Pleather or Faux-Leather is a synthetic coated fabric that looks and almost feels like real leather. It is soft, flexible, and waterproof. While not as durable as leather it is a whole lot cheaper. This is why its used in the “Leather” Kylo Wren jacket sold at the Disney Store that I bought as a Christmas present for my wife in 2020.
The jacket developed small tears on the shoulder and have started showing the start of tears under the collar. Fortunately Pleather repair tape is readily available from fabric stores, hobby shops, and Amazon.
Unfortunately the repair project failed when she first tried it on the next day. The repair patches held up too well. They didn’t stretch in the same way as the underlying fabric and tore away from the jacket leaving an even larger tear than before. Lesson learned, don’t try to repair a cheaply made jacket.
Feagle/Feyachi marketing sent me their PST35 sight tool to test and evaluate. These rigs are sometimes called “sight pushers” because there are a series of screws and plates designed to gently push off the rear iron-sights of pistol which are attached by dovetail groove and retained by pressure/tension.
This appears similar to the US made RockYourGlock sight-pusher tool. But the PST35 offers a hidden advantage. The handle of the pusher block is also a front-sight wrench, which can loosen the small bolt under your slide which holds a Glock’s front sight in place.
The PST35 is a pretty sizable rig/frame and large adjustment knobs. The frame has holes to screw/mount it on a work bench though in practice the process of sight removal or adjustment can be done purely hand-held. The frame appears to be mostly aluminum with steel screws so it seems quite robust.
After removing the slide from your pistol, you loosen the PST35 plates, and position your pistol slide in the center of the rig. After tightening the holding plates and securing the slide, you turn the main handle which pushes your rear sight off its dovetails and off your slide (depending on the design of your sights, be sure to loosen any set screws before attempting).
Installing sights is a revers of the process. The PST35 sight pusher has measurement markings (which appear to me in millimeters) to assist in aligning your sights. This is how you would also adjust your sights to properly align them for aiming your pistol.
This is a well built and useful tool if and when you need to change or adjust your sights. But like many specialty gunsmithing tools, this probably won’t be often or more than once for a typical gun owner. I suspect that this will probably get used most often when your gun buddies ask to borrow it for their new toy.
Conree contacted me and sent me a their electronic earmuffs to test. Hearing protection is a must when participating any shooting sport because hearing loss is caused by exposure from loud noises above 85dB and once damaged, hearing loss can not be healed. Along with eye-protection, it’s not worth it to cheap out and use a product that doesn’t provide the minimum level of protection promised.
I had never heard of the Conree brand before which is not a good start when choosing hearing protection. Fortunately, I have the tools to test the earmuffs before wearing. So if they failed to reduce noise to a safe level, I wouldn’t take them out to the range.
The Conree ME123 headphones come in a Spartan black box with an illustration of the headphones. Inside the box was a ~1.5ft 3.5mm audio cable, user manual, and the headphones. The user manual was as Spartan as the box, with very little instructional information, repeated in multiple languages.
The headphones are black plastic and light weight. The headband had a faux leather cover and allowed the ear cups to fold into a compact 5x5x4.5 configuration. The headphones run on 2 x AAA batteries, housed in the left earcup.
The earcup’s foam earpads are comfortable and provide a good air seal and sound isolation. The AUX jack can be used to connect the headphones to phone or radio. The sound level is dependent on the headphones volume level; when turned off, no AUX sound can be heard. The speakers have poor bass response and high volume output from my computer sounded clipped, so these are not headphones you would want for hifi music listening.
In my audio testing the headphones reduced ambient noise from my handvac by approximately 27dB; this is 4dB better than Conree’s stated 23dB NRR (Noise Reduction Rating). While the noise profile of a high-speed vacuum motor is not the same as that of a .44magnum handgun, it is a good enough for me to feel it safe to test these headphones on the range.
At the range, I was pleased to find that the headphones were light weight and comfortable for the 1hr I spent shooting my 9mm Glock. The headphones did respectable job. Unlike some headphones by Earmor and Caldwell, gunfire noise was attenuated (reduced) but not completely cut off, so I was able to follow people’s conversations around me rather than completely dropped out.
What I would have liked is a bit more max volume. Many of us use supplemental foam earplugs under our electronic earmuffs when we shoot indoors. The Conree’s max volume was barely loud enough to hear speech around me without earplugs, and not enough to amplify natural sounds of prey animals that are useful in hunting.
Overall, these headphones compare well against my Howard Leight Impact Sports. Not quite as low-profile or as loud but very close in audio quality and a bit better sound seal around the ears. I would recommend them for smaller heads or kids for whom Impact Sports do not provide a comfortable and secure fit.
A few days after my range test, I discovered that I had forgotten to turn off the headphones. The LED light was still on but I could hear no sound through the headphones. The unit has an auto shut-off after about 4 hours. This did work in my case to deactivate the headphones except for the LED light, but it did conserve battery life which still held a full-charge based on the reading from my battery tester.
When I was offered a travel tripod by SunwayFOTO, I wasn’t expecting more than another clone Chinesium tripod that would likely last long before some screw stripped itself. What I got was a feather light carbon fiber tripod that impressed me.
This tripod comes in a black velvet pouch containing the folded and collapsed tripod and a plastic pouch containing four Allen wrenches (to tighten screw joints which work their way loose over time) and a cleaning cloth. While the velvet was probably meant to make it feel high end and protect the parts, it does make for a dust magnet.
The tripod weighed in at 1.67 oz on my scale and that includes the metal ballhead! The overall length when collapsed was barely 14″. Technically I’ve used lighter tripods but these were mini-tripods or accessory tripods; not real photo tripods that you could mount a full sized DSLR and telephoto lens with any confidence or stability, and certainly not at eye level. Fully extended, the tripod stands at 52″ in height, perfectly standard.
The ball head has a slight divot cut in the ARCA QR mount to make room for the tripod foot to rest in it, making the tripod just few millimeters smaller. Levers were used instead of twist heads for added torque on locking joints. These little design details make the SunwayFOTO stand out as a cut above typical tripods. As does it’s price, which is a around $220 as of this writing, so not as expensive as some higher-end carbon fiber tripods; it’s certainly not cheap.
The leg segments lock and unlock with a 180º twist at the feet. They utilize an internalized locking mechanism without individual locking rings at the segments, so extra care needs to be made if you attempt to retract an individual leg or segment, as twisting the outermost segment can transfer torque and unlock the previous segment. This makes adjustments on uneven surfaces tedious but this also makes deployment on normal level surfaces extremely fast.
I was able to unfold and depoly the tripod in under 19 seconds pretty much the first time without rushing it. And the leg extension and locking can be done essentially one handed. This makes this tripod ideal for guerrilla-style shooting where you have to get into position fast, get your footage an go.
The light weight, fast deployment, and compact size make this an ideal travel tripod or live event vlogging tripod. This will surely be my go-to tripod for my range videos and I’ll be sure to give those leg locks a thorough durability test in the near future.
Last Black Friday, I bought a Savage Axis XP at Sportsman’s Warehouse that came with a Bushnell 4-12×40 scope and rings pre-installed in the rifle in the box. It was a great price and I assume Savage has been trying to sell through their remaining stock of the Axis now that the Axis II model has been out for a couple of years.
I didn’t hold high expectations for a “free” scope. I expected it to be about the same quality as Budget scopes by CVLife, Pinty, etc. with an unknown ability to hold up to the recoil of the .308 cal rounds the rifle was chambered for. Upon close inspection I wasn’t far off. I could not find a match for this scope in the Bushnell website? Bushnell does sell a Banner 4-12×40 but it looks nothing like this scope; with a side parallax knob instead of this scope’s AOE. It had the “Bushnell” logo on it but it looked more like a knock-off Bushnell.
I gave it a try on the rifle, going through about 50 rounds of 7.62mm breaking the rifle in and zeroing out the scope. The packaging says it was “factory bore-sighted”, which just means that you can get on paper. That I did and I was pleased and relieved to find that once zero’d the scope held its zero.
I fully expected to replace this free scope with one of the higher end scopes I’ve recently reviewed like the Hawk Sidewinder or Arken SH4. But after shooting with it, I decided to keep it on the Savage and keep the rifle stock. For a basic hunting rifle, the scope is perfectly acceptable. To their credit, as much as the Savage Axis is a budget rifle that does the job it’s designed to do, so does the scope they chose for it.
Anybody who has been out on a trip or stuck on location knows the utility of a powerbank to keep your devices running when you can’t plug in to recharge. But if you’ve ever forgotten to bring the correct cable for your device, knows the frustration of that moment. Thankfully there are powerbanks that come with built in charging cables and this Sanag is one of the most versatile in that respect.
I was sent a Sanag 10,000mAh travel powerbank to test and evaluate. It comes with 4 built-in cables: USB-A, Apple Lightning (iOS), Micro USB, and USB-C. The unit can charge up to 4 devices simultaneously using its various cables and plugging an additional cable to its USB-A port.
The cables are designed to fold almost flush into the shell. The shell is of the unit is black plastic with a unique faux brushed metal texture. This is both aesthetically appealing as well as practical as it provides a high-friction surface for a firm hand hold.
To recharge the unit, there is a Micro USB port next to the unit’s power button or you can plug its built-in USB-A cable to a standard USB port on a wall charger, computer, or charger hub. I discharged the unit and recharged it overnight. I recorded a total charge of 8156mAh to reach 100%, while this is approximately 1844mAh short of its stated 10k capacity, I suspect this is a safety shut-off on the unit, to keep the device from completely discharging.
Sig Sauer is a Swiss firearms company with an historic reputation for making rifles and pistols built to Swiss engineered quality. But recently they’ve also been releasing a line of accessories and optics at a competitive price like their popular Romeo line of red dots. Their Buckmasters 3-9x40mm is their least expensive magnified hunting scope at around $100 or under.
Unlike other budget price tier 3-9x scopes, the Buckmasters appears to be well built. It has a tight and well built tube with clear markings and smooth moving components. A good indication is the moulded SIG branded lens caps. A company that was just cashing in their brand on trash optics would have settled for unbraded caps or cheap printing on generic caps.
Typical of hunting scopes, the caps are capped which protects the turrets from the elements, moisture, and accidental bumps. The turrets are resettable using the included Allen wrench. They turn with nice audable clicks and are tactile positive, with only a little slop. In testing, the turrets returned to zero in box tests.
The scope has a BDC reticle but oddly manual doesn’t provide information as to the ammo and rifle used to establish the reticles dope markings. Perhaps this is an admission to the failure of this reticle type to live up to its promise because it’s unlikely the buyer will have the exact same rifle and use the exact same ammo. That said, I prefer reticles with any type of hold mark to provide a reference point for applying hold overs with follow up shots.
Optically, the scope’s sharpness and resolution was typical of 3-9x, in the Group -2 category using a 8.5″x11″ USAF Optical Resolution chart at 100yrds. But unlike typical budget scopes, the Buckmasters displayed no chromatic aberration and maintained an even sharpness and focus from center to edge. In addition, the scope maintained about a 3.5″-4″eye relief and decent eye box.
For the price, this scope exhibits better optics than the similarly priced Bushnell Banner and much better build quality and clarity than cheaper CVLife and other no-name scopes. It does have a limited lifetime warranty which isn’t as forgiving as Vortex’s but if you don’t abuse your gear, it should be effectively the same.
After posting videos explaining how to auto sync your YouTube videos to the rival video platform, Rumble and on copyrights, one of the most common questions I would get in the comments for those videos was, “Which Rumble License Options should I choose?”
When you upload or sync content to Rumble, you’re asked to choose 1 of 4 options to license your video with Rumble. Options #1 and #2 look confusingly similar as they are both titled “Video Management”. If you choose either, what you are effectively agreeing to is contracting for Rumble to manage the licensing of your video.
This is useful if you create content that other 3rd parties may want to use to create their content. These include Advertising agencies, film makers, news outlets, etc. who are looking for stock footage or content to create with. If they found a video on Rumble that was licensable, they could simply click on the “License” button and pay a fee to Rumble, who in turn would share those proceeds with you, the creator.
Option #1 give Rumble exclusive online rights which could bite you in the ass if you had previously posted your content on YouTube or elsewhere. Now if YouTube wants to continue showing your video, they have to negotiate a licensing agreement with Rumble. That could potentially cause your content to be removed by YouTube from their platform.
Option #2 excludes YouTube from Rumbles management which sounds promising. But in reading the fine print of Rumbles the Terms of Service, should you choose either Option #1 or #2 you are agreeing to give Rumble Management Rights to your video for up to 50 years! Thats means you do not have the right to remove your content from Rumble either because Rumble has a license to use your video for the term of the agreement.
This is a reminder of how important it is to always read the fine print. Or in the case of online Terms of Service, all of print. To their credit Rumble doesn’t hide any of these details or
That is why I always choose Option #3 which only grants Rumble the right to play and put advertising on (monetize) my videos. This is the same license I have with YouTube so it’s really no different. Option #4 is choosing to not monetize your content; allowing Rumble to play it but not put Ads on it or re-license it.
Area 419 sent me their 15MOA rail and it was exactly what my CZ 457 VPC needed. This rail has an uninterrupted 6″ Picatinny rail with a 1/2″ rise providing more than enough space to mount my new Arken EP-5. Those who shoot long range tend to buy higher magnification scopes, with larger tubes, and larger objective lenses.
The EP-5 has a 56mm bell and that means extra height is required to mount the scope without it touching the barrel. In addition, this 15MOA rail has a slight downward angle effectively aiming your scope downward 15MOA. Even with this slant, the EP-5 with an extended sun shade, clears the barrel without difficulty.
I always wondered why CZ did not include a Picatinny rail adapter with their rifle when they took the effort to create a custom designed chassis for the VPC? This rifle was designed for ELR shooters, not hunters. The long range rimfire world pretty much uses the Picatinny standard when mounting optics.
But even if CZ did include their rail with this rifle, I would probably have had to replace it for the Area 419. The 419 is rail is a much better design. The CZ-made rail lacks a complete set of Picatinny slots over the full length of the rail; this limits the number of positions that you can install rings and prevents the use of scope mounts.
The Area 419 rail also has a generous cut-out arch over the CZ ejection port so as not to interfere with shell ejection (for either standard or left-handed actions). It is twice as high as the CZ rail. And best of all, it has a built-in bubble level at the rear of mount. It is the rail that CZ should have put on this rifle in the first place.
I think it was Phillips or LG who first came out with LED backlighting in their flatscreen TV’s about a decade ago. I thought it was a novelty and for the most part, it never caught on with the general public. But now with the mass production of LED multi-color strip lighting, this feature can be easily and cheaply added on to just about anything.
I was asked to test out the Coliben LED backlighting kit for TV’s. Honestly, I didn’t have much interest in an LED backlighting system for my TV. It reminded me too much of Rice Rocket Tuners (cars). But I thought I’d give it a shot and see what all the hype was about.
The unit came in a graphic box without any branding or logo. Inside was the kit which included the LED strip inside an old-school 8mm film/magnetic tap reel. The unit had a small user manual which went over the controls using their App on your smartphone but it lacked physical installation instructions?
I did some Googling and looked at photos and videos of similar products and figured out the install process. The LED strips come in 4 segments, each connected with a short cable section which form the corners. The strips were self-adhesive on the back and the segments were to be applied to back side of your flatscreen. Depending on the size and design of your TV, the placement of each segment would vary.
The LED strip connected to a control box with a built-in camera on a stalk, which would hang over your TV and look back at the screen. The control box had 3M adhesive strips on one side but the design did not lend itself to securely attaching to the back of my TV (or at least not in the way I thought it should). I tried attaching LEGO bricks to the control box to try and secure it. But ultimately I ended up using additional double-stick adhesive gel strips to adhere the box to the back of my TV in a less obtrusive fashion.
The control box has two USB-A ports. You can plug in the LED strip to either. A separate 4.4mm jack powers the unit via a wall plug. The box has an on-off-reset button on the “front” but the unit is primarily controlled using a smartphone App. The manual did cover the calibration process and the App was fairly easy to use.
In use, the color lighting was fascinating but I did find it a bit distracting. In it’s “default” multi-color mode, the colors rendered were not 100% reflective of all of the colors in the TV screen. Black areas on video footage get translated into intense blue LED colors. Using the App, custom color pallets/moods could be selected. There were also Audio-Sync modes where the colors would pulse or change depending on the beat/sound heard by control unit’s build-in mic.
Initially, I wasn’t that keen in installing mood lighting in my house. But after trying it, I can see (literally) the attraction. The Coliben is an inexpensive way to enhance your video setup. But the install process wasn’t dummy proof and it has issues which can be resolved:
• Lacks clear installation instructions
• Control box design is not well thought out
• Unit should have been designed also run off a USB-C port and allow for connecting to a TV’s USB port.
• Colors not 100% true to the scene
• Requiring the installation of a smartphone App, along with the unit’s built-in mic and camera make me a little uneasy from a personal privacy standpoint
