretta 92 FS – 9mm, 4.875” barrel
Kimber Target ll 1911 – 9mm, 5” barrel
Sig P210 Target Heavy Frame – 9mm, 6” barrel
DSA TP-9 – 9mm, 6″ barrel
Beretta Cx4 Storm – 9mm, 16″ barrel
Kel Tec Sub-2000 – 9mm, 16″ barrel
Special Weapons MP5 Clone – 9mm, 16″ barrel

Infinity – .357 Sig, 6″ barrel

Bond Texas Defender – .357 Mag, 3” barrel
Colt Detective Special – .38 Special, 2.125” barrel
Smith & Wesson 627-3 – .357 Mag, 5” wo brake / 5.625” with brake
Korth revolver – .357 Mag, 5.875” barrel
Winchester Model 94AE – .357 Mag, 16” barrel
Stoeger Buntline – .357 Mag, 18” barrel

Beretta 96 Elite ll Brigadier – .40 S&W, 4 1/2” barrel
Rocky Mountain Armoury Sphinx – .40 S&W, 4 1/2” barrel
Browning Hi-Power – .40 S&W, 4 5/8” barrel
Ruger PC4 Carbine – .40 S&W, 16″ barrel

Bond Arms “Texas Defender” Derringer – .44 Mag, 3″ barrel
Smith & Wesson 629-5 Mountain Packer (ported) – .44Mag, 3” barrel
Smith & Wesson 629-5 Performance Center – .44 Mag, 4 7/8” wo brake 5 5/8” with brake
Smith & Wesson Model 629 Classic – .44 Mag 6 1/2”
Smith & Wesson Model 629 – .44 Mag, 12” barrel
Henry Golden Boy – .44 Mag, 20” barrel

Smith & Wesson Model 325PD (Airlite) – .45 ACP Revolver, 2 1/2″ barrel
Bond Texas Defender – .45 ACP, 3” barrel
Para LDA PDA – .45 ACP, 3” barrel
Beretta Model 8045 Cougar – .45 ACP, 3.625” barrel
Ed Brown 1911 – .45 ACP, 6” barrel
Group IND UZI – .45 ACP, 16″ barrel
Kahr Thompson – .45 ACP, 16″ barrel
Vector Arms Kriss Super V – .45 ACP, 16″ barrel
La France M16 – .45 ACP, 16″ barrel

Bond Derringer – .45 Colt/.410, 3 1/2” barrel
Navy Arms Schofield – .45 Colt, 3 1/2” barrel
Cimarron (Uberti) Colt – .45 Colt, 5 1/2” barrel
Cimarron (Uberti) Colt – .45 Colt, 7 1/2” barrel
Beretta Stampede Buntline Carbine – .45 Colt, 18” barrel
1892 Winchester Lever Action Rifle (reproduction) – .45 Colt, 20″ octagonal barrel

Quite a list, eh?

Jim Downey

New round of testing completed.

As I mentioned the other day, this last weekend was the next round of testing for the Bbti project. We finished up in good form yesterday, after completing the ‘chop tests’ of three new calibers (.327 Magnum, .41 Magnum, and 10mm) as well as revisiting many of the previously tested ammos with a bunch (like over 40) of new ‘real world’ guns. There are some very interesting results already evident in the raw data, some of which I will be discussing informally here in the coming weeks until we get everything crunched and posted formally on the main Bbti website.

But not for a day or two. As I told a friend this morning: “My hands feel like they have been pounded with hammers for the last week.” Just doing this much typing is very painful.

So, until later . . .

Jim Downey

(Cross posted to Communion of Dreams.)

Double February

I just checked the stats for March – we did almost 105,000 hits in just that month alone, which was double what we did in February.  Helped along by this surge, of course, which I found was in large part due to a posting (which I still haven’t found) on the AR-15 forum.  Which brings us to within 15,000 hits of 600,000!  Depending on how the response to the article in Concealed Carry Magazine goes, I won’t be surprised if we break a million hits before this summer.  As Jim K said:

Wow!! I still find it hard to believe just how right you were about the amount of interest in our beer bet

Heh!

So, cheers to all who have helped to spread the word!

Jim Downey