High-Tech Target Systems Plot Shots Automatically
We live in a digital, electronic era. The very story you’re reading right now consists of digital data packets transmitted electronically around the globe. Because of cost factors, 99+% of shooting matches in the USA still rely on old-fashioned manual scoring methods. However, target scoring can be done faster and more precisely with electronic scoring systems. Olympic and international CISM shooting competitions now employ electronic target systems. And electronic scoring is widely used in Europe. Virtually all the rifle and pistol events at the recent ISSF World Championships in Munich featured electronic scoring — complete with large, overhead digital displays so the audience could track the action, shot for shot.
Below is a video showing an electronic scoring system developed by Norway’s Kongsberg Mikroelektronikk AS. Watch as a prone shooter puts five rounds on a 300m target. You can see the group form on the video screen at his shooting station. He’s a good shooter (with an accurate rifle). The first three shots are touching.
As you can see from the video, viewing shots on the monitor is easier than using a spotting scope and waiting for targets to be marked. And, electronic targets eliminate the need for target pullers in the pits.
The Kongsberg target systems, like the electronic systems produced by Sius Ascor of Switzerland, do more than just display shot locations to the shooter. The target units automatically calculate scores, which are transmitted to a central computer. This can provide updated competitor rankings, and can even display the results to event spectators on large view screens.
CLICK HERE for a longer streaming Flash VIDEO showing how electronic target systems work. This video, produced by Sius Ascor, shows Olympic target systems in action.
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Tags: Digital, Digital Scoring, Electronic Target, ISSF, Kongsberg, Munich, Sius Ascor
That’s pretty cool… good shooting too, for the wind that’s blowing!
I’m keen on the system, wouldn’t need a partner when testing or practicing alone; just wondering what the “cost of admission” is to play in that game?
I wonder about the price as well.
For me, part of the fun of shooting is walking down to the targets and patching them. Never seeing your own target in person, just too sterile to me.
Steel is OK since it’s ON/OFF situation, you either hit or miss (and good spotter can even tell which way you missed). But for paper, I want to touch it…
Kongsberg has a US distributor: http://www.actiontarget.com
They even produce wireless targets using a laptop as the monitor.
It works at + 1000meters.
What about scopes – who does this work with a 60 or 80 power March? (a vastly different shooting style to tunnel iron sights).
impressive shooting!!
@Rikky:
The target works regardless of sights or range. You can put any type of target figure in front of the system (animal, silhuette, traditional target etc).
They are pricey ( a lot of the money is in the monitor, but you can use a pc instead), but if you remove the cost of all the spotting scopes…
This doesn’t appear to be a “stand-alone” single-shooter system. What the product specs shows is an integrated system for multiple shooters as a permanently installed & networked electronic scoring system.
i had the pleasure of shooting with a reserve National Guard shooter at Winnequah Gun Club last year. He had a Very Cool and QUITE PORTABLE electronic scoring device – courtesy of your and my tax dollars – that he was using for unaccompanied 600 yard practice that day.
He brought it with him, he took it home when he was done.
He’d kindly invited me to put some rounds on his target, which I declined to do once he’d told me the quoted price for one of these systems was in the neighborhood of $35,000.
Each.
Quite a few of the full bore clubs in Australia have gone with this system, and it seems to be working well. Perth have all their clubs on the system and run 20 targets, and in Sydney we have an installation of about a dozen targets about to start. Exciting times for long range shooting.
I think what Rikki is asking about is the suitability for any-sight matches–either High Power or F-Class–where the shooter uses a high-magnification riflescope. Since these targets don’t have scoring rings on them, the shooters will have a hard time finding the target center with the cross-hair.
Tony Chow has it. The answer seems to be we put a target in front of the screen then select that style from the computer. Fine when I shot with the military.
But with a 60x March I can see bullet holes way back now, and we destroy the centre of the target at the closer ranges which means the Butts are always replacing the centre.
How does an electronic system cope with this level of abuse?
The Area 52 range in Texas has Konsberg targets at 300m,600m,800m, and 1000m that are available to use. the range is set up with a common firing line so you could shoot at 300m and then simply walk down the firing line to shoot 1000m in less than a few minutes set up time. VERY NEAT
I have shot on a Sius Ascor wireless system at 600y. The system was about $15,000 ….or the user told me.
I have just returned from Canada where I was at a demonstration for the new ASCHERRIA (sp)system that was developed in Germany specifically for long range full bore shooting where portability and ease in set up were critical in the design of the wireless unit. A VERY HIGH TECH unit and very robust to withstand the rigors of high power shooting.See their website…cool stuff
Roy
I was wrong about the spelling of the company in the above post.
Go to ASCHERA Espot target systems at wwww.aschera.com to view the web page.
The unit can be set up in less than 15 minutes and is very user friendly.
To be more exact, the site is http://www.aschera.de, and the system’s name is eSpot.
This system is actually very close to a design I’ve been envisioning: a rigid metallic beam on which all sensors are mounted, modularizing the system and reducing the cost.
Some problems are still not addressed though. For F-Class and any-sight matches, the targets will need to be pasted up regularly, and if the center is damaged enough they would have to be refaced, necessitating another calibration. The problem is even bigger for XTC matches, as yard-line and target changes cannot be performed quickly–the need to change the target face twice during the match means that you’d have to recalibrate the target twice in the middle of the match.
For XTC matches, at least, this system is not yet practical.
Hi, I am the Aschera agent for North America. Last week I demo’d the system to Roy and others at the Canadian national fullbore matches in Ottawa, which included inviting people to fire on it at 900m.
For iron sight shooting, all that is required is a black aiming circle of the correct diameter, since that’s all that the shooter can see anyhow. For scope shooting, an actual target face is needed, in order to give the shooter a high quality aiming point with rings to assist holding off etc. Repair is not a big deal, in fact it is no worse than what we presently already do with manually operated targets – when the target is too shot-up visually, a new target centre is pasted on (actually since each hole is not being patched over, which can obscure the lines near the shot hole, replacement of the centre should be a bit less frequent)
While target face changes during a match are required, that can be a ten-second job if for each aiming mark you make up a piece of cardboard or corplast, and velcro it in place on your target board. No calibration will be needed if each board is centred up (which is easy to do with great accuracy with just a few small witness marks). We have the same “problem” today, which we solve quite practically – when installing a wear centre on the target, we need to put it reasonably close to the middle of the target. It’s pretty straightforward for anybody to align a wear centre very closely to exactly where it should go (alignment lines etc).