Do Ballistic Calculators Compensate for Vertical Angle Adjustment?

[Mod Zero]

Hi All,

I was working on a problem this week and ran into this question: Do current ballistic calculators adjust for changes in ballistic curves due to the change in angle of the barrel relative to horizontal when suggesting MOA changes between distances?

Ex.) If I have a 100 yards zero, but would like to use the calculator to shoot at 300 yards, maybe it gives me a value like 6" in drop at 300 yards compared to 100 yards. If I change my dope (angularly) according to the trajectory of my 100 yards zero, I will now have a predicted 300 yard zero. However, this projected impact was predicted by rotating the curve of the bullet's ballistics with a 100-yard zero and a correlative theta_100yd between the barrel when it should instead be based on the ballistic curve of a 300-yard zero and a theta_300yd.

I tried testing a few calculators online to see if MOA outputs took account of the effect of a change in theta for different zero distances. If they did, then the difference in MOA between the 100 yards and 300 yards impact should be the same regardless of the zeroing distance. It seems this works for differences in ranges far from the zeroing distance, but does not hold true for values near the zeroing distance.

I'm sure in practice, this is a marginal, insignificant error.

Thanks. I hope I'm overthinking it.

 

[DocUSMCRetired]

Some do. Ours does. It even accounts for air pressure changes as you go up or down in elevation.

 

[damoncali]

Some of the simpler ones assume it to be zero. For relatively flat fire, the difference is insignificant. It does matter for high inclines, though. If you are shooting in those situations, you'll want a calculator that accounts for the angle of fire (or more precisely, the angle of the line of sight - the bullet's actual angle of departure is calculated by the calculator).