What does an expensive Chronograph get me?

[TheHorta]

I’m generally not the type of person to buy anything cheap — but my only-ever chrono is a sub-$100 Chrony F1.

I see all kinds of sophisticated and far more spendy chronographs out there. The El Cheapo F1 seems to reliably report within +/- ~1% of the more renowned units, having little practical effect on my ballistic computations (I’m not an ELR guy).

So… what, if any, practical benefit will I get from upgrading to a Cool Kids unit? I don’t mind dropping whatever coin it costs if the value is there.

Also, with the F1 it’s about the simplest device out there to operate and lug around. It’s tiny and weighs only a couple of pounds. Will a higher-end unit be more complicated?

 

[roostercogburn98]

Following cause I currently use a magneto speed sporter. Have debated what a “fancy” one would bring to my table many times.

 

[6.5SH]

If looking for more data a LabRadar, ShotMarker or Oehler 89 allow you to gather downrange velocity and BC info.

Something like the new euro-made Bulletseeker Mach 4 allows gathering of velocity while using the rifle to record even more data.

 

[Jefe's Dope]

Applied Ballistics has a pretty decent unit. Not sure if it's for sale or how much.

 

[db2000]

This is what you seek.

Bulletseeker Mach 4 doppler chrono

Previously Longseeker radars were limited to Air and rimfire the Mach4 model seems to be centerfire oriented weapon mounted radar developed and manufactured in Europe. The price point in Europe is similar to Labradar , but considering you cant really buy Labradar till summer or autmn ,this is a...

www.snipershide.com

 

[Fig]

The $100 Caldwell Chronograph is +or- .25% The all claim about the same accuracy.

I have the Magnetospeed with a bayonete, and I love how I can get a speed and zero at the same time before a match. It's also small and compact and sets up in five seconds.

The Labradar is just fucking kewl (especially with the archery mod), but none of them is going to get you more accuracy. They're all about the same in terms of the reading on the speed, and that's really what's important...

So my answer is really, nothing. Except the labradar is soo cool...

 

[Im2bent]

You don't have to put your chronographer down range. More sophisticated software with more detailed data. SD, ES you can save multiple strings of fire, bluetooth with an ap on your phone so you can see your numbers without using a spotting scope to see the display on your chrony. Also no screens and no did a cloud fuck up my numbers?

 

[db2000]

You don't have to put your chronographer down range. More sophisticated software with more detailed data. SD, ES you can save multiple strings of fire, bluetooth with an ap on your phone so you can see your numbers without using a spotting scope to see the display on your chrony. Also no screens and no did a cloud fuck up my numbers?

…and most importantly here, you won’t look like a poor

 

[Jefe's Dope]

IMO, the MagnetoSpeed is the best 'value'. Not the cheapest but works well, is easy to set up, and can be mounted in many configurations and has a plethora of mounting options in the aftermarket.

 

[Im2bent]

And lets not forget the "Oh shit I just blasted my chrony...."

 

[6.5SH]

And lets not forget the "Oh shit I just blasted my chrony...."

Matter of when, not if on that. LoL

 

[acudaowner]

girls, money , cars , hot wives , children that love you lol and a winning golden ticket for the mega lottery .

 

[roostercogburn98]

And lets not forget the "Oh shit I just blasted my chrony...."

No shit there I was. 5.7x28, 40g amax right to the face of my old school caldwel

 

[TheHorta]

girls, money , cars , hot wives , children that love you lol and a winning golden ticket for the mega lottery .

The secrete of my success.

 

[DownhillFromHere]

The major advantage of more expensive units is vastly improved convenience, as mentioned in previous posts.

There is definitely a learning curve to using a LabRadar. The biggest caveat to LR in my experience is anyone trying to use one on a cluttered/close/indoor range is likely to experience, um, high frustration due to reflection of the radar beam. On cluttered outdoor ranges, using the low-power setting (US units; exports to some countries are low-power only) can help.

As to "when" a Caldwell/Chrony takes a hit... yeah. When. But hey, this one still works after taking a 9mm, except it won't talk to my phone anymore...

 

[db2000]

The major advantage of more expensive units is vastly improved convenience, as mentioned in previous posts.

There is definitely a learning curve to using a LabRadar. The biggest caveat to LR in my experience is anyone trying to use one on a cluttered/close/indoor range is likely to experience, um, high frustration due to reflection of the radar beam. On cluttered outdoor ranges, using the low-power setting (US units; exports to some countries are low-power only) can help.

As to "when" a Caldwell/Chrony takes a hit... yeah. When. But hey, this one still works after taking a 9mm, except it won't talk to my phone anymore...
View attachment 7888284

I’ve got a long stripe down my Magnetospeed bayonet from a 5.56. Still seems to work fine.

 

[338dude]

IMO, the MagnetoSpeed is the best 'value'. Not the cheapest but works well, is easy to set up, and can be mounted in many configurations and has a plethora of mounting options in the aftermarket.

Check out mounts made by wiser precision!

 

[acudaowner]

warm and fuzzy feelings may a few jealous looks of envy from other shooters at the range , if you really really lucky or unlucky depending on how you look at it maybe even a few fanboys at your local range might hump your leg in envy lol . Dam clingy people they can be . Almost forgot your weight is less as your pockets are a bit emptier .

 

[Dead Eye Dick]

And lets not forget the "Oh shit I just blasted my chrony...."

Been there, it only takes one bad moment. (after years of using it, especially during my IHMSA years when knowing your XP's velocity and velocity consistency was exceedingly important)

had problems with another brand. worked when it wanted, which wasn't very often. Sent it back to the factory, they said it was fine, tried it again, worked when it wanted, unfortunately, I never found a day when it wanted to (work). Sadly it was a Christmas Gift from my family. (PACT)

Got a Magnetospeed. It worked great until it came lose and the muzzle blast destroyed the plastic parts. Maybe I was doing it all wrong, but I never seemed to be able to get it really tight enough. One day it came really loose without my knowing, slipped down the barrel a bit and. the muzzle blast from a .25-06 going full song, did her in. Called the factory, told them what happened, they complimented me on my honesty, offered me a new one with a 15% discount.

My son and I went halves on a Labradar. Why would anyone want anything else? It truly falls under the class, buy once, cry once.

 

[MisterAnderson]

Owner of a (1st gen) Magnetospeed and now Labradar here.

If you shoot inside 600 yds most of the time, my opinion is that you would probably not see better accuracy or precision with a higher dollar unit. Biggest upside to a non contact chrono is being about to zero and get speeds while collecting more data points. It comes at the cost of set up complexity, a trashy interface, and it sucks batteries so youll need a battery pack along with a tripod for it.

Past 600 its probably more a question about what you think you might want to do with that data.

I will echo the curious inquiries comments here. I have yet to set up the Labradar and not be approached by many folks who dont knoe what it is or have only seen them on the webs. Thats fine but our rifle range is open for very curtailed hours so it does in cut intoy data collection.. If you are anti-social dont get a Labradar.

 

[Jefe's Dope]

I recently changed the chassis mount for my Magnetospped and it only works on my CF, so I now attach the MS to my Vudoo's barrel to just get speeds for whatever match I'm running that day and then remove it. It's quit funny but I get zero POI shift from on vs. off. Was shooting out to 385 meters/421 yards.

On a side note, I got an SD of 8.7 for 37 rounds of Lapua Biathlon X I recently bought because it was on sale.

 

[MarkyMark007]

I’m generally not the type of person to buy anything cheap — but my only-ever chrono is a sub-$100 Chrony F1.

I see all kinds of sophisticated and far more spendy chronographs out there. The El Cheapo F1 seems to reliably report within +/- ~1% of the more renowned units, having little practical effect on my ballistic computations (I’m not an ELR guy).

So… what, if any, practical benefit will I get from upgrading to a Cool Kids unit? I don’t mind dropping whatever coin it costs if the value is there.

Also, with the F1 it’s about the simplest device out there to operate and lug around. It’s tiny and weighs only a couple of pounds. Will a higher-end unit be more complicated?

not +-1% but more +-5% in chap units.
+-0,1% in labradar.
this is the difference

 

[spamassassin]

Optical (Shooting Chrony, ProChrono, etc....) gives you last millennium's tool for this millennium's job. The exception might be an Oehler 35 but even then, that's still kind of last millennium's tool trying to do today's job it's just way way better at it than other optical type. 3% error is not uncommon in the $150 class of this type.

Magnetospeed gives you no hassles with sensors getting too much light or not enough light, or fucking with sky screens, or shooting your chrony in the face, or being limited to about 3% margin of error and it provides a simple but sometimes annoyingly limited capability user interface. Way < 1% error margin, more like .1% error.

Labradar all of the above plus nothing to hang on your gun and it can give you all kinds of niggly little potential problems along with more accessories to barbie it up with and a much higher cost, shorter battery life, absolutely dog shit user interface. Way < 1% error margin. More like .1% error just like MS.

Acoustic chronographs, I've only used these once and it was singularly the biggest amount of error of any digital device I've ever seen in my life. Hit and miss even getting numbers that are on the same planet as the other 3 up ^^^ there which I will happily attribute to my own user error but I couldn't figure out what it was that I was doing wrong because it was not consistent. I saw 300fps spreads in reported velocity with a known velocity in the 2800fps area and SD's in single digits according to MS/LR.

I have all 4 kinds I describe up there. I use Magnetospeed for almost everything. LR is just a bit bulky for me to lug about.

My day job is in technology and at one point I needed to build a working chronograph for a special purpose tool so I had to learn how they work in the guts. Really, precision is in the processor being used and in the rise/fall cycle time of the sensors themselves. Faster clock speeds and shorter rise/fall times deliver big returns in terms of resolution. The number of lines of code processed isn't going to get much smaller than is used in basically all of the varieties so no real gains are to be made there. So more modern designs aren't inherently any better. I could use better components in an optical chronograph and end up with the same high resolution (thus smaller error margin) as MS/LR and it wouldn't even cost much as a product but optical types really suck dick because they're in front of the firing line far enough that they're pretty easy to Alec Baldwin. Too soon?

 

[cas6969]

They're just one of those things, how do you know? I guess you're paying for trust to some degree.

Years back a bunch of people I know all happened to be at the range with our chrono's at the same time (all double checking power factor a big pistol match we were all going to). IIRC we had five(?) chronographs and lined them all up end to end. We all shot a bunch of stuff through them. Of course, 5 different reads for each shot, and in not so small variations. Which one was right? Were any of them right?

 

[spamassassin]

They're just one of those things, how do you know? I guess you're paying for trust to some degree.

Years back a bunch of people I know all happened to be at the range with our chrono's at the same time (all double checking power factor a big pistol match we were all going to). IIRC we had five(?) chronographs and lined them all up end to end. We all shot a bunch of stuff through them. Of course, 5 different reads for each shot. Which one was right? Were any of them right? Who knows.

Given that bullets slow down the most per unit time at the earliest part of their flight I would expect you'd see something of a pretty steady downward slope with about 3% noise in the signal. I would expect them to still report as accurately as they could and if you graphed the result you would see a slope that would be very clear in it's overall trend. I can't imagine why anyone would do such a thing though, even to try and calculate BC because optical chronos just have so much imprecision.

 

[cas6969]

Yeah the last one was maybe 8-10 feet farther away that the first one, but that's not much and there was sure nothing you could really point to that it was a factor (like the rear ones reading lower)

In the end we all decided it was best to trust the lowest number just to be safe. I do recall one person who left with lots of doubt, he was making minimum power factor on some of them, but not others.
"Pump that shit up! "

I would like to buy something new that was easier faster to set up than what I have. Though I will say not dealing with lighting conditions would be nice. The only time in 30 something years I shot my chrono (clipped the sensor housing and a shade rod) was because I had to set it up in a crazy location and angle to keep it in the shade behind some barrel, yet still see blue sky (and still be able to hit berm) 500 Linebaugh revolver squatting down, leaning over, shooting almost sideways, I got stupid and flinchy and the next thing you know, parts are flying.

 

[spamassassin]

Yeah the last one was maybe 8-10 feet farther away that the first one, but that's not much and there was sure nothing you could really point to that it was a factor (like the rear ones reading lower)

Pistol bullets are going so slow that it would be easy to lose the foot-by-foot velocity decay in the noise. Rifle bullets up over mach 2.5, maybe you'd see if over the full course but not from one unit to another in all probability. I'd have to do the math and I don't want to because it's almost time to go home and watch The 100. Some fine tiddies and arse in that show.

 

[gunsnjeeps]

And lets not forget the "Oh shit I just blasted my chrony...."

That is how you know it's time to upgrade.

 

[gunsnjeeps]

As a practical application, I have a Competition Electronics chronograph from the mid to late 90's. About 8 years ago using the muzzle velocity from it at 15 feet, my 100 yard zero (zero'd while chronographing), and Sierra Infinity's info for the 175 SMK I was on target at 1000 yards.

If, or when, it gets hit I'll buy their latest model. They have discontinued the USB model for a Bluetooth connection.