Wind flag plans
- Thread starter mshelton
- Start date
Gene Beggs
Active member
I'll give it a shot.
Mike Ratigan's book, "Extreme Rifle Accuracy" devotes four chapters to wind flags including plans on how to build them. Mike knows what he's talking about. His flags are lightweight, simple, inexpensive and very effective. You can buy everything you need to make them at most any hardware store.
Gene Beggs
Mike Ratigan's book, "Extreme Rifle Accuracy" devotes four chapters to wind flags including plans on how to build them. Mike knows what he's talking about. His flags are lightweight, simple, inexpensive and very effective. You can buy everything you need to make them at most any hardware store.
Gene Beggs
Jerry W
Jerry Wick
Pete Wass
Well-known member
These were exactly my first set of windflags. Fine for 50 Yds but too small for me beyond that.
Yes, just multiply the proportions and they'll work just fine - lead "bullet" wire works pretty good for counter-balance and if you make them from Coroplast you can shove it into the "flutes".
Boyd Allen
Active member
Really small flags have a place in a 200 yard match. With normal sized flags, if you position them carefully, you can see the last two flags in a 36X scope, but not the entire flags. (Of course higher magnifications generally have proportionally smaller fields of view.)Generally you will be lacking the information that the ribbon would have given you, and in light conditions this can be important information. With really small flags, you should be able to see the whole thing, and therefore have more information to work with. Going the other way, I have the large vanes and counterweights to balance them for my Hood flags, while they are easier to see with my off eye, they are too large to be convenient through the scope, and the extra weight makes them respond more slowly to wind changes. Your flags don't all have to be the same size, and you can have more than one at a given distance. This sort of layout is often used with Wind Probes, combining them with regular flags. If I remember the conversation, Wilbur once told me that Ed Watson shot himself into the hall of fame with the flags that the article gives instructions for building. He also said that Ed routinely pushed the envelope, putting his last flag as high as he could possibly get away with, so that he would have more room, in his field of view, to stack in others at shorter distances. There have been a couple of scope modifications done to raise the horizontal cross hair, to make more room for wind flags, and I believe that March offers this as a standard reticle option.