Newbie here. Just saw a very impressive 100 yard group on this forum done at a really quick muzzle velocity and it made me think back to my old clay target shooting days.
Quite often at competitions, you would here someone claim “ I use such n such a brand coz they are f%-‘$”n hauling arse (mandatory use of bad language slang in Australia) at 1350 feet per second.!!!” Little round lead balls are not particularly high in ballistic co-efficient and in reality, by the time the shot intercepts the clay pigeon, it’s actually only doing a handful of feet per second faster than my far more comfortable on the shoulder after 2 days of shooting 1200 FPS handloads. The target is fragile. If you are spot on target, it will still turn to powder.
I even once had a go at Olympic trench shooting (and those targets come out at about double the speed). I was hopeless at 14/25 success, but what was funny was one of my reloads was dodgy. The crap powder I was using at the time had a habit of jamming & only a fraction of the powder fell into the case. When I fired the sound was just ‘wrong’. I knew it, the other shooters knew it and guess what? I hit the target & it still broke, so so much for velocity.
Has anyone ever sat a chrono at the target end and compared muzzle velocities to the velocity at the target? How much faster is that really unaerodynamic pellet doing at 100 yards when compared to a muzzle velocity increase of 100 feet per second? Remember, drag increases at the square of speed.
Love to hear your thoughts.
Dave
Quite often at competitions, you would here someone claim “ I use such n such a brand coz they are f%-‘$”n hauling arse (mandatory use of bad language slang in Australia) at 1350 feet per second.!!!” Little round lead balls are not particularly high in ballistic co-efficient and in reality, by the time the shot intercepts the clay pigeon, it’s actually only doing a handful of feet per second faster than my far more comfortable on the shoulder after 2 days of shooting 1200 FPS handloads. The target is fragile. If you are spot on target, it will still turn to powder.
I even once had a go at Olympic trench shooting (and those targets come out at about double the speed). I was hopeless at 14/25 success, but what was funny was one of my reloads was dodgy. The crap powder I was using at the time had a habit of jamming & only a fraction of the powder fell into the case. When I fired the sound was just ‘wrong’. I knew it, the other shooters knew it and guess what? I hit the target & it still broke, so so much for velocity.
Has anyone ever sat a chrono at the target end and compared muzzle velocities to the velocity at the target? How much faster is that really unaerodynamic pellet doing at 100 yards when compared to a muzzle velocity increase of 100 feet per second? Remember, drag increases at the square of speed.
Love to hear your thoughts.
Dave
Pellets loose about 50fps of the 100fps lead.
