Tag: sighting in

February 29, 2024 – It Has Been a Long Time Since I Have Been To the Range…

February 29, 2024 /

Happy leap day everyone. It may be that I am getting older and lazier but I haven’t been to the range since November. My renewal date is around the first of the year and I haven’t hardly even thought about going. It kind of makes me wonder if I should keep up my membership if I am not going to use it.

Another possible reason is that since I have setup my basement, pellet trap I use it multiple times a week. So, I feel less of the need to go to the range because I am always shooting without going anywhere. Recently I upgraded the scope on an air rifle so I am going to talk about the process today.

My son has a Crossman 760. It is a straight tube (non-rifled), multi-pump, bb/pellet combo. It is one of those classic bb guns. I can remember my cousin’s had the same one in the 1980s. My son’s looks exactly the same but today’s model has a sleeker, more updated design. It has a 3/8 rail for a scope addition.

When I purchased my first air-rifle, it also came with a very in-expensive 4×15 scope. It truly is better than nothing but for not much money you can do much better. But, the better part of my motivation was to put a scope on my son’s rifle. I figured I would upgrade the scope on my rifle and move the old scope to the 760.

Since the 760 is not rifled, it is not likely to be the most accurate of the bunch. By my reasoning, a significant scope upgrade would only marginally be of value on that rifle. The sights aren’t that great either and my groups are more like 2 inch groups with the 760. Additionally, I am noticing my eyesight is starting to degrade rapidly. Even this scope would help.

I took the old scope off and sighted the new scope on my rifle. It is shooting pretty good and I think the $40 investment was worth the cost and effort. I put the old scope on the 760 and the picture above represents how things went. Despite the fact that things were pretty dialed in my first shot was six inches to the left. As I kept working at it, I kept walking right and up. The final three shots above the center is where I left it.

Keep in mind that changing the number of pumps or the projectile will also change how things work. In my case eight (out of ten) pumps with a BB (5gr, one of the lightest projectiles) at ten yards will likely yield lower impact for heavier projectiles or less pumps. Given the same conditions, farther distance will likely have some drop as well. I think it is about perfect.

One other thing about inexpensive scopes is the adjustments are kind of poor. It is marked as on click per 1/4″ at 100 yards. So, at ten yards 1/4″ is supposed to be 10 clicks. But when it makes no clicks, you are not totally sure what the adjustment actually is. They also tend to act erratically sometimes by having different results the next day because something finally sprang into place. Some people actually tap on their scopes after adjustment to try and help them set in place.

End Your Programming Routine: I am happy to report that things were still in place the next day and I think this is an improvement over open sights. I do have a picture here somewhere with some previous testing I did but I couldn’t find it. And there is a real improvement in my rifle with the new scope on it. Win-win, I say.

February 21, 2024 – Same Old, Same Old…

February 21, 2024 /

I have mentioned before that my wife likes to binge watch shows. What has been on for the last couple of months is ‘Deadliest Catch’. In fact, it is on right now as I am typing this out. I haven’t heard this much in the later seasons but they liked to use this term ‘grinding’.

Grinding means that to make their goal, they have to just keep working. They don’t look at the clock, they don’t take a break, they don’t worry about the conditions, they don’t really even try to take stock in what is currently the status of their catch is. They just keep grinding.

That is where I am at, grinding. I probably have too many things going on at one time. I got ahead with my culinary book club reading and so I started “The Boys In the Boat” that I got for Christmas and continuing to read “The Inferno”. I have been pecking at my duct project. The next run is going to be more complicated with wiring in the way. I am still running into Linux problems getting my software scanner done.

I tapped one of my kegs for super bowl to get promptly plugged. I got to thinking that my valve was bad and so I changed it. It promptly got plugged again. After doing this six more times, I gave up. It is hops plugging it up from my dry hopping. I am going to have to filter this keg before I use it. Another thing to do.

Lesson learned that all the loose hops did not settle to the bottom after lagering. I like the effect, finally a homebrew that has some teeth to it from the hops. So, I think I will keep experimenting with dry hopping. But, it also means that filtration is required before kegging. Since this is my last keg, I really should get to brewing my next one

I also upgraded a scope on one of my air rifles. The main reason I did that is my eyesight is starting to degrade. I noticed that the open sights on my son’s Crossman 760 were really limiting. So, I decided to move the chinsy 4×12, $10 scope off of one of my rifles to a whole honking $30 variety. Anything will be better than nothing on that old rifle. I have been plinking away at getting those things sighted in.

I have projects in the waiting, so I am not just letting off the gas, I am just not done with anything. I like my work on AltF4 to be reflective of completion, not just progress unless there is something to learn. That is what generated today’s title. I have been holding onto this one for almost a week now waiting for something to break and it just has not. Sometimes you have to grind.

I will remind you that the reason for the duct project was in preparation for a wine cellar build. I am actually beyond where I needed to be to work on that project but it has made so much difference that I might as well finish this off before starting something new. I am amassing parts for a CB radio installation in my pickup. I have wooden valence to build. I should be starting seeds right now. There is going to be another culinary book tomorrow and I still have all the current things going that I want to finish.

I sometimes have problems getting motivated in the winter. It is dark and cold and wet and I just don’t feel like I have the energy to do anything. Besides that, I have other reasons (not excuses) for me making slow progress that I am not ready to discuss. I will likely have more information soon but I want to be absolutely concrete about the details.

End Your Programming Routine: So, a cliffhanger for the ending. I don’t have a lot of insight on this post other than you don’t finish a big job without putting one foot in front of the other. In other words, you gotta grind. Some day I will look up and it will be done, until that keep working.

March 31, 2022 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

March 31, 2022 /

I finally finished sighting in my shotgun that I started in December. I had a free day last week and I figured with trap starting, I was going to have to postpone several more months. I thought that it was worth sharing the results today.

If you remember where things left off, I didn’t understand how to adjust this sight as a result, I shot all of my ammo and the sight stopped working. I think that I solved all of those things before I went to the range this time.

First, the battery was not dead. I didn’t change the battery because it was working when I got home. On my second shot, the sight stopped working. I tightened the cap and the sight came back on. Lesson learned that the cap has the potential to loosen due to recoil.

One thing to note is that a red dot sight is not a precision optic. The more you pay, the better it is, but this particular sight is rated at 5 Minutes of Angle (MOA). I have previously stated that the math is complicated but simplistically, 1 MOA is roughly an inch at 100 yards. In theory, the best this sight can do is a five inch group at 100 yards. That is what you call combat (or field) accuracy.

I was shooting at 50 yards, so my theoretical accuracy should be 2 1/2″ group. My last shots were in the second ring. Exclude the one bullseye, that was my second shot I think this shotgun is about as good as it is going to get.

Now, look at the two holes at the bottom of the target. I switched from the rifled barrel to the smooth barrel and was shooting rifled slugs. That is the graphic illustration of why scopes need to be sighted to the load you are going to shoot. I also tried the field barrel with some different chokes and none of those made the paper even.

I even tried a half assed buckshot patterning. The results of that were inconclusive as only a handful of pellets even hit the target (out of 10 shots). This was barrel and choke agnostic, meaning that they all did poorly. Part of my experiment design was to sight in with slugs and then validate the shot pattern after sight in. I am pretty confident about sabot slugs in the rifled barrel and rifled slugs in the 18″ barrel, but the rest of it I am not. I will have to spend some more time patterning at ranges closer to 50 yards as these tests were inconclusive. Let’s be honest, this is not the best tool for long distances, it was more of a matter of convenience that the target was setup.

End Your Programming Routine: Just like I was talking about yesterday, you can only analyze data when you change one variable at a time. Truthfully, I probably have some refining work to do but at least I feel like I am in the ballpark now. Someday, when this ammo shortage is over I will go back and spend more time to make it better.

September 17, 2020 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

September 17, 2020 /

Today, I wanted to show an example target and how to use it. The target in the picture below has one inch squares. It is meant to zero in your rifle at 100 yards.

So, that means that if you are at fifty yards, your adjustments need to double or if you are at 200 yards, your adjustments need to be halved. What in the heck am I talking about?

Many scopes have an adjustment that says 1 click = 1/4″ at 100 yards. So, if you are off one inch at fifty yards, the adjustment needs to be eight clicks because the error (or adjustment) projects at a multiple of your distance. You see, if you were and inch off and the target was one hundred yards, then the adjustment would match the scope’s metering. But, because the scenario is one half of the expected distance then the correction needs to double the stated value.

OK, what if your scope is in Mils or Radians. Well, mils are 1/1000 of a radian and a radian equals pi (or 3.14). To ignore all of the complicated math, one mil adjustment at 100 yards equals 3.6 inches. So, at 200 yards that would be 7.2 inches. That means, adjust your scope according to the proper instructions to get a good sight in. The math can be figured out, but I think it would be too much for this post. For mils, multiply by 1000. For instance, what if you were shooting in meters?

When sighting in your rifle, you need to consider other factors like parallax and bullet drop. For reference, I am ignoring those factors today. But for super high level vocabulary purposes, I will address the definitions. Parallax is the distance of the scope above the barrel. Bullet drop is is how fast the bullet drops in relation to distance.

That means when you sight in your rifle, the parallax means that your scope is pointed slightly down. When your scope intercepts the bullet’s point of travel, then it is sighted in for that distance. Drop is a function of where your scope is sighted in.

I am willing to go through the math in the future, but I think that for now (I hope) that I got the gist across.