"Reading Wind" at 1000 yards in Benchrest competition. I want your opinion?

[milanuk]

Hmmm... if your description of the range topography is even vaguely correct, no wonder you don't believe in 'wind reading'... I wouldn't either. All the normal things that people who *do* read the wind conditions sound like they are absent. No flags even remotely close to the bullet path, no terrain features directly under the targets and close the bullet path to focus on, basically... nothing to 'see' at all.

At a more 'normal' range (in my mind), like Sacramento... I still think it would help - but then again the whole mentality of 'gone in 60 seconds' is not one I'm used to.

Very interesting.

 

[TRA]

This should give you on the left coast an Idea of the terrain in Williamsport.

 

[Charles E]

Morning shot-gun response:

Yup, That's Williamsport. I think of it as "Hawks Ridge Lite." I've been told some of the Penn. Shootesr do well using mirage -- Bruce Baer's been mentioned. I do remember when (mid-90s) he came to HR & tried to use the mirage.

I do know of tough PB ranges -- Rockingham, my home range, is still a mystery to me. For Tony Boyer, too, so the story goes. He did shoot it once, so the story goes . . . He lives less that 100 miles away, but I've never seen him there -- though the biggest match ever held at Rockingham is a SE regional. I imagine if there was a national at Rockingham, he'd be there, and he'd figure it out.

All the stories on this thread are about reading -- or not reading -- the wind with one goal: to try and save something when the conditions are going south in a hurry. That's not what most people mean, surely not what Jerry Tierney means by "reading the wind." Language like "trying to figure it out" isn't about "wind reading for winning." I don't know any PB wind-reader who is consciously "trying to figure it out", unless they mean "trying to hold on." That's not about winning, that's about not losing.

When I "read the wind" in PB group or score, I don't think the visual data even gets as far as the brain. You see a picture, you put the sight *here*, and you shoot. No time spent. This is for the "shoot fast" style. I assure you the run-and-gun crowd in PB benchrest does not put the sight in the center and let it rip.

Maybe it's different in Highpower. You've got to spend those 20 seconds doing something, maybe wind-reading is a conscious act.

I'd like to shoot Sacramento. It'll never happen. I'd like for the West Coast guys to come & shoot Williamsport. For the newer shooters to 1K BR, try to copy what the successful shooters at your range do. They may lie (improve the tale?) a bit, but trying to imitate them at first is lot better strategy than reading the internet, with general opinions from people who might shoot a completely different range.

 

[4Mesh]

Not shown in the photos is 100 yards of pond and swamp at the 400 yard mark. That's down over the hill out of sight.

 

[milanuk]

Maybe it's different in Highpower. You've got to spend those 20 seconds doing something, maybe wind-reading is a conscious act.

'Conscious' act... that would be an understatement if there ever was one. Between plot sheets, wind charts, and even wind 'coaches' (in team events), I think it'd be safe to say that wind reading is a 'conscious' act in HP

 

[vinny]

I don't know how many shooters have ever driven down the road that passes through Williamsport between the 2nd flag on the right and the 600 yard berm but if you do you'll have a greater appreciation for the thermal conditions and cross wind it presents. First the road is about 20' below the line of sight and has piles of stone 10-15' high with mounds of rotting wood and mulch standing at least 10' high. The road surface is a very dark red clay, I think. The vision which sits firmly in my mind and the reason I stated "a greater appreciation for the thermal conditions" is the mirage rising off these piles. The heat from the mulch/compost piles, rotting wood and stone have to effect the bullets flight and is something that I'm not sure is readable. The more I walk the range the more I realize that there are an awful lot of variables between those benches and targets. I have great respect for the challenges Williamsport presents. I'm sure every range has its own unique set of challenges but to really appreciate Wiliamsport you have to walk it.

 

[JCX]

Reading the Wind in 1000 BR -- yes you can!

Phil:

I was a 1000 yard competitor at Hawks Ridge before I went to LR prone. In 2004, the only season in which I shot all 10 matches, I was lucky enough to win the 10 match HG Score Agg. Not once did I read the wind nor did I know of any 1K BR competitors that could do it. When I started LR prone, I quickly found that my mentor could read the wind like foot notes in a book -- John Whidden.

Here is a nutshell of what John does and how you can apply it to 1000 yd BR. Before John gets in the prone, he finds a direction indicator and a velocity indicator -- flags, tree limbs/leaves, etc. For the most part, these indicators are on the upwind side of his position so that the "information" is not old data.

When John gets in the prone, he sets up with his Kowa spotting scope to his support arm side. He is setup where he is looking through the lens with his left eye and his irons with his right eye -- without moving his head. John sets the focus of his spotting scope on the mirage and not the target. He can read the spotting discs on the target but his focus is on the mirage. He then makes sure the velocity indicator he picks agrees with the mirage indicator. If not, he picks another velocity indicator.

This is VERY important: When John goes to the line, he has a dead center no wind zero. When he shoots his first sighter in the dominate condition -- say and 8 at 9:00 -- he knows that the flag/mirage combo read says that is worth 2 minutes. John then shoots sighters in the other non dominate conditions that can kill you -- like letoffs and switches. Of course, he then knows what those conditions are worth. After going to school on the conditions, he gets his sighters into the center ON THE CONDITION HE WANTS TO SHOOT. He starts his record rounds in that condition. If it changes, he waits or makes adjustments -- because he has already shot that condition with his sighters and maintains a mental picture in his head of his sighters and the conditions associated with each sighter. YOU MUST KNOW HOW MUCH WIND YOU HAVE ON THE GUN AT ALL TIMES.

In 1000 yard BR, determine the dominate condition at the bench you will be shooting from. See how long it lasts. Does it last long enough for a quck run or does it switch? Does the minimum condition last longer? Of course, try to determine how long it takes for the dominate condition to switch (a killer) if the wind is switching that day. Once you determine the condition you want to shoot with your sighters, get a zero on the birds. Go to your target and SHOOT THAT CONDITION QUICKLY.

If you do this, it is unlikely that you will ever be off paper -- even on a relay where everyone is gone from therelay and the 10 match agg. Additionally, this wind reading will really help on your scores. As for group, it will help, but that is much more difficult. It takes a lot of time to learn this skill, but is is worth the effort. The F-Class shooters can really benefit because they have a precision platform and feedback from the targets as well.

I hope this helps a little.

Jim Hardy
United States LR Development Team
An old has use to be 600 and 1000 yd NRA Sr. record holder
An old never been anything but a lucky 1K BR competitor

 

[JCX]

Please forgive the typo errors in my post, but the program would not let me correct them.

Thanks,
Jim

 

[dk hunt 14]

I have seen what Phil is saying many times. Once i was sitting there in the sighter period and seen a complete change of direction on the wind and i sent one downrange to see what it would do. My buddy in the spotting scope laughed and said i know where that ones going. He was wrong, it went 2 inches higher. I would have thought it would be 2 feet to the right. You really need to have wind bullets. I believe that when your bullets are laid down and not pitching and yawing, they don't get effected as much by the wind. i had a couple of guns that shot really good in the wind. Usually the more it blowed the more they would win by. Matt Kline

 

[JCX]

Charles:

WP looks a lot like the topo at Hawks Ridge. Beautiful but nasty conditions on occasion.

Jim Hardy

 

[4Mesh]

Lots of cycle time on the mill today! Makes for great keyboard time.

Jim, you can just hit edit post at the bottom of your own posts, then it'll let you fix whatever.

Your descriptions and all the ones I've seen so far, as they relate to benchrest, are more what I call the basics of the game, not wind reading. Your F-Class experiences differ from Benchrest as you know, and those can't be used in a br situation.

Once upon a time, I wanted to try F-Class cause I thought it would be fun. It just so happened I got involved when the big rules changes were being implemented and now it became br laying in the dirt. As far as I was concerned, that took all fun out of the sport, and eliminated it's similarities to varmint hunting with a bi-pod. I never returned. Not that it would have mattered much cause I'd have been shooting it at Williamsport, and, well, we've covered that above.

The flattest range I've ever shot at was Quantico. Now, they're not allowed to stick out flags in the middle of the range, but there's trees on each side, and they have had leaves on em whenever I've been there. I don't remember anyone lighting up the 10 ring there any more than the other shooters in the relay. With 18 or 19 shooters on the line, I saw relays where a very low 90 was a winner, and a lone one at that. Those relays look like any I've ever seen elsewhere. There's a change, and everyone shoots where the conditions took em.

When I shot 3.3 there, the person beside me shot 3.9. His sighters and mine were both annihilating the x. We went to records and we both went down and right. If you overlayed the two targets, they would still have been 3.9. I.dent.i.cal. a 91 just catching the line and an 89 just barely outside the line. That's easily a 6" movement, pretty clearly not caused by a gun problem. Now, if someone out there is capable of noticing a 6" movement, I'd expect to see gobs of 100's being shot. Who could possibly have guessed a 3" vertical movement on a range that's as flat as a pancake?

If I shot F-Class and I was forced to make a guess every shot, then of course I'd guess. But me being me, I'd call it a guess. And I'd call it a good guess should I ever guess right. I've made good guesses before, but I don't think there was any good reason for em other than I was forced to do so and got lucky.

Again, I posted this in relation to how or if WR'ing is done in BR. Your way is pretty much my way except I don't bother looking at the wind. I use the sighters that are the only concrete info I have, and I guess from there.

I consider myself as objective an observer as I have ever met. And I have yet to observe what I would call successful wind reading. Perhaps it's done out there, I simply have never seen it. And I would call successful, guessing the direction correctly 60% of the time. Now, that would not be enough success for me to do it and accept 40% of my targets being worse. But, I'd at least call that "success" by my definition. Now if this were F-Class where group size is not counted, then that 60% means more. But alas, this is BR. Gotta shoot groups too.

 

[B. Harvey]

Try reading it without flags OR sighters!

 

[Joe Salt]

Phil every time I try and read the wind 90% of the time i'm wrong. All I'm sure of is what my rifle telling me the conditions are doing, and if my HG says adjust I adjust. The wind at PA. that I believe is the hardest to figure out is diagonal say 7 to 1 o'clock now you have vertical to deal with. I'm one that has tried reading the wind, but there are too many things going though my head like the hold, the trigger,did I remember to tighten my rest. So I don't remember one change to the next, you name its going though my head. Wish I could be like Kathy, when I ask her if she seen the change, she say's what change I just shoot. She is hard to beat right Phil!

 

[Danny Brooks]

Phil, Charles, et al,

First, let me say this. I CANNOT READ THE WIND. I can identify a change, but not guage the difference. I have held to what I felt were the magic choices and 90% it bites me in the butt. In '99, at Hawks Ridge, I remember a LG relay where the wind changed dramatically, ( or so I thought), the first three rounds down range already and so I hold over in the 8 ring to compensate. I get the target back, first three are dead center measuring less than 1" in group size and, you guessed it, the other two are in the 8 ring measuring less than an inch. Since then, I consider all wind flags to be potential liars. When Rob Ritchie and I looked over the target, we decided that the gun shot very well, it just needed someone who knew how to shoot. That would have been a record in both group and score that would still be standing. I feel a tear coming now as I type this memory.

I conclude with the past eleven years of experience behind me, that you will win your share of relays and matches if your preparation before the match, with regards to components and equipment are followed through every time and you concentrate on what you are doing at the bench behind the gun.
If you do not put in the time on sorting brass, bullets, and maybe primers, you will lose 90% of the time. If you do not test your loads and equipment at least twice a year, you will lose 90% of the time.

And if you go to the range expecting to win all of the time and get upset when you do not, you are a bigger loser than you will ever know.

And 98.7% of the time, after the last sighter, I run & gun as fast as I possibly can. I do believe that we have about 5% of our shooters in the sport that can read the wind. And I watch them every chance I get, so that I may learn something.

That is my nickles worth.

Danny

 

[Charles E]

Danny,

I may be getting to old to shoot, but my memory's still good. In the interests of accuracy -- in 1996 and 1998 the Nationals were at Hawks Ridge. In 1997 and 1999 they were at Rob Ritches in Virginia. I believe you won in 1999 . . . So your story must be about 1998 or 2000

I remember 2001, at Quantico. First time we had a 3-target agg at the Nats. I was leading HG score after 2 targets. We go to the line. We shoot our sighters, and wait for the record target to come up. And wait. And wait. About a minute later, up she comes. That's a lifetime in BR matches. I was down on bench 5 or so -- the left end of the line. You were in the high numbers 15 or so. Everybody on the left end had a weather report, hopes of glory gone. You shot a 100 on the top end. Actually, it was first scored as a 9-on, then the people in the pits said, no, there were ten shots, we watched the impact. That's the only positive part of using pits. If the pullers are worth their salt, they count the shots, and can attest to the number that hit the target. Now if they'd only run the targets up after 10 seconds or so . . . we'll never know. Except that even after the minute wait, the first 5 shots were 9s and 10s. I figure the pit service cost me the win.

Well, that's my wind story.

 

[Danny Brooks]

Charles,

The story about the target was a regular points match. And the 2001 target at the Nat'ls was first scored a 9 on. But the paper from the pits showed ten shots. I asked the judges for the match to check with the pit crew a the pullers in question before making a final decision. One of the pullers was counting the impacts and the other noticed a piece of the target paper coming off of an existing bullet hole when a shot came through.

The judges were convinced that there ten shots on paper and all but one was inside tha ten ring, with the other cutting it from the nine ring.

That was a barrel from Lilja that shot so many doubles and triples that I thought maybe we should have moving backers. I still have the barrel, but it has over 2500 rounds on it. Now if I could find one them healing preachers, I would have something to really shoot, now that I have learned a few things. I was truely wasted on me being a rookie then.

 

[Charles E]

Now if I could find one them healing preachers, I would have something to really shoot, now that I have learned a few things. I was truely wasted on me being a rookie then.

Danny. I think we all have some equiopment like that, usually barrels -- Other things wear less, but sometimes get sold because we don't know what we've got.

* * *

In match 3 of the 2001 nationals, if the targets had been run up in 10 sencods, I could have easily put down 5 shots in the 45 seconds it actually took. Since the "first 5" after they finally got up were good, a 95-96 was in the cards. I don't think your 100 would have mattered. 2001 wasn't your year, and as i remember, I'd averaged 95 or better on the first two targets, with pretty good groups. But we'll never know. It was mine to lose, and I did.

 

[TXPPC65]

At 1000 yards, there is no magic laser beam that will let overcome an inability to read the conditions and adjust for them.

There are those happy days when it is dead calm and you can just shoot, but those are rare days. A light twitchy wind can be harder to shoot in than a consistent stronger wind.

People who shoot consistently the best at 1000 yards are people who can read conditions.

 

[alinwa]

At 1000 yards, there is no magic laser beam that will let overcome an inability to read the conditions and adjust for them.

There are those happy days when it is dead calm and you can just shoot, but those are rare days. A light twitchy wind can be harder to shoot in than a consistent stronger wind.

People who shoot consistently the best at 1000 yards are people who can read conditions.

IMO a "dead calm" can be the worst condition of all.

I haven't shot enough matches to comment meaningfully here but in the few I have......... I come with a gun that SHOOTS and whenever I've tried holdoff the bullet has gone there.

without fail.

al

 

[Law Dawg]

Wind reading and 1000 yd BR

All:

It is hard for me to express the need for wind reading skills when minds are set to the contrary, i.e., the skill is not worth learning. I can try to find the words to sway a shooter's thinking to understand why reading the conditions is so important without being offensive, but it is very difficult. On the other hand, many in the long range prone game seem to believe that NOTHING matters but the shooter and his wind reading ability -- nothing even close to precision reloading at a BR level. All of this drives me nuts.

I think we can all agree that great equipment (especially barrels and bullets), a great gunsmith and precision loads go a long way in 1000 yd BR success. Since we do not shoot in a vacume, I think we can also agree that the big varriable are the conditions -- the wind. Having said that, how can anyone deny that having a grasp of wind reading skills is not mandatory to milk the last drop out of your precision package?

The bottom line is that, everything else being equal (never is), the shooter who can narrow his condition bracket has a better chance of shooting a small group and big score than another shooter who uses the "poke and hope" technique.

As respectfully as I can say it, and I pray that no one is offended, few on this thread believe in reading the conditions in 1000 BR because -- they don't have any clue whatsoever how to get it done! There I have said it. Many of the prone shooters could not load precision match ammo if their life depended on it -- many of the BR shooters can't read more than "it sure is windy". Just a fact. I know because I was one of them.

If you (a collective "you") spend one day training with a world class wind reader (like John Whidden) at 1000 yards, it would change your thinking on the subject forever. You would learn more in that one session than you would ever think of learning in a life time of 1000 yard BR. The reason is that you would learn when to start shooting and when to stop. You would learn to start your record rounds based on data from your sighters when you selected the narrow condition window. If you pick a .5 minute window to shoot in during a fast run, or you decide to make your fast run in a window that varries 2 minutes during that run (because you can't read the conditions), then you will pay the price at the target -- if you do not, you just got lucky.

Everyone please forgive me, but if you think you can shoot at 1000 yards, and max out your abilities to the last drop, without being able to read and select a narrow bracket window in which to make your run -- you are just wrong. And just because you don't have the skill set it does not make it OK.

BTW, any response to my post which says anything close to "well come beat me in 1000 yd BR" is not addressing the issue of improving your skill set to deal with Mother Nature who does not give a dang about your equipment or the wood you won at your last match. Again, been there and done that.

Knowing what I know now, I wish I had been mentored by John Whidden when I shot 1000 yd BR as I would have been much better at that game.

Thanks for listening to my $.02,
Jim Hardy