Bullet trace video....very neat

[hillbilly]

The following thread on another site I peruse has a great video of bullet trace.

Trace can be seen through a spotting scope that's at least 20X, and usually focused back just a little...enough to be hazy a bit.

The video is taken at Badlands Tactical Training Facility in Grandfield, Ok.

I've taken two precision rifle courses there, great folks, great courses.

The voices are the shooter (one of the instructor's daughters) and Mr. Steve Suttles, the head rifle instructor at Badlands.

They are doing the "shooter-spotter" dialogue.

When the shooter is ready, she says "Up."

The spotter takes one last look at the wind and says "Send it" if the shot is a go.

The target is a hanging half-silhouette at 500 yards. Check the wind.

When Suttles tells the shooter to "Come up one and a half" he is making an adjustment in Minute of Angle.

But it's a great demonstration of what "trace" looks like.

Of course, higher humidity, and light coming in at angle make for better trace watching.

Also, the bigger the caliber, the better the trace. I've seen .300 Win Mag trace at Badlands that looks like a cruiseliner wake on an ocean.

At long distances (like 600 yards or farther), you can call the shot a "hit" or not before the bullet actually gets there by reading the trace to the target

http://www.snipershide.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=6;t=000649#000000

 

[Warbow]

Cool!

 

[Third_Rail]

Mmm... disruption of light through sheer velocity.

 

[Jonathan]

Diffraction of light by air density changes.

I've got a few videos around of this sort of thing, but no host.

Anyone have some FTP/web space handy?

 

[Third_Rail]

I stand corrected. Nice to know what actually does it!

 

[Gewehr98]

That happened to me during a competition once.

My smart-a$$ spotter was calling hits and misses before the bullet even hit the 500 meter steel targets. He could see the bullet wake from my 6.5-06 each time I touched a round off. Once he stopped giggling and got serious, he called out adjustments to me to get a better hit ratio. I couldn't see them because the scope moved during recoil, plus my Vais muzzle brake made things swimmy in the field of view for a second or so. I switched places with him after the match to view the bullet wake effect, it was intriguing to say the least.

Since then, I've been able to watch .22 Long Rifle target loads arc up and into a target at 100 yards, when viewed at 24x or better through the rifle's scope. I understand the spotters for black powder cartridge folks can see the big .40-65, .45-70, .45-90, .45-110, and .45-120 bullets when they're dropping into the field of view at 800+ yards. Neat!

 

[Gewehr98]

Jonathan, I've got webspace, if you need it.

Send me a PM.

 

[psyopspec]

You can get similar dramatic effects if you're ever on a range with a light morning mist. It's cool to it get burned away in swirls.

 

[hillbilly]

At Badlands once, with the light just at the right angle, we could see the bullet through the spotting scope.

Not trace, the .308 actual bullet going into the 100 and 200 yard targets.

It was a coppery streak or flash, but it was the actual, honest-to-goodness bullet we could see for a fraction of a second.

hillbilly

 

[skunyun]

That could have been Flash Gordon, I heard he was up there

 

[Badger Arms]

I love broadband. Downloaded it in 22 seconds! WOOHOO!

 

[Gordon]

when I loaded 22-250 or .220 swift or early .17 Rem bullets a little too hot they would leave an actual lead trace from the open bullet bases! This , of course was not the same as the supersonic turbulance/dew point issue!Nice video!

 

[Gewehr98]

Thanks to Jonathan for this impressive video:

Bullet Path Video

 

[Jonathan]

If the video gives anyone any problems, it's probably the codec. It's actually a divx, so you might just try renaming it to ".avi" if the windows media tag causes issues.

The distance is 200 yards, with a 45-70 with 405 grain bullets. The plate target weighs about 80-100 pounds (about 1-1.5" thick). Every shot could be seen with the naked eye while the sun was at that angle, but the longer range shots didn't show up well due to snow etc and the lighting. I'll try to get some better clips later.

Thanks to Gewehr98 for the host: please do him a favor and save it locally rather than re-download for every viewing.

 

[Gewehr98]

Not a problem, Jonathan.

I've been paying for extra bandwidth as part of my www.mauser98.com business account for quite some time. I'd actually like to see it get some use, so the more videos I put out there, perhaps the closer that little slider bar on the usage gauge will move to the right. Right now, it barely shows up at all.

 

[Steve Smith]

You guys have to start shooting Highpower. This is an every shot occurance and while you're not allowed to coach, you will at least know what your shooter is going to do, and you can learn tremendously from it.

 

[Jon Coppenbarger]

Like steve said with highpower in the slow fires you ar allowed to look at the trace and it is a easy thing to do to see where the shot is going. I use a 27x spotting scope for this.
In team event's I use the scope to call all of the shots and they give me instant feed back to adjust for the next shot for my shooters.
In rapid fire I call either good or out at where ever the shot went so the shooter can tell what he is doing, if a pattern comes up I can tell the shooter to hold off what ever it takes to get centered back up.
At longer ranges of say 600 yards or so I use the trace to get the wind deflection and the shooter as soon as he shoots tells me where he thinks it should be and I take that info and what I saw in the mirage and compare it to his call and the wind before and after the shot to tell him what to adjust if anything on the next shot.

Now with binoculars its different as most days I can not see the trace nor look for it but actually look for the bullet its self and it is seen at the peek where it starts to break. It is just a small black dot but you can see it. By looking at where it is at in reference to the target I can let the shooter adjust his fire as to what I know the wind will do to it. I use either 7x or 10x as 10x is the most I can legally use in that type of match.
Trace is easier to predict that the bullet as you see the trace for awhile but with the bino's if you have a wind you need to know if say its coming from the left you will know that the bullet needs to be on the left of the man size target or sometimes even off to the left depending on how much the wind is moving to get your hits on the target.

Fun and a challenge to say the least.