FX Crown 100yd accuracy Extra- LIGHT WIND EFECTS + AVE. GROUPS

Those are good groups. I’m not sure if you are familiar with the math of drift....so if you already know this ignore me.



Wind drift increases by the square of the distance. If you shoot at 25y and are seeing 1/16” of drift...you can expect to see 1” at 100y If the same conditions are present all the way to the target. 100y is 4 times the distance of 25....so 4 squared is 16. If you measure drift in angular format instead of distance....such as mil or moa....it does not need to be squared. So if you measured 1/4 moa at 25...it would be 1 moa at 100. This is why it’s far more convenient to measure drift in the reticle and plan for different distances.



If you could only use one wind flag...it would be best to place it in the first 25 yards of a 100y range. What is happening in that first 25 is more weighted in importance than the rest of the distance. You can easily visualize this by taking a leaf blower and placing it on full blast just in front of the muzzle and shooting. Now take the blower and put it just in front of the target and shoot. You will be way off your mark with the blower at the muzzle....while you will notice no shot movement from the blower at the target. Those numbers are rounded a little.


Most guys place their flags at nice even intervals out to the target. Doing it like that means that each flag further down the range is less and less a contributor to the total drift of the pellet. It’s better to break the flags up into equal zones of influence. For 25m and 2 flags....2 equal zones of influence will be 1st flag at 13 feet, and second flag at 54 feet. So by this spacing, you can notice that what happens in the first 26 feet is equally of influence to what is happening in the last 56 feet. If the flags are pointing opposite directions with the tails indicating the same velocity...you can expect your pellet to have virtually no drift.

This is very boiled down technique. Too many flags is simply information overload...especially if they are each showing you a different percentage of overall drift influence.



Mike 

That last target page shot at 100 is about what I could do at 50. Even in no wind conditions thats not easily accomplished because of the shooter related errors. You have to have perfect technique and perfect trigger control. Very nice shooting but I don’t think too many of us ( and especially the old guys like me) are going to be able to accomplish that. We all are chasing the rainbow but I know I’ll never shoot that well. One group or maybe two but consistently shooting groups like that? Maybe twenty years ago?

Bubblerboy....I’m saying this with intentions of being constructive....so hopefully it is heard that way.

You don’t need much in the way of trigger control or perfect technique to aim at the same place and operate the trigger satisfactorily when shooting from a bench. Put the gun in a front rest and a good rear bag and just pinch the trigger with your thumb and forefinger. If you want to shoot with a bipod, at least use a rear bag to support the gun.


On the other hand, shooting field target style requires good trigger control and holding steady. No such need for bench shooting if you have the proper tools.

Most BR shooters in the world shoot free recoil. Meaning they do not touch the gun except for the trigger. The gun goes off and recoils “freely”. The rear bag and rest are set up so they guide the rifle in the same way each time. You only need to push the gun back forward to it’s ready to fire position after each shot.


Most of the 100y air rifle BR guys use a bipod and rear bag because the targets are so big (compared to centerfire or rimfire) at 100y that a typical mechanical rest cannot cover it quickly enough when going from the lower sighter area to a scoring bull up top. The air BR targets should have sighter targets on each side of the record targets in each row so you don’t have to travel up and down to get to a sighter...but the targets would end up being so wide that they would not be practical in a typical BR range. A front rest and bag are perfectly legal for use in any of the 100y events, but few choose to use them because they are not as fast.

Since my gun is single load...it wouldn’t really hurt me to use a rest since It takes me much more time to reload, anyway.



Mike 

Phil, I would say that your gun is doing as well as any when conditions are good.


Your technique of shooting a few sighters, then a bull is really all that can be done. There is just too much going on between the bench and the target, even when conditions are great, to be able to shoot by flags alone. Even if someone could do it on flags alone, it’s not going to happen at a typical BR range that has a roof over the benches. The airfoil created by this convenience item is more than these guns can tolerate since the disturbance is so close to the muzzle. The flags are mostly there just to verify that a condition that you just shot a sighter in is still present. I use them to try to make a decision about a condition that is pretty similar to one I may have already shot a sighter in since I get tired of running back and forth from sighter to bull.

I think your advice about ignoring everything and testing yourself is golden.


Mike 

I don’t have much experience at 100y...but I can tell you what I know about 25m. When I was shooting 25m BR....I was usually competing against some guys that were also shooting my rifles. A few would pull me over after a card to show me a few shots that they were certain were flyers and not their fault. These were guys that had never shot their guns indoors at 25m. I would encourage them to come by my shop sometime and shoot to see if their guns ever did those ugly 8s in the absence of wind. Over the years...they have done so and realized that those 8s could not be reproduced indoors with their guns no matter how long they shot...and as long as their scope was adjusted right...they never or very rarely shot a 9. 


The fact that you can throw a ridiculous high or low flyer at 25m using a gun that will never do it indoors tells me that the likelihood of something similar happening at 100 is much, much higher.



You will see less up and down when shooting over grass than you will any other surface.



Mike

I would like to add (I’m no expert trust me!) but I will certainly agree with what was said above, and about covered benches creating all kinds of funkyness with errant shots (unexplained?) I shoot under such, and some times, especially if it’s a tail wind your scores just are not going to be there! Now mind you every range is different and the bench You are assigned can And will be a factor! One more thing I was taught yrs ago when I was shooting CF is mirage or boil as it was called, My range is over grass and if I shoot in morning with a heavy Dew and when the sun heats up the grass you get a tremendous amount of “BOIL“ and to cut to the point you think your aiming at the X but your not!!! That’s when you have to wait for the boil to “SNAP” a couples of things I’ve learned over the years, but these are not excuses for me! I should have learned by now...