Taofledermaus Slow Motion

Upcoming Projects

2012-03-05T03:52:00.005-08:00

March 30-31   Not attending "Big Sandy" this go-round.    Other plans.    May try to go again next October though.   Hopefully gas prices will be down by then.  I sold 4 videos to Break.com last Oct to pay for the trip.

April 20-22    Antique Farm Show in Tulare, CA.   I missed this one last year since it fell on my weekend to work.    Lot and lots of very interesting antique tractors, hit-and-miss engines, old tractor pulls, steam engines/tractors, etc.    Probably a few slow motion opportunities but the HD footage should still be good.   I need a heavy duty battery for my Panasonic camera,   what a joke the recording time is. It sure records some fantastic imagery though.    I have to fall back on the Flip camera way too much or switch one of the Casios to HD mode.
http://www.antiquefarmshow.org/index.htm

May 12  Advanced Explosives Demonstration in Tulare, CA.    Got a follow-up from the arson investigator wanting to know if I am still interested in attending. Duh! This is an invite-only event so I got very lucky on this one.    Basically a bunch of LEO's from all over California putting this on.   They sound like a bunch of pyro's.  Should get some killer HS footage. They blow up cars,   buildings, aircraft, etc.    I believe this is on my weekend off.   (I get every other weekend off)     I would still go even if I had to drink a few Rockstars and go without sleep that day.   Should be some amazing stuff to post. A buddy from work said he was golfing near the area last year and said he saw a tire fly about 500' in the air.   Lots of very heavy explosions.
http://www.centralvalleyarson.org/

Marathon Upload Week...

2012-03-05T03:29:00.000-08:00

Uploaded most of the footage from the "Ivanhoe" shoot this week.   I was planning on spacing out the uploads to about 1 per week and actually discussed this plan with Jesse and Mike, but felt I would get behind so decided to upload one per day through this weekend.   There was a possibility of another shoot on Sunday at the "Tipton" location but that fell through.

One issue with uploading so frequently is the massive number of comments that accumulate.    I hate letting a friendly comment go unanswered, and there were a lot of them this week.    The "Tic Tac" video generated an unprecedented number of comments,   many viewers making a lot of interesting suggestions.

Got nearly all the concepts planned, filmed and figured I'd have enough footage for 7 or 8 videos.    I wanted to keep each video very short rather than make long, drawn out videos this time.

The Ivanhoe property is about 500 yards deep and we tested the range of the wax slugs, shooting level, and the slugs travelled about halfway across the field before splashing.   Some of the camera footage shows a house in the background about 600 yards away off to the west,   but it looks closer on some of the clips.   Had to reposition everything to avoid the house being seen but some footage will have to be scrapped still.   The last thing I want is the focus of conversation being the house and how careless we appear to be.

It was warm that day and the 400 rounds of wax slugs sat in the back of my truck with the sun beating down on them.   Near the end of the day, the wax started to get soft and some rounds broke up after firing them.   Definitely a winter round.   To shoot them in summer I'd have to keep them on ice.

We had a small crowd of spectators watching at the shoot so that was a new one.    I think we all got a little stage fright from that so we weren't able to do some of the "sketch" stuff I had planned out in my head.

Since no one reads my blog...

2012-03-02T23:29:00.001-08:00

There is a bug, well many bugs on Youtube when using Internet Explorer. This one bug is when managing videos,   the "X" or checkmark, doesn't show up in the boxes when you click on them.
   I sometimes delete videos that are just not getting any views at all.    I tried, the video failed.   You can't win if you don't try, right?    I checked the video to delete, and then accidently checked the box above all the videos which indicate "ALL" but there wasn't a checkmark in the box.   No problem- I didn't actually click it I thought.   I then clicked on the pull down menu I meant to click on and selected "delete".     Bam.... 100 of my latest videos all deleted in one fell swoop.   These videos went back to the end of July 2011.
Fortunately Youtube Partner support was a lot of help and actually restored all 100 videos in less than 24 hours after I reported it them.   People may say a lot of bad things about Youtube Support, but hey, they did a great job for me. I didn't expect so much as a reply to my email, so it was a great relief to get the help.
Thanks Sharif.

Upcoming Projects as of 2/12

2012-02-20T16:00:00.000-08:00

"Wax Slugs"

The term "wax slug" is somewhat confusing and I am not a fan of the name.    These are homemade, user-modified, or do-it-yourself shot gun rounds where inexpensive, low-power birdshot shells are used.   The entire top of the shell is cut off,   and the bird shot is mixed with hot, liquified wax.   The mixture is then poured back into the shot gun shell which acts as its own mold.   The purpose of the wax is to simply hold the lead shot together so all the pellets impact together as a unified force.
The wax is "just" strong enough to accomplish this but weak enough to allow the pellets to break back apart upon impact with even light objects.

The first round of testing provided some very unexpected results.    The rounds were very "frangible" but managed to penetrate a 4" book, 2x4's, computer hard drives, etc. before the rounds broke apart.

Round 2 Tests

We are planning a second test of the 12 ga. wax slugs as soon as possible.   I have made a small modification to the process which still keeps things simple but should help keep the slugs flying more true in flight and not tumbling.    Though these rounds are relegated to somewhat close-range use (less than 100 yards),   the rounds are still very unique and have uses unlike any other round.

We will test the possible use as a "home defense" round.     Though some shooters may balk at using something "homemade" to protect their life, we feel the modification has no effect on the reliability of the round in any way.   This role may be a perfect application for these rounds.

Tests:
Simulated drywall shot
Shooting padlocks
Shooting 1/8" thick mild steel
Ballistics gel
Wet toilet paper roll (simulate section of leg)
Long-range stability (approx. 100 yards)
Cut-Shell testing

We have tried three different brands of 12 ga. sport loads for these tests
Remington Sport Loads (#7½)
Federal Field and Target (#7½)
Winchester Super X Game load (#8)

The Federal shells have a 2-piece wad and are the shells we'll be focusing more on. The
shot-cup has a natural skirt on it which may also help stablize the shell and may stay attached to the wax slug for a greater distance and less drag.

Liquid Metal MERCURY in Balloon popping in SLOMO

2012-01-31T21:24:00.001-08:00

Pellet rifle - Happy Meal Toys - High Speed camera = EPIC

2011-12-02T08:22:00.000-08:00

Amazingly Fast Fly Reaction Time

2011-11-14T21:49:00.000-08:00

PPSH-41 in Slow Motion

2011-11-13T20:56:00.000-08:00

Big Sandy Machine Gun Shoot in Slow Motion

2011-11-13T20:48:00.000-08:00

P-51 Mustangs in Slow Motion

2011-09-20T19:25:00.000-07:00

The "Taofledermaus" Promo Video

2011-09-17T10:19:00.000-07:00

Shooting a Public Defender - GunWebsites

2011-09-10T20:21:00.000-07:00

What happens when Mercury contacts aluminium?

2011-09-10T20:16:00.001-07:00

Slow Motion Rat Trap - Casio EXF1 Pro

2011-09-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

Panasonic HDC-SDX1 HD Camcorder REVIEW

2011-09-10T20:04:00.000-07:00

Slow motion homemade air rifle darts

2011-09-10T16:22:00.000-07:00

Spoof on TNOUTDOORS9

2011-09-06T21:07:00.001-07:00

What would I use in a Zombie Situation?

2011-08-27T07:11:00.000-07:00

Herding Cats... Part 2

2011-08-24T18:28:00.000-07:00

Cat-traption

2011-08-22T18:06:00.000-07:00

Lighting 2 matches at the same time trick

2011-08-19T20:33:00.001-07:00

New Top Secret Blog

2011-08-18T12:25:00.000-07:00

I gotta say I have never "blogged" before but it was suggested to me that I should create a blog to promote my channel. I see channels directing people to Twitter or Facebook or whatever and it has always seem redundant to me to use other websites to do what we can all ready do on YouTube.

Cat running at 600 FPS (20x slower than real time)

2011-08-17T22:39:00.000-07:00

AK 47 Drum Mag Failure

2011-08-17T22:17:00.001-07:00

Mercury (hg) Makes 1953 Silver Quarter shiney

2011-08-17T22:15:00.000-07:00

Hello!