Thread: NZHS Hunter Challenge and Long Range Day - 7/8 Sept; Sparrowhawk

Originally Posted by Pommy

I think I said at one point (whilst we were discussing scopes and the uselessness of plain duplex reticles in wind) that "I like this scope and how easy it is to precisely dial for wind. But that doesn't stop me making a bad wind call".

Shooting at Sparrowhawk on a windy day is a pretty eye-opening experience. On the plus side I'm happy that one of my misses was simply down to me having not learned to use AB properly, and a couple of them were only very narrow on the longer ranged targets. 5/10 for me including the bastard offhand shot.

We only had what, 7 or 8 people in our squad? The wind was stiff and changing constantly, we had a variety of cartridges, and not knowing (or caring) what the person before you had dialled/held correctly or incorrectly, it meant that there wasn't really any point trying to deduce the actual conditions based on other people's results before it was your turn anyway.

Listening to others wind corrections is pointless if they aren't any good in that position. If they miss due to a poor setup with their gear, their correct wind call is likely to not be the reason for the miss anyway.

We had a few discussions on reticles too, and a duplex isn't ideal in my opinion and experience when there are switching winds. Dialing for wind creates some challenges too when the wind increases, decreases and/or switches direction (unless you understand bracketing and the size of the duplex)

Duplex can be used if you understand the size of the markings. For example, the VX5 3-15 (a couple in our squad, mix wind-plex and duplex) - at 15x, the thick post is 0.6MOA think, think the line is 0.2MOA, the length of the thin line is 18.9MOA (or 9.45 from centre to start of the taper). Can adjust the magnification to give a range of other values too. This all comes down to being familiar with your gear, not just a ballistics app. Most of the wind I use was between 0 and 2MOA, is a Duplex would work if knowing the thickness of the thick post was 0.6MOA (3 time this is close enough to 2MOA)