[jeffba]

Hi Lynwood,

I left there in 1995. Cool work, but low pay. When I was there we used smokeless powder. the bullet was an aluminum ball It was held in the barrel with a sabot.

The powder was lit off and propelled a piston that compressed either helium or hydrogen (I do not remember which). It compressed the light gas to the point of rupturing a burst disk. That escaping gas propelled the "bullet' down the barrel into a vacuum.

The sabot was nylon and it was traveling so fast that it would leave a footprint in the steel plate stripper, just like making a handprint in cement.

I was an electronic tech. So may job was instrumentation and control. I also did some work with the targets. At the time we had 3 guns. .17 caliber, .357, and 1 inch. The 1 inch I always wanted to shoot into the night sky. At those speeds I envisioned a man made meteor.

My idea for the laser intervelometer beat out the design that a physicist came up with. Mine was simpler and easier to to get repeatable results. It took about 20 manhours to turn the .357 around for a second shot. More depending on the target.