[joel.favre]

Hello all, I have been toying around with some ideas for a small (2 acres to be exact) private range. I am looking for something that I can use on my own, and possibly a fun day with one or two friends. The left side is s simple 25-300 yard range, and I am basing the right side of the range off of a tac range that I was exposed to in the military, with a 5 station "running course".
All the targets are numbered with the sequence which they will be engaged. The first station (#1) is where you will engage targets 1-1, 1-2, and 1-3 in that order. So on in that manner until station 5, where I haven't quite decided what to do, I am thinking just a 25 yard 5 target falling plate setup for pistols.
There are proposed yardage numbers in parenthesis beside each target.
Now, I do understand the safety factors that go into building a range, and will take every precaution necessary for safe operation to include backstops (earth berms on the front and sides of the range, sloping from 12' in the front to a full 20' behind the targets), offsets from neighbors, other buildings, and any sort of area where people might unknowingly be. Given all that said, I would appreciate any relevant safety tips anyone has.
One potential safety issue I have spotted is the 3rd engagement at station #2. This is drawn incorrectly, and it would actually be a downrange engagement, more along the lines of a 45 deg angle downrange instead of what looks to be parallel the firing line.
So without further ado, what I am looking for is any comments you may have about the order of engagement, length of shots, and whether you think this could shape up to be a fun course, and one that you would want to run through/practice on.
Anything is appreciated, thanks all!
Joel

[janedoedad]

Can you repost the map as .PDF file? I can't read your notes on the .JPG.

TYVM!

[JohnKSa]

Ideally the targets should be directly in front of the berms.

The key is that the bullets really need to hit the berms and NOT the ground in front of the berms--especially not the ground WELL in front of the berms. That leads to ricochets and that will mean you would need a really large safety zone on the other side of your berm.

[joel.favre]

Sorry, I do not know how to make a PDF from an image.
As far as the targets being in front of the berms, that is a good point. I had initially planned to put them behind a small berm, so that it would add some element of "concealment" to the target, and just use the large berm surrounding the entire course as the backstop, but I think you are right in saying that putting them directly in front of the small berm would create an extra margin of safety.
Joel

[testosterone]

what John said.

Berm design and the target orientation relative to those berms is what makes a range safe or dangerous for stuff(people, houses, roads, livestock, etc....)

Ground ricochets are extremely common and those bullets will easily go over down range berms if berms are to low or targets are set in such a way that you don't shoot through targets into berms.

A proper range, as you are showing for example, would have a 100 yd berm. That berm would be tall enough such that a ground ricochet form a 50 yd ground ricochet would hit the 100 yd berm

from 100 yds to 200 yds would be a higher elevation(100 yds berm height) leading out to your two hundred yd line.

The taller your 200 yd berm is the better... 20ft is a min, if you have the material and resources to do it 30+ ft is better...