Friday, November 26, 2010

Shotgun Slugs and 22LR Ballistics

Do ballistics programs work with 22LR and Shotgun slugs at Mach 1 (about 1110fps)?

From 0 - 100 yards you are about Mach 1.2 - 0.9 with a 12ga slug. This is a sensitive region (see graph) and most computer programs have very few data points in that range, so they won't work well.
McCoy's book:


Most programs store this graph as a rough approximation. So the steep wiggly part isn't represented well.
Over Mach 1.4 is pretty much a straight line, so the programs are accurate there.


Here is the "GNU Exterior Ballistics Computer" source for G7:
case G7:
if (vp> 4200 ) { A = 1.29081656775919e-09; M = 3.24121295355962; }
else if (vp> 3000 ) { A = 0.0171422231434847 ; M = 1.27907168025204; }
else if (vp> 1470 ) { A = 2.33355948302505e-03; M = 1.52693913274526; }
else if (vp> 1260 ) { A = 7.97592111627665e-04; M = 1.67688974440324; }
else if (vp> 1110 ) { A = 5.71086414289273e-12; M = 4.3212826264889 ; }
else if (vp> 960 ) { A = 3.02865108244904e-17; M = 5.99074203776707; }
else if (vp> 670 ) { A = 7.52285155782535e-06; M = 2.1738019851075 ; }
else if (vp> 540 ) { A = 1.31766281225189e-05; M = 2.08774690257991; }
else if (vp> 0 ) { A = 1.34504843776525e-05; M = 2.08702306738884; }
break;

You have 3 points in the jiggly range around 1110fps, which isn't what you would like. 3 points between 1260 and 4200 is OKish with the straight line.

22LR has the same problem, not enough data for the curve at those velocities.

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