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arms. These two factors work against each other for Federal's setup, but may not entirely offset each other. The difference between these calculated trajectories and those obtained with your rifle will, however, be fairly small.
constant, as most of the ranges are situated in canyons and hills that bend and distort what might otherwise be steady on-shore winds. A light 10 mph breeze doesn't feel like much, but best groups hovered near the half inch mark at 50 yards. No matter what ammunition or how good the trigger pull and barrel, that half inch barrier seemed unbreakable. Could such a light wind really make that much difference? It was time to break out Jim Ristow's Gun Controller (V2.2.8) once again to take a look at wind drift for Federal's American Eagle discount load, as well as the premium UltraMatch subsonic cartridge. Here's what I found out. Starting with the Federal economy load and a 10 mph wind crossing from the right, Table 1 shows that the deflection at 50 yards would be close to an inch. The calculation assumes that the wind is steady for the entire 50 yards, which owing to the gusty nature of local breezes is somewhat optimistic. But if the wind speed varied between zero and five mph, drift would spread between zero and one inch. The best group size under such conditions, if no allowance for wind was made, would be one inch, and would depend on the rifle having zero deviations, and the rifleman making every shot perfectly. Figure 1 shows a plot. Note that at 100 yards, deflection increases to more than 5 inches!
actual deflection may differ from the calculations. In this case, deflection at 50 yards in the same 10 mph cross wind drops by .05" for the subsonic round, a difference hardly worth mentioning. Figure 2 shows the wind drift plot for the subsonic loading.
from the target) wind? Again, Gun Controller can help find some answers. Table 1 shows that the bullet will hit .12" high at 50 yards. Looking back to the plots shot in still air, the impact point would be .35" high at 50 yards. That's a change of almost 1/4"! No wonder those BR50 shooters use so many wind flags!
Table 1 shows that the bullet starts off .16" to the left of the line of sight, just as you would expect if the scope was tipped to the right. The bullet crosses the line of sight at about 30 yards, and by the time it arrives at 50 yards, its 1/4" right of the aiming point.
Table 1. Trajectory of a typical 22LR subsonic cartridge showing the effect of scope cant.
Figure 1 shows the plot of the deflection data from Table 1.
Figure 1. Trajectory plot for 22LR subsonic load showing the effect of scope cant.