Trans-Sonic Zone for Handgun Cartridges

Not tacticle warrier enough to comment, just a guess - the overall distance travelled by your bullet is probably too short for these kinds of stability perturbations to make any significant difference.

I doubt in your 22 pistol that you are getting supersonic. That said I have not seen any issues with accuracy out to practical pistol ranges. I shoot 357 and 44 mag out to 150 yards and have not had any issues.

You'd really have to chronograph your rounds to see if you are supersonic to begin with. 1150 fps is only 25 fps above sonic, and that would be on an ideal day where temperature and air density meet the criteria for Mach 1 = 1125.32808 fps. At distances where you're shooting handguns, I doubt it would be an issue. POA and POI aren't too far apart, distance-wise, unlike rifle shooting where the drop becomes significant and bullet speed and stability really matter, and wind also has a much greater effect.

It's my guess you'll be okay out to about 50 yards.
Let's just look at the Remington golden bullet as an example, according to this website,
https://www.mcarbo.com/22LR-Ballistics-Chart
The 22 golden bullet has a BC of .125 for it's 36 grain bullet. If we assume that the velocity listed (1280 fps) is correct then I won't expect that bullet (at that velocity) to go trans-sonic until around 50 yards.
You can run your own numbers for different loads here,
http://www.jbmballistics.com/cgi-bin/jbmtraj_simp-5.1.cgi

If the dreaded trans-sonic region really concerns you then just use Target loads which stay below the speed of sound from the get-go.

Me personally, I don't worry about it. My handgun ranges don't warrant the concern. Good luck. Good shooting.

It's important to remember the sound barrier is not a fixed definite thing. Trans sonic effects occur from Mach 0.8 to 1.2 where the flow has both subsonic and supersonic characteristics. So almost all handgun rounds are trans sonic all the time.
Being that handgun bullets are basically blunt bodies I suspect it matters very little, as opposed to rifle bullets.

I’m faaaar more apt to chunk shots myself than have the super-to-sub sonic deceleration phenomenon affect any of my bullets impact on a target.

In the pursuit of the X-ring, I am my own worst enemy on the firing line .

Stay safe.

Out to 50 yards my model 41 shoots best with a 35 year old lot of PMC sidewinder 22s, before they started copper plating them. It’s high velocity, definitely has a supersonic crack. I tried something like 10 different brands, Tenex among them and the PMC grouped best. When they went to copper washing it was not as good. It shoots better than I do with CCI std velocity which is subsonic. So for me the sound barrier did not seem to matter.

TransAmConvert said:

It's important to remember the sound barrier is not a fixed definite thing. Trans sonic effects occur from Mach 0.8 to 1.2 where the flow has both subsonic and supersonic characteristics. So almost all handgun rounds are trans sonic all the time.
Being that handgun bullets are basically blunt bodies I suspect it matters very little, as opposed to rifle bullets.

Click to expand...

90% and 110% are 'popular' boundaries for transonic.
Once any portion gets close to transonic the Bernoulli Equations simply fail.
A 'standing pressure wave' can exist and for the most part their is no air flow past that pressure wave.
The wave is not 'standing' in the sense of not moving, it moves with the projectile.
It is 'standing' in relation to the cross section shape of the projectiles.

It creates a large increase in Cd (the drag factor cross section.).
When it starts to break down the air flow resumes resulting in disturbances to the flight of the object.

The problem is when the bullets go trans sonic. That is go back down below the speed of sound. They tend to de-stabilize due to the effects noted by brickeyee in the post above.
With rifles, and hi velocity ammo, that occurs at about 80 yards. That is why rimfire competitors use standard velocity ammo, generally running around 1050 fps.