reading wind when shooting between crops

[pitdog85]

hey guys this might be a bit of a long shot but wondering if anyone out there is shooting down a long narrow corridor like me with crops on either side. The width of the "road" between crops would be not much more than 20-25ft the crops are currently about 8ft high and very dense but get as high as 10ft fully grown. I'm shooting out to 600m in this long "tunnel". I have some tape tied to a post down at the target, I have a post with tape at my shooting position as well as my kestrel. I'm finding It very hard to find which was the wind is coming from as it never seems to come from a consistent angle. The tape on my posts is always all over the place and there is no way I can confidently say this wind is coming from 3 o'clock for example its just too inconsistent and seems to swirl around.

Wind seems to be much more consistent out in an open field where the tape holds a consistent angle much better but not so in this corridor. Any ideas that might help??

 

[Rudy Gonsior]

The problem is this "corridor" you created with cutting though the crops is going to cause wind eddies and your tape is going to blow inconsistently about because the wind inside the corridor is inconsistently blowing about. A better mental picture would be to imagine a flat shallow stream bed, the water gently flowing along without much disturbance or drag. However if you were to dig a narrow trench across the stream bed the water is going to roll and eddy with the abrupt change in pressure/resistance. Now air is obviously not quite as dense as water but the two behave similarly enough so you might grasp a visualization of whats happening down in your corridor.

This phenomenon is actually pretty common at NRA ranges with high berms or tree lines right next to the range, its not uncommon to find that even on windy days the wind corrections for shooters positioned right along the berm or tree line will be little to no wind corrections, while shooters a little farther out will get caught in some switchy swirls produced by the eddies and shooters out in the middle of the range will have nice consistent full value winds. Given that your width is only 20-25 ft wide, whats probably happening is you've created a situation which is unlikely to produce any consistent winds unless the vector is from the 12ish or 6ish o'clock. You could try opening up to a wider width if thats a possibility. I'd say maybe double the width of the corridor for starters but also recognize that since the crops are growing taller it very well may not be enough room to let the wind roll it's self out.

v/r Rudy

 

[pitdog85]

hi thanks mate I think you are spot on with whats happening and the description you give with the creek makes it very clear, unfortunately I cannot alter the road between the crops. Looks like I will just have to roll with what I have and record as much as I can and see how it changes day to day as I shoot here fairly often.

 

[Gray Squirrel]

Sounds like a perfect condition to shoot in to see what happens and maybe gather some valuable data.