Shooters Math

[jar]

If the only fun part was the shooting, playing this game would be kinda silly, economically speaking. Luckily, shooting matches is also a reason to spend the day outdoors with my friends.

[fiddler]

I won't do the math for three gun either. It seems like it should be better since you can have single stages with a higher round count than an entire pistol match but I have a sinking feeling that its as bad or worse.

[sargenv]

And people ask me why I shoot a 6-gun... simply because I get to shoot twice as long and sometimes as much as 3 times as long as the rest of you

[gm iprod]

Work out the cost of a barrel.

A 6.5mm Target Barrel for F Class Rifle, only last 7.142 seconds. At $800 for a new barrel installed, that is $403,000 per hour of shooting????

[John Tuley]

The math gets even worse.

Let's assume a 20,000 round life on a 20" AR15 barrel, firing ammunition with a muzzle velocity of 3000fps. (We're playing with roundish numbers to make the math easier.) Doing some algebra and assuming a constant acceleration, we come to the formula time = length / (24 * velocity) (with length in inches, velocity in ft/sec, and time in seconds) for the length of time the bullet spends in the barrel during a single shot. (I haven't studied internal ballistics and I know the acceleration isn't constant, so feel free to add a small "fudge" factor if you like -- it won't change the picture much.)

So our conclusion is that it takes roughly 1/900th of a second for the bullet to travel those 20 inches. So your barrel's working life is 22.222 seconds. A .45 making 900fps out of a 5" barrel 20,000 times comes to 4.630 seconds.

Now ... be glad that you got a whole "minute and a quarter" of shooting!

-- John.

[gm iprod]

It does get worse.

7800 miles from my house to the Bianchi Cup.

Practical 80 seconds

Barricade 52 seconds

Plates 60 seconds

Mover 72 seconds

Total time actually shooting 274 seconds. 4 Minutes 34 Seconds. (Wife did mention I spend more time shooting than having sex, but this is ridiculous).

So Airfare $3000, spending money $3000, Ammo $500, Hotels $800. Lets call it a round $8K once we factory beer and bourbon. $1750 per minute of shooting.

Total spent on present for wife $100, and she better put out.

[Toolguy]

So - that's $1750 per minute for shooting and $100 per minute for sex?

[BillD]

I have had this discussion with others in the recent past.

I will be flying to the Double Tap. 12 stages, if I am really good I'll shoot under 5 minutes. Well under. I'll have two days of travel, 5 nights of Hotel, a car rental. Even sailing seems cheap by comparison when we do the match this way! At least then you pend entire days actually using the boat!

At least this hobby keeps me out of bars. (most of the time)

I went to Double Tap last year, got a real nice range bag from the prize table. Considering travel expenses, I've got right at $600 in that range bag.

[gm iprod]

Warren,

Exactly.

[Steven Cline]

Ahhhh, the places we go...