Yesterday morning I had the opportunity to take a couple of hours off work and and drive to the range, some 25 mins from my home, to enjoy a lull i the bad weather we have had recently. To my surprise there where already a handfull of bench shooters there, taking advantage of a relatively still day.
The previous day I had received my new toy; an acoustic chronograph, and I was eager to try it out. The Superchrono is marketed by a Norwegian company, Steinert Sensing Systems (http://www.steinertsensing.com/), and has been available for 3-4 years now.
The positive aspects of the acoustic chronograph are that it has a large detection area, it is not dependant of good lighting conditions, and it can easily be placed downrange near the target if one wants to record speeds at the target without fearing to hit and destroy the chrono. However it is quite sensitive to the relative bullet path, and must be level with it or the readings will be false.
I was not disappointed: I placed the Superchrono 100 meters downrange near the target, hidden behind a stub I put there. I leveled it with a level tool on my iPhone, and it recorded (accurately it seemed) every shot I fired, except the subsonic ones. Yes, because the Superchrono records the supersonic crack the bullet generates, it will not record bullets that go below the speed of sound.
I did not compare the readings to a 'normal' chrony, since I don't have access to one, but the velocities compared nicely the ones published for the actual loads I shot.
All in all I'm happy with the purchase, and looking forward to doing some more testing
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