Thread: Field Ranges in NZ - Reduced Danger Area Example

Field Ranges in NZ - Reduced Danger Area Example

The intent of this post is to demonstrate there is a Reduced Danger Area system that can be used under the NZ Firearms Safety Authority range certification regime. There are some significant limitations to its use at the moment and we are continuing to work on that in the background. And this system is fairly specific, at the moment, to field ranges (i.e. not permanently established ranges).

I also have to clarify I am going to leave out a whole bunch of information and application criteria from this post.


Photo 1
Photo 1 is taken on a GPRE range looking downrange at a bunch of indicative target locations on the hills. There are a few things of note here - primarily all the targets and their applicable "Cones of Fire" are below the hill crest, also the vast majority of the targets are on a slope.



Photo 2
Photo 2 is the aerial photo of the same range with the same indicative target arrangement. I have overlaid the NZ Firearms Safety Authority T6 ADAT template here as well. This T6 template is suitable for calibres up to 8mm. The resulting Range Danger Area is roughly 3km in depth. For clarity I will call this a Tier 1 system.



Photo 3
Photo 3 is the same aerial photo and target layout. This time I have overlaid the applicable FSNZ Reduced Danger Area Tier 2 Template - this template is suitable for targets out to 500m and calibres "up to 8mm". You can see the resulting range danger area is a lot smaller than the FSA one.



Photo 4
Same aerial photo with the shoot positions and indicative target locations overlaid. This time I have overlaid the range danger area when the FSNZ reduced danger area Tier 3 criteria is applied. I have to clarify here that it takes a considerably amount of work and on the ground measurement to be able to make the leap from applying the Tier 2 template in the previous photo to being able to apply the Tier 3 reduced danger area criteria. Not every location needs this Tier 3 step and it isn't suitable for every location either.




Coming out of this is the big question why is the FSNZ RDA template so much smaller than the FSA one? Or why is the FSA T6 template so large.

To be very clear the FSA T6 ADAT template shown here is not "wrong" - it is simply based upon some simple assumptions. One of those assumptions is that the projectile is fired on a set angle and the template reflects where that projectile would come back down to a flat plane i.e. the template reflects how far a projectile could travel based upon being fired at set angle "X".

The FSNZ RDA template makes a massive assumption - it assumes the fired projectile impacts the ground at or immediately around the target location. After that it considers a "simplistic / conservative" ricochet template.
You can see why the indicative target locations are all on slopes and also why we have the rule where you can only close the bolt with the rifle shouldered and pointed at the target. These are only two of the actions we take to ensure we keep projectiles within the RDA.

I won't go into the Tier 3 criteria here because this post is already far too long.

Again, the intent of this post is to demonstrate there is a reduced range danger area templating system out there for use with field ranges in NZ. This system is set up for rifle calibers from 22LR all the way up to .50BMG.

Lastly, this system is not mine - it was created by a number of the field range match directors in NZ. And, as above, there is still some further development works going on in the background.