Still haven’t unpacked the trailer — that’s for tomorrow — but the wife casually announced that “next year I’m flying in” to Boomershoot. THAT MEANS SHE’S COMING BACK!!! I knew I’d hooked her, and she admitted it, but that’s the proof right there.
Makes me feel like cranking this — BoA’s Energetic:
The thund’rous drums are a pale echo of the boomers, but the energy level was easily that high for us the whole week. Best Boomershoot Ever.
I’m engaged also. I have challenged myself to try to come up with a video system which will substitute for a spotter. After consulting with several guys I know who are into portable video equipment (one puts it on HO-scale model trains!), I am convinced that this can be done, and for not TOO much moolah.
My first experiment will be a bread-board lashup of my old Sony Hi-8 camera and my spotting scope. I’m going to put that together this week and see if the concept is worth pursuing further. Physics says there ought to be a point where the focal planes of the two optics ought to mesh. My only question is whether the resulting images on the camera will be any good. If it works in analog, I will get a digital video cam and play with that. I know that this can be done with a 5-figure cam with long lens attached to same, but I want to see if it can be cobbled out of lesser components.
If I can pull this off, it will be a boon to anyone who wants to come to Boomershoot, but can’t get a full-time (or even half-time) spotter. Who knows, but if it works well enough, it could become the norm for equipment carried to Boomershoot.
Excellent idea! For what it’s worth, somebody put his camera up to the viewfinder of my Burris Landmark spotting scope and said the resulting image was very good.
Aha! Do you remember what make and model that camera was, by any chance?
In the skull session where two of us put the idea together, we figured out that there will have to be either a separate table to hold it, or maybe a Surveyor’s tripod. It obviously can’t be on the shooter’s table.
The setup needs to be directly behind the shooter if it’s going to have any chance of seeing bullet trace. I propose getting a video screen from a wrecked SUV (most of those monitors are made by Sharp, and are excellent quality) and mounting it in a box with a face-shield. The camera will have to have a remote (my old Sony does) to rewind and play back the shot, as well as starting the camera before the shot is taken.
This whole system should work well with mil-dot technique, which is difficult to master early on.
I don’t remember the camera, but I think it might have been owned by the fellow with Laurel of Politics, Guns and Beer blog — her husband, I suspect. You could hit her up with the query.