Long distance shooting, how do you feel about wind?

[chronic]

I hope i make sense, I found a new rum I like, the kraken! Its pretty good!


Anyway, short range for me and my non pal rifles is 45 yards... The challenge is 90-100 yards. At 90 yards from my 45 yard zero I have a drop of 52", which is generally no problem with proper scope shimming and a perpendicular hold to "level" earth...

But wind, is weird! It seems in summer time wind is generally coming from the east and I normally shoot "long range" towards the north. I find that wind hitting the right hand side (looking from the back) of my clock wise spinning pellet almost stabilizes it.
I set my elevation turret for distance, then hold over mildots for the wind and get very consistent hits with wind from this direction.

Falling into winter, I have noticed wind blows from the west more often, and I have noticed it has a wicked effect on my pellets. For starters, I seem to have to hold over more for wind drift, maybe 25% more? But! I also get extreme elevation deviations from wind hitting the left hand side of my pellet.

Has anyone else noticed wind interferrence from the left hand side of your clock wise spinning shot causes more trouble then from the right?

[AirGunEric]

I wish I had the time to practice the 'perpendicular hold to "level" earth' shooting technique. Ever since that guy in Australia a few years back was shooting (coyotes I think, maybe dingos) at 150+ yards with an 18fpe springer and no one would believe it until someone videotaped it I've been meaning to get on practicing...good for you in getting it to work!

[fabforce1]

I wish I had the time to practice the 'perpendicular hold to "level" earth' shooting technique. Ever since that guy in Australia a few years back was shooting (coyotes I think, maybe dingos) at 150+ yards with an 18fpe springer and no one would believe it until someone videotaped it I've been meaning to get on practicing...good for you in getting it to work!

Hey Eric, you got a link to this video or article on this technique you are talking about??
Never heard of this before.

Thanks
Fab

[Dukemeister]

My "long distance" with non-PAL is 50 yards, sometimes I stretch it to 60 yards. Only you can make the pellets get out to 80,90, 100 yards and still hit a target!- maybe next year I'll give it a try. Wind will just make it worse!

[AirGunEric]

Hey Eric, you got a link to this video or article on this technique you are talking about??
Never heard of this before.

Thanks
Fab

I wish I did, the guy was an older gentleman with a funny username on one of the US-based forums ("yrrrhaa" or something similar). One of the 'catches' of course was that the guy was around 70 years old and had been shooting this way for 30 years- he had a heck of alot of practice.

Think "hold rifle vertically, tilt a bit in the general direction of where you are trying to shoot, pull trigger" the pellet path was one very large arc to the target. I would have to assume this couldn't be done very well with any wind to speak of...

[poil27]

balistic shooting or mortar shooting i've heard about this before it's almost like shooting a canon in extreme long range. i have to search in my old books for formulas but it actualy work

[fabforce1]

balistic shooting or mortar shooting i've heard about this before it's almost like shooting a canon in extreme long range. i have to search in my old books for formulas but it actualy work

That would be quite interesting to see the math on this. The way you put it, it all makes sense to me now. So what Eric is saying about this guy shooting coyotes or dingos or whatever, Eric doesn't say that they were killed....???? But I'm guessing that the weight of the pellet coming back to earth and I guess, at it's terminal velocity would have enough energy to kill said animal....?????
I'm guessing the pellet would have to be a large caliber. The minimum being a .22....????

I'm gonna have to try this out next summer, the ceiling in the garage ain't high enough to try it out...lol. I'd sure like to see some math on this tho.

[chronic]

Well this is a good example of my right hand wind theory, I had about 3-5km of right hand wind today, with gusts and got wicked groups at 90 yards!



I was holding over about 4-7" depending on how the wind was blowing, I did awesome, this is probably some of my best shooting! But it was a good example of what I mean, I had various winds from the right but my elevation never changed more then a couple inches. I just really had to focus on my windage... yesterday, I had similar conditions, maybe a bit stronger wind but it was coming in from the left and I was getting an elevation spread of almost 8"
I keep treating this as though the wind hits my pellets path square every time, I'm sure there are more variables I will learn as I go on.


Super good day of shooting! And just before the blizzard came in :)

[SeanMP]

Interesting thread

Have you observed this when shooting at other locations or just in your back yard?

It is very possible to have completely different flow patterns from left to right as opposed to right to left due to landscape features.

I can't do any long distance shooting here in even the slightest breeze because the landscape is ridges, valleys trees and lakes. Groups are crazy day to day or even shot to shot.

But if I go out on the ice in the winter is a completely different game. the shots are repeatable.

[MSEO1]

I was playing around with ChairGun looking at an 18 fpe 0.22 at a range of 150 yards. The terminal energy appears to be around 2.5 fpe. My bet would be that you could hit the coyote but it would only annoy it. Having said that, if we assume that a Red Ryder has the advertised 350 fps with a 5.1 grain BB, it is generating 1.39 fpe. Now, refer to that fine documentary film, A Christmas Story, which warns us that a Red Ryder will "shoot your eye out". If we assume that a Coyote's eye is no tougher than a kids, the 2.5 fpe terminal energy would seem to be able to shoot the Coyote's eye out.