I struggle with how a wind blowing perpendicular to the swing of the indicator will provide an indication. It might sway it if not exactly perpendicular, but I don't see the indication being much help with deterimining the strength of the wind.
Yes, you can wait for the same conditions for every shot. And if the matches had a Mercedes in the prize pool, that is probably what would be done. But these are club matches with nothing but bragging rights when they are done. So, making corrections for the wind conditions being read by the spotter goes a long way to understanding the effects on the projectile downrange. Same is true with mirage and the combination of the two.
We are moving to smaller targets at Wilton to increase the challenge and IMHO, the fun. Perfect scores are nice, but when you tend to shoot them regularly, it indicates that the match is not challenging the shooter sufficiently. We just cooked up a plan to hold what will be called 3-minute matches. Each target is 3 minutes in diameter for every yardage from 50 to 500. This will make it tough for the iron sight guys because small targets are hard to see. But they shoot against each other, so everyone is on the same playing field. We will probably hold an iron sight only match with these targets to demonstrate what can be done. It's important to keep it fun and not discourage the shooters that don't have the skills. Old eyes, shaky fingers and reluctance to learn and improve have to be taken into consideration. It is also an opportunity to learn and at Wilton, pretty much all the shooters are willing to coach others to make them better. If they end up beating you, now you have the challenge to get better.
Getting back to the topic, we have shooters who are old hands at long range shooting that still do not believe that the wind and mirage play a significant role. Not sure why they refuse to accept the effects of the wind. But they suffer in their scores because they refuse to correct in order to accommodate for those two variables. You can lead a horse to water...