Re: 30-06, 208AMax, RL17
The reason I'm skeptical of temperature insensitivity in ball powders is because the treatment is a coating, as I understand it (hence the green coloring). A coating will be fairly consistent and uniform in terms of percentage weight on a stick powder, as the sticks are all pretty uniform in size.
However, with a ball powder, the balls vary a lot in size. The formula for surface area of a sphere is a squared function, while volume is a cubed function. Double the diameter of a sphere, you increase its surface area by 4, but its volume (and weight) by 8. If you assume the coating is consistent in thickness, the sphere that is half the size of the other will have twice the percentage of coating (by weight). One would think this would affect its burn rate in some way. And, if you can't control the size of the balls, then you can't control the burn rate of the powder when applying a coating.
Also, the balls are much smaller than most sticks (even H332), so they will have more surface area and a higher percentage of coating by weight. Which should be great temperature stability, but not as great for velocity since there will less actual powder.
This is only speculation based on my understanding of the process... it could be way off. We will see...