effects of mirage?

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stepnmud
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effects of mirage?

Post by stepnmud »

I did a search on the word "mirage" and gained some info., mirages are wind currents that can be seen at a distance with or with out a scope, correct? So when spotting for someone and you see a mirage going left to right, you would tell the shooter to hold left or adjust so many minutes to the left, along with the flags. Is it yer best guess or a better estimate of wind speed. The mirages that can be seen by the spotter are reflecting off the target rail or targets, would seem to be diff. sometimes from where the shooter is actually shooting from. Just asking for advice on these mirages and how to judge them.
Gunny
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Post by Gunny »

Stepnmud,

You are on to something keep reading and for sure keep spoting experiance is and will be the best teacher.

Mirage is a tool of spoting just like a wind flag or wind guage or any another aid that we can find. Mirage CAN BE very important and at some matches and under some conditions it can be THE MOST importnt aid out there. But you will have to learn to read the Mirage, it will tell you the story if you can just learn the language. In time as your experiance level increases you will be able to tell a 2 mph mirage from a 5 mph mirage you will learn how heartbreaking shooting into a boil can be. All of the indicators of mirage are important, it will tell what the conditions are, and even how to shoot a condition. how to learn that some times you need to wait for that condition before breaking the shot. But really the only way to really learn about how important and how to shoot or coach your shooter while you are spoting is on the job training. You have to spot and spot a lot, just like shooting it's trigger time. Spoting is the same, it is time behind the scope. This sport that we have chosen is in all aspects a "TEAM SPORT" It's shooter and spoter working together to attain those scores. YOU OWE IT to your shooter to be the best damn spoter there is. By asking your question about Mirage you have taken a giant step in the right direction. Good Luck

Gunny
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Trigger Dr
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Post by Trigger Dr »

Being a BPCS hunter more than a target shooter, I have never spotted or had a spotter for shooting. In a recent conversation around the camp fire last Sat. eve, the question of spotting came up and one of the comments was "AFTER YOU GET SETTLED IN AND ON TARGET WITH THE SPOTTING SCOPE, BACK OFF THE EYE PIECE SO THAT THINGS ARE A LITTLY FUZZY, THIS WILL ENABLE YOU TO SEE THE BULLET COMING IN TO THE TARGET"
Is there anything to this? It don't sound right to me, but then again I'm a little on the dumb side about a lot of things.
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Kelley O.Roos
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Post by Kelley O.Roos »

Trigger Dr:

No it dosen't sound right, except it is. Play with the focus knob and you see the wigglie lines of the mirage. Turn the focus counter clockwise 1/16th. turn, some will go 1/8th or so, the scope will just be out of focus and the mirage will be seen. On cloudy days the mirage is almost none existent. When the mirage is in a boil, as the Gunny said, that means the wigglie lines are going straight up and this condition can occur when a tail or head wind is present. If the mirage is running say left to right and then goes into a boil thats telling you of a soon to be change or the change has already taken place and hopefully the spotter has stopped his shooter from taking a shot in the middle of a change. Like Gunny said it experiance. I still have a hard time.


Kelley O. 8)
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RMulhern
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Mirage

Post by RMulhern »

Trigger Dr

Mirage can be seen and read up to about 12-14 MPH. Above this wind speed the mirage lines flatten out and are useless! Learning to estimate and use the range flags are your only recourse when this takes place. Once upon a time when range flags were made from 100% cotton.....a standard rule of thumb was to take the angle of the flag in relation to the flag mast.....divide by 4 and that was close to wind speed. Now that most of these flags are NOT made from cotton but rayon or something else similar.....using this formula is a "shot in the dark"! On most any day of ordinary conditions, when shooting a bullet IN EXCESS of 1800 fps it is possible to see the "trace" of the bullet going downrange. I have NEVER been able to pick this up shooting BPCR bullets at 1100-1400 fps...and I know what/where to look. Experienced shooters LEARN.....to eyeball the flags even though it is possible to ascertain and see good mirage flow because....if the flag drops or slows....toward the upwind side....this is indicative of a coming change which will, if continued show up as a "boil" at the face of the target! It will either eventually pick back up....or, as I have seen conditions do many times.......change 180 degrees!

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BuckeyeShooter
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Post by BuckeyeShooter »

Just read a couple of Paul Matthews books and in Black Powder Pig Lead and Steel Silhouettes chapter five he does an excellent job explaining mirage in a way that is easy to grasp. If you don't have his books you need to get them. They are excellent reads with a lot of good no nonsense information.
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MBW
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Post by MBW »

I fully agree with BuckeyeShooter that Paul Matthews has great info in his books. I started reading him years ago and now have 8 of his titles. In the Black Powder Pig lead book he indeed covers mirage quite well and the visual weirdness they observed through the transit was quite surprising. Very well worth the read and all of his books will be used many times as a reference. In our sport we need all the help we can get.
And thanks to Matthews and MLV we have it.
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