SpudFiles

I've been designing a very aerodynamic round that is fired out of a 3" barrel with Great Stuff sabots for the purpose of range firing, when I realized something fairly obvious: Getting a range requires retreiving your rounds. And aerodynamic darts have a tendency to be terro-dynamic on impact, burying themselves good and deep. So I was wondering what methods work well for finding rounds after firing them 1/4+ mile.

I've thought about using that orange contractor's twine on the end of it, but it would just bunch up in the hole on impact. And I don't have any RFID readers, although that would be nice ^__^

How about something like this http://www.deepskyrocketshop.co.uk/prod ... 3d3914de74 maybe you could modify it so it goes off on impact? I'm sure there are many deviances of that idea out there so good luck.

Build a GPS receiver into the dart and track it.

For a large projectile, you could have it loaded with low pressure air, a needle, and a burst disc. On impact, the needle would pop the disc and shoot a load of flour up out of the back of the round, which would be sticking up, assuming the round is weighted at the front.

But if he is shooting that far away how will you see a sudden poof of flour ?

Perhaps a metal detector? Or hire a whole bunch of “cheap labor” guys to scour the field. Or, building on Noname’s idea, instead of flower, hi-visibility paint, chaff, or a coil of caution tape with a weight on one end and tied to the bolt/dart at the other.

If it was clear you could put a glow stick in it. You could mold a wax round (not recommended, mine just fell apart) and put an LED in it. You could tie a string to the round and then tie the other end to your finger (highly not recommended, mainly because you will end up in the hospital)

Or just do some calculations with projectile, windage, energy transferred to it, and angle of shot. That way you could grid your shot target zone if you had a nice liitle topo map and a good sense of math etc. Or borrow a marine artillery officer and ask him to do the math.

I really like the audible tracking because I'm too cheap for GPS, and we'll have a spotter nearish to where it should land, but we won't be able to get that close (Bithmuth spike at 100 mph = not cool to be under). Although the flour idea is really creative.

I forget the firearms provisions in New York state but I am pretty sure putting a smokebomb in the projectile would make it illegal...anyone know?

Flaming and/or incindiary projectiles are illegal, both in the US and on this forum, I suggest you end this idea beofre the trouble starts.

How about dry ice?

For recovering at night, I would use a high power LED light installed in the rear (providing it is front heavy), during the day I would install a loud chirping device that would chirp (beep) every 10 seconds or so.

Just give it a streamer of brightly coloured material. It may bunch up on landing but you'll see exactly where it lands.

A metre or so of bright orange ribbon would do the trick

Trailing any string/ribbon will majorly reduce range.

The first thing you should do is calculate an expected range.

The best idea I can give is glow-in-the-dark paint and doing it at night with solid ground.

The other option is dragging a huge tarpulin/similar thin flat sheet over your target area, and then searching for the hole in it.

Or do the flour idea only it releases a neon colored balloon filled with hellium or hydrogen which ever gas you have you can get your hands.
It hits and you have a balloon floating 1-2 feet off the deck.