Chronographs which one should I buy

[bigboreshooter]

I am planning on purchasing my first chronoy and am wondering which is the best, most user friendly and which options I really need. Thanks

[Smooth]

I have owned 2 Chronographs. The first one was a basic Chrony, which I shot (ouch! ) The second one I bought is a Competition Electronics ProChrono Digital and I like it very well. It hooks up to my laptop and I am able to track my shots without writing them down and losing the papers. It's all in my computer. I can't really say anything bad about the original one but it didn't hook up to the computer and I had to write everything down. I would suppose it's according to what you want.

[Texas Sheepdawg]

I have a Chrony F1 with remote head. Can't beat it and if you get it, check back with myself or Hoot. We can show you how to activate the recall button.

[Jim in Houston]

I, too, asked this queston some time ago and ended up with the Pro Chrono. I got the remote control box, but not the computer hook-up. I can change strings, delete bad shots, and recall the statistics (max, min, average, etc.) from the bench, and I record each velocity on a chart, even though I could just recall the data from the chrono, when I get it home.

Having the hook up to the computer would save me the time from entering the data into an Excel spreadsheet, but I have set up the sheet to generate graphs and data sets that are useful to me.

Anyway, I can recommend the ProChrono - http://www.midwayusa.com/product/852429/competition-electronics-prochrono-digital-chronograph, for example.

[Hoot]

Most of the time, my Chrony with the remote head does a yeomen's job. However, it will occasionally and inexplicably get into a funk that defies understanding and I've been working in electronics for going on 40 years. This past Wednesday, I was puttering with 300gr Gold Dots and VV N110. Over a short span of time, on a cloudless day, using the sun screens, running 3-shot ladder test, I got the following readings:
34gr
1905 (fouler)
1928
1932

34.5gr
1946
1948
1948

35gr
886.8
886.0
887.2
WTF?!!!

35.5gr
2011
2015
1999

It's not the first time something odd like that has happened. More like the 5th time in two years of experimentation. That's 5 times too many. No idea why it went crazy. After the first shot, I recycled the power, but to no avail. And it's not like the sun coursed across the sky while I was shooting them. It was cold that morning, so I got all the shots off at 1 minute intervals and that included hand loading them one at a time. At least it was a good SD.

I'm not in the class of people who build car elevators in their houses, so price is important. Then again so is my time and mental health. For the amount of experimentation I do, I'd really like to find a make and model that doesn't cost as much as I paid for my 450B upper, yet doesn't pull crap like that on me.
I worked fastidiously making up those loads. No lie. 12 rounds and over an hour getting them perfectly matched, only to have some B.S. like that happen.

While affordable, the Chrony is starting to alienate my affection.

It was a new EverReady Industrial Grade Alkaline battery that morning, so don't ask...

Every time this has happened, it was during temperature transition from cold out of the carrying case to warm from sitting out in the sun. Regardless if that meant starting out at 30 and warming from the sun to 50, or starting out at 70 and warming from the sun to 90. Always during upward temperature transition. Once it reaches stasis, it runs like a champ. I've worked on problems like this at work often enough to know that they sometimes, heck most of the time, are not easy to recreate and hence troubleshoot on the test bench. Though we have a thermal chamber for running the temperature up or down, it probably won't go over well shooting through it.

So, if anyone has an affordable (I know, matter of perspective) make and model that they do not have this, or other anomalous problems occur with, to the point that they would recommend it, feel free to chime in.

Hoot

[kottke_35]

Hoot,

was the 300gr trial worth a write up? I've got some 300gr speer bullets to run as well. Just curious what you came up with? Perhaps a new topic with this info, or a pm?

Thanks,
B.

[Hoot]

Hoot,

was the 300gr trial worth a write up? I've got some 300gr speer bullets to run as well. Just curious what you came up with? Perhaps a new topic with this info, or a pm?

Thanks,
B.

Regrettably no. Not all hunches pan out. Much better choices in powder. I happen to have some N110 left over from a different bad hunch last year. Wish I had some 1680, or 296. Heck, H110 even. Anything slower than Lil Gun, though that'll work almost as well. Some things I write up, some things I don't. Remind me to tell the one about my idea for shrink to fit (in boiling water) chopper mittens some day.

Hoot

[kottke_35]

Lol. Roger that! Thanks Hoot.

B.

[Jim in Houston]

I've put about 200 rounds across my ProChrono. I have had about 16 rounds that failed to record, but that can happen with changing cloud cover, being a little off center on the chrono on one shot, or shooting out one of the sun screen supports (chrono survived the insult, but the rod was bent about 45 degrees). I've only had one anomolous (how the heck do you spell that) result - everything was running about 2,100 fps and one shot came out at 4,900. Maybe a bee flew through across the sensor ahead of the bullet?

I have no idea how to account for a single string that is out of agreement with everything else. Temperature change affecting the electronics sounds as good as any other reason, but I don't physically know why that would happen.

Most of what I read while researching chronographs pointed to the Oehler 35 as the "professional" standard, but it is about 3x more expensive than the consumer verions. I can live with less, and I haven't been dissapointed with my ProChrono so far.

[Texas Sheepdawg]

Mine seems to work fine. And it sat in a fridge for several hours. Knuckle Head Spencer was half asleep raiding the fridge and I guess he thought it was a block of cheese... He barely remembered doing it but he didn't know why. Crazy teenagers.