Miller's post totally baffles me. The theoretical time of flight in a vacuum seems to be dependent on MV and only MV... assuming constant gravity vector. Is Newton wrong too?
No; Newton is not wrong. Yes; the theoretical time of flight in a vacuum is based solely on Muzzle Velocity. It can be calculated by using the muzzle velocity & the range. Thus if a bullet were fired in a vacuum at 1250 FS over a 100 yd (300') range it would arrive in .24 seconds. When the atmosphere is thrown into the mix the the Drag factor comes in. I did not have a time of flight table I could immediately lay hands on but did have a muzzle & 100 yd velocity chart for the standard Velocity vs the a HV round. With both using a standard 40 gr bullet the HV round lost 290 fps over the 100 yds while the SV round lost only 171 Fps. At 1335 FPS the Theoretical TOF for the HV round would have been .225 Sec's while at 1145 FPS the theoretical TOF for the SV round would have been.262 Sec's.
Wind Drift is calculated, not from the actual time of flight in the air, but from the difference from the theoretical TOF to the actual. In this case the standard velocity round has less difference than the HV therefore it had less wind drift. This situation occurs only at this velocity level & occurs because of the greatly increased drag encountered as the sound barrier is broken. "Barrier" here is more than just a figure of speech.
