not killing with a spud gun

[Ragnarok]

my vision is 20/16, i see better than most humans, can you see a a toddler crawling in the grass at 500 yards?

If we're arguing about that, I'm 20/10.
And yes - I once spotted one of my Nan's dogs (a little smaller than a toddler) in the ferns a quarter mile away across a Welsh mountain side.

Anyway, my experience is that most toddlers are not out crawling in the grass unattended where spudgunners might be firing.

do you know of a spud gun with accuracy of less than 1 MOA? you may intend to hit something 500 yards away, but YOU WON'T!

Not yet, but I'm working towards it.

Besides, as MrCrowley says, that just defeats your point - if a person is out there, given the inaccuracy of spudguns, the spud could land in an circle nearly 50 or 100 yards across. The chance of hitting a person who's within that area is slim to say the least.

my first spud gun generates 1400 lb/ft of energy with a potato, a head shot would cause massive trauma and death, a body shot would break a few bones, adding a little "extra" to the potato would cause more "damage".

You still haven't broken out the chronograph I see. Really, 1400 ft/lbs from that combustion of yours isn't happening.
No matter what prediction method I try (HGDT, pressure/volume calculations, EVBEC), I can't even get a quarter of that.
I'll admit the pressure/volume calc is only a ballpark figure, but HGDT and EVBEC are almost always within 10 or 20% at the outside.

80% error from these things is completely unheard of. I'm sorry, but you need to use a proper chrony - guessing numbers from a 30 frame/second video will not give you accurate results.
I assure you, when you get the chrony out, the numbers will almost certainly be more like 250 to 300 ft-lbs, which is what all other combustions that size would be generating.

Besides, that's at the muzzle. 500 yards away, regardless of how fast it was in the first place, it's unlikely to have more than a couple of dozen ft-lbs left - and over such a large area with a soft projectile like a spud, penetration of the skin or lethality is exceptionally unlikely.
Spuds and golf balls are not ballistically efficent.

in the last week i've seen a few others who haven't read the rules, and even a few more who have yet to have been reprimanded.

You have no idea if that's true. Moderators do most of their work by PM.

I broke a rule once here ("inciting mass argument by mentioning religion" - or something like that)- I did know about it, but I'd forgotten in the act of posting. That still didn't excuse me.

~~~~~

Anyway, myself, I've largely given up on distance shots. When the spud is leaving the muzzle at 600 fps or so, it's hard to follow it in the air which makes it largely pointless. That said, I did have fun launching glow sticks across my "uncle's" field at night.

And before you rant at me for firing at night (with next to no visibility) - it's private property, and the only people with permission to be on it were me, or one of the people behind me, so any daft apeths (or muppets if you're not in tune with semi-archaic Lancastrian slang) that might happen to be trespassing downrange...

... Oh, look, incoming instant karma.

[mark.f]

mrbadexample, everybody breaks a few rules now and then. My very first post on Spudtech nearly three years ago was breaking the rules, and I almost got banned for it.

It's no reason to point the finger at other people. I've witnessed quite a large number of people (an exceptionally large number of people) break the rules. Just let themselves or the mods handle it. Don't try and get involved because you got told off.

If PCGUY or a mod thinks distance shots are bad sometime down the road, then that will be that. In the meantime, why be a fun-sucker, you fun-sucker you.

[VH_man]

haha

I see no problem with distance shooting either. As long as your thinking its totally Alright. Im lucky enough to have almost 2 miles of space right out my backyard where i can fire ANYTHING and it will land before it hits anything.....

Also, When doing distance shots, I let out the Danger waring with an Air horn in the direction of the shot, so people possibly downrange are aware that SOMETHING is going to happen, and once they hear the report, will most likely be in the lookout for flying objects.

[jackssmirkingrevenge]

I think it's a matter of calculated the risks involved.

Seeing footage like this of individuals firing spuds into the air at random and deliberately targeting traffic is shameful to say the least, behaviour which can never be acceptable for a responsible spudgun afficonando.

Shooting over unoccupied land which you are reasonably certain is clear of people doesn't sound so bad though. How many fullbore shooters fire at high angles (shooting game in trees, or even for example a deer that is on the crest of a hill) with rifles whose rounds are much more lethal at much longer ranges? I don't think one could point to a single incident where an individual was harmed as a result of a spud fired by an individual who had not taken the appropriate precautions when shooting for distance.

[LCTChamp]

i do all my distance shots into a river so the only thing i could kill would be a fish and what are the chances of that? You don't ban distance shots because there is a slim to none chance of hurting an animal.

[Fnord]

The users here who are capable of creating guns which can be very lethal at ranges outside of a typical human's vision are the ones who know how to use them responsibly. If you want to complain at irresponsible people, do so on youtube.

And if by chance you smash a mouse at 500 yards, so be it. I don't like killing anything, but I won't give up a hobby just because there's a one in a billion chance of it happening.

[BC Pneumatics]

Aside from convincing us that your name is warranted, I am not terribly sure of the point of this topic. There are a ton of nuances of this conversation on which to comment, but I will restrain myself.

First of all, shooting for distance is not an inherently unsafe behavior. The fact that you think this tells me you do not have a proper idea in your head of how one would scout a location for distance shooting. Browsing this site, or any firearms site, one will run across tons of statements warning "you must aways know what's downrange". If your range ends at a block wall 20ft away, that is all you need to know. The chances of hitting someone with a distance shot it zero, because such a shot would require a range hundreds of feet long, which the shooter would have checked for clearance.

Eye sight is irrelevant. If you can see 3 miles away, you are golden. If you can only see three feet in front of you, you are going to have to go on a walk to check your range up close and personal. Grab some shoes and get over it. But what if a baby crawls in your way after you check? If babies are crawling around anywhere near your launch range, I would castrate you for shooting at either a target or the sky just alike.

Now, simply because people are more likely to read an abbreviated version of the rules, does not we should cut them down a notch. Can we all guess why? Well, lets put it this way. The rules were once much shorter, and easier to read. Unfortunately there are people out there around whom rules are written to prevent repeat behavior. Saying we need shorter rules is saying there are rules we can afford to loose. Perhaps the IRS can drop business deductions or 501(c) exemptions as well, for those with readaphobia.

Since you are obviously not much into reading large blocks of text, I will end this post with an anecdote. One year at the IPLA event north of Vegas, we had some officers drive up on our shooting. They were in the area on another call, and of course stopped in to check us out as well. They recalled an incident in which some folks were discharging firearms in our very location. Of course these shooters violated the sacred 'know what's downrange' rule, so it is no surprise that things went wrong. An off duty officer was tagged in the head by a falling bullet while riding his ATV and killed.

Now, considering these same officers were also rather impressed with our launcher demos, and were perfectly fine with us shooting them there all weekend long, perhaps you too can get over it?

P.S. As for accidentally hitting some innocent creature of nature? Our launcher's carbon emissions undoubtedly do more harm. By the way, don't sit down, you may inadvertently crush dozens of dust mites.

[SEAKING9006]

I'm fairly certain this guy is a troll now. He has already blatantly put down at least two individual sports, and has repeatedly made false statements upon ungodly numbers.

And pretty much everything I see this guy post is inflammatory in at least one way. There's no way in hell you will get 1400 ft/lbs out of a first cannon. Larda's hybrid is the only thing you can REMOTELY call a 'first' and break 1400 ft/lbs with. And he ain't Larda.

Therefore, Mr Bad Example here, has proven on multiple instances that he is incapable of keeping his flap shut when he wants to make an argument that many people will later disagree with, and I'm 95% sure he does that on purpose. I reiterate from an earlier thread;

This guy's a troll. I used to be one, they're fairly easy to spot.

[i-will]

the furthest i ever want to shoot is about 300ft. and that's with an airsoft gun in a controlled environment. never in a populated area. i live on the edge of Dallas so i can find a suitable field easily. unless u got access to unpopulated land distance shouldn't be a factor in ur cannon design. and with a little math u can find out distance without trying to find a huge field.

[FordGtMan]

a couple of years ago, a MLB pitcher killed a seagull with a pitch of a baseball in a regulation game.

Ahhh, yes... Randy Johnson's Bird kill. I saw that game

and golf, as far as i'm concerned is the biggest waste of time and real estate, outside of graveyards.

That is the most wrong statement i have ever heard. What sport do you do that matches golf's skill requirement? Has it ever occurred to you that the most skilled players in the world are golfers? Probably not asshole.

[MrCrowley]

That is the most wrong statement i have ever heard. What sport do you do that matches golf's skill requirement? Has it ever occurred to you that the most skilled players in the world are golfers? Probably not asshole.

Let's not get in a sport debate here, but that's not true either. Yes you have to be very skilled to play golf, but that doesn't mean they're the most skilled 'players' in the world. Chuck them on a cricket pitch and they're gone.


I think there's nothing left to say on the original topic. If another mod wants it open, so be it.