M-14 wind doping

[flintlocke]

Can anyone help me with a crude rule of thumb 'formula' for doping wind as taught by the Army in the late '60's? I can't remember whether it was in basic training or ROTC, (I went thru both), but the gist was, with your m-14 sight on 'battlesight zero'...to calculate for full value wind correction, you grabbed a handful of dirt, grass, or leaves and released them at shoulder height, 90 deg from line of fire, pointed your extended arm at their approximate landing spot. Then, you estimated the angle formed from vertical to your arm, here's where it gets real shaky, divided by ten? And used the result to take your clicks into the wind. Example, wind is from right to left, you release the debris at shoulder height, it blows and lands at roughly 30 deg to your left, divide by ten gets you three...put 3 clicks right windage and you're supposed to be in the ballpark. Does anyone remember this stuff? Or care? We all promptly forgot it and Kentuckied the wind. I'm thinkin' with slower cast bullets a guy could interpolate something useful...since I personally feel something of the historical rifle experience is lost with anemometers and mini computers. Thanks, flintlocke

[M-Tecs]

http://www.6mmbr.com/windreading.html

http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/...ange-shooting/

http://www.rifleshootermag.com/shoot...g_wind_values/

http://www.millettsights.com/resourc...g-in-the-wind/

http://www.accuracy-tech.com/how-to-...imate-guide-3/

http://www.sniperflashcards.com/windreading.php

http://artoftherifle.com/shooting-in...-the-wind.html

[M-Tecs]

[M-Tecs]

[country gent]

There are wind charts in most of the score books, though score books for 308 7.62X51 may be getting harder to find with 223 taking over like it has. These may be able to be "adjusted to your cast bullet loads also. With some shooting under known wind conditions it may show that your loads wind is compared to the chart

[flintlocke]

I thank you for your reply and referenced data. Yes wind can be doped pretty accurately with the tools that the links suggest. Flags, wind meters, ballistics tables, smart phones are all gadgetry. Good stuff, technology. But what I am after is the tools that a man, with a rifle, with some ammo, can use find a crude starting point for wind dope. The Army of the 60's had such a tool....and I was just asking if anyone remembered that. There is some old infantryman out there that used it or taught the class.

[M-Tecs]

A spotting scope and reading the mirage until it gets up to 11 mph. After that it becomes more of a wag based on:

http://www.accuracy-tech.com/how-to-...imate-guide-3/
0mph – Smoke rises straight up, no movement of grass
1mph-3mph – Smoke moves in direction of wind, slight movement of grass
4mph-7mph – Wind felt lightly on the face *Very Accurate*
8mph-12mph – Leaves turn, twigs and treetops will be in motion
13mph-18mph – Loose paper, dust, and paper will blow around, small tree branches will move
19mph-25mph – Large tree branches move, entire trees will sway if small
25mph-30mph – Large branches will be in constant motion and walking against the wind becomes difficult
There is another way to estimate wind speed called the Flag Method. This one is straight out of the US Military Field Manuals and is fairly simple. You look at any flag, cloth, etc. that is flapping in the wind. Estimate the angle of the flag in relation to the flag pole and then divide that number by four for a fairly accurate estimate of the wind speed where the flag is located.

Straight out of US Military field manuals, some of the best and simplest methods can be found with a little reading material to reference

https://www.targettamers.com/guides/...potting-scope/

http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/...with-diagrams/

https://www.americanhunter.org/artic...te-wind-speed/

http://southtexasshooting.org/multim...xt/mirage.html

[Larry Gibson]

flintlocke

Being and old Soldier who was weaned on the M14 back in the '60s it goes like this;

First is to estimate the velocity of the wind in mph. a piece of paper (news print wadded loosely), grass or some other light material is held shoulder high at the shoulder with the other shoulder into the wind and dropped. Point to where it lands and the angle formed between your body and the arm is then divided by 4 to get the mph of the wind. If the angle is 30 degrees for example dividing that by 4 gives us 7 2/7th mph.

Next take the range in hundreds of yards/meters (300 yards would be a 3) and multiply by the wind velocity in mph. Divide that answer by the constant "10" and you get the number of 1/2 moa clicks to adjust the M14 windage knob. Round to the nearest whole number up or down thus our 7 and 2/7ths mph is 7 mph. If shooting at 500 yards multiply 5 times 7 and divide by 10 which gives us 3.5. Since you can't adjust a .5 of a click the "normal adjustment would be 3 clicks of wind.

That's it.

However, keep in mind all the above mentioned references by big time shooters have rifles and sights they can "chase the spotter with" adjusting for wind. With an M14 or rack grade M1A you do not. What we have to remember is moving the elevation or windage does not move the strike of the bullet. It moves the center of the cone of fire. I learned from older M14 and M1 match shooters that if your cone of fire is not moa (most match M14/M1s back then were closer to 2 moa rifles) are really to compute a wind change according to this method or from charts and then move the windage 1/2 of that. If you move the windage full value according to the charts you're almost certain to blow the next shot out the other side. Done it too many times myself before I learned to listen to them. Thus with the above adjustment I would only adjust the windage 2 clicks.

Hold hard, shoot straight......

[flintlocke]

Thank you, thank you! That is it Larry. Corollary to Tesla, "Deficient MEMORY is another form of ignorance".