Learning to Live With A Chronograph

[Mr. Neutron]

For those toying with the idea of a chronograph, I'll speak to my limited experiences with my entry level Caldwell Ballistic Precision Chrono I bought several weeks ago. I didn't buy their kit, which comes with a tripod (supposedly a crummy one, going by the reviews) and lighted sunscreens. My photographer wife graciously donated one of her many tripods, so that's covered. She found some of her used tripods at the local Goodwill store, on the cheap. I don't know if the LED-lighted sunscreens from Caldwell's kit would help in low light, late afternoon/early evening outdoor lighting or not. I think that's mostly for indoor shooting. I could NOT get it to read a shot from my BB gun in that kinda lighting at home after I first unboxed it. But it does work from the late summer hours of, say, 9 a.m. to 6:30~ish p.m. every day since, using the sun screens ya git. One day I'll try taping my little Harbor Freight LED flashlights to the sunscreens I have to see what happens in those crummy light situations.

I don't like dealing with the chronograph at the local range. It has to be set up with as perfect of pitch, roll, and yaw as you can get. Parallel to the bullets path, square to the muzzle, and as level left-to-right as you can get it. And at the right distance and height from the muzzle, so any muzzle blast won't rattle the thing, and at the right height for the bullet to pass through, hitting "the sweet spot" over the sensors to record shots, but not hitting the chrono itself. I did punch it once with my BB gun at around 550 fps, and now have a little shallow divot in the plastic screen protector.
Wouldn't be that lucky with, say, my .22 or bigger guns. Anyway, getting the goofy thing set up while the range is temporarily cold, and folks are wanting to return to shooting, is a pain to me. It's probably easier to live with at a home range, or times when you have your shooting area all to yourself, as far as setup is concerned.

And it comes with a cord to hook up to a phone, tablet, or laptop. You can download a free app, and it will save groups & calculate all the nerdy facts for ya. I could not get it to come to speaking terms with my iPhone mini13. I tried 2 different adapters for the phone-to-cord connection (one directly from Apple, on Caldwell's recommendation), and neither worked. It plugs directly into and does work with my old Android Motorola phone, so now that phone goes to the range with the chronograph. When I show up to shoot, it looks like I'm gonna have a yard sale at the range. If you only use it to read the velocities on the screen, record the numbers with pencil and paper, and punch the values into an online ballistic progroam of some sort, you can get the same sorta facts and nerd stuff that the app does, if you're into that sorta stuff. You won't have to deal with connectivity issues this way.

I have had issues with it not reading shots sometimes, but almost always when the light was marginal or not good for whatever reason. Yesterday, it never missed a beat. These things can be frustrating as hell when they don't work right, and kinda cool at times when they do work as they should. Be prepared for a slight learning curve with these types of tripod mounted sensor reading shot timer/computer gizzies. Use a BB gun or .22 to learn with, as the ammo is cheaper, or with the BB gun, it might survive a direct hit. A Nerf gun would likely be best of all, I guess. I sent a few of my reloads through, and it didn't record them on my first trip to the range with it a coupla weeks ago. Same for factory loads, on that day. That kinda pi$$ed me off a tiny bit.

I'm slowly building trust in the velocity readings I'm getting. My BB gun is CO2 powered. As shots go on and the compressed gas gets used up, it progressively shows slower velocity readings. It's pretty much good for 60 shots before it needs more gas. And this shows on the chronograph readings. You see a gradual recuction of FPS readings in the numbers as you keep shooting, followed by an increase in velocity when I replace the cylinders. This is as it should be. For my shooting yesterday with my reloads for my 30-30, a 4-shot group showed an average velocity of 2400 FPS. It showed an average for 3 shots with my son's .270 Savage 110 of 2975 fps using green & yellow box Remington factory loads. Which again, is probbly as it should be. The values for his .270 Winchester are pretty much what most folks actually get with their rifles for these factory rounds. I was just happy it recorded his velocities later in the afternoon, and showed expected numbers.

Be interested in others' experiences and problem solving.

[GunnyGene]

.22 and smaller is always doubtful. Primarily because the projectile doesn't create a big enough shadow to trigger the pickups. I use a on-line calculator and enter velocities manually to get the statistical data.

https://www.calculator.net/statistics-calculator.html

Then use JBM for the ballistics.

https://www.jbmballistics.com/cgi-bin/jbmtraj-5.1.cgi

[220]

I got my first crohny back in the mid 90's when the first affordable ones started hitting the market.
Cant say I have ever really had an issue with it and still using it to this day, would be thousands and thousands of shots over it with everything from 17-45cal.
They do require a bit of trial and error getting them at the right height and position so not ideal on a public range.
Getting on for 30 years old so it has none of the bells and whistles the newer models do, it does nothing but record and display each shot, no interface with anything, no shot strings averages SD or anything else. Probably why I have never had a problem and it is still working. I dont find it hard to manually write down each velocity and work out averages etc from the raw data.

[Mr. Neutron]

It seems as if when the outdoor light is "right" (still a little confused on what exactly what that is), this thing works wonderfully. It picks up every shot, as it did yesterday afternoon. I know if things are "right", it picks up BBs, pellets, and .22 projectiles.

The days when the outdoor light is late afternoon/early evening (the sun's angle makes the light come in from one side instead of overhead, basically. Which possibly messes with the image or shadow that it's expecting to see??? If it's not happy with the light, it seems to be VERY finicky and it gets a buncha error readings or just completely misses shots. I don't think its only the Caldwell brand that has these problems, as reviews of most all brands with this style of sunshades seem to have this issue from time to time.

Please don't get me wrong. I sorta like the thing mostly, and the info it can provide. It just has a few nagging little issues I'd like to beat. Heck, maybe the issues are with me........

I can deal with the app possibly being flaky with my iPhone, by using another phone, or a pencil, paper, and the calculators like Gunny Gene gave links for (thanks for that, btw!).

[Luv the lever]

Starting to take my reloading more seriously this is the next step. I have looked and considered an affordable one myself. I will be following your posts to understand the learning curve before spending more money I don't have, or want the wife to find out about. LOL.

My buddy uses the Lab Radar and sometimes struggles with it working properly at the range. He is a national competitor, and very good at it, so it's understandable why he has one but the more I read about reloading the more seem to make it a necessary tool.

[Mr. Neutron]

Starting to take my reloading more seriously this is the next step. I have looked and considered an affordable one myself. I will be following your posts to understand the learning curve before spending more money I don't have, or want the wife to find out about. LOL.

My buddy uses the Lab Radar and sometimes struggles with it working properly at the range. He is a national competitor, and very good at it, so it's understandable why he has one but the more I read about reloading the more seem to make it a necessary tool.

Ha ha, man oh man, Luv the Lever, do I ever understand about the wife not knowing about my "discretionary spending" for my hobbies. Which is kinda why I chose the Caldwell. The cost was only $83 shipped from Amazon. Amazon does have cheaper copies/no-name models, and I've shot thru one at my gun club. A friend let me put 3 or 4 shots through his, and it worked fine. But not 15 minutes later, it died on him while he was shooting through it. We both hoped it was simply needing a fresh battery, but I've yet to find out from him if it's still working or not.

I guess I've always had an "anti-chnograph" kinda attitude towards them, pretty much like most of my family, and a lot of other folks as well. I thought of them as nice, kinda cool, but for most folks (not competitors like the bench rest crowd) just an unecessary novelty. I'm mostly interested these days in having a rifle/load combo that groups as good as I can reasonably achieve for hunting. I hate to admit it, but the chronograph can help out there. The bench rest crowd generally acknowledges that lower ES (Extreme Spread of shot velocities) and SD (Standard Deviation between shots, sorta) values are one step to finding an accurate load. Most of us just try a variety of powders and charge levels, with maybe a variety of bullets, and then shoot some groups. This has worked really well for a long period of time, and for myself included. I will still go to range and see if I can confirm what the chronograph is telling me simply by shooting groups. Accuracy, as much as I can squeeze out of my rifle, is what I'm after.

Really, one of the main reasons I got one was due to my inner "machinist nerd" wanting to know that I was actually possibly doing something right (or wrong) with my reloading, as far as consistency is concerned. It seems to be showing me that my cartridge assemblies are somewhat consistent. Or that I was just really lucky with that last 4-shot group of cases I stuffed components into and sent thru the chrony, hee hee......

Next was that I really wanted to be certain of my bullet's trajectory. Now, with some math and a range with some long yardage capability, the trajectory can be figured out without a chronograph. The clock is just a shortcut for me that feeds my laziness. Hell, an open sighted levergun .30-30 really isn't what I would consider a "long range rifle" anyway. I have other rifles for that. But sometimes I don't wanna think; I just wanna reload, shoot, and repeat. With a fairly accurate set of velocity readings, there are plenty of online ballistics calculators that will give you bullet drop at various ranges. I have one on my phone from Hornady. And I don't have set up at various yardages, shoot, then measure bullet drop, do that again at a different distance, and such. Getting the numbers from a chrony, even if you use pencil and paper to record the shot values, is a timesaver as far as figuring ballistics is concerned.

Another reason I wanted a velocity reading at the muzzle is more complicated for me to describe. I shoot a Hornady #3035 150 gr. RN bullet, mostly because the nearby places I get components from don't stock any .30-30 bullets from Nosler, Sierra, Speer, or whoever. I've killed animals with Sierra and Noslers with my .30-06, but have never recovered a bullet. I guess they expanded and worked okay. I have the dead deer and elk to show for it. But I have no idea how they expanded and such. You're pretty much buying some bullets based on what other folks have said worked out for them. I don't really like to do that, but ya gotta start somewhere. So, I wasn't certain about how the Hornady 150s perform on big game. I read one article on Terminal Ballistics that gave it a good rating, and better than Hornady's 170 grainer #3060 bullet. Hornady is somewhat helpful to us reloaders by giving us a muzzle velocity "range" that their bullets are designed to work at. For the #3035 bullets, its rated to work best within the 1800-2500 FPS muzzle velocity range. Now that I know that my loads are leaving the barrel well within that range, and grouping decently, are consistent and uniform, I can hunt with a tad more confidence. For the #3060 170 gr FP bullet, Hornady says it needs to leave the barrel at the 2000-2500 FPS range. My rifle doesn't really group those bullets very well with the 3 different powders that I've tried. And since it (the 170 slugs) needed a coupla hundred extra FPS over the 150s to work "in the zone" specified by Hornady, I felt that I could more easily load the 150s to a safer charge level that still might let those bullets work as they should on game. I'd have to crowd the upper charge limits for the 170s to get a velocity that works within their zone, if Hornady's listed velocities in their reloading manuals are close to correct.

So for me, it was probably $83 well spent. Without the clock, all I can do is basically just guess and hope that the velocities I get are somewhat close to the velocities listed on boxes of ammo, or listed in the load manuals. There's differences in barrel lengths and such that need to be accounted for, and again, for me personally, it's kinda worth it to have a better idea of where my gun is actually clocking velocity-wise.

Hope this might help someone.

[220]

I use mine when ever I am doing any load development, not hard to shoot groups at the same time as checking velocity.
Often I have a velocity I am chasing might be due to wanting to limit the speed with cast, down loading to duplicate a smaller round or after maximum velocity, trying to meet a minimum power factor or any number of other reasons. With the crohny I know exactly what speed I am getting.
I find it a good indicator of pressure, of you are seeing velocities well above or below what manuals indicate a good chance something else is at play.
Stuffed up on OAL with some load development once and jambed the projectiles into the lands without realizing. Chrony showed the starting loads exceeding manual max velocities. Extraction was easy and no obvious signs of excessive pressure so probably would have just kept going with testing without looking further without the crohny. Reducing OAL and velocities dropped back into the range I expected.

[Luv the lever]

Starting to take my reloading more seriously this is the next step. I have looked and considered an affordable one myself. I will be following your posts to understand the learning curve before spending more money I don't have, or want the wife to find out about. LOL.

My buddy uses the Lab Radar and sometimes struggles with it working properly at the range. He is a national competitor, and very good at it, so it's understandable why he has one but the more I read about reloading the more seem to make it a necessary tool.

Ha ha, man oh man, Luv the Lever, do I ever understand about the wife not knowing about my "discretionary spending" for my hobbies. Which is kinda why I chose the Caldwell. The cost was only $83 shipped from Amazon. Amazon does have cheaper copies/no-name models, and I've shot thru one at my gun club. A friend let me put 3 or 4 shots through his, and it worked fine. But not 15 minutes later, it died on him while he was shooting through it. We both hoped it was simply needing a fresh battery, but I've yet to find out from him if it's still working or not.

I guess I've always had an "anti-chnograph" kinda attitude towards them, pretty much like most of my family, and a lot of other folks as well. I thought of them as nice, kinda cool, but for most folks (not competitors like the bench rest crowd) just an unecessary novelty. I'm mostly interested these days in having a rifle/load combo that groups as good as I can reasonably achieve for hunting. I hate to admit it, but the chronograph can help out there. The bench rest crowd generally acknowledges that lower ES (Extreme Spread of shot velocities) and SD (Standard Deviation between shots, sorta) values are one step to finding an accurate load. Most of us just try a variety of powders and charge levels, with maybe a variety of bullets, and then shoot some groups. This has worked really well for a long period of time, and for myself included. I will still go to range and see if I can confirm what the chronograph is telling me simply by shooting groups. Accuracy, as much as I can squeeze out of my rifle, is what I'm after.

Really, one of the main reasons I got one was due to my inner "machinist nerd" wanting to know that I was actually possibly doing something right (or wrong) with my reloading, as far as consistency is concerned. It seems to be showing me that my cartridge assemblies are somewhat consistent. Or that I was just really lucky with that last 4-shot group of cases I stuffed components into and sent thru the chrony, hee hee......

Next was that I really wanted to be certain of my bullet's trajectory. Now, with some math and a range with some long yardage capability, the trajectory can be figured out without a chronograph. The clock is just a shortcut for me that feeds my laziness. Hell, an open sighted levergun .30-30 really isn't what I would consider a "long range rifle" anyway. I have other rifles for that. But sometimes I don't wanna think; I just wanna reload, shoot, and repeat. With a fairly accurate set of velocity readings, there are plenty of online ballistics calculators that will give you bullet drop at various ranges. I have one on my phone from Hornady. And I don't have set up at various yardages, shoot, then measure bullet drop, do that again at a different distance, and such. Getting the numbers from a chrony, even if you use pencil and paper to record the shot values, is a timesaver as far as figuring ballistics is concerned.

Another reason I wanted a velocity reading at the muzzle is more complicated for me to describe. I shoot a Hornady #3035 150 gr. RN bullet, mostly because the nearby places I get components from don't stock any .30-30 bullets from Nosler, Sierra, Speer, or whoever. I've killed animals with Sierra and Noslers with my .30-06, but have never recovered a bullet. I guess they expanded and worked okay. I have the dead deer and elk to show for it. But I have no idea how they expanded and such. You're pretty much buying some bullets based on what other folks have said worked out for them. I don't really like to do that, but ya gotta start somewhere. So, I wasn't certain about how the Hornady 150s perform on big game. I read one article on Terminal Ballistics that gave it a good rating, and better than Hornady's 170 grainer #3060 bullet. Hornady is somewhat helpful to us reloaders by giving us a muzzle velocity "range" that their bullets are designed to work at. For the #3035 bullets, its rated to work best within the 1800-2500 FPS muzzle velocity range. Now that I know that my loads are leaving the barrel well within that range, and grouping decently, are consistent and uniform, I can hunt with a tad more confidence. For the #3060 170 gr FP bullet, Hornady says it needs to leave the barrel at the 2000-2500 FPS range. My rifle doesn't really group those bullets very well with the 3 different powders that I've tried. And since it (the 170 slugs) needed a coupla hundred extra FPS over the 150s to work "in the zone" specified by Hornady, I felt that I could more easily load the 150s to a safer charge level that still might let those bullets work as they should on game. I'd have to crowd the upper charge limits for the 170s to get a velocity that works within their zone, if Hornady's listed velocities in their reloading manuals are close to correct.

So for me, it was probably $83 well spent. Without the clock, all I can do is basically just guess and hope that the velocities I get are somewhat close to the velocities listed on boxes of ammo, or listed in the load manuals. There's differences in barrel lengths and such that need to be accounted for, and again, for me personally, it's kinda worth it to have a better idea of where my gun is actually clocking velocity-wise.

Hope this might help someone.

I have some OCD and need to know. Those affordable ones are exactly that but do I end up aggravated fighting the cheaper one?

As soon as I figure out my new press, and your learning curve, a chrony is on the shopping list.

[Mr. Neutron]

Hmmm.......

I hope that everyone here knows that I'm a total Dork and Rookie with the chronographs. I'm possibly writing some of this outta frustration, and some of it out of praise for the info you can get with them. I really like how member 220 used his chronograph to diagnose a problem that coulda become a bigger issue, had he not known what was going on.

MY personal philosophy of target shooting came into play here when I bought the goofy thing. I refuse to spend a crap-ton of money on something I could possibly shoot (and I did just that, with my BB gun.... ). I chose the Caldwell partly based on reviews, but mostly on price. It has it's little quirks that I'm beginning to figure out, slowly..... Most of the seemingly negative stuff I'm writin' is more likely my fault rather than the device.......


The first coupla tryouts, both here at home with the BB gun, and next at the range, did not go well for me & this thing. I was trying it out as the sun was just a short time from going down, and while it would occasionally give me a reading, it was mostly error codes. I firmly believe it was an issue with the existing light. I shoot facing the north both at home, and at my gun club. I guess that the very late afternoon light is coming in mostly from the west side, rather than from directly above. This kinda messes with the chrony's 2 photosensors that are looking for bullets or their shadows, if my understanding is correct. Not certain if some of the lighted sunscreens or home-brew setups will help outdoors. Gonna try one of the "solutions" I saw in a video on Caldwell Chrony issues, involving a couple of Harbor Freight LED flashlights taped on the the sun shades. Some guys have simply put good sized pieces of cardboard on one side of the chonographs to block sideways lighting like that late afternoon scenario, and claim it works. I'll probably try that some time, I reckon.....

In the videos I've seen, it seems like most of the troubles not recording shots or getting error codes are for folks shooting indoors. Flourescent lights mess with the sensors, and people come up with some dandy solutions to fix that. Like the LED lights of some type attached to the sun shades I kinda mentioned above.

I went down a rabbit hole of youtube videos watching reviews of various chronys before I bought, and then on solutions for getting them to work. In the end, I'm not certain that any of the less expensive brands are any better or any worse than the others. Any of them that will read a velocity and you can see that reading from where ya shoot will give you all the info you need for load development. No more than I know about these things, I'd guess you'll do good with a Pro Chono, a Shooting Chrony, Caldwell, or any of several other brands. They all seem to run in the $85 to $125 range for price, more or less.

If you just need some numbers, can use a pencil and paper to record shots, and don't need the hassle of a cord or bluetooth connection to the chrony, my advice at this time is to just get a simple cheap one. I can and probably will use my Caldwell this way. You can enter the numbers later on different programs (like Gunny Gene linked to) onto a laptop, phone, or tablet, and get the info you're lookin' for. The Caldwell has a big enough screen on front that will let me read each shot from 12-15 feet away easily, so whether or not I use their app while it's connected to my phone doesn't matter to me now. That will eliminate one source of frustration I had/still sorta have. Although, the app/cord/old Android phone combo works fine now. I can shoot a group, describe it, record it, and send the results to myself in an email or text. I did just that for my son when we shot his Savage 110 chambered for .270 Win a coupla days ago. I emailed him the file (a "Saved Group") we recorded the day we shot. He put the velocity into one of the ballistic programs, and now has a fair grasp of his trajectory and Maximum Point Blank Range for his ammo & rifle.

I think some chronys hold records of shots in either their own memory, or on a chip that you can move to your laptop to play with. The Caldwell does not do that. Once you turn it off, the actual chronograph has no memory. It's up to me to use a pen & paper, or, hopefully, use the app to get a record of all the wrongs I've done.

Again, hope this helps, and really appreciate the inputs of others. Sorry for the novel again.

[Mags]

...
Hope this might help someone.

Yes. I'll probably pursue one to work on my CFE223 30-30 loads. Thanks for leading the way and sharing.