Thank you Rex for the great information on God, Guns, and Guitars! Quick question... I found myself calculating a firing solution the other day in which I had overhead cover to deal with/avoid. A bit of an odd shot. Think of power lines. :) After a lot of searching, I could not find a calculator that produces this number. It looks as if many old school hunters used to look at mid range height, but this seems to be a rough number only viable at shorter ranges. Others state that you look at drop at 2/3 of the range. The only resource I found that definitively listed maximum ordinate for some specific loads is: www.hpbt.org/articles/308.doc I don't see anything in JBM. I don't remember you going through this in Sniper 101. Am I missing something? Thanks.
merwin907
Jan 13
Discussion
Oh lord why didn't I listen! Why did the Steiner have to be out of stock everywhere I looked! I ended up getting a 5-20x50mm Razor HD for $1899.99, what a great deal. Put in on my beautiful newly rebuilt savage 110. XLR chassis, MPA single piece rings, Atlas BT-35 bipod, a smoking hot 29 inch stainless heavy palma barrel, and a camo Cerakote on the whole thing. I get it all together and I am ready to shoot laser beams with this thing. Nope, POI shifts as much as 10 MOA JUST SITTING IN THE CASE. I cant get it zeroed, cant index a FS, cant do anything because of a $1900 POS. I saved my pennies for so long to have a rifle that would make heads turn. I was starting to really reach out there with the range- pushing 1200, 1300 yards and making first round hits- so I wanted to treat myself to something nice after practicing twice a week for almost two years straight. I had my eye on the Steiner T5XI, and they were on sale for like 1300 bucks, but everyone else and their sister saw it too and bought them up quick. I settled... I am sending the scope to vortex today, hopefully I will get one back that works. I was in denial- Couldn't believe the stories were true. I tried everything to correct the problem. Bedded the action into the chassis, unmounted and remounted the optic like ten times. messed with torque and turret caps. Its a crying shame that at 400 yards, I can't hit the target because the scope put my projectile three feet to the right. If they send me a new scope as some attempt to rectify the issue, I am going to the local fudd forums and I am going to sell it for $1500 brand new in the box, and I am going to put my SWFA back on until I can afford something from IOR. at least with SWFA I know damn well I will make a hit whether its rain or shine- I have three of them and they are all reliable. like, go-to-war level reliable. Its sad that a guy can start really feeling confident about LR, and then have a piece of equipment bring him down. I took this scope to my first competitive shoot ever in my life and I didn't hit a single target- put me in last place... I felt like a moron lugging this 28 pound beast of a rifle around like I was some kind of badass and then have my equipment fail on me- totally making me look like an idiot. further more, half of the guys out there had vortex scopes that somehow worked. makes me sick. I am glad you all are here to listen to my angst. sure, I could afford to be a little more humble about the whole thing- and I would be if this wasn't a $1900 mistake. Had Athlon been known to me before hand, I would have went with that.
Racesmith,
I too have been searching for info on figuring max ordinate, so maybe Kacie will put a bug in Rex's ear for us! I'm fairly sure Rex briefly mentions it a couple of times in the series, but I can't recall where. Possibly in Advanced External Ballistics and/or the tutorial on spotting.
If I recall correctly, he said something like max ordinate would be about 60% of the distance to the target. Being able to know what that height above the ground is would be nice, especially since the 500 meter range where I shoot has been closed for nearly a year; stemming from allegations of bullets going over the back stop and hitting a barn a mile away!
I am a bit disappointed to not have received an answer in response, but I did figure out the solution. I feel a bit stupid for not figuring it out sooner. In your ballistics calculator, simply set the zero range at the target range. Look for the largest drop and that is the maximum ordinate at that range.
Racesmith,
Excellent solution! Just went to JBM's website and checked the results with the info from your earlier post. Didn't adjust all of the environmentals, but the answer was still darned close! Right around 60% of target range.
This may (or may not) help in getting our 500m range reopened.
Thanks for your post!
There is not much info out there on this topic. It would be nice to have a simple field solution to have without needing a ballistics calculator.
#Geoff Glover - At a local range I use they have an overhead backstop about 1/2 way down the range to the 200 yard line to catch those shots that are way too high. Something your range might want to consider.
Bill,
Perhaps that's in the works. Most of our board of directors got the boot in the last election, but that's a "whole 'nother kettle of fish"!