Gustavo
Well-Known Member
From the reading of so many posts about discrepancies in downrange figures from different programs ( commercial or free ) and being myself involved in the development of another package (now in beta) I asked myself : do we need to compute values beyond the 2000 yards mark?
While with my own knowledge and experience in LRH and ballistics fired a fast answer that doing so is futile due to innacuracies in the math models, especially at the transonic level, and not counting shooter's error at that distance and the almost ever present wind, my guess is that we cannot trust or need to push the envelope that far. Maybe for marketing reasons.
We have different drag models, differents algorithms, different books...(Pejsa, McCoy, just to name a few) etc, but so far I've never obtained from a certified source a true table showing real vs. predicted values. Not even in military circles, except ( and cannot confirm ) the ones involved in the CheyTac system.
Moreover, if we take that project into the scene, I've never found any proof of some claims ( and please do not take this statement as it not being possible or unreal )
In short, when some programs shows downrange values beyond 2000 yards, my best educated estimate is that they rarely are confirmed by real firings.
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to check during a sniper exercise (Marines' Special Forces) under "somewhat" controlled conditions and up to 1200 yards the values I'm obtaining from my software.
Well, fortunately drop values were almost near the 99% of the threshold of accuracy ( field data vs predictions ) but when I tried to push the range out to 2000 yards, an experienced officer and a LRH himself, pointed out the many variables involved that otherwise can put in jeopardy a military operation, by not hitting the target with the first or two rounds. Beyond that they call in close air support /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif
So, they don't need or foresee a future need for tables beyond that range. That prompted my original question posted here.
In short, I'll like to hear from more experienced shooters waht they think on this subject.
Thanks in advance!
While with my own knowledge and experience in LRH and ballistics fired a fast answer that doing so is futile due to innacuracies in the math models, especially at the transonic level, and not counting shooter's error at that distance and the almost ever present wind, my guess is that we cannot trust or need to push the envelope that far. Maybe for marketing reasons.
We have different drag models, differents algorithms, different books...(Pejsa, McCoy, just to name a few) etc, but so far I've never obtained from a certified source a true table showing real vs. predicted values. Not even in military circles, except ( and cannot confirm ) the ones involved in the CheyTac system.
Moreover, if we take that project into the scene, I've never found any proof of some claims ( and please do not take this statement as it not being possible or unreal )
In short, when some programs shows downrange values beyond 2000 yards, my best educated estimate is that they rarely are confirmed by real firings.
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to check during a sniper exercise (Marines' Special Forces) under "somewhat" controlled conditions and up to 1200 yards the values I'm obtaining from my software.
Well, fortunately drop values were almost near the 99% of the threshold of accuracy ( field data vs predictions ) but when I tried to push the range out to 2000 yards, an experienced officer and a LRH himself, pointed out the many variables involved that otherwise can put in jeopardy a military operation, by not hitting the target with the first or two rounds. Beyond that they call in close air support /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif
So, they don't need or foresee a future need for tables beyond that range. That prompted my original question posted here.
In short, I'll like to hear from more experienced shooters waht they think on this subject.
Thanks in advance!