Finé, or How I Fired My Shot In Spite Of Myself

Just a few hours ago I fired my last shot until next summer, providing I pass THE QUALIFIERS. It didn't go as well as I would have liked, but it went. Thats whats important. Maybe I should say, I didn't prepare it as well as I would have liked; I lucked out.

In addion to the liquid nitrogen fun I had yesterday, while I was measuring my target I dragged the instrument across the mirror. Twice. Now this is the same mirror that I stayed up late depositing last night. The mirror is basically a thin layer (about 500 nanometers thick) of condensed aluminum vapor. It should not be touched, or even breathed on. And I dragged a piece of steel across it. Big oops. The good news is that I still got a good signal, so I could continue with the experiment.

Next I epoxied pins and whatnot on my target, and happened to put a little string of epoxy on my mirror. Fortunately five-minute epoxied cleans up well if you're fast.

Aside from all that, my experiment went well. The data I got doesn't make any sense, unless soda-lime glass is in fact worthless, junk glass that won't give consistent data.

Since you may want to see some of what I'm talking about, here's a before and after picture of the projectile and a before picture of the target. The target was unavailable for comments following the shot.