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Ballistics

3 articles

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Ballistics Board's ballistics calculator summary banner for a 145-grain .270 Winchester load, its four cards reading a 253-yard zero, a 298-yard maximum point-blank range, a 1,300-yard transonic distance and 1,000 ft-lbs retained to 775 yards, above a trajectory table showing the bullet 2.6 inches high at 100 yards
Ballistics6 min read

Maximum Point-Blank Range, Explained — Your Vital Zone Matters More Than Your Cartridge

Maximum point-blank range is the longest distance you can hold dead-on and still hit the vitals. We ran every .270 Winchester factory load in our database through our ballistics calculator: the entire field spans 65 yards, while changing the vital-zone assumption on a single load swings it 109. The number you invent moves the answer more than the ammunition you buy.

Ballistics Board Staff·
Layered mountain ridgelines fading from dark foreground to pale distance in thin cold air, with a faint arcing line of light tracing across them
Ballistics9 min read

Altitude and Temperature Don't Move Your Zero — Unless You Zeroed Far Out

Everyone says to re-zero when you get to the mountains. We ran a 6.5 Creedmoor from sea level to 10,000 feet and from 0°F to 100°F, and a 100-yard zero never moved — 0.04 inch across the entire envelope. What moves is everything past it: 33 inches at 1,000 yards. Unless your zero itself is distant, in which case all of this inverts.

Ballistics Board Staff·
A single orange range wind flag standing straight out in a stiff crosswind, sharp in the foreground with a berm and a distant target frame dissolving into haze behind it, low warm sunlight raking across an empty range
Ballistics5 min read

Wind Drift: Why Ballistic Coefficient Beats Velocity at Distance

Everyone reaches for the fastest load to fight the wind. It's exactly backwards. We ran the numbers on five popular .308 loads from the manufacturers' published data — and one of the slowest bullets drifts the least, while two loads of the same weight come out 29.5 inches apart.

Ballistics Board Staff·