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Hornady Podcast

Nothing really new here. Of course the more data points you have the more accurate your data. However, a lot of hunting rifles without heavier barrels will struggle to shoot 10 shot groups or even 5 shots sometimes. Also if your letting your barrel cool down so you can shoot that much that is a different test not related to hunting. I can count on my left hand with a few fingers left how many times I've had to shoot more than twice. Nothing wrong with 3 shot groups as long as you shoot enough of them to make sure the data is repeatable.

I think their point was, most shooting 3 shot groups discount the flyers. The 'ol "when I do my part" nonsense you read when people describe their awesome shooting rifle.
 
substantially better if you can afford it
Well, aren't most of us shooting about 50-100 varying charge weight and seating depth?

Seems like 20 to serif that combo is ok or change components is fewer shots??

They basically discounted the benefit of changing charge weight and seating depth as mostly a waste of time.
 
Heres a little trick I started doing in the last great component shortage. Load up a one shot ladder to find pressure. If the rifle really likes the bullet powder combo and you have an accurate rifle it should be a relatively small group on the target at 100 yds even though you have several different charges weights. If you have say a moa rifle and a soso load you will see the shots spread out over 3-4 maybe 5-6 inches on the target. The vertical clusters will be your accuracy node but it's usually small. With a very accurate rifle and load you will need to shoot at further distance. A real accurate target rifle that might mean 5-600 yds. For a hunting rifle maybe 2-300. We all know that H 4350 and a 140 gr Amax or eld now was the original creedmoor load from hornady. If you shoot a 9 charge ladder at 100 yds with a good rifle it will be pretty much one ragged hole. Move out to 300 and you should find a cluster at the sweet spot. So basically in 9-10 rounds you find pressure and a good starting point for your load. A few 3 shot groups should verify it. But if you can put 9 rounds over 2.5 grains in an inch it's going to be a forgiving load lol.
 
I also think some folks get married to a particular bullet and waste a lot of components trying to get it to shoot in a rifle that just doesnt like them. You see this a lot with slower twists and the new longer bullets.
 
It was a pretty good video IMO, if we're all realistic, we all know that a couple three shot groups don't statistically prove it's a great load.

I don't own a target rifle, all hunting rifles, so no ten shot strings. In fact, for my 260 I shot one round a day over the course of several days, on the same target. This is my hunting load.
 
One interesting thing I took from the video, if you are a long range target shooter or hunter you need to shoot at least 20 rounds to have a real zero. Now for a hunting rifle that might mean doing this over 7 3 shot groups or 2 10 shot groups for a prs rifle.
 
Hornady as a company has known about this forever, the packaging and delivery to shooters is new. What used to be the subject of paper benchrest newsletters and magazines is now all the rage.

Seems like their MO, put a new veneer on something old and make a bajillion dollars selling it. And more power to them for it, I'd ride that horse if I could.

I agree....Most of top tier Fclass shooters have known this for a long while. Typically when you have to shoot 20-30 shot strings you will figure stuff out.
 
I agree....Most of top tier Fclass shooters have known this for a long while. Typically when you have to shoot 20-30 shot strings you will figure stuff out.
How are they using it then? I see lots of 5-10 shot load developments.

Seems like Hornady is saying stop load development. Pick your components. Pick your parameters for charge and oal. Shoot until you group blows up or you get to 20 rounds. If too big of group, change a component until it meets your demands or change your barrel. Other than bullets, they don't sell the others stuff, so I'm not sure it is a get rich quick scheme!
 
How are they using it then? I see lots of 5-10 shot load developments.

Seems like Hornady is saying stop load development. Pick your components. Pick your parameters for charge and oal. Shoot until you group blows up or you get to 20 rounds. If too big of group, change a component until it meets your demands or change your barrel. Other than bullets, they don't sell the others stuff, so I'm not sure it is a get rich quick scheme!

During load development the number one mistake I see with most rookie Fclass shooters (and here actually)....It's easy to get sucked in by that one small group. Look at the overall picture...if it's garbage in front and garbage behind that 1/4moa group is probably a garbage unstable load, that likely won't repeat or it will be a super small window that is affected by every little thing. But a guy gets to say look at this my gun shoots 1/4moa.

For a long range competitive Fclass rifle it has to be capable of shooting cleans (200's with 10-14X's) when conditions allow, across large temp swings (typically) and changing bore conditions. Very very seldom does that one off 1/4moa group hold up across that board.
 
I compete in PRS. Most competitors are using a 6mm something (there are others, yes). Trend seems to be pick a speed (2820 to 2860 for 6BR, etc.), pick your preferred projectile (Berger 105 Hybrid), then execute abbreviated load development based on those two factors. Find a powder charge that gets you to your preferred speed with that preferred bullet and do some load development around that powder charge then try some seating length tuning.
 
Seems like Hornady is saying stop load development.
Not at all. They said make statistically meaningful changes, and build a statistically meaningful population of data points. The guy with the moustache said he does powder charges in 1gn intervals because any smaller of an increment gets lost in the noise of variances in multiple other variables. If someone were to do a charge weight ladder in 0.1gn increments there would be so much noise that unless you shot 30+ shots of each increment there would be no way to quantify the change from each increment. So make big jumps to skip over the noise patterns.

This is a graphic from PRB re: seating depth testing, you can see how individual data point lines vary within a range, and in this case he used I think 10 shots per increment to show the actual vertical dispersion range versus the variance in individual data points. In this case it shows someone would be better off to do the bulk "Berger jumps" increments of 0.040" unless they wanted to commit to shooting a meaningful number of shots at each 0.005" increment. That's the balance - to prove the change caused by very fine adjustments takes very large samples. For larger, more coarse adjustments you can use smaller sample sizes because the shifts move more than the larger margin of error from the smaller sample size. The podcast actually mentioned that specifically - small samples do not PROVE anything, what they do is RULE OUT combinations. A very small 5 shot group doesn't confirm that a load is good, but a very bad 2 shot group will rule out a combination because it can't possibly do better than the bad result it already showed you. To prove something (aka show some kind of causal link) takes large sample sizes, so if you aren't going to collect large sample populations, then you have to make changes that are more than the margin of error.

Bullet-Jump-for-Berger-105gr-Hybrid-with-Trend-Lines-645x450.jpg



 
Not at all. They said make statistically meaningful changes, and build a statistically meaningful population of data points. The guy with the moustache said he does powder charges in 1gn intervals because any smaller of an increment gets lost in the noise of variances in multiple other variables. If someone were to do a charge weight ladder in 0.1gn increments there would be so much noise that unless you shot 30+ shots of each increment there would be no way to quantify the change from each increment. So make big jumps to skip over the noise patterns.

This is a graphic from PRB re: seating depth testing, you can see how individual data point lines vary within a range, and in this case he used I think 10 shots per increment to show the actual vertical dispersion range versus the variance in individual data points. In this case it shows someone would be better off to do the bulk "Berger jumps" increments of 0.040" unless they wanted to commit to shooting a meaningful number of shots at each 0.005" increment. That's the balance - to prove the change caused by very fine adjustments takes very large samples. For larger, more coarse adjustments you can use smaller sample sizes because the shifts move more than the larger margin of error from the smaller sample size. The podcast actually mentioned that specifically - small samples do not PROVE anything, what they do is RULE OUT combinations. A very small 5 shot group doesn't confirm that a load is good, but a very bad 2 shot group will rule out a combination because it can't possibly do better than the bad result it already showed you. To prove something (aka show some kind of causal link) takes large sample sizes, so if you aren't going to collect large sample populations, then you have to make changes that are more than the margin of error.

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Thats a great site with a lot of good info.
 
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