TargetTalk

I am only aware of 3 electronic trainers, The Rika, the Scatt and the Noptel. Can anyone gice comparative information on these units. What you like or don't like. Advantages to each and such. Also, can additional targets be added to the soft ware such as "silhouette animals"?

One of my main interests is shot to shot accuracy. I know that these "are not designed to replace shooting scores on paper" but it still erks me to calabrate a unit and then see that the next shot is not where it should be. Does one of these units hold a calabration better or have a more accurate design?????

I have a Noptel and had a Rika. The Noptel is a great tool and is very accurate. One very nice bonus is the possibility of live fire with the Noptel. I know it can be done with the others too but it is an uphill battle. We shoot in winter on a range with electronic targets. I made up a reflector card to mount on the electronic target and shot on both the electronic target and the Noptel at the same time. The two systems were not always in total agreement but were very close.

My club just purchased a noptel system. The main problem I saw was that you never gonna get it on perfect for the electronic part so if you live fire it might be hard to get them both to agree. Also I just used it of sand bags to see how it worked and I noticed the shots would slowly move in a direction. I think for that much there are things you could puchase to help you instead. But thats just what I feel about the electronic trainers.

I had the same problem with my Noptel. Mine is an Anschutz version (made by Noptel for Anschutz). The sensor mounts to the forearm. The mount on all of these is the weakest part of the system. I found that the stock forearm would move a little due to varying pressure and with the barrel mounted ones (rika I had) the mount would slip a little. I wound up making a new mount. I used a Burris signature scope ring. These have spherical plastic inserts. I turned a bushing on the lathe to allow the scope ring to clamp to the rifle barrel. I then mounted a scope base to my noptel sensor. The scope ring lives on the barrel. The spherical part of the scope ring allows the sensor to be adjusted and clamped tight. Once it is setup the sensor can be installed and removed with no further zeroing also it does not move around at all.

This is the mount that comes with it:

This is mine:

I have a Noptel Sports II. So far I only use it for Air rifle and air pistol.
In the beginning I have a little problem setting it up, but the Noptel support people are great. The software is easy to use. There are 3 types of zeroing; they are (1) One-shot zero, (2) one shot and drag with your mouse cursor to where you think the shot should be, and (3) 10-shot average. I left the optical unit on my air rifle for the last 4 months now because I shoot it about 3 times a week and don’t want to take it off. Even after taking my air rifle in and out off my case, I never have to re-adjust my optical unit. The shots stay at the same spot. It is very accurate.

Our host Scott P. sells the Rika. Maybe he got something to say or maybe he already did. He maybe the “Guest” shown above.

Forgot to mention one important thing about Noptel Sport II, The targets are made from plastic with reflectors only, no wires, no transmitter, no optical unit , and no wireless anything, unlike the Rika and the SCATT. This means it is easy to mount anywhere and don’t have to worry about tripping over the wires or aligning the target with the rifle sensor.

Another wireless training system is SAM , the current generation of trainers being upgraded all feature USB port compatibility, and i was told by the owner of our leading shooting sports equipment dealer who knows the manufacturer of the SCATT system that they are developing a wireless version too.

What he also told me and i dont know if this is correct is that the wireless modes in all these trainers tend to be less accurate than the wired versions in their ability to resolve decimbal places (e.g 10.5's showing up as 10.1'setc).

But this is do know since i recently saw the demo of a wired USB - SCATT and SAM, when you live fire and the system does not match the actual shot you can go into i think some sort of administrative mode (dont remember exactly what it was called) and fine tune the system again to show it what the shot really was, after 2-3 such calibrations the system as we saw it in the demo was spot on for the remaining 20-30 shots we tried.