Latest Happenings
What's New
Haven't checked in with Roger in a while? Here's what he's been up to — every new post and gear pick, newest first.
New Gear · Camping
Warmco D4 Battery Powered Camping Fan
What I really like about this one is the huge battery — it runs a long time, and the LED light can stay on low all night as a nightlight in the tent if you need that. I originally bought it for the adventure truck, to go alongside two USB-C fans I modified with a magnetic base so I could stick them to the inside wall of my ARE truck shell. But I like this one so much I keep grabbing it out of the truck and bringing it into the house — just last night I used it to create a breeze to help keep the mosquitoes away, so it's earned a spot doing more than just camping duty. Aside from the battery and how quiet it is, the flat design has a swing-out leg built in, which also doubles as a small hook if you want to hang it instead.
Check it outNew Gear · Camping
FARADAY USB Desk Fan
I used JB Weld to glue magnets onto the base of this fan so I can stick it to the inside wall of my ARE truck shell. I actually bought two of these — one with the USB cable built in, and one where you supply your own USB-C cable — and I like the built-in cable version better, since I'm not hunting for a cable and I don't have to spend extra buying a longer one just to reach a power source. These barely draw any power, so a small USB power bank runs it easily. Thanks to the magnetic mod, I'll sometimes stick it upside-down on the tailgate when it's down, blowing air on me while I'm sitting nearby — keeps the tailgate itself free for camping gear instead of taken up by a fan stand. Mine's actually black; this listing defaults to blue, but it's the same fan.
Check it outNew Gear · Gardening
FOGWOWO Drip Irrigation Emitters, 30-Pack
I'm an avid gardener, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that at the garden you're either watering, weeding, or BS-ing with other gardeners. I like this style over a plain drip emitter because you can swap the heads between a fine spray and a straight drip. I think it matters to water the top of the soil in a dispersed pattern rather than concentrating it right at the root — it's better for the soil's microbiology and the worms, and it makes the roots extend out searching for water instead of staying lazy right where a dripper feeds them. The one downside: watering this way sprouts more weeds too. Worth knowing on the product itself: reviews are mixed (3.7 stars) — some people get a full working set, others have had a few emitters DOA out of the bag, so test each one before committing it to a spot in the garden.
Check it outNew Gear · Gardening
Dramm One Touch Fan Nozzle
I really like this handheld watering nozzle for its fan pattern. My community garden plots are laid out in large rectangular beds, so I can pivot the nozzle to lay down a nice flat sheet of water and just drag it across the length of the bed instead of trying to cover it with a round spray. Thumb-controlled flow, all-metal construction, and it's corrosion-proof so it holds up outside season after season.
Check it outNew Post · Starlink
Starlink vs. Comcast: Why I'm Finally Making the Switch
Comcast keeps raising my bill while new customers lock in a lower rate for years. Here's why I'm renting a Starlink V5 to see if it can finally replace cable.
New Gear · Camping
TrixHub Rechargeable Flashlight, 2-Pack
This is a cheap light, don't get me wrong — but a guy camping next to me showed it to me, and it won me over. It zooms, so you can go from a wide floodlight to a narrow, focused beam that'll actually reach out and find whatever's making noise out past the fire. It's rechargeable over USB-C, so no scrambling for the right batteries, with an LCD screen that shows the actual charge level instead of guessing, plus 5 modes including strobe and SOS. Aircraft-grade aluminum, waterproof, drop-resistant, and it comes as a 2-pack — good, because one always seems to wander off to someone else's tent.
Check it outNew Gear · Camping
Assark Solar Trail Camera
A camping neighbor talked me into this one after his caught a black bear so big it dwarfed the bike parked next to it — that was enough to convince me. Bluetooth wakes the camera and it switches to WiFi for a longer range, it charges over USB-C, and the battery lasts long enough that I've never bothered hooking up the included solar panel. I run it two ways at the campsite: watching for critters at night, or repositioned to quietly cover the entrance — if anything ever went missing, I could just review the footage. One annoyance: the power switch sits under a rubber cover on the bottom, right next to the tripod mount, so if it's tripod-mounted you have to unscrew it just to turn it on or off — not an issue when it's strapped to a tree. Like any trail camera, be ready to sort through a pile of false triggers.
Check it outNew Gear · Camping
MCGOR Magnetic Motion-Sensor Light
These are magnetic, rechargeable motion-sensor lights I stick to the inside of the aluminum camper shell walls on my adventure truck. If I'm mingling around camp and walk by, or if anyone else does, it lights up — a cheap security light that takes up almost no storage space. The key thing with this one: it only triggers in the dark or low light, not during the day. I've had pricier motion lights before that also go off in broad daylight, which drains the battery and means taking them down every morning. These stay charged and mounted for the whole weekend since they're not firing off constantly in daylight — I just leave them stuck to the wall and forget about them until it's time to pack up.
Check it outNew Gear · PCP Airgun Stuff
STIKMAN — SCBA PCP Fill System
This is one of our staple products at AirTanksPlus — a purpose-built fill system for adapting a 4500 PSI SCBA tank down to airgun fill pressure. It's compact and lightweight, with a stainless-steel gauge marked in bar and psi, and a 48-inch microbore hose (we make these in-house) with your choice of quick-connect fitting depending on your gun's fill port. It vents safely away from you, supports cascade filling, and ships with a soft carry case. It's one of our best sellers — 18 customer reviews, still sitting at 5 stars.
Check it outNew Gear · PCP Airgun Stuff
BoreMan — Pull Through Barrel Cleaning Kit
A pull-through bore cleaner with a rugged aluminum handle and braided Spectra cord — the 36-inch standard length fits most barrels, with a 40-inch option for guns like the Air Force Texan with a shroud. Fits .177 and up, works on airguns or firearms. Comes with a zip-up carry case, made in the USA. We stopped shipping the cleaning strings since most people weren't using them — you get more cleaning patches instead.
Check it outNew Gear · PCP Airgun Stuff
GX PUMP CS4-I PCP Air Compressor
This one's made in China, and no, we don't sell it on AirTanksPlus — we can't compete with Amazon's pricing, warranty, or free/overnight shipping on it. But it's the compressor I actually recommend, because a lot of the people who call me already own one and are happy with it, unlike a lot of the other cheap Chinese compressors out there. GX has been building compressors a long time — a lot of the compressors sold under other brand names are actually built by them, and they've made steady improvements to the design over the years. What sets this one apart is that it's water-cooled instead of air-cooled — an air-cooled compressor can usually only fill in about 12-minute intervals before it needs to cool down, and this one runs a lot longer than that. It's not just for topping off airgun reservoirs either — it'll fill large PCP tanks and bottles too. It's also low-maintenance: there's a grease pot with a knob you turn every so often to redeliver grease to the pump, so it's about as close to maintenance-free as these get. It's also got an internally mounted 120V converter built in, so you're not lugging around a separate AC-to-DC power supply — plug it straight into 120V household power or a 12V source and it just works. If you pick one up, I'd also recommend the external filter.
Check it outNew Gear · PCP Airgun Stuff
GX-PUMP Professional-Grade PCP Compressor Filter
This is the filter I mentioned above — if you're running the CS4-I (or pretty much any GX pump, CS1 through 5K), I recommend picking this up alongside it. It's an oil/water separator with a pressure-maintaining valve, so it doesn't start passing air to your tank until the line's up to pressure, which helps the filtration actually do its job. Mounts magnetically or with screws, and it's rated for the same 5800 PSI the compressor can put out.
Check it outNew Gear · PCP Airgun Stuff
TOPTACTICAL Scope Mounted Engineering Level
A scope leveling tool I use when mounting optics. It levels the scope to the receiver instead of just the top of the base, which matters more than people think — a canted scope throws your shots off to the side the farther out you go. Aluminum construction, quick to set up, and it's the kind of thing you don't think about until your groups are drifting for no obvious reason.
Check it outNew Gear · PCP Airgun Stuff
Acecare 9L CE Carbon Fiber Air Tank
Acecare's been making tanks a long time, and that's the only reason I'm listing this one — but keep this in mind: this tank is NOT DOT approved. No reputable shop is going to fill it without DOT certification, and nobody's going to hydrotest it every 5 years like they would a DOT tank. As I understand it, a non-DOT tank technically can't be pressurized and transported on the highway either — please double-check that for yourself before you rely on it. A lot of people buy tanks like this purely on budget, and there are even cheaper CE options out there, like the Iron Man tanks — but if I'm looking at CE-only tanks at all, I trust the Acecare brand more than those. Plenty of people show me the Amazon tank they bought and tell me they fill it themselves with their own Amazon compressor. I just tell them okay. Personally, I'd rather buy a used SCBA tank off eBay and pay to have it hydrotested. You've been warned.
Check it outNew Gear · PCP Airgun Stuff
Owfeel DIN Valve Scuba Adapter
This is the cheapest fill valve I've seen for PCP tanks — comes in M18x1.5 threads (for the Chinese-made tanks) or 5/8-18UNF. It's probably going to be hit or miss on quality, and we don't sell it on AirTanksPlus. Honestly, I'm not really recommending this one — but some customers buy it anyway, especially if they're filling tanks at home with their own compressor, since most compressors already have a female quick-disconnect that clicks right onto this valve's male fitting. The brass female quick-connect it ships with is pretty rough — tolerances are often off, so it may not mate cleanly with every quick-connect you run into. If budget means this is the valve you end up with, I'd swap the included hose for one of our microbore fill whip hoses instead — just know you'll still need a separate female quick-connect fitting with male BSPP or metric threads to adapt to this valve's fill port, since I'm not sure what thread it uses on that end.
Check it outNew Gear · Starlink
Obeaming Starlink Mini Wall Pass-Through Socket
This is what I used in my battery box build to power the Starlink. It takes 12V straight from the battery bank and steps it up to 30V DC — Starlink Mini's native voltage — so you skip the inefficient round trip of inverting to 120V AC for the stock Starlink plug and then converting that back down to DC again. Since it boosts up to 30V instead of running at 12V, it also supports a longer cable run, so you can mount the Starlink Mini farther from the battery box and still use the original Starlink Mini power cable.
Check it outNew Gear · Starlink
USB-C to DC Power Adapter Kit
This is the USB-C to barrel-connector cable I used to power my Starlink Mini off any 65W-or-larger USB-C port instead of the stock adapter. It came in handy once when I plugged this into a cigarette lighter USB-C adapter and into my Starlink Mini, and had it serving up internet while I was driving down a bumpy road in the middle of nowhere — the Starlink antenna worked through the whole drive with no problems.
Check it outNew Gear · Starlink
UGREEN 130W USB-C Car Charger
This is the cigarette lighter adapter I pair with the USB-C to DC cable above to power my Starlink Mini off my vehicle's 12V outlet. It puts out 130W total across three ports (2 USB-C, 1 USB-A), which is plenty — just make sure whatever port you're using can put out at least 65W, since that's the minimum the Starlink Mini needs to run reliably.
Check it outNew Gear · Coin Collecting
Elikliv Coin Microscope
If you're going to get into coin collecting, you'll get tired fast of holding a coin up to the light with a magnifying glass trying to catch the details. This is a much better way to actually see what you've got — 1000x magnification on a 4.3-inch screen instead of squinting. Before you cash in any old stash of coins, it's worth doing a quick rough sort first: stack up your quarters and dimes and look at the edges — no copper stripe means it's silver, so set those aside. Then go through your pennies for wheat pennies (1958 and earlier, wheat stalks on the back) — those are worth keeping too. It only takes a few minutes before you'd otherwise dump everything into the bank's counting machine, and it's the only chance you get to catch something worth more than face value.
Check it outNew Gear · Backyard Adventures
Assark Solar Trail Camera
Same camera as my camping pick, doing double duty in the backyard. I've had it pointed at the back lawn at night just to see what wanders through, and it's caught everything from a fox to more raccoons than I expected in Orangevale. Bluetooth wakes it and it switches over to WiFi so I can pull footage from inside the house without walking out to grab the card. Only real downside for yard use: sprinklers count as motion too, so be ready to scroll past a bunch of clips of your own lawn getting watered.
Check it outNew Link · PCP Airgun Stuff
AirTanksPlus.com →
The business side of this hobby — owned by Air Power Group, LLC, which I co-own. Day to day I handle support calls, the website and social media, and product development.
New Post · Backyard Adventures
A Fox Came to Check Out My Starlink Setup
Testing whether a heat signature draws wildlife in — caught a fox investigating a Starlink Mini running off solar in the backyard.
New Link · Camping
CampingWithStarlink.com →
Staying connected in camp is its own thing, with its own site.
New Link · Starlink
CampingWithStarlink.com →
The full build — including my Starlink-in-a-case setup — gets its own dedicated site with ongoing updates. This page is just the quick version: me actually using it.
New Link · Vacuum Sealing
VacuumSealerForum.com →
The full community — questions, machine reviews, and everything vacuum sealing.
New Link · Coin Collecting
Metal Detecting →
These two are going to end up pretty tangled once the detector shows up.
New Link · Metal Detecting
Coin Collecting →
I already have a small coin collection going — this hobby is probably going to feed that one.
New Link · My Internet Marketing Journey
DominateYourMarket.com →
The business itself — this page is more the running story behind it.
New Post · PCP Airgun Stuff
Squirrel Hunting with PCP Airguns in Cedarville, California
Up in Cedarville with my dad, running a select-fire .22 PCP air rifle while helping local farmers deal with a ground squirrel problem in the alfalfa.
New Post · Gardening
Slate Plant Markers
Blank slate plant markers you write on with a paint pen — a simple garden labeling idea from a friend at the community garden.
New Post · My Internet Marketing Journey
Product Branding and Why I Do It
Why I believe in building your own brand, and treating it like a real business from day one.
New Post · Cooking
Garlic Bread on the Blackstone Griddle
Turning a 22″ Blackstone with a fold-down lid into an outdoor oven, just to avoid firing up the one inside.
New Post · Cooking
Chicken Fajitas on the Blackstone 17″ Griddle
One of the easiest meals you can cook outdoors — sliced chicken, fajita seasoning, frozen peppers, and a hot griddle.
New Post · Gardening
Blackberries in the 2nd Plot
Picking blackberries from a second community garden plot as the season winds down.
New Post · Cooking
Blackstone Chicken Wings on the 22″ Propane Griddle
48 pieces of chicken wings, seasoned salt, and a coat of Sweet Baby Ray's — a crowd-pleaser for a backyard get-together.
New Post · Gardening
Summer Salad Inspired by the Garden
A simple summer garden salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and basil, plus a tip for salting cucumbers ahead of time.
New Post · Gardening
Squirrel Problems in the Garden
Squirrels raiding the Fair Oaks Community Garden faster than anyone can grow it back.
New Post · Gardening
Garden Harvest 7-26-2018
Carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, and blackberries — the haul from the garden.
Nothing in that range yet — try a wider window.