Sunday, October 14, 2018

LED to better results?

While Kedok use a halogen spotlight for aiming at the target many other aiming systems use an
LED at the target.

When Kedok project started I used an LED too, but when I discussed it, many disapproved.
Arguments were:
We are not used to it and we would have to change the shooting lane we already have.
They wanted a system just like Swarovski, with the only change that it can be used with ISSF
approved target cards.
And of course available for a low budget.

Anyway, this was four years ago and in the meantime you see systems like Eco-AIMS and
VIASS using a LED at the target for aiming.
Than there came questions from Kedok users, why don’t we have this?
There is a reasons not to use it: Chanting of the rifle gives a error in aiming.
I discussed it with Daniel Walø and Michael Whapples. With Daniel I did some theoretical tests.
Daniel calculated it, I made a 3D model on my computer and we came to the same results.
There is a significant error if you chant the rifle.
Would it affect the results much if a trained shooter used an LED for aiming? I doubt it, looking
at the scores they shoot.

Halogen spotlights have some disadvantages too:
The quality of the paper target card must be good, shooters hear a noticeable difference in pitch
if the card colour slightly changes.
At our club the SH3 shooters always get a card set from the same factory batch.
Also the card can bend and a shooter will hear this too.
One of the shooters loves the pitch change if the pellet hits the target, Wheee, whee whee :)
This convinced me to make Kedok also suitable for an LED as target.
The question now is, how do we mount the LED if paper card targets are being used?
First attempt was to make target card frame with an LED.
Problems that occurred were that every target card runner had a different mounting system and
therefore it is hard to find a right way to mount the card frame.
It all became a bit heavy and I skipped this idea.
Now we are testing with an LED mounted on the tripod we already have for the spotlight.

The LED setup has only been tested by two shooters so far but soon we will have more data
available.