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Chronograph

you don't test or calibrate a chronograph with a un-known velocity load and ALL loads have un-known velocities. this is because all guns are different. a chronograph is basically a fancy electronic stop watch.... it counts time in fractions of a second. I have used a chronograph in our family business (Aero Space) for about fifty years. first you calibrate them with an oscilloscope. next, I've reloaded for right at 53 years and I really can't imagine what use a chronograph would ever have to the average reloader .... esp. cheap ones that have no accuracy at all.... you may get consistent reading but trust me they are rarely anywhere near accurate. my old chronograph was accurate time wise to 11 places to the right of the decimal point of one second. still a great unit but the vac. tubes became a pain in the back side to replace. can't tell you what we now use as it's classified but I can tell you we don't use an Ohler unit and never have. and ours is a fraction of Ohlers prices. industry uses a screen spacing of ten feet, this alone increases effective accuracy but this is kinda difficult to do with a small prepackaged unit so all the retail makers went to short screen spacing and on top of that overly round off numbers... end result is pure s...
I can get as accurate readings with a pocket calculator and use the known energy/pound of the powder used..... use the Noble Abell equation. can't tell you how many times I've proven that velocity claims by various persons were pure fantasy. even if the person used an expensive chronograph simply because the velocity excided the theoretical max that powder could produce.

but if you happen to be a speed junkie like me..... then you'll need a real chronograph cause none of these cheap units can measure excess of 4,000 fps..... far short of the goal of 5,000 fps we have long worked toward to get true capillary damage and instant death. we first got those speeds with sabots, wonderful little things but built in accuracy problems. forget the sabots and using the powders then known it was impossible til now with the new generation of powders..... no nothing you'll see on the shelves for many years, if ever. funny part is that many of these new super-speed powders are easy to make and safe to make. material costs of under $10./pound. and can make them in your garage.

enough of that side tracked and probably boring you with the true goals that friends like Roy Weatherby had in mind years ago. an idea my dad put in his head.... back when he was doing development work for the army medical corp. 5,000 fps is what roy put in print many times. that's the speed you begin to get capillary shock....... proven by thousands of real live medical experiments done by the army......a BB at 5,000plus fps kills instantly regardless of where it hits...... speed does kill and is now available to us but no one is putting them in a standard rifle. read, learn and enter the new world of hypervelocity.

botton line don't drink the cool-aid put out by chronograph con men, your just giving away your hard earned money
 
Smokeless powder burns at 5k. Add barrel friction and air resistance. 5k is unobtainable. Short of new propellants that don't rely on nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose the only way you will get to 5k and maintain it is electrons. Rail guns are the future.

And a 5k bb to the foot might wreck your foot but it ain't gonna kill you.
 
twitch...... yes the new propellants don't contain either nitrocellulose nor nitroglycerin and all of their burn speeds exceed 5,000 meters per second..... they were the reason the definition of a detonation had to be redefined back in the 80's... they were faster burning than what had been defined as a detonation however they don't detonate.... they are just very fast burning, due in part to their very fine grain size. they are combined/mixed at near molecular levels. they also don't produce the extremely damaging shock waves of a detonation. our family company has been developing, producing and using them in various gov. projects for... well since the start. lol why go to a rail gun and all it's technology and power requirements and massive expense when it can be done with conventional weapons. the military has always had a warped twisted mindset that bigger and more expensive is better and is the only way to get results...... that's why they couldn't accept or believe it when we killed three german tiger tanks with a special load in a browning .50.... one shot thru the frontal ammor and killed the tank. done in a demo. for all the top military brass so many years ago..... just one of the reasons my dad left the army weapons development group and went private.
and as to the damage a high velocity projectile will do... that was done and proven at Aberdeen proving grounds by the army medical corp back over 60 years ago, with LIVE testing. something the army has never wanted to admit to. the info. is all in the library on the base if you can get into those files. my advantage was being related to the man that did the work for them... last time I contacted them the head of the library was very nice and helpful.

to get back on subject a little more..... there are ic counters available cheap on the electronics market, cheap in part because they only go to a few decimal places and as such not usable but like batteries they can be connected in series to expand the number of decimal places.... you connect several of them together and you can make your own chronograph far more accurate than any of the retail units. remember to cut the wires for both the front and rear pick-up the same length.... have to account for the nano seconds travel to your counter. you can even use break screens and print them on regular paper with a ink jet printer using conductive ink..... no more worry of hitting an expensive sensor. yeah your results will be in nothing but time, fractions of a sec. and you then just convert it to speed... easy math anyone should be able to do the simple math. or make and use a chart..... then you'll have a useful unit.
 
I'm on the fence about buying a Chronograph. Yes, I would like one, do I really need one? I've been reloading for about 25 years without it. I only reload 9mm and .45ACP and so far I haven't blown anything up by sticking to the "mid-range loads" in the powder makers manuals and reading a lot on the web forums. I don't shoot any competitions that require a power factor so I'm just looking for loads that are accurate and powerful enough to cycle my guns with standard springs.

I like the Labradar technology but at around $600 it seems out of my budget. I would think the Labradar technology could be incorporated into a few lanes at an indoor range without too much trouble. I'd be willing to pay extra for a couple of hours of range time for that benefit!
 
twitch...... yes the new propellants don't contain either nitrocellulose nor nitroglycerin and all of their burn speeds exceed 5,000 meters per second..... they were the reason the definition of a detonation had to be redefined back in the 80's... they were faster burning than what had been defined as a detonation however they don't detonate.... they are just very fast burning, due in part to their very fine grain size. they are combined/mixed at near molecular levels. they also don't produce the extremely damaging shock waves of a detonation. our family company has been developing, producing and using them in various gov. projects for... well since the start. lol why go to a rail gun and all it's technology and power requirements and massive expense when it can be done with conventional weapons. the military has always had a warped twisted mindset that bigger and more expensive is better and is the only way to get results...... that's why they couldn't accept or believe it when we killed three german tiger tanks with a special load in a browning .50.... one shot thru the frontal ammor and killed the tank. done in a demo. for all the top military brass so many years ago..... just one of the reasons my dad left the army weapons development group and went private.
and as to the damage a high velocity projectile will do... that was done and proven at Aberdeen proving grounds by the army medical corp back over 60 years ago, with LIVE testing. something the army has never wanted to admit to. the info. is all in the library on the base if you can get into those files. my advantage was being related to the man that did the work for them... last time I contacted them the head of the library was very nice and helpful.

to get back on subject a little more..... there are ic counters available cheap on the electronics market, cheap in part because they only go to a few decimal places and as such not usable but like batteries they can be connected in series to expand the number of decimal places.... you connect several of them together and you can make your own chronograph far more accurate than any of the retail units. remember to cut the wires for both the front and rear pick-up the same length.... have to account for the nano seconds travel to your counter. you can even use break screens and print them on regular paper with a ink jet printer using conductive ink..... no more worry of hitting an expensive sensor. yeah your results will be in nothing but time, fractions of a sec. and you then just convert it to speed... easy math anyone should be able to do the simple math. or make and use a chart..... then you'll have a useful unit.

Zzzzzzzz.
 
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