“Thats due to (getting a little technical here) the environmental factors of temperature and barometric pressure.”
Utter and complete nonsense.
Bullets “drop like a rainbow” do to lost velocity, which the above factors have minuscule affect on.
The author doesn’t know what he is talking about.
In other words, about average for 'Am Shooting Journal'.
Bullets “drop like a rainbow” do to lost velocity, which the above factors have minuscule affect on.
The author doesn’t know what he is talking about.
That's for sure. It is simple distance equals 1/2 acceleration times time squared. How ever much a bullet drops in one second it will fall 4 times that much in 2 seconds. Add to that the fact that it is slowing down so it is covering less distance in that second second.
Well, er, sort of...
Bullets spin well, but they loose velocity rather quickly, even real slippery Very Low Drag types. A 338 250 grain bullet is rather light for the task they were performing, kind of like using a 168 BTHP in a 308 and trying to get past 1000 yds.
In a nutshell, what happens is as the bullet slows, the center of pressure ( air pressure created by the bullet moving forward) begins to move forward and the change affects the bullets “yaw of repose” or kind of like angle of attack for an airplane wing. Then the bullet begins to wobble more and more until at a certain velocity for those atmospheric conditions ( air density-combined air pressure, temp and relative humidity). The wobble becomes more and more detrimental to continued forward motion and accuracy until the spin stabilizing effect is overcome and the bullet then tumbles and literally falls to the ground, if you will. Like a wing in a stall condition...
This happens with almost all bullet deigns at some point in free trajectory.
Some bullets tolerate the velocity decay better than others, and atmospheric conditions indeed are part of the equation.
Most bullets never make in free trajectory to those extreme ranges, they hit something first.
The 338 L would do better if a 300 or even heavier/longer/more ballistically efficient bullet were used.
This tendency occurs in what is called the transonic zone- a super sonic bullet slowing into the 1.3 to .8 Mach range (see, that is determined by atmospherics) has to stay stable through this “barrier” IOT to continue on to greater range accurately, while raveling at sub sonic velocity thereafter.
So, yes indeed, atmospherics and bullet deign can actually cause a super sonic bullet to “fall” out of the sky....
If they shot a 300 grain VLD, the ranges would probably be seen as a few hundred yards longer before they too encountered this phenomenon.
All bullets “drop” the same. Time of flight to the target is the difference. There are several factors that affect this of course.
Accuracy and velocity are independent and not necessarily related.
I live in an area that is full of hunters. And a bunch of them actually think a bullet “rises” when it leaves the barrel. Bullet starts “dropping” the minute it leaves the barrel. Of course you know this. Just expanding a little.
Trajectory would be the more correct term(s)?
Bullets drop like a rainbow because of time of flight. Provided they fly far enough, all bullets eventually drop like a rainbow REGARDLESS OF VELOCITY because acceleration due to gravity increases with the square of the time of flight.
g = G*M/R^2