Tuners!!!!

[mwezell]

Oh, sorry about the question.
Other than you, honestly, I don't think i ever heard a push from anybody to vote on it.
Nor, for that matter was I ever at a match where it was an issue.
Mike, frankly if a guy leans over and makes a few clicks, rarely, if ever, are you gonna get called, but in all things I suspect Tony has run into guys that take it to excess, I mean, come'on a little common sense here goes a long
way.

I'm far from pushing for it, in any way but I agree about common sense and taking things to extremes.

[Pete Wass]

I'm far from pushing for it, in any way but I agree about common sense and taking things to extremes.

Sometimes it's better to just watch.

Pete

[tonykharper]

Thanks for the clarification, Tony. I do have a shooting room, where I and the gun are inside and firing out a window. I'll have to test what I see on paper when someone opens and closes the door, for example. I've often considered indoor gremlins to be mirage related more that anything else but perhaps not. Mirage can be a bear, especially in cooler temps with warm air rushing out the window. I suspect a totally indoor setup would be bad as well.

Mike, shooting out a window is not in any way the same as shooting in an enclosed building.

It would be nice if you could make it to Piney Hill one day for a match. Even better if you could shoot in that building when there is no one there but you.

You can find the perfect ammo, and perfect tune and have it go straight to crap the day of the match when everyone else shows up.

TKH

[George Atkins]

Mike, shooting out a window is not in any way the same as shooting in an enclosed building.

It would be nice if you could make it to Piney Hill one day for a match. Even better if you could shoot in that building when there is no one there but you.

You can find the perfect ammo, and perfect tune and have it go straight to crap the day of the match when everyone else shows up.

TKH

A total waste time and ammo to practice there, unless match conditions are duplicated, which never happens, too many people moving, door open and shuts..... When I get there I just check the scope for zero, put the rifle away and watch all those guys practicing, shoot astounding targets, only to listen to them the next day saying, WHAT THE %&*#@ HAPPENED !!! The two day events are interesting as well, day one's HERO can be the next day's ZERO. Once the door is locked, the air settles, the pressure equalizes, it completely different from shooting practice. Even the shooters that attend most of the matches during the season, there get humbled. I went to my first indoor nationals there ( actually my first IR indoor and second match ever ) in 2013 and have not missed one since. Everyone knows what it feels like to shoot a 9 outdoors, you get the same feeling when you miss a X indoors. Shoot a 9 indoors, it's all but over.

[BillBrawand]

i'm far from pushing for it, in any way but i agree about common sense and taking things to extremes.

20 yrs ago found inside was not the place to test lots closing of a door heat waves test out side at 50 yrds

[mwezell]

20 yrs ago found inside was not the place to test lots closing of a door heat waves test out side at 50 yrds

Did you or has anyone ever really pinpointed specifically why it's so hard indoors? What little I've done, it seems like mirage is the biggest issue. Drafts from a door etc would move the air and mirage a bit, even when it's not apparent. That's my best guess but wondering what more experienced indoor shooters thoughts are.

[tim]

I believe , while that is likely true, another reason is the same one that often lots of guys have seen when shooting on a nice windless late afternoon after a hot day.
Indoors, as more people come in, as more guns get shot, on day two, etc. you get warming air that does not get completely displaced so at some point you are probably shooting through several boundry levels of air of different temps.
On those outside situations, we've gone nuts for a while until you get near dusk and then, bingo, guns start shooting like lasers again. The air temps have stabilized, far less warm air rising.
Inside 30-40 guns at once push nice warm(er) air down range.

[tonykharper]

Did you or has anyone ever really pinpointed specifically why it's so hard indoors? What little I've done, it seems like mirage is the biggest issue. Drafts from a door etc would move the air and mirage a bit, even when it's not apparent. That's my best guess but wondering what more experienced indoor shooters thoughts are.

Mike,

I'm not Bill but I have shot indoors quite a bit. I believe you are right about the problem being mirage.

Years ago we clamped a scope with cross hairs to a bench, adjusted it so it was centered. About every 5 or 10 minutes one of us would peek through it. Rarely would the crosshairs still be on the dot.

Many times you can sit and watch your cross hairs dance across the 10 ring sometimes leaving the 10 ring altogether.

Especially bad when you have one end of the range heated and the other not.

There isn't enough air movement to account for how much POI difference you can encounter.

Air currents are changed as people move about. The air currents with the mirage means you aren't aiming each shot where you think you are.

As long as the mirage is consistent you can deal with it. But constant movement can make it difficult to impossible.

Can be very frustrating, but still better than not shooting at all.

TKH

[mwezell]

Mike,

I'm not Bill but I have shot indoors quite a bit. I believe you are right about the problem being mirage.

Years ago we clamped a scope with cross hairs to a bench, adjusted it so it was centered. About every 5 or 10 minutes one of us would peek through it. Rarely would the crosshairs still be on the dot.

Many times you can sit and watch your cross hairs dance across the 10 ring sometimes leaving the 10 ring altogether.

Especially bad when you have one end of the range heated and the other not.

There isn't enough air movement to account for how much POI difference you can encounter.

Air currents are changed as people move about. The air currents with the mirage means you aren't aiming each shot where you think you are.

As long as the mirage is consistent you can deal with it. But constant movement can make it difficult to impossible.

Can be very frustrating, but still better than not shooting at all.

TKH

Makes sense but doesn't make it easier.

[mwezell]

I believe , while that is likely true, another reason is the same one that often lots of guys have seen when shooting on a nice windless late afternoon after a hot day.
Indoors, as more people come in, as more guns get shot, on day two, etc. you get warming air that does not get completely displaced so at some point you are probably shooting through several boundry levels of air of different temps.
On those outside situations, we've gone nuts for a while until you get near dusk and then, bingo, guns start shooting like lasers again. The air temps have stabilized, far less warm air rising.
Inside 30-40 guns at once push nice warm(er) air down range.

To me, the question then becomes, why do thermals or boundary layers..that you may or may not even feel, move a bullet more than a wind that you clearly can. i've seen "knuckleball" condition a few times. I truly believe those are tune related.
One of those times was due to a funnel cloud in the area and I believe tune went away with extreme pressure changes. It's hard to duplicate those kinds of changes. Temp stayed stable but pressure dropped dramatically. I found tune but it didn't make sense with my tuning method. I've worked on that and have a working theory, but we'll leave it at that.

[tim]

I don't think they move the bullet, I suspect, as Tony alluded to, they move the target image So where you are looking and where the gun is pointing are different.
As a for instance, when March 40's came out,I got one and was told to run an experiment.
Set my gun up @200 yds and centered the dot right in the mothball. Over the course of, say, five minutes, several of us watched that dot drift out and back into the mothball.
Is this not, as written in his book Tony B's whole premise for why, under a lot of conditions, you want all five shots down range in 20 seconds, especially @ 200 & 300 yards?

[mwezell]

I don't think they move the bullet, I suspect, as Tony alluded to, they move the target image So where you are looking and where the gun is pointing are different.
As a for instance, when March 40's came out,I got one and was told to run an experiment.
Set my gun up @200 yds and centered the dot right in the mothball. Over the course of, say, five minutes, several of us watched that dot drift out and back into the mothball.
Is this not, as written in his book Tony B's whole premise for why, under a lot of conditions, you want all five shots down range in 20 seconds, especially @ 200 & 300 yards?

So mirage? I could buy that and I even said that. Has anyone ever tried setting a few fans, instead of flags, down their shooting lane? I've mentioned that before on another forum too, but I don't recall getting a response. Any rule against it? Seems like a reasonable way to push the mirage and mild air currents away and in a more consistent fashion.

[tim]

So mirage? I could buy that and I even said that. Has anyone ever tried setting a few fans, instead of flags, down their shooting lane? I've mentioned that before on another forum too, but I don't recall getting a response. Any rule against it? Seems like a reasonable way to push the mirage and mild air currents away and in a more consistent fashion.

Well mirage of a sort, but a different kind, so to speak.
Outdoors, nothing shows with flags, your only option is to wait out thermals coming off ground . Indoors entirely different issue.
As a for instance, awhile back I used to fly RC hand launch gliders, very sophisticated ships, mostly carbon, 60" spans that weighed 10oz. Including miniature gyros. Point to this is that quickly you learn how thermals coming off the ground form, most of them within the first 3-4 feet off the ground and they can be surprisingly forceful and you will never see them through a scope. I learned a pantload about rising air when you are gliding 3-4 feet over the earth....hit one, and if you learn to stay in it , bingo, you're 30-40 feet in the air.
I remember the great series of articles published in Small Caliber News by Frank Tirrell (sp), all centered about precision rimfire, including his construction of a great rail Setup.
Anyway, Frank , in AZ built a 50 yd tunnel above ground but early results were simply horrid. Essentially the same issue we're talking about here with air within the tunnel heating.....creating several temp layers within an above ground tube 3 feet or so in diameter. He ended up resolving the issue with a complete air evacuation system which kept the tunnel at one, more or les, temperature .

Cannot imagine the cost of, say a 30-40 bench facility to install and effective evacuation system of that magnitude.
I'm guessing that's why the old Texas warehouse PPC tests were pretty neat. Space was protected enough to be great, but big enough to avoid these issues, also why, now guys try and put them underground if possible.

[mwezell]

Well mirage of a sort, but a different kind, so to speak.
Outdoors, nothing shows with flags, your only option is to wait out thermals coming off ground . Indoors entirely different issue.
As a for instance, awhile back I used to fly RC hand launch gliders, very sophisticated ships, mostly carbon, 60" spans that weighed 10oz. Including miniature gyros. Point to this is that quickly you learn how thermals coming off the ground form, most of them within the first 3-4 feet off the ground and they can be surprisingly forceful and you will never see them through a scope. I learned a pantload about rising air when you are gliding 3-4 feet over the earth....hit one, and if you learn to stay in it , bingo, you're 30-40 feet in the air.
I remember the great series of articles published in Small Caliber News by Frank Tirrell (sp), all centered about precision rimfire, including his construction of a great rail Setup.
Anyway, Frank , in AZ built a 50 yd tunnel above ground but early results were simply horrid. Essentially the same issue we're talking about here with air within the tunnel heating.....creating several temp layers within an above ground tube 3 feet or so in diameter. He ended up resolving the issue with a complete air evacuation system which kept the tunnel at one, more or les, temperature .

Cannot imagine the cost of, say a 30-40 bench facility to install and effective evacuation system of that magnitude.
I'm guessing that's why the old Texas warehouse PPC tests were pretty neat. Space was protected enough to be great, but big enough to avoid these issues, also why, now guys try and put them underground if possible.

Serious question..Can the speed of the up or down force be quantified, realistically, as in mph? I wonder how it would correlate to a crosswind drift of the same wind speed. I would think the two will be very near the same, but what I think I'm hearing is that some believe that it may be of more value on target than an equal cross wind speed. If the speed is greater than seems logical, why would it not appear on flag tails? Just thinking out loud here. Not arguing, hoping to learn. It would seem logical that the air density may be greater at these boundaries. That might account for a small amount of it. I've seen tails literally go straight up like they were in a tornado..or at least a dust devil kind of force outdoors.

[John Kielly]

Our local 50 meter smallbore range is walled but with the main range uncovered.

At certain times of winter, cool air coming in above interferes with the warm ground air so that a "bouncing meniscus" is formed between the two, just like oil on water and on certain nights, or at certain times, that exactly coincides with the centre of the aiming marks so that you get high or low eights as the line moves.