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[TowerTalk] Launching Lead

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Subject: [TowerTalk] Launching Lead
From: w5hvv@aeneas.net (Roderick M. Fitz-Randolph)
Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 13:04:08 +0600
>Where do bullets go when they come down?  I saw the Desert Storm tv
>coverage with Saddam's "hail of lead" shooting up at the incoming planes
>and wondered where the lead was coming down.  What's say, egginneers?
>K4VUD

  Well, they come back down to the ground--at approximately the same
velocity they had when leaving the gun barrel. That's why people (and kids)
here in Dallas get 'shot' just about every July 4th, often while sleeping
in bed.

73,

Bob
K5WO
________________________________________________________________________
Because of tumbling effects and the lack of the same push as that which
launched the bullet upward, the terminal velocity of a 150 grain bullet
that was originally launched at 2970 feet per second, the terminal
velocity of the bullet is approximately 300 feet per second..... that is,
if the bullet was launched straight up........  The same bullet launched
at an approximate 30 degree angle will have far greater velocity at the
point at which it returns to earth.

Army manuals of old considered the falling bullet (at 300 feet/second) as
capable of inflicting a painful but not lethal wound.

This is of some interest to those of us that, like myself, shoot at owls
that side on my damned sidearm on my tower so that it can prey on my song-
birds.  I am guilty of shining a light at him and shooting with a .22,
almost straight up.  I've got to get him to quit depositing quano all over
my rotor ring and KT-34A at 72 feet.  The velocity of the quano, when it
reaches the rotor ring, is sufficient to cause me mental pain when I view it.

Rod, N5HV



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