Brief Downtime

There will be a couple hours of downtime on the site today (or possibly tomorrow) – we are moving onto our own dedicated server. You may have noticed timeouts or slow service in the last week or two, because we’ve reached the capacity of out current hosting setup. This new dedicated server will keep things going nice and fast for a long time, though. Thanks for the patience!

Girl with a Gyrojet pistol
I know, she needs to learn proper trigger discipline. But she still looks better with that Gyrojet than I would.

24 Comments

  1. Ian –

    Just a point of curiosity. How many views is your site experiencing daily? What are their origins, domestic and foreign? The main stream media tries to portray firearms enthusiasts as rare oddballs, so a little disclosure of our population would be welcome.

    • It depends a bit on which type of tracking you look at, but the site is getting about 6,000 daily pageviews on average. Last month saw a total of 52,000 unique visitors and about 212 gigabytes of bandwidth. The majority of the traffic is from the US, followed by (in decreasing order) Germany, Singapore, the UK, Canada, China, France, Australia, Poland, and Russia.

  2. Alexa gives you a pretty good idea of the popularity of websites. Just punch in your favorite gun site and compare ranking.

  3. Germany second place? Pleasant surprise.
    Although: given the wealth of information presented on this website by you, Ian, not that much of a surprise really. Thanks a lot for this and I can’t wait to see more!
    So, is the Karin-Dor-still from ‘You Only Live Twice’ a nod to your German visitors? 😉

  4. Ian, congratulations on the increased viewing traffic — that is always a good sign. This also reminded me that not too long ago, we had all been discussing the possibility of you making a full-time career out of this web site, along with the possibility of a subscription for in-depth news and information. Any updates as of yet?

      • Thanks for the update, Ian. It’s very heartening to see things going in a positive direction, as always. I don’t think I would be remiss in stating that many of us are right with you and want to see you succeed in the long run. If that long-term prospect involves a heritage that can be passed down through generations to come, so much the better.

  5. Although this is a tad off-subject, I believe that the femme fatale with the Gyrojet pistol in your photograph was actress Karin Dor, who played the part of arch-villainess Helga Brandt in the original version of the James Bond movie, “You Only Live Twice”. Growing up with a host of the old Bond movies, among others, I thought then that the Bond girls such as Karin Dor, Ursula Andress, Daniela Bianchi, Aliza Gur, Martine Beswick, Shirley Eaton, Tania Mallet, Honor Blackman, Diana Rigg, Claudine Auger, Luciana Paluzzi, Molly Peters, Akiko Wakabayashi, Tsai Chin, Lois Chiles and Olga Bisera, just to name a few (!), were the most beautiful women I had ever seen. I still do.

      • Just a little reminiscence , Fidel — They were , and still are, beautiful. I’m sure you’ll forgive an old veteran a little of that, won’t you? If you, or anyone else, is still offended, I duly apologize. Besides, I did preface the whole commentary by flatly stating up front that I acknowledged I was a little off-topic to begin with. Almost everyone on this site has diverted in one form or the other in one direction or another in the course of discussion, but that’s what makes it so interesting — the willingness to risk an open forum in the hopes that it might lead to another equally-interesting ( and relevant ) thread leading back to the main topic via a different route.

  6. I have always been drawn to the “strange or different” guns. I bought a Gyrojet Pistol and 20 of the rocket balls when they came out. I would like to tell you of my impressions. The gun was light, slow to load, big, with the barrel high above the grip. You may think the M 16 or Grease Gun were like products of the Mattel Toy Company but the Gyrojet was the most tin toy like gun ever. To Load it you slid the top cover to the rear and inserted the rounds one at a time into the fixed internal magazine and slid the top cover forward. Next you pushed the hammer above of the trigger guard in a 90 degree arc forward and down cocking it. When the trigger was pulled the hammer swung back striking the nose of the rocket driving it back into a fixed firing pin at the rear striking the primer. The report was loud but not sharp the rocket then took off it seemed to go faster the farther away it got. You could follow its flight like a tracer ( which it was) till it burned out. The accuracy was so so (might be my fault). It hit the backstop near the can but not the can.The funniest thing was seeing the Gyrojet shot from the side as the rocket seemed to drop 1-2 inches out of the barrel then take off. What it really was was the Gyrojet muzzle recoiling upwards and seeing the trace of the propellant. I sold it with 8 rounds long ago. I kept one round that I still have stored away from other ammo because it has deteriorated (rusted) over the years. I wonder what its worth now?. Bob

    • Wish you’d kept the gun and the original rounds :). Thanks so much for sharing your experiences with us!

    • Thanks for describing the firing experience with the Grojet.
      Lack of accuracy was not your fault, it seemingly is something everyone observed who fired it. As for any rocket, maximum speed was achieved at burnout, which was approximately 15 yards from the muzzle.

      P.S. Karin Dor will have her 75th birthday this year. In my view she is one of those women who remain very female and attractive even at an advanced age. (Google has a number of other shots showing her with the Gyrojet.)

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