For instance, if a rifle is capable of shooting 1/4 MOA 5-shot groups @ 100 yds. how far out of the group would a shot need to land to be called a flyer ? Opinions please.
TLDR: when a standard is 1/4 MOA 5 shots, and that context is very reliable and repeatable such that the 5 shot aggregate is commonly 1/4 MOA, then I would agree a shot that doesn't overlap the other 4 and leaves a gap can be called a flier.
Keep or pitch the rest of this, I'm just wasting a minute here on.....
I know many folks hate formality and math, but if you were to informally look at a target and call a flier, then the formal methods would also call it a flier. You can decide how many standard deviations you like, but to me calling a shooter, ammo, and gun capable of a 1/4 MOA aggregate means that it is roughly holding that for 95% of the record groups, and mathematically that would mean plus minus two sigma.
Remember, there is a human in that loop. They are making the decision on bench technique and wind calls, so there is more than just the gun and ammo in that group. The formal study of ballistic target statistics gives us good definitions for a flier, but we are not in that world here.
The terminology around most shooting ranges doesn't follow formal standards. I'll say a few words but not with the intent that shooters must try to follow them or that they matter in shooting as a sport or hobby. There is a different world where there are contracts and specifications with enforcement like law suits and such, but that isn't here.
A "flyer" on a target used to mean an ammo defect and that meant that the shot was an outlier due to an unintentional out of spec (quality control escape) condition for that round, not caused by an experimental error or "pulled" shot, or wind. (Many times even a gun tunnel can have air flow issues, but I digress...)
If you are familiar with common target analysis software, where there is a Mean Radius, then it should not be a stretch to understand that if we know a "mean radius" that we can also know the standard deviation (one sigma) of that shot pattern as well.
When we use those concepts, we defined a "flier" as when a shot falls more than three standard deviations away from the group center. In a contract, whatever the buyer and seller agree on is the rule, not necessarily what the math books tell us. So, Erik and Speedy can set the rules for their target analysis.
Most of the time, after a shot printed onto the target there was little chance to say what the root cause was or which specification was failed causing it to be a defect. If there was instrumentation for pressure and velocity, the shot may or may not have gone out of the accuracy/precision specification on the target, and it would still have been called a defect, but not a flier on the target unless it was more than the agreement.
Standardized ammo often has what we call a Cpk, so think of that as a group agg stat, and weapon systems often take this a step farther and are held to an aim point so they are managed to a Cpkm. Once we have what reasonable folks would call a steady history for a given ammo or weapon, few folks would argue on what is called a flier even without a technical background.
Standardized ammo performance accuracy testing specifications most often do not involve a human marksman, they use a test rig or weapon system. In that world, there was no such thing as a "called shot" since the expectation was that the weapon system or shooting machine was "in good working order" and "calibrated" and that the technician knew and followed the testing procedures. Get a flier on a test, and you are usually headed to a formality called a material review board to determine if the lot is rejected.
Bayesian statistics and quality control methods are used to manage the risks of false positives or false negatives. Those risk management methods are based on prior knowledge of what to expect. In other words, you burned a lot of ammo (money) to get that basis. That experience was used to get the agreements that resulted in specifications and contracts (it was very expensive to get to that last sentence). Now segue to our topic... BR or Highpower F-Class.
We have no formal definition of a flier or outlier that I am aware of in sport shooting. Erik and Thomas can define their own expectations any way they like and that's okay with me. Those discussions are valuable and not meant to set some standard or binding contract, so they should be taken as friendly discussion and not a new rule or definition we all have to follow.
I get where BR shooters are coming from when they say "flier". In the end, their targets are measured in inches, so I don't mind folks discussing their targets one way or another unless they are trying to redefine an inch or change the rules. Even then, I probably still don't care as long as most of us would agree to the new rules.
In my own opinion, I think Highpower folks should not try to use the BR world as a generality, but it would be best to take it for what it is worth and that is an example of what is possible with respect to state of the art with those bullets and brass.
It takes lots of 5 shot groups, and years of attending matches to get the experience, but most reasonable folks would agree on what a flier would be once they know the capability of the gun/ammo/shooter. It is the same for the math-credentialed ballistics geeks as it is for the unwashed crowds, provided the crowds are not kidding themselves. We can see the odds that folks are or are not kidding themselves these days.... just look at our politics....
There can be so many things about BR that are useful for everyone to understand, and at the same time it would be important to keep in mind when their world is different than the world of Highpower, PRS, varmint, hunting, defense, etc.. An accomplished BR shooter has burned a lot of powder, bullets, barrels, and travel budgets to get to where they know what they are looking at, and they have my respect. I look at their scores and stats, not the letters after their names to determine their credibility.
I often cringe when non-BR folks invoke BR without having a clue about what it really means. Most of the recent debates about group stats, load development, tuning, and ammo performance on the forums go into swirl because of the misunderstanding between general shooting and BR shooting.
If it were up to me, I would emphasize that ballistics and target measurement standards between general shooting and BR shooting have some overlap, but they also have some serious differences between them.
The prep, load development, bench technique, wind skills, etc., of BR are important to study because they represent a state of the art but they also are vastly different than the other types of shooting such that we waste too much time on the swirl by not having a solid understanding of the similarities and differences.
That said, BR shooters know a flier when they see one. It is far harder to know a real BR shooter when you see one... YMMV
