Just a quick quip about chronographs.
I've seen people lose hair and all sense of reality chasing low ES... only to find that their chrono is predisposed to throw those "wrong" numbers. A sub-$1000 chronograph is not up to the task of finding beneath 30-50fps ES
consistently. It may do it from time to time, or even most of the time... but it will not do it every time. I should know... as I can't even be confident that my PVM 21 can do it. That chrono has a resolution of +/- 30fps. That is a 60fps window, built right into the hardware of the chronograph. If an $800 chronograph can't do it... what can? Most of us don't have access to commercial shooting tunnels. Even fewer have access to $30,000 doppler units. After spending near $1000 on a chronograph, I can tell you I was emotionally invested and would have liked to believe it was capable of doing a hell of a lot more than it is. Thankfully that time has passed. There's an argument for magnetospeed here, as people have said that it produces very accurate velocities. However, there is conjecture as to whether it can be used during load development. Disregarding that for a moment; Even if they are providing accurate numbers, just how do we
prove that they are? The chronographs available to most shooters are
severely lacking in their capabilities. This is a hardened fact. A fact that is often never discovered, or if discovered, is by great cost and time... but a hardened fact none the less.
My point here is that I'd go shoot your loads that shoot well up close, at distance, to see if you are
actually getting any appreciable vertical. Chronographs are notoriously untrustworthy. Even the expensive models. More so than most people realize. Secondly, the aspect of actually being in your accuracy node does not necessarily mean that velocity changes will show themselves at distance, even if those velocity changes would seem to be extreme to those of us looking for ultimate precision. That's the beauty of what happens to our barrels during firing when we have accurately timing our load to the rifle.
With that said, I have never achieved as good of results in 7RM with Retumbo as I have H1000. Just as I have never had H1000 perform as good as Retumbo in 338LM. So it's very likely your chrono is telling you the truth. Still you'd do well to compare your chrono data to that of a conversation with a person. Most chrono's should be treated as crack heads, rather than the pillars of the community some think they are.
