I dunno. 5 shots in 20 seconds at 600 yards resulting in a group of 0.349" seems both fast and accurate to me. (The actual shooting demo starts at 2:28. The first part is interesting tech stuff).
That brings up an interesting point regarding the usefulness of tensioned barrels vs. tuners to dampen vibration. Tensioned barrels are kind of a brute force approach but have worked very well for some people. I think most benchresters are using tuners, though.
What do you mean by "chassis"? In all the videos thus far posted, the rifles are just rifles. The barrels are heavy and the stocks pretty massive, but they're just well-made rifles. They're all being shot from atop well-made, well-designed sandbag rests at both front and rear.
I've never been interested in that type of shooting, but it is interesting. It seems like the rest is just as important as the gun; it's all one system.
That's porn for machining enthusiasts.
Yes, but they could be made along the same lines as a bolt gun. They just aren't.
Oh, those. Well, I don't like those but I can see why some people use them for heavy recoiling rifles.
I see the rail gun setups in the video. Not a lot of human interactions. Set it up to auto feed and remote trigger and you can stay at home and shoot remotely. Not sure how much skill in involved except with setup. I would imagine your reloading skill would mean more than any shooting experience you have. All the videos have the gun resting in a cradle for the front and a rest in the back. Is there a bipod class? Or prone class of contest? This just looks extremely expensive if your not a machinist. Thanks Ben for posting this up. As you can tell I have little to no experience with style of shooting. My comments are based on trying to learn the in and outs of the sport. I'm not trying to bash or degrade in any way. I guess I imagined people shooting the old fashion way of holding the rifle at these challenges.
Bingo. Nobody wins a benchrest match unless they know how to use sandbags.
I guess so. There are many long videos on YT showing a benchrest rifle being made. They're weak sauce compared to the few YT vids that show the building of a rail gun. If somebody wants "porn for machining enthusiasts", those are the vids to watch.
No, you've got the wrong idea.
You say cradle. I say sandbags. We're both right. Except in the most experimental class and in (again, iirc) rimfire BR, the rules require a sandbag so there is one between the rifle and the front rest.
Reloading means a lot, for sure. They do it right there at the range, sometimes tuning loads for the conditions. I don't think that means more than shooting experience though since some successful benchresters find reloading on site to be an unneeded mental distraction. So things go both ways.
IIRC, there was an experiment with an AR-centric class that used bipods. I've been away for too long to know if it survives. I do know there are several smaller benchrest matches that use bipods but I don't know about anything with world wide participation and sanction like is shown in the videos. If anybody has info on such a thing, I'd love to hear about it.
And there are F-Class classes (F-TR) where bipods are used, too.
I see nothing you've posted as bashing in any way. You're just asking some (very good) questions. I like that.
Oh, that exists, too, in a hundred variations. Obviously, it doesn't fall under the classification of "benchrest" but there are off-hand and supported off-hand rifle matches of every type you can imagine.
