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Posted: 8/7/2010 2:22:52 PM EDT
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Ok,Stupid question time.
I have done some reloading, mainly to learn the basics. I have dies for all calibers I shoot. I know how to churn out good cartridges. One thing i have not been able to wrap my feeble pea brain around is this: What am I aiming for? With a Chrono, what should i be looking for if i am testing a load? What do i compare chrono readings to? |
| You should be looking to see if your loads are consistent first in foremost. There shouldnt be a wide spread standard deviation. You should also be referring back to your load data to see if your loads match what your books are saying. Chronos are good to have in these cases. Different guns preform different with different loads. By seeing how the bullet speed is changing you know how to adjust your load. |
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Quoted:
You should be looking to see if your loads are consistent first in foremost. There shouldnt be a wide spread standard deviation. You should also be referring back to your load data to see if your loads match what your books are saying. Chronos are good to have in these cases. Different guns preform different with different loads. By seeing how the bullet speed is changing you know how to adjust your load. What is consistent? How far of a spread is considered consistent? 10 fps? 50? 100? |
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Quoted:
Extreme spread is not nearly as informative as Standard Deviation. The SD indicates not just the amount of variation but the tendency of the variation. A small SD means that you are unlikely to have much variation, while a larger SD means you have plenty of variation. Extreme Spread often simply identifies the two least consistent data points. You could have 8 rounds with variations of only a few FPS, and have two with a lot of variation, maybe 100 or more FPS; this situation could easily give you a reasonable SD but the ES would lie to you and give you the impression that the whole batch was goofy.
Quoted:
You should be looking to see if your loads are consistent first in foremost. There shouldnt be a wide spread standard deviation. You should also be referring back to your load data to see if your loads match what your books are saying. Chronos are good to have in these cases. Different guns preform different with different loads. By seeing how the bullet speed is changing you know how to adjust your load. What is consistent? How far of a spread is considered consistent? 10 fps? 50? 100? Every reloader should learn a lot about basic statistics. Unless you intend to hand-craft each round from start to finish with exacting measurement tools and the most precise loading tools in the world, your work will be best evaluated by statistical means. While most people cringe when the subject comes up, basic stats are really straightforward and not really harder than college algebra (which is poorly named; a reasonably bright high school student can pick up on all the skills if he/she simply pays attention). Plus there is so much software available to use for processing stats, you may not need much more than a "book learning" understanding of what various statistics (specific measurements and calculation results) tell you. |
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#1 - ACCURACY
This is the be all and end all of reloading. You might modify it to say "accuracy within a certain velocity range" which might be for hunting applications. Or, you might say, "accuracy at a certain distance", which would be for target shooting. Either way, or however you want to put it, accuracy is the #1 key. Note, no mention is made of a chronograph. |
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