Let's talk no wind

Friend Cliff

I will agree a lot of the problem is mirage if there is any air movement.
I have paid close attention since my original post and have found that I must watch the tails on my flags very closely in what sometimes seems to be dead calm. The flags can all be pointed one direction with no movement but the slightest movement of the tails to the left or right will push the mirage a huge amount.
Paying more attention to mirage in the calm has helped my scores but still there is more to it than just mirage since cool calm mirage basically moves left or right unlike a boil in the hot summer sun I would expect if the problem was due to mirage my targets would show most of the out shots to be left or right and that's not usually the case. When I examine my targets shot in dead calm they are fairly equal in the number of shots going out North and South with the ones going out east and west.

Any more theories?

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Friend Cliff:


When there is a true, dead calm, there is no way to read the effect of the target image displacement....

In a true, dead calm, the target image is constantly being displaced in a circular motion.....very slowly...

If one places the cross hairs on the dot, assuming your gun is sighted-in behind the dot, one will shoot a bunch of close 100's and scratch 50's, which will be located both vertically and horizontally..

How many times have you been killing it, then all of a sudden, your next five shots walk a circle around the 100 ring...all 50's, or most all of them anyway?

And then you go back to killing it............

Your friend, Bill Calfee
 
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Friend Cliff:


How many times have you been killing it, then all of a sudden, your next five shots walk a circle around the 100 ring...all 50's, or most all of them anyway?

And then you go back to killing it............

Your friend, Bill Calfee

You hit the nail on the head with that comment!
So your saying in the true dead calm the sight picture is moving all around the clock on me?
Very interesting, I think I can test for this next time I shoot in Livonia.
 
Friend Cliff

You hit the nail on the head with that comment!
So your saying in the true dead calm the sight picture is moving all around the clock on me?
Very interesting, I think I can test for this next time I shoot in Livonia.

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Friend Cliff:


In a true dead calm, yes, the image of the target slowly revolves......

For this reason......it's rare that the temperature of the air and ground are the same...

So in a dead calm there's a slow mixture of temperature layers.....

One of the worst dead calm conditions is right after a rain, especially at the range where I test since there's low spots that hold water...

So the ground temps varies from the firing line to the target....

And remember, the air will cool off much quicker than the ground.........

Likewise, the air will heat up much quicker than the ground....

I try to always test in a calm, and I really like to test on a day that's been overcast the entire day, and calm.

When the sun has stayed off the ground all day, the temps of the air and ground become more equal....hence the target image stays put better.

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A lot of folks associate mirage with the dancing, or shimmering, variety.....which does occur.....a lot as a matter of fact.

And the shimmering, or running, type of mirage is fairly easy to detect.....a lot of folks use black and white strips at the target...

I simply watch the top of my target frame, which is white, against the green grass background....

You can see the running mirage clearly this way....

Most generally the mirage runs the same direction as the prevailing wind...............but not always......

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But the mirage cased by calm conditions can't be detected......at least not while one is running a card.

This is what fools so many shooters.....even seasoned shooters....

Because the target isn't shimmering, it looks perfectly still and normal....

But the image is slowly revolving.......


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So what we wind up doing, is pointing the cross hairs at what we believe to be the target, but in reality we're just pointing the cross hairs at a perfectly clear image of the target, not the actual target itself...

So, if you've got the most accurate gun on earth, and you point it at the 50 ring by mistake, thinking you're on the dot, you're going to get a 50 every time......

Your friend, Bill Calfee
 
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