The Mystery of missing bullets
This September we tested new shooting equipment and techniques to be properly prepared for next season. And above all we enjoyed it...
One long weekend we went to three Slovak competitions and we made a nice trip out of it.
F-class 1000m where it was beautiful again. We did not have the best results this time. It was a precursor to future technical difficulties.
We were really did enjoy it... On the Long Range we used our 6.5 Creedmoor rifles in the Standard category - shooting at a distance from 500m to 1000m. Veronica was playing with a new scope.
While I was testing different bipods with my proven rifle and the new MDT ESS Carbon chassis. This chassis will be part of the new rifle for the next season so it's time to start testing it.
Unfortunately we found a problem with our new 7mm Practical rifle that I shot in the Magnum category (500m to 1400m). Even on the previous F-class I missed several hits in the target. I thought I made a mistake and did not pay attention. But when shooting steel targets it was repeated and even worse.
On the video is a shooting situation at 1320m where the first two shots were hits. But the other two hits we just did not see at all. Not even missing the target. Which is normal to see. Later as part of the training we focused on it and found the bullets are "lost" during the flight at a distance of about 400m... A mystery... Finally we found out what the problem is. The bullets are "overstabilized" to have better ballistics in the "transonic range" (the speed of the projectile is gradually decreasing. The transonic range is the area of velocity that approaches the velocity of the sound and drops below it which causes a significant destabilization. An overstabilized bullet works a little better).
But we found that the bullet already had too much rotation and from time to time it simply breaks into pieces in the air thanks to too much centrifugal forces... It is funny to see how it flies and then suddenly "puff"... and it's gone. And of course this is a big problem. The solution is to make another ammo with different bullets. And that means to do the whole testing again.
It is a lesson learned in the field of ELR (Extreme Long Range). But it's good that we've already figured it out - we have time for further testing...
