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Open – what we did this week

Last weekend Dan,Wes, and Kirk pushed the rifles out to a little less than 1000 yards and used the bullseye camera system. it was a good day for shooting with 20 to 30 mph winds. getting hits on our e-type target was a little tricky at times but all in all it was a good day!

listener email on ballistics.

• Concentricity and the shape of the bullets when viewed from the side are more important than the squareness of the nose tip. A boat-tail bullet with a gradual contraction behind the ogive will have less drag (air resistance), but may also be less stable for a given rate of spin. If a bullet is not perfectly concentric along its length, the imperfections will cause it to wobble in flight due to non-symmetric air pressure over the surface. I’m trying not to get too geeky here, but a bump on one side of the bullet will cause the air over the bump to move faster and make lift there (like a curved wing). Since the bullet is spinning, that non-uniform lift force is rotating around with the bullet, causing wobble and will make for less uniform/predictable shot-to-shot performance. (Imagine trying to spin in a circle with a bucket of water at arms length, but not being able to lean backward to counter the force from the spinning bucket.)This gets back to consistency. Imperfect bullets will not be consistently imperfect. The stability issue is complicated, but the drag (and mass) at the back of a non-boat-tail bullet keeps a projectile on track. That’s why bombs have tail fins. Shotgun slugs and shuttlecocks are an extreme example of high drag at the back and flight stability. They follow a simple ballistic parabola, but don’t fly very far because of the drag.

Important things to remember when shooting 1000 yards.

• Trigger Control
• Leveling the rifle/ reticle
• Playing the wind.
• Shooting positions.
• Proper zero
• Spotting
• Save ammo while getting on target quicker.

gear talk.

http://www.bullseyecamera.com/