AQT Target Scaled for 10 Meters

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JohnKSa

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I've been kind of interested in the Appleseed events for awhile and wanted to see what sort of a shooting challenge it was. I found a number of targets and put together a single 8.5"x11" page with the entire AQT course on it, scaled for use at 10 meters (33 ft). I picked 10 meters since that's a pretty typical airgun shooting distance--and because that's the maximum distance I can shoot indoors with an airgun.

I figured that other THR airgunners might want to practice for an Appleseed event, or might just want a different target to shoot now and then so I uploaded it. It's a Word document--sorry about that, but I don't have the ability to save it as a pdf. Print the page with the "Actual Size" option selected and the sizes should be correct. If you want to check to make sure everything is correct, here are the numbers:

Measuring the targets at the base from one edge of the 3 point line to the other, the 100 yard target should be 3.46" wide, the 200 yard target should be 1.74" wide, the 300 should be 1.15" wide and the 400 yard target should be 0.87" wide.

The actual course of fire information is included on the target but I shoot it with a single-shot airgun which means it's pointless to try to meet the time limits on some of the stages. So I shoot it all from the standing position to try to make up for ignoring the time limits.

I shot it once for score earlier tonight but then realized I had botched the scaling process and the score wasn't valid. Next time I get a chance to shoot the updated target with the proper scaling, I'll post my score for everyone's amusement. :D
 

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Im gonna play with this target and my repeater qb78 tomorrow, should be fun :D
I actually just looked at one of the commercial scaled targets like these at the range today and was thinking they seemed like fun.
Thanks for taking the time to make and post this!
 
All right, as promised...

I shot the AQT again tonight--this time with the properly scaled target above. I used a Beeman R7 named Ellie. This is the only gun/airgun I've ever named. If you own an R7, that might make sense to you. She's equipped with a custom muzzle weight, a coverplate engraved with her name where the open rear sight used to be, and a Williams aperture sight. An airgunsmith named Russ Best tuned her for me and she shoots with no vibration at all. R7s are pretty fun to shoot even stock, but when they've been touched up a little, they're really nice.

The score was 220.

I had one 4 on the simulated 100 yard target, the rest were 5s. On the simulated 200 yard targets I had six 5s, two 4s and two 3s. On the simulated 300 yard targets I really started to get in a groove and shot six 5s, three 4s and one 3. Managed to finish up the simulated 400 yard targets with no misses--five 5s, one 4 and four 3s. Remember the points on the simulated 400 yard targets count double.

It's important to keep in mind that when shooting at targets that have been scaled down significantly to simulate distance, you get an extra bonus from the fact that your projectile size doesn't shrink along with the target.

For example, let's say you're shooting at a 12" x 12" target at 400 yards with a .30 caliber bullet. Assuming you count any hit that nicks the target, your effective target size is actually 12.3" x 12.3" since you can "miss" by half the diameter of the bullet on any side and still score a nick. The target "grows" by half the bullet diameter in every direction which increases its overall dimensions by the diameter of the bullet.

But now let's say you scale the target down to simulate 400 yards while shooting at 10 yards. Now the actual target size is 0.3" x 0.3". But the bullet is still 0.3" in diameter and you can still "miss" by half the diameter of the bullet on any side and score a nick. So the effective target size is now 0.6" x 0.6".

At full distance (400 yards), scoring the nicks only increased your effective target by 2.5% in each dimension. But with the scaled down target, scoring the nicks increases your effective target by 100% in each dimension since the bullet size is now much larger relative to the target dimensions. Obviously quite a bonus!

It's possible to scale down the target even smaller to try to keep things proportional, but if you do that, now it's much harder to see the target and that makes hitting much harder than it should be. Especially if you're using iron sights. Another option is to keep the target the same visual size but to introduce scaled-down scoring rings/lines which are visible up close.

I didn't bother doing that on the AQT for two reasons.
1. It was going to be more work than I wanted to do.
2. Since the AQT is already a scaled down target (scaled for 25 yards), a big part of the proportionality problem is already present in the original AQT. That means compensating for the scaling would be making the AQT harder than it normally is unless I had compensated for the scaling from 25 to 10 but not the scaling from the actual distances to 25 yards. See #1. :D
 
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Very interesting idea and sounds like a lot of fun too! If only there was a way to scale the caliber down. One would need a caliber at just under .10 to make the holes punched equivilant to a .22 at 25m. The .177cal BB/pellet is equivilant at 10m to sending .50cal projectile at a normal scale AQT at a 25m.
 
I've got an updated version that's scaled to assume it was shot with a .30 cal projectile at full distance and with a 0.177 pellet at the scaled-down distance. It makes the 400 yard targets significantly smaller than they would actually appear so I put a heavy black (non-scoring) border around them to highlight them a little. That takes care of the visibility problem and the hit/miss issue. But there's still the problem that the scoring rings are very small compared to the projectile. There's no way to fix that short of reworking the target entirely and using a new scoring scheme.

At some point you just have to accept that shooting scaled-down targets isn't quite the same as shooting them at full distance...

Anyway, if the updated version works ok after I've shot it a few times, I'll upload it.
 
Still shooting the target posted above from the offhand position. I've got one more of those targets that I printed out initially, then I'll switch to an upgraded version with the scaling adjusted slightly to simulate shooting a .30 cal at full distance and a .177 cal at the scaled distance. It also has a dark non-scoring border around the 400 yard targets for added visibility.

I decided to try my hand with a match rifle so I shot the target with my FWB 300S. It's a much heavier gun than the R7, and I can't contort my torso into the classic offhand rifle pose so I ended up with some more wobble than with the R7. Also, the double aperture sights cut down on light transmission which made the smaller targets very difficult to see. But the trigger is very nice and I was able to compensate for the extra weight by putting the gun down every 5 shots or so to take a slight breather.

I didn't adjust the diopter rear sight starting out and my shots were a little high on the 100 yard target. One slipped out into the 3 zone and another into the 4. I got things adjusted for the 200 yard targets and was rewarded with all 5s and 4s. Not so good on the 300 yard targets, I had a couple of misses and three 3s. But the rest were 5s which helped compensate somewhat. On the 400 yard targets I managed to avoid missing--six 5s, two 4s and one 3 wrapped things up for a total score of 217. Not as good as with the R7, but what can you expect when you have misses?

I noticed that the smaller targets seem to show a higher tendency for 5s. I believe this is another scaling issue. The targets get so small when scaled down from 300 and 400 yards (especially the simulated 400 yarders) that a .177 pellet is about a fifth of the size of the target. Which means that if you hit the target at all, you're pretty likely to at least clip the 5 scoring line. There are places on the target where shooting the scaled 100 yard target for a solid 3 will yield a scored 5 on the 400 yard target since the pellet width is about the same as the combined 3 and 4 scoring rings on the smaller target. With the 400 yard scaled targets counting double, the tendency toward higher value hits pushes the overall score up a little bit.

So yet another reason that the scaled targets aren't quite representative. But it's still pretty fun to shoot.
 
@JohnKSa Thanks for this! I haven't shot them yet but if the weather is as nice today as forecasted, I'll be able to give them a try outdoors. My problem is, my bestest target gun (CMP Daisy 853, aka 'No-name') is down right now getting a new stock and I'm still in the process of finishing it. But I have a couple others that should do okay; they shoot better than me... :)

Figured I'd score it by taking the outer edge of the shot as being 0.050" from center of the hole. Hopefully the wadcutters will punch a clean enough hole for this.
 
Don't know what's up but I cannot seem to get the target to copy as it should- the right side of each target segment is missing parts of he outline and 'torso'. I checked my settings but found nothing out of the ordinary, and other things are copying normally. Anyone else getting what I'm getting or is my printer wacked?

Target1.jpg
 
Not sure exactly what's going on there. I figured out how to get a pdf saved so here's a pdf of the latest version I've created. The scaling has also been adjusted to simulate shooting a .30 cal at full distance and a .177 cal at the scaled distance. There's also a new dark non-scoring border around the 400 yard targets for added visibility when using iron sights.
 

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Cool, will give it a try. The first targets are still useable (although 'stuff' got in the way of shooting today), it wouldn't take much at all to replace the missing portions.

ETA The pdf copied perfectly, thanks.
 
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I still don't have the barrel latch for my 1077, so I figured I'd try to shoot the target with my R7 while keeping track of the elapsed time just to get a reference point. That didn't work out so well. I didn't even make the time limits for the 100 & 400 targets which are 2 minutes and 5 minutes respectively and because I was trying to rush I had 4 misses. A 200 overall--my worst score yet.

100 yard target--one shot every 16 seconds--score 47/50
200 yard targets--one shot every 18 seconds--score 43/50
300 yard targets--one shot every 24.5 seconds--score 32/50 (two misses)
400 yard targets--untimed (started timing it but quit after my first two shots were misses) but longer than 5 minutes--score 78/100 (two misses)
 
I have several copies taped to cardboard to keep them from fluttering outdoors. It's rainy here today so no telling when I'll get to shoot them, but I will- eventually!
 
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