Chronograph Recommendation

[JakeSCH]

Looking for chronograph recommendations. I meant to ask @NBK at fine firearms today but forgot among my laundry list of questions.

I plan on doing most of my load work up and Poway Weapons and Gear mainly since it’s 100 yards, 10 minutes from my house, and i can go after the kids are in bed.

So with that note, it seems that I am mostly limited to a magnetospeed or labradar since it will be indoors? I really do not like the idea of the magnetospeed hanging off the barrel changing its harmonics and POI (or I am off base here?).

Magnetospeed users:
Have you noticed if the magnetospeed causes you to be off on a node or does it still captures nodes and velocities well? Just remove before you sight in?

Labradar users:
How well does a lab radar work indoors if people are shooting near by? Do you accidentally pick up other people’s shots??

Lastly, from those who use both? What is your preference?

- Jake

 

[NBK]

I have used both (the shop has a Magneto Speed and I have the Lab Radar) and I like the Lab Radar. It's easy to use, it does not effect barrel harmonics and it can capture FPS at various distances. Magneto speed is a good tool but has its limitations. Both are accurate and work well. Go with what your budget allows. If you can afford the Radar, get it. If you can't, you will be happy with the Magneto Speed.

 

[punkur67]

I have the magnetospeed V3 and have used a Labradar. The V3 is more difficult to set up but not too bad. However if you plan to shoot indoors at PWG a V3 may be a better choice due to how small the booth is. Heres my V3 at PWG

 

[Lungpopper]

Like NBK said. Lab radar is the best. I have noticed that there is a 20 FPS difference from his radar to my magneto speed.
Don’t worry to much about it changing your harmonics I noticed a small shift but it’s not much.
I do all my accuracy testing, find what I’m going to use and zero it. Then set up the magneto speed.
this is 3 shots without and 3 shots with.

 

[White Smoke]

Totally agree. Get your most accurate load first and then chronograph it.

 

[NBK]

Understanding SD's during load workup is important to accuracy at distance. So I gracefully disagree. You should run all loads you are working up through the chrono.

 

[TheGDog]

Please forgive the interruptive question, but for you gentleman with much more experience chronographing loads. What's like a typical expected amount of deviation commonly found in factory premium hunting ammo? Just ballpark figure of what you've experience when you've bothered testing it. Thank you.

 

[JakeSCH]

Tried to purchase the Labradar from Bass Pro but it won’t let me since they are out of stock...seem that I will need to wait until COVID clears up before I can buy it.

 

[NBK]

Tried to purchase the Labradar from Bass Pro but it won’t let me since they are out of stock...seem that I will need to wait until COVID clears up before I can buy it.

Thanks for trying to support the site Jake.

 

[JakeSCH]

Please forgive the interruptive question, but for you gentleman with much more experience chronographing loads. What's like a typical expected amount of deviation commonly found in factory premium hunting ammo? Just ballpark figure of what you've experience when you've bothered testing it. Thank you.

I definitely plan on testing when I get my chronograph, however it is gun dependent since tolerances of the barrel diameter change pressure (obviously barrel length matters too)

I did measure concentricity of some hornady and federal ammo and was surprised to open boxes of “premium” ammo with 0.007” off center. The lowest of the factory ammo I measured was 0.0035. I just took a random sample. I haven’t measured my barnes ammo yet.