This continues a new category of posts: Guest columns where friends and readers share how technology is reshaping their hobby – basket weaving, rugby – whatever.
This time it is my former Gartner colleague Tom Ryan. By day he helps clients solve complex logistics issues. By night, he relaxes at the range.
“I had spent many years in the Army and one day long after I became a civilian a young friend of mine asked me if I wanted to go to the shooting range. I went along, a bit cynical. But with my 3 daughters all grown up and gone, I had some time on my hands for golf or bowling or this.
Why was I cynical? When you’ve pulled the trigger on a 152MM tank cannon, had the 17 ton “light” tank hunker down on its haunches and raise the first two rows of wheels off the ground, and had your target 3000 meters away blow up scattering large chunks of metal everywhere, plinking at a tin can at 50 feet with a .22 caliber rifle just doesn’t do it for you like it did when you were a kid.
I was wrong – that range visit helped identify my new hobby - high power target rifle shooting. The object of this hobby is to put all your bullets in the same hole on the paper at ranges that vary from 100 yards to one mile. In the military, we qualified with our rifles with targets at ranges from 50 to 500 yards.
In this hobby, the equipment and the tools are always more capable than the shooter. My rifle is a Springfield Armory M1A, 7.62 MM .308 caliber semi-automatic with a 4x14 scope with a 50MM aperture (no it is not a sniper weapon but it is the civilian version of the venerable M14). It can consistently put all the bullets in a 1” diameter circle at 100 yards – except when I am shooting it :)
There is science and technology involved; the biology of the shooter (pulse rate, breathing, vision), the meteorology of the day (temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction), materials (the rifle barrel, the bullet shape and composition), chemistry (the gun powder), and last but not least, ballistics (distance, muzzle velocity, bullet shape, bullet weight, air resistance). All these things make the sport frustrating and exciting all at once. The best shooters work on perfection in each of these areas. It isn’t just good aim and a steady hand. Science and technology improvements have helped about every facet of the sport.
The most obvious technology application is zeroing the gun. Zeroing is when you adjust the aiming point of the gun sight to match the impact point of the bullet. The gun sights can be “iron”, e.g. a blade on the front and an adjustable “v” on the rear of the barrel, optical, e.g. a telescope, or a laser aiming light. In each case zeroing starts with bore sighting, lining up the path of the bore of the rifle with the line of sight of the gun sights. Twenty years ago, this was mostly mechanical; sight down the barrel with a scope type device with the gun locked into a vise and then adjust the actual gun sights to match. Today we have lasers that fit in the bore of the rifle and illuminate a point on a target down range, then you adjust the gun sight to match.
Then there is the interplay of ballistics and material technology. Bullets don’t fly in a straight line. They drop over the flight distance because of gravity so you need to compensate for that when you aim the gun. The faster the bullet flies, the flatter the trajectory, the less time for gravity to interfere. In addition to flying flat, you want the bullet to fly straight. Rifles are all about adding spin to the bullet to make it into a little gyroscope so that it will fly straight. Again, the faster the bullet moves down the barrel the faster it will spin.
You’re asking where materials play into this. I had a friend of mine that is a good shot. He had been doing well at 100 yards with his rifle and bullet combination putting all his shots in about a 3” diameter circle. We decided to step it up a notch and move to the 300 yard range. Over there, he couldn’t hit a 4 foot square target to save his life. We knew it wasn’t him. A little research uncovered some interesting facts. The bullet his ammunition was using (40 grain FMJ – full metal jacket) was known to go unstable after about 200 yards. You see, in his gun, that bullet was spinning at 624,000 RPM. The composite metals of the bullet couldn’t stand that rotational stress for more than the .115 seconds it took for the bullet to fly 200 yards. The bullet then fell apart and none of the pieces followed the perfect path to the target at 300 yards. He changed to a different bullet (66 grain FMJ, Sierra boat tail) and he was back on target.
As an engineer I find all this very rewarding. I get to use my problem solving skills, I get to chase different technologies, I get to pursue best practices, I can help others learn and get better at it, and I get instant gratification when my vision clears in the sight and the cross hairs are on the center, I slow down my breathing and relax, I take up the slack in the trigger, then I’m surprised by the thump in my shoulder from the recoil, and then that little white hole appears in the middle of the 10 ring.
I am so glad that friend did not invite me to golf that day. The thrill of doing as well as I did in the photo below would only be matched by 9 consecutive holes-in-one in a golf round…”
This was a really good article. I never knew that much went into shooting, although I always wanted to learn. I learned a lot from your article today, and looking forward to reading more.
Posted by: Jason F | April 08, 2009 at 01:36 PM