I'm not 100% if it was the same magazine. Had this been a casual range trip, I'd have stopped to see what was going on. Since this was a training scenario once I was able to drop mag and clear it, the other I just tossed the rifle on the ground and grabbed my G17 and kept shooting. All the mags I've had for some time and ran plenty of times before, but I have one suspect that's new that I intend to test out a bit more before confirming.
As far as the knife, it's a self reliance outfitters PKS Kephart. I thought I had a spare sheath laying around and turns out I had to get one of those coming in the mail soon. I'm going to "wetform" the sheath and I've never done that "successfully" before so I'm hoping I don't go screwing the whole thing up. Hopefully that sheath gets in this weekend and I get that knocked out before this weekend.
This friday night I'm taking two nephews (18 & 16) out on their first overnight backpacking trip. It's not going to be ultra hardcore, and I'm going to keep the boys well fed, dry, safe and sound. Ideally, they're going to do something they've never done before and enjoy it, hopefully they'll want to do it again. Worst case, they'll at least have one trip under their belt, and never do it again. I really haven't done much backpacking in summer temps at all so I'm having to rethink a lot of things. Usually I go out late spring, or after first frost in the fall and all through winter just because bugs and ticks aren't my friends. Now I'm on the fence about what sleeping bags to put the buys in. It'll either be a surplus MSS green patrol pack, or a surplus MSS black bag to make sure they're going to be warm and toasty. One will be in a hammock, the other in a tent, and I'll be in a hammock as well. We may switch that up, but we'll see what we get into.
Also, debating on any good lessons to make sure these guys learn on this trip. If I can get the basics in their heads, like a couple knots, fatwood & ferro rod, feather stick, and looking out for water, wind, widow makers, and whatever the other one is I think that'd be enough to get some amount of grit instilled for an overnighter.
For myself, I've got a Helikon Swagman Roll inbound because I really like the concept of a poncho, woobie, sleeping bag, jacket thing that takes one piece of gear out of my pack and replaces with nothing but versatility. Only problem is that I like to test things in the backyard before getting out a few miles and finding out something sucks. We'll see how that goes......
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) for the AK. Putting away berries as preserves, strawberry, currant, gooseberry and mulberry so far.
