Stumpy1
Gold $$ Contributor
Hi All,
For those that are interested, here are a few links that have recently been brought to my attention regarding the accuracy and precision of a couple of the currently available electronic targets.
My intent here is to share this information, and not to say that target “A” is good and target “B” is bad. Those types of decisions are and should be up to individual clubs, shooters, and ultimately, the NRA (here in the US).
These tests were conducted in Australia largely by David Stewart and Peter Smith with input and assistance from Dennis Russell, Ross Harvey, Steve Durham, Dudley Ford, Arthur Simpson, Mark Edge, Les Binnie and probably some other folks as well. I do NOT know any of these people, but wish to applaud the effort they put into conducting what looks to me like a thorough and unbiased test of the systems they had available. Well done Gentlemen!!
As many of you know, my Home Club, Bridgeville Rifle and Pistol Club, has purchased and been using 10 of the Hexta e-Targets. I cannot speak for anyone but myself, but I have been pretty happy with how these targets have performed in our hands. Again, I am NOT saying that any one target is ‘better’ than any other.
In examining the test results (linked), I had a few observations;
It was interesting to see direct evidence that a SMT target next to a second target picked up a stray shot –even though the targets are a meter apart (much further than we typically see here in the US). That result sure threw the scoring system for a loop…
The other part that I found interesting is how in one system, a ‘hot’ bullet coming in generally yields smaller random errors than one coming in more slowly. Might be worth dragging out the 300 WinMag! Or a 264 WinMag shooting 140’s at some ungodly speed… But, that might be counter-productive to good shooting…
The more relevant question in my mind that is brought up by this nicely done test is ‘how much error is a shooter willing to tolerate?’ That question is followed by ‘how different are the errors between each target in a given bank of targets?’ –if one target is giving a huge advantage (or disadvantage), well, that certainly isn’t a good situation.
I hope you find the test results interesting and useful. I think this sort of testing will certainly give the manufacturers things to think about and things to improve. I personally want all of the vendors to be successful –more choices (within limits…) are more better!
Frank
The testing procedure and results for several tests may be found here;
https://sites.google.com/site/targettests2016/
https://sites.google.com/site/targettests2016/home/lr-smt-and-hexta-2017
https://sites.google.com/site/targettests2016/home/smt-2017
For those that are interested, here are a few links that have recently been brought to my attention regarding the accuracy and precision of a couple of the currently available electronic targets.
My intent here is to share this information, and not to say that target “A” is good and target “B” is bad. Those types of decisions are and should be up to individual clubs, shooters, and ultimately, the NRA (here in the US).
These tests were conducted in Australia largely by David Stewart and Peter Smith with input and assistance from Dennis Russell, Ross Harvey, Steve Durham, Dudley Ford, Arthur Simpson, Mark Edge, Les Binnie and probably some other folks as well. I do NOT know any of these people, but wish to applaud the effort they put into conducting what looks to me like a thorough and unbiased test of the systems they had available. Well done Gentlemen!!
As many of you know, my Home Club, Bridgeville Rifle and Pistol Club, has purchased and been using 10 of the Hexta e-Targets. I cannot speak for anyone but myself, but I have been pretty happy with how these targets have performed in our hands. Again, I am NOT saying that any one target is ‘better’ than any other.
In examining the test results (linked), I had a few observations;
It was interesting to see direct evidence that a SMT target next to a second target picked up a stray shot –even though the targets are a meter apart (much further than we typically see here in the US). That result sure threw the scoring system for a loop…
The other part that I found interesting is how in one system, a ‘hot’ bullet coming in generally yields smaller random errors than one coming in more slowly. Might be worth dragging out the 300 WinMag! Or a 264 WinMag shooting 140’s at some ungodly speed… But, that might be counter-productive to good shooting…
The more relevant question in my mind that is brought up by this nicely done test is ‘how much error is a shooter willing to tolerate?’ That question is followed by ‘how different are the errors between each target in a given bank of targets?’ –if one target is giving a huge advantage (or disadvantage), well, that certainly isn’t a good situation.
I hope you find the test results interesting and useful. I think this sort of testing will certainly give the manufacturers things to think about and things to improve. I personally want all of the vendors to be successful –more choices (within limits…) are more better!
Frank
The testing procedure and results for several tests may be found here;
https://sites.google.com/site/targettests2016/
https://sites.google.com/site/targettests2016/home/lr-smt-and-hexta-2017
https://sites.google.com/site/targettests2016/home/smt-2017