Pat throwing right bird in doubles w/ right cant?

I have seen this before... The right bird is tilted down to he right on the right bird.
Left comes out OK.

 

Is that why no one is shooting good scores in doubles today?

I do agree with Hap that the present rule, restricting the top speed of doubles to 40 MPH, does not allow setters to set a bird to a faster speed which would would be better for the sport in that it would allow the majority of our doubles participants to, who are in B and C, to shoot a horizontal rather than falling bird, which no one can shoot well.

As to the tilt, I will check some recent videos of right and left birds and see if you are right about the tilt. I don't know how that will come out, but I will post the pictures here for everyone to decide for him- or herself. Give me a day or two to get the analysis done, OK? I will, I promise, post the pictures, count on it. In the meantime, I hope others here will post their guesses about the tilt or lack of tilt they will document.

Neil

 

Make sure the trap is level first!

 

I think you are right about the speed..we put 42 on the plate but when I checked it from the 16 it would register 37.8 or so....I had seen it before but didn't think about speed especially on a still day.
Monty

 

If you think about it on a still day there is no lift like it is no a north wind day in the spring or even a slight south wind.I personally think high angle birds are harder to hit than the other alternative faster.I kind of agree with Neil... that you set them for the day as best you can....matching speed and angle gauge on the traps which he might not agree to.
Monty

 

Well, Ollie, it's too late now. All I can assure you is that it looked level.

But it was in fact the question of "level" that drew me to respond to Romie's thread and look hard at the video data I've never looked at in this way before. The great Canadian shotgun writer John Brindle wrote in American Rifleman, a generation ago, an article about the flight of clay targets. It had several surprising points that made me take notice, though, unfortunately, not enough notice to save the article. Thus, what follows is my memory of the piece which time may have jumbled some. If some of this is wrong it's my fault, but you have been warned.

The first thing I could not immediately understand was that in the initial phase of its flight, the targets is not "tipped up" from an aerodynamic point of view, that is, the angle of attack of the bird is zero, not the 20 degrees or so that seems obvious to (unthinking) observers like me.

A second point was that the bird should be tipped when launched. Look at the arm of a WW handset! It has a small, but visible "twist" that launches a "tilted" bird. The spin of the bird straightens it out. (It must not be too big a deal, but I was tempted to test a Pat Trap with whatever tilt John recommended before we installed the traps at Sparta - would "tilted" tables have been better? But in the end I decided that even if it were better, I was unwilling to take the heat that such a radical affront to "common sense" would engender. )

It's been a long time so my recall is spotty, but as I remember he also said that it possible to spin the target too fast, that over-rotation lead to instability in flight, just the opposite of what I would have expected.

The videos are on another machine so I don't know what they say. But they do cover two interesting facets of target flight.

1. At a suggestion by jhunts, I tested the effect of sanding the arm of a veteran Pat trap with not only the 320 grit paper I'd already tested, but also the more aggressive 150 grit to see if that had a different effect than the 320.

2. Also at the suggestion of jhunts, I compared the spin of right and left birds in a doubles situation.

It's summer and I am on the road mostly, but I'll get a least to the stills soon; the the full videos for home analysis will have to wait, probably at least until after the Iowa State Shoot.

Yours in Sport,

N1H1

 

You'll be surprised how often the mounting pedestals are not level giving a trap a slight tilt. Right targets will curl in that situation!

 

John Brindle's statement leaves me wondering how he came to such a conclusion for a faster rotation on a clay target? How he attained the extra RPMs leading him to conclude they would curve.

I would think; it wasn't the RPMs causing that but extra speed at the launch to get the higher rotation speed caused the clay to curve a little more. The amount of curve/speed drift may vary under different air conditions such as humidity or dryer air. I say this after shooting (single targets) clays set at higher speeds at different clubs across the country. This may vary day in and day out also?

At my home club, Tucson T&S, I've asked to see the velocity read at the 16 yard line when the targets for doubles were set directly off the machine at 39 mph. With the same radar gun, it read an average of 37 mph when shot from the 16 yard line with a level radar gun? That's how after observing and shooting targets set accordingly, 39 0r 40 mph directly taken off the throwing arm isn't what's best for the shooters or our sport. On a nice day, targets may be set to 39 or 40 from the 16 yard line and are much better targets for the shooters and our sport. Head or tail winds call for doubles shooting common sense adjustments be made which low speed limit rules prevents. Clubs will adjust up or down in elevation only, that's a mistake for our shooters and our sport. This doubles speed rule should be amended ASAP, sooner would be much better for the sport.

Speak with your delegates and help our sport.

HAP

 

Hap, from the rules I wrote, still in the book and (mostly) unchanged:

"The correct speed for the right target of a doubles pair must be a minimum of 39 MPH, maximum of 40 MPH. When a radar gun is used from inside the house, the correct speed for a singles or handicap target must be a minimum of 44 MPH, maximum of 45 MPH. The correct speed for the right target of a doubles pair must be a minimum of 41 MPH, maximum of 42 MPH. "

I think that's perfectly clear.

When I was at Tucson in 2008 they were laying the gun on the house which I don't much like, but they had done to work of determining the relation between their usage and the one in the rulebook. BAS asked me to verify that the conversion they were using was valid and so we duplicated their test and everything matched like clockwork.

N1H1

 

I wish I could remember everything on a couple of pages I read 20 years ago, Hap, but I can't. I do think that engineer John Brindle was very, very smart and careful and a great, clear and accurate writer too. I just hope I have recounted his view accurately and if I have, I advise you to take his word for it, as I did and still do. His book, "Shotgunning Shooting: technique and technology," was unmatched until Andrew Jones published his work, and every time I run across something new by him in an old magazine I marvel at how much he knew, how hard he worked to explain it even to the likes of us.

N1H1

 

Neil, this minimum number is now used for setting doubles at Tucson. Asking for an increase of speed falls on deaf ears! Roger Coveleski and I asked for an increase in the speed and we were denied very quick! Yo-yoing the targets up and down only is the re-sets according to the trap line manager!

I recall that day also, I was with Betty and you when they were setting targets with the radar gun located at the back edge of the trap house. That method has now changed to 39 mph inside only as a firm speed set! That certainly doesn't work for day in and day out doubles shooting at all! It's acceptable only on the best of shooting weather. Anytime our rule book calls out a minimum, that will be taken for granted as an absolute.

Without any doubt, John Brindle was a terrific writer and a very smart man whom I enjoyed reading his writings a lot. I wrote my questioning on how he came up with higher target RPMs and how I perceived the extra RPMs must have come about.

HAP

 

Well, what can I say, Hap? If they are doing as you say, they are not following the very, very clear demands of the rulebook, which is rendered in such clear, direct English that no one can fail to understand what it says.This is not a rule problem, not a radar problem. It is a personnel problem.

N1H1

 

Either way Neil I think you are right the speed probably was a little slow.I think the rules probably should be amended to a minimum speed .....but if you don't set a maximum speed I'm not sure of the consequences....with some dumb setter that won't exercise common sence......

 

Agreed, one wouldn't think any club would be so (minimum minded) to use it all the time.

Romie;

39 mph is the minimum and the max is 40 at this club and it's strictly adhered to. No speed changes whatsoever! Your on the right track though, we need a new minimum setting number and 39 mph isn't it. We're so hooked on speed limits we fear the word (more speed) as if it's a plague?

Neil, a lot of ATA officials are there and shooting these same targets. I could name them but won't just because but how does anyone go about enforcing what's written in the rule book when the rule is so openly violated? I'll quit there.

HAP

 

I don't quite remember it as a suggestion to do it (maybe I did), but a noted difference in the application of two different works of the same idea. 1. sanding with a 150 grit changed the spin rate and 2. One disproving the previous using a finer grade of sand paper. If I remember correctly.

Nobody has asked to see the clips yet, must not be important. I will be in Sparta starting Thursday, if everything goes well. We will have a real conundrum if you don't see about the same differences as I saw. I imagine you will though, or have.

Was the OP talking about a particular trap or PATs in general? If the finger touches a horizontal surface (top of outer ring) of the target it may provide for the energy to create a lifting of the inboard part of the target and at flight beyond the platform slightly angles away, to the right. Where as the left target never touches the finger. Just a guess. It appears, though the photo angles I have are not great, it appears finger rides on the upper portion of the outer ring and not on the drive ring. One more thing to check the next time I am in a house.

--------------

One problem with such exacting target speed limits of range has to do with the range in which the rule states.

I know my radar gun does not have tenths of mph. So it is either 39 or 40, which is 38.50 to 40.49 mph. It would be better as 39 - 41, with 40 recommended, though in reality to meet 48 - 52 yards, it would just be right target 41-43 and 42 recommended.

As in singles when it was no target less than 48yd and no more then 52yd with 50 recommended. It would have been in my opinion an illegal target setting if someone were to set them at 48yd. If you set them to 48yd, it would be 48 +- and the rule was clearly "targets, whether singles or doubles, shall be thrown not less then 48 yards nor more than 52 yards" , not, "not less then half of the targets less than or 1 target less than, it was, "shall... ...not less than 48 yards".
1982 rule book:

Why recommend 50 yards, well because at 50 yards you had 50yards plus or minus 2 yards, like 1200fps +- 90 fps, so as every target within the range depicted as legal for weight and size of the target thrown and variability's within the trap, will be within the window to the highest extent possible.

The right doubles target should be thrown at a speed where it falls beyond 48 yards consistently. I imagine that would be 42 mph.

I don't think many check the height of doubles, it is eyeballed. I have not seen it done, some times if appears to me it is above the 10ft threshold as the appear to be at least 6 inches higher than the singles targets that were set at 9.5ft but whom am I to question. Though I think if doubles are set up off a properly set singles target it seems to work. Up 3 or 4 notches and 10 turns on the spring, so to speak. Quite simple really.

There is another thread about Tucson out there. I highly doubt Tucson was throwing targets that were outside the legitimate area. They maybe have been outside the preferred area. It would take a Pat Trap basically to its limits to exceed the legitimate area, the legitimate area has a field of 54 degrees and the max field for a Pat Trap is 60 degrees. 54 degrees would be a switch spread of 8" or so, instead of the 4.25 inch spread set by Pat Trap for 17 degree. When I was reading about it though I imagined it as illegal for a narrow field, I have seen a few fields recently that were set narrower than 17 degrees. Though not the day of a match, which really it probably is, though I have not been there. Club was notified.

I all honesty when a Pat Trap is set to 17 degrees, with any crosswind or tailwind one or both outside angle targets do not meet the angle settings if it is measured at 15 - 20 yards. The rule really should be addressed, but will not. I have written a letter without a response from any EC member, the ED, my delegate, the handicap committee or the rules committee. Status quo is fine with them. Just to take a look at the range in which exists at the moment within the angle rules. 34 degree field is minimum, a 54 degree field is maximum, what is in the middle that would take care of most wind conditions. You guessed it 44 degrees, is that not amazing. The range of min and max should have a recommended setting of the middle. What is 44 degrees, you guessed it, darn near a straight away from 1 and 5, some would call it that.

Added: I should add in reality as the rules are written and depicted, min and max is 34 degrees with the 10 degree outside limit to 54 degree. Any target outside of 54 degree is not a legal target. I think most targets turned down for being an illegal angle, is most likely legal. With a head wind it would probably be easier to argue an illegal target for height, as one is only given 6", who can tell 6" at 26 yards, if they were set to 9.5ft.

Had 1 trap at the CA State shoot a few weeks ago that did throw straightaways from post 1. I noticed it when I was on post 5, it put a smile on my face. I subsequently watched the trap afterwards from behind post 1 and they were straightaways.

Shoot well.

John

 

Mr. Hunts our present ATA President tried to get 38 yard doubles approved, it was denied, but what has happened since on his 38 yd Idea?

GB DLS

 

First, a strong, strong warning. The following pictures may provide an accurate depiction of the tilt of flying targets . . . or they may not. These data are just imported from an experiment designed to answer other questions and which embodied none of the controls needed to give trustforthy data about the question at hand.


Think of what follows as no more than an informal and uncontrolled pilot study. Pilot studies are done to see if there may be something worth spending more time on later. They highlight problems which may need to be solved and point the way to the design of a proper experiment, one whose results can be trusted. Think of them the as the first couple of pages of a novel – you don’t learn much about the end, but you get the idea of whether further reading is likely to lead to anything interesting.


The big failing of the following presentation is that we have no way to determine what “vertical” is so we can’t infer “horizontal,” can’t be sure if what we see as “horizontal” or “tilted” really is horizontal or tilted. Panning the camera as I did here can – and often does - lead to changes in the tilt of the camera. It may have done so here, or it may not have. In short, I do not present this as “evidence” for anything other than it may look interesting and a better, properly-controlled study might lead to evidence we could put some stock in. But this is not it.


Let’s look at some singles to get used to what we are seeing. Here are stills from a video of targets thrown from this Pat trap before the arm was sanded.











I look at those think I may see some tilt to the right, but keeping in mind all the warnings above, do not conclude that these birds really are flying “tilted.”


Here are some stills of birds thrown after the arm was sanded with 320-grit sandpaper, which is mildly abrasive.











And here are three after sanding the arm with an aggressively-cutting 150-grit paper:











My conclusion is that some looked a bit tipped; some didn’t.


Let’s move on to Romie’s post that started this thread. “I have seen thisbefore... The right bird is tilted down to the right on the right bird.

Left comes out OK.”

Here are some stills of right birds:












And as look at them and assume, provisionally, that the post in the left of the frame is close to vertical, I am struck by the fact that the bird does appear far more tilted to the right than the previous singles birds did.


Let’s pan over to left bird; that was in Romie’s post too.











Wow! That a surprise! Now the bird, to me at least, appears to be about as much tilted to the left as the right bird had earlier appeared tilted to the right!


Repeat of lead-off warning. There appears to be something going on here that I do not understand. Maybe the birds really do have opposite tilts, or maybe we are just seeing some sort of artifact caused by the way the videos were taken, at is, without any of the controls that would be appropriate for an experiment focused on bird-tilt rather than rate-of-spin, as these were.


I’d like to thank Romie for starting this thread. I have seen things in my own videos that I never noticed before and probably, without his prodding, never would have. Maybe at the end of the shooting season I’ll do more with this. Or perhaps not, since I have no idea if tilt means anything at all to trapshooting and there certainly are things I should do that interest me more.


Thank you for attention,


N1H1

 

Questions for someone in the know.

Wouldn't having both birds hit the ground at the same time be more beneficial than worrying about if one bird was tilted more than the other?

Arn't you supposed to shoot the birds on the rise, which even if the birds were tilted they wouldn't drift out of specs very far anyway?

And a comment.

Somewhere I read that someone extended the plate so the right hand bird didn't cantilever over the edge of the factory plate. They claimed that helped eliminate the tilt on the right hand bird.

 

Is it possible, due to less rotational spin on doubles targets brought on by less speed, these targets may not be stabilizing as quickly as a result? Remember the spinning tops we had as kids? Pump them to a high rate of spin, maybe even tilted slightly to one side when we turned them loose, they would level out pretty quick? A clay, more likely than not, would act accordingly in stabilizing itself after leaving the throwing arm when canted. Comparable pictures taken of clays as those above were at two different speeds may produce an answer? That too may depend on how far out the pictures were taken.

Observing doubles shot by average doubles shooters seem to always shoot at the second bird as it's going down. I'd think we should do everything in our powers to change that to give them a better chance at scoring better on doubles. Forget about the top shots, they will break doubles clays regardless of how we throw them! More participation by more shooters having fun shooting doubles is the same as growing our sport, all of us should be for all of that!!

HAP

 

Neil
Thanks for the pictures. I think you were dead on with the speed to take out the tilt.... probably the left bird has some tilt but never like the right due to how it comes off the arm or distance it travels on the arm or whatever which is way above me.I'm just glad we have guys like you that have the expertise and drive to get to the bottom of this with facts. Its kind of like ten people say a car wreak and ten saw it differently.... but the pictures say it one way....amazing how that works.

 

Hap
Most of the people I know invest little time in the doubles myself included. If you have a 100 shooters you end up with 35 doubles shooters and of that probably only 15 practice it very often... they just shoot.I think I agree with more speed than higher targets on the south wind days... High targets are hard to hit and the second target ends up way higher than the first if someone has cranked up the angle....

 

That's the main reason I've posted my concerns about our sport of doubles shooting all this time. Neither high nor falling targets is attractive for the doubles game. More speed is needed to help stabilize them and give average shooters a better chance at hitting more targets before the begin falling. A falling target is hard to HIT as well!

HAP

 

"The correct speed for the right target of a doubles pair must be a minimum of 39 MPH, maximum of 40 MPH.
The correct speed for the right target of a doubles pair must be a minimum of 41 MPH, maximum of 42 MPH."

"I do agree with Hap that the present rule, restricting the top speed of doubles to 40 MPH, does not allow setters to set a bird to a faster speed which would would be better for the sport in that it would allow the majority of our doubles participants to, who are in B and C, to shoot a horizontal rather than falling bird, which no one can shoot well." Copied from Neil's post above, post #2.



Is this a shooters/clubs choice in the selection of a rule to abide by? In my opinion, inserting both these two written sentences aren't nearly clear enough for a rule for clubs/shooters to abide by in our doubles game?

Both sentences say; "correct speed", both say "first bird must be a minimum", what am I missing here? OR, does this mean we get to choose? Using both sentences sure makes for confusion and evidently I'm not the only one!

Depending on where the right targets velocity is measured from, inside and off the arm OR measured from the 16 yard line will give two different velocities from a level radar gun, is that where the confusion comes from in the varying speeds above?


This MUST be amended for our sport fairness and more clarity in the doubles game. Your thoughts?

HAP