Iraq Ninja- Sons of Guns- Freefall Shotgun episode

General General Discussion
1

Tomorrow night the company I work for (Paradigm SRP) will be featured on Sons of Guns. I can’t go into the details of what it is about, but the preview is up. Helicopters, free fall, multicam, Mayflower PCs, and shotguns are all involved. If nothing else, the Gear Queers will have a field day with it.

I know that many gun folks laugh at the SoG shows, but I can say that this one may be their best ever. The quality of the builds they did for us was excellent. I got to spend a lot of time in their shop and was overall impressed by what I saw. Flem is one hell of a gunsmith. Red Jacket treated us right…

Notes:

Our lead jumper is Chris Wagner, who was not only a high school friend of mine (he went SF, I went Ranger), but a former Golden Knight and world champion. He currently is a MFF instructor for the Navy EOD.

Joe Jennings is probably the world’s leading freefall videographer and his work on the show was amazing. Check out his work at: http://www.skydive.tv/

The “situation” that happens in the show was real “reality TV” and we honestly didn’t know the outcome. Weather was a big issue.

Our helicopter is an EC 135 Eurocopter. Last year we used our AStar on a previous episode.

My thanks go out to our friends at Personal Defense here in Texas for getting us hooked up with ITT to showcase their DSNVG night vision monocle. It is simply an amazing piece of kit to use. The ITT folks flew down to make sure there were no ITAR violations or security issues. For instance, the government says you can show the image through the DSNVG, but not how the controls works.

Also, Legion firearms was nice enough to loan us one of their carbines and a pistol for the show.

Lastly, I want to thank Chief “Patches” Watson, former SEAL and author of the books Point Man, and Walking Point. Though he is not featured on the show, his legacy and experience was a major part in bringing back to life a little piece of SEAL history…

2

Damnit IN, now I’m going to have to watch the show :laugh:

3

Yeah, me too. This is totally against everything I stand for…

4

Chief Watson + shotgun = Stevens 37 12 ga. DUCKBILL with #4 buckshot. Or something similar I predict. I would love to see how this attachment performs.

I don’t watch SoG anymore, but I will tune in for this episode. Might have to re-read his books this week for the tenth time. Perhaps this will be a good dose of sanity to Red Jacket that serious work is worth watching not just drama and stupid projects.

5

might I ask why your company chose to do business with them in the first place?.. or was this simply a situation presented to you from SOG/Discovery?

I guess what I am asking is… did your company have a real need and thus you specifically sought out Red Jacket for some odd reason, or were you contacted by Discovery Channel/SOG staff and presented with an opportunity for a collaboration?

6

You had me at “multicam”!! :dance3:

7

ETA: This will probably be the only episode of Sons of Guns I watch where I won’t want to punch a baby.

8

HUH? :confused:…

9

Fixed it.

10

IN, thanks for the heads up. I don’t watch the show but set up the DVR to record tonights episode.

11

Any chance we could get a link so we could watch it online?
Thanks

12

I’ll suck it up, and check this episode out, IN.

:slight_smile:

13

Watching now.

Ninja, we’re you on the episode?

14

Todd is the tall guy, I am the other one (john). We both sporting white goat beards lol.

15

Lol, I was waiting for “I was the one with the goatee”.

ETA
Holly multicam batman…

16

Watched it, those Saigas were pretty slick. Cool progression of Chief Watson’s duckbill.

17

I was using the rifled saiga and I gotta say it is a sweet gun. Light and not a lot of kick.

Overall, the show went well. They cut some good scenes and some of my better lines! It is not really scripted. They let you say what you want and do want you want.

The best line they cut was just before the assault:

Todd- How we want to hit this house?
Me- I got an idea… I will go first and you follow, because Rangers Lead the Way! and then I run off with Todd (former SF 10th group) runs to catch up.

BTW, our website crashed during the show with all the hits. Now I got hundreds of emails from job seekers wanting work. Maybe I will forward them to the White House.

Next time, I will get rid of the Copenhagen before talking, but that is a Ranger thing too…

Overall, it was fun to do. The GATOR is a real product and works. We did it mostly out of nostalgia and to support the SEAL Museum. Heck, it might even work for hunting hogs!

18

We had a relationship with RJ from a previous episode with our first generation TALON helo mount. The GATOR project was something we had been working on for a while, trying to re engineer it so it would not break, and add some modern applications to it.

When the SOG guys got in touch with us earlier this year, they asked what we were up to and told them about the GATOR. I had this idea of a short saiga with the GATOR called the Buster. I wanted it to be full auto and used to break contact. I wanted to be able to jump it in. It kinda evolved into what was finally made on the show.

The jump really did end up way off the drop zone. They really didn’t script it much, but rather let you say and do what you wanted.

19

Ninja,

I have to admit that was a decent episode. Now if you can pull some strings to get me over there on the show, that would be cool!

Your stuff arrived today. Email going out later.

20

Good stuff, IN! It was fun watching you guys tonight.