Hammer ballistic coefficient tests...

[Muddyboots]

So to be clear, every bullet manufacturer that does not provide a LabRadar calculated BC can do more? CE? In business 14 more years and is just starting to use an Oehler? Originally this was stated not to be a Hammer issue but yet you made it one with your Safari comment. There are bullet companies far more financially established in size like Hornady and even lately Nosler that only recently started to use Doppler. What took them so long? They have the financial and technical resources to have done this years ago. They have ballistic labs. Heck, for years everyone complained about their BC's and now they are better. These are huge long time companies in comparison. How about giving companies time to grow, prosper and develop products as their primary focus? Have you ever mortgaged your personal assets to start up, develops and grow a company? Your day to day decisions are far different than ours.

Testing bullets on all sizes and shapes on animals is tough to do here while you can do so on a safari much easier with real world data. And yes, marketing is part of it but hide, tissue and bone performance on extremely tough African game has great deal of significance.

My comments are based upon friends I have in other businesses that mortgaged their life in a gamble to start and develop their business. They were successful only by shaving beards off pennies until their business prospered enough to start having a life. This was not overnight success. On average 7-10 years grinding it out every day. Everyone has an opinion how to run someone else's business until you have one of your own. Perspectives change fast then. I hope everyone understands my perspective from building a business versus what we think someone should do.

Thank you for considering my comments.

 

[JD284win]

@entoptics
Calculating a BC is just an estimate.

Let me know what you find out. I shoot all of his bullets.

I messaged with him but forgot to ask. They look like a solid. Could you PM me some close up photos of the bullets? I should be able to get the 178s in my 30-28 to 3350 or so.

 

[RockyMtnUT]

It's getting to muddy in here.

 

[Petey308]

So to be clear, every bullet manufacturer that does not provide a LabRadar calculated BC can do more? CE? In business 14 more years and is just starting to use an Oehler? Originally this was stated not to be a Hammer issue but yet you made it one with your Safari comment. There are bullet companies far more financially established in size like Hornady and even lately Nosler that only recently started to use Doppler. What took them so long? They have the financial and technical resources to have done this years ago. They have ballistic labs. Heck, for years everyone complained about their BC's and now they are better. These are huge long time companies in comparison. How about giving companies time to grow, prosper and develop products as their primary focus? Have you ever mortgaged your personal assets to start up, develops and grow a company? Your day to day decisions are far different than ours.

Testing bullets on all sizes and shapes on animals is tough to do here while you can do so on a safari much easier with real world data. And yes, marketing is part of it but hide, tissue and bone performance on extremely tough African game has great deal of significance.

My comments are based upon friends I have in other businesses that mortgaged their life in a gamble to start and develop their business. They were successful only by shaving beards off pennies until their business prospered enough to start having a life. This was not overnight success. On average 7-10 years grinding it out every day. Everyone has an opinion how to run someone else's business until you have one of your own. Perspectives change fast then. I hope everyone understands my perspective from building a business versus what we think someone should do.

Thank you for considering my comments.

Oh I get it and understand fully the intricacies of starting a business, as I'm starting my own.

Again, I'm not trying to be negative towards any particular company. I'm merely making talking points and using examples. I don't want to be misconstrued. I brought up the safari because I think it's a valid point to be made based on your comment about time and money- that's all, seriously.

I don't have some unrealistic expectation of young companies and expect them to have every resource available from the beginning. That's crazy to expect that. That's not what I've been saying.

And to be fair, I do think it's peculiar that all those other companies you mentioned in your own examples haven't done more and sooner. I do agree they could have and maybe should have and are trying to play catch-up with current consumer demand on the info.

I agree their African trip will be useful and will be a great test for their bullets. I alluded to that already. It's not a waste of time and resources. I used it only as an example that they appear to have the kind of resources to also do more BC testing. What they ultimately do is their choice and their business, and I respect that. I'm not here to throw stones. I even mentioned ALCO as being worse on their advertised BC, and I shoot ALCOs.

I'm all for giving companies time to grow. I'm not the only one that sees inaccurate BC as an issue though and the whole point is I'd like to see them grow and do better in that area specifically as they continue to grow. No one is saying, "well their BC numbers are wrong, so don't even bother with their bullets". All that's being said is they seem to be consistently lower than the estimates and that it would be nice to see published numbers at least closer to what guys are seeing after doing their own trueing (which everyone should do regardless).

Again, I understand and appreciate your perspective and I hope you can understand and appreciate mine as well. And I thank you as well for considering my comments as well.

 

[Muddyboots]

We are all good, different perspectives provide more thoughts to consider. Hopefully everyone sees and understands healthy discussion never a bad thing.

 

[Petey308]

We are all good, different perspectives provide more thoughts to consider. Hopefully everyone sees and understands healthy discussion never a bad thing.

Agreed! Thank you.

 

[QuietTexan]

BC is just a number that trues up a ballistic calc to real drops. If it does any work in selling bullets it's to the same people who believe in window sticker gas mileage, the energy sticker on their fridge, and the promises in political campaign ads. I don't know why anyone bothers to get upset about what the actual results are, what the difference from printed is, etc. It's not an emotional thing to have a high BC number or not.

That said I appreciate the serious, actual work showing real results. To me it shows that each of us has to do our own work and there are no shortcuts out there.

Not every hunter has the luxury or skill to easily confirm drop data out to maximum hunting distances

That's an insane statement though. Actually shooting as far as you think you can shoot isn't a luxury, and if someone doesn't have to skill to shoot drops they for darn shoot don't have to skill to take the shot at an animal. About the only thing worse than blindly trusting printed BC is trusting FPS on a box of factory ammo

But all those average shooters will probably never get out of 300 yards where they can continue to use made-up numbers to feel good about their minute-of-gut-shot accuracy. If they feel like blaming the BC for their 150 yard miss, well that's just the shooting equivalent of "my fish was thiiiiiis long". Serious people will hear their BS and know it for what it is.

 

[buckbrush]

There seems to be a number of end-users willing to perform the ballistics testing and load data for these small business boutique manufacturers and designers. Look at Sherman wildcats. That load data is all user submitted, albeit use at your own risk since there is no quantitative pressure information. It provides useable reference points.

It is probably brilliant business practice to utilize the energy of your clients if they have the enthusiasm to do this work free of charge and report unbiased results.

 

[Petey308]

BC is just a number that trues up a ballistic calc to real drops. If it does any work in selling bullets it's to the same people who believe in window sticker gas mileage, the energy sticker on their fridge, and the promises in political campaign ads. I don't know why anyone bothers to get upset about what the actual results are, what the difference from printed is, etc. It's not an emotional thing to have a high BC number or not.


That's an insane statement. Actually shooting as far as you think you can shoot isn't a luxury, and if someone doesn't have to skill to shoot drops they for darn shoot don't have to skill to take the shot at an animal. About the only thing worse than blindly trusting printed BC is trusting FPS on a box of factory ammo

But all those average shooters will probably never get out of 300 yards where they can continue to use made-up numbers to feel good about their minute-of-gut-shot accuracy. If they feel like blaming the BC for their 150 yard miss, well that's just the shooting equivalent of "my fish was thiiiiiis long".

So how is a consumer supposed to pick out a bullet for their needs if none of the published data is to ever be considered accurate? Just buy some of it all and try it and see?

I agree a lot of it isn't accurate, but that's a problem and not all of it should be dismissed and/or accepted, in my opinion.

Every hunter taking shots beyond PBR in particular should be trueing their numbers and not taking shots out of their capability.

The adjustments needed though shouldn't be way different than what's been advertised when you're using similar equipment and similar speed and SG.

Idk, just my thoughts.

 

[Pdvdh]

I use s Magnetospeed and have no experience with the Labradar. Could you elaborate on your velocity decay method? Are you just putting 100yrds as you max range in your calculator and adjusting BC value until velocity lines up at 5 or 10yrd increment out to 100?

I set my LabRadar to collect velocity at 20yd increments out to 100yds. As 100 is about as far as my LabRadar will collect accurate data on the 30 and 338 cal bullets.

I then compare recorded velocity amongst each group of bullets to ensure consistent velocity loss for each bullet fired. I compare velocity loss at every 20yd increment down range. It becomes obvious in short order what the average rate of velocity decay is for the bullet being tested. After I've fired, say 4 or more bullets, I develop an "averaged" MV and an "averaged" velocity for the bullet at 20 40 60 80 and 100yds.

I then input the "average" MV into my Ballistic software, along with the station pressure, temp, and RH, and adjust the bullet BC value until the Ballistic software accurately predicts my "average" downrange LabRadar velocities.

I don't know of any method of mimicking my process using a Magnetospeed Speed. Since to my knowledge, it provides only one velocity, at the muzzle.

My Labradar will commonly/normally collect bullet velocities out to 100yds for 30 and 338 cal bullet diameters. Normally 80 to 100yds for 28 cal bullets. 60-80yds for 25 cal bullets. And ~60 yds for 22 cal bullets.

If you collect accurate velocity out to 60yds, that's sufficient to calculate an accurate BC value. More distance velocities are of course, better. But the LabRadar isn't able to collect velocity past ~125yds. I used to set my LabRadar to collect velocity out to 125yds, but feel I get better / more accurate velocity data running it with the 100yd max range setting. So I set mine to report velocity at the 20 40 60 80 100yd settings.

This is somewhat similar to the method used by shooters to develop a BC value for a bullet based on measured downrange bullet drops. Reverse calculation of a bullet's BC value using a ballistics program by inputting BC values into the ballistics program, until a BC value accurately predicts the measured downrange bullet drops. Except my method eliminates the human and rifle-caused errors involved in accurate placement of bullets on target at long distance, especially under variable wind shooting conditions.

 

[Pdvdh]

So how is a consumer supposed to pick out a bullet for their needs if none of the published data is to ever be considered accurate? Just buy some of it all and try it and see?

I agree a lot of it isn't accurate, but that's a problem and not all of it should be dismissed and/or accepted, in my opinion.

Every hunter taking shots beyond PBR in particular should be trueing their numbers and not taking shots out of their capability.

The adjustments needed though shouldn't be way different than what's been advertised when you're using similar equipment and similar speed and SG.

Idk, just my thoughts.

Agreed. The cost of a LabRadar is minimal compared to all the other costs associated with bullet manufacturing. It's comes down to a matter of prioritization, and time.

If time is the big constraint, Oehler sells equipment to reduce the time required to collect accurate BC values. More expensive than LabRadar, but not bankrupting.

Downrange bullet drops is not an accurate method for establishing 'initial' bullet BC values. It's a good last step for refining a bullet's BC value, as fired from a specific barrel.

 

[RockyMtnUT]

So how is a consumer supposed to pick out a bullet for their needs if none of the published data is to ever be considered accurate? Just buy some of it all and try it and see?

I agree a lot of it isn't accurate, but that's a problem and not all of it should be dismissed and/or accepted, in my opinion.

Every hunter taking shots beyond PBR in particular should be trueing their numbers and not taking shots out of their capability.

The adjustments needed though shouldn't be way different than what's been advertised when you're using similar equipment and similar speed and SG.

Idk, just my thoughts.

Why this concept is so hard to understand I don't know? .
This is for the best interest of the consumer and for the supplier to provide as accurate information as possible.

 

[TheSouthpaw]

Mcguire Ballistics is next on my list to test out

I'll be watching that one. $2.50 per bullet is awful steep for the lack of data yet. They post their terminal videos with large overbore magnums with 2200+fps impacts at 800yds. I'd like to see a legitimate 1600-1800fps impact into gel with their bullet using smaller cartridges. Do they only mushroom or do they fragment at higher impacts? It would also be nice if they explained the difference in their mag-feed and single-feed beyond "reduced range." So BC is probably affected, what about velocity and/or terminal performance?

Not trying to be too critical, just some open questions that I feel should be answered at a minimum given the cost of their product.

 

[Petey308]

I'll be watching that one. $2.50 per bullet is awful steep for the lack of data yet. They post their terminal videos with large overbore magnums with 2200+fps impacts at 800yds. I'd like to see a legitimate 1600-1800fps impact into gel with their bullet using smaller cartridges. Do they only mushroom or do they fragment at higher impacts? It would also be nice if they explained the difference in their mag-feed and single-feed beyond "reduced range." So BC is probably affected, what about velocity and/or terminal performance?

Not trying to be too critical, just some open questions that I feel should be answered at a minimum given the cost of their product.

All valid points and considerations, in my opinion.