Ballistics program
- Thread starter Safariman
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I have done more experimenting and I find that Strelok on long distances is coming with close to the same answer as the others. I have the 4DOF, I have AB, I have Strelok Pro. And I have the cheapest, as well, Ballistic Buddy, which is free. For example, 225 yards, they are all coming up with 1.5 MOA for my rifle and ammo set up. Of the solvers, Strelok Pro is the first one to have the ammo I was looking for. Their library of ammo and reticles is vast. And it does true the reticle, based on the factory published findings.
4DOF has some neat features but is a bit more daunting to use, at first. But I am not an expert and I take my advice from Ryan Cleckner, who was a tactical shooter. While in service, he used the M24 in .300 WM. He could dial elevation as far as 600 yards and hold left or right edge of target zone into the wind and get his first round hit. Of course, his DOPE was real because he may have had a previous posting at Fallujah and wrote down what settings he needed to have.
He is the first one to admit he would suck at PRS and would likely never hit the X at 1k. But, at 1k, he could get in a 10.45 inch circle, which is enough to hit the targets he had. So, yeah, different philosophy of use.
I have learned that what your use is greatly defines what you need. And, for some, it is not enough to get stopping energy in a 20 inch by 24 inch target at any range. It needs to be .25 MOA all the way.
Again, I am the stupidest guy here but those are some of my thoughts.
4DOF has some neat features but is a bit more daunting to use, at first. But I am not an expert and I take my advice from Ryan Cleckner, who was a tactical shooter. While in service, he used the M24 in .300 WM. He could dial elevation as far as 600 yards and hold left or right edge of target zone into the wind and get his first round hit. Of course, his DOPE was real because he may have had a previous posting at Fallujah and wrote down what settings he needed to have.
He is the first one to admit he would suck at PRS and would likely never hit the X at 1k. But, at 1k, he could get in a 10.45 inch circle, which is enough to hit the targets he had. So, yeah, different philosophy of use.
I have learned that what your use is greatly defines what you need. And, for some, it is not enough to get stopping energy in a 20 inch by 24 inch target at any range. It needs to be .25 MOA all the way.
Again, I am the stupidest guy here but those are some of my thoughts.
I'm on Android, but if I wanted an app that was close to Strelok that was easy to use and had all the reticles like Strelok has, what might be the best one? Aside from accuracy, ease of use and large reticle database are mostly my main concerns. I have no clue what scopes & reticles I'll be buying in the future, so I need to have something that will likely have anything & everything I might want to buy. I don't shoot extreme long range but I do have a 1000 yard range near me that I'd like to ring at least some steel on one day.
The reticle feature is kinda cool but mostly useless IMO.
it's useful for first time match shooters to help demonstrate holdovers.
beyond that I see zero practical use
Yeah I was kinda thinking that it wasn't necessary too, but I wasn't sure. How do the other apps interpret their data in easy to read & shoot terms? Is there another app that I can punch all the information in, and the app will essentially tell me to shoot (for example) this dude/animal right above his left shoulder (for example) to hit center mass on a windy day?
If you’re dialing hold overs you don’t need a visual of what the drop would look like without dialing. You just need the drop in mils or moa at the target distance.
A lot of us prefer to get that info from dope charts that we keep with or on the gun; ballistics apps are a great way to start building a dope chart but not something to rely on in the field.
YMMV of course and I think there are more people pulling up ballistics apps these days while behind the gun, but my gut feel is most of them are still new-ish to the activity.
You could try the Hornady App. If you don't want to use the 4DOF system just use the BC Calculator feature. It's free so it just costs you the time to set it up and see if it works for you. It doesn't have a reticle feature but I never use that anyway.
uhhhhh
this is why we have FFP scopes with good reticles. so we can use real data. not 'left shoulder'
i would guess most (all) guys whether in a match or 'long' distance hunting are pulling dope from a phone/kestrel/lrf prior to shooting a stage or taking a shot
yeah a dope chart is great. but why not be as exact as possible if you have the space/time.
something like the race dial @D_TROS uses with yardages and wind holds for certain matches/hunting is a great tool when you don't have the time. but if you have the time use it
I'm not dialing, nah. I'm still a newb. I just enjoy putting holes in things at longer distances than the average wanker does. I guess for now I just want something that will give me a quick rundown of what distances my holdovers will shoot, according to my bullet's ballistic data.
dialing is the more basic way to shoot.
also...what are you even trying to say? any ballistic app will tell you what your dope is for a given distance. most give a chart in 5-100y increments and you can type an exact yardage. wind on the otherhand...you need to learn
But let's not make a mountain out of a mole hill here. Suppose I iust wanna ring small(ish) gongs at like 500-600 yards on the first trigger pull every time for now. Suppose I just want to show up my friends at the range even more so than I already do. It should be noted that none of them can shoot for beans, so we won't be doing PRS sh*t 
Well Strelok at the very least would compensate for wind. I know wind isn't constant but an educated guess is fine by me. I guess what I'm trying to say/ask, is after reading many of the comments, it sounds like these other apps (besides Strelok) have a much steeper learning curve. If that's true, i probably just want the most streamlined, easiest to read app there is.
Geoballistics, 4DOF, AB, shooter, ballisticAEBut let's not make a mountain out of a mole hill here. Suppose I iust wanna ring small(ish) gongs at like 500-600 yards on the first trigger pull every time for now. Suppose I just want to show up my friends at the range even more so than I already do. It should be noted that none of them can shoot for beans, so we won't be doing PRS sh*t
they'll all give you the elevation data (and wind...if you can read/measure it)
NONE of them guarantee a first round hit. thats on you as the shooter and the gun's capabilities and your ability to read wind
"Every time" was a bit of a misnomer haha. I understand the apps will not be perfect. Alrighty, thank you. I'll check those apps out on YouTube and see what's up
Another option is to just go with a Kestrel unit. I lot more money but after it is setup is fairly easy to operate. I don't like scrolling to different yardages on it though.
Cheapest is to go to the range and figure out your drops and write it on your wrist or a note card in a wrist band card holder might be better. lol
Cheapest is to go to the range and figure out your drops and write it on your wrist or a note card in a wrist band card holder might be better. lol
Also a big fan of AB with their custom drag curves.
You need to ensure that your profiles are all setup correctly, but when you do I've found that there's no need to "massage" any data to get correct outputs, at least when using Berger bullets.
Full disclosure, I did get spoiled rotten fast on the library of reticles and ammo. And how the program trues the reticle and also gives you a reticle view of your target. And the library of targets, too.
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While the reticle view feature on the home page of Strelok Pro is pretty useless... the reticle view on the mover page is helpful IMO for visualizing one's lead. Though, weirdly, there's no "set virtual turret to calculated elevation" option like there is on the home page's reticle view settings pane.
...pretty cool:
...would be cooler with this:
I'd email Igor about fixing it, but I doubt he gives a shit about doing an update on an App that's banned in most places people can afford and are allowed to even have the rifles you need first... doh.
Also, the intergration of the weather with all the other stuff, without it being very complicated, is what's cool about Strelok... it lets you make a "custom range card" , easily, every time you update the weather/wind. Helpful, duh, since dope changes throughout the day/conditions.
IMO, Strelok Pro + WeatherFlow weathermeter = "SuperKestrel" ...but designed so a dumb child can do it. I literally tell it which way I think the wind is coming from, point the WeatherFlow into the wind, press save to capture the weather and go back to the home screen, press "calculate" on the home page to update the dope, and voila... first-round hits 90+% of the time.
Plus, you can shoot matches like The Mandalorian (shot a 1-day like this a couple of weeks back, kicked ass, never touched a pen/marker and had clearer, more detailed info). I entered 10 stages 3-6 targets each in like 5mins well before the match even started, never had to worry about it again (just updated weather throughout the day):
...pretty cool:
...would be cooler with this:
I'd email Igor about fixing it, but I doubt he gives a shit about doing an update on an App that's banned in most places people can afford and are allowed to even have the rifles you need first... doh.
Also, the intergration of the weather with all the other stuff, without it being very complicated, is what's cool about Strelok... it lets you make a "custom range card" , easily, every time you update the weather/wind. Helpful, duh, since dope changes throughout the day/conditions.
IMO, Strelok Pro + WeatherFlow weathermeter = "SuperKestrel" ...but designed so a dumb child can do it. I literally tell it which way I think the wind is coming from, point the WeatherFlow into the wind, press save to capture the weather and go back to the home screen, press "calculate" on the home page to update the dope, and voila... first-round hits 90+% of the time.
Plus, you can shoot matches like The Mandalorian (shot a 1-day like this a couple of weeks back, kicked ass, never touched a pen/marker and had clearer, more detailed info). I entered 10 stages 3-6 targets each in like 5mins well before the match even started, never had to worry about it again (just updated weather throughout the day):
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I use GeoBallistics and 4Dof and both give the same data out to 1200 after I true them up manually.
I don’t like the fact that my 4Dof won’t pair with my weatherflow wind meter and wind in 4dof has to be manually entered relative to the shot angle, not the actual wind direction. Not sure why they configured it that way. And my 4Dof back button seems to hang up relatively often.
Therefore I predominantly use GeoBallistics b/c it syncs with my weatherflow wind meter.
And it’s super quick and easy to build multiple target cards in GeoBallistics.
I don’t like the fact that my 4Dof won’t pair with my weatherflow wind meter and wind in 4dof has to be manually entered relative to the shot angle, not the actual wind direction. Not sure why they configured it that way. And my 4Dof back button seems to hang up relatively often.
Therefore I predominantly use GeoBallistics b/c it syncs with my weatherflow wind meter.
And it’s super quick and easy to build multiple target cards in GeoBallistics.
But let's not make a mountain out of a mole hill here. Suppose I iust wanna ring small(ish) gongs at like 500-600 yards on the first trigger pull every time for now. Suppose I just want to show up my friends at the range even more so than I already do. It should be noted that none of them can shoot for beans, so we won't be doing PRS sh*t
Dialing is the easiest way to accomplish that. It's not something just for advanced shooters to move to, it's the most basic way to get it done. And any good app will give you that info.
But reading between the lines, I'm guessing you don't actually have an optic that dials, and are hoping to just get away with a BDC reticle? If so, I'll suggest that spending the cash on a decent optic, even if it's only $250-$300 for a cheap SWFA SS or similar, will put you miles ahead of what you can do with the typical and common cheap BDC reticle optics. Especially if you want to ring small gongs at 600.
The method you're trying to use "as a beginner" is much more difficult to master for small targets than just using a decent mil/mil optic and dialing dope. There is a typical beginner mindset where the person decides what their requirements are and chases that, rather than asking experienced shooters what they should do and following that advice - if you've fallen for that, it's to your own detriment but rest assured you're not alone.
I'll disagree on the reticle view being useless, "visualization" is a very powerful learning and sport performance tool. Having a choice of something similar in measurements can replace it, but lets face it, every other app that has reticle view pales in comparison to the choices in Strelok.
It's useless if you dial for distance; you don't need to see what that holdover would look like.
I'll allow that it has value for using BDC-style reticles, or holding over with any reticle really.
