Field Target Wind Training Game

The secret to shooting in the wind...

So we all know that the wind is variable, so how can there be a secret to it?

If you ask the top shots how they manage to figure out the wind they'll usually tell you it's a matter of experience, and to a large extent they're right, but there's more to it than that.

Some of it comes down to experience, but there are elements of the wind that are just ballistics and accuracy.

So if you could split the problem into two parts and remove the variable wind and the whole experience part, how well would you fare on an FT course if it just came down to ballistics and accuracy?

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If you want to know the background to the game, read on...

Ballistics

I've built in the same ballistics calculations into this game as used by Chairgun, so you can tweak things to mirror your actual rig, and also play some what if scenarios so you can see what different muzzle velocities, ballistic coefficients, scope heights etc will do for you when it comes to getting the ballistics right.

So what do you need to know?

Ok so for example, you're on the zero range and you know that the wind is blowing directly across at a 90 degree angle to the target board and at 45 yards you're getting a pretty consistent 1 mildot of wind. How much allowance for wind will you need to make at 55 yards? Will you still give it 1 mildot?
Now you're shooting the course and the wind strength seems to be about the same, but this time it's not coming across at 90 degrees, the angle has halved to 45 degrees. Do you still give it 1 mildot of wind? If the angle has halved from 90 to 45, do you halve the amount of wind you need to give it?

The answer to those questions its just ballistics - if you don't know the answer, then learning the answer will help you to remove the ballistics part of the problem of knowing where to aim.

You could sit down with some ballistics software and try to learn the answers, you could even print out a spreadsheet with the answers on it.. but a better way is to learn it by practice - that's something my little game (Windeeze) will help you with.

Accuracy

Here's a question for you.. have you ever come to a target where there was clear indication that the wind is blowing from left to right, so you've given it outside left edge of kill and the pellet has landed smack on your crosshair? I know I have and I bet it's happened to you too.

Have a listen to shooters as you wander round a course waiting for your session to start and I bet you'll hear this at least once "I don't believe it!!.. it went straight!" and that's what you tend to think when you see something like that happen. It looked like there was wind, you gave it wind and the pellet landed smack on your crosshair - so it must have been that you got the wind wrong?

Well... not necessarily.

Think about it like this.. you're shooting groups on a bit of paper at 55 yards - how often does the pellet land smack on your crosshairs? For me, if I can group sub 1 inch at 55 yards, I'm happy enough with that - but that means that for every shot I take, the pellet could effectively land upto half an inch away from my crosshairs in any direction - left, right, up, down. Why do we totally forget about our average group size when we're shooting in a competition? So an alternative answer to "why did that shot go straight when there was clearly wind" is this...

It didn't go straight at all - you just put the pellet inside your average group size and that just happened to make it look like it went straight.

Another thing to think about in terms of accuracy is - how accurate are your clicks and how accurate is your range finding?

If you have clicks for every yard and your range finding is perfect - then you have a 40mm disc to land you pellet in, so you've got 40mm of leeway for getting the wind wrong.

If you can be say plus or minus a yard on your rangefinding, then you no longer have 40mm of leeway, because if your pellet lands high or low, the width of the kill is no longer 40mm.

If you combine this with your average group size (where a pellet could land anywhere inside say a 25mm circle) then you have even less leeway for getting the wind wrong.

You can do a calculation to figure out what the leeway is.. but here's a couple of examples..

If your average group size is 20mm at 55 yards and your range finding/clicks are accurate to plus or minus say half a yard. then your leeway for getting the wind wrong isn't 40mm, it's about 18mm - effectively, you have to take a good shot and you still have to guess the wind strength to within 18mm to knock the target over without luck playing a part.

Now let's up the values a bit.. suppose your average group size is 30mm at 55 yards and your range finding / clicks can be out by plus or minus a yard. A situation that's common to most of us mere mortals.

Your leeway for getting the wind wrong is now less than 1mm - that means you have to gauge the wind strength and direction absolutely perfectly to take the target down without luck playing a part.

Now ask yourself this... the shooters who seem to be awesome at shooting in the wind - what else do they have in common? - They're all bloody good shots too, and also bloody good at range finding and setting their guns up.

The difference between someone who can shoot really tight groups at 55 yards and can range find accurately - is, they get an extra 18mm of leeway for getting the wind wrong. It's not that they've sold their souls to the devil and are able to read the wind perfectly, they get extra leeway for getting it wrong because they're more accurate in terms of shooting and range finding.

Some questions you've asked

and hopefully some answers that make sense

Click on a question and the answer will be revealed..

How do I aim high or low, I only seem to be able to aim left and right?

Ah no.. there's no holdover or under on this - it's testing your ability to get the wind right so you're shooting with a gun thats zeroed for the target distance on every shot. If I'm bored again and I have some spare time, I might write an HFT version where you also have to get your holdover right as well.

All I get is a black screen, why doesn't it work?

The game is tested on Google Chrome, some of the features might not work on other browsers and the whole thing definitely won't work on Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Update your browser to a more recent version or install Chrome as your browser.

It appears to come up with different wind speed and direction each time I play it?

Ah yeah - I forgot to mention - the wind speed and direction change each time you shoot the course - but they remain constant for the whole course. So you can shoot the zero range and get an idea about the wind strength and then go onto the course with the same overall wind speed and direction. The resulting wind direction will be different for each target, but that reflects the actual bearings to the targets on that course.

The York winter league course I entered from memory and the shooting line was in a straight line with targets set at angles to the shooting line. The Inters course was entered from real data and a pretty good approximation of the target bearings - it was a sort of horse shoe shaped firing line.

All of the ballistic calcs for height etc all use the same equations as Chairgun does, using the GA drag tables for waisted diablo airgun pellets.

Why doesn't a 'split' ever go down?

If less than half a pellet's surface area strikes the killzone, the shot will be marked as a 'split' and the target won't go down.

If more than half the pellet lands inside the killzone, the target will be classed as a 'hit' and you won't see the word 'split' appear, so it looks like splits never go down, when in reality they do, but splits aren't reported when more than half the pellet hits the killzone.

It looked like more than half the pellet landed in the kill, but it still didn't register as a hit?

The calculation of where the pellet will strike uses a pretty accurate exterior ballistics formula to get it's answers - the calculation is often much more accurate than the display of the killzone.

There is a slight bug, but the bug is just the accuracy of the display of the killzone, so it just looks like the pellet didn't hit the kill because the display is slightly wrong.

I'm seeing a lot of pellets land high and low - what's that all about?

If you tell the system that your average group size is 30mm at 50m - what you're saying is that when you take a shot at a target your pellet could land 15mm high or 15mm low and still be inside the average group size you specified.

You also tell the system how accurate you are at range finding - if your margin for error is high, you might find that the system is applying that error and compounding it with your average group size to come up with a point of impact that's higher or lower than your aim point, those settings are there to help you realise the importance of tight groupings and accurate range finding.

Don't forget that scope height will also play a part in this - if you have a really high scope it range finding errors at longer range will have less impact on the difference in point if impact, but will be more noticeable at close range

None of this is black magic - it's just the effect of the settings you've chosen combined with ballistics - it's all about ballistics and accuracy.

Is there going to be an HFT version?

You never know, but it's a lot of work to do it correctly for HFT.

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