Checking on progress with the RIKA

So tonight became a session with the RIKA to check to see (objectively) how the hold has improved, with some nice results.

Started off a bit late as work ran on, got into the kit, hooked up the RIKA and started dry-firing to get settled, then some warm-up shots to cernter myself, then fired some calibration shots for the RIKA:

RIKA Calibration shots

Then we covered the screen of the RIKA (so I wouldn’t be distracted) and shot a few ten-shot strings:

RIKA String 1

My head was *not* in the game for that one 🙂 Took a few minutes, centered myself a little, and continued on:

RIKA String 2

And of course the RIKA didn’t capture that string properly (for some reason the software only recorded seven of the ten shots). So back to the line and put in another ten:

RIKA String 3

Not as good as the second string, but it did turn out to be instructive – you can clearly tell on the RIKA trace that that 7 is from the trigger, not the hold:

You can also see from comparing with earlier RIKA traces that the hold has gotten much, much better. For example, this was last night:

RIKA Trace Composite 18.08.11

Okay, it’s a bit easier to see with just the trace from a single shot. So here’s a single average shot from last night:

RIKA Trace x-y graph

And here’s one from three months ago:

RIKA Trace x-y graph from 25.05.11

The amplitude of the vertical wobble is about the same, but the left-right wobble is much less and so is the drift (the longer-term wobble caused by sway and other large position problems) – and that earlier graph was the best I could find from that session, but the one from last night was average – there were better ones than that last night:

RIKA Trace x-y graph

I mean, that’s nearly textbook, right there. Now, to get that to happen every time…. 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.