Wind Flags

[StephenPerry]

Range Flags
I'm going to bring this Post over and add a little, kick it up a notch.
As some know wind flags were not always present on the BR field. I never thought they were illegal but those crusties from days past 1940-1970 liked to fly by the seat of their pants. I know of a Match at Skunk Creek where a friend of mine was asked to put his wind flags back in his car. This was back in 1972 my buddy knew the rule book and cornered a referee to tell him to show where it said no flags. He and his brother set flags took 1st and 2nd and went home. This being an end of the year Match next year when went to Arizona the whole field was covered with wind flags.
Range Flags are the one's the Shoot provides generally set off to the side of the 1st and last benches. These are not required and not in the rule of either Organization. Their purpose is give direction and an indication of velocity of winds coming in and leaving the Range. Sounds good but not every shooter is capable or concerned with such. I have seen such flags at Midland and St Louis during National Events.
At our soon to be Angeles BR Range we are going to have 6 Range flags set. 3 for each side looking for wind currents not set distances. Our flags will be 8' poles set in 3# coffee cans bolt in the bottom for a guide, filled with concrete buried in the ground. Poles will be 2 piece retractable made by von Epp the super flag builder. Kurt is going to attach a 4" steel hanger where we swill attach our 5' section sail cloth tapering to a point, slim and fast no vane, The length of the flagging will provide the crossection to move flagging fast. A true reading of the wind currents no delay.
Some of you guys that shoot 600/1000 explain what types of Range flags you see from range to range. My benchrest bud Chuck brought his airplane wind indicator to his first BR shoots setting on his bench I watched it. He said that what he used at Camp Perry. All kinds of wind indicators out there.
Stephen Perry

 

[StephenPerry]

My Wind Flags
Part of using wind flags is knowing when to change-up and why. I have 83 wind flags and 30+ stands and poles. I have one particular style, flag forward, 30 flags that I could use if I chose to cover all the benches we shoot at the Nationals. But I normally use my paddle vanes, I have 12 of these. I have both 5/32 and 1/4 poles and stands and all the sleeves to convert everything to 1/4 flags. The rest of my flags are 3 types which I call blades. My stands are Sinclair and my poles are made by the guy who made all my flags, Kurt von Epp.
For vane colors I have orange/black, yellow/blue, yellow/black, orange/green, blue/white. For flagging I have 5 colors that I use depending on background and what the other guys use. I want to use the opposite colors as the guys around me. I use surveyor flagging.
I usually carry stands and poles I am going use that day in a 32" metal carpenters box. Complete with nails for tie downs, swivels, sleeves, body hammer, pole studs, slammers, tools, and spare parts.
No way does the average shooter need this much equipment. 4 flags and poles will get most shooters through a season of shooting. Now if you have the mojo 4 flags from www.shadetreea.com would keep you in high cotton the rest your shooting career. Take at a look at these flags I recommend these as some of the best made in the World. I can't drop all the names of flags here but Don Nielson and Smiley Hensley are some of the better flags you see on the benchrest circut. Hood makes a nice affordable flag that are double vane look at his Web. Lots of flag makers out there they all go around in circles. Of my 83 none cost more than $25 most were in the $5-$15 range. Point is for BR you need flags in practice and at competitions to be successful. Without some kind of wind indicator your lucky if you do shoot good and don't know why you shoot well, groups and especially aggs in the the teens come from proper wind evaluation of flags and indicators. There are no Daniel Boone's or Davy Crockett's in the BR world digging stacked round balls out of trees at 200yds. You must have a way of reading the wind element in short range BR. Wind flags are a simple and efficient tool to make some sense at what Mother Nature does at her whim, blow the wind.
Stephen Perry

 

[tenring]

Steve - I have the Sinclair vane/daisey/flag type with spike extendable poles. Sometimes at certain ranges, the poles come up a little short. I am not happy with the Sinclair vanes or the poles. But I don't want to spend $100 per flag with pole. Are tripod stands OK? What combination do you recommend within my price constraints? What about Gene Beggs design?

 

[StephenPerry]

Tenring
You can't afford Gene's stuff. I would recommend for you the Hood Flag, affordable and proven check his Website. Poles are nice but most are custom made and can get pricey. I have had my tripod light stands that Sinclair sells for 12 years. Beat to hell but still there. Some ranges back East and other places require some tall poles. I have some 15' poles but even those don't make it with some Ranges. Poles will do the trick why not try and make your own. I have 3 section poles that collapse to 3' and when extended all the way up will give me over 8'. There is always a way when your on a budget just think it out and come back and tell us.
Stephen Perry

 

[butchlambert]

Something to keep in mind about flags. Visiting with the top shooters in our sport about flags gave me some suprise info.You do not want your flags balanced. The weight should be biased to the vane side. That will help take the twitch out of your flags. It will take the windshield wiper effect out. The Aussie propellers are used for velocity reading only at very low wind velocity. They are mainly to let you see a pickup or a let up. The sailcloth tails are attached with a clip that does not allow the tail to twist and it also holds the shape of the flag in a V so that it doesn't flop in the wind. As mentioned before, daisy wheels slow response of the vane, puts a shake in your wind flag, and hides the vane on any tailwind.
Butch

 

[Kodiak99317]

No pics, and I was thinking

so I had to add some...

 

[tightneck]

All right, now this thread has moved beyond flags. Pics really do add to the thread. Wind probes are becoming more and more popular so I guess we need some input on whose making and using them. Gene Beggs is known as the wind probe guy and his probes are seen at all the matches I attend. Locally, another shooter makes a probe similar to the one Gene makes. I've never used probes so I can't say I like one better than the other. Who else out there is making probes? How many shooters out there feel that probes add greatly to their wind reading ability?

 

[AlNyhus]

I shoot with people that use probes of all makes and designs. Sometimes they've been very helpful for me..and sometimes not. My observations over the past two seasons is that the more 'angular' the wind is as it comes across the range, the less I can rely on the probes.

There are times when the standard flags I have in front of me show the condition I want, but a probe-type gizmo will be in a completely different position than where it was when I shot in identical 'flag' conditions. For example..my condition was:

-Wind r-l
-Flags at 5:00
-Tails at 45 degrees
-Probe pointer at second black mark

Now, if the flags and tails all line up and I see that the probe pointer is at the fourth black mark....or somewhere way off from the original 'reference' mark,the second mark), I get pretty cautious and either put one in the sighter to verify or wait until things stabilize a bit..even if it means waiting out a complete wind 'cycle', if that's what it takes.

Knowing when not to shoot can sometimes be better than the other side of the coin. And that's where a probe can sometimes help you put the pancakes on the table. :thumb:

And sometimes not. :,

The real trick in BR is to sort out all those things in a constantly-changing dynamic environment and in a relatively short amount of time.

Hey Keith...where the heck do you shoot at where all those probes point the same way like that???? I gotta come there! HaHaHa! -Al

 

[Kodiak99317]

It's a pic from the Cdn Grp Nationals that was held in Regina in 2006, pretty flat down there.

 

[Aussie_bob]

I have shot here in Australia using Stuart & Annie Elliot's wind Probes and found them to work very well with horizontal effect on your bullets but you need the flags and ribbons for the direction to give you vertical effect.
With the Daisy wheels on the flags you leave some off so the react faster to wind direction changes.

 

[butchlambert]

Aussie Bob, Stuart and Annie use Gene Beggs windprobes in addition to their flags to read straight crosswind velocity. They do not manufacture wind probes.
Butch

 

[Shelley]

At 100 yards I use three sorta standard flags set out under the bullet path. I also have three probe clones,home made) set out in a straight line but about three feet to the left of my bullet path. The flags are at 25, 50 and 75 yards. The probe clones are at 13, 38 and 63 yards. The probes give me a bit of information as to what the wind is doing between the flags, but I keep most of my attention on what the flags and flag tails are doing and just glance at the probes for a "Don't Shoot Now" indicator. In other words, if my flags say shoot but one of the probes is bouncing off of the ground I'll hold my fire till the probes agree with the flags. This tends to be a lot of information for your brain to process but I do try.

At 200 yards I'll add a set of flags and probes and will spread the flags and probes to cover out to 150 yards. Past that I try to use the mirage as my wind indicator. More information to process, geeeeze.

Shelley

 

[w]

Someone experience with the wind flags from S.E.& A.
There a lot expensive than normally wind flags.
Now a need very quick wind flags.

 

[chuckw2]

SE&A is Butch Lambert, he is a good vendor, stands behind his products...



Chuck

 

[StephenPerry]

Shooters
I wrote this Thread in May of 2006 and it's still in the middle of the pack on the Comp. page. Lots of responses not a bad one in the bunch. The shredders stayed away from this one which is thankful. Less smoke on my part. Love to hear from the Aussies they have some better ideas on stealing a group from Mother Nature.
Now that we have most of Wind Flags and the accompanying equipment laid out lets go for the secrets that guys like Tony Boyer, Lester Bruno, Gary Ocock, Allie Euber, Lowell Frei, and Wayne Campbell keep close. You don't get to the top and stay there changing methods often on the other hand they do attack conditions until they get what they want from the bench.
My contribution. Each bench has it's own wind corridor mostly moving back and forth at a gimme. Think not. Place a a smoke bomb in front of several benches and watch the smoke being drawn in and out and shearing at angles only to wander across another wind corridor on adjoining benches. And you have to shoot through these conditions that look straight forward to you.
I like to write em but I really like to see the gears turning in some of the well thought out returns.

Stephen Perry
Angeles BR

 

[tightneck]

Welcome back Stephen. I've recently started making my own flags, nothing special, just a Smiley copy. It is fun to try different sized vanes, color scheme, etc. I still ended up using the standard that most shooters opt for in the long run. Red on the left and Green on the right. I'm messing with different color daisy wheels and some flags without daisies at all. I've come up with lots of different materials to use that are very inexpensive or even free. I have it down to a couple bucks per flag in material. The real cost comes in time. Putting a dozen flags together with the right tools,lathe, etc.) is flat out time consuming. I have a real respect for those that make flags for other competitors, because I know they are not doing it for the money. They do it out of sheer love of the sport. I thought my next project would be building some long poles. Smiley's poles are of stainless tubing and are second to none in quality. They aren't cheap, but I figured I could build em' for half the price...Well I've been checking out the price of stainless tubing, and all I can say is, he's not getting rich on poles either. I'm gonna pick up a couple of his at the Hog Roast next weekend.

 

[StephenPerry]

TN
Great that you can make your own wind flags. You will benefit in knowing what design you chose and what your flags are capable of. Two good friends of mine and HOF members made and make their own flags. Ed Watson made a very simple flags out of minimal cost material, he has since passed on. Lowell Frei also has made his own flags for a long time. I think these guys were consulting with each other. Very similar shooters, gunsmiths, bullet makers, and flag makers.
You have made a good choice on Smiley clones. I don't see these as much in California but Raton, Midland, St Louis, Phoenix they more than hold their own. What I see with Smiley's are a single ribbon of surveyors tape. Good Luck with your projects and come back and fill us in what happened.

Stephen Perry
Angeles BR

 

[Forum Boss]

There are some really nice features on the Carbon River Windflags that Michael Gibeault is making up in Washington.

www.CarbonRiverWindflags.com

The shafts are light but stiff anodized aluminum, and he's got a slick system to reduce drag--the pivots employ opposing magnets.

The spinners are quick-detachable:

 

[StephenPerry]

Paul
Great looking flag attachments. Like to see the whole flag on the poles in action. Like the design on the propellors. He lives in any area to put them to good use.

Stephen Perry
Angeles BR

 

[Magical_Merlin]

Thanks for the kind words. Here is a photo taken today of my pinwheels.