The way to a man’s heart is his stomach. When that man is a prepper, and a blogger, nothing could be more true. With that said, I was overjoyed recently when I was contacted by one of our local freeze-dried companies. They were wondering if I would be interested in sampling a couple of their entrees, and writing my opinion on them. Not exactly a difficult decision there.
Gun ownership is a long-term investment which requires proper maintenance and cleaning in order to keep your guns working at their peak performance. A primary concern with long term storage of any gun — especially those stored in humid climates — is corrosion. Preventing corrosion is a multi-step process, starting with proper care of your firearm in the field, and followed with proper storage. However, even if you take all the necessary precautions and care possible with your firearm, and even in the best of situations, if you use it corrosion or wearing will probably happen. How you deal with the results of such wear is the purpose of this article. Continue reading “Getting the Blues – Dealing with Corrosion”
Recently, Mike published an article introducing a local company named Goal0 (article link). They develop solar products to fit a wider variety of needs than your average solar pack, and so we were very intrigued as to their application to a prepper mindset.
Elite/Sherpa Products
In reviewing the different models, I decided to purchase some of the Sherpa series of products to try out. One of the ideal solutions when buying gear is to get one of the pre-defined kits, in my case I specifically picked up the Sherpa 120 kit. This kit is made up of the following items, which in the bundle came at a good discount:
Here at UtahPreppers we try to keep an eye on prepping topics, trends and products from all over the country and often the world. Even though we try to keep a global focus we still like finding and supporting local businesses that fit into the prepping niche. We recently met up with a Bluffdale company to take a look at some of their innovative solar products.
When I moved to college in Idaho as a teenager, I had a really quick introduction into a new world of snow and ice. While the snow I grew up with was wet and heavy, and usually melted away pretty quick in the moderate temperature. Idaho however introduced me to the bitter hard-freeze that left our campus with an amazing array of forms of ice that were completely new to me. I, as with many of my fellow students, became intimately familiar with this ice while performing the splits, or landing on my back when trying to hurry between classes.
In that time, I saw a few people that had some nifty attachments for their shoes allowing them to get traction on the ice. Along the lines of higher end crampons used in ice-climbing, they strapped on over any shoes and allowed the user to dig into the ice a bit more. Over on one of my favorite sites (Instructables) there are some instructions for creating a simple version of these yourself.
A theme that is seeing increased activity on many of our friends blogs is that of the 5-gun challenge. What does that mean? Well it’s a way of answering the common question of “What gun should I buy?” Chances are you’re one of two types of readers at this point; either you are already familiar with firearms, and you will want to read this simply to debate the opinions. Or, you are to some degree unfamiliar with firearms and will hopefully find this post very informative.
If you’ve ever been in a conversation with a firearms enthusiast, you’ll know that each person has their own strong opinions, so it’s always nice to get everybody’s input and reasoning behind their decisions. This being a multi-author blog, this post will allow several of our authors to explain their choices for 5 guns, and give their reasoning behind each. Please check out each page to get the full list of recommendations.
In a group camping situation, I’m “That Guy”. You know, the one everybody is thankful is around because all the bugs seem to be biting him. For some reason I tend to get singled out for the airborne attack, and with my allergic nature, I tend to get largest bumps you’ve ever seen. So I’m always on the lookout for something to improve my chances in the wild, battling the vampiric forces of the bugs.
In my search for more weapons in the battle against the bite, I’d heard of people suggesting using drying sheets with some success; now there appears to be some scientific proof to this case. According to the study:
For those looking for some discounts on your food storage, and especially on a few bigger items, this might be exactly what you need. Our friends at Home Storage Basics are having their Harvest closeout sale. The following is from the email they sent out.
Home Storage Basics, American Fork Utah!
Harvest Inventory sale one week only! Ends October 23, 2010
Inventory IN the store is 15 % OFF, Except Shirley J Seasoning items.
In celebration of our Store Anniversary we are selling all our used floor models of the BOSCH, BOSCH Compact, Nutrimill, and Wondermill at great prices! All items have been out for a year- some gently used other have seen a lot of cookies in their day! Come visit us for pricing!
If you are in Utah or Salt Lake counties, you should make sure to check this shop out. The owner (a friend of mine) is the best resource around for all things wheat and grain related, and the bakery they have in the shop is excellent. Please check them out and support a great local business.
As a web developer who freelances in addition to my full time employment, I sometimes take advantage of bartering opportunities. Last year one such opportunity presented itself—I was on the lookout for a military surplus tent of some sort, and came across a company (based here in Utah) called Turtle Tuff Shelters who made yurt-like geodesic shelters. Their website at the time was very.. ahem.. lacking, so I suggested a barter. They agreed, and a few months later I became the owner of a 24′ Turtle Tuff Shelter.
The interesting thing about these shelters, and the reason I opted to get one of these as opposed to some other form of tent/shelter, is that the structure is a geodesic frame which helps greatly with load bearing, wind resistance, with lightweight, high-strength, tempered, aircraft aluminum alloy rods. The dome shape distributes any weight or force across a broader area, thus minimizing any impact it receives. Each of the individual hubs/joints hold over 300 lbs. because of this design. The frame is designed to withstand almost 150mph winds when staked to the ground.
Putting the shelter together has been on my to-do list since last year, but not until today have I made the time to do it. With the help of a friend of mine, I spent the morning putting the tent together—partially, anyways. We assembled the frame and covered it; due to time constraints, we weren’t able to proceed with setting up the floor. Additionally, once the shelter is assembled you determine where you want your door and window to be, and you then cut out material, apply adhesive zippers, etc. I preferred to wait until if/when I actually have to use the shelter before making any permanent alterations to the materials.
Are you interested in learning a little more about HAM radio—specifically, understanding the “geekier” side of things? Then check out this session at the Utah Open Source Conference: Exploring the Radio Frequency Spectrum.
From the abstract:
An in depth look at amateur radio’s effect on today’s technology. Topics to be covered will include the history of amateur radio, requirements for becoming an amateur radio operator, exploration of the technologies amateur radio uses, and open source tools that can be used in conjunction with amateur radio. Technology enthusiast familiar with the Linux Journal January 2010 issue will find this presentation a compliment to the amateur radio articles covered. This presentation is suited for technology beginners to experts, and those that would like to learn more about amateur radio.
I will never hide the fact that I am a geek, a gadget geek in the scope of this post. I love playing with various “toys” and trying to find the perfect tools for whatever need I have.
Image Taken Straight From ThinkGeek
So this week, one of the shiny things to catch my attention is found over on the ThinkGeek Gadgets site, It’s a key-sized multi-tool, for a decent price. Now I’ve checked out lots of ‘key’ tools the past few years.From constantly watching for a chance at picking up an Atwood Ti, to usually crappy quality key-tools that are way too clunky to want to carry on my limited keychain. Previously I was leaning towards the Gerber Artifact (via ThinkGeek:
Gerber Artifact Pocket Keychain Tool) (Which I still wouldn’t mind, for sure). It’s a nice tool, but still isn’t quite the same idea of this. While the artifact tries to be another knife, this tool attempts to be all the various non-blade tools from your swiss-army knife.
This however beats out those crappy ones (not the atwoods though, of course). It’s thin, not wider than a normal key. Nor is it bulky, sticking out wrong. It has several helpful functions which are actually labeled to help jog the memory. It’s the perfect choice when I don’t want to carry my swiss army style knife, but would rather keep a single blade on me. I don’t lose access to the common tools this way. Hey, it’s probably safe to take on a plane too!.
Also well thought out, is that it actually wraps onto your existing keys, so it covers the sharper edges, and doesn’t rip up your pocket so much.
I’ve been wanting to get out camping more often, but I suspect like many have had trouble convincing my wife to give camping a try. For some reason, sleeping on the hard, cold ground doesn’t appeal to her.
Buying a dedicated camper, pop-up tent, RV would be nice, but they are generally more than I want to spend, are single purpose and often require separate registration here in Utah. I often find a need for a small utility trailer for hauling mulch, compost, etc. and here in Utah, smaller trailers under a certain weight and size don’t need to be registered. When I obtained an old home built utility trailer recently, I decided to jump head first into a home built adventure trailer build. Continue reading “Bug out/Camping/Utility Trailer”
The way to a man’s heart is his stomach. When that man is a prepper, and a blogger, nothing could be more true. With that said, I was overjoyed recently when I was contacted by one of our local freeze-dried companies. They were wondering if I would be interested in sampling a couple of their entrees, and writing my opinion on them. Not exactly a difficult decision there.
(via ThinkGeek: 
