This is me shooting my Orion 62. Shooting a 600 grain slug. 150 yards at the steel target.

Enjoy!

Here's the link for some .../. [s434.photobucket.com]


And here's the embedded version as well ....

nice headshot. i think you have found your new niche..... we need some different colored contrails now. keep going, looks like a blast!

So how about some Red Trans oil Mixed with a little diesel?? maybe then it would look RED.

BTW, Nice Shooting..Was it a Standing, offhand shot.?!!!

Hi Rick,

Thanks, no. It was a bench shot.

Those aren't oil residue smoke trails. It's my understanding that we are seeing the slug shear condensation from the air, back lit by the setting sun. To my understanding, the slug's passage thru the air (around the slug) lowers the pressure as it passes. This causes condensation of the moisture in the atmosphere. Now - I don't claim to be very knowledgeble about Bernoulli's Principle. But I think it applies here.

This can be for the engineers in our midst to hash out. I made the gun, slugs, shot them, and taped the footage. I'm pretty sure it was the setting sun backlighting the phenomenon, which made it so visible to the camera.



Gary

Yup, like the contrails from airplane wingtips as they rip the air apart.
In any case...Very Cool looking

In this slow motion section .... listen to the sound track. After the plume disappears (no longer backlit) the slug still takes a while to travel to the target. You see the plume of the vaporized lead first (light is faster than sound) and THEN you hear what sounds like the hull popping on a WW2 submarine ... then you hear what sounds like a distant depth charge as the sound reaches you. Very, very neat stuff! Love it.

Gary

Capturing condensation off of a bullet is a rare occurance. IT LEAST I THINK IT IS...lol. But like mentioned above, i see it all the time when i'm at the AIRPORT. Planes taking off and landing do it all the time. I've seen bullets from PB's create what looks like shockwaves coming off bullets as it travels downrange but to see "SMOKE" is a hole nother story.

Really cool video and i'm afraid..............."I CANT TOP THAT".....lol

Thanx for posting and awesome video as seeing projectiles in flight is amongst my favorite TOP 2

Cool visual effects, thanks to Mother Nature instead of George Lucas this time.

(oh yeah, some Barnes guy may have had a minor contributing role too)

That's a great video. I think we got really lucky with the atmospheric conditions. The vapor trail gets "torn" out of the air but it is cool enough that the vapor doesn't instantly evaporate, it takes long enough to be seen and even move with the breeze.

Nice shot at 150 yards too!

Really nailed that fox at distance Gary, nice shooting! Do you think that puff when hitting the fox is all lead dust, or could it be condensation caused by the exploding lead, like the contrail?
Cheers
Neil

PS Great camera shooting too!

Hi Neil,

I never thought of that. I did think it odd that the cloud drifted off and stayed together like that. Maybe it did create the same effect to draw moisture from the air.

I took another little video ... but it wouldn't be real exciting. I scanned the area all around the steel fox, and there was only ever one or two tiny flakes of lead found. The slugs were completely blowing up - thus my idea of the lead particle plume. But you make more sense.

This Steel Fox is much heavier than any of our steel groundhogs. Those are free to react backwards and blunt some of the energy. Thus, we find some splats ... even though they are pretty well destroyed. This steel fox is heavy, and the slugs have time to completely disintegrate upon impact before it moves.

Gary

I thought this movie was at least as neat as the last. I have a few more too, when I get the chance.

Should have video taped the look on my father,s face when he watched the video. You could tell by the look that he was shocked at the power at that range.

I'm not surprised to see a cloud of vapor drifting off at the target face, I see that fairly frequently when I shoot centerfire rifles at steel targets. I'm guessing it would be mostly microscopic particles of re-condensed, oxidized lead vapor, mixed in with paint remnants. The kinetic energy of the slug hitting the steel is rapidly converted to heat energy, minus whatever residual kinetic energy remains in the fragments leaving the target face (which is actually quite a bit). If anything, the atmosphere immediately adjascent to the impact should be rapidly heated, not cooled, and would hold more water vapor in the form of invisible vapor. I don't think you'd be seeing any steam, unless the targets were soaking wet when the slugs hit.

Great video Gary. I like that contrail effect, very unusual. I wonder if the condensation was actually making a "snow" at that temp. Hence the prolonged effect that the camera witnessed?

I do have a tale of a "contrail". Taking off from Memphis via jet, child behind us said "Mom look at that". OK you've got to look too! Noticed a streaming contrail from the center of the wing. Stewardess said "Just condensation". We made an about face to airport where they put a gas cap in the arm diameter hole on top of the wing. Whewww..

hmmm...condensation right where the gas cap goes...yeah...right.... The fact that it smells like jet fuel is purely coincidental. Good thing they caught it, or it might have been a short trip as they scrambled to find out where they COULD go with half their fuel disappeared.

Funny aviation story follows...

I flew AS-350 A Star helicopters for several years, mostly for a hospital contract in New Mexico. They're a pretty good design (despite being French built), and have taken over a lot of the U.S. market while the American helicopter manufacturers concentrated on big-bucks military contracts and pretty much ignored the civilian side of things. One of the nice things about Astars is that they are fairly tolerant of imperfect pilot behavior by design, they've got good "human factors" engineering compared, say, to the German designed helicopters. The fact that French pilots are still legally allowed to drink moderate amounts of wine immediately before flying is no doubt completely coincidental.

One exception to that generally good design is their gas cap. It's actually an automotive gas cap, I think it comes straight from a Renault car design. It works fine, but it's very different from what you are used to seeing on U.S. helicopters. You need a little key to open it since they're round and completely smooth, there is no lever or handle like the gas caps you almost always see on U.S. aircraft. Once it's off the gas tank the key is trapped in the lock until you put the cap back on, you can't take it out. Since it's far too easy to lose that little key, virtually every Astar out there has a cord leashing it to the inside of a nearby cargo compartment. Once you take off the gas cap to refuel the aircraft it just hangs there by the key, unless you place it in the handy recessed step that just happens to be right there (the steps are used to climb up top for preflight inspections).

Why is this funny, and how does it relate to the story, you might ask? Well, pilots everywhere being human beings by default, we all eventually make mistakes. One mistake that EVERY pilot who has ever flown an Astar eventually makes is to forget to put that stupid gas cap back on after refueling. After all, the tank opening is not that large and is slighty recessed, and the gas cap is always tucked safely away in that recessed step. Out of sight, out of mind...right? Fortunately, the Astars fuel tank design means that you usually don't spill much (if any) fuel unless you're flying severely out of trim or making some pretty extreme manuevers. The same can't be said about the gas cap. It always rolls out of the step and either disappears forever or beats the heck out of the aircraft paint job in a small arc around the cargo door, depending of course on whether you've got a little string or a piece of sturdy cord attached to that key. You usually don't hear it going on, helicopters aren't exactly known for their silent flight characteristics, after all.

The funny part? Well...remember that little recessed step? The one where you leave the gas cap when you forget it? It's also the perfect place to put your little styrofoam 8oz. coffee cup when you get called out in the middle of the night or early in the morning and you've got to refuel before you go. It's like it's built just for that, a coffee cup holder perfectly placed for the guy refueling the helicopter, just the right size and location. The ironic part is that if you leave your coffee cup sitting there with a half inch of stale hospital coffee in it, IT WILL STILL BE THERE when you return! I don't know how it works, those little styrofoam cups weight about as much as a couple of paper clips and the coffee not much more. You'd think that it would blow away like yesterdays dream once you're up to cruising speed, after all, the gas cap ALWAYS will. Go figure....

I don't even want to think about what my call sign would be if I had left the fuel cap off but saved my coffee!

Java Man isn't just for paleoanthropologists anymore...

I can see the perfect opportunity for a very costly multi year study right there! NO ... not on why the gas cap isnt hinged. NOT on why the coffee cup stays put. The REAL focal points are 1) what kind of string gives the longest service between key and loose gas cap. 2) what sort of paint additive would better resist the flailing gas cap in flight!
WHAT AN OPPORTUNITY for study. And then we could GIVE the results of the study to the French, and allow the Chineese access via top secret data storage!!!



Gary

Well, to be fair you can buy an aftermarket U.S. style gas cap that is hinged directly to the opening, but where's the fun in that? Of course since we're talking about FAA certified parts for a helicopter, the new setup that really SHOULD run about fifty bucks costs something like three or four hundred dollars. You can buy quite a few of the original style gas caps for that, even at the outrageous factory parts prices.

The string is still pretty cheap, though.

that is head shot

head shot .. great shott... wowwwww