John (JWP475) reminded me that it might be a good idea to start a Wind or Condition thread. This is a subject that is often not given the level of attention that it requires. Sure it is fun to shoot small groups at 100 or 200 yards maybe even longer and assume that all one has to do is adjust for the drop of the bullet and bingo shooting long range is easy! Well maybe that is an over simplification but it captures conceptually what many feel is the primary task of adjusting the cross hairs to achieve the correct POI.

Unfortunately and we will assume that the rifle and ammunition being used are up to the 1K (a reference for our discussion) being that the extreme spread between a 10 shot group is single digits or no higher than the low 20’s to avoid vertical stringing. There are so many other things that contribute to being consistent but we are just going to deal with the external forces of the wind on our projectiles. The attached information was put together by Speedy Gonzales who is one of the best shooters on the planet, held world records and is a HOF shooter in more than on discipline. Even if the attached is detailed it all falls together when you are actually trying to put a bullet into a small area at long range. This works and I used to keep the charts printed out with me until they became second nature.

Some decent info there BH, but most is outdated or unneeded in a long range field shooting scenario. Some of it is wrong or incomplete.

First of all, the effect of the rifling twist on the bullet as it applies to elevation. It has so little effect that it won't be an issue.

quote:

Can my elevation be affected by the wind? Yes, it certainly can in two areas. The first I will explain but for the most part is not a factor most will worry about. When shooting a righthand twist barreled rifle, a left to right wind will cause the bullet to impact to the right and slightly low. The same barrel in a right to left wind will cause an impact to the left and slightly high. The elevation affect is slight in most flat shooting calibers you will have to test to see this but in my experience it is usually 1/8-1/4 MOA. For most shooters and most distances this is a not an issue.

The reason the charts are outdated is that they are made obsolete by PDA run ballistic programs that every serious long range shooter owns. Wind drift is much more effected by wind direction and rifling twist than elevation.

As you can see from these two screen shots from BulletFlight, elevation at 1000 yards is the same but wind effect is different because of wind direction and rifling twist. The ballistic program accounts for this for you.







The only difference btween the two is wind direction as you can see from the menu.

Elevation is much more effected by wind blowing up or down over terrain features.

quote:

Now on to “the” issue, elevation affected by wind blowing over certain terrain features. I believe that this gets a lot of people in the field simply because they just don’t realize that it is happening. The simplest example is to shoot down a canyon from the head with a head wind…a common midmorning occurrence. As the wind blows up the canyon life is normal but when it reaches the end it has to go somewhere. The only place for the wind to go is out by going up. If you are shooting across this effect it will lift the bullet as the bullet flies across this wind blowing up the face. How much lift becomes a matter of the angle of the face, velocity of the wind & the distance the effect is in place. If you will look at the diagram below we have a flat canyon bottom with a 45 degree face at the head end for the wind to blow into. We are shooting level out to a 600 yard target in a 10 mph headwind. If the 45 degree distance is ½ of our 600 yard shot, then 300 yards of the shot is affected by a .7 value 10 mph lift. It has the same values and windage but applied to elevation. The wind has in this case pushed our bullet up and we need to back off our elevation
accordingly.



Let us say that our 300 Win Mag. drops 11.50 moa @ 600 yards and we determine the affected distance to be 300 yards @ 45 degrees in the 10 mph wind. The most accurate way I have found to compensate is to go to the 300 yards wind and take 1.50 moa for a full value 10 mph wind and treat it like a 45 degree wind multiplying it by .70. This will give you 1.0 moa, now subtract it from your dope of 11.50 moa to shoot a corrected dial of 10.50 moa. Now in this example we have corrected an error of about 6 inches, but this was an affected distance of only 300 yards. If the shot were longer or the effected distance longer it could have resulted in a miss high. This can be done pretty accurately, but as with all aspects of wind it takes practice and experience to do consistently. Watching light fog patches will give a great idea what happens to open air, especially when 2 air masses come together. In this same canyon in the diagram, a tail wind will have a similar effect in pushing the bullet down as the air drops in to the canyon. The tail wind effect will not be as radical due to the fact it is not running up against a solid wall to redirect, it is simply displacing lower pressured air in the canyon. It will however last over a longer period and the drop is generally speaking about the same as the head wind rise.

Some of the things that I and others believe are just plain wrong are the values Speedy is assigning to wind according to direction. He is assigning a quartering wind as "half value". Most experienced shooters use a 3/4 value for wind that is quartering in or out. The Gunwerks long range shooters do, I do and so does Shawn Carlock whose article I've been quoting.

quote:

Giving a value to the wind is easy once a direction is determined. A 90 degree wind from either direction is a full value wind. These next angles get the following values:

90 degrees - full value
60 degrees - .85 value
45 degrees - .70 value
30 degrees - .50 value

If you are using a pocket PC (I hope you are) most programs have a block for direction or value and will compute the windage correction for you. Again enter all of the details you can for the most accurate shot placement possible and don’t start a series of compounding errors.

The mirage sketches posted and are right on. Most successful experienced long range shooters watch mirage in the scope before every shot. I'm getting better at it. One of my buddys is an absolute wind reading genious and always shoots on a boil (no wind situation)

The wind flag info is good but for most practical shooting where no flags or benches exist, reading mirage and vegetation is key.

Just about every time I see one of these things which purports to tell one how to calculate drift, refers to varying "MPH" wind speeds, and so on, all I can do is snicker, then finally burst out laughing.

All it tells me is that the shooter hasn't shot a great deal in the wind in the real world.

One thing winning competitive high-power shooters (and bench rest shooters too) soon learn is that in windy conditions you don't have time to go through all the B.S. of calculating, with a hand-held computer or anything else! By the time you do that the wind will have changed, maybe several times, anyway.

When you have put ENOUGH rounds down range, and have charted what you SHOULD have had on for windage and elevation for every shot, you will learn to "recognize" an almost infinite number of wind vectors and strengths in a direct human brain readout of MOA....

As in "Looks like an average of about a 3-1/2 minute wind from 10 o'clock to me", and you'll just hold off or crank your sight to exactly where it should be for YOUR rifle and load. And you'll try to have the shot already going downrange in 4 seconds or less, half that if you're holding off.

In the long run your brain and your muscle memory will beat any gadget anyone can sell you.

It only takes several years of regular shooting, faithful observing, and serious charting at least once week, to truly become good at it.

Relying on technology to replace your brain is to waste the most effecient device the world has ever seen. And BTW, the battery which runs your brain goes dead only once in each lifetime.

quote:

Originally posted by rcamulia:
Some decent info there BH, but most is outdated or unneeded in a long range field shooting scenario. Some of it is wrong or incomplete.

First of all, the effect of the rifling twist on the bullet as it applies to elevation. It has so little effect that it won't be an issue.

The RH or LH twist has a effect on drift albiet it slight.

quote:

Can my elevation be affected by the wind? Yes, it certainly can in two areas. The first I will explain but for the most part is not a factor most will worry about. When shooting a righthand twist barreled rifle, a left to right wind will cause the bullet to impact to the right and slightly low. The same barrel in a right to left wind will cause an impact to the left and slightly high. The elevation affect is slight in most flat shooting calibers you will have to test to see this but in my experience it is usually 1/8-1/4 MOA. For most shooters and most distances this is a not an issue.

The reason the charts are outdated is that they are made obsolete by PDA run ballistic programs that every serious long range shooter owns. Wind drift is much more effected by wind direction and rifling twist than elevation.

As you can see from these two screen shots from BulletFlight, elevation at 1000 yards is the same but wind effect is different because of wind direction and rifling twist. The ballistic program accounts for this for you.







The only difference btween the two is wind direction as you can see from the menu.

Elevation is much more effected by wind blowing up or down over terrain features.

quote:

Now on to “the” issue, elevation affected by wind blowing over certain terrain features. I believe that this gets a lot of people in the field simply because they just don’t realize that it is happening. The simplest example is to shoot down a canyon from the head with a head wind…a common midmorning occurrence. As the wind blows up the canyon life is normal but when it reaches the end it has to go somewhere. The only place for the wind to go is out by going up. If you are shooting across this effect it will lift the bullet as the bullet flies across this wind blowing up the face. How much lift becomes a matter of the angle of the face, velocity of the wind & the distance the effect is in place. If you will look at the diagram below we have a flat canyon bottom with a 45 degree face at the head end for the wind to blow into. We are shooting level out to a 600 yard target in a 10 mph headwind. If the 45 degree distance is ½ of our 600 yard shot, then 300 yards of the shot is affected by a .7 value 10 mph lift. It has the same values and windage but applied to elevation. The wind has in this case pushed our bullet up and we need to back off our elevation
accordingly.



Let us say that our 300 Win Mag. drops 11.50 moa @ 600 yards and we determine the affected distance to be 300 yards @ 45 degrees in the 10 mph wind. The most accurate way I have found to compensate is to go to the 300 yards wind and take 1.50 moa for a full value 10 mph wind and treat it like a 45 degree wind multiplying it by .70. This will give you 1.0 moa, now subtract it from your dope of 11.50 moa to shoot a corrected dial of 10.50 moa. Now in this example we have corrected an error of about 6 inches, but this was an affected distance of only 300 yards. If the shot were longer or the effected distance longer it could have resulted in a miss high. This can be done pretty accurately, but as with all aspects of wind it takes practice and experience to do consistently. Watching light fog patches will give a great idea what happens to open air, especially when 2 air masses come together. In this same canyon in the diagram, a tail wind will have a similar effect in pushing the bullet down as the air drops in to the canyon. The tail wind effect will not be as radical due to the fact it is not running up against a solid wall to redirect, it is simply displacing lower pressured air in the canyon. It will however last over a longer period and the drop is generally speaking about the same as the head wind rise.

Some of the things that I and others believe are just plain wrong are the values Speedy is assigning to wind according to direction. He is assigning a quartering wind as "half value". Most experienced shooters use a 3/4 value for wind that is quartering in or out. The Gunwerks long range shooters do, I do and so does Shawn Carlock whose article I've been quoting.

quote:

Giving a value to the wind is easy once a direction is determined. A 90 degree wind from either direction is a full value wind. These next angles get the following values:

90 degrees - full value
60 degrees - .85 value
45 degrees - .70 value
30 degrees - .50 value

If you are using a pocket PC (I hope you are) most programs have a block for direction or value and will compute the windage correction for you. Again enter all of the details you can for the most accurate shot placement possible and don’t start a series of compounding errors.

The mirage sketches posted and are right on. Most successful experienced long range shooters watch mirage in the scope before every shot. I'm getting better at it. One of my buddys is an absolute wind reading genious and always shoots on a boil (no wind situation)

The wind flag info is good but for most practical shooting where no flags or benches exist, reading mirage and vegetation is key.

I think that you missed some of what the intended value of what was intended here. Not that you have to have a wind flag to judge direction from but to understand what the effect of the wind has on the projectile. The next evolvement in this is when you have one condition at the muzzle another at 400 and another at 1K. This is when TOF becomes an issue as well as what the specific conditions are encountered. For example a 10mph condition at 9 o’clock experienced at the muzzle and reverting back to a zero condition at 300 is going to have much more effect at 1K that that same condition being encountered between 700 to 1K with a zero condition from the muzzle to 700.

You are correct that while in the field there are no “flags” but then again there are---every tree, bush, long grass etc will work for direction and the speed thing I am still working hard on getting down. Speedy has worked with Aberdeen for many years and The US F Class Team (Speedy called me while I was typing this) and I did not write down the ladies name from the F Class Team but love the charts that are above. The drift charts above are spot on and have helped me win a few matches and Helped me in the field.

It is important to understand the entire process then the laser will help a lot. Attached is the chart I use for one of my primary hunting rifles here at home.

quote:

Originally posted by rcamulia:
Some decent info there BH, but most is outdated or unneeded in a long range field shooting scenario. Some of it is wrong or incomplete.

First of all, the effect of the rifling twist on the bullet as it applies to elevation. It has so little effect that it won't be an issue.

quote:

Can my elevation be affected by the wind? Yes, it certainly can in two areas. The first I will explain but for the most part is not a factor most will worry about. When shooting a righthand twist barreled rifle, a left to right wind will cause the bullet to impact to the right and slightly low. The same barrel in a right to left wind will cause an impact to the left and slightly high. The elevation affect is slight in most flat shooting calibers you will have to test to see this but in my experience it is usually 1/8-1/4 MOA. For most shooters and most distances this is a not an issue.

The reason the charts are outdated is that they are made obsolete by PDA run ballistic programs that every serious long range shooter owns. Wind drift is much more effected by wind direction and rifling twist than elevation.

As you can see from these two screen shots from BulletFlight, elevation at 1000 yards is the same but wind effect is different because of wind direction and rifling twist. The ballistic program accounts for this for you.







The only difference btween the two is wind direction as you can see from the menu.

Elevation is much more effected by wind blowing up or down over terrain features.

quote:

Now on to “the” issue, elevation affected by wind blowing over certain terrain features. I believe that this gets a lot of people in the field simply because they just don’t realize that it is happening. The simplest example is to shoot down a canyon from the head with a head wind…a common midmorning occurrence. As the wind blows up the canyon life is normal but when it reaches the end it has to go somewhere. The only place for the wind to go is out by going up. If you are shooting across this effect it will lift the bullet as the bullet flies across this wind blowing up the face. How much lift becomes a matter of the angle of the face, velocity of the wind & the distance the effect is in place. If you will look at the diagram below we have a flat canyon bottom with a 45 degree face at the head end for the wind to blow into. We are shooting level out to a 600 yard target in a 10 mph headwind. If the 45 degree distance is ½ of our 600 yard shot, then 300 yards of the shot is affected by a .7 value 10 mph lift. It has the same values and windage but applied to elevation. The wind has in this case pushed our bullet up and we need to back off our elevation
accordingly.



Let us say that our 300 Win Mag. drops 11.50 moa @ 600 yards and we determine the affected distance to be 300 yards @ 45 degrees in the 10 mph wind. The most accurate way I have found to compensate is to go to the 300 yards wind and take 1.50 moa for a full value 10 mph wind and treat it like a 45 degree wind multiplying it by .70. This will give you 1.0 moa, now subtract it from your dope of 11.50 moa to shoot a corrected dial of 10.50 moa. Now in this example we have corrected an error of about 6 inches, but this was an affected distance of only 300 yards. If the shot were longer or the effected distance longer it could have resulted in a miss high. This can be done pretty accurately, but as with all aspects of wind it takes practice and experience to do consistently. Watching light fog patches will give a great idea what happens to open air, especially when 2 air masses come together. In this same canyon in the diagram, a tail wind will have a similar effect in pushing the bullet down as the air drops in to the canyon. The tail wind effect will not be as radical due to the fact it is not running up against a solid wall to redirect, it is simply displacing lower pressured air in the canyon. It will however last over a longer period and the drop is generally speaking about the same as the head wind rise.

Some of the things that I and others believe are just plain wrong are the values Speedy is assigning to wind according to direction. He is assigning a quartering wind as "half value". Most experienced shooters use a 3/4 value for wind that is quartering in or out. The Gunwerks long range shooters do, I do and so does Shawn Carlock whose article I've been quoting.

quote:

Giving a value to the wind is easy once a direction is determined. A 90 degree wind from either direction is a full value wind. These next angles get the following values:

90 degrees - full value
60 degrees - .85 value
45 degrees - .70 value
30 degrees - .50 value

If you are using a pocket PC (I hope you are) most programs have a block for direction or value and will compute the windage correction for you. Again enter all of the details you can for the most accurate shot placement possible and don’t start a series of compounding errors.

The mirage sketches posted and are right on. Most successful experienced long range shooters watch mirage in the scope before every shot. I'm getting better at it. One of my buddys is an absolute wind reading genious and always shoots on a boil (no wind situation)

The wind flag info is good but for most practical shooting where no flags or benches exist, reading mirage and vegetation is key.

Rick:

Man, you hit the nail on the head with the hill drawing. There is place i shoot in the desert in which the prevailing wind blows into a hill; i shoot at rocks on that hill. I have to always take a few clicks off at 700 yards and beyond. Almost like clockwork, I hit high.

And you are right about the half value - a wind from 45 degrees is not half value, it .707. And a quartering wind is 1/4 value, it is 38%.

The wind essentially sets a pratical limit on what one can do. One thing I know is that limit is less than 900 yards...

quote:

Originally posted by Alberta Canuck:
Just about every time I see one of these things which purports to tell one how to calculate drift, refers to varying "MPH" wind speeds, and so on, all I can do is snicker, then finally burst out laughing.

All it tells me is that the shooter hasn't shot a great deal in the wind in the real world.

One thing winning competitive high-power shooters (and bench rest shooters too) soon learn is that in windy conditions you don't have time to go through all the B.S. of calculating, with a hand-held computer or anything else! By the time you do that the wind will have changed, maybe several times, anyway.

When you have put ENOUGH rounds down range, and have charted what you SHOULD have had on for windage and elevation for every shot, you will learn to "recognize" an almost infinite number of wind vectors and strengths in a direct human brain readout of MOA....

As in "Looks like an average of about a 3-1/2 minute wind from 10 o'clock to me", and you'll just hold off or crank your sight to exactly where it should be for YOUR rifle and load. And you'll try to have the shot already going downrange in 4 seconds or less, half that if you're holding off.

In the long run your brain and your muscle memory will beat any gadget anyone can sell you.

It only takes several years of regular shooting, faithful observing, and serious charting at least once week, to truly become good at it.

Relying on technology to replace your brain is to waste the most effecient device the world has ever seen. And BTW, the battery which runs your brain goes dead only once in each lifetime.

Alberta---I am a Score shooter not a Group shooter and the HOF Points I have were all from Score. Group shooting does nothing for me and if it were up to me Score would be the ONLY criteria used for winning. I agree with you about the judging of condition because it does not matter if I am in the field or the bench I watch condition Very closely. I already know what I am going to shoot so all I want to know is range and direction because I have been already watching wind speed and already have that value figured.

Many if not most of the time in competition (IBS 1K) I am the last guy in the relay to finish shooting---waiting for condition..

Boss,

One thing I like to do is note my drift in one mph winds, like you did.

Notice that drift at 900 yards - one mph is more than half the vital area on a pronghorn or deer.

I was out shooting yesterday. there is no way that wind was steady during my TOF. I shot a .300 SAUM and a .308Win. Missed wide at 750 yards (held 1 mil for wind, but the right hold was 1.3 mils), but hit four times at 700 yards (actually hit my 3 inch circle all four times from a sitting position with bipod). At 600 yards I shot three times, but one shot was 6 inches wide (and I didn't hit the circle at all, though I was very close). Hit at 550 and hit again at 500 sitting with sling (and hit my 3 inch circle). So in yesterday's shooting session, with the wind gusting from 5-10 mph (and it was obviously more on that 750 yard shot), I was 5/6 at 600 yards or less, 9/10 at 700 or less, and a big goose egg at 750.

I want to see the guy who can park 9 of 10 in a paper plate in a gusty wind at 900 yards...

I didn't miss your points BH, they were good.

AC, the ballistic programs give you much more accurate data, data that is specific in regard to atmospheric conditions at your location. With a Kestrel hand-held weather station, pressure, temperature, wind, relative humidity can be input directly into the program and the output will be adjusted automatically for drop and windage because of velocity changes with all of those atmospheric conditions.

In competition one has time to do this and refer to it continually between stages. In a hunting scenario, the data can be input for the atmosphere, printed, and affixed to the rifle so that all that is needed is to read the wind.

AZ, you are dead right. Wind is never constant in speed or even dirction between the shooter and the target. You can't just put the windage on that your data output says and expect to make first round hits. Just like AC says, the shooter constantly has to make judgement calls about conditions preceeding every shot and make adjustments. The in-the-field ballistic program simply gives a more accurate starting point.

Well, I will have to disagree a little bit that the starting data is more accurate with a computer. I believe that would only be true if there was a weather station providing feed back to the computer from every hundred yards or so all the way to the target.

A truly experienced reader of conditions (including wind) can sense not only the wind strengths, but the vectors along the way. The subconscious averaging his mind does includes both, and tells him where to hold or adjust the sights to.

Another thing shooters can do and a computer can't, is figure out which single indicator out there may be telling him where to hold because the wind affecting it just happens to be the same as for the average wind across the whole distance. On rifle ranges in both highpower and benchrest, that is known in shooter's shorthand as "Finding the flag which is telling the truth." I'm sure every experienced long range highpower shooter has seen situations where the flags are blowing in all directions, but by watching a particular one, he can shoot successfullly while ignoring all the other flags and indicators.

I know, for instance, that when shooting at Bisley on the thousand yard range, you can watch the flags all you want, but if the leaves on the trees behind the targets turn silver, you'd danged well better put on 2 more minutes of elevation or you're gonna miss the bull and maybe the target.

Just like with a computer, the first shot may not be quite where he wants it, but that is taken into account with any successive rounds. And, it is faster than a computer, because he doesn't have to stop watching the conditions to read the computer. (Nor does he have to think through what to do. Once his mind is trained to shoot that rifle and load in various conditions, it does it instantly.)

I will say, we are not far off from being able to have scopes which will read, weigh, and adjust the reticule for all the windage strengths and windage vectors all the way out. We could do it now, if the technology guys really understood the shooter's problems. And some of them are beginning to do just that.

When that happens, I think I will quit shooting at long range. I LIKE using my mind and my experience instead of just being a trigger switch. What would be the fun of learning to shoot the conditions if any dodo with a week's experience could do just as well by spending big bucks on technology instead of building his or her own skills?

Another plus for using the PDA run, hand held, in the field ballistic program other than its ability to automatically account for spin drift, is its ability to account for the Coriolis effect.

The rotation of the earth can affect bullet impact at 1000 yards by 3.5"

quote:

Coriolis Acceleration
Accelerations due to the Coriolis Effect are caused by the fact that the earth is spinning, and are dependant on where you are on the planet, and which direction you're firing. It breaks down like this:
There are horizontal and vertical components to Coriolis acceleration.
The Horizontal component depends on your latitude, which is how far you are above or below the equator. Maximum horizontal effect is at the poles, zero at the equator. The horizontal component doesn't depend on which direction you shoot. Typical horizontal Coriolis drift for a small arms trajectory fired near 45 degrees North Latitude is about 2.5-3.0 inches to the right at 1000 yards.
The Vertical component of the Coriolis effect depends on what direction you shoot, as well as where you are on the planet. Firing due North or South results in zero vertical deflection, firing East causes you to hit high, West causes you to hit low. The vertical component is at a maximum at the equator, and goes to zero at the poles. Typical vertical deflection at 45 degrees North (or South) latitude for a 1000 yard trajectory is the same as for the horizontal component: +2.5 to 3.0 inches (shooting east), or -2.5 to 3.0 inches when shooting west.
 

That's kinda tough to do in your head

Ken Pratt tested 3 different 190 grain 30 cal boat tail bullets and 2 exhibited spin drift (1 more than the other and 1 did not.

According the Gereald Perry maker of Exball Coriolis effect maximum at 100 yards from the 7.62 Nato with the 175 SMK is .2" and is why he doesn't acount for it. I do not acount for spin drift or Coriolis effect with the 300 SMK out of my rifle

Gerald Peryy feels that spin drift needs to be measured by shooting to 600 yards on a windless day and measuring the POI VS POA and imputing it in the spin drift feature on Exball

There is a lot of conflicting info on the subject

1006 yards 300 SMK, 338 Lapua and no spin drift or Coriolis correction

This is a cold bore shot

quote:

Originally posted by Alberta Canuck:
Well, I will have to disagree a little bit that the starting data is more accurate with a computer. I believe that would only be true if there was a weather station providing feed back to the computer from every hundred yards or so all the way to the target.

A truly experienced reader of conditions (including wind) can sense not only the wind strengths, but the vectors along the way. The subconscious averaging his mind does includes both, and tells him where to hold or adjust the sights to.

Another thing shooters can do and a computer can't, is figure out which single indicator out there may be telling him where to hold because the wind affecting it just happens to be the same as for the average wind across the whole distance. On rifle ranges in both highpower and benchrest, that is known in shooter's shorthand as "Finding the flag which is telling the truth." I'm sure every experienced long range highpower shooter has seen situations where the flags are blowing in all directions, but by watching a particular one, he can shoot successfullly while ignoring all the other flags and indicators.
I know, for instance, that when shooting at Bisley on the thousand yard range, you can watch the flags all you want, but if the leaves on the trees behind the targets turn silver, you'd danged well better put on 2 more minutes of elevation or you're gonna miss the bull and maybe the target.
Just like with a computer, the first shot may not be quite where he wants it, but that is taken into account with any successive rounds. And, it is faster than a computer, because he doesn't have to stop watching the conditions to read the computer. (Nor does he have to think through what to do. Once his mind is trained to shoot that rifle and load in various conditions, it does it instantly.)

I will say, we are not far off from being able to have scopes which will read, weigh, and adjust the reticule for all the windage strengths and windage vectors all the way out. We could do it now, if the technology guys really understood the shooter's problems. And some of them are beginning to do just that.

When that happens, I think I will quit shooting at long range. I LIKE using my mind and my experience instead of just being a trigger switch. What would be the fun of learning to shoot the conditions if any dodo with a week's experience could do just as well by spending big bucks on technology instead of building his or her own skills?

Good post.

I'd rather have an old boy who's been shooting since the Burmese campaign wind coaching me than the latest PDA in those circumstances.

I can see however that in unknown topography, it would be nice to have a starting point provided by a ballistics program. To object to one under those circumstance these days would be akin to having objected to the use of paper ballistic charts before the modern PDAs were invented.

quote:

I can see however that in unknown topography, it would be nice to have a starting point provided by a ballistics program. To object to one under those circumstance these days would be akin to having objected to the use of paper ballistic charts before the modern PDAs were invented.

And these PC's we are using to talk to each other all over the world are a heck of a lot better than smoke signals!

quote:

Originally posted by Ghubert:


Good post.

I'd rather have an old boy who's been shooting since the Burmese campaign wind coaching me than the latest PDA in those circumstances.

I can see however that in unknown topography, it would be nice to have a starting point provided by a ballistics program. To object to one under those circumstance these days would be akin to having objected to the use of paper ballistic charts before the modern PDAs were invented.

My point is that neither paper charts nor PDAs are of as much use as disciplined, methodical, concentrated experience when it comes to reading and allowing for the wind.

The wind and barometric pressure right where you are isn't a great deal of help in my experience. You are not shooting at yourself, but away from yourself. It is the conditions down-range you need to observe and allow for.

While the condition where you are is the single most important one IF you have to consider only ONE, you don't want to do that. If there are three or four or more changes in the wind downrange, then the wind where you are firing from is vastly overweighed by all those other changes, which may reult in your having to put on a lot more wind than the condition where you are would indicate, OR A LOT LESS. Skilled observation and experience will tell you which is most likely needed.

If you do enough "for the record" shooting, you learn what your rifle does in different conditions. And you don't spend your time calculating out atmospheric pressures, etc. Experience tells you how it will work when its raining (usually a low barometer reading) and so on.

I'd rather have a Life Master in hi-power coaching me over any unknown range than a computer. Computers DON'T THINK. And to the extent they cannot consider all the things a human can see and allow for in the blink of an eye, it's simply GIGO (garbage in, garbage out).

But then, every one does it his own way.

Having had the good fortune to have been a Life Master for 30 years now, and having been a Palma Team member, I'm gonna stick with my way for my shooting.