Tips for reading the wind?

T

tiny68

Member
I went out and shot today in terrible conditions. Wind at 1:30-3:00 @ 18-30 mph. I am practicing shooting for F-class, which I have never competed in. My 308 usually holds sub-2" at 300 yds for 10 shot groups with minimal wind and wind flags using RE-15/168 SMK. It is a stock factory rifle, no custom here. I decided to try the conditions. Shot at 300 yds. Three 20 shot groups with no wind flags. I tried to read the movement of the grass. Average vertical 2.7" :D Average hortizonal 12.4" :( This was only 300 yds. How in the heck do you keep them in the 10 at +600 with no flags. :confused::confused:

I am seeing a major butting kicking coming my way when I actually make it out to a match.

Thanks for any tips, Tiny
 
watch your backside, right side, left side and front side

Tiny, it all about practice. Reading the wind and waiting for a repeatable set of conditions to occur. They don't always re occur, but the wind is like water waves lapping at the shore. I watch several spots and feel the wind at my cheek, and listen to the rythm of the wind.

Trying to do the same in the morning!
 
Reading long range wind.....

>>>How in the heck do you keep them in the 10 at +600 with no flags. <<<

Yes, I wonder this too.......
I primarily shoot 100/200 Group/Score Benchrest matches but do shoot an occasional 300/600 yd F T/R match... I practice as much as I can but honestly, I too feel that "looking" at the big range flags don't tell me the whole story by a LONG SHOT!....
Basically, I don't feel I have learned much after especially 600yd practice.
Lotta random luck.... Good and bad.....

Now with 100/200 BR practice, I feel every time out, I LEARN something.....
Sometimes good sometimes bad..... But learning...

Currently what I do is set up my 100/200 BR gun at 200 on one bench and my F-Class rifle on the ground (Solid front rest rear bag) the bench next to the BR set-up.. The full acompany of BR flags typically 5-6 @ 200 yds.
I use the BR set-up to TELL me WHAT the wind is doing and get behind the F T/R and figgure out how it's performance is doin...

This is the best means I have found to test equiptment for my F-Class gun...
Of course this ain't really prepareing me to well for the 600 yd shoots but I'm getting better. Trust the rifle at least.

Boy, though it would be both tough to set out and SEE BR type flags out to 600 yds, say one flag at every 100 yd interval. After a 600yd poor performance I tend to walk away grumbling something like I CAN'T SEE THE WIND WELL ENOUGH!:cool:

Ohhhh welll, Every competitor has the same prob and many do REAL well.... I'll be talking to these guys alot..!;)

cale
 
I'd skip the benchrest style flags. Their too close to the ground.

Talk to a Highpower shooter, ask him what he's watching through his spotting scope.;)
 
Wind Doping

“How in the heck do you keep them in the 10 at +600 with no flags.”

Tiny,
You need to train the way you will shoot. F-class matches are shot on ranges with target pits. The target is pulled and hit location and value are indicted after each shot. This allows the competitor to use the location data to assist in his determination of where to hold for his next shot. Of course the wind can be changing between one shot and the next, but top level shooters will anticipate how the wind will cycle and stay with the ebb and flow of the wind.

After a good deal of experience a competent shooter can read the wind and mirage with a high degree of accuracy and turn in some phenomenal scores on a 1moa ten ring target out to 1,000 yards with very high X counts. A top notch competitor will use every indictor he can to determine the drift of the bullet including flags, mirage, and dust from rounds hitting the berm in back of the targets, grass, trees, wind feel and hits on other targets to name a few.

The best place to learn wind doping is shooting at matches. The second best place is at matches picking the brains of the best shooters available. The higher the level of the championship the more data is available for mining.

As far as butt kicking, there have been days when I thought I was a one legged man in a butt contest.
 
Amazing

caroby said:
>>>How in the heck do you keep them in the 10 at +600 with no flags. <<<

Yes, I wonder this too.......


Yes, I wonder as well, how someone can hold the X ring at 1000 even with the flags.

Shoot better
Peter
Click to expand...
 
Wind reading skill

I have been through this issue before and am struggling with it now. My wife and I shoot F-Class at 600 and 1000 yards with 6mmBR's and 308's. I keep hearing to just go out there and learn - Sorry but that really does not work. We have read books, tried to coach each other, chased the spotter, looked a the flags, and all that other "stuff" the High Masters suggest. We have reached a plateau and cannot seem to get past it in our wind reading abilities. In Long Range shooting, wind is the defining issue after you get the mechanics of a good gun and position have been satisfied.

I truly believe the only way to really learn wind is to have a experienced shooter than CAN TEACH lay next to you on the line and show you what they are looking at and how they interpret it - then fire a shot and see what happens. Doing this over and over for a while will help tremendously - not the just go and do it BS.

Maybe the best idea is to go to a Long Range Shooting school that are periodically held.
 
Travelor,

As you know the .308's aren't very fast. The 190 gr. pills will react better than a 155 gr bullet will in the wind but there still going slow. The 6mmbr may be faster but it's lacking the weight to buck the wind.

It seems the guys using the bigger faster calibers are the one winning when ever it's windy. If I lived and competed at a range where wind was always a minimal, I would go for a 6mm type of cartridge, if the range was always windy I would go for a 6.5x284 or an ultra mag.
 
Wind reading is the most important skill in F-Class. I don't believe it is something where you can make a short sharp effort of reading books and receiving training and become a top wind reader. More than anything it needs experience in a wide range of conditions and at many locations, and applying that knowledge sensibly and systematically. That is probably the main reason why older shooters with a good brain can be so competitive, not only in F-Class, but all long range target shooting.

Alan
 
Doping Wind

Alan,
You hit the nail on the head. Older shooters who have spent untold hours on the range have earned their stripes so to speak. The best 4-man team in the USA is currently Team Berger, whose ages run from 63 to 76 with an average of 68. The coach is a youngster of 60 years. These guys can win any individual L-R match in the world on a given day without a coaches help, with a coach watch out.

Just shooting a long time does not automatically make for a good wind doper. I know many older, long term shooters who couldn’t dope their way out of a wet paper bag without help. This is not for lack of trying; it appears that in many cases some people just don’t have the natural knack for the art.

While getting coaching help one-on-one from a good doper can help, in the end only the shooter himself can use his own experiences to improve his ability and that is no BS.
 
It's either an art or a science

Your personal makeup can have a lot to do with it too. I envy those mathematically inclined shooters who can say, "I saw flag such & such straighten at the same time the wind strength dropped, so I know that the net result was a one MOA pickup". I'm more of a touchy-feely type, & I sense what's happening when I'm really in the groove - but only when I'm shooting. If I have to coach somebody else, I'm only mediocre at picking what's going on most of the time, maybe because I have to operate to their shooting rhythm, not mine.

The good thing about string shooting F class is that if you don't have anything else to go on, you can follow the spotter if you can shoot really quickly. In a similar discipline, I recently saw a very competent friend shooting a 1200 yard match in really nasty conditions. He fired, reloaded, was waiting on aim when the target came up & his shots were off within 2 seconds of that, after he had considered changes he could see & spotter location. Needless to say, he won that range.
 
Art or Science

John,
Your observation that wind doping is either an art or a science hit right at home for me. I have been asked how I read the wind on many occasions and my normal answer is I can’t. I am left handed and just seem to do it! I think it is more instinct for me than anything else.

I have coached a few matches, but believe my abilities are much more suited to individual shooting; string style preferably, but I have done fairly well on those occasions when I was forced to shoot two or three to the mound. I am ready to fire when the target comes out of the pits, make my determination of where to hold and let it rip ASAP.

I envy those who can look at the flags, the mirage and what not else and come up with a calculation as to what it is worth. I just take a SWAG on the first sighter and adjust from there based on what I see on the target, the mirage and occasionally a flag, if I remember to look at them. Shooting fast lets you shoot through less wind changes. Which leads to less mistaken hold offs.
 
As a relatively newer and younger shooter I'm still working on getting a handle on wind reading myself. Sometimes I think I'm actually making forward progress, other times I might as well be using a ouija board. This weekend I get my second go at a range that just ate my lunch last summer; guess I'll see if I've gotten any smarter in the interim ;)

The past year or so I've been trying to make a conscious effort to dope the wind rather than play chase the spotter. I'd avoided that for some time despite recommendations from more experienced shooters because it seemed every time I did, my scores went in the toilet. I might get bit a little by a change or switch when running, but usually my overall score was noticeably higher when I chased the spotter. Going to my first 'fullbore' style match up in Chilliwack put an end to that - chasing the spotter is basically impossible in that style, as is 'machine-gunning' the target. I *had* to work on reading the wind and doping every shot off of the available information - the flags, the mirage, the impact of my partner's shot (who was invariably *not* shooting F/TR, so I had to learn to fudge a correction value between a 6.5-284 and a .308), and even the impact of other people up or down the line that I knew were shooting a .308 like mine. I started paying a *lot* more attention to what the conditions were doing when I *wasn't* shooting - paid target service suddenly became a lot more valuable than just extra B.S. time.

Did it pay off? Somewhat. I'm getting better at looking down range at the flags and mirage and pulling a number out of the air to put on my windage knobs. Actually, I'm doing okay with the big changes - wind dies, or does a big direction change, I can crank on the knobs and often stay in the 9 ring or better - I've surprised myself a number of times with an X! The little up-down speed changes and light twitchy winds still eat my lunch, as I just hemorrhage 9's and 8's out the wazoo. Something to keep working on, I guess.

I do think that book mentioned earlier, "The Wind Book for Rifle Shooters' by Cunningham & Miller is probably the best book on the subject available right now, and absolutely worth the price (I have both the current edition as well as the previous one). I review it from time to time, or pick it up and re-read a section when I want to go work on a specific technique or if I'm going to a range that I know has a particular dominant condition. It's certainly not a read-it-once-and-you-know-everything book - at least not for me. I read through portions that are of immediate interest, and then keep coming back for more once I think I've got a handle on one technique. The pictures of flags, mirage, etc. are very handy for me. Maybe if you have a range where you have a good number of 'old salts' who are willing to get down behind a scope and talk you through what they are seeing out there... well then a 'live' coach would certainly be better - for that particular range. What holds true on one range doesn't always hold true on another, though. Experience counts for a lot, but a good grounding in basic concepts and theory helps speed the process along as well - then it's actually 'learning', not 'monkey-see, monkey-do'.

Monte
 
Reading the wind..

Reading the wind is like riding a bycicle. About the time you think you get it figured out, you have a wreck.

I went to a Palma/Long Range Rifle Shoting Clinic (Mid and Nancy Tomkins, Kent Reeve, Norm Crawford and several other Palma shooters). It was one day of class room and two days on the range being coached. I learned more in three days than fifty years of shooting.

I am ready to go back to the same class again after two years of shooting and try to learn what I missed the first go around.

Practice, Practice, and more Practice..

Rustystud
 
One solution

I am at the point where I want to improve my wind reading inorder to maintain my scores.

How to do this when you don't have a target marker for feedback?

I shoot in an open field and started by shooting at a rock or swinging gong. Hit - splat, miss dust. Not bad but you don't get the fine adjustment knowledge. You just know if you missed in a particular direction.

Then I moved to paper. Which was fine except I can't tell which shot is which AND I can't see my bullet holes. This means I am shooting blind and just guessing on conditions.

Well, I am hoping that technology can help me out.

I will be experimenting with digiscoping. This is simply mounting a digicam onto a spotting scope and 'filming' your group.

My goal is to make notes about what I am seeing and what I feel is the best adj. Fire a shot, etc.

Then I can review my video against my notes to see how I did. Certainly not fast shooting but I hope to be able to track cause and effect. Shopping for a digicam shortly.

Of course, you could also set up a wireless camera system and provide live feed to a monitor so you have instant feedback. Surprisingly, such a system doesn't cost that much anymore especially if distances are inside 750yds.

I shoot alone most of the time so a spotter simply isn't available to help. Plus a spotter isn't going to see a 1/2" here or there which is how much I am mixing the X ring by.

Hope this helps....

Jerry

PS Since most of the ranges I compete at do not have large numbers of flags, I prefer to practise without them or maybe one/two. No use getting use to something that might not be there at the next match.
 
LarryBartholome said:
Alan,
The best 4-man team in the USA is currently Team Berger, whose ages run from 63 to 76 with an average of 68. The coach is a youngster of 60 years. .
Click to expand...



Larry, I think the Spindle Shooters might not agree with you on this claim :D plus we haven't hit our prime yet :)
 
Larry:
Just to let everyone out there know, your claim that you can't read wind well is mostly a pile of BS! You do very well. You may not be able to coherantly explain what or how you do it, but it's a fare shake you end up with.
I've been known to make some good calls from time to time. I can tell everyone that some days are diamonds, some days are stone. There are more diamond days that come with years of range time.

Alan
 
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