National Match Air Rifle Targets

[Random Plinker]

A scaled version, shot at a shorter distance is not going to help you much, if any at all. You are going to shoot more accurately at the shorter distance. Your comparing one target to a completely different target.

Just as in the "reduced high power matches" yes, we are shooting reduced sized targets. Shooters generally shoot higher scores on these targets than they do on the across the course matches.

There's wind and trajectory to dope going from a 100 yard reduced high power target to the unscaled 600 yard high power rifle target.  I can appreciate how scores might improve a bit at 100 yards.  But indoors, with no wind, shooting at 25 feet instead of 10 meters (33 feet)?  At some point, minute of angle is minute of angle.

Scaled targets are fascimiles of the original that may score only approximately the same, but I do not agree that they are completely different targets.  They have their place in helping one to shoot with the facilities one has.  There are not a lot of 600 yard ranges.  This is why the NRA high power matches offer the 100 yard reduced target options.  Similiarly, not every air gunner can easily make a 10 meter range, but somewhere in the house or garage there may be a usable 25 feet, or 5 meter, shooting lane.

Sure, practice is practice.  But a scaled target can add to the fun factor by giving shooters a reasonable approximation of what their scores would be shooting the real thing at the real distance, when they can't easily shoot the real thing at the real distance.

I have never understood the hoo ha about scaling targets for different calibers....

Convenience.  Granted, at the cost of some confusion in selecting the right target.  Inexpensive as they are, everyone does not have scoring devices.  Everyone does have pellets and pellet holes.  That said, I have an Eagle Eye scoring gauge on order now.  Happy Birthday to me!

Also, when one goes down the dubious road of scaling targets to a very reduced distance, the scoring rings can get so small that just the difference between a 177 pellet and 22 pellet hole starts to become a significant fraction of the scoring distance for the small, high scoring rings.  Adjusting ring sizes for caliber can make a significant difference at this point.

If you are wanting to see how well you can score on a NMAR target,, print or buy some full size targets and shoot them at the required distance. That is the only way you will actually see how you stack up. You must compare apple to apples.

If only we could print the real thing.  I've taken a shot at figuring out the real thing and posted 10 meter and 25 feet versions in my posts above, but the official ring dimension specifications on these targets appear to be a closely guarded state secret.  It will be interesting to see what ac12 measures.  Of course there is always buying the real thing, but the OP was looking to avoid that.

[Brushy Bill]

Your right, trajectory and wind does come in to effect in shooting at
600 yards, wind more than trajectory,
(that is where the term "matches are won on your feet, and lost on your belly" came from)
the angle of the sun and the mirage can also make the target appear higher than it actually is too.
(there has been way more "clean scores" fired in the 100 yard reduced matches than in the across the course
matches)

I personally still think it is a bunch of hoo ha. But that is OK,
while you folks are crunching numbers in spread sheets and sweating over
dimensions of scaled to caliber scoring rings, I will be practicing shooting holes as close to
the centers of black circles as I can.

I was merely trying to show jglover that you do not need the scaled
targets with adjusted scoring rings to get quality practice time.
As far as seeing how well you are shooting, if the holes are dangerously
close to the center of the circle, that pretty much tells you all you need to know.
No matter what size those circles are. When they are not, you have to analyze what you
are doing that is keeping them from getting there.

If you can do that in the shelter of an indoor 25 foot range, you can do it in the shelter of
an indoor 10 meter range. Although like you said, minute of angle is minute of angle, your
scores at 10 meters will more than likely not be as good as your 25 feet scores when the dropped
points are taken away.

Enjoy your shooting, it is supposed to be fun,, try not to take it too seriously, it is just a game.

[jglover]

Trust me, for longer than I have been on this planet, High Power shooters have been in their basements
shooting air rifle and smallbore targets at what ever distance they could muster
with their 10 meter air rifles to keep sharp during the winter months.
It worked for them, it will work for you.

If you are wanting to see how well you can score on a NMAR target,, print or buy some full size targets
and shoot them at the required distance. That is the only way you will actually see how you stack up.
You must compare apple to apples.

Geez, all I was doing was lookin' for some scaled targets!

Seriously, I'd love to be able to shoot at the required distances all the time but I'm an hour or so from the nearest high power range and I've only got about 27 feet in my garage to shoot most of the time.  I can't even go out into my yard here as I've discovered that firing an air rifle in my back yard is against the city codes here, so i'm limited to shooting indoors. Still you make do with what you have.  The CMP NMAR competition caught my eye and I was just asking if any targets existed anywhere, as ac12 stated the dimensions of these targets do seem to be somewhat secretive.

Like you said, this is fun and to me, even fooling around with the spreadsheets and scaling and all the hoo ha associated with that actually does interest me as well, mainly I suppose because I'm a geeky engineer (befor i went too kollej i culdnt spel injunere, now i are wun).

Hopefully one of these days I'll get me a Garand. I've got a Mosin but can't hit the broad side of a barn at the moment.  But even shooting with NMAR targets does give the practice I need to work on the basics as you said; sight picture, hold, trigger control etc. Minus the recoil of course.......

My dad carried an M1 carbine along with his 1911 with him all through Korea and Vietnam and he shot expert with both at every qualification, so I hopefully have the genes to do it as well as he did!

[Brushy Bill]

Was not trying to offend anyone, just wanted folks to realize it does not
really matter what you are shooting at or what distance you are shooting.
The mechanics of shooting are the same.

When I first started shooting competitively, I visited a local rifle & pistol club
towards the end of their outdoor summer season. Within a month, they moved
back to their indoor 50 foot range for the winter season. Shot 3p smallbore every
thursday night. (since most there were high power shooters, they shot sitting instead of kneeling)
Would meet with a couple of guys during the week to shoot 40 to 60 rounds for practice.

A couple of the guys kept telling me I needed to come out and shoot high power with them.
All I had was my smallbore rifle and my shooting coat. They kept telling me they had everything
I needed, just come out and shoot.

The following spring I did. One of the guys let me shoot his AR. I had done nothing to "prepare"
for this match, just showed up.  Since it was a 100 yard reduced match, they
allowed a 10 minute sight in period before the standing stage started.
I fired 6 sighter shots, those were the first rounds I ever fired from an AR.
So much for preparing.

I shot a 451 of 500 possible that day. Was I happy with that? Not really. Those friends from
the club there supporting me were pretty happy though. They said, "That's 90%, that will get you
an expert card if you can keep it up" (you shoot with a temporary card until you fire the required
240 rounds for record and then receive an official classification card from the NRA)
When I shot my first across the course match, my average did drop, had trouble at 600 yards.
But by the time I got the 240 rounds in, I had managed to bring it back up and received my expert card.

My point is, I did not go out and shoot hundreds of rounds from an AR or shoot at the high power targets
before I went to shoot a match.
I simply shot allot, and paid attention to what was going on while I was doing it.

I hope you find what you are looking for, and I hope you can shoot in a high power match some day.
Should any local club decide to start holding NMAR matches. You have the option of shooting in "Match"
or "Sporter" class if you have a 10 meter air rifle. You do not need to use the AR look alike to compete.

[jglover]

No offense taken Bill, I understand where you are coming from. I've just recently starting in shooting again in the last year and have been trying to find something I can shoot easily and relatively inexpensively to start.  Air guns and smallbore is sort of where my interests lie at the moment but high power definitely appeals to me, especially the as issued service rifles.  Conventional pistol is also an area I want to try. It'll be a bit before I get there with the high power stuff, but I've been using my air guns to sort of fill the gap.

I'd love to find someone who runs NMAR matches locally but the closest I can seem to find is Camp Perry at the moment. Almost all the air gun comps around here that I've been able to locate are ISSF olympic pistol and rifle or junior 3p. But I'm still enjoying shooting my limited garage range!

[ac12]

I got the targets and here are the measurements, as best as I could measure them.
I used a magnifying glass to make the measurements as accurate as I could.
column 1 = ring #
column 2 = diameter, mm, measured w a ruler (accuracy no better than 1/2mm)
column 3 = diameter, inches, measured w a dial caliper
     note, My practical measuring accuracy is .005 but more like .010
     so do not let the 3 decimal places fool you.  I can't measure that
     accurately.
column 4 = diameter, mm, column 3 x 25.4 (mm/in)
     column 4 should be close to column 2

ring     mm       in         conv mm

ARSR - 200 yard reduced range target
  X       0.5     0.015       0.4
10       5.5     0.210       5.3
  9     13.5     0.540     13.7
  8     22.0     0.875     22.2
  7     30.5     1.205     30.6
  6     39.0     1.530     38.9
  5     47.0     1.860     47.2
         
ARMR - 600 yard reduced range target
10       1.0     0.045      1.1
  9       3.5     0.150      3.8
  8       6.5     0.260      6.6
  7     12.0     0.480     12.2
  6     17.5     0.700    17.8
  5     23.0     0.920     23.4
  4     29.0     1.140     29.0
  3     34.5     1.355      34.4

Trying to get the columns to line up is PIA.

(edited)
I remeasured more targets and and corrected some of the numbers. 
Usually going up by .005 or .010.
Again, my error of measurement is approximately .005
It is hard to place the caliper just on the outside edge of the lines.

[Random Plinker]

Thank you for that ac12.  That is a lot of precise measuring work.  And I likewise took no offense at all in a great exchange of ideas.  For the record, Bill's right.  I find the spreadsheet work way too amusing, and know in my heart I should just go shoot

The diameters of these rings are so small it is a challenge to measure with enough precision to obtain 3 or 4 significant figures.  Another approach is to use photo editing software to count the number of pixels inside a scoring ring, including the scoring ring line thickness, from a high resolution target scan.  The diameter of the outside edge of the scoring ring is that of a circle with the same area as the total for the square pixels.  This averages out the choppiness of circles drawn with square pixels (albeit very, very small square pixels), provides the average ring diameter measured across every possible location, and the large number of pixels provides more significant figures.

ac12 was kind enough to send me targets so I could give this alternate approach a try.  Measured ring diameters based on counting 600 DPI pixels follow.  The ring diameters include the thickness of the scoring ring lines, i.e., the diameters are from the outside edge of the scoring ring line to the opposite outside edge of the scoring ring line.

SR Ring (Diameter in mm):
X(0.32), 10(5.47), 9(13.82), 8(22.32), 7(30.62), 6(38.95), 5(47.28)

MR Ring (Diameter in mm):
10(1.09), 9(3.86), 8(6.63), 7(12.21), 6(17.77),  5(23.49), 4(29.04), 3(34.60)

Using the same approach, the thicknesses of the scoring ring lines on both targets measure 0.10 mm thick inside the black bull, and 0.16mm thick outside the black bull.

So there you have it.  Independent confirmation that ac12 can measure as good as a computer, or vice-versa!

For the higher scoring rings inside the black bull of both SR and MR targets, and ignoring the SR "X" ring for a moment, these measured dimensions are ~0.2mm smaller on the SR target and ~0.1mm smaller on the MR target than the ring sizes I calculated by scaling the 200 yard and 600 yard targets based on 0.308" bullet holes in the reference 200 and 600 yard targets, and 4.5mm pellet size holes in the 10 meter 177 caliber targets.  Not bad at all, but still slightly more difference than I expected, and in a direction that is very slightly less challenging.

Perhaps the reduced NMAR SR target rings inside the black bull were made very slightly more challenging to compensate, in part, for things Bill mentioned can happen to bullets from 10 meters to 200 or 600 yards, but do not at 10 meters, by scaling these rings based on 4.5mm bullet holes in the reference 200 yard high power rifle target, instead of 0.308” holes.  And consistent with this approach, perhaps the NMAR MR rings inside the bull were scaled based on 200/600*4.5mm, or 1.5mm bullet holes in the reference 600 yard target.  Reduced 10 meter target ring diameters calculated based on this conjecture would essentially eliminate the very small differences noted above.  Or maybe the rings inside the black bulls measured smaller because the ink bled in a little bit!  Truly, the agreement is so close it is a hair splitting exercise.

Regarding the SR "X" ring, I calculated a scaled diameter at 10 meters for 4.5mm pellets of 0.09mm, so that is the dimension I listed on the targets I posted.  Only because I had to, I cheated when I defined this ring in drawing software.  If I did not define the ring to be 0.4mm in the drawing software, speaking of ink bleeding, it could not be seen when the target was printed on card stock.  Scoring on a 0.09mm ring at 10 meters is equivalent to a 1.6 MOA group, and on a 0.4mm ring it is equivalent to a 1.7 MOA group.  I think we can safely ignore both that 0.31mm difference, and the 0.1mm to 0.2mm differences noted above.  It appears the CMP made a similiar "X" ring decision, and also slightly increased the diameter of the "X" ring so that it could be seen.

[ac12]

I used a training target where all you have is the black bull, NO RINGS.

The idea is to train yourself to shoot the black and forget about scores.
Your eye can see how well you group, and your eye can also tell you how centered the group is.

[Random Plinker]

Understood.  I was letting the third decimal place fool me.  I don't plan on revising the targets for a few tenths of a mm in any case.  They will remain scaled assuming 0.308" holes in the original targets, and pellet sized holes in the scaled targets. 

Safe to say, we now understand the NMAR targets as near as they can be measured or printed.

Thanks again for the measurements!

[ac12]

The good thing about this exercise is, now I have the ring dimensions to put into my Pellant target program, so I can duplicate the targets to fit my smaller trap.

BTW, the regulation ISSF 10m AR target is HARDER than the AR-SR 200yd target, but not as hard as the AR-MR 600yd target (except for the 10 ring which is smaller on the ISSF target).
5 ring size on
ISSF target = 25.5mm
NMAR SR = 47.2
NMAR MR = 23.4

8 ring size
ISSF target = 10.5 mm
NMAR SR = 22.2
NMAR MR = 6.6