0) Insufficient adoption as currency. Early adopters cash-out, bubble bursts, speculators lose out, everybody forgets about BTC. The biggest hurdle here is the natural deflationary nature of BTC, which motivates people to hold rather than spend them. Merchants are strongly motivated to accept a deflationary currency because their goods will retain their current value but the currency will be worth more tomorrow, but merchants won’t get any BTC if nobody is willing to spend them.

1) Widespread adoption: 10% of world cash currency transactions replaced with BitCoin, 1% of world wealth stored as BitCoin holdings. Target price (current USD): $1000-$1,000,000 per BTC. Obviously this is what speculators are hoping for, but it’s quite a gamble what the target is and when it might happen (if at all).

2) Black market adoption for cash-only workers, drugs, weapons, slave trade, and other questionable activities. 10% of black-market transactions conducted via BitCoin. Target price: about $1000 per BTC. Obviously the purveyors of BitCoin would rather not be associated strictly with organized crime, that sort of thing gets you fined, locked up, or worse (see e-gold for an example).

3) Government buys up a large amount of the BitCoin money supply like gold has been (Ft Knox). Rampant deflation and market instability, currency is no longer immune to fractional reserve banking because it’s effectively controlled by a government. The act of buying up enough BTC off the market to gain a controlling stake would drive the price up and cripple supply for transactions, but it would also enrich with USD the current holders of BTC; maybe 25% of the market would be enough, so about 5 million BTC which could be bought at current prices for only $100M which is chump change to the US government, but obviously the cost increases as the market shrinks and it could cost a few billion USD to corner the market. The government could take other actions to shut down trading and production of BTC, but that boat may have already sailed.

4) Cryptographic attacks on “work” algorithm. Effectively counterfeit BitCoins could be produced by clients doing an unbalanced amount of work, which would cause inflation for non-counterfeiters and market instability when they are introduced to the market. If the attack were publicized or widely adopted, it would be integrated into the work expectation and the network would re-normalize.

5) Social or cryptographic attacks on transactions or holdings (transaction signing, wallet store, man-in-middle, etc). Market instability, loss of trust in currency, hyperinflation. There is no central or accountable authority for BTC. If someone steals or peeks into your BTC wallet, they are free to spend its entire contents in an irreversible and potentially untraceable way, perhaps just sending it all to themselves at a newly-generated address (or multiple new addresses) which could then be laundered and anonymized. Worse results would occur if the transaction signing mechanism were compromised and collisions could be generated.

6) A competing e-currency gains more market share than BitCoin. This could be as simple as a shadow BTC2 network with tweaked rules like a higher asymptotic production limit, faster/slower production peak, etc. It may be non-deflationary or offer other characteristics which give it greater intrinsic value as a store of wealth or better qualities as a currency of exchange.

I’ve also thought of some more detailed problems since my previous post:

• Mining productivity has a discontinuous rate over time, and this will test the market for block mining when the first reward decrease occurs (from 50 BTC per block to 25, anticipated sometime in 2012 when half of the BTC asymptote has been reached).
• Anonymity is not as simple as advertised. All transactions are stored in the global history and can be traced from one address to another. Obscuring transfers and ownership requires paying fees to move money around, and source transfers from other currency can potentially be traced by subpoena.
• Mining work is only internally valuable, unlike real metal coins, commodities, or services like password hash cracking.
• Wallet is totally unsecured on a computer without specific action by the user (and maybe even then if a debugger is attached).
• Having a single copy of your wallet compromised can mean all your money disappears without a trace.
• Transaction verification time (at least 10 minutes) is too long for reliable practical use. If you don’t wait for verification, the “double-spend” problem is easily exploited.
• Lack of physical medium is a blow against total adoption.
• Loans are difficult to imagine in a deflationary currency, and difficult to exercise (or abuse) in a fixed-reserve currency system. Borrowing 1 BTC @ $100USD and paying back 1.1 BTC @ $200USD is not appealing to a borrower, and a negative interest rate is unappealing to a lender. Perhaps loans will simply be unappealing until the price volatility is reduced.
• Usability of a hash address is pretty terrible. Bank account ACH transfers are about 20 numerical digits, PayPal uses email-addresses, and money orders are sent to physical house addresses. All of those are far easier for a human to remember and use.

For the record, I’m currently shy to the trading market due to extreme volatility and cumbersome barriers to entry (for converting other currency into or out of BTC), but I’m investing a little bit in a mining pool. A few dollars on my electric bill will hardly go noticed if the bottom drops out, but if I can hold onto 10+ BTC and the price continues to rise then I’ll be feeling pretty happy.

Resources:

http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/bitcoin-what-s-it-backed-by

http://falkvinge.net/2011/06/04/bitcoins-four-hurdles-part-one-usability/

http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin

How do they work?

• Visit bitcoin.org for the semi-official description. Here’s my take…
• BitCoins are produced at a fixed (predictable and dwindling) rate over time by computing cryptographic hashes of various “difficulty”. One “successful” hash block is expected every 10 minutes.
• Transactions of BitCoins are conducted by signing some data with public and private keys, where the public key is used to announce the new owner, and the private key is used to renounce existing ownership. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transactions
• A successful hash block stores all of the transactions which have transpired in the intervening 10 minutes. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Blocks
• Transactions and successful hash blocks are shared over a peer-to-peer network so they can be “verified” and the next block must refer back to a previous successful hash block, creating a “chain” of transaction histories.
• All machines on the network are racing to complete a successful hash, because they get the 50 BitCoins produced by it. GPUs are faster at hashing than CPUs, but a lone machine is quite unlikely to win the hash lottery; pools of shared machines have cropped up, where many machines cooperate to find a successful hash and then share the output proportionally among the pool members. http://bitcoinx.com/profit/
• The cost of producing a successful hash changes over time according to the hash rate of the network as a whole. A single machine may produce the first million bitcoins over the course of a year, but the next million may consume the resources of a million machines for a whole year, and the next million could be produced by a single machine again (although that last possibility is highly unlikely).

Beneficial Aspects

• Low or no transaction fees
  • Relative to credit cards, which charge at least 3% of the value of the transaction
  • Hash-computing machines may charge transaction fees on all or unusual transactions, of an arbitrary amount
• Potentially anonymous transactions
  • Transactions can be scattered across sender and recipient addresses which make it difficult to trace the owners of the sending and receiving addresses
  • Supposedly useful for buying goods and services on the internet (although the seller still needs to know some details in order to deliver)
  • Perfect for black market trading
• Predictable money supply
  • Supposedly immune to the whims of a central banking authority
  • Implies deflation (increasing value of currency) as the economy expands
• Effective currency by most measures
  • Durable (assuming data is immortal)
  • Portable, high value density
  • Easily divisible
  • Difficult to counterfeit (assuming cryptographic security)
  • Liquid (perhaps)

Problematic Aspects

• Cryptographically unproven
  • The block hashing algorithm searches for a hash in a given range
  • SHA-256 is not known to have specific collision attacks, but a range collision attack is probably far easier
• Too complex for many people to understand, in theory and practice
  • Theory: much more complicated than cash or commodities, and this is before any loans enter the picture
  • Practice: wallet management, transaction security, anonymizing, etc
• BitCoin production (mining) cost increases linearly with demand for production
  • The hash work expectation means that as more individuals enter the BitCoin production market, the higher the per-unit production cost for everybody in the market.
  • In order to sustain production, the value per unit must increase.
  • If the value does not increase sufficiently to provide profit incentive, producers will abandon the market.
  • This scheme heavily favors early adopters who enjoy cheap production and can then liquidate their assets for extreme profit.
• BitCoins have no intrinsic value, but a high production cost
  • Gold is costly to produce (mine) but also has aesthetic and utility value
  • Paper dollars have low production cost and low utility value (its value is derived from government backing)
  • With no intrinsic value, there is no price floor in an exchange, which may invite hyperinflation
• Irreversible currency destruction is possible
  • If you lose your wallet, the money in it is destroyed forever
  • Paper dollars can be printed to shore up money supply
  • Gold can be rediscovered and refined
• No fraud protection
  • Isn’t that what all those credit card fees cover?
  • Cash has similar flaws, but you typically exchange cash and real goods simultaneously in a real-world transaction with the option to back out if the goods are not correct.
• Anonymity is difficult to maintain
  • All transactions are visible to the world
  • If someone knows your public address, they can trace every transaction involving it
• Whole number of bitcoins is too small for practical use
  • The upper limit on the number of whole BitCoins (after 130 years of production) is 21 million
  • microbitcoins are not a friendly unit for people to deal with
• Transaction verification time is too slow for instantaneous purchases
  • One successful hash block every 10 minutes
  • That means AT LEAST a 10 minute wait before that block is distributed and verified
  • That block might not even include your transaction, if the computing machine didn’t like your offered transaction fee
  • If you don’t pay a sufficient transaction fee, your transaction might float around the network indefinitely
• Few legitimate means of buying or selling BitCoins for other currencies
  • Supposed exchanges accept cash, check, bank transfer, or a medley of unpopular secondary exchanges (no credit cards or PayPal)
  • None of those options is inherently reliable for online purchases or very good for anonymity
  • This really raises the stink level of the whole enterprise

Resources:

• http://www.quora.com/Is-the-cryptocurrency-Bitcoin-a-good-idea/answer/Adam-Cohen-2
• http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/

• Released: 3/10/2011 on XBLIG @ 80 MSP ($1)
• Dev Tools: XNA 3.1/4.0, Paint.NET, Milkshape 3D, SmartSVN
• Work Effort: 200 hours of tasks, 50+ hours of bug-fixing and polishing
• Sales Expectation: 1000+ downloads, 100+ sales
• Sales Reality: 33000+ downloads, 6000+ sales (in the first week)
• Intent: Develop a novel realistic control scheme, publish a finished indie game
• Download Marksman: Long Range on the Xbox Live Marketplace.
• Some development pictures and screenshots

Good

• Realism in control scheme. Having recently become personally interested in shooting sports and firearms in general, the primary design goal for the game was to demonstrate a more realistic rifle simulation as compared to the “point and click” firing mechanic almost every FPS game uses. A real rifle is a physical artifact which must be held with imperfect fleshy meat-limbs, and the trigger is a mechanically attached component of the entire rifle. The design goal of a physical trigger is to make the gun fire when you want it to and to have the gun not fire when you don’t want it to, thus the trigger has mechanical resistance and pulling the trigger too violently will affect the overall orientation of the entire rifle, enough to make a noticeable difference at a significant distance like 100 meters. Obviously, this would be difficult to achieve with a mouse and keyboard, so I targeted the analog trigger and thumb-sticks of the Xbox 360 controller. The trigger measures analog position, and over time you can calculate velocity and acceleration to examine jerky trigger action and feed into the aiming deflection. Similarly, the game uses a thumbstick to measure “grip stability” – if you adjust your grip while pulling the trigger then the rifle will move. I was hoping to use an analog face button instead of the thumbstick, but the Xbox 360 has only binary face buttons (unlike the original Xbox and PS3). I only continued with the remainder of the game once I was satisfied with the control prototype. The control scheme manages to be challenging to master but fun to use once familiar, just like real firearms!
• Simple & straightforward game concept. Marksman uses a relatively simple central game mechanic: aim and shoot stuff. There is no player location movement, very little game state to manage, and only one bullet is in the air at a time (no full-auto here). This makes it relatively easy to learn, although there is more to a precision rifle shot than just “point and click”. The simulation of the bullet trajectory is quite realistic; it uses real empirical data for the simulated bullets, although it lacks certain minute details such as spin drift (caused by gyroscopic destabilization as a bullet tilts along its trajectory) and the coriolis effect.
• Simple art & sound assets. Almost all the content in the game was produced by me, at my computer desk. This includes all the 3D models, all the textures aside from the skybox, and all the sounds aside from the gunshot (used with permission, and freeware, respectively). Keeping the content simple meant I didn’t have to worry about polishing it too much, or paying to contract it out to someone with more talent. That said, I did perform a polish pass, the ground and backstop were green and gray checkerboards for a long time, and the bullseye and other target textures were re-made with better anti-aliasing and color selections. The bullet model and texture were somewhat painstakingly made to be as close to physically realistic as possible, including the rifling imprint lines which should roughly match the spin rate of the bullet.
• Trial mode. XBLIG trial games have approximately 5 minutes from launch to sell a user on the game; after a certain amount of time, the system pauses the game, cuts off input, and displays a dialog prompting the user to either purchase or quit back to the dashboard. The Marksman trial mode locks out the aspects of the game that might not be fun in a hurry: the highest difficulty, the longer distances, the slow-paced “rifle golf” game mode. The player gets right into the game (optimally picking either time-trial or zombie-horde game modes, although free-play is also available). The longer distances and the harder-hitting high-caliber rifles are also locked out as sort of a teaser. You can highlight the locked rifles in the menu and see their details and stats, but you can’t select or use them.
• Luck. The XBLIG certification process is community-driven, and when the final “pass” vote is given, the game automatically goes live on the marketplace after a short propagation delay. For Marksman, this meant a Thursday release window, ideal for garnering a few sales before the weekend and getting onto the top-selling list when people are at home looking for a new game to play. There were also few or no other competing new releases during that first weekend; combined with a sales data maintenance downtime the subsequent week, Marksman stayed at the top of the best-selling list for a week straight, whether it was actually the top-seller or not. For all the games released during this sales maintenance window, my good luck has been their poor luck; I wish them well, all the same. Luck seems to play a significant role for some XBLIG titles, but the keywords “avatar” and “zombie” also seem correlated with success.

Bad

• Challenge in control scheme. Some people don’t understand how to play the game, since it’s quite different from CoD or Halo, as evidenced in the reviews linked below. The “aim” button is the left shoulder instead of the left trigger (left trigger is “zoom”), so some people flail around for a considerable time unable to even fire a single round. The trigger is treated as analog although most other FPS games present it as a binary button, which potentially adds more confusion. The grip-stability mechanic calls for the right thumbstick to be held still somewhere in a “sweet spot” which is actually donut-shaped to avoid the dead spot at the center and the rim of the stick boundary where the stick can “rest”; this control mechanic is intentionally fatiguing, but might be excessively so.
• Confusing UI. This goes along with the previous point, but is focused on the visual UI rather than the control scheme. Several hints and explanations are present in the game, including a visual “control map”, a multi-page “how to play” description, briefing text at the beginning of each game, and goal text visible at the top of the screen during the entire game; most people completely ignore all of these cues. In long-range shooting, a “drop table” is used to estimate the adjustments needed to place a bullet on-target; the drop table describes the drop of the bullet relative to the point of aim at various distances; real drop-tables are typically produced by a ballistic calculator with some inputs of empirical data for the specific firearm and cartridge being used. The in-game drop table is accessible via the Y button at any point in the game, and displays a pre-calculated set of data for the current rifle/cartridge configuration, and it appears as a large 2-dimensional table of numbers. The other tool available at any time is a “range estimator”, which is in fact a calculator designed to aid in the estimation of target ranges using the mil-dot reticle, but that isn’t adequately described in-game for people unfamiliar with the concept (almost everyone); most people assume this is an automatic laser range-finder, and are confused when it’s wrong. The grip-stability indicator is also not adequately explained, but is rather designed to be plainly visible to someone already familiar with what it is communicating.
• Simple art & sound assets. The menu has no sounds, there is no music in the game, and the scenery on the shooting range is quite sparse (only a ground plane, backstop, target, and skybox). If you listen closely, you can tell the recording quality on some of the sound effects is relatively low, because they were recorded in a computer room with a tile floor and a few blankets lying around. The overall lack of high production values makes it clear this is an “indie game” but doesn’t appear to detract too much from the experience; it may actually keep expectations sufficiently low, along with the price-point. The menu actually consumed a considerable amount of development time, and has some nice background art, so the game clearly has some degree of polish.
• Failed peer-review submission. The game was first submitted for peer-review in late January, in the interest of passing before the XNA 3.1 submission grace period ended on February 7th. It sat in the review queue for two weeks before anyone gave any feedback, and a crash bug was quickly discovered thereafter, which failed the game from review. The specific bug was a failure to handle an exception raised when trying to play too many sounds, and was fixed quickly and easily. Failing from review induces a 1-week wait period before re-submission, which kicked the submission window out past the 3.1 grace period and thus required the game to be ported to XNA 4.0. The process of porting took me a couple of long evenings, and is akin to converting from D3D9 to D3D10 with the similar transition from render-states to state-blocks, but the most painful and time-consuming aspect of the port was the switch to pre-multiplied-alpha by default (my skybox apparently had an all-zero alpha channel which took a few hours to identify). The porting process also exposed a few opportunities for extra polish in rendering, UI layout, and other subtle details. After porting and re-submitting on February 19th, the game again sat in the queue for two weeks before being paid any attention, and eventually passed review on March 10th.

Take-aways

• XNA toolset is fairly robust but also quite basic (D3D + D3DX + content pipeline)
• XBLIG submission process is time-consuming and somewhat subjective
• Xbox dashboard prominence is a vital component of marketing
• I hope this game encourages more people to try shooting real firearms, so long as they handle them safely

Trivia

• The altitude setting, AI AWSM rifle, and 2500m distance were added to replicate the recent world-record sniper shot.
• The ACOG for the M16 is the only non-crosshair scope reticle in the game. The ACOG is correctly calibrated for the simulated M193 cartridge, although the real ones are typically calibrated for M855. The cross-hatches for 400m and beyond are matched to the width of a man’s shoulders (about 19 inches) at the corresponding distance.

Reviews

• User feedback star-rating on XBLIG: ~3.2 (out of 5)
• Video review by youtube user “aaronthesplazer”. No commentary but obviously doesn’t understand control scheme, skips briefing text, ignores goal text at top of screen, quits before trial time-out, gives game a “skip it” rating.
• Video review by youtube user “mainmarco”. Voice commentary demonstrates confusion over control scheme even after briefly viewing the control map, and continual confusion by “inaccurate” bullet-strikes while pulling the trigger. Reviewer skips briefing text, ignores goal text at top of screen in zombie game mode and even exclaims “how do you kill them?” while the text visible in the video says “shoot zombies in the head to kill them”. Gives game a video upload comment of “This game is way to [sic] complex and dumb”, and a verbal rating of “3 out of 10″ or “below average”.
• Written review by “Choke Bunny” of CoedMagazine.com. Excerpt: “This game is for the type of person who claims Call of Duty isn’t realistic. For everyone else, it lacks the bells and whistles to merit even the slightest attention. Well made, but a dull experience overall. BUY or PASS? PASS”
• Written review on “The XNA Roundup”. Generally positive review, the first I’ve seen where the reviewer seems to have actually understood the game design. Excerpt: “You have 8 real life rifles to choose from, each handles differently. There are three difficulty levels, which increase the wind speed, distance and steadying you have to do. The game isn’t flashy, but it wasn’t trying to be, and it works.”

The merchants who are buying jewelry will likely buy it at a price below the market rate, possibly melt and purify it, and then sell it at the market rate for a profit, especially if the market rate increases while they’re holding onto it. The merchants who are selling gold coins are on the other end of the supply chain, taking that purified gold and making coins to sell with a face value above the market rate; many of them also sell coins minted by the US government (among others) which command a higher premium than the merchant-minted coins. Silver is given a similar treatment, but there is less demand for silver jewelry since the production cost of silver (mining it from the ground) is significantly lower per ounce – the current gold and silver prices are set at roughly a 60:1 ratio. The demand for gold coins drives the demand for jewelry and other raw gold (industrial uses for gold aren’t really shifting much), but what drives the demand for gold and silver coins?

The most common reason for hoarding gold, silver, or any durable commodity is to stave off the effects of inflation on liquid assets such as cash, bonds, or stocks – any financial instrument valued in terms of a fixed dollar amount. Stocks are relatively volatile and may respond to inflation with increased value… or they may not. The dollar is fiat currency, and since the 1930′s its value has been separated from the value of gold or any other valuable asset; a dollar has no inherent value aside from the raw materials used to create the currency – a penny might be worth $0.005 in zinc, and a bill might be worth $0.01 in cotton, I don’t actually know the correct figures for those values. In the event of considerable inflation – if the dollar was halved in value – then those people holding dollars would have half as much buying power, whereas those holding durable goods or commodities would have relatively unchanged buying power.

Gold and silver coins are the ultimate durable good, the ultimate currency, and it has been that way for hundreds or thousands of years; they are value-dense, easy to recognize, don’t decay, are difficult to fake, and have inherent value due to industrial uses and the cost to produce more (surprise! the market rate of a gold ounce is close to the cost to mine & refine an ounce of gold, not so with the value of a dollar bill). Precious metals like gold and silver are commodities, other commodities include agricultural goods like grain, industrial metals, energy, and any other bulk good that is traded on a market. All these commodities can have volatile short-term prices, but the long-term prices are relatively stable relative to one another, although the recent price increase of gold and silver appears to buck that trend.

The demand for precious metals is a symptom of a general distrust of the dollar to retain value. The stock market slump, followed by the housing market slump and financial implosion crisis, combined with the longest-running war ever fought by the United States, has incited a mild inflationary panic. The Federal Reserve claims to be fighting inflation but at the same time they have roughly doubled the amount of dollar currency in the money supply, and with no net increase in overall value of production we’re looking at a potential halving of the dollar’s value. Thus, many people are turning to gold rather than to stocks and bonds to maintain their long-term wealth, and with the increased demand and limited supply, the prices of gold and silver have quadrupled in the past several years.

Large banks have seized on the public interest in precious metals and have created exchange-traded funds (ETFs) which are designed to track the value of gold and silver, by buying actual gold and silver and storing it, or perhaps buying futures (fixed contracts for future production of the metals). I consider these ETFs to be mostly a scam – you are still holding an instrument valued in dollars, but the bigger problem is that the large bank running the fund has no reason not to oversell positions in the fund, essentially selling gold and silver that does not and will not exist to cover the value of the fund; if the economy reaches a tipping point and everybody tries to pull their “gold” value out, a lot of people will be left empty-handed. If you’re going to buy into gold or silver as an investment of last-resort, something that will hold value when nothing else does, something to use as currency when a dollar bill is only useful for building fires, then make sure to buy actual metal, not an IOU written on a piece of paper or computer screen.

Another possibility with our current banking structure is the ability of banks to boost and suppress the prices of commodities for the personal gain of the banks at the expense of everybody else. The most recent rumor I’ve heard along those lines indicates that banks have been massively suppressing the price of gold and silver for a long time and that the real price should be far higher than the current record-setting high. That’s a difficult pill to swallow, especially as it may be pushed by people and organizations who have a vested interest in selling gold to people who expect the price to continue its meteoric rise. I think we all remember how well that worked out for the stock market and housing market, so it’s hard to recommend getting into yet another market that’s constantly setting high-price records.

Overall, I consider runaway inflation and economic collapse an unlikely and remote possibility. But I have money sitting around in a rainy-day fund, and I feel it would be negligent to avoid diversification, so I bought a small value of government-minted silver coins and keep them in a safe location; I went with silver due to its lower value density – each silver coin is worth roughly $20, versus the $1200 per ounce coin with gold. If their value increases in the future and I need to spend them, then I can; if their value drops then it is hardly any more risky an investment than real estate or the stock market. Some houses in Detroit are worthless, and stocks in GM are similarly devoid of value, but gold and silver will have value so long as any economy at all exists.

The key to accuracy is consistency, in both the rifle and the ammunition used, not to mention the marksman. The ammunition must provide a uniform bullet weight and velocity from one round to another, since any variation will cause a change in the trajectory and thus the impact point at distance. The rifle must propel and release the bullet the same way every time, which means the barrel cannot vibrate or bend much, the action must be immobile, and the scope must stay in perfect alignment; basically, the rifle must be solid and relatively heavy. The stock must not push on the barrel at the front, which means that the barrel and stock must actually be joined no farther forward than the chamber, and that the stock must be rigid forward of that point; typically this is achieved by “bedding” the stock with fiberglass or aluminum. The trigger must be crisp with a relatively light resistance to avoid any destabilizing motion when firing. Long-range accuracy typically means using a heavier projectile that will keep its momentum when fighting against wind resistance, and M118LR is the standard military sniper ammunition, sporting a 175-grain boat-tail hollow-point bullet. Accuracy is typically measured in inches or MOA, which are roughly equivalent at 100 yards, and 1 MOA is considered good for a long-range rifle, and 0.5 MOA is considered excellent; anything better is extraordinary. Hitting a dinner plate at 1000 yards calls for 1 MOA accuracy.

The M24 is a custom-made rifle, built on the Remington 700 long-action platform, with a custom barrel and stock along with a fancy Leupold Mark 4 scope. The rifle alone can actually be bought, for a mere $3685, and the complete sniper weapon system is only $8970; this is somewhat beyond my budget for a long-range rifle, but I felt that I could get something almost as good for considerably less money. The M24 is built with a special barrel which has 5 grooves (instead of the usual 6) and rifling tuned specifically for the M118LR cartridge, at 1 full rotation per 11.25 inches. This same barrel rifling can be purchased on a commercial Remington 700 rifle called the “5-R mil-spec”, which retails for about $1100. I was highly tempted, but that was still a bit rich for my blood, and I already had a couple of Remington firearms that hadn’t quite been perfect, so I continued to look for deals on something similar. I came across a decent deal on a lightly-used but well-reputed Savage rifle fitted with an aftermarket stock that should improve accuracy; I decided to buy it, for about $700.

The specific model is the Savage 10FP, which comes standard with a 24″ heavy-profile .308 barrel with a 1:10″ twist rate, a 4-round internal magazine, a user-adjustable trigger, and a somewhat flimsy stock. The copy I bought had already been fitted with a more solid aftermarket stock, the Bell & Carlson Medalist, which is aluminum-bedded for rigidity and has a free-floating barrel channel. The stock has a couple of front sling swivels, which can be used for attaching a sling or a bipod, and I had the intention of attaching a Harris bipod, similar to the ones used on the M24. The bipod is designed for slightly rounded stocks, and the stock has a flat forend, which allows the bipod to yaw slightly; not a serious problem, and Harris even makes an adapter for flat forends, but it doesn’t offer much improvement. The Harris bipod I bought allows for swivel or tilt, meaning you can tip the rifle sideways to get the scope sights level with the horizon; the adjustment knob for this is notoriously difficult to lock down, so I attached a small handle that gives enough leverage to lock the swivel feature solidly; the swivel is of limited use anyway, I would recommend saving money and getting the non-swiveling model.

For optics, I wanted a scope that could scale from 100 to 1000 yards. This caused me more trouble than I had anticipated, as the bullet-drop for a 175-grain .308 at 100 yards is practically nothing but at 1000 yards it’s about 30 feet, which translates to an angular difference of 30+ MOA (minutes of arc). The implication here is that after allowing some give for mounting imprecision, the scope needs about 40 MOA of adjustment; since the consistency of a scope’s zero tends to decrease towards the edges of adjustment, it’s typically best to avoid those extremes, especially if windage adjustments may be needed, so the desirable adjustment range is more like 60 MOA in one direction. You will not find a scope with that degree of adjustment for less than $1000, but if you mount the scope pointed down by 20 MOA or so and then adjust up by 20 MOA to hit 100 yards and down by 10-15 MOA for 1000 yards, the scope only needs about +/- 30 MOA adjustment, which is still somewhat hard to find. The rifle’s previous owner had attached a 20 MOA scope rail, so I was in luck. I finally found an affordable scope with a fixed magnification of 10x but with an adjustment range of +/- 40 MOA: the Bushnell Elite 3200 10x40mm. This is the same scope that Barrett includes with some of their .50 BMG rifle packages, so I had a feeling it would be a solid buy. I attached it to the scope rail with Burris Xtreme Low rings.

After assembling the rifle with its accessories, I took a few photos before heading to the range. Here’s a full frontal, and here’s a close-up of the Savage AccuTrigger. The AccuTrigger uses a safety device like those found on Glock handguns, which allows the user to adjust the trigger resistance down to about 2 lbs for high target precision. I took my rifle to the range in Issaquah, where they have 25, 50, and 100-yard shooting positions, with the hope of seeing some consistent 1-MOA performance. The 100 yard distance is a pretty long way if you’re accustomed to indoor ranges and handguns: my target in this photo is the white dot in the middle. My first trip was spent mainly trying to dial in the scope, which I did first by roughly bore-sighting the scope by peering through the barrel with the bolt removed. I finally got around to shooting some groups at 100 yards that actually hit close to the mark, and one of them recorded an amazing 0.5 inch 3-shot group.

Not convinced that the half-inch group wasn’t a fluke, I made another trip with a variety of ammunition to try and test the accuracy I could get with each. The test subjects were: Federal Gold Medal Match .308 175 grain, Black Hills .308 Match 175 grain, and American Ballistics M118LR which also uses a 175-grain bullet. I shot 10 rounds of each, in 5-shot groups, switching ammo types after each group. In the following photos, each target was used for only one type of ammo, with the first group in the top left and the second group in the bottom right. My half-inch group had been shot using the Federal ammo, and I was hopeful to repeat that feat so I started with 5 shots of the Federal GMM, to the result of a wide-open 2-inch group. I followed that group with some Black Hills, to see a fairly tight clustering with a high flyer making it about 1.5″ overall. My third group was with the ABT M118LR, which showed a relatively open 1.75″ group. All of the groups were clustered a bit to the right of the aiming point, so I adjusted the scope left by 8 clicks, or 2 MOA. I then did another group with each of the ammo types in the same order, aiming at the bottom-right target spots. The Federal ammo produced another open group, although a bit smaller at 1.5″, and the ABT ammo had similar improvement, closing its group to just over 1.1″ with a high flyer. The Black Hills ammo demonstrated another tight cluster, producing the only group under 1″ of the whole trip (my last 2 shots in this group were actually hurried because the range master was about to call a cease fire). My overall conclusion is that my rifle works best with the Black Hills .308 Match 175gr, which is actually in the middle of the pack for cost, at just over $1.50 per round; long-range accuracy is certainly not a cheap hobby!

I’m honestly a little disappointed that my more-rigorous accuracy experiment didn’t demonstrate any half-inch groups, but I was only hoping for 1″ groups on my budget. I have heard that a break-in process can be used to enhance the accuracy of a rifle, but this is quite a time-consuming process which involves cleaning the barrel between every single shot for 10+ shots, then between every other shot for 20+ shots, then between every five or ten shots for 50+ shots. The idea is that the first bullet through a clean barrel will hit a few imperfections and wear them down as the bullet passes, but that following bullets will only wear down the fouling left behind by the previous bullet. Cleaning between each shot allows the bullets to slowly polish the bore and fully smooth out any imperfections. I’ll have to give it a try when I have several hours free at a range that doesn’t mind cleaning on the firing line. I also realize that my personal shooting accuracy is probably not at its peak, although I did try my best to provide a stable sandbag platform for the rifle and to pull the trigger with maximum smoothness and consistency. I feel that I was able to keep the rifle within at most 0.2 MOA of the same target location for each shot, but if you have some good accuracy tips then please send them my way.

Overall, I’m pleased with the performance of the Savage 10FP considering the money I spent, and time will tell whether I will feel the need for something beyond the capabilities of this rifle. I can’t help but wonder if a few hundred dollars more spent on the Remington 5R could have got me twice the accuracy.

2000:
Started working on Destiny3D

2001:
Graduated high school
Worked at Fuddruckers
Started university at Georgia Tech

2004:
Internship at Autodesk

2005:
Graduated from GA Tech
Visited Hawaii and England
Started a job at Microsoft, on Direct3D
Started skiing regularly

2007:
Met Sarah

2008:
Visited Tokyo, Japan
Sarah moved in
Got a quaker parrot

2009:
Got into shooting guns, bought several
Started rock climbing
Transferred to Project Natal
Bought a house
Got a dog
Got a cat

I didn’t really notice a significant difference in recoil between the calibers, but the overall size of the gun had a major impact – sub-compact pistols actually hurt to shoot, while the large and heavy steel construction of the 1911 ate up most of the recoil. I tried several different manufacturers’ models to see how they varied the trigger feel: the Glock had a sharp safety device which hurt when combined with the poor recoil control of the mostly-plastic construction; the FNP-9 had a very long, heavy trigger pull that drove me off-target; the Sig P220 Elite had a very smooth and short trigger pull in both single and double action; the Springfield XD had a similar feel to the Glock although a bit less painful; the various 1911′s I tried felt good, but the screw in the trigger face bugged me a bit. Overall, I felt that the Sig P220 Elite was my favorite pick of the selection, but balked at spending $1200 on that particular model. I came back another day and tried the lower-end Sig models, in various calibers, and they all felt good, although not quite as smooth as the Elite.

What really sold me on the SIG Sauer P226 was the smooth trigger and safety mechanism. Glock uses an “automatic” safety built into the trigger which requires the trigger to be pressed rather than jarred, a requirement due to the possibility of injury and/or lawsuit if the gun were to discharge accidentally. The Springfield XD has a trigger safety like Glock, in addition to another automatic safety which is disengaged when you apply pressure to the rear of the frame by gripping the gun normally. That feature is borrowed from the ancient 1911 design, which also offers a manual safety. Most pistols offer single-action triggers, which require a manual cocking procedure that varies from one model to another, but typically involves racking the slide or pulling back an exposed hammer. The P226 offers a double-action/single-action trigger, with a de-cocker mechanism which allows you to transfer from the cocked/single-action state into the un-cocked/double-action state. When in an uncocked state, the P226′s trigger will resist at about 10 lbs through a long double-action pull which cocks the hammer and fires; when cocked, the trigger pull is a relatively light 4 lbs and will fire with a short, smooth pull. The 1911 typically offers a smooth trigger with little travel, but will fire only in single-action mode as the hammer must be manually cocked, but it can be carried in a “cocked and locked” position, meaning that the hammer is cocked and the manual safety is locked; when needing to draw and fire the 1911, the safety must be disengaged or the hammer must be cocked. With the Sig P226, you need only pull the double-action trigger; this simplicity and the smooth action are the primary features that sold me on the Sig design. In the case of a dud round, the semi-automatic action will not re-cock the firing mechanism; the double-action trigger gives you a second chance to try firing the round in the chamber. The 1911 can do the same if you manually re-cock the hammer, and the P226 hammer can also be manually cocked, but most Glock-alikes must discard the chambered round to re-cock the firing mechanism.

With my mind set on the Sig, I then perused their catalog of model variations and settled on the P226 9mm SCT model. In 9mm, this model comes from the factory with four 20-round magazines (which extend about 3/4 inch below the bottom of the grip, when standard 15-round magazines are flush with the bottom of the grip). It also sports a fiber-optic front sight, which will gather daylight and focus it towards the eye of the shooter, providing a bright sight picture in daylight. The front and rear sights are also illuminated by phosphorescent tritium vials in darkness, which should last 15 years before dimming significantly. Another feature common to pretty much all new pistols is a small 1913 picatinny rail just ahead of the trigger guard, which can be used to attach flashlights, lasers, or other accessories.

With this pistol, I have demonstrated quite good accuracy, typically keeping all my shots within 2 inches at 5 yards distance when slow-firing. I need to practice more with rapid-fire drills such as double taps and going quickly from holstered to firing, as I wouldn’t feel comfortable carrying a concealed pistol until I felt proficient with such actions to the point of muscle memory. I have accessorized my P226 a bit, adding a flashlight and occasionally a laser sight. I bought a 15-round magazine for the intent of better concealment, although the large grip still makes that difficult and I don’t have a concealable holster for the P226. Using Speer Gold Dot 9mm+P hollow-point ammunition against a pumpkin made short work of it, sending pieces flying in the air and generally making a mess; similar results were observed versus apples and potatoes.

My total expenditure on this pistol, ammunition, and accessories is on the order of $1500, but that includes over 1000 rounds of FMJ target ammunition and 500 rounds of Gold Dot. I feel that this pistol is highly reliable, as I have never experienced a malfunction of any kind while using it. It doesn’t hurt that the P226 was the only competition to the Beretta 92FS for the M9 contract, and lost only due to price; some special forces units still opted for the P226 instead of the M9. I don’t have much more to add, so I’ll finish up with an action shot.

I ended up settling on a specific model of Remington 870, mainly due to the tacti-cool appearance and the feature of a rear ghost ring sight, similar to the iron sight on my AR-15. It also has a picatinny rail ahead of the ghost ring sight, but I haven’t found much need for that yet. I decided on 12 gauge due to the wide availability of ammunition in different sizes of shot and the well-known reputation for stopping power.

I’ve since learned that there’s a model of Benelli Nova in an 18-inch “tactical” model with a ghost ring sight. I would strongly consider this as an alternative to the Remington 870, as Benelli has an outstanding reputation and the Nova has a feature or two that the 870 lacks. The primary bonus feature is the “shell stop button” on the pump forend which allows you to unload the chamber without pulling a round from the magainze, thus allowing you to insert a specific type of ammo without having to cycle it throug the magazine.

Back to my Remington 870… This particular copy actually has an issue with the ring sight that I haven’t yet rectified – one of the windage adjustment screws is frozen in place, which means I can’t adjust the sideways motion on the sight; this wouldn’t be a problem if the gun shot straight, but currently the point-of-impact is a bit right of point-of-aim. The elevation is also way off at the moment, but I blame that on my lack of slug ammo and range time with this shotgun, which is partly because of the expense of slug ammo (close to $1 per shell) and the lack of availability of ranges that allow you to shoot shotgun slugs on a fixed-target (rifle) range. I will try soaking the rear sight module in some solvent to loosen it up and post an update if that works… if not, I’ll call up Remington and see if they can help me out, which worked out fine when the magazine on my old-stock 597 was jamming up. I must also mention that the pump action seems not quite utterly reliable, as I’ve had a few instances of spent shell cases getting caught on their way out of the ejection port; I don’t recall whether I was able to load the next round without fiddling with the dangling casing, but I would call that a failure to eject.

The shotgun is generally regarded as the most powerful short-range weapon available, and I am inclined to agree. After my first range outing, where I shot about 10 rounds of 00 buckshot and four 1oz slugs, my shoulder was sore for 2-3 days. I subsequently bought a Knoxx SpecOps recoil-reducing pistol-grip replacement stock, and my next range outing was far less punishing on my tender flesh. The cantaloupe melon that was on the receiving end of one of those slugs was almost completely obliterated in a single shot, which is a far more devastating reaction than any of the .22 or 5.56mm I’ve shot at fruit or vegetables. 00 buckshot had a similarly devastating effect on a small pumpkin at 10 yards or so, although it fell apart rather than exploding into a shower of goo. My overall cost to acquire, outfit, and shoot this shotgun has so far totalled somewhere close to $700, making it the second-cheapest member of my collection.

I don’t have any pictures of my 870 in action, but here’s a picture of my collection so far. From top to bottom: Remington 870 12ga, Stag Arms AR-15 model 2T, Remington 597 SS. I’ll post more shotgun pictures if any surface from my recent shooting pit outing.

The .22 rifle is a nice gun, but I wanted something with more reach, more punch, and more reliability – something capable of taking large magazines and spending them at a relatively high rate of fire and with good accuracy. At the time, there was much rumor of the political powers reinstating an assault-weapons ban, and the rumor was strengthened by the attorney general outright proclaiming that goal. That rumor has since faded, but at the time I wanted to hedge that bet by buying something that could be banned, despite the price markup that dealers were enjoying. I simply had to get an AR-15 of reputable manufacture and features.

I researched various models and decided I couldn’t live without a quad-rail handguard and a flip-up rear iron sight. Smith & Wesson had a nice model in the M&P 15, but it was beyond my price expectations, which led me towards the Stag Arms Model 2T. This rifle features a 16″ chrome-lined barrel with 5.56mm chamber, a flat-top railed upper receiver, a carbine-length quad-rail handguard by Samson, a collapsible stock, a standard front sight post, and an ARMS 40L folding rear sight. All of those features met my desires, so I set about trying to find the best price. I scoured the internet and discovered the average going price was around $1300-1400, well above the $1125 MSRP. I searched every night on sites like gunbroker.com and gunsamerica.com, and it was relatively easy to filter because nobody else uses a model designation of “2T”. Eventually, I found one listed for under $1200 and decided I had waited long enough and that prices weren’t going down anytime soon; I ordered it and waited patiently for it to arrive.

Perhaps a little too late, I realized that 5.56mm and .223 ammunition costs roughly 10 times what .22 ammo does, so I’ve put considerably fewer rounds through my AR-15 than I have through my .22 rifle. That being said, it is a blast to shoot at the range, and I thoroughly enjoy whenever I take it out. I had to adjust the iron sights a bit to get the rifle zeroed at 100 yards (apparently it’s zeroed for 200 or 300 at the factory), and it took a little while to actually figure out what the different apertures and notches on the folding rear sight were for, since there were no included instructions for the sight.

I’ve never experienced a malfunction with this rifle, but I’ve also treated it pretty well, despite the arduous cleaning requirements. I’ve since purchased various cleaning equipment to try and improve my ability to clean out the bolt carrier, bolt, and firing pin, which get a bit caked up with carbon fouling. I’d hate to be in the army and told to get this thing spotless, because it’s very difficult to get the fouling out of all the nooks & crannies, even with fairly strong solvents. The AR-15 design is quite impressive, as it keeps cost, weight, and total number of moving parts low, but it spits hot gases from the cartridge powder directly onto the bolt carrier. A number of manufacturers have started offering gas-piston AR-15 models this year, and I would strongly consider getting one of those if I were to buy a new AR-15 today, as the gas-piston action keeps the bolt much cooler & cleaner.

I also wanted to put some type of optics on my AR-15. I couldn’t decide between a short-range optic which could be used for close-quarters engagements, or a magnified optic for better precision out to effective range of the rifle, which is 500 yards or so. I ended up deciding to get an ACOG, as I was less enthusiastic about battery-operated red-dot sights, and had heard nothing but praise for the ACOG. I found a good deal on a used copy from someone nearby, and snagged it for almost half off MSRP. I must say, this is an excellent optic, although I’ve only taken it out once to sight it in. My only complaint is that the eye relief is very short at about 1.5″, which requires me to mount it as far back on my flat-top upper as possible, just ahead of the folding BUIS, and still place my cheek quite far forward on the stock. Once I have a good picture, it’s quite easy to line up the sight and hit a target, although I haven’t yet tried using the two-eyes-open aiming technique that the ACOG was developed for.

I did replace the standard plastic pistol grip with a rubberized version with finger grooves, made by Hogue, which I feel made a significant improvement to comfort and control for only $15. I also got a few PMAG magazines, which are extremely tough and feature a window through which you can see the remaining number of rounds in the magazine. I have yet to actually use the quad-rail handguard for anything productive… I did buy a cheap vertical grip to put on it, but decided to leave it off because it was a bit large & flimsy. I considered buying a tactical flashlight and attachment, but ended up just buying a nice bright flashlight and not mounting it. I do appreciate the tacti-cool appearance of the quad-rail and the possibility to attach all sorts of accessories, but if I could go back and do it again, I’d probably save some money and get a standard handguard instead. My total costs for purchasing, outfitting, and operating this AR-15 are upwards of $2500, which makes it the most expensive firearm in my collection.

Here’s a picture of me firing my Stag Arms AR-15 at a nearby shooting pit. On my hip you can also see my Sig P226 SCT 9mm, which I will discuss in a future post.

I started with a .22 rifle, the Remington 597 in synthetic/stainless. The actual rifle I received was old stock sold as new, and I discovered it was 10 years old by searching for the serial number. This meant it came with the original-design plastic magazine, which has a tendency to jam up; a quick call to Remington had them sending me a new-design aluminum magazine for free that has been much more reliable. There are also a few rust spots on the barrel and magazine.

The rifle shoots nicely up to about 100 yards and can be taken to indoor pistol ranges without difficulty. I tried using it to complete a marksmanship evaluation, but wasn’t able to do the prone portion of the test due to backstop and target placement. Extrapolating the standing and sitting portions placed me into the top tier of performance, Expert, which made me feel pretty good about both myself and my equipment. My girlfriend also likes shooting this rifle because it has almost no recoil, is relatively quiet, and it has a very simple blowback recoil action. It does jam up once in a while, the most common being a bolt hold-open failure when the magazine is empty, and the occasional failure-to-feed. I wouldn’t trust my life to this rifle, but it’s fine for short-range target practice with cheap ammo.

Decent .22 ammo has been difficult to find since I bought the rifle, and I recently used up the last of the 525-round Federal value pack I bought along with the rifle back in March. I like this particular ammo because it comes in a hefty value pack, it has copper-plated hollow-point bullets, and the price is right around 4 cents per round. Thankfully, Cabela’s had a bulk offering at a decent price with free shipping, so I now have over 4000 rounds of .22 sitting around, begging to be used. I added a cheap Bushnell scope which makes it relatively easy to get nice tight groups at 50-100 yards off a bench rest. The most affordable piece of my arsenal, this .22 rifle has only cost me about $500 in total, including freight, ammo, and cleaning supplies.

Here’s a picture of me shooting the Remington 597 at the local indoor range, Wade’s.