This "review" is more aimed at someone who has never used this software (or hardware) before. Consider it a crash-intro so to speak. I've been running this combination for a while now and figured it was time for a review of these two systems paired up since no one else has. I'd imagine that most people that are currently utilizing FFS Delta V are probably running this on different, previous generation hardware. Understandable, since the entire Windows Mobile and even the hardware itself to an extent is quite antiquated by today's mobile standards. Be aware that there is an Android OS available, but FFS will only work with Windows Mobile.
Juno T-41-X Hardware
I won't go into detailed hardware details as it's a rather boring journey that honestly doesn't mean much in the long run. I think touching on the highlights will be sufficient before diving into the software itself (for those who haven't perhaps used it before).
Firstly, the hardware itself. The Juno T-41-X has been out for a few years now. It comes standard with a 4.3" WVGA Gorilla-Glass capacitive touch screen, 2-4 meter GPS receiver, 8MP camera with flash and an IP65 (yellow) or IP68 (grey) ingress rating. Optional are a 1-2 meter GPS receiver, 3.75G cellular radio, RFID and barcode scanning - within a larger form-factor and different model designation.
I've found that normally a typical day at the range (6-8 hours) running FFS constantly with a 5 minute screen backlight timeout will leave the unit with about 65 percent battery capacity remaining. Not too shabby. I do have the extended battery pack as well which adds roughly 80 percent capacity. The external battery pack is configurable to either run the unit, or to charge the internal battery. I have it running the unit in order to save charge cycles on the internal battery - if that even really matters. It charges via a proprietary USB-to-9-PIN serial cable - 2A outlet charger takes roughly 4 hours to charge both packs. PC USB takes considerably longer - up to 12 hours (.5A versus 2A) - USB 3.0 will charge it (and most any other device) considerably faster since it is rated for 1.0A - 1.5A depending on the specification and USB chipset vendor.
Yeah, it's heavy... well worth the weight to me. Might not be for others.
FFS Delta V Software
If you are in the Kestrel Horus or Applied Ballistics world like I was for a few years, this is where I'll describe the major differences - there are plenty to cover. Please note that FFS doesn't do away with the need for a Kestrel - you still need the Kestrel (or similar) to give you environmental information. What you won't need is the ballistics calculator in any of them.
First off, I know someone is going to scream "It's a totally different form factor that weighs around 10 times more than a Kestrel and the Kestrel gives me good dope as-is". Mine still does too! This won't be a bashing contest against Kestrel Horus or AB because they are outstanding at what they do. They are simply a different - and more simple - tool for the job. I want to highlight more of the differences between the two - ignoring the obvious weight, form factor, cost and lastly learning curve. You won't pop open a little quick start guide for FFS and be up and running in an hour! The program will come from Lex Talus on either a Standard SD or Micro-SD card. I suggest the Micro-SD as you can always change hardware and either run a SD adapter or not. The program does not install on your device - it can only be ran from the SD card itself. This being said, it will run on any hardware that meets the minimum specifications just by moving the card.
Environmental
Like the previous versions, Delta V does not use density altitude by default. You can reference a chart of course to determine station pressure, but the program will want temperature and station pressure as it's main environmental inputs. Note that station pressure is not barometric pressure and the application can use either as long as you tell it which you are inputting. You can also link a Kestrel via Bluetooth to pull this data in near real-time.
Along with environmentals, FFS allows you to set a "powder temperature offsets" that will impose a "fps increase or decrease per degree" ambient temperature change. For instance, through data I have collected I have found H1000 to give a 0.7 FPS increase in velocity per degree Fahrenheit temperature increase over my zero-day temperature. 1.1 FPS per degree F appears to be a good all-around metric for Varget for instance.
Rifle Profiles
This is where things start to get very customizable versus Kestrel AB/Horus. The rifle profile is the basis around most of the application. It allows you to select a particular rifle, but jointly also select bullets to fire out of that rifle - dynamically. (I don't mean loaded rounds when I say "bullets" here).
As you can see, you input the basic rifle information here. Even with the commonality of switch-barrel systems these days, think of this being "the barrel". Twist rate is the only variable from this screen that are used additively in ballistic calculations.
Shooter - This is for team shooters that may use the same rifle. It provides the ability to filter based on this name for different zero offsets, etc. You can setup the same rifle data with a different shooter. I believe there are easier ways to really do this though.
Bullet - Will be the default bullet profile that the rifle is zeroed to.
Turret - The optic that is attached to this rifle.
Count Tab - Lets you keep track of you round count for this rifle, with dates and cumulative round counts.
Notes - Just a general text field where you can put any text notes you might have.
Bullet Profiles
This is where you'd build the profile for the actual bullet. Most of this is going to be rather self-explanatory but I will cover a few of the fields.
BC - Obviously this is the ballistic coefficient of this bullet. I'll cover this more as an important thing to note is that Delta V does not use exacting G1 values. Calculation is almost always a must.
DK - We don't touch that - ever! That's an "all else has failed, let me mess with this" field. It basically alters the way the engine generates values.
Min. Twist - This is the minimum twist rate that this bullet should be fired though. It's informational, no calculations are used from it.
Powder Temperature - Remember earlier when I was talking about powder temperature offsets? This is where you set the "zero-temp" for this particular velocity/powder. It's a selectable item that can be turned on or off on demand.
Notes - That's just where I put some reloading details about that particular bullet/brass/primer combination. You can put anything you want to here.
Turret Profiles
As you can see here, this is where you optics profile is associated. All of the normal information in here, relatively straight-forward.
"Scope Click Values" are used to true your turret for actual real-world click data. Who knows, your optic might actual equal 1.1 MILs in 10 clicks due to random variables. (I track-test all of my scopes right out of the box.)
The "Scale" section is used to set the values for "clicks" to the actual scale printed on the turret (1 MIL on a S&B DT MTC turret equals 10 clicks).
Offset Profiles
This is a very powerful feature. It allows you to fire the same bullets with an altered zero offset. You still need a dedicated "suppressed" (it can be called anything but used for a shorter barrel, different barrel, etc.) bullet profile so your BC calculations at that speed are used, but you can maintain the same physical equipment zero across all bullets (and even calibers). Requires you to fire and actually measure the offset from your zeroed round though. Just remember - a change in this zeroed round will affect everything else because it is the "foundation" upon the offsets! I won't go any deeper into those as it gets rather involved. Just know that it's possible and it works.
Target Profiles
These are a rather nice feature. Targets are defined either by strictly distance (with no bearing information) or via the method pictured. If you create a profile with coordinates and angle, the program will give you the magnetic bearing and cosine to the target from your set FFP. This is useful for Coriolis/Eotvos calculations with magnetic variation. Useful if you know the exacting coordinates but don't have a LRF (for some reason). Target profiles can also be grouped together and bound to a FFP if desired. There are several LRF (Vectronix having the most support) for direct-targeting information linking via a serial cable.
The Final Firing Position screen is rather self-explanatory.
Main Screen
This is where all of your different profiles will comprise your dope, etc. You can get a full target profile dope list, or you can manually type in a distance.
A single wind direction can be input on the main screen. If you are firing in an environment that has multiple wind directions out to your target, you can resolve for that as well with "Wind Vector Zones".
The small box next to the range is the projectile metrics button. The color of the box indicates the velocity of the bullet at that distance. White/tan equals supersonic. Yellow equals transonic. Red equals subsonic. Pink-White means that the bullet would have to be fired at such a ridiculous angle that it would probably never even make it to the target.
Speed will be target speed. Heading is target direction.
T is your Target profile selector
R is your Rifle profile selector
O is your Offset profile selector
B is your Bullet profile selector
There are many, many tools inside of Delta V as well. Stability Calculator, BC Calculator, Muzzle Velocity Calculator... as well as references for different measurements and conversion formulas.
Speaking of the BC Calculator; In my experience it is almost mandatory that you calculate a custom BC with this application for any true long-distance (or otherwise transonic-bound) shots. I start out with the advertised G1, but calculate the final BC using the POI method right above the transonic boundary. Before doing this, just make sure you have some solid loads with a preferable single-digit SD. You want your POI's to be as true as possible for the POI BC calculation to be valuable.
Overall for the average user I would have to award the following summary attributes to this system:
Pros:
A) About as much detail as you can get in or out of any handheld system.
B) If you have a ton of rifles and some of them fire the same bullets with different barrel lengths and with/without a suppressor.
C) You want to increase your first-round-hit probability substantially at distance (cold-bore or a clean-bore offset comes to mind).
D) LRF interfacing.
E) GPS coordinate and target "mapping".
F) You like the "science" behind it all. If you hate collecting data, this isn't for you. Then again, you might be in the wrong hobby to begin with if this is the case.
G) LOS Metrics "obstacle avoidance" is a very nice feature.
H) You get to turn your Kestrel AB/Horus into a backup ballistics solution.
Cons:
A) It can be a little expensive at $1750 for the hardware (new) and $395 for the software. Units can be found used for much less.
B) The learning curve can be a little much for some.
C) It's heavy and bulky - still beats the hell out of the Trimble Nomad (although you do get a limited mechanical number pad with the Nomad).
D) You won't get the 6-month battery life that you get out of a Kestrel! Think hours instead of months.
E) Still requires you to carry weather instrumentation for atmospherics.
F) Capacitive touch screen. Useless with gloves on and sometimes a stylus doesn't work well. Resistive would have been much better, but it's difficult to get accurate clicks on a small screen with resistive screens. Capacitive are also way more rugged.
G) If it matters to you, you can forget staring at the Juno screen with NV.
Blaine Fields (the creator of Field Firing Solutions) is a great guy and will help you out with anything that he can. http://www.lextalus.com will give you virtually all of the information you'd ever need if you ever want to make the switch. He also has hours and hours of training videos on the operation of the software.
Feel free to let me know if you have any questions.
Juno T-41-X Hardware
I won't go into detailed hardware details as it's a rather boring journey that honestly doesn't mean much in the long run. I think touching on the highlights will be sufficient before diving into the software itself (for those who haven't perhaps used it before).
Firstly, the hardware itself. The Juno T-41-X has been out for a few years now. It comes standard with a 4.3" WVGA Gorilla-Glass capacitive touch screen, 2-4 meter GPS receiver, 8MP camera with flash and an IP65 (yellow) or IP68 (grey) ingress rating. Optional are a 1-2 meter GPS receiver, 3.75G cellular radio, RFID and barcode scanning - within a larger form-factor and different model designation.
I've found that normally a typical day at the range (6-8 hours) running FFS constantly with a 5 minute screen backlight timeout will leave the unit with about 65 percent battery capacity remaining. Not too shabby. I do have the extended battery pack as well which adds roughly 80 percent capacity. The external battery pack is configurable to either run the unit, or to charge the internal battery. I have it running the unit in order to save charge cycles on the internal battery - if that even really matters. It charges via a proprietary USB-to-9-PIN serial cable - 2A outlet charger takes roughly 4 hours to charge both packs. PC USB takes considerably longer - up to 12 hours (.5A versus 2A) - USB 3.0 will charge it (and most any other device) considerably faster since it is rated for 1.0A - 1.5A depending on the specification and USB chipset vendor.
Yeah, it's heavy... well worth the weight to me. Might not be for others.
FFS Delta V Software
If you are in the Kestrel Horus or Applied Ballistics world like I was for a few years, this is where I'll describe the major differences - there are plenty to cover. Please note that FFS doesn't do away with the need for a Kestrel - you still need the Kestrel (or similar) to give you environmental information. What you won't need is the ballistics calculator in any of them.
First off, I know someone is going to scream "It's a totally different form factor that weighs around 10 times more than a Kestrel and the Kestrel gives me good dope as-is". Mine still does too! This won't be a bashing contest against Kestrel Horus or AB because they are outstanding at what they do. They are simply a different - and more simple - tool for the job. I want to highlight more of the differences between the two - ignoring the obvious weight, form factor, cost and lastly learning curve. You won't pop open a little quick start guide for FFS and be up and running in an hour! The program will come from Lex Talus on either a Standard SD or Micro-SD card. I suggest the Micro-SD as you can always change hardware and either run a SD adapter or not. The program does not install on your device - it can only be ran from the SD card itself. This being said, it will run on any hardware that meets the minimum specifications just by moving the card.
Environmental
Like the previous versions, Delta V does not use density altitude by default. You can reference a chart of course to determine station pressure, but the program will want temperature and station pressure as it's main environmental inputs. Note that station pressure is not barometric pressure and the application can use either as long as you tell it which you are inputting. You can also link a Kestrel via Bluetooth to pull this data in near real-time.
Along with environmentals, FFS allows you to set a "powder temperature offsets" that will impose a "fps increase or decrease per degree" ambient temperature change. For instance, through data I have collected I have found H1000 to give a 0.7 FPS increase in velocity per degree Fahrenheit temperature increase over my zero-day temperature. 1.1 FPS per degree F appears to be a good all-around metric for Varget for instance.
Rifle Profiles
This is where things start to get very customizable versus Kestrel AB/Horus. The rifle profile is the basis around most of the application. It allows you to select a particular rifle, but jointly also select bullets to fire out of that rifle - dynamically. (I don't mean loaded rounds when I say "bullets" here).
As you can see, you input the basic rifle information here. Even with the commonality of switch-barrel systems these days, think of this being "the barrel". Twist rate is the only variable from this screen that are used additively in ballistic calculations.
Shooter - This is for team shooters that may use the same rifle. It provides the ability to filter based on this name for different zero offsets, etc. You can setup the same rifle data with a different shooter. I believe there are easier ways to really do this though.
Bullet - Will be the default bullet profile that the rifle is zeroed to.
Turret - The optic that is attached to this rifle.
Count Tab - Lets you keep track of you round count for this rifle, with dates and cumulative round counts.
Notes - Just a general text field where you can put any text notes you might have.
Bullet Profiles
This is where you'd build the profile for the actual bullet. Most of this is going to be rather self-explanatory but I will cover a few of the fields.
BC - Obviously this is the ballistic coefficient of this bullet. I'll cover this more as an important thing to note is that Delta V does not use exacting G1 values. Calculation is almost always a must.
DK - We don't touch that - ever! That's an "all else has failed, let me mess with this" field. It basically alters the way the engine generates values.
Min. Twist - This is the minimum twist rate that this bullet should be fired though. It's informational, no calculations are used from it.
Powder Temperature - Remember earlier when I was talking about powder temperature offsets? This is where you set the "zero-temp" for this particular velocity/powder. It's a selectable item that can be turned on or off on demand.
Notes - That's just where I put some reloading details about that particular bullet/brass/primer combination. You can put anything you want to here.
Turret Profiles
As you can see here, this is where you optics profile is associated. All of the normal information in here, relatively straight-forward.
"Scope Click Values" are used to true your turret for actual real-world click data. Who knows, your optic might actual equal 1.1 MILs in 10 clicks due to random variables. (I track-test all of my scopes right out of the box.)
The "Scale" section is used to set the values for "clicks" to the actual scale printed on the turret (1 MIL on a S&B DT MTC turret equals 10 clicks).
Offset Profiles
This is a very powerful feature. It allows you to fire the same bullets with an altered zero offset. You still need a dedicated "suppressed" (it can be called anything but used for a shorter barrel, different barrel, etc.) bullet profile so your BC calculations at that speed are used, but you can maintain the same physical equipment zero across all bullets (and even calibers). Requires you to fire and actually measure the offset from your zeroed round though. Just remember - a change in this zeroed round will affect everything else because it is the "foundation" upon the offsets! I won't go any deeper into those as it gets rather involved. Just know that it's possible and it works.
Target Profiles
These are a rather nice feature. Targets are defined either by strictly distance (with no bearing information) or via the method pictured. If you create a profile with coordinates and angle, the program will give you the magnetic bearing and cosine to the target from your set FFP. This is useful for Coriolis/Eotvos calculations with magnetic variation. Useful if you know the exacting coordinates but don't have a LRF (for some reason). Target profiles can also be grouped together and bound to a FFP if desired. There are several LRF (Vectronix having the most support) for direct-targeting information linking via a serial cable.
The Final Firing Position screen is rather self-explanatory.
Main Screen
This is where all of your different profiles will comprise your dope, etc. You can get a full target profile dope list, or you can manually type in a distance.
A single wind direction can be input on the main screen. If you are firing in an environment that has multiple wind directions out to your target, you can resolve for that as well with "Wind Vector Zones".
The small box next to the range is the projectile metrics button. The color of the box indicates the velocity of the bullet at that distance. White/tan equals supersonic. Yellow equals transonic. Red equals subsonic. Pink-White means that the bullet would have to be fired at such a ridiculous angle that it would probably never even make it to the target.
Speed will be target speed. Heading is target direction.
T is your Target profile selector
R is your Rifle profile selector
O is your Offset profile selector
B is your Bullet profile selector
There are many, many tools inside of Delta V as well. Stability Calculator, BC Calculator, Muzzle Velocity Calculator... as well as references for different measurements and conversion formulas.
Speaking of the BC Calculator; In my experience it is almost mandatory that you calculate a custom BC with this application for any true long-distance (or otherwise transonic-bound) shots. I start out with the advertised G1, but calculate the final BC using the POI method right above the transonic boundary. Before doing this, just make sure you have some solid loads with a preferable single-digit SD. You want your POI's to be as true as possible for the POI BC calculation to be valuable.
Overall for the average user I would have to award the following summary attributes to this system:
Pros:
A) About as much detail as you can get in or out of any handheld system.
B) If you have a ton of rifles and some of them fire the same bullets with different barrel lengths and with/without a suppressor.
C) You want to increase your first-round-hit probability substantially at distance (cold-bore or a clean-bore offset comes to mind).
D) LRF interfacing.
E) GPS coordinate and target "mapping".
F) You like the "science" behind it all. If you hate collecting data, this isn't for you. Then again, you might be in the wrong hobby to begin with if this is the case.
G) LOS Metrics "obstacle avoidance" is a very nice feature.
H) You get to turn your Kestrel AB/Horus into a backup ballistics solution.
Cons:
A) It can be a little expensive at $1750 for the hardware (new) and $395 for the software. Units can be found used for much less.
B) The learning curve can be a little much for some.
C) It's heavy and bulky - still beats the hell out of the Trimble Nomad (although you do get a limited mechanical number pad with the Nomad).
D) You won't get the 6-month battery life that you get out of a Kestrel! Think hours instead of months.
E) Still requires you to carry weather instrumentation for atmospherics.
F) Capacitive touch screen. Useless with gloves on and sometimes a stylus doesn't work well. Resistive would have been much better, but it's difficult to get accurate clicks on a small screen with resistive screens. Capacitive are also way more rugged.
G) If it matters to you, you can forget staring at the Juno screen with NV.
Blaine Fields (the creator of Field Firing Solutions) is a great guy and will help you out with anything that he can. http://www.lextalus.com will give you virtually all of the information you'd ever need if you ever want to make the switch. He also has hours and hours of training videos on the operation of the software.
Feel free to let me know if you have any questions.
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